Here may very well be formal reasons for why ultimately Evil will win over Good.  One reason is that an agent of Evil can at any time require people to what is egregiously wrong in order to advance the cause of Evil.  That is, Evil can proceed by any means necessary, coercing people into performing the most despicable acts even to innocent people.  By definition, however, the Good cannot triumph by forcing people to perform despicable acts.  Another reason is that Evil can employ the most duplicitous means imaginable in order to advance its ends.  Evil has no qualms cheating the proverbial little old lady out of her life’s savings.  Not so with the Good, however. The Good may not advance its ends by doing that which is evil. 

One way of succinctly putting the difference between Evil and Good is that courage is at best ancillary to the advancement of even horrendous forms of Evil.  By contrast, it would seem that Good can triumph over Evil only if the agents of the Good are tremendously courage—even to the point of being willing to put their life on the line.  And that, alas, might very well be an insurmountable problem.  For no one can be morally required to put her or his life on the line in order to advance the cause of Good.  And no one can rightly put another’s life on the line in order to do so.  Thus, where the hands of agents of Goodness are considerably constrained when it comes to advancing the cause of the Good; agents of Evil essentially have free rein. 

The only respect in which ordinary citizens can be morally expected to put their lives on the line for another human being would seem to be in the case of parents on behalf of their children.  And even here the children have to be young.  No one thinks that a 70 year old mother, for example, is morally required to put her life on the line to save any of her adult children.  Otherwise, ordinary citizens may morally excuse themselves from any and all activities that require them to put their very lives on the line.  And such individuals may not resort to duplicitous and coercive means in order to advance the cause of Goodness. 

From these considerations, it follows that Evil simply has the upper hand. 

It is in this light that the people of France’s small town, Le Chambon, stands as such a moral marvel.  In the endeavor to save the lives of thousands of Jews, the people of Le Chambon risked their lives by standing up to the might of Hitler’s military force. 

It stands as something of a miracle that Hitler did not simply wipe this town out.  More importantly, and this gets to the very heart of the matter, had the people of Le Chambon refused to put their lives at risk, including the lives of their children, simply no one could possibly have blamed them. 

The lives of thousands of Jews were spared because the people of Le Chambon chose to do what no one could ever have rightly claimed that they were morally obligated to do.

Of course, there is lots and lots of morally decent behavior that does not require people to put their lives on the line and so which we are all rightly expected to perform.  Basic honesty and considerateness and kindness are an eliminable part of being morally decent.  However, it is exceedingly rare that it is moral behavior of this kind that will undermine the advances of brazen Evil.  Basic honesty and kindness would not have sufficed to save Jews from Hitler’s army.  In order to accomplish that, the extraordinary courage of the townspeople of Le Chambon—the courage to put their very lives on the line—was unequivocally necessary. 

It is not just that most people do not have that kind of courage.  What is most poignantly the case is that most people cannot be expected to have that kind of courage.  No matter how much we admire those who have such courage, it is true nonetheless that no one is open to moral criticism for not having such extraordinary courage. 

Unless I am missing something, what formally and inescapably follows these considerations is that Evil is favored to triumph over Good. 

Occasioning fear for our well-being, or the well-being of our loved-ones, is one of Evil’s greatest weapons.  And there are virtually no limits to what can be done to give rise to a deep and abiding fear on the part of individuals.  And where fear prevails, courage is easily vanquished. 

 Here is a final difference.  One does not have to be evil as such in order to be a pawn in the service of evil.  It suffices that one lacks the courage to stand up to evil because, for example, one is incapacitated by fear.  By contrast, there can be no pawns in the service of Good.  Either people are committed to doing the Good or, with very rare exception, the Good does not get done.  Or, to put the point another way: it is much easier for Evil to capitalize upon indifference and the like than it is for Good to capitalize upon indifference and so on. 

Indifference could easily have resulted in the people of Le Chambon not saving a single a Jew.  However, it is well-nigh impossible that indifference could have contributed to saving the life of a single Jew. 

The Good is rarely if ever advanced as a result of indifference; whereas Evil almost always is.