I don't hate to see her go

Maybe this comes from my libertarian nature. Or maybe it comes from my lifelong fascination with, and my formal education in, history. Perhaps it's the synthesis of the two: My morbid interest in the evil men of the world. The serial killers, corrupt big-shots and, especially, the tyrants.

I've read thousands of news stories about criminals, and I've written a few. I've studied scores of books about hundreds of peoples and their actions over the course of all human history, from man's climb out of the swamp to his leap toward the stars. I took a hefty load of courses devoted to the study of how people have behaved and why. And I've followed politics and government's activities for as long as I can remember.

I am not the sole authority on human behavior, nor am I singularly or even uniquely qualified to discuss sociological occurrences. But during my education, such as it is, I've noticed something important.

Of all the serial killers, corrupt big-shots and tyrants there have been (and there have been a lot), the very very worst of them are always in government.

Adolf Hitler could have neither killed 6 million Jews nor invaded Poland from any job other than Chancellor of Germany.

Joseph Stalin was never all that friendly, but the Purges, the Pogroms, the forced collectivization of farms and the famine-by-policy were never possible until he became General Secretary of the Soviet Union.

There is little record of Idi Amin's exploits before he seized the office of "His Excellency, Presient for Life, Field Marshal Al Hadji Doctor Idi Amin Dada." His exploits while in office are more well known.

But for the authority granted him as a leader, Pol Pot would have been unable to murder one-fifth of Cambodians.

There are many kinds of human criminals on many scales of severity. Some bad, bad people never held a job higher up than chocolate-maker. But Jeffrey Dahmer's death toll was less than 20; Stalin's was at least 20 million.

Certainly, Sarah Palin's name does not belong on any list with the names above. She's never been convicted of so much as swiping a candy bar from a grocery store (though she's been accused of much). But she has been a member of government, with far more authority than most normal people would ever seek. A governor of a state or another chieftain in government can, if she so chooses, destroy innocent people.

I don't know why Mrs. Palin decided to resign. My sense is that she did not seek fame, that, rather, duty called her into every campaign she ever entered. My other sense is that she does not deserve the lies that have been told about her or the hatred she has attracted. In whatever she chooses to do next (and I am not at all convinced that she will run for president, though I am entirely convinced she'd do a better job than Barack Obama is) I wish her well.

In larger terms, maybe my thoughts come from my deep well of mistrust for government. (If you trust government -- even ours -- any further than you can throw it, then you are a gullible, sad, pathetic excuse for a human being.) Maybe it's because I saw what the Ayatollahs did to Iranians after their recent election. Maybe it's because, for all of my short life and for all the history of human beings, governments all over the world have been guilty of (at best) waste, fraud and abuse, and (at worst) of outright theft, rape and murder.

From what I know, from what I've seen, from what I've experienced and learned, there is one thing -- maybe only one thing -- that a government potentate can do at any time in their career and almost never be wrong for doing it.

They can quit.

There are significant exceptions, of course. The retirement of Ronald Reagan in 1981, Abraham Lincoln in 1862, or George Washington in 1776 would have sent the world down a road to darkness. But the scarcity of such men is barely finite.

Almost every time a person with power relinquishes it, humanity wins.