I believe that the Albert Einstein quotation comes from the World War II era, prior to U.S. involvement in that war, when Nazis were killing people everywhere. But I also believe that it totally pertains to today’s world and what is happening now. If we can promote the ideology of “no hate, no violence,” then I think it would help us all a great deal.
Unfortunately, the world is filled with people who stand by and do nothing – and I’m not talking about the Americans. I’m referring to peaceful Muslims who could stand up against the terrorists and the radical Muslims. If 1 billion people could stand up against the hundreds or thousands of bad actors, then I’m confident about what would happen. But they need to stand up in such a way as to be united, so that they will not be individually persecuted by the terrorists.
Once the terrorists see that the general population of the Muslims is not going to take it anymore, things will start to change.
This is especially true of Muslim women begin to fight back. We must talk about equal rights, and equal rights must be achieved with no hate and no violence. There are still people in the world who believe in keeping women down. IN order to do that, there has to be some hate and, in some cases, violence. That is the wrong way to think – and to stand by and watch somebody be physical with anybody is especially bad. It happens all around the world, but we don’t put up with it in the United States. We put people in jail for being violent toward their spouses.
The ideology of “no hate, no violence” can be applied to anything. We need to call out the evil in this country. Sometimes evil is visible. It’s people trying to develop their own agenda at the expense of those who have good and peaceful intentions – people who believe in equal rights for every person of every race and within every religion.
I think the white supremacist movement needs to be put down. To be successful, I think the movement to eradicate white supremacy needs to come from other white people – just as movements toward social and racial justice in places like Chicago need to come from within the black community. There are, of course, some very strong black leaders in this country who can help put together a coalition to figure out how to stop the gang violence, helping young people of color to see that there is a better way of life, a way to learn and to live so that they won’t be susceptible to the temptations of the gang lifestyle. Gangs have replaced the family unit in so many places. Many times, it’s a single mother trying to raise children on her own.
Anybody who has a little bit of time can help. If everybody pitched in to help that single mother by being a mentor to a child in need, it would make a great difference. These kids need to see that there is a world outside their own bad neighborhoods.
So many things can be done – and they must be done one to one, person to person. The government will not be able to do this work; it simply can’t. There’s too much red tape and bureaucracy to overcome, and too many rules that don’t apply to specific problems and situations.
I help families without the government’s involvement, and I’m so happy that I do, because they’re all doing extremely well relative to where they came from. If we all adopt this attitude, we won’t be like those who do nothing. And right now, that’s the majority of Americans. We’re watching but not doing anything.
