Beyond good and evil
Sir: In your Christmas issue, both James Macmillan (Composer’s Notebook) and Israel’s President, Isaac Herzog, in his interview with Andrew Roberts, refer to the ‘war between good and evil’, as if most of us experience life on Earth as a continuous struggle of this kind. But many issues cannot be polarised so simplistically, and our understanding of religion and psychology has moved on. Who is to decide which people are good and which evil? Some fundamentalist Christians regard the Dalai Lama as evil. In international relations, it is surely dangerous to use this kind of language: while the actions of Hamas are undoubtedly evil, I doubt if it is helpful to revive the rhetoric of G.W. Bush and ‘the axis of evil’. Perhaps The Spectator could present a discussion of the issue.
Stephen Terry
Lustleigh, Devon
Larder than life
Sir: The Christmas cover by Morten Morland is pure genius. He has got to be the greatest cartoonist of our day; every time I look at that cover, I laugh.
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