{Blow.Me.Away}

Thursday, October 4, 2007
5:19 AM

Most wicked deeds are done because the doer proposes some good to himself. The liar lies to gain some end; the swindler and thief want things which, if honestly got, might be good in themselves. Even the murderer may be removing an impediment to normal desires or gaining possession of something which his victim keeps from him. None of these usually does evil for evil's sake. They are selfish or unscrupulous, but their deeds are not gratuitously evil. The killer for sport has no such comprehensible motive. He prefers death to life, darkness to light. He gets nothing except the satisfaction of saying, '' Something which wanted to live is dead. There is that much less vitality, consciousness, and, perhaps, joy in the universe. I am the Spirit that Denies.'' When a man wantonly destroys one of the works of man we call him Vandal. When he wantonly destroys one of the works of God we call him Sportsman.

When the Winchester gun company makes a propaganda movie concluding with a scene in which a ''typical American boy'' shoots a number of quail and when it then ends with a slogan '' Go hunting with your boy and you'll never have to go hunting for him,'' I may suspect that the gun company is moved by a desire to sell more guns at least as much as by a determination to do what it can toward reducing the incidence of delinquency. I will certainly add also my belief that there are even better ways of diminishing the likelihood that a boy will grow up to do even worse things. Though it seems to me that he is being taught a pure evil I know that he will not necessarily cultivate a taste for all or, for that matter, any one of the innumerable other forms under which evil may be loved.

-The Vandal and the Sportsman Joseph Wood Krutch

evil is grabbing those minds.
the hearts turned black,
the tongues turned purple,
and the nails grew long,
what a monstrous figure.

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