Seasons

That gets into the neutral area. The money could be given to the poor, but if I don't buy the pop, I put people out of work. and Pepsi Co collapses.

Suppose you can't, but an evil sociopath follows you back in time I think the fact that he is "an evil sociopath" precludes him from being the good guy?

Maybe. But he just saved the lives of 6 million Jews, 20 million Russians and a few million assorted Slavs, Poles, gypsies, gays and handicapped people. Not to mention the actual combatants in the war. Accidentally of course, but the result is the same.

Not that I'm advocating even killing Hitler to prevent it. But a part of me that I don't like very much wouldn't be at all sorry to see little baby Shickelgruber die in his cradle.
I can't accept that it's ever the answer to meet violence with violence, but I can't rationalise why I feel that. And I don't presume to condemn anyone who disagrees with me.
Vengeance is a dangerous thing, and "there but for the grace of God go I" etc. I'm all too aware of how easy it would be to make the whole world blind and toothless by insisting on exacting an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. I could be goaded into joining a lynch mob just as easily as the next man if I didn't make a regular conscious effort to step back from the brink. More easily perhaps - injustice really gets me mad.

The solution can only be compassion, not vengeance - even for evildoers. Even if it doesn't come naturally (and it doesn't,) I think we should try. That's not to accept or diminish the severity of the deeds, nor to allow them free rein. They should be safely and humanely confined where they can no longer abuse people, because people deserve to be protected. But they also deserve the opportunity to repent, even if it seems beyond hope to us here and now. Tyrants and sadists and abusers have ruined their selves as well as their victims, and we should try to find some compassion for that. What made them go so very wrong, when we didn't? I don't know. But I try to pity them for having so comprehensively corrupted their own humanity because I know it could all too easily have been me if things had been different. We are just variations on a theme - call it God, or stick some psychobabble label on it. And it is pitiable that some of those themes go bad.

The fact is we can't go back in time, and it doesnt look like man will be able to. So killing Hitler at any age is just mind play. Being able to recognise an evil leader in our life time might save the lives of millions.
It is a sad fact that many lives were lost because no one would help 'at the time', because of their own anti Semitic feelings. A boat load of children that found no refuge, and was sent back. Gypsies being turned back over to the death squads. Will we do the same?
Never mind stopping Hitler, it's too late. How close do we watch our own world, at our own time? Look at the number of children that die of the effects of poverty, one every three seconds.
I do give to charities, then find out that food is stockpiled and unable to get delivered because of the political situation. The U.N releases reports, and seems unable to do much to fix any situation. Our leaders seem more worried about how their photo ops go than helping the world....I do think EVIL is real and alive.

Will we do the same?

We already are. Darfur doesn't have any oil, so the West doesn't care two hoots that there's another genocide going on there. We did bugger all about Rwanda. The UK is (I think still, but if not until very recently,) sending asylum seekers back to Zimbabwe to be beaten and murdered by Mugabe's death squads. But what's the solution? Kill even more people?

I don't know what the solution is, but I'm pretty sure more killing isn't it. Stopping electing professional liars whose primary interest is to hold onto power and line their own pockets might be a start. But until the fizzyplexers arrive that isn't going to happen.

In the meantime all we can do is refuse to abuse. Don't lend legitimacy to the politicians' Orwellian arguments that we can fight a war to make peace. That's how Iraq went so very pear-shaped, and evil as Saddam was, more Iraqis are dying now than were before we toppled him. More even than before they hanged him - killing him didn't do much to improve the situation, did it?

Blair and Bush's legacy is that they actually managed to make a really bad situation, that no one imagined could get much worse, a lot worse. Astounding!
I won't publicly express the opinion that they should be tried as war criminals - I would apparently be in breach of the 2000 Terrorism Act and risking arrest were I to do so, but I see little to differentiate them from Saddam in moral terms. Assuming they have the same time to ruin Iraq that he did, they might just manage to get even more innocent blood spilt than he managed to shed.

*sighs* I never said that genocide was morally equivalent to eating a Big Mac. I said that both hinge on a single action, killing. The contexts are very different, however. Most people would agree that genocide is evil, and that eating a Big Mac isn't. But they both require someone/thing to be killed.

OK, try out this moral dilemma:

A train is coming to a Y intersection. On the track it is currently on (Track A), five people are tied to the tracks. On the other track (Track B), one man is tied to the tracks. You are standing beside the track switching lever.

I do think EVIL is real and alive.

Oh, yes!

It often seems to me that Gandhi is like a sign pointing in the right direction. He offered an alternative to the escalation of vengeance and conflict generally and showd that it could accomplish remarkable things. That's not to say that he offers a complete answer or that I agree with everything he said or did. But he does offer an alternative to "I'm going to get rid of nasty people by being even nastier than they are."

I just think it is a dangerous thing to pity, accept evil, and rationalize it.

I certainly wouldn't equate pity with acceptance. I think you can pity the person even while you utterly reject their actions. Or at least I try to.

Man at sometime is going to have to renounce the outlandish evils an develop some sort of societal inhibitions against it. It is not right to say, oh well, it's ok..we are all bad, what's a little genocide?

Amen to that! (though in fairness I haven't seen anyone remotely express that view here.)

Whether I eat ice cream out of hunger, or out of spite, or to fill some nagging emotional lack, I'm still eating ice cream. Killing something out of hunger or out of hatred is still killing. I consider it more dangerous not to recognize the commonalities. Otherwise it's far too easy to fall into an "us vs. them" trap. It's is NOT that both are right. It is that they are at opposite ends of the spectrum.

I still can not agree. The old defense of "it is no different than...". I am guilty of hate. when I hate, not when I eat. I am guilty of murder when it is murder. Even the courts of law recognize the difference , and have categories of homicidal negligence, assault with intent, first degree murder.
If I say my eating is no different from Joe's killing spree, it's all killing. I have reduced Joes victims to the importance of a hamburger. To joe that is all they were. I have to consider human life too precious to say it is equal to, no different than, similar, has things in common with a hamburger.