The Duty to Confront Evil

When I grew up there was this quaint notion that part of growing up and becoming a man was accepting the duty to protect yourself, protect your family, and protect those around you who were smaller, weaker, and less able to protect themselves. This idea that as an adult, your security, and the security of those around you was your responsibility, is constantly being fought by those on the left. The idea that you have a duty to confront evil, to not run away, and to protect those who couldn’t protect themselves from evil, implied you had a duty to be prepared. Looking back the games, sports, and activities of my youth, they all seemed all to be preparation for that duty. From Boy Scouts, to games on the play ground, to competitive sports, to fishing and hunting, the Left has and is systematically attacking both this duty, and the activities that prepared young people for that duty. Consider the rules and consequences in school today. If a student sees a bully picking on an obviously weaker victim then steps in between the bully and his victim, physically stopping the attack, the result will be that the student protecting a weaker victim, because he was engaged in a fight, will be suspended and punished the same as the bully. There is zero tolerance for fighting, regardless of the reason. This codifies the idea that there is no evil, and teaches that taking responsibility for protecting yourself, or protecting those who are weaker is a punishable offense. Do we really want to teach our boys that if they see a man attacking a weaker woman to do nothing, allow the attack to continue, and call the police?

You’ll never hear it from a liberal, and rarely from an atheist, but there are evil people in this world. There always has been and always will be evil among us. In your local paper you will see acts of evil like murder, arson, rape, assault, robbery, and fraud every day. On a rare occasion you will see the evil act of an individual like that in Tuscon that grips our nation. On less rare occasions you will see the acts of people who believe in an evil ideology as recently happened in Pakistan, where the governor of Punjab was assassinated. His offense was opposing evil laws that carried a death penalty for blasphemy. Those who supported his assassination celebrated publicly and urged more such killings. There is a word for laws and ideology that calls for the execution of individual who don’t hold the same belief, that word is evil. What better word to describe the practice of stoning a rape victim to death for adultery than evil.

Whether it is a single murdering psychotic, or a group of people griped by an evil belief, we see that innocent Americans have been murdered at shopping malls, schools, restaurants, churches and courthouses, work, and even a grocery store parking lot. It should be plain that there is no safe place against evil. Worldwide subways, train stations, air flights, any place people gather are targets for evil people.

The evil that some people do, makes no logical sense. Trying to understand why psychotics commit evil acts is a waste of time. Limiting the actions of normal everyday people, because of the acts of evil is counterproductive, and will not eliminate or even reduce the carnage evil people commit.

If you look and read, you can find many stories of heroism where people didn’t run away from evil but ran to the shooting in Tucson to help and/or attempt to stop the evil being committed. There are many good people in this country that will not stand by while evil attacks. Well-known 18th century political philosopher Edmond Burk said, "All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing." What that means is that evil is not neutral; if you and/or society stop resisting evil, it will continue to grow and spread. It is a call to arms for people to stop being complacent. Evil is not neutral and there can be no neutrality exercised toward it. Anyone who is not against it is perforce in favor of it. The Left in America by its actions and words supports evil.

The utopian idea that if we educate everybody and just make them “understand,” will end oppression and we will all get along is a fantasy. Whether it is the anarchists voluntary “stateless society,” or socialists “from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs,” leftist views disregard the idea that there is evil and are naive. It is also naive belief that we can keep the tools for doing evil from lunatics by creating laws that make the tools illegal for everybody, or attempting to confiscate the tools of destruction.

Sadly, another lunatic or zealot of evil ideology will commit more mass carnage. Maybe tomorrow, next week or next year, it will happen again. Just as the twin towers were brought down, innocents shot while enjoying dinner in the Texas Luby’s Cafeteria, or the recent massacre in Tucson, evil will attack again. Knowing this, rather than restrict and neuter the innocent, prudence dictates that we should be prepared. It is our duty and responsibility to protect ourselves, our loved ones, and the friends in our communities from evil. We as individuals cannot depend on the brave and earnest officers of the law to be everywhere at all times and unerringly protect us from all evil. We can nolonger disconnect ourselves from the evil in the world around us, the idea that you can go to the mall, out to eat, travel, blissfully unaware are over. As citizens in our communities, not just self-centered individuals, it is incumbent to be ready to fight evil if we are to survive as a free people. We do not have to go around scared, uncomfortable, looking over our shoulders all the time, but we must mentally prepare ourselves and stay tuned into our environment.

The Left is trying to use the action of a crazed evil man, to enact anti-liberty legislation of all sorts. The Left has always been and continues to be the enemy of freedom and liberty. They generally want to silence any opposition, and control everybody, rather than allow the common man to speak his mind and control of himself. The Left lost its monopoly on the US Media years ago, and since then continuously tires to suppress speech it doesn’t like. They are using the actions of evil, to silence everybody. As an example consider US Representative from South Carolina, Democrat Clyburn, reporting that he will introduce legislation making it a federal crime to use language or symbols that could be perceived as threatening or that incites violence against a federal official or member of Congress. Interesting how the legislation doesn’t protect the same use language or symbols if used by congressmen against political parties, unelected candidates, etc. So language and symbols perceived as threatening by a congressman to target, attack, or defuse the Tea Party, the NRA, or an individual not associated with the government will still be protected.

The Left is claiming that it is the “violent rhetoric” of conservatives that contributed or caused the tragedy Tucson. Not a single American politician, nor significant segment of any political movement, nor statistically identifiable share of the American people, has made a serious threat or call for the violent death of its political opponents. For every example of a conservative who has used a militaristic or violent metaphor the Left has used to “prove” their position, the pundits, bloggers, and chatters have found multiple examples of more atrocious violent rhetoric by the Left. Google, Bing, Yahoo, etc. and the instant availability of information that the internet has made for everybody is a bane to the Left. They no longer control the availability information to the public, hence they call for “Net Neutrality” and more government control of the internet.

The Left is again calling for the failed policies of gun control. The dire predictions of gunfights in the streets, and increased violence, wherever gun rights are restored never materialize and are as rare or rarer than with restrictions on gun rights. Never mind the fact that since the Brady Bill expired in 2004 gun ownership has increased dramatically and all violent crime, including murders, has gone down. The truly evil mass murders of the last century, where hundreds of millions of people were murdered, all occurred where the government disarmed the people then murdered them (Germany, China, USSR, Cambodia, etc). Reason on logic does not play a part in the Left’s push to some unrealistic utopian fantasy. Rather than recognize and prepare against evil, which includes good people having the tools to protect themselves and their loved ones, the Left uses the heinous but rare evil acts of a lunatic to try and validate their attacks on rights, liberty, and freedom.

The failure to recognize evil and accept that evil exists will only make things easier for those who support evil ideology or who are just plain evil. We need not walk in fear of evil, but we must be prepared at all times to respond to evil. It is still each person’s duty to provide for their own protection, the protection of their loved ones and their communities, from murdering psychotic monsters. As part of being prepared we must fight the reasonless idea that restricting the natural rights of everybody is necessary to stop evil.