We try to eliminate criminals through punishment. However we rarely try to look at it through the angle of restoration and rehabilitation. — Rosalina

True, but sometimes a tomato is too rotten to eat, even if there's still some color left. Question is, are inmates ever too rotten to rehabilitate? I think for some, yes. For the severely mentally ill, say, who aren't even criminals, it's a question of how much can I save, and what can't I save. A rotting tomato can't become fresh again, but there's sometimes the possibility of getting good out of it still!

I'm wondering if evil can sometimes be good. — Rosalina

Evil cannot in itself be good, but I do think that evil can bring about the good. Then again, I think it depends on how you define evil, and whether evil causes the good or if evil merely facilitates a future moral dilemma that comes out good, but that would not have been possible were evil not the choice made prior.

I am glad you asked and didn't assume like I did thinking of the produce named Cucumbers but sometimes shortened to Cukes. — ArguingWAristotleTiff

Were we to devise new insults and use fruits and vegetables for slurs, which ones would we use?

So and so is such a __________________ for females, __________________ for males.
What a pile of compost!
You are a melonkopf.
You, Senator, are a rotten, stinking potato. (potatoes stink when they rot)
If you want to pass as a vegetable, you'll have to tone that fruitiness down.
Top banana
You don't amount to a hill of beans (about 3 beans)
A pain in the asparagus

Were we to devise new insults and use fruits and vegetables for slurs, which ones would we use?

So and so is such a __________________ for females, __________________ for males.
What a pile of compost!
You are a melonkopf.
You, Senator, are a rotten, stinking potato. (potatoes stink when they rot)
If you want to pass as a vegetable, you'll have to tone that fruitiness down.
Top banana
You don't amount to a hill of beans (about 3 beans)
A pain in the asparagus — Bitter Crank

No, no, no. My mind went to a completely different idea of fill in the blanks. I will delete my vegetable reference since it was an error.

Man, I used a rotten tomato as an example in my most, now it feels weird. I didn't know you guys were discussing froots and veggies.

Words like "cuck" and "pussy" may cause buildings to burn down (see Because a Little Bug Went Kachoo). These are determined effects though which might also have origins in other words with more neutral connatations, like "coffee" and "philosophy."

Fred couldn't help beating his son. His son couldn't help lighting the fire. The judge couldn't help putting Fred Jr. in the slammer. It's just a Rube Goldberg machine, with elements of "cuck" and "pussy" placed in the chain for aesthetic affect.

An artist needs to get on this ASAP. Build a RG machine that determines court verdicts of cardboard cutouts.

The common use of the term applies to the knowing cuckold, who derives masochistic pleasure in seeing his wife sexually satisfied by another man, while being denied the same access as the invader. It's a humiliation fetish. — Hanover

:-O Oh dear, seeing that this is so disgusting, no wonder you know about it!! >:O

The word is derived from the cuckoo bird, who supposedly invaded other bird's nests, pushed aside its eggs, and laid its own eggs in the nest, causing the other bird to unknowingly care for the egg and eventually raise the cuckoo bird. — Hanover

Well, the term I knew is "cuckservative", and it describes a conservative just like you Hanover - like John Kasich, Jeb Bush, that ilk ;)

Italians are into vegetable slurs, must be part of their agrarian heritage. I wonder if they have enough to make a Sampler...eggplants, cucumbers, fennel...these are the ones my grandmother taught me.

Are you a spokesperson for all women or are you just telling us of the sort of bad boy you adore? — Hanover

Perhaps an exaggeration, but I was trying to show that our OP is really talking about the construct of masculine aggression rather than evil. I am far from liking bad boys I can assure you, but we all admire a protective strength and loyalty in a man, someone who may have the capacity to undertake the so-called 'evil' tendencies the OP discusses while at the same time remaining moral and loving. I just assume that her understanding of evil is dubious and you yourself agree when you say then it's not evil.

I am not saying how I feel or what I think is true. I am just articulating a possibility:

One theory from sociology is that deviance serves a function: everybody gets reminded of the consequences of deviance, therefore social control is maintained and society is able to continue to function and stay together.

I guess, therefore, that you could say that it is possible that evil is the most extreme form of deviance that serves that aforementioned useful, important social function.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but it sounds to me like you're trying to articulate an intuition you have, but I'm not sure if you're saying it the right way. You seem to vacillate between the idea of "is evil good? sometimes it's attractive", and "why do we punish instead of rehabilitate? Isn't evil necessary for good to also exist?" Evil being somehow "good" and rehabilitating criminals are very different ideas.

I think the second idea here is a good thought, and worth discussing. I've made similar arguments here at various times that tend to be ignored for some reason. The yin yang relationship bears itself out over wide swaths of the human condition; apophatic vs. kataphatic theology, esoteric vs. exoteric mysticism, the recurrence of diametric political factions, the master slave dialectic, continental vs. analytic, dominant vs. submissive personalities, male vs. female...in my view it's a mystical concept, these opposite poles, and good vs. evil is really the archetype that "overarches" them all. So what I'm reading in your post is a natural intuition for this yin yang relationship, but I think you need to expand on what you mean that evil can be good or attractive. The only way I can see that working is for good and evil to be superseded and overcome in a way, as in Hinduism (via union with Brahman), but I don't think that's what you were thinking. Even (and especially) in Hinduism, a strict moral code accompanies the spiritual quest for Moksha.

"Apologize for my idiosyncrasies. Sometimes I think evil is attractive. It's necessary in this world or else we won't be able to appreciate good. Can evil be used as an agent to do good things and protect the ones who are weak and innocent. Just a thought that ran through my mind. We try to destroy evil by punishing it
--Rosalina
I kind of know what you mean. When I was a kid and Darth Vader said to Luke "..you have no idea of the true power of the dark side!", I felt like if I was Luke I would have pulled up a chair/grabbed a soda and asked him to tell me more about what he wants to tell me. :D

Since your a person who might value the "virtues" of being evil I suggest you consider getting and/or reading a book called "Supervillains and Philosophy: Sometimes, Evil is its Own Reward" which costs around $10-$15 on Amazon. It talks about things like how after so many years of tradition heroes posturing and spewing forth things like why kiddies should do their best to be "good", modern superheroes such as "Deadpool" are really nothing more than villains or anti-heroes who are sort of disguised as heroes but act more like the misunderstood bad guys of the past. Also it wouldn't hurt to read up on Niccolo Machiavelli and Machiavellianism to get a better grasp of how from a philosophical standpoint how evil can be good or at least useful.

Also it may be useful to note that when you criticize the flaws and weaknesses of people trying to be "good" your really working from another moral paradigm where weakness is a sin and strength (even sometimes if it can be ham handed/brutish/bullying/etc) is instead a virtue. Under such a paradigm it might be wiser to ask if weakness and the other things you see as sins are really needed.

As a person who is partial nihilism, I really think that what we think of as morality is merely about what is useful and/or not useful to us. To really think we have access to objective morality is kind of silly, other than perhaps to maintain social order and keep some people behaving who might not if they realize that what is going on is "We do what we do, because that is the way that we do it".

Hopefully this answers some of your questions. :)