Are you good or bad – you see I am currently studying the laws of purity (in the daily lesson of Rambam) and it occurred to me an interesting thing – there are three basic almost subconscious premises – there is the premise that everyone is bad (certainly Catholicism took this approach – it would seem that Islam has this approach (for they consider anyone who does not rigidly follow their laws automatically an infidel and worthy at best of being humiliated; at worst, being killed, tortured, raped, as we currently see) then there are the host of different radical groups) the second is the opposite, "people are inherently good" – this is the Jewish perspective (which it seems was a core of the founding fathers and of the perhaps Protestant, Evangelical approach) This is a critical difference, for if you are inherently bad, you can never have a good self-esteem