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Quote of the Day: Cowardice and Courage
“This republic was not established by cowards; and cowards will not preserve it.” ― Elmer Davis
Just when you think the story of the shooting at Stoneman Douglas High School cannot get worse, it does. Apparently a security guard saw the shooter (I won’t name him) entering the high school armed. He did not confront the shooter. I cannot blame the guard for that; he was unarmed. Neither did he do what he was supposed to do: raise an alarm. Instead he called a fellow security guard inside the school (also unarmed), and went about his business. The fellow guard also did not raise the alarm. Instead he locked himself in a safe room.
Unsurprisingly, he has not been fired, merely reassigned.
I say unsurprisingly because this is the school at which the armed guard hunkered down behind cover during the shooting, the other sheriff’s deputies responding set up a perimeter outside the school until the shooting was over, and a captain prevented EMTs from entering the school to render assistance. It was all a piece with the standards of the Broward County Sheriff’s Department.
Contrast this to what happened at Santa Fe, TX, where a guard armed with a pistol went up against a shooter armed with a shotgun. The guard was shot and badly injured. He almost died on the operating table. Yet that action engaged the shooter long enough for the students to get clear and limit the damage.
Courage — there is no substitute for it.
Published in General
Sea,
Agreed. One more thing, scr#w Broward County Sheriff’s Department. They got the 17 kids killed as sure as the sun came up in the East this morning.
Regards,
Jim
I wish there was an “angry” button that worked like the “like” button. Is this all true? Did they really see the shooter go in and not raise an alarm? {insert multiple swear words here}
Yup. You have to read around the #metoo stuff to find it, though.
Just one more epic fail in this incident. The bottom line is those kids needed a gunfighter, and instead they got a perimeter builder. If you cannot be a gunfighter when the situation calls for a gunfighter then you cannot be a police officer.
Period. Amen.
Interesting transition from a quote to a great discussion topic.
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Amen.
Conversion from what? I like Ricochet, but I don’t think I can accept it as a religion substitute.
The Internet ate two of his letters: conversation.
I learned the look-say method rather than phonics. I’m a lousy speller and spell check didn’t read my mind.
“Courage is the mother of all virtues because without it, you cannot consistently perform the others.” – Aristotle
I think Aristotle overexaggerates courage. Hitler for example was a brave soldier. You don’t get the Iron Cross for nothing. But courage is absolutely necessary to be consistently virtuous.
Furthermore, for warriors and academics, courage is central. A warrior must always be willing to sacrifice his life for the safety of others. An academic must always be willing to sacrifice his reputation for Truth.