He calls the phrase bunk, and yet quotes Lang's heartfelt concern regarding Heidegger's refusal to engage the consequences of the Holocaust, "Lang thought Heidegger's indifference was a whole new kind of evil." If that does not, in and of itself, get to the heart of the "banality of evil" then what does? I read "The Origins of Totalitarianism" not knowing anything about Arendt - had never heard of her. I thought that in parts it was overblown, repetitious, and self-important. But at the same time I was taken by the depth of the analysis - how it was important to have a deep understanding of all that went before in order to understand how and why the Third Reich and Stalin's USSR could exist side by side. Understanding how people can simply buy into the high flying rhetoric of Hitler or Stalin explains far better how Germans could accept the extermination of 11 millions or Russians could accept the extermination of millions more, than believing that somehow all these people were either totally ignorant of what was going or that they were all in fact "actively evil."

Like it or not, we are seeing how this banality that Mr. Rosenbaum so rejects is at work in the USA today. This is not to suggest that we are on the brink of revolution in any direction, but there's a lot of people out there who are buying into Beck on the right and Olberman on the left without giving a whole lot of thought to what the consequences of either one's ravings could be.