In this article on Medium, "What Transphobia Sounded Like in 2010," (a 7-minute read), I unpacked some statements in the book How Evil Works by David Kupelian, an editor of WorldNetDaily.
Go check out that article if you like, but here's more stuff about that book that was less directly relevant to my central point in that short article.
How the Left Machinates with Fake Crises
He also says the left manufactures crises to serve its socialist agenda.
Specifically: "The environmental movement has become one of the most powerful, modern battering rams of the left." In particular, he says, "man-caused global warming is a fake crisis." Children who are "forced to sit in classrooms" (otherwise known as going to school?) have been "brainwashed" by activities like watching Al Gore's documentary on global warming.
So, too, he says, "the false accusation of racism remains a powerful weapon of the left." (He says nothing, of course, about the weapon of actual racism itself.)
God, Though, Loves a Good Crisis
God, he says, "'creates a crisis' - or perhaps more accurately, allows a crisis to develop in our lives" so that "we end up growing in His direction."Jesus and Capitalism
He likes Christianity and Judaism but not witchcraft and atheism. U.S. culture, in his view, is based on "Judeo-Christian, free market values." (I can't offhand think of any value I'd call both religious and capitalist, but I let that be.)
His complaint against "Marxism, communism, socialism" is two-pronged. First, he says, people don't follow the moral rules he says they're supposed to follow, so they set up a false god. People who are "estranged from the laws of God now need the 'god' of socialist government." That will be a demagogue. Second, this behavior is animated by people feeling sour grapes ("hate, dissatisfaction, greed, and especially envy") about not being rich, so they turn to a socialist demagogue who "demoniz[es] 'the rich'."
How Do We Know that God Exists? That Evil Exists?
Because sometimes people make "principled" and "self-sacrificial" choices. And how could there be any other explanation for that, other than that God is the source of Choice A and evil the source of Choice B?
A rudimentary and universal moral conscience, which people have regardless of their belief in God, is, he says, "the very evidence of God." The Bible just tells us stuff we already know is true: "the Bible says stealing and murder and lying are wrong because they are wrong." (Great.)
He compares atheistic "freedom from God" to the sickly effect of "those green Christmas-tree-shaped air fresheners" that make the air smell worse.
Evil is out there, actively trying to invade and persuade us, he assures us, citing the New Testament and "the blockbuster film Spider-Man 3."
Theology of Lying
- "We elect liars as leaders because we actually need lies if we're avoiding inner Truth."
- "Lies do a great job of excusing their failings and validating their illusions."
- "Conflicting emotions cause you to be unable to think straight, and can easily result in your compulsively believing the lie."
- "When you're upset, the lie takes on a mysterious quality of attraction and believability, as though a protective force field has temporarily been disabled, allowing the lie to enter your mental inner sanctum."
- "If we assume that what feels good is good, and what feels bad is bad, we have a huge problem, because lies often make us feel good..."
Hatred
For young jihadists, he says, "the core of their being" is "a smoldering fireball of suppressed rage." He goes on:
"Intense hatred has a way of morphing inexorably into full-blown, epic madness. Indeed, hate is like spiritual plutonium, possessing bizarre, explosive, and transformative qualities of which we are largely unaware. It is the means by which evil itself blooms on this earth, especially when rage is focused and magnified by a malignant worldview."
Similarly, "many people who 'dislike' or 'are uncomfortable around' guns are actually afraid of what they might do if they had a loaded firearm in their hand," and they "project" these ideas onto the gun, classifying the gun itself as evil.
War
He complains that the government uses tax dollars to "fund evil," in which he includes "obscene, perverse, and blasphemous 'art,'" and not, say, the war in Iraq, about which he speaks positively. He says that President George W. Bush "amazingly" protected the US post-9/11 from further attacks on home soil by launching combat operations overseas (thereby conflating the rationales for war in Afghanistan and Iraq) and describes the war in Iraq as "giving the Iraqi people a chance to choose another destiny."
Similarly, this on the incineration of civilians at Hiroshima and Nagasaki:
"It broke Japan. It confronted the 'evil spirit' that had possessed that nation…and violently exorcized it. Having neutralized the evil that had captivated Japan, America became that nation's friend and helped massively reconstruct it, ultimately turning Japan into the civilized, successful, First World economic power it is today. Think how utterly amazing that is."
Anything other than war, it seems, is "moral weakness" and "appeasement."
Who's the Real You?
There are evil "forces working through you," and "if deep down you really don't agree with those feelings [schadenfreude or envy, then in a very real sense those feelings are not you. You could say there are two of you: with the real you being the observer who is chagrined over the dark thoughts and feelings rising from the deep." People ought to reflect and seek "repentance and real change."
Also, people's "entire sense of self-worth" shouldn't be "based on what others say to them and about them." That approval should come from following the godly impulse inside us, so that God rewards us with "direction, purpose, energy, and genuine and lasting happiness."
Guns
He believes that "more guns in the hands of law-abiding citizens results in less crime," citing a 1998 book that preceded the Columbine High School massacre and was already 12 years old when he cited it.
Definitionally, a law-abiding person will not commit, is not committing, and/or has not committed a crime, so their gun doesn't increase crime. And some use of guns — chiefly, suicide and accidents — might not be categorized as "crime." But we don't have predictive knowledge of exactly who is law-abiding, non-suicidal, and won't experience an accident, so the real question is not about certain types of people but about whether more guns in a society overall increases the use of those guns, and the answer is yes.
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