As luck would have it, and for different reasons, I became a teacher in another school system which is one of the largest in Texas, and I taught in one of the largest high schools in Texas. I was called, “Mr. Hestal,” “Coach Hestal,” and “Herr Hestal.” I thought I was addressing Herr Burke with a term of respect, and I still think it is respectful. I won’t stop.

I suppose it’s meant to be.

But Herr Burke said that the weren???? evil. So it was nobody???? fault.

This is a distortion of Professor Burke’s position, and a willful refusal to acknowledge that the same accusation can be made of the “evil is inborn” explanation. If evil is born, not made, you can argue that it’s “nobody’s fault” just as easily – because evil is then something like a hurricane or an earthquake, and it just happens.

I suppose you would then retort that knowing this doesn’t prevent us from building earthquake-resistant structures or not living in a flood plain, but that still doesn’t invalidate Professor Burke’s argument.

If evil is born not made, regulation is the only answer.

If evil is made not born, then regulation and prevention are the answers, meaning that not only can the effects of evil be contained, but evil itself can be reduced.

Under your set of assumptions, the only way to actually reduce evil is through the selective culling of genetically defective human beings.

Personally, I’m disturbed at such a line of thinking, especially since it is based on the notion that “evil” is an objectively measurable quantum, as opposed to a variety of traits that combine in certain circumstances in socially destructive ways. Is all selfishness “evil”? Is all greed “evil”? Is all cruelty “evil”? Is all short-sightedness “evil”? If yes, how do you separate out the torturers from the toddlers? If no, who draws the line? Who determines what is acceptable and what is not? How do you ensure that the people who get to regulate “evil” are not themselves “evil”?

In short – regulating “evil” is a crappy basis for policy making. Regulating – and preventing – destructive behavior makes much more sense.

I think comparing the American public response to Iceland’s would be fruitful. In Reykjavik they staged a month long chari vari in front of Parliament harassing the government and financiers into submission. That was a real populist response and it achieved some results in terms of recalibrating social norms.

The fact that there are Very Serious People tutting while politicians and pundits undertake populist grand standing suggests that the depths of the crisis has not sunk in. When average Americans go into the public square to protest and actually engage in their own self-directed populist organizing activities, then we will have hit bottom. Until then all talk about populism or demagoguery is simply part of the Beltway Kabuki show that got us all into this mess in the first place.

Time to break out the Voltaire. We may not have to string up a financier or two, pour encourager les autres, but running out of town on a rail, tarring and feathering, and several years in stripe city should be very much on the table. Personal liability, swingeing fines, forced breakup of several of the largest firms, all of these should also be not just possible but probable options.

“Stop worrying about the delicate sensibilities of the people who robbed the system blind in the first place…” Indeed, Tim, indeed.

Do the sovereign people rule finance, or are we ruled by our financiers? Wall Street players are not going to back down out of the goodness of their own hearts.

I forgot to say that there are policy responses to my theory. As I told Herr Burke above, one such institution has worked well for centuries, and if the Framers had thought about it they would have realized that the answer was right under their very noses. I would love to discuss this institution with you but I just can’t subject myself to such closed-mindedness as has been demonstrated here today. The very fact that you classifed my ideas as Manichean and 19th century shows how little time you have spent thinking about my views. My views are not Manichean. They are not 19th century, but are 18th century updated with modern technology — which, by the way, has substantiated beautifully what people thought in the 18th century.

I have spent decades thinking about the interactions of good and evil and all I can say is that you clearly don’t get it.

You and Herr Burke insist on talking about individuals, saying that all people are good fundamentally, but here and there, and from time to time, they are trained, by whom is not at all clear, to be evil. By your analysis there is no way for anyone to be evil except when someone else teaches them to be evil. So who is this mysterious figure that does this evil training? It must be society? Or religion? Or government? or who?

I do not say and I have never said that it is possible to know who is evil and who is not except by their own actions. I have never claimed that it is possible to know in advance who will perform evil deeds and who will not. But I have said that there are evil people and they are, to a very great degree, but not completely, determined by their genetic endowment. I call these people Varietas Tyrannis, a variety of Homo Sapiens. And the idea is not original with me, just some of the terminology. I pointed out above that the Framers, George Washington, the APA, Jimmy Carter, recognize that these people exist and the Framers tried to design institutions that would keep them from doing great harm. But the enlightened culture that followed the Framers chose to believe that evil men are made not born and they tore down the walls that the Framers erected to protect us. And our other institutions, such as Wall Street, never tried to protect us — they believe in “nature, red of tooth and claw.”

So we need to face the facts. We need to understand that the men who stole trillions are evil and they knew what they were doing. But Herr Burke said that the weren’t evil. So it was nobody’s fault. Sure there will be an overreaction by the “populists” to reinstate regulations, but later when time has passed, the evil men will get regulations changed and emasculated so that we are back in the same spot.

By finally understanding that some men are evil and they will always seek institutional power, and that we must always have regulation and limits on power, we will not let someone talk us into dropping our guard.

But you are right about one thing fridaykr and that is that I can’t seriously believe what you say I must believe. I am not even close to believing in the simplistic doctrinaire world you describe. It is a figment of your own imagination, not of mine. But I could be wrong about this. Perhaps Herr Burke put his finger on something after all. Perhaps you were “trained” to imagine such wild scenarios.

You can’t seriously believe this, and if you do, there isn’t a viable policy response that can be developed out of these assumptions. What do we do, isolate the proper genetic test for evil and ban the holders of said genes from the NYSE? I think what Prof. Burke was trying to articulate in the quote you cite is that the villians you identify have acted not out of a deliberate attempt to harm but out of an unrestrained attempt to pursue their own institutional self-interests–interests, by the way, that many small investors or little people saw no problem with as long as the value of their homes and 401ks kept increasing. The point is to describe a shared confluence of short-term incentives at work that collectively lead to bad outcomes. This doesn’t make all of the participants “evil,” just self-interested. I think there’s an important difference.

So the thing to do is design our systems, including Wall Street, to minimize the damage evil men can do when they get control of other people’s money.

You have, I think, reacted with alarm to my views for many reasons and they be valid in some cases, but the one that is off the mark is “determinism.” This implies that my world, if true, would lead to people running wild. They would conspire to counter medical evidence about tobacco with fabrications that tell the potential smoking public that such evidence is by no means clear and further study is needed. In that “deterministic” world the descendants of the tobacco supporters would apply the same tactics to the question of global warming and climate change. This “deterministic” world would use the agonies of the ill to make money for Wall Street.

But I look at the world that you champion and say that it is “deterministic” as well. Those things that I just listed, of course, have already happened or are ongoing. In your world the evil men do great harm to the good men. And this has always been so. As a historian you should know that better than me. And until your world decides to change the factors that “determine” the behavior of institutions, not of men, for that can’t be changed, then evil will keep on keeping on.

By facing the fact, and I say it is a fact, that behavior is determined in large measure by genes then we can understand, for the first time, that nobody in a position of power can be trusted. People who are evil, and who possess great institutional power, will react violently to observation and limits. They will siream “free markets,” they will rail against “big government,” they will talk about the “police state,” but when they do they will only be telling us that they want to have their way. No one man should have greate power. The good guys will not object, they will understand that observation and limits are for everyone’s benefit — except for the evil ones.

No government can ever reconcile good and evil. No governmental system can protect the good people by letting the evil people run free. Hunting down criminals means that criminal harm has been already done to innocents. At this point my attackers usually ask who is “good” and who is “evil.” But the answer is that we can’t determine who is what. But we can design a world so that it will not be necessary to make that “determination” on a person by person basis. If our institutions are designed so that evil can’t do great harm when it gains power, and it will, then we will have a better world than we do today.

And it is not hard to do what I am saying about. We already have public institutions that are designed to work that way and they have done so successfully for centuries. All we have to do is look around and think.

Of course “genetic determinisn,” is a grossly inaccurate, and unfair, characterization of what I said. Self-control and social opinion along with properly designed systems can have a great impact. Education can help, not so much to change behavior, but to teach people that such people do exist and that we shouldn’t give them benefit of the doubt. The childish assumption that all people are good is dangerous. We should assume that any person who seeks positions that, if misused, can do great harm, should be carefully examined.