Will Smith, Smarter than the Jewish Defense League

From a blurb in a Dallas paper:

"The Jewish Defense League pounced on Will Smith on Monday after he was quoted in the Scottish newspaper the Daily Record as opining that the Nazi dictator wasn't all bad. "Even Hitler didn't wake up going, 'Let me do the most evil thing I can do today,' " Mr. Smith said. "I think he woke up in the morning and using a twisted, backwards logic, he set out to do what he thought was 'good.' " The JDL condemned the remarks as "ignorant, detestable and offensive" and urged theaters to pull Mr. Smith's new movie, I Am Legend."

So.... it's "ignorant" to say that Hitler wasn't trying to be evil, per se? I think that's entirely rational. I'd be surprised if even Hitler was deliberately trying to be evil - but he was so utterly wrong about what was good and what was evil, that in his pursuit of what he considered "right," he did what was clearly evil.

I find it offensive that the Jewish Defense League would find this position offensive. And I think the ignorant position is likely the one that says "Hitler wanted to be as evil as he could be," not the one that suggests that even he was human. Wrong, twisted, and blind... but in his wretchedness trying to do what he saw as "right." That's an important distinction, because it admits that any of us, despite trying to do what we see as "right," may in fact be guilty of terrible evil.