We have all heard the quote “All that is required for evil to prevail is for good men to do nothing.” There are various versions of it and it is unclear whether Edmund Burke, who it is usually attributed to, actually said it. But the truth of it has stood the test of time and has been proven repeatedly throughout our history.
Perhaps the most egregious example of this can be found in the study of the Holocaust. It is common knowledge that Americans heard about the horrific events taking place in Nazi Germany under Hitler’s rule, but little or nothing was done to go to the aid of the Jewish people caught up in this horror. The idea of an attempt to exterminate a whole race of people was so foreign to the minds of ordinary American citizens in the 1940’s that they simply refused to believe it. The term for this atrocity, genocide, was not even coined until 1944.
Well, that was a long time ago you say, it couldn’t happen now. To disprove this logic you simply need to search out information about Rwanda, Darfur, and Bosnia, to name just a few. It does happen now. People can and do ignore the warnings about horrible things if they do not directly and immediately influence their lives.
This head in the sand approach to dealing with unpleasantness has not served our country well. Experts still strenuously debate the degree of prior knowledge involved in the attack on Pearl Harbor. It is obvious, from historical reports, that the ball was dropped at several levels of command. Depending on what reports you read, the mistakes involved ranged from careless to criminal.
The events of September 11, 2001, are still fresh in the minds of most Americans. We have all seen the reports about the intelligence information that was available to our government prior to that disastrous and shocking day. Our leaders were accused of not acting on the information that was available to them. Is this true, could the people that we trust to lead this country have deliberately ignored information that would have allowed them to prevent this tragedy? It seems unlikely to me. The more likely explanation is that this monstrous act was beyond the imagination of most sane people. Is it likely that we will be caught unawares again? I would like to think not, but reflection on our history does not make me sleep better at night.
NASA scientists warn us that global warming is not some distant future threat but that it is happening now. They say the most obvious impact will be a change in both average and extreme temperatures. It will also make coastal erosion worse, melt ice caps and glaciers and possibly alter the range of some infectious diseases among other things. These are dire warnings. There are commissions and committees abounding to debate these issues, but is the average American doing anything to halt the progress of global warming? To paraphrase inspirational speaker Tony Robbins, the average American is doing what he has always done and getting what he has always gotten.
Retired General Colin Powell said, “When more than one million students a year drop out of high school, it’s more than a problem, it’s a catastrophe. Our economic and national security are at risk when we fail to educate the leaders and the workforce of the future. It’s time for a national ‘call to arms,’ because we cannot afford to let nearly one-third of our kids fail.”
This is a serious warning stating a clear and present danger, one that requires thinking outside the bureaucratic box that holds our educational system in its power. It is time to do things differently so that we can stop getting what we have always gotten when it comes to the education of our children.
David A. Hall, MD
Janice Ivy
