Second Story: The Declination of Courage

“Should one point out that from ancient times declining courage has been considered the beginning of the end?” Alexandr Solzhenitsyn.

All we have to do is look at Ukraine and the way they are fighting for their “freedom.” It did not matter that before the war, they may have had a corrupt system at work that many saw daily but had to live with.

They believe in something beyond their day-to-day operations and scandals. They survived communism and, with patience, picked and chose people for a government they thought could help them. They found a President who is fighting with them for independence, once and for all, regardless of the cost.

The following passage from his speech is superb in how Solzhenitsyn foresaw how we are acting TODAY!:

“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.

Political and intellectual bureaucrats show depression, passivity, and perplexity in their actions and statements, and even more so in theoretical reflections to explain how realistic, reasonable, intellectually and even morally worn it is to base state policies on weakness and cowardice. And decline in courage is ironically emphasized by occasional explosions of anger and inflexibility on the part of the same bureaucrats when dealing with weak governments and with countries not supported by anyone, or with currents which cannot offer any resistance. But they get tongue-tied and paralyzed when they deal with powerful governments and threatening forces, with aggressors and international terrorists.”

Guilty as charged. All we have to look at was the country’s reaction when Trump ordered the assassination of Qasem Soleimani and Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis. Today we see the surrender of Joe Biden to get back to the “Iran Nuclear Deal.” Why? Because Iran had said, Trump declared war on Iran when he pulled out of it back in May 2018. Everybody in the world said that exiting the Iran deal was “misguided” to Trump’s statement when he said, “the U.S. no longer makes empty threats.” Look where we are TODAY! DO you think Putin would have declared war on Ukraine if Trump was president?

“LACK OF COURAGE!” is correct.

On the other hand, as Solzhenitsyn said:

“When the modern Western states were created, the principle was proclaimed that governments are meant to serve man and man lives to be free and to pursue happiness. See, for example, the American Declaration of Independence. Now, at last, during past decades, technical and social progress has permitted the realization of such aspirations: the welfare state.”

That must be, so far, our most outstanding internal achievement. In 2020, “The Harvard Crimson” wrote that the “current FEC (Federal Election Commission) data continues to reinforce the popular belief that Harvard’s staff and student base is mostly liberal. A 2015 Crimson analysis found Harvard faculty contributed overwhelmingly to federal Democratic campaigns and political organizations.” Similarly, in 2018, The Harvard Crimson reported that “88% of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences believed Trump’s job performance was ‘abysmal.’”

So, despite the argument Alexandr Solzhenitsyn presented at the Harvard Commencement in 1978, most faculty continued to contribute, vote, and educate as they believed, with liberal-socialist tendencies.

Why some of the best-educated people in this country believe a socialist-democratic system is better after learning and knowing about the Constitution can only be a “lack of Courage” in their design of Education.

If we sum up the lack of courage and obligation, we get a perfect formula that yields precisely where we are as a Nation — A welfare State! And continually living with INFLATION!

Further, if we look at how the West is behaving vis-à-vis the Ukraine war, we are a society without an objective except survival through subsistence. And that comes from us electing and accepting OUR government that gets elected as OUR GOVERNMENT OF CHOICE!!

WE HAVE LOST OUR COURAGE AND HAVE A HUGE LACK OF OBLIGATION TO DO THE RIGHT THING!!!

On the other side of that coin:

THE WORLD EVIL STATES ARE FREE TO WAR AND PILLAGE AS THEY WISH!!

WHAT, Pillage, you say? Yes, PILLAGE — like Russia and China are doing in SOUTH AMERICA !!! Even Mexico is leaning that way.

Manuel Lopez Obrador, the President of the Mexican United States, has not been impressed with the small shadow we project on the world and has spoken “wittingly or unwittingly, seem intent on opening a ‘second front’ for Moscow from Mexico,” now called “misguided bromides.”

THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA IS PASSIVE IN THE WORLD. And, all Americans that are OKAY with that are cutting their nose despite their face.

The question is, Why this? The short answer? WE ARE CONSUMED WITH OURSELVES, LIKE A TEENAGER WITH PIMPLES.

Next: Third Story: The Welfare State, Lack of Self-Restraint, and Our Legal System