The price of apathy

"First they came" is a poem attributed to Pastor Marin Niemöller(1892-1984) about the inactivity of German intellectuals following the Nazi rise to power and the purging of their chosen targets. There are quite a few variants of this, this is one of them:

First they came for the Communists,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communist.

Then they came for the sick, the so-called incurables,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't mentally ill.

Then they came for the Catholics,
and I didn't speak up because I was a Protestant.

Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew.

Then they came for me,
and by that time no one was left to speak up.