Read Jonathon Glover's "Humanity - a moral history of the twentieth century. How WWI was really the outbreak of four wars, Hilter ans the NAZI moral identity, Mao, the penchant towards Obedience and Conformity, Rwanda, Viet-nam and My Lai.... it goes on and on. The book analyses the psyche and the breaking down of moral identity too, as usually orchastrated by Governments and Treaties.

On the smaler scale: Is Tony about evil? There is 1 PET scanner for every 1,312,500 Australians. He promised to address the need for more affordable and more available scanners by July, 2007. These scanners can detect cancers at a cellular level. He has provided no information and doctors have to fight in Court for access to public records ubder the FOI Act. Presumably, the money is needed for por-barreling? Is that evil?

Oliver,
We should be asking What is Evil or evil, rather than who. Not to have facilities wherever someone would like them is not evil 't's a matter of economic priority. I believe many good people do very things bad things purely out of ignorance. I would not describe that as evil but it can lead to evil eventually. Surely you've heard the phrase "bad things happen when good people do nothing". Well, I have experienced good people thinking they're doing good things but the opposite resulted. that is not evil but it fosters evil because eventually the short-changed have to retaliate. this is how neighborhood disputes start & wars on the greater scale. When you have someone who is too ignorant to see that their action is offensive to someone else & that someone else is too ignorant to realise that the other did not mean to be offensive & becomes aggressive then who is the guilty one if a conflict occurs. I work in an environment where we provide facilities to remote communities & in general make for healthier living conditions & we get flak. why, because we're seen as a necessary evil. so, are we really evil by trying to help people who incessantly bleat discrimmination or are they evil by just taking & not making any effort to help themselves.
the outcome is that we have a dysfunctional society with a lot of ill-will & ill-feeling.

individual,

Have you read Lawrence Kolhberg:

http://faculty.plts.edu/gpence/html/kohlberg.htm

He would set-up scenarios like, is it right/wrong to steal to save a life. What was measured was not the right or wrong bit, but how the subject arrived at a decision. Germany was blockaded before WWI and forced to pay unpayable reparations before WWII. It was crippled economically and insulted to core of its society:

Hilter is regarded evil, but what of the West creating the situation via concourse of cascading treaties and acts of repribution?

Oliver,
the west wrong ? surely not ! left-wing academics undermining everything that's good for society ? never !
That Kohlberg article should be brought up in schools. thanks for that link.

The pseudo-science of Eugenics was popular in lots of nations 100 odd years ago, and found its political voice in Hitler's Germany. Racial hygeine and sterilisation of the 'feeble minded' etc were serious subjects for discussion, considered as science and popular with the Psychiatry profession. Why they won out in Germany and not the US or Australia does say something about the German psyche of the time.

Oliver, maybe the harsh terms imposed on Germany explains some of their bitterness, but this doesn't even touch the question at hand here.

If it was simply a question of righting those wrongs Hitler could of stopped after say, Poland & northern France and achieved a 'fair' outcome through diplomacy.

Gypsys, Jews, homosexuals et al, were the subjects of German evil, and irrelevant to your economics argument. Hitler had one product in mind- death and destruction. The results on Germans were no less destructive than the results on his targets

palimpsest,

I was addressing individual's what vs why. Distinctions are not always clear. In WWII after the Germans started [accidently] bombing Coventry [civilians], England started bombing Dresden [civilians]. Does tit for tat made it less evil. Suspect, evil as a force is buries in our genes. Conrad Lorenze [sp?] researched the cross-over of animal to human behaviour, especially aggression.

Germany and Hilter are different constructs. The conditions in Germany, let NAZISM become impeded. Elsewise, I suspect, Hilter would have neen thought of as some sort of nut, best ignored.