Most of the world sees things in terms of us-here and them-there. We who live here are good, and they who live there are wicked. We are blessed to have been born here among the good and to have been taught the absolute truth.

The other part of the world — much smaller — sees things in terms of us-cosmopolitan and them-insular. We who are cosmopolitan understand that where someone was born and what they were taught is the absolute truth does not matter. What matters is whether a person has understood that the unexamined, uncritical belief that one is good and knows the truth is not a sign of knowing but of ignorance and will lead not to good, but to evil. We must stay alert to the fact that we ourselves are vulnerable to playing the evil role unless we stay aware of how evil actually works, and that evil works precisely through our own certainty that we are right.

This certainty — this moralistic pridefulness — will lead the wives and children and grandchildren of American soldiers who bravely fought and defeated totalitarian movements in Europe and in the Pacific to enthusiastically support totalitarians in their own land — totalitarians who promise the same returns to national greatness, the same disgust toward liberals and intellectuals, the same rise of the common folk to take back their government, the same mass conspiracy thinking. Because their families believe with all their hearts that it was Japanese or Germans or Italians that their husbands, fathers or grandfathers fought — missing entirely the fact that it was an eternal evil they fought — an eternal evil ready to seduce any person in any land professing any faith — just as long as they are prideful enough to believe they possess the knowledge of good and therefore impossible to seduce. They give themselves to the strong man who says the words they love to hear and never allow themselves to suspect who has entered their bed. They betray the principles they claim as the basis of their virtue — but it feels so right, it can’t be wrong.