Mad or Not

Hitler Was a Perfectly Rational Man

There has been a discussion going on in Auckland recently as to whether Hitler, Stalin, and latterly Ahmadinejad were mad--that is, bonkers (a psychiatric techical term, for those unfamiliar) or insane. The overwhelming consensus in the discussion was that these folk clearly were and, in the case of the president of Iran, are.

But what does that mean? Clearly, under our legal system it would mean that none of these tyrants are to be held accountable for their actions. There would be no moral concupiscence in their crimes because they were unable to distinguish between right and wrong. But why the rush to declare them mad? Why the overwhelming consensus that Hitler was insane? Are we to conclude that the Nuremberg trials were a terrible travesty of justice?

The standard answer to this question is that no sane person would ever have committed such unspeakable horrors. This assertion, in turn, rests on an unspoken premise: that sane people do not commit horrors, or, more subtly sane people do not do evil things. Whilst this premise is a complete nonsense, when it comes to those whom our culture identifies as the Black Beasts--Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, etc.--folk tend to take mindless comfort in it.

We suspect that there are some strong drivers which seduce people into such mindlessness. The first is that our culture has stopped seeing things in ethical categories. Concepts such as sin, evil, righteousness, and depravity have dropped out of the popular lexicon as the Christian faith has waned. The doctrines of original sin and of the fallen nature of humanity have been replaced with Enlightenment assumptions about innate human goodness. They have also been eroded by the pervasive cosmology of evolutionism which does not operate with categories of right or wrong, but of fitness for purpose--a very different concept entirely.

If the culture believes that mankind is innately righteous, then the existence of evil must have extrinsic causes. We see this all the time. The common ideology of victimhood is an example. Crime exists because of poverty. Drunkenness is caused by easy access to alcohol. People are not wrong or sinful when they are drunk; they, rather, are the victims of big brewery and supermarket businesses. They are being exploited as victims for money.

When someone commits unspeakable acts of extreme horror, however, these explanations wear a bit thin. OK, so Hitler did not have a strong, stable family background. But neither do millions upon millions of others, and they do not murder six million Jews. So, another causal explanation must exist. The consensus of the age is that Hitler, then, was not evil, but mad. Poor chap couldn't help it.

This nonsense is comforting to people. For if Hitler were evil, and was a human being, then that implictly might say something about all human beings. Modern man does not want to go down that track.

Hitler was clearly not insane. He was eminently rational. So was Stalin. So is Ahmadinejad. They had a clearly defined world-view, with premises, organising principles, meta-narratives, values, ethics, and assumptions which facilitated rational evaluation and decision making. An evil world-view to be sure, but rational nonetheless. All lived pefectly consistently by their lights.

Hitler, to cite just one illustration, took Darwinism and evolutionism seriously--far more seriously than people do today, most of whom merely use evolutionism as a lazy warranting concept to justify their agnosticism or Unbelief. He believed in higher and lower forms of life, including higher and lower forms of humanity. Within this ideology and cosmology he opined once that Maori were sub-human, primitive, ape-like creatures who deserved extinction. This is a perfectly rational position.

And if readers take umbrage at the idea that to hold Maori to be primitive ape-like sub-humans is perfectly rational, then consider an example closer to home. Just a sort time ago, within living cultural memory, it was openly asserted that Aborigines in Australia did not have souls and were not human beings. This, of course, was also perfectly rational within the Darwinian scheme of things. Are we really seriously going to assert that the majority of European settlers in Australia were insane? OK, a lot of them were convicts--but insane? We think not.

One is clearly not mad to hold such views. Evil, yes. Wicked, yes. Depraved, yes--but not mad. Darwinism itself as a religious cosmology is likewise evil, wicked and depraved. When men, in their wickedness embrace evolutionism it is their innate wickedness that makes the evolutionist cosmology attractive and compelling. It is like answering to like.

When our modern world cheerfully and self-righteously crusades for abortion and murders twenty-thousand innocent and defenceless children in this country every year, sacrificing them upon the grisly bloody altar of human rights, paying for the sacrifices with our tax exacted money, it is perfectly rational in doing so--by its own lights. Yet, evil, monstrously evil to be sure. And the rationale is very, very close to Hitler's evolutionism--that is, the unborn child is sub-human; therefore, it is reasonable to kill it.

Ahmedinejad is a Shi'ite Muslim--reportedly an ardent "Twelver Shīa" Muslim. This means that he believes that the twelfth Imam, born in 869 is still alive, yet hidden by Allah. He is about to reappear (a second coming) to smash Israel and the entire world into submission to Allah. Ahmedinejad believes that nuclear conflagration will be part of the appearing and the submission of the world. That is why Iran must develop nuclear weapons--to prepare for the Imam's appearance. That is also why he has been busy widening public streets in Teheran to accommodate the triumphal processions the twelfth Imam will lead.

Ahmedinejad is a perfectly rational man. He is also a workhorse for the powers of Satanic darkness. But, then, so are all who are involved in the abortion industry--both its cheerleaders and its practitioners who perform the human sacrifices on the altar of human rights.

Christians hold these views about Hitler, Ahmedinejad, social darwinists, and abortionists without self-righteousness. They can speak plainly about evil and depravity, because they also profess the total depravity of the entire human race descended from Adam by ordinary generation. All Christians know that there is no evil of which they are not capable. Lurking within them, apart from being baptised into the death and resurrection of our Lord, lies the evil rationality of Hitler and Stalin and the abortionist. Every Christian knows that given certain circumstances and opportunities there is no evil of which they are not capable. Every Christian looks at Hitler or Pol Pot and professes, "There, but for the grace of God, am I".

And they are both rational and righteous to make such a profession.