"For good people to do evil things, that takes religion." Okay, what about Communism?

[MikeH]

Ideologies can become defacto religions.

The amazingly polarised nature of American politics is very stange. 'cause they agree on most things.

[Elok]

The amazingly polarised nature of American politics is very stange. 'cause they agree on most things.

Much the same remark has been made about many religions, though I don't think politics and religion are generally comparable.

Re:OP, the distinction between the morality of a person's actions and his/her intentions is exceedingly fine and based largely on their feelings and sincerity--which are impossible for another person to gauge with certainty. How do you judge a man's motivation when he's sending people to be burned alive? As time goes by and he burns more and more, I imagine the distinction vanishes; brutality deadens the conscience and what was once a reasoned, painful decision becomes merely routine. To claim religion has a monopoly on moral corruption is, of course, absurd; it has a long track record because for ages it was the dominant ideology (if you can treat such a multifaceted thing as a single entity in the first place--a Daoist and a Jew are two very different things). People will not stop doing evil "for the greater good" until such time as nobody believes in the possibility of a greater good at all. And that, I think, will cause its own problems.

[Imran Siddiqui]

The amazingly polarised nature of American politics is very stange. 'cause they agree on most things.

It's because they agree on most things that it becomes polarized. Sounds counter-intuitive, but the parties have to distinguish between themselves and since on policy there are only really slight differences, they have to hammer home those differences and WHY those differences should matter so much.

[giblets]

I don't think they really agree on everything, it just appears that way because they both have to campaign for votes from people in the center and it's very hard to get anything done without some votes from members of the other party.

[kentonio]

Someone should remind the GOP of that.

[MikeH]

They don't agree on everything but there are a whole raft of common American values that they both agree on. They have slightly different principles about the extent of government (and therefore taxation) which explain most of the differences.

[Proteus_MST]

Well, the Stanford Prison experiment as well as the Milgram experiment show us, that it takes little to get "normal" people to do evil.

It just takes the positive acceptance of "evil deeds" in your peer group (i.e. getting reinforcing feedback when you do things that normally would be considered evil) and of course superiors that order you to do things that can be considered to be evil.

A thing in which communism and religion aren´t far apart...
peer group that might give you positive feedback for doing bad things:
Radical Brothers in faith (that condone atrocities against infidels) or fellow crusaders / inquisitors for religions
vs. comrades in party and/or red army for communism.

Superiors who could/would order you to commit atrocities/do bad things:
Preachers of your religions / higher ups within the church hierarchy (religion) vs.
Commanders within the read army/the "beloved leader" himself/higher ups within the party (Communism)

Not to forget that both, religion as well as communism often have a strong cult regarding a leader figure ...
be it the "beloved leader" (like Stalin, Castro or one of the north Korean Kims)
or one of the prophets/founders (or highest ranking still living preachers) of the religion
to which the ordinary believer/follower builds up a high affection (and therefore is very eager to place lots of thrust into this figure [and also very eager to give up thinking as soon as he gets orders that are giving by this leader figure (either directly or via lower ranking mediators)])

[Dr Strangelove]

Is "Eurocommunism" evil?