The difference between an 'evil' person, and a 'immoral, depraved, debased,' person IS semantics. Evil is really just a convenient term when it's used in a non-religious context. I agree with Kestra when I say I don't believe in evil as a religious force. I do, however, believe the term is accurate in describing these child killing crazies. Why? In western culture, children are considered to be the ultimate innocence by, I dare say, the vast majority of peoples. To murder or manipulate an innocent child, who we generally assume is whole at this point, is very easily referred to as evil. I'm not exactly sure how naming an entire nation or faction evil, as opposed to depraved or "insert word here", changes the fact of the matter, or the resolve to disrupt and end them.
Lebeau: So why are people evil? Mommy and Daddy abused you and you came up a psycho?...Behavior comes from a thought in an individual's mind. The individual CHOSE to act in an evil manner.
Joreth: There is the ivory tower approach, and then there is simple reality. Reality is that good, decent, people are getting beat back so badly in many major cities by evil/derranged people willing to do anything and everything that it is quite sad.
I've listed these two quotes because they're very related, in my opinion. Related because of the corruption of innocent children, I believe.

First I'll respond or expound on Lebeau's statement: While I largely agree (and I believe I've heard something similar to this out of my own mouth) that somewhere a person performing evil or depraved acts has made a choice to act that way; I do not think it's so conveniently cut and dry, and I think especially in the case of examining these acts and these people, we're better off understanding that circumstances drastically affect the makeup, even if the result is the same or similar. I personally believe it's worth understanding before we simply condemn. Even if we inevitably condemn.

More to do with the statement about "mommy and daddy" abusing someone. First, it's never quite that simple. If it was a mere matter of mommy and daddy abusing someone, I'd say that we'd have about a third of the pedophiles we currently have on the registered sex offenders list. What generally causes the affect that an abused child then in turn abuses is: re-traumatization, and abuse manifesting itself in less overt ways against the child.

The environment has everything to do with it. If a child is molested, and then is able to live in a healthy environment (and I'm not going to assume how this child got into a healthy environment) there is an astronomically higher chance of the child overcoming said abuse. However, if a child is molested, and returns to an abusive environment, especially when the abuse is only more wicked and deceptive (maybe evil?): there's a high probability that this abuse is going to manifest from the child as an adult (and I won't assume how this abuse would manifest, as it could manifest in many, many different ways.)

There are differing opinions in the psychological world about this: from my own experience, I just wish to add that the Doctors claiming that an abused child will abuse by default, and that the real traumatization in a child occurs as a result of society's perception of the abuse (incest in particular, and that children and abused adults put themselves in situations to be abused, and that a child is an anyway responsible for the abuse performed by an adult - ARE COMPLETE FUCKING QUACKS. And I half wonder if the people who say these things aren't child molesters themselves, trying to shed blame for their EVIL transgressions against helpless and innocent children.

I digress.

Onto Joreth's comment, and how they relate.

Yes, it is sad. Here's why: abuse manifests in many ways. Sometimes a child who was beat, then beats their children. Sometimes a child who was raped takes on risky, or criminalistic behavior. Sometimes we see things that are so devastating to our minds that we do any number of things as a result. Sometimes we have our conscience conditioned out of us. And there are a myriad of these causes and affects.

Abuse, as a very loose term, spans generations. Dysfunction can beset a generation the same way that we pass on our genetics - though obviously it's in conditioning (and that's not to say there aren't genetic anomalies that cause dysfunction). And it isn't contained within a single family. A convenient analogy would be aids: some say it started with one, now it has spread to millions. And good people get swallowed up by it. Hell, the ones doing the swallowing were once good, innocent children.

Point 1: if we lose our heart even in dealing with people we deem depraved or evil, we are absolutely no better than they are.

Point 2: Nothing changes if we don't understand the root cause. Being too general is dangerous ground to trod when we're talking about the psychology of people.

Point 3: At some point, they made a choice. At some point they struck out (to a degree) of their abusive situation, and decided NOT to identify the dysfunction within them. At some point they began abusing others as a result.

Moving along.

Aristotle: You can't fight a "behavior," You can't stop a "behavior." You can only stop people. The longer we sit on our hands trying to change "behaviors" the more likely it is that these people, who care about results not our feelings, will destroy us.
This isn't entirely true. Behavior can be changed, it just takes a long, long time. Generally, through much strife. Here's an example using our sweet, innocent children: I watched one of the Harry Potter movies with my nephew recently - there was a ball, and a red-haired white boy invited a mid-night black skinned young lady, one white kid invited a Asian girl, and Ol' Harry and his friend Red invited two Indian girls (I think they were indian). I said: Hey, that's cool that they're doing that. I bet some hicks in the sticks are outraged. The nephew looked at me like I was completely retarded. Point is: after some several hundred years, the nephew doesn't even so much as notice that these people are of other races. That's a drastic change in behavior.

The same idea holds true in evil people. Of course, it's not feasible to wait that long, and that may be Ari's point. Also, the circumstances are different when we're dealing with religious extremists.

But it's all a matter of conditioning. Whether we want to call them 'evil' or we'd rather call them 'depraved' and argue about how we're evil from their vantage point: it's all rather pointless if you take a hard look at the big picture.

Brute force alone won't fix it (look at Iraq and Afghanistan), incarceration won't fix it (Charles Manson for 500, Alex.), at some point it involves altering a behavior, and this is a generational task.

Though, I'm not saying we should sit back and wait for that to happen.

Thank you for reading this very long, very off the topic post. (I hope I don't regret posting this after I get some sleep.)