By Charles Mueller

Winning hearts and minds is how you lead a country, it is key to winning wars, and it is what good governance depends on in a rational society. If you do not have the hearts and minds of the people, then you cannot lead them or protect them. People’s hearts and minds are won by giving them something to believe in, giving them something to trust. When people believe that you will help create the reality they hope to see, they give their hearts and minds to you. This is something all people who want power understand because power is controlling the hearts and minds of the people. Today, the hearts and minds of the rational people around the world are being controlled by an irrational idea, that trepidation is normal, that terrorism is acceptable, that we are not free to live without fear. That fear was perpetuated earlier this week when Daesh carried out a series of cowardly attacks on the innocent people in the capital of Belgium.

The hearts of people are won by gaining their trust, by capturing their loyalty. Terrorists groups like Daesh are winning the hearts of rational people, people like the teenager Maysa from Belgium who drank the Daesh kool-aid. The heart is not always a rational thing, it is fueled by emotion and responds most greatly to fear. We are losing the hearts of the rational people of the world somehow. The heart is most susceptible to change when it is living in fear. Ironically, by creating an unstable world the terrorists gain the hearts of the rational people.

The minds of people are sometimes much harder to win. The more educated, the more skeptical, the more logical a mind, the harder it is to win it over with cheap tricks. Maysa’s rational mind is the only reason she is not a terrorist fighting with the Daesh today. They might have tricked her heart, but they could not trick her mind. This is the power of rational thought, the power of science. When we understand our world better, in a more scientific way, we can control our hearts and put our loyalty and trust in places that are truly safe. This is why democracy works; because rational people invest their hearts and their minds in leaders who are rational and logical too.

Our rational leaders are not capturing the hearts and minds of the people anymore. The terrorists have put fear in our hearts and minds and they are beginning to turn us into irrational, illogical people. If we become that, we’ve lost the world we have spilt so much blood, sweat and tears over trying to create; a world of free thought, of opportunity, of freedom and justice for all. Trust and loyalty are inspired by action. Rational people also require that action be logical. Every war, be it WWII or the most recent War on Terror, is fought over the hearts and minds of people. I hate to think that right now we are losing the war for the hearts and minds of the world.