I believe "Evil" is a very useful term. I think it is meaningful. It is within my own experience. There are a number of horrors that can be experienced personally, or vicariously, that are awful and hideous enough, that involve enough lack of character, depravity, conscienceless, gratuitous suffering, or sadistic cruelty, to warrant strong negative evaluation... evaluation stronger than simply 'bad' or 'unmeritorious' or 'unhealthy'...

Let me give some examples; consider the variety of responses:

Haditha Probe Finds False Reports -- soldiers misrepresented information, minimizing the reality of the horror.

Sex Offenders Sue for Playground Access -- ACLU challenges an ordinance that requires certain convicted sex offenders, including pedophiles and rapists, from passing within 1000 feet of playgrounds, etc., without being accompanied by another adult who is not a sex offender.

Congo President on Military Rapes: Unforgivable -- The rape and mutilation of women in the Congo, and the response of the Congo President, continuing concerns of Amnesty International.

On the one hand we have:

Soldiers tone down descriptions of what happened, to minimize war crimes.

Convicted rapists and pedophiles don't want to be inconvenienced by being considered untrustworthy around children.

A transitional President shows an appropriately shaken expression about what happened -- on his watch; he says he wishes to be the first elected president so he can correct the problem as a first priority.

On the other hand we have:

Officers who failed to scrutinize reports.

Wiley rhetoricians who choose to spend time and money disputing the protection of children in schools and playgrounds, in the name of civil liberties.

Amnesty International, cautious and concerned about a very difficult situation and trying to sort out facts about human rights violations, progress, etc.

What of Moral Politics?

Dereliction of duty will not serve as a model for Moral Politics.

Failing to consider the safety concerns of parents, safety of children from convicted sex offenders, will not serve as a model for Moral Politics.

Careful Scrutiny of principles, trying to get at facts, and evaluating realities, on the other hand, has merit.

Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and other such groups, try to evaluate problems and give accurate information and send timely warnings about dangers. And there are great dangers.

Call them dangers, call them horrors, call them violations, I call them "Evil" -- there was a lot of Evil shown in photographs of US soldiers torturing Abu Ghraib prisoners, there was a lot of Evil shown as Musslims rioted over a cartoon, there was a lot of Evil when American soldier massacred civilians in Iraq, there was a lot of Evil when soldiers raped and mutilated women in the Congo.

But at least sound the warning. I am not afraid to call it a moral warning. Those who are afraid of the word Evil, seem to be playing with word-politics, the rhetoric of buzzwords and (the formerly) fashionable disdain for moral language. I'm concerned about the real dangers of politics. Those dangers include the manipulation of moral language. That does not negate the value of moral language, or the value of Moral Politics.