The moral incomprehension of Richard Cohen

Richard Cohen, columnist for the Washington Post, is morally incoherent; no softer words will do to describe it. Writing of yesterday’s act of multiple murder at Virginia Tech perpetrated by Cho Seung Hui, Cohen opines

Cho Seung Hui was just mad. Other terms will be applied to him and, of course, he's already being called a loner, but the simple fact is that he was mad -- maybe not for long, but when it mattered, long enough … He wanted only to do something totally mad … Osama bin Laden is mad as well. Look what they did. They harnessed technology, the power of the airplane, and killed almost 3,000 people in a morning's work. Hitler was probably always mad, but when he got to be dictator of Germany, he could exploit the technology and organizational ability of the most advanced nation in Europe to murder people without reason. Yes, of course, he had his reasons – but they were mad

Readers will note how the word ‘mad’ is brandished like a talisman, as though it is the key, something which explains that which has eluded lesser lights. I would say however that wisdom has eluded Cohen, for this reason: madness is a psychological category, not a moral one. And, barring a mental state of literal insanity that renders a killer morally unaccountable, the deliberate murder of 32 innocent victims chosen at random is first and foremost a moral obscenity. Cohen makes a celebration of ignoring this cardinal issue, not only in reference to this crime, but also in reference to those of Hitler, Bin Laden, Idi Amin, and others.

When one refuses to recognize evil, the common result is to substitute psychological categories for moral categories. Moral coherence goes out the door and with it, the ability to pass intelligible moral judgement – well in evidence in Cohen’s belief, expressed in the same piece, that the West’s response to Bin Laden and Saddam consists only of a lesser degree of madness.

Cohen contends that “Maybe evil is just another name for madness.” Perhaps imbecility is just another word for moral incomprehension.