Evil does not create objective values, but only destroys them. For this reason, evil is impotent in the following sense: the means to evil must come from good, and evil is therefore ultimately dependent on good for whatever power it may wield.

A striking real-world example is provided by the recent fall of the USSR. The moral and practical ramifications of such totalitarian systems will be explored in detail in Section 5. It should be clear even from casual observation, however, that the Soviet system deprived millions of people of economic opportunity and in many cases of their lives, while even its ruling elite lived in psychologically degrading conditions of paranoia and repression. Yet only in a symbolic sense was the USSR really an "evil empire": its economic survival (as we shall show later) depended on the coexistence of countries where some freedom remained, while its seemingly monolithic political strength was exposed as an empty shell when it rapidly crumbled. Meanwhile, the so-called "intelligence" analysts of the CIA, generally concrete-bound and oblivious to philosophical principles, had no insight into this reality and were stunned and embarrassed by the sudden demise of this supposedly monolithic regime.