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It seemed like wisdom in 2002: “To understand the workings of American politics, you have to understand this fundamental law: Conservatives think liberals are stupid. Liberals think conservatives are evil.” The late Charles Krauthammer expounded this “law” in a column entitled “The central axiom of partisan politics.”

I am no longer sure this was ever correct, and am confident it doesn’t apply to American politics now.

First off, the enemy of conservatives may have been “liberals” 150 years ago. But not now. The proper word is “progressive,” not “liberal,” and to those who follow the to and fro of substantive policies, the most classically liberal people right now are conservatives.

And “conservatives” is not the right word, either, is it? Progressives hate hate hate the dominant strain in the Republican Party, the Trumpians. Well, Trump isn’t now, nor has he ever been, a “conservative,” though some of his actions during his term in office, were more conservative than any other Republican president of our time. What Trump and his followers now oppose is the “insider-ism” of big government, with Democrats constituting the dominant force of the administrative state and, yes, the Deep State. That is the nature of Republican populism.

Another problem with Krauthammer’s Law is that progressives have always looked upon conservatives and decentralist populists in the dread Republican Party as both evil and stupid.

But it’s worse: both sides, today, look upon the other as both stupid and evil.

The real question then, to anyone who ideologically distances himself from leaders on both sides, is to discern whether both sides are right about each other.

And, it follows, wrong about themselves.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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I think of people as basically good. Most folks treat me well enough. I can navigate my neighborhood at night; I can go to an ATM unmolested in most cities I visit; often, I get smiles — and it isn’t because of my extraordinary good looks (alone).

But evil is all around us. Some folks harbor deep resentments, and worse. Garett Jones, writing at EconLog, notes that “a lot of people are actually just awful.…

In a series of studies of male college students in the 1980’s, Malamuth found that about 35% of these students in the U.S. and Canada said they’d consider committing a rape if they knew they wouldn’t get caught; 20% would seriously consider it.… And these studies are just detecting those students who are willing to state their proclivities in a survey; the true number is surely higher.

We are, all of us, constantly surrounded by such people.

Jones draws a startling moral: “I suspect that if people were more aware of the awfulness of their neighbors, support for the welfare state would decline.”

He may be right, but contemplating crime is different than committing it. The move from wish to action often depends on “context.”

Studies have shown this. Clean up your neighborhood, replace broken windows: crime goes down.

Some social engineers argue that the welfare state is more than mere window-dressing, it’s a swap: The dole buys off potential criminals.

I suspect the opposite is true: It funds criminals, supporting their bad habits, and serves as a trap for everyone else, preventing the vast majority from climbing out of the velvet cage.

We should work for better contexts.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.