Never Be Neutral, Never Be Silent

"The penalty good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men." -- Plato

"When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle." -- Edmund Burke (usually misattributed as "All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.")

"It is a wicked thing to be neutral between right and wrong." -- Theodore Roosevelt 

"We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented." -- Elie Wiesel

"In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends." -- Martin Luther King 

Injustice begets injustice. When you see the strong picking on the weak, you must act, or else the cycle continues. Especially if the weak one is a child, who will grow up to pass that meanness on to others, and become what he once hated.

Don't sit back and do nothing. Punish the bully. Show him you're stronger, because that's the only thing he respects, and that you won't tolerate it. Otherwise, the child he bullies will become a nasty person himself.

I speak, literally, from painful experience. People ask why I'm always so angry, why I have to win every argument, why I always have to get the last word. It's because I see everyone who disagrees with me as a schoolyard bully, who must be punished for what he did to me long ago.

There are a lot of men now in their mid-to-late 50s who are lucky that I didn't grow to be as big as they got. Like the old joke says: A big man says to a little man, "If you were two inches taller, I'd knock you out." The little man says to the big man, "If I were two inches taller, I'd knock you out."

Back then, I was too scared to try to fight back, because I knew I couldn't win. But that wasn't the worst part. The worst part is that no one would step in and win for me. Or so it seemed: It seemed like I was facing the same vicious clods year after year, until I got to high school. The torment slowed down and stopped. Did the tormentors grow out of it? Did they get punished for other things they did? I noticed a lot of them did not end up graduating with my class (or the ones before). Did they get expelled, or have to transfer, or drop out?

Now, I no longer give a damn: If I see someone getting picked on, I do something about it. I call the authorities' attention to it, because I know I still wouldn't win many fights. But I make sure that the one who started the fight loses it.

Declaring ourselves neutral, and deciding that something is none of our business because it is an ocean away, is what kept us from opposing the Nazis at the start of World War II. The results were disastrous for humanity.

I STAND WITH ISRAEL. Not just because I'm one-quarter Jewish. Not just because I'm half-Polish. Not just because of my personal history. But because I'm a human being.

And as a human being, I refuse to be neutral, and I refuse to be silent.