Welcome to Call to Decision 

 Subject: American Minute - Jan. 12 - The only thing necessary for evil to triumph...

 American Minute with Bill Federer

 January 12

 "The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do
 nothing."

 This famous quote was from British statesman Edmund Burke, who was
 born JANUARY 12, 1729.

 Considered the most influential orator in the House of Commons, Burke
 stands out in history, for, as a member of the British Parliament, he
 defended the rights of the American colonies and strongly opposed the
 slave trade.

 In "A Letter to a Member of the National Assembly," 1791, Edmund
 Burke wrote:

 "What is liberty without wisdom and without virtue?

 It is the greatest of all possible evils; for it is folly, vice, and
 madness, without restraint.

 Men are qualified for civil liberty in exact proportion to their
 disposition to put moral chains upon their own appetites; in
 proportion as they are disposed to listen to the counsels of the wise
 and good in preference to the flattery of knaves."

 Edmund Burke continued:

 "Society cannot exist, unless a controlling power upon will and
 appetite be placed somewhere; and the less of it there is within, the
 more there must be without.

 It is ordained in the eternal constitution of things, that men of
 intemperate minds cannot be free.

 Their passions forge their fetters."