Who are the bad people?

At a dinner table discussion tonight, Jen mentioned that she's sick of people talking about voting for Bush like it was a completely immoral action and there's no good reason anyone could ever vote for him and that everyone who voted must be either evil or stupid. Haninah seemed to agree somewhat, Eric, while not explicitly disagreeing, said he'd seen those people and he's glad he's on this side, now.

But this led me to think of a topic I've been considering quite a bit lately of what makes a bad person. Is it someone who always tries to do what's right? It seems like this is a factor, but I'm convinced that plenty of Nazis and terrorists and witch-hunters and opponents of gay marriage think that they're doing what's right, and these are pretty bad people by my standards. Some might say they're (probably the Nazi's and the terrorists) some of the worst people who've ever existed. I wouldn't disagree. So it seems that the point is not whether you're trying, but rather, what values you have...especially your values relative to my values.

It does seem to me that the way to judge which people are bad is by how radically their values diverge from yours. Hitler did not place life at a high priority, in fact, he readily sought to end life for many people. Life is probably my highest value, as I'm a humanist. His highest value was purity of the gene pool. I like diversity in my population. So I (somewhat weakly) oppose his highest value, and he (somewhat strongly) opposes mine. This is primarily why I would consider him to be a bad person. I think this will work with all people. Let's take Jesus. His values were of self-sacrifice for your fellow man. While I think he may have overdone the emphasis on sacrifice, his proactive stance on charity and love of humanity resonates with my values strongly. He adds a value I only oppose very lightly (much less so than a purity of genetics) to a value I embrace. He might think me less worthy, on the other hand, because of his concept of sacrifice held so dear which I generally reject. He would respect my love of humanity, but opposes strongly my zest for indulgence and will for all of humanity to endulge. So he would probably think me a worse person than I think him.

Of course we have to look at frailty: how strongly we act on these values. But it seems this generally emphasizes how bad or good we feel the person is. I suppose this is unfair, as strength is a value that some people prioritize. It's not one of my highest, but for those who consider it completely essential to goodness, it is a common value between themselves and those they consider good. It rarely trumps initial intention, however.

So I don't really see why voting for Bush couldn't be considered an awful thing. Anyone who votes for him clearly has values pretty vastly divergent from mine. And they are acting on those values. And of course there are reasons for voting for Bush that are less opposed to my values, but in any case, people voting for Bush are not too high on the good people list. And I would bet that most of them are voting for reasons that I would consider opposed enough to my values to make them bad.