Numbers and Humanity

I was emailed this piece, and expected another joke, but was surprised to find something more important, and more moving.

The Peaceful Majority
(from "Why The Peaceful Majority Is Irrelevant" by Paul Marek)

I used to know a man whose family was German aristocracy prior to World War Two. They owned a number of large industries and estates. I asked him how many German people were true Nazis, and the answer he gave has stuck with me and guided my attitude toward fanaticism ever since.

"Very few people were true Nazis "he said," but many enjoyed the return of German pride, and many more were too busy to care. I was one of those who just thought the Nazis were a bunch of fools. So, the majority just sat back and let it all happen. Then, before we knew it, they owned us, and we had lost control, and the end of the world had come. My family lost everything I ended up in a concentration camp and the Allies destroyed my factories."

We are told again and again by "experts" and "talking heads" that Islam is the religion of peace, and that the vast majority of Muslims just want to live in peace.

Although this unqualified assertion may be true, it is entirely irrelevant. It is meaningless fluff, meant to make us feel better, and meant to somehow diminish the specter of fanatics rampaging across the globe in the name of Islam. The fact is that the fanatics rule Islam at
this moment in history.

It is the fanatics who march. It is the fanatics who wage any one of 50 shooting wars worldwide. It is the fanatics who systematically slaughter Christian or tribal groups throughout Africa and are gradually taking over the entire continent in an Islamic wave. It is the fanatics who bomb, behead, murder, or honor kill. It is the fanatics who take over mosque after mosque. It is the fanatics who zealously spread the stoning and hanging of rape victims and homosexuals. The hard quantifiable fact is that the "peaceful majority" is the "silent majority" and it is cowed
and extraneous.

Communist Russia comprised Russians who just wanted to l ive in peace, yet the Russian Communists were responsible for the murder of about 20 million people. The peaceful majority were irrelevant. China 'S huge
population was peaceful as well, but Chinese Communists managed to kill a staggering 70 million people.

The average Japanese individual prior to World War 2 was not a warmongering sadist. Yet, Japan murdered and slaughtered its way across South East Asia in an orgy of killing that included the systematic murder of 12 million Chinese civilians; most killed by sword, shovel, and bayonet. And, who can forget Rwanda , which collapsed into butchery. Could it not be said that the majority of Rwandans were "peace loving"?

History lessons are often incredibly simple and blunt, yet for all our powers of reason we often miss the most basic and uncomplicated of points:

Peace-loving Muslims have been made irrelevant by their silence.

Peace-loving Muslims will become our enemy if they don't speak up, becaus e like my friend from Germany , they will awake one day and find that the fanatics own them, and the end of their world will have begun.

Peace-loving Germans, Japanese, Chinese, Russians, Rwandans, Serbs Afghans, Iraqis, Palestinians, Somalis, Nigerians, Algerians, and many others have died because the peaceful majority did not speak up until it
was too late.

As for us who watch it all unfold; we must pay attention to the only group that counts; the fanatics who threaten our way of life.

[This last paragraph was added by the emailer] Lastly, I wish to add: At the risk of offending someone, I sincerely think that anyone who rejects this as just another political rant, or doubts the seriousness of this issue or just deletes it without sending it on, is part of the problem. Lets quit laughing at and forwarding the jokes and cartoons which denigrate and ridicule our leaders in this war against terror. They are trying to protect the interests and well being of the US and it's citizens. Best we support them.

All too true, my friends, and something most of us recognize. And it got me to thinking about the immense numbers of people, many of them like you and me, who have been slaughtered in the past century in the name of one ideology or another, and in the name of a Death Cult in the latter half of the past century. Take a look at the estimates. Remember that every death which occurred during World War II was the responsibility, ultimately, of the Fascists of Germany, Italy, and Imperial Japan. Any quibbling about Dresden or Nagasaki is pointless: they would not have suffered a single war-related death had the Fascists been silenced by their own people. Read on.

Deaths during Lenin era of Russian Communism (including Russian Civil War): 9,000,000 (est.)
Deaths due to European Fascism: 42,000,000 (est.)
Deaths to Asian Fascism: 15,500,000 (est.)
Deaths due to Stalinist Regime in Russia (including Ukrainian Genocide): 20,000,000 to 50,000,000 (est.)

Deaths during Chinese Civil War: 2,500,000 (est.)
Deaths during Communist China (Mao's Regime 1949-1975): 40,000,000 (est.)
Deaths during China's Nationalist Era (1928-37): 3,100,000 (est.)
Deaths during Korean War: 2,800,000 (est.)
Deaths during North Korean Regime (1948 - present, not including Korean War): 1,633,000 (est.)
Deaths during Vietnam War (1960 - 1975): 3,500,000 (est.)
Deaths during Cambodia's Communist Khmer Rouge Regime(1975-1978): 1,650,000 (est.)

And don't forget Sudan. This Civil War between the Arab, Muslim north and the Christian & Animist south, has been ongoing since 1983. Estimated deaths, through 2005, number around 1,900,000. The recent sensitivity of the American, indeed world, press to the suffering of the people of Darfur, has been annoying to those of us who have been asking about it since the 1980s. By the time of the Clinton Administration the US had descended into navel gazing and cigar antics. Looking at Muslim atrocities in Africa simply didn't fit the agenda of the "Peace Dividend" generation of politicians. A dividend few of those who sucked it up ever healped to create, I might add.

I did not include the Armenian Genocide by the Turks, or the Cuban Communist atrocities under Castro, or many others. I simply put together these few glaring examples. And the numbers are staggering, aren't they? Beyond human comprehension. Truly. I can't wrap my head around numbers this high. Can you? Yet those gargantuan numbers each represents human beings. Millions upon millions of humans, snuffed out, slaughtered, wiped off the face of the earth. For the sake of Communism, or Fascism, or, of late, Islam.

These were men, women, children, old and young. Gone forever. Because of power-hungry, zealous fanatics, whose philosophies they don't even try to hide.

Remember these numbers the very next time some "expert" tries to explain how irrational it is to worry about the peace-loving Muslims. None of us worries about them. We worry about the Death Cultists who rule Islam today. And we worry about American politicians who refuse to see the bloody evidence before their eyes. And we worry about a Media and Educational elite who care nothing for their fellow citizens, but believe themselves above such mundane things.

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Thanks, Paul, for the inspiration!