No Courage
It is astonishing how little courage one encounters in public life these days.
Not in Congress.
Not in the courts.
Not in the press.
Not in acadamia.
Not even on Facebook, that agora of performative conviction.
This is, I admit, something of an exaggeration. There are courageous voices—lonely ones—who continue to speak plainly. But the broader phenomenon is unmistakable: a vast number of people are willing to outsource bravery to others, to let someone else plant the flag while they keep their heads safely below the parapet. When we do little, we leave more to do for others, and make it so they face more peril.
If we make it through this moment—and I believe we will—will people look back with pride? Will they say, We held the line; we kept the republic upright through its dizzy spell? Or will they whisper, more honestly, Others did the hard work while we waited for the danger to pass?
I sometimes think back to my childhood in Burke, Virginia, in the mid-1970s. There was a German worker at the stable near our home. I remember, even as a boy, wanting to ask him what he had done during the war—or, if he was too young, what his family had done. At the time it seemed a natural question about a terrible era.
I would never ask that question today.
The fear I see in people now is too real—careers ruined, families threatened, reputations annihilated in an afternoon. And the unnerving truth is that fear, once learned, becomes transferable. One begins to understand how entire societies fall silent.
Trump’s weakening position has begun, mercifully, to coax some courage back into public view. But the more haunting question is not where courage is returning—it is where it vanished in the first place.
And when this chapter closes, as all such chapters eventually do, I wonder what people will say when they watch films about this time—or about the Second World War—and ask, “Why didn’t they do anything?”
They won’t ask it aloud.
They will already know the answer.