The Good, the Bad, and the Evil
Watch your language.
A new Iowa legislative session is off and running, and several priority proposals already are in the hopper. Many are controversial. Some are downright divisive.
As Senate President Amy Sinclair gaveled in on the first day of the session, she cautioned legislators: “I encourage each of us to tone down our rhetoric and to get to work on what Iowans are telling us they really want.”
The 2025 Iowa legislative session was intense, hyperbolic, and often bitter. Divisive issues ranged from removing gender identity from the Iowa Civil Rights Act to protecting the property rights of landowners from eminent domain seizure by carbon capture pipelines. It culminated in an all-night wrestling match pinning the Fiscal 2026 Year budget. Twenty-seven days after the session ended, the Governor vetoed the hard-won eminent domain bill.
I’m one of those Iowans who would welcome a return to civility and polite discourse, but I’m not optimistic. However, as legislators set to work, I suggest they might accomplish more if they retire one four-letter word from their political lexicon.
It’s not the one that Trump used this week during a tour of a Dearborn, Michigan Ford assembly plant, when he flipped off a worker who heckled him, and mouthed the words, “F You.”
No, it’s a four-letter word that’s tossed around in polite company without raising one eyebrow. But it’s one that’s insidiously detrimental to any efforts to improve the daily lives of Iowans and achieve consensus in both the state and national arenas.
Reynolds began her State of the State address on Tuesday night by honoring the two Iowa Guard soldiers recently killed in an ambush in Syria. “When I reflect on the evil that robbed our state of two exceptional young men and wounded three others, I’m aware that no words can right the wrongs of their deaths, or make up for the loss of their loved ones,” she said.
Thanking all the Iowa Guard members serving around the world, she concluded, “Our heroes in uniform are on the front lines of the fight against evil.”
Biblical Root of All Evil
I distinctly remember the first time I heard Reynolds use this four-letter word, following the shooting at Perry Community School in 2024.
“There’s just evil out there, “ she said after principal Dan Marburger and sixth-grade student Ahmir Jolliff were killed at by a 17-year-old student with a gun.
I could think of many other words to describe this event: horrific, heartbreaking, senseless, inexplicable, unspeakable – and more. Evil was not one of them.
But Reynold was not unique in adopting this narrative. In 2022, reacting to the school shooting at Uvalde, Texas, Gov. Greg Abbott declared, “Evil swept across Ulvade yesterday.”
However, the word evil isn’t bad enough for some politicians. No. What could be worse than the word evil?
Pure evil.
After the 2017 mass shooting in Las Vegas, Trump spoke of inherent evil in the world. He called it “an act of pure evil.”
In September Rep. Bob Onder (R-MO) described leftist ideology as “pure evil” on the floor of the House in Washington, D.C. following the killing of Turning Point USA leader Charlie Kirk. Never mind that Charlie Kirk was not killed by a “leftist.”
In fact, when the parents of Tyler Robinson asked their son why he shot Charlie Kirk, he replied, “There is too much evil and the guy spreads too much hate.”
It seems the root of all evil in the world is simply the four-letter word Evil, and politicians are throwing it around like candy at a small-town parade.
Sinful Doesn’t Sell
Merriam-Webster defines evil as: “Profound immorality, wickedness, and depravity, especially when regarded as a supernatural force.”
The origin of evil is an age-old question. Sometime between 470 BC and 399 BC Socrates declared that evil didn’t exist. In a debate with a prominent sophist Protagoras, he said that people who commit evil acts either are deluded into thinking they’re doing good, or they have a mental defect.
Aristotle argued that evil could result from a failing of character. He said it was driven by selfishness, greed, and a disregard for the well-being of others. “Evil destroys even itself,” he concluded.
Most of us first encountered the word evil in the context of religion. The word evil is a mainstay in the Bible, especially in the New Testament. Four different Greek words translate into the English word “evil” or “bad.” Some scholars suggest a more accurate translation of the Greek word poneros would be the words “worthless” or “second-rate”. If so, the word evil in “Deliver us from evil” in the Lord’s Prayer wouldn’t translate as malicious acts, but as worthless or base impulses and desires.
That relates more closely to being sinful. However the use of the word sinful has primarily remained within the confines of church walls, and is rarely mentioned in political contexts. After all, theology offers grace for sinners willing to abandon their past lives and commit to Christ’s teachings.
But evil deserves no such redemption. For instance, a Satanic Temple display at the Iowa State Capitol was amplified into an issue of “good versus evil,” and not a matter of religious freedom.
Alan Wolfe, a Boston College political scientist and author of Political Evil: What It Is and How to Combat It believed politicians ripped off the word evil from the religious sphere. He argued it’s become a secular word, a conservative buzzword designed to elicit emotional responses.
Political Roots of Evil
But the current MAGA crowd leaders aren’t the first to apply the word evil in politics.
In 1983, Ronald Reagan gave a speech to the National Association of Evangelicals, calling the Soviet Union the “Evil Empire.” He stated the two countries were locked in “a struggle between right and wrong, good and evil.”
In his 2002 State of the Union address, George Bush called out the Axis of Evil, namely Iran, Iraq, and North Korea.
But these references to evil were confined to global conflicts. They weren’t reflexively used to deflect attention from thorny issues in our own backyards, or to describe other people with differing solutions to shared problems.
More recently, Bill O’Reilly wrote a book called Confronting Evil. The focus is on individuals he singles out as evil: Genghis Khan, Joseph Stalin, Adolf Hitler, and Russian president Vladimir Putin. O’Reilly has no problem making a profit from evil.
Evil Takes the Blame
Evil clearly is having a moment today. Wolfe says over the past two decades Americans have undergone “a radical change in how we talk about evil.” He said it’s increasingly used to frame opponents and to justify actions. (It’s also used to justify inaction.)
“If we as a nation were capable of legislating evil out of the hearts and minds of criminals who commit these heinous acts, we would have done so a long time ago,” Wayne LaPierre, CEO, National Rifle Association, told his followers three days after the Ulvade murders.
Gov. Reynolds agrees. She told Iowans no additional gun laws would have prevented the shooting at Perry Community Schools. In other words, you can’t regulate evil.
Conservative politicians typically oppose regulations, arguing that government shouldn’t wield such power over its citizens. However, selective regulation is common (pornography, alcohol, drugs, and gambling) and is increasing. During the Reynolds administration, entire legislative sessions have been squandered by debates on regulating school library books with sexual content, restricting restrooms of transgender students, and barring transgender girls from competing in sports. No doubt the four-letter word “evil” was used to spice up this narrative.
Although the Moral Majority disbanded in 1989, its alliance with the Republican Party plays a role today. Evangelical Christians, and the more fundamental Christian Nationalists, lean heavily on the word “evil.” They don’t shy away from portraying differing viewpoints and values as a battle of good vs. evil in their efforts to achieve worldly influence.
Unnecessary Evil
Is there natural evil out there in our world? Or does it reside in the human heart?
Why does it matter?
Many of our most contentious policy arguments today revolve around the ability or the limits of government to prevent bad things from happening from people. Alan Wolfe points out that the way we think about evil shapes how we think about actions. He argues that if we believe in the ubiquitous presence of evil, we humans often resort to “outsized” actions in ill-advised attempts to combat it. (Think book bans, transgender discrimination, abortion, and more).
On the other hand, if we’re repetitively told “Nothing could have been done to prevent it,” we lose our will to fight and just give up (gun violence, human trafficking, hunger, war, and more). The way we think about evil causes us either to overreact and cause unnecessary harm, or to become paralyzed into inaction.
Dismissing violence, and the causes of violence simply as inherent evil takes the easy way out. If “evil-doers” alone are responsible for their evil, there’s no shared, moral responsibility of the community. Reflexively using the word evil absolves us of guilt and prevents us from coming up with a different course of action.
Evil is in the Eye of the Beholder
The word evil is used to demonize opponents, and avoid substantial policy debates. It reinforces the belief that anyone who disagrees with us might be evil.
Democrats tend to shy away from using the word evil. However, some might identify evil as a moral component of the following:
· Ripping immigrant children away from their parents
· Permitting civilian ownership of multiple firearms (including an AR-15 assault rifle) and hundreds of rounds of ammunition
· Shooting unarmed civilians protesting immigration efforts
· Claiming the murdered Parkland children were crisis actors.
· Invading a sovereign country and kidnapping its president and his wife, and killing 100 Venezuelans
· Taking away food stamps or health care from Americans
· Failing to invest in improving the mental health; terminating $2 billion in mental health and addiction funds overnight, and restoring it 48 hours later.
Much of what’s happening today isn’t caused by evil. These actions/inactions can be called misguided, imperialistic, ignorant, cruel, greedy, unconscionable – and more. Blaming everything on evil gives even a four-letter word like evil an undeserved bad rap. Most of these issues are linked to systemic or structural failures allowing “evil” to flourish.
Negative outcomes aren’t inevitable. But it requires thoughtful leaders to explore approaches and research strategies to apply to regulation, human intervention, or public policies.
Few would disagree that slavery was evil. President Lincoln didn’t simply blame the evil hearts of slaveholders. He didn’t rely upon religion to change their actions. Nor did he shrug his shoulders like President Trump in response to a question about the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, saying, “Things happen.”
Lincoln knew the institutions and economic system devised by legislators provided the infrastructure and incentives for slavery to thrive. Our country had to fight a war to abolish it, but he knew what we had to do as a nation, and as a society. We know, too. We need to summon the will to carry it through. We can start by changing the “Evil” Blame Game narrative.
“The Devil made me do it.” Flip Wilson
Branding everyone and everything we disagree with as “evil” is taking the easy way out. That is an excellent point, Cheryl. Thank you.
Your historical and religious review of "evil" has me thinking. I am a daily Word Jumbler so instead of evil, I will use vile. Lastly, Reynolds often reminds me of SNL's Church Lady when she speaks of evil.