In Gil Bailie’s 1989 presentation on the Flannery O’Connor story “A Good Man is Hard to Find” the theme of Western culture’s attenuated ability to provide a bulwark against humanity’s most destructive forces is explored. As the West moves ever closer in its embrace of Enlightenment rationalism as the foundation of its principles and further from the Christian realism regarding human nature a high price is paid. Many of the modern world’s politically correct psychological nostrums for human perversity are highlighted by O’Connor and shown to fail in the face of evil.