Where is The Courage?

<p>These are times of increasing political extremism. They are also times of corruption and rising inequality. Enormous, alarming trends are sweeping through culture, government, and the economy. In some sense this is new, but in other ways it’s a story as old as civilized society. </p><p>So the question is not why or what or who or even how—it’s where. Where is the courage? Where are the people standing up to stop all this? Where are the heroes, big and small? The city council member who refuses to rubber stamp the pocket-lining policies of her fellow council members. The parent who turns in their own child for his alarming obsession with guns. The celebrity who uses their platform to speak <em>truth</em>, rather than pile onto whatever the mob has decided is right. </p><p>To the Stoics, courage was the greatest of the virtues. <a href='https://dailystoic.com/the-important-thing-is-to-do-the-right-thing/?utm_source=convertkit&amp;utm_medium=convertkit&amp;utm_campaign=the-courage'>Being brave enough to take a stand</a>, to risk one’s own neck. To throw yourself in front of the car to save someone else. Or, as Mario Savio put it on the Berkeley campus in the 1960s during the Free Speech movement, “to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus…to make it stop.”</p><p>Courage was also independence. Refusing to cow to the majority, and instead to hold oneself to a higher standard. That standard was justice, another essential virtue. That meant insisting on what was right. Attacking corruption, intolerance for unfairness. Protecting the downtrodden or the weak. </p><p>Are there still heroes out there? Yes. We see it in <a href='https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2019/04/28/lori-gilbert-kaye-woman-protected-rabbi-synagogue-shooting/3608418002/'>Lori Gilbert-Kaye</a>, who died protecting her rabbi from a gunman. We see it in <a href='https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/06/29/u-s-ambassador-to-estonia-resigns-in-disgust-after-trump-anti-europe-rants-nato-european-union-diplom