According To Experts Evil Wins When Good People Do Nothing

Yesterday I blogged about the fact that Before Facebook I Had No Idea How Scarily Stupid The Racists Are.

Some of the reaction to that blogging got me thinking that while bigoted racists are a vile disgusting sub-set of humanity, those who collaborate with bigoted racists may be even worse.

I think that to be a bigot and a racist you have to be at the low end of the IQ scale.

I have known no intelligent, educated people who were blatantly bigoted and racist.

I have known some intelligent, educated people who collaborate with racist bigots, rationalizing doing so in ways which make no sense to me.

Thinking about this had me thinking of that quote one hears fairly frequently about evil people. To get the quote right I started to enter into the Google search window "For Evil to...."  and then Google filled in the rest.

All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.

That's the quote I was looking for. What I did not know before looking for this quote was its origin and its many variations.

It is the Irish statesman and philosopher, Edmund Burke who, in 1770, is credited with first expressing this truism, writing, "When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall, one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle."

Edmund Burke's original is more poetic in the way the idea is expressed, than its later permutations.

Almost a century later, in 1867, British political theorist John Stuart Mill gave a speech in which part of what he said was, "Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends, than that good men should look on and do nothing."

And then, again almost a century later, in 1961, an American president named John F. Kennedy, in a speech to the Canadian Parliament, credited Edmund Burke for the quotation, but used the modern version, "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”

As for Albert Einstein, and the version of the Burke quote that particular genius is quoted as uttering above, that is not a version which Einstein is thought to have said. What Einstein is believed to have actually said, in a tribute to Pablo Casals, was, "The world is in greater peril from those who tolerate or encourage evil than from those who actually commit it."

So, what lesson do we glean from this history lesson?

DO  NOT TOLERATE RACIST BIGOTS AND THE HATE SPEAK THEY SPEW.

Before Facebook I Had No Idea How Scarily Stupid The Racists Are

A week or so ago I blogged about being No More Mr. Nice Guy Regarding Pseudo Conservative Reactionary Racist Republican Right Wing Nuts.

A few days after that particular blogging I read that a right wing nut job in Las Vegas had been indicted for death threats directed at President Obama.

Does the FBI and the Secret Service monitor Facebook for presidential death threat types? If not, they should.

I have seen death threats directed at the president being spewed on Facebook from one of my Facebook "Friends" who I do not know and have never met and with whom I would never actually be friends.

The guy making death threat type comments is clearly an idiot. He may be insane. He clearly has some sort of mental impairment. But none of that excuses his spewing  hateful racist nonsense.

Idiots are not able to understand that the First Amendment, you know, the one guaranteeing Free Speech, does not mean you can say any fool thing your sick mind tells you to say. The cliche example of that is you are not free to scream "FIRE!" in a crowded theater.

And, you are not free to suggest that some "patriot" save America by taking out the President. Suggesting such a thing is what is known as a crime, with a possible life sentence.

If you read the "No More Mr. Nice Guy" blogging you already know that the idiot who has been appalling me with his racist, bigoted, ignorant, hateful, idiotic nonsense calls himself David Patriot Lambertsen. Clearly this idiot is no patriot. What he is is what is known as a traitor.

Over and over again this idiot traitor refers to our current President as being a traitor, as you can see via the below screen cap.

I found that second comment, above, by the Lambertsen Traitor, to be very amusing. Is he confessing that he is clearly out of his mind? Because he clearly is. But can he possibly have the self awareness to realize he is what is known as an asshole, and to describe himself as such?

How is it someone living inside the borders of America can be as cut off from reality as this David the False Patriot idiot? Did his education end at grade school? What explains this level of stupidity? Does this idiot have no contact with normal people? Is that the explanation?

It's just perplexing. And equally perplexing is though this David Traitor Lambertsen person might be an extreme example of a right wing nutjob, people of a similar simple minded mindset are scarily large in number. And on Facebook they cluster like a little cult of crazies that you only get to witness if you accidentally accept a Friend Request from one of them. Then it becomes hard not to look at the train wreck madness, like a window into ignorant insanity.

How do so many people come to believe so much idiotic, stupid, ignorant nonsense?

Though Rush Limbaugh's audience is dwindling, he still has millions of listeners. Rush Limbaugh is very articulate. But he articulates nonsense, which then morphs into even more ridiculous nonsense when his poorly educated illiterate listeners try to repeat the nonsense.

Rush Limbaugh's education ended at high school. Rush Limbaugh already knew it all when he tried to go to college where, according to his mother, he enrolled in Southeast Missouri State University where he flunked everything and left the school after two semesters and one summer.

Rush Limbaugh is the Idiot Savant behind much of the hatespeak which spews from the right wing nutjob collection of idiots.

I explained in my previous blogging about this disgusting subject that this Lambertsen moron ended up on my Facebook Friends list because he sent me one of those Facebook Friend Requests. That request told me we had 13 "Mutual Friends". One or two of whom I actually know, and am fairly certain they are not racist bigots.

While it is a bit disheartening to find that there are so many Americans willing to spew hateful nonsense with zero apparent awareness they are doing such, it is also a bit heartening to see multiple Facebook threads where people express their shock and disdain for the ugly spewage of the racist haters. From what I see via my little Facebook window on the world, the sane, normal, sensible, non-racist, non-reactionary, non-bigot real Americans are in the majority.

By a large number.

Just this morning I read through the comments in a post about the latest Nazi-like idiocy from Donald Trump. A sub-set of that comment thread morphed into a lot of very wise comments about the absurdity of Rush Limbaugh and the ignorant hate speak he spews.

Well, I think I will hit the publish button on this blogging and then go to Facebook and delete a racist, bigoted non-friend, or two.

Maybe three......