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

Edmund Burke (1729-1797) 

Someone who does not know the difference between good and evil is worth nothing.

Miecyslaw Kasprzyk, Polish rescuer of Jews during the Holocaust

An article about an up state New York school assignment requiring students to depict Jews as evil provoked an interesting response, a response that solidified my thinking on a matter that has been, of late, on my mind.  I wrote, in part:

“One might argue the teacher was trying to show, by means of this assignment, how foolish the very idea was, but who, apart from lunatic Leftists and Islamist maniacs, needs any intellectual practice to know the very idea is demented and could not possibly be anything but incredibly offensive to decent people?”

Reader R.W. Blakeslee wrote in response:

‘Lunatic Leftists and Islamist maniacs,’? The author has taken his hate speech lessons well and to heart. He is good at name calling.

I take pains to avoid just that–name calling, preferring instead to allow the words and actions of others to define them.  But this time, I did engage, not in defamation of character, but in definition of character.

It is for this reason I’ve included the quotation from Edmund Burke.  For years now, since before 9-11, I’ve watched evil at work in the world, on the small scale of Leftists who not only sympathize with the enemies of the United States and of civilization, but who praise, even assist them.  And I’ve watched on a much larger scale Islamist murderers who cut off the heads of innocents, and who strive to obtain larger and more deadly weapons to accomplish what Hitler was unable to finish.  I need not give specific examples of the evil of leftists and Islamists; they are legion.  They that deny such depraved acts–and the very existence of evil–used to present something of a moral dilemma for me.  Perhaps they are salvageable?  I no longer worry about that.

I’ve been watching since the 1960s.  On every question of good and evil, the Left has expressed neutrality or actually supported, even directly helped evil.  They praised and propped up communism, even as it killed hundreds of millions and continues to torture and murder even today.  They praised and supported Muslim terrorists, including the Palestinians, despite the fact that they are anti-democratic and embrace terrorism and murder, worshiping it as a political tactic and enshrining it as their highest cultural value.  They attacked their own president and nation in favor of Saddam Hussein, one of the most brutal and genocidal dictators the world has seen.  And they absolutely oppose Israel’s defense of her people, even in the face of credible genocidal threats from Iran.

I’ve often wondered at those that embrace the Islamists that would, if they had their way, not only oppose everything Leftists claim to value, but would gleefully slaughter anyone opposing them and anyone whose values and practices did not conform to their vision of Sharia.  Homosexuality, feminism, “diversity,” any and every cause for which Leftists lobby, all would be swept away if Islamists were ever able to impose Sharia.  “How,” I’ve wondered, “could leftists fail to understand this?  How could they fail to understand that the very people they support with their words and fortunes would be delighted to kill them and their families as brutally, painfully and bloodily as possible?

Ultimately, I’ve come to understand, or at least understand well enough to know what to do.  Such people hate their own countrymen, the values and culture of their nation so much they naturally align themselves with those who share their hatred.  However, they are so arrogant, so assured of their own intellectual and moral superiority and righteousness, they can conceive of no issues, no powers greater than themselves.  Their leftist ideology makes them invincible–or so they believe.

Some, to be sure, are plainly stupid.  They have no idea what they don’t know, and are too arrogant to admit they don’t know everything.  Their intellects make them smarter than the God and gun clingers of flyover country, so there is nothing to recognize, nothing to learn.  Their lives are devoted to forcing those inferior to themselves to think and live properly, as only their betters can understand they must live.  Communists and Islamists are only too happy to accept their help and their money, and privately delight in their foolishness.  They call such Americans “useful idiots,” and they are right.  To the good and civilized, such people are worth nothing.

People that act this way, that embrace killers that would slaughter them the moment their usefulness came to an end, that would, through their idiocy cause the deaths of countless others, are more than mere dupes.  For such people–the overwhelming majority of whom are leftists of one stripe or another–“lunatic” is a mild epithet.  Perhaps many of them are merely deluded, and perhaps they will, one day, learn before it is too late, but they are moral agents making a choice.  They, having at their fingertips all of the information in the world about history, culture, politics and more, choose evil, evil currently personified by Islamists.  For them, “maniac,” is virtually a compliment.

I cannot, in military terms, join the battle against evil.  I am now too old, but I’ve actively fought it much of my life, and I stand ready to do what I can, where and when I can, to combat it.  One way I can do that is to honor the words of a man who knows of what he speaks: Miecyslaw Kasprzyk.  Like him, I know what evil is, and unlike some, I choose good; I choose to fight evil in every way open to me.

One way is by calling it by its name. President Obama and his sycophants may choose to call the murders at Ft. Hood “workplace violence,” and deny those soldiers the decorations due them for their wounds suffered in combat during wartime.  I choose to call the self-described Islamist killer just that.  I blame him and his murderous, anti-civilization culture, and call his murders acts of war.  If he and what he did are not evil, what is?

Evil too was the murderer of Sandy Hook Elementary School.  And I will not abide enablers—like Mr. Obama–who insinuate that those who support the Constitution and oppose unconstitutional laws that will do nothing to prevent violence want to see children killed.  I choose to oppose them and their attempts to destroy freedom, and I will call them the fools, lunatics, demagogues and enemies of freedom, democracy and America they are.

By saying nothing in the face of lies and slander, by failing to call those who oppose America, God, and democracy what they are, we–all of us–allow the triumph of evil.  We allow these people, merely deluded or irredeemably evil, to support and enable evil.  We allow them to seize the public podium and trick the good into believing opposing them is futile, even hopeless.  It is not.  By speaking up, by calling out their acts and omissions, by naming their ideologies and by calling them what they are, we help to drive them back under the rocks from under which they have crawled.  They deserve to be social pariahs, unwelcome anywhere in the company of good and decent men and women.

As for Israel, the Jews are God’s chosen people.  I’ve done my share of foolish things, but I’ll not make the mistake of standing against God or in any way helping those evil enough to try to destroy His chosen.

So I appreciate R.W. Blakeslee and thank them for taking the time to read and comment.  But I’ll continue to identify evil and call it by name.  This is not a lack of diversity or a lack of appreciation for equality.  It is moral clarity, and a clear-eyed recognition not only that evil exists, but what it is and does.

I’ve made a choice and there is no going back.  I would hope that R.W. Blakeslee and all Americans would make the same choice.  If not, evil may yet triumph, for evil laughs at those who deny its existence and who will not call it by its many names.