Posted by
Mark McConnell on Tuesday, August 21, 2007 7:03:53 PM
The word "courage" is badly abused in the election season. When you hear someone called "courageous" during these times, what people are usually pointing to is a reckless disregard of restraints. Be imprudent, and disrespectful, contemptuous of conventions including simple decency, self-control, or truth, and they will engrave your statue with verses in tribute to your courage, because you dared to trample down this or that dictate of wisdom. Never mind if what is trodden down is holy. They will point to someone who managed to justify hating the good and loving the evil, and was not afraid to brag about it. "Bully for such courage", they will say. They mean careless, irreverent, brazen, shameless, pushy, uncivil, disloyal, incircumspect, and audacious. Any bold vice is electable if it is called, "courage".
Listen, as the rhetoric ramps up for the election, how often the demagogue, the populist, the moral coward is called "courageous", precisely in the sense described.