The key thing people are misunderstanding about this issue is that not all points of view/ideologies/worldviews are morally neutral. The reasoning goes: Since n

The key thing people are misunderstanding about this issue is that not all points of view/ideologies/worldviews are morally neutral. The reasoning goes: Since no one could rationally choose to harm another person, there must be some pathological reason he chose to harm someone. But it's basically and simply true that people do things in their right minds all the time that lead to suffering. OP's point is that pathologizing behavior you don't like cuts off all reasoning about it. John Brown killed people, but was he mentally ill? What about US soldiers in Afghanistan? Put another way, there are plenty of smart white supremacists. They're not all toothless knuckle dragging illiterates. Some are highly educated. It's possible to do bad things not due to a defect in education or mental illness, but through moral deficiency. People in their right minds do evil things.