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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Elder-Basilisk" data-source="post: 1405056" data-attributes="member: 3146">There are a few things here that are relevant to the discussion, I think.First, if Kant was even partially right (if a decent society could contain a fair number of devils without the devils ruining it, as long as the society were properly structured), then evil people can quite easily be (and often are) productive members of society. If the best way for them to get what they want is the way a good or neutral person would do it, then their alignment would not be immediately obvious throught their actions. The evil person who donates money to charity and does pro-bono work because it gets him a tax write-off and is necessary to retain the respect of others in his professional circles would be an example of this. Just because someone is evil doesn't mean he's doing anything illegal or even wrong.Second, people who are clearly evil, are not necessarily brutal toward everyone. _Prince Caspian_ has a good example of this when Nickabrik proposes summoning the White Witch in order to defeat Miraz. Caspian protests that she was a far worse tyrant than Miraz ever was and Nickabrik responds something to the effect of: "maybe she was to humans but not to the dwarves she wasn't." Now Nickabrik's perspective is probably somewhat distorted, but it's not entirely unreasonable to believe that, as long as the interests of some dwarves coincided with the Witch's, she would treat them fairly well. And, while I've heard nothing good about Stalin or Pol Pot, I read somewhere that Hitler secretly supplemented the wages (or increased their minimum wage) of cabaret girls in Germany so that they wouldn't be forced into prostitution. (A more certain example would be his well-documented love for animals). While the economics of that move may be dubious, if it's true, then the icon of 20th century evil committed actions that might appear--or might even actually be--good. Of course, that doesn't change the fact that he was evil. It just demonstrates that evil people are still human.</blockquote>

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