Yeah, “rather badly” is a strong understatement. But read on.

Certainly not excusing any libertarians, natural law, constitutionalists, or even democratic socialist politicians and activists, the GOP and Democrats have a highly undesirable record of their actions going back as long as those parties have existed.

And they simply replaced other parties: other political groups and philosophical comrades, who did the same thing. It is all part of what we (sometimes laughingly) call human civilization. Systems of organizing society that divide people. Into the rulers and the ruled. Into the haves and the have-nots. Into the state and the enemies of the state. The parasites and predators, and their prey.

Today, with the horrors of the last few weeks, we think that what we are seeing is far worse than what we have been through in the past. That is wrong. And not just in foreign lands, or among distant people: here in the States, here in our cities, our communities, our families’ lives.

Even if we reject the suspicions and claims of so many conspiracy addicts, the events of Bloody Tuesday, 9-11, are a small example of how evil people can be. Right here between the Atlantic and the Pacific.

Mandatory government is not just evil in and of itself, but it is also a tool used by people – people who are more monstrous than any mere beast. People who view others as prey, as sheep not just to be sheered but to be butchered and eaten. And not only figuratively.

When we go back even a few decades, much less a century, we find the same kind of evil which has polluted our land that we see around us today. It is not all government, and not all so-called private organizations that are empowered by governments. It is not just mega-business, or internationalists. It is an evil that infects, pollutes, society at all levels.

We call what the madman from southern Utah did to Charlie Kirk an “assassination,” but as a close friend and brother in faith told us yesterday, it was murder. The same sort of murder as happens many times a day across this nation. Not because we are not disarmed, but because we have people who are warped, sick, evil, and always with us. Just like the poor. Charlie’s murder is no more or less a horror than the man stabbing Iryna Zarutska with a pocket knife in a train. No more or less evil than the murder of Michael Ladeaux of Rapid City, South Dakota, a few days ago. (Even if you never heard of Michael.)

Whether it is a killing or robbery by a private individual or a government official, it is wrong. Morality, like science, and like freedom and liberty, is not a matter of majority vote or of legality. As we near 250 years of the “United States” and more than 500 years of a “discovered” America more and more settled by Europeans, Africans, and Asians, we must understand that immorality is something caused by individual decisions and reactions. But all too often it is governments – mandatory and human governments – that create the conditions in which individuals can act immorally and escape the consequences (at least, the human consequences).

We are told that assassination is a worse crime than simple murder. A worse sin, a worse immoral act. But why? Because ultimately, the most predatory of humans had, deep in their soul (whether they think they have one or not), a fear that they will be held to account for their actions. No matter how they justify those acts. Since they do not (or claim not to) believe in a God, in eternity, in justice (which they cannot buy), their greatest fear is to die. To die any sooner than they can possibly avoid. Knowing that death is inevitable, they also fear that the power and wealth they have collected will not go to someone who will continue their operations: their “family” (physical or spiritual). So assassination, being a way to do one or both things, is something that must be vilified and prevented.

Just a few thoughts on evil now and in the past.