Last night both Barak Obama and John McCain appeared separately at a “Civil Forum” at Rick Warren’s Saddleback Church.Each was asked the same questions. I find the question on "evil" the basis of my voting for John McCain. The difference in their answers can not be more revealing.
Among the questions Warren’s posed Saturday night was how the candidates would deal with “evil” during their respective presidencies.
“Should we ignore it, negotiate with it, contain it or defeat it?” the pastor asked.
Barak Obama's Answer:
“Evil does exist,” Obama began acknowledging the premise of the question as he ticked off the evils of genocide in Darfur, inner-city crime and child abuse. “I think it has to be confronted. It has to be confronted squarely and one of the things that I strongly believe is that, you know, we are not going to, as individuals erase evil from the world. That is God’s task. but we can be soldiers in that process and we can confront it when we see it.”
“The one thing that I think is very important is for us to have some humility in how we approach the issue of confronting evil, but you know a lot of evil has been perpetrated based on the claim that we were trying to confront evil,” Obama added. “Just because we think our intentions are good doesn’t always mean that we’re going to be doing good.”
John McCain's answerer:
"Defeat it",
“If I have to follow him to the gates of hell, I will get Osama bin Laden and bring him to justice. I will do that and I know how to do that. I will get that done,” McCain added decisively, quickly turning the topic to the war on terror–his strength. “No one should be allowed to take thousands of American, innocent American lives. Of course evil must be defeated…we are facing the transcendent challenge of the 21st century–radical Islamic extremists.”
