Letters to the Editor
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Rex
Thanks for replying. Naturally, I recognize your name as a (the?) prosecutor in the Diaz case.
As I think I made clear in my post, I have no personal knowledge of what Diaz released. I based my assertions as to its character on the statements made in his filing. I believe that was a filing made to the court by his JAG defense attorney.
So as someone who has inside knowledge of his case, do you disagree with his lawyer's statements about what the "seven columns" of data were? Or do you disagree that the alphanumeric codes were meaningless without access to some key material to decode them? Or is there some other reason why this material compromises "sources and methods"?
Please note that I'm not defending Diaz as a hero, but if you prosecuted his case, I think it's fair to say that you're not unbiased in your assessment of his conduct. I think it's fair to expect you to support your assertions, in view of that bias.
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Jazzlstr
jazzlstr said:
"You are guilty of what you complain about when it comes to the administration, you only care about the truth if it fits your particular viewpoint."
Not knowing, and not really caring if he really is who he says he is (why didn't he just use his real name as his handle then?) this really takes the cake. Here's a guy who admits he opposes the Iraq war but not only won't do anything about it, actively chooses to enable it. Then he complains that others are too narrow-minded, which apparently hurts his feelings.
Is it any wonder, with people like this at high levels of the military, that we're in the mess we're in?
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Sometimes a hero is just a sammich, WT
‘All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing’ (or words to that effect)
A study of a Web quotation
Martin Porter
January 2002
(...)
3) If it were genuine, it would be easily traceable. For any quote this common, reference to an encyclopaedia, dictionary of quotations, or the internet will usually reveal the source quickly. Furthermore great quotes (and this is supposed to be one), come usually from great works, which are again readily accessible, and are often on the internet in machine readable form as E-texts. The few Burke E-texts I have downloaded do not contain the quote. Even if this quote were from a minor work (the corner of one of Burke’s laundry lists for example), its fame would make the containing work famous and we would be able to find it. The fact that none of the thousands of web pages that give the quote cite a source is, for me, conclusive evidence that it is an invention.
But if anyone can trace this quote back to the authentic writings of Edmund Burke, email your findings to martin@tartarus.org, and I will remove this web page forthwith.
The only question left to answer is where it actually came from. The title at the top of this web page is the form which, to me, sounds most like Burke,
‘All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing’
It has about it the eighteenth century sound, it mentions ‘good’ and ‘evil’, which are certainly part of Burke’s political vocabulary, and it is a generalisation, like most of the other quotes by Burke that you see. The one thing you can say about the pseudo-quote is that it does remind you a bit of a real Burke quote, and that, I think, is the clue to where it comes from. Someone has read through a list of them and composed another one in a similar style. But although it is not unlike Burke, it does not feel quite genuine. Burke will use the words ‘good’ and ‘evil’, but he never reduces politics to the primitive level of describing his side as the good people and his opponents as the forces of evil they have to combat. In the pseudo-quote you do get the feeling of Buzz Lightyear, and the other good men of Star Command, fighting the evil Emperor Zurg, sworn enemy of the Galactic Alliance. And despite appearing to be precise, the exact meaning is not altogether clear. Are the men good in an absolute sense, or are they being described as good because they see the evil? Can they be described as good if they do nothing? Are not other things necessary for evil to triumph? Some degree of public enthusiasm for the evil, for example?
Triumphant evil has often been cast down by plain in-between men, and indeed by bad men. The human sacrifice practised among the Incas we may regard as evil, but the Conquistadors who brought it to an end we may equally regard as having been bad men. An attempt by a small and evil group to revive human sacrifice in modern society would fail, not through resistance by good men, but by a complete lack of support for such a crazy idea. But once you qualify the pseudo-quote to except these cases, its meaning is reduced to a mere truism, that if bad things are happening, we must do something about it.
The pseudo-quote is therefore without authenticity or meaning, and is just another of those political slogans which are used not as an assistance to, but as a substitute for real thought. It is not a deep truth, although it is constantly treated as one. Burke incidentally hated such things. He thought that cheap political slogans, or ‘maxims’ as he called them, enabled politicians to invoke principles of expediency, so they could pursue their own selfish interests instead of fulfilling their obligations to country, party and people. To him they were quite distinct from the deeps truths, or as he calls them here, ‘first principles’,
It is an advantage to all narrow wisdom and narrow morals that their maxims have a plausible air; and, on a cursory view, appear equal to first principles. They are light and portable. They are as current as copper coin; and about as valuable. They serve equally the first capacities and the lowest; and they are, at least, as useful to the worst men as to the best. Of this stamp is the cant of not man, but measures; a sort of charm by which many people get loose from every honourable engagement.
Edmund Burke
And to this quote we can give a proper attribution,
Edmund Burke, Thoughts on the cause of the present discontents, 1770. In The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, edited by Henry Froude, Oxford University Press, 1909, Volume 2, page 83, lines 7 to 16.
And see the follow-on essay.
http://tartarus.org/~martin/essays/burkequote.html