Why do wrong-doers do wrong? And how are we to deal with them? The stereotypical perspectives of neither liberals nor conservatives on these questions are satisfactory, but perhaps between them they provide the ingredients for a better answer. In a nutshell, liberals tend to see the roots of human evils in people's external environment, and they want to heal the criminal so that he will become a good person; conservatives tend to see people as the source of their own evil, and they're for making the wrong-doer suffer to punish him for his immoral choices. I agree with the liberal view of how evil arises in people, but the approach to dealing with immorality that often grows out of that view can foster moral bankruptcy in society. The conservatives' insistence on treating people as responsible agents is healthier for society, but their approach is made unnecessarily harsh by their illusion that we humans ultimately are responsible for choosing what we become in moral terms. Obviously, there is a paradox in my position, and it revolves around the question of free will. What does it mean to say that people have free will? If it means that you and I confront a range of options in our lives --shall I tell the truth now or not, shall I take care of the baby I have fathered-- and can experience ourselves making uncoerced choices among them, then of course we have free will. But if it means that the determinants of why a person makes a choice for good or for evil should be regarded as ultimately originating inside himself, then free will seems to me a nonsensical idea. How can a person create himself, undetermined by the world that preceded him? God may have performed the miracle of creation ex nihilo (out of nothing) --what explanation of the universe's existence does not boggle the mind?-- but why should we believe that each human being performs an analogous miracle of creating his own moral nature ex nihilo? If one could examine the entire nexus of cause and effect back through time, would not the source of everything within us ultimately have its roots outside us? Consider an evil man, like Hitler. I hate what Hitler did and all that he stood for. Yet I also believe that if I had been born endowed with all that Hitler had within him at the moment of his birth and into the identical circumstances into which he was born, I too would have become Hitler and done what he did. If that were not so, from where would the difference arise out of everything being exactly the same? And if --in some ultimate sense-- Hitler's course of evil derived from the elements that were present at the outset, of what, ultimately, did his free will consist? Can we blame him for what he was on the day he was born, or for the situation into which he arrived? Sure, we are free to choose. But how we choose is a function of forces that we did not choose, and that created the will with which we make our choice. Confronted even with a Hitler, clear thinking requires us to acknowledge, "There but for the Grace of God go I." I not only do not share the belief of many apparently intelligent people that each human being has a kind of free will that makes him the ultimate cause of his moral self; I don't understand how they can believe it. To me, that belief looks like a logical lapse that serves two purposes I think best not served. With such self-contained sources of evil, it becomes possible to reconcile the undoubted evils of this world with the idea that this same world was created by an omnipotent and all-good Creator. And that belief also can justify the infliction of great cruelties on sinners, whether on earth or in hell. As much as I regard Hitler as a monster --and, of course, there is no shortage of other monstrous examples of humanity-- I would regard any cosmic regime that inflicted external torment on him in punishment as terribly unjust. "There but for the Grace..." And it seems to me we would understand our predicament better if we recognized even human evil as just as much a reflection of the state of the Creation as our goodness. In these ways, I doubtless appear to conservatives --aside from being a heretic-- as wedded to the liberal approach. "There but for the Grace of God..." leads to that "c-word"-- compassion, which is seen as a sympathy for the evildoer that excuses misdeeds and assures the malefactor that there will be no price to pay. "You poor boy, brought up in such disadvantaged circumstances, no wonder you became a mugger." If I believe Hitler cannot be blamed for being Hitler, many would assume that I must be one of those liberals who cannot get very excited about the idea of moral responsibility. But no! When it comes to holding people responsible, I feel much closer to the conservatives. I've no patience for "I couldn't help it." People have to be held to a standard of right conduct, I say, and when they choose to go astray, it's the job of their community to impose consequences that make them sorry. Whatever the circumstances of a person's birth and upbringing, I say, murdering and raping cannot be excused. To the extent that liberal practices have controverted such basic moral ideas, I repudiate them. Is this a contradiction? Can it make sense to say that people, ultimately, do not have free will but then maintain that they should be held responsible for their conduct? Is it consistent to say that, ultimately, the sinner is not the cause of his sin but to argue also that society should impose sanctions that make the criminal regret his crime? The two sides of my position can be reconciled in this way: yes, a person's will is the fruit of forces outside him, but the moral pressure exerted on him by his society is an essential component of those forces. A society that is too ready to excuse our sins can make it easier for us to sin more. An environment that holds people painfully to account for crimes and misdemeanors may mold a will that will choose the righteous path. As much as I regard the idea of the torments of hell as a libel on the image of a just God, it may be that a society will be more moral for believing in such a hell. My leaning toward both a more liberal understanding of evil, and a more conservative response to it, is therefore not necessarily an inconsistency. But my way of reconciling them does seem to contradict another fundamental belief of mine: I believe strongly in the beneficial power of the truth --"the truth shall set ye free"-- yet I seem to be arguing for the benefits of false beliefs. A society should treat people as if they have free will in a sense that, I argue, they do not. Well, perhaps-- but I do not think what I've called the conservative approach, though it may be preferable to some liberal tendencies to feed irresponsibility, represents the highest wisdom in dealing with the wrong-doer. Where the free will analysis may support hating and blaming the criminal, one of the early giants of Christianity, Augustine, displayed more insight when he said we must "hate the sin but love the sinner." Compassion for the sinner need not be wielded so foolishly as to encourage further sin. A fundamental question is, what leads a person to choose good and eschew evil. The school of hate-and-blame, of hell and damnation, implies that what will drive us from evil toward good is fear of pain. In the world as it is, there is doubtless some legitimate place for that school of thought. But I think it greater wisdom to deal with sin in a way that is compatible with the compassionate view of human sin I've endorsed. "Go and sin no more," Jesus told the woman, after challenging the haters and blamers on their right to throw their stones, and after lovingly raising up the woman who had sinned. That she did go and sinned no more seems more the result of the compassionate spirit that stopped the stones than of the blaming spirit that gathered them. Compassion, rightly wielded, need never be an impediment in the confrontation with the evil-doer, and it can often be an asset. ??