How to Spot a Goat in the Wild

Michelangelo's "Last Judgment."

The world is composed of two kinds of people: good and bad.

If you dislike this analysis, your problem is not with me. Take it up with Jesus and the New Testament. Take it up with God.

This being so, it is important to spot the bad guys. Before you find the knife in your back.

Here are a few pointers I have learned from hard experience:

1. Beware anyone who is seriously critical of anyone being “judgmental.” Obviously enough, those who are most opposed to judgment are those conscious of having done wrong—and the more important they consider the issue, the graver their sins must be.

Note too that anyone who condemns another for being “judgmental” is automatically outing themselves as a hypocrite. They are being judgmental of the one being judgmental.

2. Beware anyone highly critical of all religions (or other beliefs) other than their own.

More naturally, bad people are against all religion—it implies judgment. But there is also strategic value for them in pretending to be religious. This is so natural that “Pharisee”—religious authority—becomes almost a synonym for a bad person in the New Testament. The very worst people are liable to be rabbis, Catholic cardinals, Buddhist monks, imams, and so forth. This has been known since New Testament times, and following the news shows it is still so.

Their attitude towards the religions of others is the giveaway. Their base assumption is that, because they profess religion X, they are exempt from moral requirements. It follows that they will hold anyone not professing religion X to be bad and damned. It is the necessary corollary.

A good person will recognize and honour good people of other faiths.

This rule can also be applied to other fields. Anyone who demonizes all those who do not hold the same political beliefs as they do is acting on the same impulse. They are hiding some grave guilt. Anyone who demonizes those who do not adhere to the same psychology as they do—this too seems a growing phenomenon—is again masking some guilt.

In theory, at least, there are limits to this principle—some political ideologies, religions, and potentially psychologies can be objectively immoral. But there is something wrong if it is asserted to be all but one, or one narrow set of beliefs.

3. Beware anti-Semites.

This might sound arbitrary, but I find this most consistent of all. Hating Jews is a sure sign of a bad person.

This makes sense theologically: if God chose the Jews as a light unto the nations, turning against the Jews is rejecting God.

But putting aside theological considerations, it is objective fact that Jews left alone are consistently better educated, more successful, and wealthier than the surrounding populations. Higher IQ alone may explain it.

Accordingly, any anti-Jewish sentiment is most likely to be an expression of envy, a deadly sin.

4. Some will suggest that a love of animals is a clear sign of a good person. It is not. Like religion, it is too convenient as a cover for a bad person. Precisely because everyone thinks it is a clear sign of a good person. Hitler was a vegetarian and a big animal lover.

To the contrary, anyone who is too extravagant and aggressive about asserting their love for animals is probably a bad person. They are covering for something. Beware the aggressive vegans and the ecofascists. The best test is: are they making demands on others?

5. The same logic applies to those who make a big deal of their love for small children. All the worst dictators know enough to pose for propaganda photos surrounded by small children. The best test is whether they advocate things that, while immediately pleasing to children, are not in their long-term interests. All toys and candy, say, and no discipline. Anyone who spoils a child is revealing their own sense of guilt. And their fundamental rejection of morality.

6. Beware anyone who makes a big deal about having read Nietzsche. They are declaring themselves free of all moral constraints.

More blatantly, anyone who asserts that “there is no right or wrong” is doing so. And some these days—postmodernists—do this openly.

7. Beware anyone who seems to be always smiling and friendly. This is especially true of women; far fewer men are always smiling, and they are more readily suspected if they try. Someone who is always smiling is necessarily wearing a mask, and hiding their true feelings. Which can accordingly be assumed to be malicious.

I’m sure there are more. Suggestions welcome.