Can anything good come from Men?

[Legate of Amon Lanc]

Originally Posted by Inziladun

Well, I can think of at least one cultural group of Men that were mostly 'good' and appear to have been little influenced by Elves: the Rohirrim. Even though their homes for long years were in Rhovanion, relatively near large settlements of Silvan Elves in Mirkwood and Lórien, they seem to have had little contact with them and instead regarded them with fear and awe.
Of course, in later years they were much enriched by the Men of Gondor, themselves elevated in knowledge and culture by virtue of their ancestral ties with the Eldar of the First Age, but they were already disposed to aid the West against evil even before then, as the Ride of Eorl shows.
The Rohirrim were not nearly as 'high' as the Gondorians even in the latter's fading years, a warrior culture to be sure. Their behavior couldn't really be considered 'elvish' (the killing of Freca by King Helm "Hammerhand" comes to mind), but they were at heart friendly to ideals that would set them apart from the Easterlings, Men of Harad, and others who don't seem to have any redeeming qualities (at least any visible to the reader).

Not so sure. The Rohirrim, if I am not mistaken, were presumed to have some connection to the First-Age Edain, even though a small one. Faramir said something like that, unless I am mistaken?

As for the second part of your post: here I think is another problem. We don't know what it would have been like if for example the Haradrim were on good terms with Gondorians, for example if they were in place of the Rohirrim. There is this question of the possible connection of Rohirrim to the Edain, however, connection or not, the Men of Dale, the Dunlendings, the Haradrim, the Easterlings... all were still Men, just some of them stopped on the journey earlier and some later, during the journey to Beleriand. Breelanders were also just "normal Men", and they were being quite nice. Even though, on the contrary, it was mostly the "lesser Men" of Arnor who joined the WK (men of Rhudaur), but people like the Breelanders seemed still good.

But overall - yes, generally, it seems that Men had a tendency to evil rather than to do good. Of course: Arda Marred. Because of Morgoth's intervention from the very beginning, everything was heading towards a sort of decay. Think Númenor, think the overall progress of things in M-E... The only thing that could help it was always some "injection" of something good from the West.