Good vs. Evil

Sometimes I like to ask Mr. George about what's going on in the world, and he likes to tell me the answer. He says it's good practice for him to bounce ideas off of me, because I represent his core constitutionality. But today I didn't even ask a question. Mr. George just came up to me while I was edging the lawn and started talking.

"Listen here, Lenny. There's two kinds of people in the world. There's good people over here-" and he held up his right hand. "And there's bad people over here-" and he held up his left hand. "The good people love freedom and democracy. The bad people, and the evil people, you know the bad people and the evil people can pretty much be lumped in the same thing, and they don't love freedom. Saddam is evil. He just is. William Hung over there in North Korea with all them nucular bombs is evil. And so is John Kerry and all the Democrats."

"My mother is a Democrat," I said.

"Sit down, Lenny. You might take this kinda hard. What I'm doing is making the world safe for freedom and democracy. I'm a part of history, see? And anyone who doesn't support me, and anyone who doesn't love freedom, and freedom is a very important principle, so therefore anyone who refuses to live under democratic reign is evil."

"But what if a Democrat catches you telling a lie? Are they evil for reporting you?"

Mr. George paused for about ten seconds. He made his decision: "Yes, they're evil. You see, I'm a leader, and I need to lead. And sometimes I need to do bad things to help good prevail. If someone says I'm lying, that hurts me as a leader, and that's not good. It's bad. And bad and evil are two pods in a pea."

"But what if they're telling the truth?"

"They're not coming from a position of strength. They're coming from a position of weakness. Instead of being patriotic, they're being sedultory. They want to weaken America. Weakness is bad. And bad is one of the pods."

I kept edging the lawn. This was a lot to think about. Mr. George is like deep water that runs still.