I wrote last week that I was recently asked about my personal thoughts on what this person perceived as an attack against our personal freedom. This person asked me as someone who is passionate about finding financial freedom and helping others find it as well to give my thoughts about the attack on personal freedoms. So, I decided to share a series of thoughts. I am going to share my thoughts in two separate blog posts and this is the second post. I have asked my brother, Justin Fischer to share the third post to share his thoughts in the last blog post on the response people need to take.
It was a brisk fall day and I was the new kid at a new school. Much to my surprise, three kids after school came to “greet me”. It wasn’t the kind of greeting that I was hoping for at 13 years of age. I could tell that I was in trouble as they approached me. There were three kids, but two of them were the most terrifying. The tall kid was the leader of the pack, acted all domineering, and talked a lot, but the other two were true believers. These two kids were going to follow their leader and do all the work for him. They were the one that I was most worried about as they confronted me with the goal of intimidating me as most bullies do.
I share this story because it is a perfect example of why people should fear those I call believers. I have found that there are four types of people in the world. There are leaders, believers, followers, and crusaders. I am most concerned with the believers in this world from a political sense.
The ones people should fear are the believers. The belief they hold so dear penetrates them to such a degree that they will defy reason for the sake of their own belief in what their leader is advocating. I am not suggesting that all people who hold to beliefs are bad, but what does concern me is when people allow their beliefs to blindly guide them without using objective reasoning. What also concerns me is the lack of accountability the believers put on their leaders, and how much lack of reason they use in thinking through what their leaders are saying.
I heard a story years ago when the British invaded India. What was troubling was how some in India not only accepted the invasion, but actually worked alongside the British to kill their own countrymen. Their belief and the acceptance of the British who were the leaders led them to kill for the British. The most dangerous people aren’t always the ones leading, but those who follow in total belief and trust in those promoting the belief in “the cause”.
Suzy Kassem says it best when she said “the most dangerous people in the world are not the tiny minority instigating the evil acts, but those who do the acts for them.” This is the point of the great political divide we are seeing in our culture today. We are finding that people are following their leaders so faithfully that they will do incredibly unreasonable things for them. It is becoming so obvious as we see the believers in this world actually begin to hate those on the other side. People are willingly hating others for the sake of “the cause”.
What does a believer look like, though? The believer can be from any walk of life ranging from the lady at the grocery store who is so obsessed with her beliefs that she will confront you in an absolute rage over a difference in opinion. The believer can look like a TV personality who is supposed to report the news and is sitting back and painting a narrative without using reason to justify his or her positions. The believer can be a local politician who is so in love with a perceived idea that the leaders are pushing that they allow it to control them and influence their judgment.
The believer can look like a teenage boy obsessed with a viewpoint, the believer can look like a middle-aged woman, like a celebrity, etc. The list could go on of believers. The believers should be feared though. They are so obsessed with the belief system that it has been presented to them that they cannot separate fact from fiction and they cannot separate emotion from intellect. The believer can be a Republican and Democrat. The believer is bipartisan.
I was once told that “you cannot have a puppet master without a puppet.” It sounds almost too simplistic, but it is true. We must be careful when forming alliances that we do not become so obsessed with a perceived leader that we reject objectivity and reason. We must not become the puppet to a puppet master. All political ideologies have their believers, and they are all the ones we should fear and not become.
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