>I didn't see that. I went through a 32 step to wean myself off of
>O'Reilly...Can Fish provide us with a transcript of that show? If he did
>that well, he might wanna publicize the exchange. (beyond the already how
>many millions of viewers who haven't completed their 32 step...)
[The whole thing costs money; here's a taste from the O'Reilly website.]
Is "Evil" Too Simple to Describe Terrorists? Thursday, October 18, 2001
This is a partial transcript from The O'Reilly Factor, October 17, 2001.
BILL O'REILLY, HOST: Thanks for staying with us. I'm Bill O'Reilly. In the second Personal Story segment tonight, you may remember earlier this week, I quoted an article written by the University of Illinois-Chicago liberal arts and sciences dean Stanley Fish in The New York Times.
Dean Fish said: "We have not seen the face of evil. We have seen the face of an enemy who comes at us with a full roster of grievances, goals and strategies. If we reduce that enemy to evil, we conjure up a shape shifting demon, a wild card moral anarchist beyond our comprehension, and therefore beyond the reach of any counter strategies."
Dean Fish joins us now from Chicago. Well, I'm really happy you cameo on the program, Dean, because I -- your article was extremely well written and well thought out. And I disagree with it in the sense that I think that this a very black, white situation here.
And when President Bush comes on and says, hey, the evil-doers, we got to get them, I'm with that. I'm with him. I don't need to know too much more than that, based upon the activities of these people. Where am I going wrong?
STANLEY FISH, UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS-CHICAGO: Well, I think that the "we've got to get them" part is right, but I don't think that calling them evildoers helps very much. I kind of reserve evil for sociopathic personalities, people who do bad things for no reason at all.
For example, in the anthrax discussion you were having earlier, either the anthrax letter-writers are part of this conspiracy or they are just people who get their kicks by harming as many people as they can. Bad acts in both cases, but only one set of bad acts is simply evil. The other set of bad acts, the ones attached to the terrorists' agenda, are bad acts that flow from a rationality and a plan and design we oppose.
So I don't think it's helpful to call these people evil because that detaches them from an agenda and a plan that we might get to know and, thereby, be in a better position to fight it.
O'REILLY: All right, see, I disagree with you entirely. No. 1, I think they're sociopaths. I don't think they have any human feeling at all. You don't send anthrax to somebody and a baby gets it. You don't crash a jet plane into an office building where people who have babies and children at home die for no reason at all.
No. 2, Usama bin Laden has no agenda in the sense that he says I want to defeat America so that a and b and c happen, because all he wants is to ignite a worldwide conflagration that destroys everything so that his crazy vision of what Allah wants will prevail.
This is delusionary. It's insanity. It's not based upon history. It's not based upon Osama bin Laden wanting to improve the lot of his people. All it is, is basically the inquisition all over again. "Let's kill the infidels if they don't think the way we do." That's evil, Dean. And I don't think we need to really understand it to deal with it, you know? You deal with evil -- wait a minute. And I'll give you a big, long time to answer.
FISH: Sure.
O'REILLY: You deal with evil in two ways. You contain it, which means you isolate it behind bars, or you kill it. That's it. There's no third option. Go ahead.
FISH: Well, I think that the phrase that you used that I would pick up on is the crazy vision. Now you and will agree that this vision is based on distortions, misunderstandings, and above all, on a desire to destroy us. And therefore, we have every right to oppose it. But it is a vision. It is a moral vision. It's a vision with history.
O'REILLY: Now let me op you there. You say it's a moral vision. Adolph Hitler had a vision. His vision was a world without Jews because he hated Jews for whatever psychopathic reason. Now I don't assign that as a motivation for Adolph Hitler's behavior. I simply say he's evil. We need to get rid of him.
FISH: Well, look, you said you'd let me speak.
O'REILLY: Go ahead.
FISH: The moral vision of Hitler is a moral vision. We have to distinguish between moralities we approve and moralities we despise. A morality simply means that someone who has one has a world view in which certain kinds of outcomes are desired and certain kinds of strategies are necessary. Acknowledging that someone that has moral vision doesn't prevent us for a second from saying that moral vision is one we rightly reject, and we should fight against it with every reserve that we have.
O'REILLY: But Dean, you're smarter than me.
FISH: There's no advantage whatsoever to calling...
O'REILLY: Yes, there is.
FISH: ... these people insane, irrational, and evil. All it does is put them into a category where their actions come from nowhere. If we understand where their actions are coming from, we have a better chance of trying to figure out what they might do next and then moving to combat it.
O'REILLY: No, see, I disagree. No. 1, you're smarter than I am, but you're giving credibility to Adolph Hitler and Osama bin Laden, a credibility that I don't believe they have. OK? I don't assign.
FISH: I'm not giving them credibility.
O'REILLY: Well, you're saying they have a moral vision. By entertaining their point of view, Dean, by not outright rejecting it, the way I do, you give it a certain amount of credibility. You've actually thought about them, about their vision.
I don't even think about Hitler's vision or Osama bin Laden's vision. I say, and President Bush says, we're going to destroy it. We don't care where it came from. It's bad for humanity. It goes.
And you know why that's better? And I'm going to give you the last word for a minute. It's better that way because there's no moral hesitation on our part to do what's necessary, which is to annihilate them. There's no hesitation. And that's, in our society, a strength because for too long, we've been morally equivocating, oh, we can't do this. They're not that bad. We have to understand them. No! Kill them. Give you the last word.
FISH: OK. Let's understand that they're bad and go after them. If you read mystery stories, as I do, you know that the detective always wants to put himself into the mind of the criminals so that he can better track him down and prevent him. That's one point.
And I think that the other point is that Bush's rhetoric, which I think is very useful as the bully pulpit rhetoric, is now saying evildoers, we must get them. But I will bet that in the councils of the government, they're not using that language. They're using the language of strategy.
They're asking where are these guys coming from? What are their grievances? What are these grievances going to lead them to next? And how can we anticipate and defeat them? That's a lot better way of talking and thinking than hurling around absolute moral judgments that do no one any good.
O'REILLY: All right, Dean. We'll let the audience decide as always. We thank you very much for coming on The Factor.
FISH: I thank you very much.
O'REILLY: All right.