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Quote of the Day: Courage
“A decline in courage may be the most striking feature, which an outside observer notices in the West in our days. The Western world has lost its civil courage, both as a whole and separately, in each country, each government, each political party, and, of course, in the United Nations. Such a decline in courage is particularly noticeable among the ruling groups and the intellectual elite, causing an impression of loss of courage by the entire society. Of course, there are many courageous individuals, but they have no determining influence on public life.” – Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
How much of our government today is marked by a lack of courage? We see it most clearly in the response to the COVID-19 epidemic. The states, counties, and cities whose leaders are most frightened are the ones maintaining the lockdown longest. Especially the politicians who fear the electorate and mistrust the common sense of the average person.
Similarly, the decline in courage has led to today’s bubble-wrap society — the desire to insulate people from any shock or hurt is overriding people’s ability to live their lives. Even those of us who realize the emperor is wearing no clothes lack the courage to proclaim it aloud.
When I was younger, when Solzhenitsyn was still alive and wrote this quote, I believed he was too pessimistic, especially about Americans. Today? I am not so sure he was wrong.
Published in General
On one side we have people accusing other people of murdering grandma because they want to engage in activities seen as hazardous and liable to spread disease in the community. On the other side we have people who are frustrated and angry because they have been prevented from working, and they lash out, accusing people who are just doing what they have been told by countless experts is the right thing to do of cowardice, despotism, or worse.
As a general rule, people in this pandemic crisis have been doing their best to do the right thing. Everyone just wants to get this pandemic behind us with minimum pain. There are no public officials who are trying to destroy our economy and become dictators. There are no people who want to harm other people or who don’t care about the harm they may do. Most of all, there is no lack of courage.
“Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.” Is that how it goes? At some point, we have data instead of projections. The projections have been wrong again and again. We didn’t all die from Net Neutrality, either. Now, what does the data say?