Scott Simon is one of the most thoughtful commentators on National Public Radio, and in the aftermath of seeing those horrifying images from the chemical nerve agent attack in Syria, Simon offered an important meditation on the nature of evil.
Once of Simon’s daughters asked how anyone could commit such an atrocity. He admits that “I was of a generation educated to believe that ‘evil’ was a cartoonish moral concept.”
Simon goes on to say that “I still avoid saying ‘evil’ as a reporter. But as a parent, I’ve grown to feel it may be important to tell children about evil, as we struggle to explain cruel and incomprehensible behavior they may see not just in history — in whatever they will learn about the Holocaust, Bosnia, Rwanda, and Darfur—but in our own times.”
It turns out that Scott Simon the reporter doesn’t want to use the word “evil,” but as a parent has to. That in itself tells us a very great deal.
