The Road to Hell
The road to hell is paved not only with good intentions, as the proverb promises, but more often with bad ones.
For example, when Reformation firebrand Martin Luther exclaimed, “Reason is the devil’s greatest whore!” his intentions were apparently pure, as were those of St. Thomas Aquinus and many other medieval Christian sages who also believed trying to rationally understand the unknowable divine was a grave sin. Except it isn’t. Humans are genetically, meaning naturally, endowed to compulsively analyze the world they are born into. The habit—the instinct—evolved to protect us. Is that waving grass in the distance being moved by a benign breeze or a lion? Is a statement true or false?
The anti-intellectual religious naysayers of antiquity made simple questioning of faith heretical in the eyes of the Catholic Church and its adherents in the Middle Ages, and blind faith is still the go-to opinion of most Christians of all stripes today. So, even though the attempt to shelve reason was probably well-intended, it caused monolithic religiosity that often plunged large regions of the world into bloody warfare and over long centuries and condoned the murder of countless unbelievers chained to burning stakes. “War is hell; there’s no reforming it,” said Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman, the prominent Union general in the U.S. Civil War. And so it is.
But that doomed bad intentions are even more despicable than good ones is underscored in The Vietnam War, Ken Burns’ and Kim Novick’s powerful new PBS documentary on the monumentally tragic conflict. It recalls U.S. President Richard Nixon’s false promise to South Vietnamese President Nguyen Van Theiu early in the 1970s that he would protect his country from attack by his Northern communist enemies after a peace treaty was signed ending America’s involvement in the conflict. Thieu concluded that President Nixon was “an honest man” who should be trusted, when, in fact, Nixon had no intention—certainly not a good one—of aiding Thieu militarily under any circumstances after inking the treaty. After American troops vacated Vietnam in 1975, the communists quickly conquered the South, Thieu was forced to flee and epic misery ensued.
I am reminded of such ill-meaning duplicity today whenever President Donald Trump opens his mouth to assure us—“Believe me”—that he will do or not do something or other that he invariable does the opposite of. Whether it’s promising to repeal and replace Obamacare and deport illegals “on day one” of his presidency, bald-facedly insisting he has “nothing to do with Russia,” or falsely accusing his predecessor of “wiretapping” his phones, our dear leader’s intentions are clearly rarely good. As history shows, surely nothing good can come of such cynical mendacity.
Is it just me, or is it getting warmer?
