The truly and deliberately evil men are a very small minority; it is the
appeaser who unleashes them on mankind; it is the appeaser’s intellectual
abdication that invites them to take over. When a culture’s dominant trend is
geared to irrationality, the thugs win over the appeasers. When intellectual
leaders fail to foster the best in the mixed, unformed, vacillating character
of people at large, the thugs are sure to bring out the worst. When the ablest
men turn into cowards, the average men turn into brutes.