Monday, September 29, 2014

Initiators and Imitators, Good and Evil

“Since 95 percent of the people are imitators and only 5 percent initiators, people are persuaded more by the actions of others than by any proof we can offer.” 
                                                                – Cavett Robert

This is the fundamental principle of the law of social proof. The fact is that most people are significantly influenced in their behavior by looking at others.

Most people want to conform. They don't want to stand out in a crowd. They are very comfortable in going with the flow. That type of human behavior works well when you have moral, ethical leaders. As a result, society functions well.

It does not work well when the leaders and initiators are evil. This has been proven over and over and over again throughout history. Some imitators imitate. However, most of the 95% become invisible. They keep their heads down and they just stay quiet so as to not rock the boat.

President Obama said last night on 60 Minutes that "Islam is a religion that preaches peace and the overwhelming majority of Muslims are peaceful."

That may be the case but it is irrelevant if "the overwhelming majority of Muslims" are silent or sit back while "initiators" and "fanatics" in their religion are defining Islam in their image.

With that in mind, it is worth considering this blog post by Paul Junker in Celestial Junk on "Why the Peaceful Majority is Irrelevant" that was first published in 2006. It is 2014 and his thoughts seem as relevant today as they were then.


Why the Peaceful Majority is Irrelevant

I used to know a man whose family were German aristocracy prior to World War Two. They owned a number of large industries and estates. I asked him how many German people were true Nazis, and the answer he gave has stuck with me and guided my attitude toward fanaticism ever since.

“Very few people were true Nazis” he said, “but, many enjoyed the return of German pride, and many more were too busy to care. I was one of those who just thought the Nazis were a bunch of fools. So, the majority just sat back and let it all happen. Then, before we knew it, they owned us, and we had lost control, and the end of the world had come. My family lost everything. I ended up in a concentration camp and the Allies destroyed my factories.”

We are told again and again by “experts” and “talking heads” that Islam is the religion of peace, and that the vast majority of Muslims just want to live in peace. Although this unquantified assertion may be true, it is entirely irrelevant. It is meaningless fluff, meant to make us feel better, and meant to somehow diminish the specter of fanatics rampaging across the globe in the name of Islam. The fact is, that the fanatics rule Islam at this moment in history. It is the fanatics who march. It is the fanatics who wage any one of 50 shooting wars world wide. It is the fanatics who systematically slaughter Christian or tribal groups throughout Africa and are gradually taking over the entire continent in an Islamic wave. It is the fanatics who bomb, behead, murder, or honor kill. It is the fanatics who take over mosque after mosque. It is the fanatics who zealously spread the stoning and hanging of rape victims and homosexuals. The hard quantifiable fact is, that the “peaceful majority” is the “silent majority” and it is cowed and extraneous.

Communist Russia was comprised of Russians who just wanted to live in peace, yet the Russian Communists were responsible for the murder of about 20 million people. The peaceful majority were irrelevant. China’s huge population was peaceful as well, but Chinese Communists managed to kill a staggering 70 million people. The Average Japanese individual prior to World War 2 was not a war mongering sadist. Yet, Japan murdered and slaughtered its way across South East Asia in an orgy of Killing that included the systematic killing of 12 million Chinese civilians; most killed by sword, shovel, and bayonet. And, who can forget Rwanda, which collapsed into butchery. Could it not be said that the majority of Rwandans were “peace loving”.

History lessons are often incredibly simple and blunt, yet for all our powers of reason we often miss the most basic and uncomplicated of points. Peace-loving Muslims have been made irrelevant by the fanatics. Peace-loving Muslims have been made irrelevant by their silence. Peace-loving Muslims will become our enemy if they don’t speak up, because like my friend from Germany, they will awake one day and find that the fanatics own them, and the end of their world will have begun. Peace-loving Germans, Japanese, Chinese, Russians, Rwandans, Bosnians, Afghans, Iraqis, Palestinians, Somalis, Nigerians, Algerians, and many others, have died because the peaceful majority did not speak up until it was too late. As for us who watch it all unfold, we must pay attention to the only group that counts; the fanatics who threaten our way of life.

This is not just a lesson for peace loving Muslims to remember but for peace loving and patriotic Americans as well.

"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing."

An interesting footnote on the quote above that I found while researching this blog post.

This quote was recently considered to be the most popular quotation of modern times in a poll conducted by the editors of “The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations.”

I always thought the quote was attributed to Edmund Burke dating back to the 18th century. However, this article by the Quote Investigator concludes that there is no evidence that Burke ever uttered or wrote the phrase. The correct attribution for the quote is not known. And now you know!

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