"One of
the most disturbing facts that came out in the [Adolf] Eichmann trial was that
a psychiatrist examined him and pronounced him perfectly sane. I do not doubt
it at all, and that is precisely why I find it disturbing. . . The sanity
of Eichmann is disturbing. We equate sanity with a sense of justice, with
humaneness, with prudence, with the capacity to love and understand other
people. We rely on the sane people of the world to preserve it from barbarism,
madness, destruction. And now it begins to dawn on us that it is precisely the
sane ones who are the most dangerous. It is the sane ones, the well-adapted
ones, who can without qualms and without nausea aim the missiles and press the
buttons that will initiate the great festival of destruction that they, the
sane ones, have prepared. What makes us so sure, after all, that the danger
comes from a psychotic getting into a position to fire the first shot in a
nuclear war? Psychotics will be suspect. The sane ones will keep them far from
the button. No one suspects the sane, and the sane ones will have perfectly
good reasons, logical, well-adjusted reasons, for firing the shot. They will be
obeying sane orders that have come sanely down the chain of command. And
because of their sanity they will have no qualms at all. When the missiles take
off, then, it will be no mistake."
"A
Devout Meditation in Memory of Adolf Eichmann" in Raids on the
Unspeakable." Thomas Merton - New York: New Directions Publishing Co.,
1964
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