almost ALL violence organized on a large scale has hypocricy at its root. Try and think of ANY act of major organized violence throughout history that was not papered over as some "noble cause" that was the "proper and right thing to do."

Then again, it's not really hypocricy, except as seen from the perspective of history.

You see, one of the Great Truths of history is that no bad guy ever thought he was a bad guy in his own mind. Not Hitler. Not Pol Pot. Not Stalin. Not the Europeans coming into the Americas. Not the guy cutting hearts out to make the corn grow. And most of these were not crooks pretending to be on the side of the angels, although there are some of those. Most were convinced down to their bones that theirs was the True Path. They could not have done what they did if they were simple thugs.

The damage these people were capable of doing was directly proportional to how many other people they could convince to agree with him in this view. This is the difference between the guy on a soapbox in the park, and the guy standing on a wall in North Korea while endless troops of starving people, dressed exactly alike, parade in front of him.

Only in comic books and TV shows does the villain brag about how "evil" he is. Real villains are convinced that their ideas are the right ones, and that those trying to stop them are wrong. Anyone dealing with real evil has to be constantly aware of this.

And people like myself, and others who are enthusiastic about large ideas, have to remember to keep an eye on ourselves as well.