When Evil Prevails
Evil prevails where good people do nothing.
That’s an old saying that perhaps you’ve heard before. I think we all get its message. For instance, what if Hitler had been assassinated by a good person who couldn’t just sit back and do nothing. He’s a hero! He saved us from WWII!
Hold on just a minute there. Germany was a mess economically; people were looking for a savior. Many saw Hitler as their savior, not evil. And with Hitler not having yet invaded anybody, that assassin is looking more like a psycho killer than a hero who saved the world.
If people didn’t recognize Hitler for what he was until it was too late, could those same people recognize a savior before it’s too late? Many people were opposed to MLK. You would expect that from people in the KKK, but there were average, middle of the road people who just didn’t like having the status quo challenged. Why did MLK have to be such a troublemaker? A lot of people felt that his assassination was for the best, just as with the assassination of Charlie Kirk.
Is your judgement any better? It’s easy to be an expert after the fact, but can you tell the evil from the good in real time?
The expression, evil prevails where good people do nothing, misses a critical point. It doesn’t tell us how to differentiate the evil from the good. I think I do know how to tell the evil from the good, even at the early stages. First, do not think in terms of likability. The worst tyrants try to be likable. Likability is an essential tool for a charlatan, since they have nothing else to offer. They use that tool well.
Then how do you recognize an evil person before they’ve really done anything? For that matter how do you tell a good person, if they have not yet done anything all that good? Start with tolerance. No, not yours, theirs. In my experience, the tell for evil people is that they don’t just promote themselves and their ‘beliefs’, they denigrate anyone who counters their agenda. Good people, on the other hand, are tolerant of beliefs that counter their own. By tolerant, I don’t mean good people readily accept their opponents’ views. But they don’t arrest their opponents. They don’t censor them. They don’t call their opponent’s words ‘hate’ speech and then proclaim that the constitution doesn’t protect hate speech (which the constitution most clearly does protect).
That’s how you tell evil people from good people, even before they’ve done much evil or good. Hitler, Mao, Stalin, Xi Jinping and Maduro all worked to silence their opponents. Initially it is censorship, ultimately it is executions. But you can see it coming from the very beginnings. No tolerance for dissent, right from the start.
How about MLK, Charlie Kirk and Abe Lincoln? No censorship, no effort to censor. Generally, these and others like them invite debate. They don’t want to persecute opponents; they want to convince them they are wrong.
None of what I say is meant here to determine which is the ‘right’ side. It is to point out how you can spot evil and confront it before it becomes too powerful to stop.
Forget the smiles and affability. Anybody can smile. Forget the ego strokes. Any phony can stroke you. Forget them telling you what you want to hear. Oldest trick in the book…If you go for that, remember I’ve got a bridge in Brooklyn I can sell you for cheap.
No, I’m talking about good and evil. Learn to tell the differences early on, and there will never be another dictator. Well, unless too many of the people doing the voting are evil…
I do so enjoy your essays. Well thought out and presented.
As I often say, history is our only test for the consequences of ideas. If it looked bad in the past, it's probably bad now.