The other night I was listening to NPR's "This American Life," a Valentine's Day special, with various true tales of love.  The most striking of the tales involved a drug bust. 

Imagine the situation.  The cops have determined that to bust high-school dealers, they need to infiltrate the high-schools with cops who can pass as students.  So, this one kid who is a straight-A student, even though he comes from an ethnic/economic background that is less than conducive to academic excellence, a real high flyer with plans for a career in the Air Force, finds himself with his dream girl, a surprisingly mature girl who just happens to share three classes with him, sits right by him in all three, etc. 

Life is good. Sometimes she doesn't manage to finish her homework, so he lets her copy his.  Over several months, they become inseparable.  They talk for hours.  He falls in love and is sure that they will be together forever.  Then she asks him if he can score some weed and insists on paying him.  That's his story.  Her story - the undercover cop's story - is a little different, like he persuaded her and asked for money.  Whatever.  The rest is obvious.  He ends up in jail for selling a small amount of pot, a felony offense, since done on a high-school campus and he's over 18, pleads for a suspended sentence, is now permanently inelligable for any of the armed services, as a convicted felon, and, instead of the major university that he could likely have gotten a scholarship to, is now looking at a community college.

His question:  How could she possibly DO THIS to him.  How could she have lived this lie, for months, to ruin a teenager's life.

Her reported response:  He did the crime.  Now he's paying for it.  End of story.

So what does this have to do with morals or the lack thereof, of psychopaths, sociopaths and related bad actors who are responsible for a surprisingly large portion of all the really bad things in our lives - wars, famines, environmental destruction, ethnic cleansings, etc.?  You name it and there's very likely an evil person who made it possible.  That's my take.

At this point, if you're seriously interested in this issue, you might want to go to my earlier article, "On Morals."  The easiest way is likely just to open a new window, go to Google and enter "On Morals, philosborn, joeuser."