As we've all heard a million times, all it takes for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.
I think part of our overall problem with the crisis of confidence in the West can be generally tied into the waning influence of religion, and particularly the religion of the West, Christianity. By that I mean, if the culture has reoriented itself to a materialist, atheistic view of human existence then that means everything that is, was, or will be can be accessed by human senses and intellect alone. This is my convoluted way of suggesting that the moral cowardice we are witnessing is ultimately because modern Westerners are less willing to lay down their lives, and are governed more by individual cravenness because this right here is all there is. There's no hereafter or greater spiritual purpose, we're just sacks of organic molecules on a big rock circling a star called Sol, right? Sacrifice for a deep spiritual ideal, why that's just a fool's prize. That is the prevailing ethos of the modern West. I think it is disastrously wrongheaded, but that is another debate.
Now obviously I'm not suggesting that life is anything but precious, and it should be guarded and held sacrosanct. But I think past generations were more willing to expose themselves to personal risk in defense of what they knew was righteous, and a big part of that is because they had religion. I can't think of the author right off hand, but there's a quote along the lines of "Death is a bad thing, but it is not the worst of things. Far worse is to live in an existence where there is nothing worth dying for".
I think this partly explains what IDP asks, about why these men are not standing to be counted if indeed they know what is going on. They don't consider it worth the personal risk.
