Engaging Good and Evil Citizens: Edmund Burke's Warning

[CANAAN51USA - Alfred De Grazia]

Engaging Good and Evil Citizens:

Edmund Burke's Warning

I recalled something supposedly said by Burke or Carlyle and, instead
of locating the book in which I had just seen the common slick
expression, I went to Google and searched for a piece of it. There I
found two useful articles by Martin Porter. They should provide
amusement as well as disabusement.

And here is the error which I have been spared: ‘The only thing
necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing,' was
attributed to Edmund Burke. Burke never said it and yet it has been
repeated in many forms and myriad times, and could be considered for a
principal slogan of this book Canaan: Fifty-first State of America.

It is true in our context if only because there are so many good men
and women who dare not engage themselves, will not, cannot, know not
how, and are engaged with other evils, or advance their own
propositions. But, too, we should realize that there are many ‘evil
men and women' who are on my side and many more of them might join me
if they were to read Canaan. Israelis, Americans, and Palestinians of
all kinds (and so too the world at large) will be tumbled upside down
before they straighten up and fly right.

Yet, here is a genuine quotation from Burke (adduced by Porter), that
is more inclined to humble me than to inspire me:

"No man, who is not inflamed by vain-glory into enthusiasm, can
flatter himself that his single, unsupported, desultory, unsystematic
endeavours, are of power to defeat the subtle designs and united
cabals of ambitious citizens. When bad men combine, the good must
associate; else they will fall, one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a
contemptible struggle."



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ALFRED DE GRAZIA