The Argument from Evil in the Rhetoric of Reaction

In his provocative book The Rhetoric of Reaction, economist A. O. Hirschman identified three recurring themes in conservative argument since the French Revolution: (1) the perversity argument: well-intentioned efforts to change the world always backfire; (2) the jeopardy argument: radical reforms always jeopardize hard-won liberties; (3) the futility argument: the acquisitiveness and selfishness of human nature doom all efforts for social improvement. 1 After spending some years studying the rhetoric of the Right, I want to add a fourth argument to Hirschman's list: The argument from radical evil. The argument from radical evil uses the Christian concepts of sin and Satan both to argue against equality and to condemn liberals and socialists for their naïveté. In this brief paper, my goal is to explain why rational people should reject use of the term "evil" in public discourse, first, by examining the uses of the argument from evil in American political rhetoric, and, second, by contending that the Christian view of evil is inherently corrosive of democratic politics.