Contemporary Westerners constantly underestimate a human's ability to commit unthinkable atrocities under the right conditions. I don't know if it's our education's fault. Maybe we just don't bother to ever emphasize this point. Maybe it's too uncomfortable of a subject to deal with.

This last century has presented a rich buffet of historical options to choose from when looking for examples of ideologies that allowed otherwise perfectly normal, God-fearing, salt of the earth folk to turn into horror-machines of rape, mutilation and slaughter. Western Europe, Eastern Europe, Africa, Asia, you name it. Maybe even a relative or a next door neighbor in our very own US of A, sent to the wrong Vietnamese village at the wrong time. That seed of pure horror is in all of us, and it's ready to rear its ugly head when the conditions are right.

I don't think as a species we've quite figured out how to suppress it.