Good Intentions are Meaningless, Everybody Always Has Good Intentions

Many people will take umbrage at the statement that "good intentions are meaningless, because everybody always has good intentions". But think about it, every time you choose/decide, implicit in that is the question "what's the best thing to do?".

But "what about Hitler...?" you say. And one could add Stalin, Pol Pot, Chairman Mao, and quite a long list of demonized despots, criminals, and the like. So what about Hitler - how did he end up ordering the deaths of millions?

For him, it goes back to being on the loosing end of a major war, and being part of a populace that was stuck with paying war reparations from a devastated economy. He and in fact, most Germans of the time, were trying to make sense of this. They could have faced the painful facts that imperialism leads to such catastrophes, and that the mighty Prussian military machine was arrogant in assuming a fast win before the U.S. would have any effect. Or they could have looked for an excuse, and, superficially at least, avoided the shame. The good intent? "Let's feel better about ourselves."  So they came up with the notion that Germany was "stabbed in the back". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stab-in-the-back_myth

The next question is "who" were the backstabbers.  Many were named - the Weimar politicians, communists, left-wing socialists, and because of the association with those two,
the Jews.

But the Jews had another strike against them.
In 1915 Henry Ford the automobile magnate was a pacifist, and in looking to find the cause of wars, believed he found it - that international financiers, mainly Jews, caused wars to profit from them.  Trying to warn people, he bought a languishing newspaper, and had people publish articles critical of "international Jewish bankers".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dearborn_Independent

And Ford gave credulity to The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a hoax and forgery that purports to describe a plot by Jewish leaders to conquer the world.  Ford printed a half million copies in the U.S., and his newspaper printed excerpts in a series from 1920 to 1922,
even though the The Times (of London) exposed the forgery in 1921.

Hitler and his buddies admired Ford, and took up the cause, believing (like any good paranoid Conspiracy Theorist) in the existence of this awful conspiracy that they get to heroically uncover and fight.  Thus the concentration camps and attempted genocide.

Hitler and his fellow Nazis were certainly deluded, even paranoid, and certainly acting in evil ways.
But they did so with good intentions.

More about these issues can be found by reading some of Hannah Arendt's work,
particularly Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil.

Think also of the Bertrand Russell quote: "The fundamental cause of the trouble is that in the modern world the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt."

Also consider that until the mid 1800's, medical doctors bled people to balance their 4 bodily humors, rejecting Semmelweis's idea of infectious particles as "unscientific reasoning".

Why I'd like you to know this is that I see a great many people demonizing anyone who resists them and their plans as "having bad intentions".  At least one can understand them as seeing the world through the childish myth that good intentions mean good actions.  And we ourselves can be more effective if we listen to others and see if there's something we might learn, and something we might teach.  We may not get the hysterical child in them to back off their attack, but at least we can avoid escalation or being guilt-tripped for our "bad intentions".