When you think about a Muslim suicide terrorist, is "happy" the first word you think of to describe him?

 When you think about Nazis or Communists or Klansmen or child molesters, do you immediately think, "Now there are some happy people"?

 Of course not.

 It only takes a moment's thought to realize that while most unhappy people don't engage in evil, most evil is done by unhappy people. This is true on both the macro and the micro levels. We all know how much more likely we are to lash out at others when we are unhappy and how much we desire to make others feel good when we feel happy.

 Given this association of evil with unhappy people, it is quite remarkable how little attention is paid to happiness as a moral, rather than only a personal psychological issue. Too often the pursuit of happiness (not the pursuit of fun or excitement) is regarded as a selfish pursuit, when in fact it is one of the best things a person can do for everyone in his life and for the world at large. The Founders of America were brilliant in many ways, not more so than by enshrining that pursuit alongside the pursuit of life and liberty.

 It is therefore worth noticing how little thought is given to the question of happiness in attempting to understand the roots of evil and in seeking ways to improve the world.

 Those on the left are far more likely to inquire about the economic state of those individuals and groups involved in anti-social behavior ("poverty causes crime"). And those on the right are more concerned with determining the moral and ethical values held by people engaged in bad behavior.

 In my view, values are more determinative than economics. But few people have values that are so strong that those values will always overcome the individual's unhappiness and lead him to act according to those values.

 Moreover, happy people with weak characters or who possess an underdeveloped code of values are still not likely to engage in cruel behavior or join evil movements. But unhappy people who lack strong character or who have not adopted a code of moral values are very likely to act out their unhappiness in anti-social ways. Continued...