The English writer and theologian C.S. Lewis wrote the best definition of courage I’ve ever read. I quote it frequently. He described courage as “not simply one of the virtues but the form of every virtue at the testing point, which means at the point of highest reality.”
In other words, we don’t know if we’re brave until we first face genuine physical risk. We don’t know if we’re honest until telling the truth carries a consequence. We don’t know if we’re kind until our kindness is tested by cruelty.
Honest people look at el Ahmed’s act of heroism and wonder what they would have done.
It’s also why cowardice is so harmful. It annihilates virtue. One of the most dispiriting aspects of our modern political moment is that it feels as though cowards are everywhere. Institutions yield to bullies. Politicians yield to mobs. People are unwilling to tell even obvious truths if telling the truth will put a target on their back.
To take one example: I remember Tim Alberta’s 2021 profile of Representative Peter Meijer — one of the 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach President Trump after Jan. 6, 2021. Alberta wanted to know, given the absolute absurdity of Trump’s claims that the election was stolen — and the violence that his lies inspired — why did so few stand up?
“At one point, Meijer described to me the psychological forces at work in his party,” Alberta wrote, “the reasons so many Republicans have refused to confront the tragedy of Jan. 6 and the nature of the ongoing threat.” He added:
Some people are motivated by raw power, he said. Others have acted out of partisan spite, or ignorance, or warped perceptions of truth and lies. But the chief explanation, he said, is fear. People are afraid for their safety. They are afraid for their careers. Above all, they are afraid of fighting a losing battle in an empty foxhole.
From a young age, we learn that there are wolves in our midst. It is the absence of courage that plunges us into crisis. Great courage can help redeem a catastrophe. But abject cowardice not only magnifies our pain; it makes us doubt the strength and virtue of our nation and culture.
(THAT - Is the how and why you get a Trump - a JD.Vance and every sick sad soul on his team AND out there in voter land!)
Think of the contrast, for example, between the days and hours after the slaughter at Bondi Beach and the unfolding horror we felt after the Uvalde massacre in Texas. If it weren’t bad enough that 19 children and two teachers died at the hands of a deranged young man, the police response was so slow and so cautious that the shooter wasn’t confronted and killed until more than an hour after his attack began.
And consider what happened on Feb. 14, 2018, when a gunman opened fire at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla. A sheriff’s deputy, Scot Peterson, was on the scene, and when the shooting started, he jumped in a golf cart, drove straight to the school building and then … did nothing.
He stayed outside. Let me repeat that: An armed police officer stood outside while the kids he was supposed to protect ran, hid and fought on their own inside.
There was breathtaking courage on view in both shootings. Students and staff members alike laid down their lives to protect other innocents. But it was the two instances of cowardice that created waves of national revulsion. They felt like second blows — the horror of the school shootings was magnified by the woefully inadequate responses.
An emphasis on accomplishment can actually breed cowardice. Courage can cost you your career. Courage can cost you your life. And so the careerist learns to adapt, to hide when the bullets (real or figurative) start to fly.
Rinse and Repeat:
THAT - Is how you get a Trump - a JD.Vance and every sick sad soul on his team AND out there in voter land!
Excerpted from Bravery and Cowardice are both exemplary teachers
