Evil and Good Revisited

Tycen Proper, a 19-year-old Ohio man, was arrested with five others and charged with attempted murder of a federal officer and others at the White House UFC Freedom 250 event late in June 2026. Reportedly, the plan was to have some members of the group demonstrate outside the White House as others flew drones filled with explosives. Then, when the detonation caused tens of thousands to evacuate, snipers would shoot and kill them.

The arrests were made possible by Proper’s mother, who had been concerned about her son’s purchase of firearms and his communications and so notified the authorities. Her alertness, which saved tens of thousands of lives, provided a deeper understanding of good and evil. That understanding concerns the quiet form of evil and the importance of overcoming it.

In The Sin of Silence Ronen Kolton Yehuda points out that Hannah Arendt, in her Banality of Evil (1963), and Zygmunt Bauman, in his work on moral distancing (1989), agree that atrocities can be caused by “widespread passivity” as well as “active cruelty.” Yehuda notes further that historically both religions and legal systems have held that “to know of evil and to do nothing is to share in it.”

Let’s look more closely at that idea. It doesn’t say “share equally.” That would have been a serious overstatement, because the circumstances of an action, or inaction, can differ from one situation to another and alter guilt. For example, doing evil with a clear mind carries greater guilt than doing so while mentally ill. Similarly, failing to oppose an evil with no good reason would make one more culpable than being silent when threatened by a perpetrator. What Yehuda and those she quoted were stating was that we all have an obligation not only to avoid evil but also to speak out against it.

This understanding of our dual obligation enables us to appreciate Mrs. Proper’s action against the evil her son and his friends had planned, and her virtuous saving of tens of thousands of innocent people. Mrs. Proper should be considered a model for us all, especially today when so many among us have forgotten the imperative of avoiding evil ourselves, let alone our obligation to speak out against silent evil that surrounds us. Here are just a few examples:

1) A candidate for high office shouts to her followers, “All deportations are wrong,” and the crowd screams in approval, while most newspapers and legions of people say nothing. Meanwhile the following crucial sentences remain unspoken:” A crime does not become less criminal for being denied. Nor do pedophiles and drug runners become honorable.”

2) Islamists loudly proclaim in speeches and worship services that Allah demands that not only all Jews, but all others who reject Sharia Law, be murdered! In response, many U.S. elected officials ignore that message and speak only of “meeting the Islamists halfway.” They seem to believe that murdering half of the Jews and other Americans is moral if agreed to. And many news agencies embrace that insane notion, denounce those who challenge it, and join the “sin of silence.”

3) Some teachers encourage young children to consider that they might be inhabiting the wrong body. In some cases, they arrange for children to seek doctors to act on that idea without informing parents. Most children understandably trust their teachers and are easily swayed to follow such advice. Some principals know of this activity but remain silent about it, or worse, approve of it. Many in the community decide not to protest for fear of offending school officials, friends, and elected officials. Their guilt joins that of the perpetrators.

4) For decades, floods of pregnant foreigners visited the US near their time of delivery. As a result, not only the infants but also their entire families gained American citizenship. Though the practice was no secret to elected officials, apparently few if any of them considered the danger being done to the US, and decades passed before the practice was closely examined. In fact, it is just now being understood that their mindlessness paved the way for legions of foreign infants, now grown and multiplied, to teach our children to hate America and its values and embrace our enemies.

5) A man stabs a young woman in the back in a subway, then walk’s nonchalantly while she bleeds to death. Other subway travelers who see this happen neither cry out in outrage nor offer aid to the victim. When they reach their stops, they exit the train carrying whatever they brought, and sadly, the guilt of their inhumanity.

6) For decades many students at every level of American education from elementary school to college have failed to perform acceptably in the fundamentals or learning. State and Federal governments have spent billions of dollars to improve scholarly performances for decades but have continued to fail. The loss has been greatest among minority students, but the impact has also affected worker performance in every field. Among the recommended solutions has been allowing parents to enroll their children in schools of their choice, which would arguably force teaching improvements. However, the resistance of teachers’ unions, the unwillingness of elected officials to oppose their leaders, and the fear of voters to change their ballots, have left the problem unsolved. Denying children effective education is clearly evil. In this case the guilt is spread wider than usual and consists of both active cruelty and widespread passivity.

7) Despite the history of the US beginning with a singularly insightful system of government and improving that system in the decades that followed, some elected officials have lately denied two of the most fundamental truths of human history—the imperfection of humanity and the tendency to choose evil over good. A current example of this denial is officials’ effort to replace police with social workers around the country. These officials have rejected statistics that proved both their error and its disastrous impact on the nation. But worse than their intransigence is the choice of many voters to ignore the officials’ behavior and repeatedly return them to office. This combination of evildoing and evil ignoring is remarkable.

8) It has been established that elected officials and others have stolen billions of dollars from their voters for years. The obvious question was why, at very least, the officials didn’t keep track of and try to validate the records of disbursal. But no one seemed to have asked that question, and the officials simply claim they were appalled at what happened. Although what occurred was definitely evil and illegal, yet it is questionable whether the officials will be charged with a crime or that their political party will oppose their running for government again. And though the voters whose money had been stolen murmured about the loss, their response was hardly satisfied their obligation to speak out against the crimes.

Many years ago, Perry Como popularized a song that contained the words, “If everyone would light just one little candle, what a bright world this would be!” Speaking out against the evil ideas and actions that surround us today would be a powerful way to “light” such a candle. Tycen Proper’s mother provided a much needed and memorable example of doing so. Let us hope that example will inspire legions of Americans.

Copyright © 2026 by Vincent Ryan Ruggiero