Dissent Requires Courage

     I have an admission to make, Gentle Reader: I'm not terribly courageous. There are times when I back away from saying plainly and explicitly what I think about a particular proposition. It's normally in those cases where I could expect a storm of denunciation from persons who agree with me on most other things: a consequence of the polarizing and hardening of opinion on innumerable subjects. So my "courage of convictions" is a good distance from perfect.

     But I'm nearing the end of my life. If I'm ever to correct that deficiency, it must be soon.

     Those readers who have respected my views on matters of faith and the spirit are the most likely to feel what follows as a "gut punch." If you proceed from here, don’t claim afterward that I didn’t warn you.

---

     I'm a Catholic. That doesn't mean I agree with the totality of Church teachings. The Church has been wrong on a number of occasions and subjects. I've been called a "cafeteria Catholic" for that. Whatever! I stand by my convictions.

     On a variety of subjects, clerical doctrinal overreach has been rampant. Church teaching has at times seemed designed to benefit the Church hierarchy and the clergy generally, rather than to explain and explore the will of God as it was elucidated to us by His Son. This was at its most dramatic in the years near to the end of the First Millennium, when clerics routinely exploited the millenarian fears of European Christians to enrich themselves.

     About thirty years ago, the Church added two remarkable "sins" to its catechism: income tax evasion, and "excessive" sexual pleasure even between husband and wife. Never mind that the income tax itself is a form of armed robbery, or that "excessive" is always a matter of opinion. Never mind that many a State is blatantly oppressive, even murderous, or that the marital bed is supposed to be a place of fulfillment and joy. The Church condemned these things; we're supposed to feel guilty about them and plead for absolution from them.

     To which I replied, "Where is your authority for these pronouncements?"

     (...crickets chirping...)

     For "baseline" thoughts on clerical overreach, see this essay.

---

     It is unacceptable for a human institution to arrogate authority that belongs only to God. The moral-ethical rules are His rules. We cannot legitimately alter them, nor can we extend them into realms where they don't apply. Neither teleology nor "good intentions" can justify it. Yet the Church has done so repeatedly.

     In recent years, fearing that its doctrinal overreach has endangered the allegiance of its flock, the Church has tried to "have it both ways:"

     Catholics believe that an individual's conscience is the ultimate determinant of what is wrong or right for that individual. Moreover, God will judge us according to the fidelity with which we have followed our conscience. Nevertheless, this conscience needs to be formed by objective standards of moral conduct. The Church provides us with just that -- moral norms based on Jesus's teachings, the inspired scriptures, centuries of tradition, and the laws of nature.
     These moral standards may seem at times to be inhibiting or restrictive. The fact is, that quite to the contrary, they release or liberate us. These norms both make us free, and lead us to the deep happiness that comes from following God's plan. Jesus underscored that point when he said: If you live according to my teachings, you are truly my disciples; then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free." (John 8:31-32)

     [Father Joseph M. Champlin, What It Means To Be Catholic]

     The attempt to tread the narrow line between "Let your conscience be your guide" and "We know better than you do" could not be more obvious. Yet there is no avoiding the primacy of conscience. Conscience, once supplemented with reason, provides us the tool for knowing right from wrong, the "land of sin" from the "land of liberty."

     For what is the conscience? It's the "knowing with" that God provides to every human soul: the "knowing with" God, through the faculties He has awarded us. I had a character in a novel explain it better than I could:

     The word ‘conscience’ means ‘knowing with.’ But knowing with whom? As we can’t read one another’s consciences, or transmit into them, it can only be God. Conscience is the channel God uses to help us make our judgment calls—which does not mean that if you and I make a particular one differently, then one of us is ‘wrong.’ You can never know what another person’s conscience has told him...or whether he’s really paid attention to it as he should.”

     The hard-and-fast rules that must undergird the operations of conscience are set out by Christ Himself in Matthew Chapter 19:

     And behold one came and said to him: Good master, what good shall I do that I may have life everlasting?
     Who said to him: Why asketh thou me concerning good? One is good, God. But if thou wilt enter into life, keep the commandments.
     He said to him: Which? And Jesus said: Thou shalt do no murder, Thou shalt not commit adultery, Thou shalt not steal, Thou shalt not bear false witness. Honour thy father and thy mother: and, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. [Matthew 19:16-19]

     Note that Christ's pronouncement comes close to the Noahide Commandments. These are the lightest requirements any faith has ever laid upon Mankind. As they were enunciated first by God the Father and then by His Son, we may trust the Authority behind them. Moreover, they are fully consistent with two even higher Commandments:

     But the Pharisees hearing that he had silenced the Sadducees, came together: And one of them, a doctor of the law, asking him, tempting him: Master, which is the greatest commandment in the law?
     Jesus said to him: Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with thy whole heart, and with thy whole soul, and with thy whole mind. This is the greatest and the first commandment. And the second is like to this: Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.
     On these two commandments dependeth the whole law and the prophets. [Matthew 22:34-40]

     I hold that these rules and these alone are the original authority to which the Church must cleave. The Church's authority is derived from those rules. I've never met a challenge sufficient to make me doubt it.

     Much of my fiction has been aimed at elucidating the rules by which a Catholic – or any other person who wants to see himself as good – must live. Dissent if you please; I stand by what I've written, here and elsewhere. I'll do so when I face God at the Particular Judgment, without fear.

---

     Why is this on my mind, you ask? Mainly for two reasons. First, in these later years of life I've become more judgmental of myself. I've always promoted clarity in thought and expression. To fall short of that standard lowers me in my own eyes. Second, because there are innumerable persons who lack a sense for the limits of their authority, and not all of them are in Holy Orders.

     I could go on, but I don't want to become tiresome. Let that stand for the moment. Love God with your whole heart, listen always to your conscience, and do have a nice day.

Faces Of Courage

     In mathematics, we speak of the preconditions for some implication as being necessary, or sufficient, or both. If a precondition is necessary, it’s merely one without which the conclusion sought cannot be reached. If a precondition is sufficient, then it implies the conclusion sought without requiring any other support.

     Courage is a necessary precondition for heroism.

     Many people fail to understand courage. It’s not the same as fearlessness. In fact, it comes close to being its opposite. The courageous man acts despite his fears. The greater and more pressing are the fears, the greater is the courage required to stand fast despite them.

     Allow me a longish citation from an old novel: Robert B. Parker’s Pastime:

     “When did scotch become the drink of celebration?” Susan leaned her chin on her folded hands and rested her gaze on me. The experience was, as it always was, tangible. The weight of her serious intelligence in counterpoint to her playful spoiled princess was culminative.
     “Sometimes it's champagne,” I said. “Sometimes it's scotch....
     “I was seventeen,” I said, “the first time I had anything but beer. We were bird hunting in Maine, my father and I, and a pointer, Pearl the first. We were looking for pheasant in an old apple orchard that hadn't been farmed in maybe fifty years. You had to go through bad cover to reach it, brambles, and small alder that was clumped together and tangled. My father was maybe thirty yards off to the right, and the dog was ahead, ranging, the way they do, and coming back with her tongue out and her tail erect, and looking at me, and then swinging back out in another arc....
     “All of a sudden I heard her bark-half hysterical bark, half growl-and she came loping back, stopping every few yards and turning and making her barking snarling sound that had some fear in it, and then she reached me and leaned in hard on my leg and stood like they do, with her front legs stiff and her tail down and her ears sort of flattened back, and growled. And the hair was stiff along her spine. And I remember thinking, ‘Jesus, this must be the pheasant that ate Chicago.’ We had just come out of the cover and into the orchard and I looked and there was a bear.”
     “A grizzly?” Susan said. Her eyes were fixed on me and they seemed bottomless and captivated, like a kid listening to ghost stories.
     “No, they don't have grizzly bears in Maine. It was a black bear, he'd been feeding on the fallen apples that some of the trees were still producing. They must have been close to rotten, and they must have been fermenting in his stomach, because he was drunk.”
     “Drunk?”
     “Yeah, bears do that sometimes. Usually it happens close to a town, because that's where there are apple orchards, and the forest ranger types dart them and haul them off to some other place in the woods to sober up. But no one had tranquilized this one. He was loose, upright, drunk, and swaying a little. I don't know how big he was. Maybe a hundred and fifty pounds or so. Maybe more. They can get bigger. Standing on his hind legs he looked a lot bigger than I was.”
     “What did you do?”
     “Well, the dog was going crazy now, growling and making a kind of high whining noise, and the bear was reared up and grunting. They sound more like pigs than anything else. I had a shotgun full of birdshot, sevens, I think, and it might have annoyed the bear. It sure as hell wouldn't have stopped him. But I didn't have anything else and I was pretty sure if I ran it would chase me, and they can run about forty miles an hour, so it was going to catch me. So I just stood there with the shotgun leveled. It was a pump. I had one round in the chamber and three more in the magazine, and I prayed that if he charged and if I got him in the face it would make him turn. The dog was in a frenzy, dashing out a few feet and barking and snarling and then running back to lean against my leg. The bear reared up, swaying, and I can still remember how rank the bear smelled and the way everything moved so slowly. And then my father was beside me. He didn't make any noise coming. Afterwards he said he heard the dog and knew it was something, probably a bear, from the way the dog sounded. He had a shotgun too, but he also was carrying a big old .45 hogleg, a six-shooter he'd had ever since he was a kid in Laramie. And he stood beside the dog, next to me, and took that shooter's stance that I always can remember him using, and cocked the .45 and we waited. The bear dropped to all fours, and snorted and grunted and dipped its head and turned around and left. I can see us like a painting on a calendar, my father with the .45 and the dog between us, snarling, and yipping, and me with the shotgun that, if he'd charged, the bear would have picked his teeth with....
     “The dog was no good for birds the rest of the day, and neither were we, I suppose. We went back to the lodge we were staying at and put Pearl in our room, and fed her, and then my father and I went down to the bar and my father ordered two double scotch whiskies. The bartender looked at me and looked at my father and didn't say anything and brought the whiskey. He put both of them in front of my father and my father pushed one of them over in front of me. “
     ‘Ran into a bear in the woods today,’ my father said without much inflection. He still had the Western sound in his voice. ‘Kid stood his ground.’
     “The bartender was a lean, dark guy, with a big nose. He looked at me and nodded and moved on down the bar, and my father and I drank the scotch.”

     A better description of courage in the face of a physical threat would be hard to find.

---

     In America in our time, many “classical” fears – fear of starvation; fear of assault and murder; fear of a wild animal attack – are far less intense than those suffered by people of other places and times. We have other things to fear. Some of them are trivial and contemptible; others are so fearsome as to defy adequate condemnation.

     In America in our time, there are predators roaming about eager to destroy your life should you dare to disagree with them. They have a range of tools with which to do it. Some of those tools are very nearly impossible to nullify.

     Have a memory from a year ago, at the 2019 March for Life in Washington, D.C.:

     The young man with the somewhat nervous smile had just had a drum thrust into his face by one of the nation’s foremost frauds. He merely stood his ground. Perhaps he didn’t know what else to do. Perhaps he wanted to push the old “Indian” away; I surely would have wanted to do so. But perhaps he knew that it would be impolitic, and decided merely to wait out the nuisance.

     The consequences could have ruined his life. Quite a lot of people, including the pastors of his parish and the authorities over the school he attended, leaped to condemn him for merely standing his ground. They were encouraged to do so by news media that produced deceptively edited video clips of the confrontation to suggest that Nick Sandmann had deliberately obstructed Nathan Phillips to show scorn for him.

     Nick Sandmann continued to stand his ground. He secured legal assistance. He filed suits against those who had defamed him. He pressed his case in court, and in the court of public opinion. He saw to it that unedited video clips of what Nathan Phillips had done, amply buttressed by eyewitness testimony, were provided to the media.

     And he won.

     Many persons, once they’ve freed themselves of a tangle of defamation, would have chosen never again to risk public attention. But Nick Sandmann feels that some causes are too important for him to withhold his presence and support. And yesterday, he participated in the 2020 Washington, D.C. March for Life:

     A better real-life demonstration of courage in the face of incredible viciousness and condemnation – some of it from conservative commentators and other putative supporters – would be hard to find.

---

     It isn’t necessary to say much more about this. Simply remember that those who claim a right to slaughter the unborn – they call it “a woman’s right to choose” – are willing to destroy the reputation of anyone who stands in their way. If you’ve ever been active in this cause, you may have been touched by their malice; it’s a good possibility.

     We who respect life and seek to protect the lives of the helpless are of another persuasion. We don’t strive to defame or destroy anyone, regardless of his opinion on the subject. But we need icons to represent us; faceless masses are far less persuasive, and far too easy to disparage as “mindless religious fanatics.”

     President Trump’s appearance at yesterday’s March for Life was a signal event: the first time a president has done so. Many regard that as a pivot point for the pro-life movement. But President Trump is, at least for now, a politician, and politicians often do things strictly for political advantage.

     Nick Sandmann has no such agenda. He’s not running for anything.

     Regard well the face of courage in a cause far too many are eager to defame.

Quickies: “Dangerous Worlds”

     Among my favorite passages in C. S. Lewis’s The Screwtape Letters, this one is at the top:

     This, indeed, is probably one of the Enemy's motives for creating a dangerous world—a world in which moral issues really come to the point. He sees as well as you do that courage is not simply one of the virtues, but the form of every virtue at the testing point, which means, at the point of highest reality. A chastity or honesty, or mercy, which yields to danger will be chaste or honest or merciful only on conditions. Pilate was merciful till it became risky.

     The speaker in the above is Screwtape, a devil high (low?) in Satan’s service. I had occasion to revisit that passage today, and it struck me as I contemplated it that it explains the perennial popularity of adventure fiction of all kinds and genres. Contemporary America is remarkably safe. The typical American’s likelihood of incurring real danger in his daily business is very small. And there are institutions and individuals who labor to keep it that way, and to make it even safer if possible.

     Adventure fiction, whether it’s a thriller set in something approximating the real world or an item of fantasy, horror, or science fiction, allows us to “visit” a dangerous realm where, as Lewis says above, moral issues really matter. There’s no disguising right and wrong, nor can one confuse them with one another, when life and limb are on the line, whether it’s the protagonist’s own well-being, that of his loved one(s), or that of an ideal the protagonist has pledged himself to uphold.

     No doubt you’ve seen this before:

Hard times create hard men.
Hard men create good times.
Good times create soft men.
Soft men create hard times.

     We’re somewhere between the late third and the early fourth phases of that cycle today. I think most of us are aware of it. Yet rare is the man, whatever his convictions, who would elect a greater degree of danger for himself or those he loves. He’d much rather enjoy such a realm vicariously, in fiction of his preferred genre.

     Food for thought.

Heroes Redux

     Well, the National Football League has begun its “regular season” once again. As is usually the case, the opening game between the Kansas City Chiefs and the New England Patriots was festooned with more celebratory pageantry, hyperbole, and miscellaneous self-glorifying folderol than we usually load onto the conclusion of a war. And as we were warned to expect, a player refused to stand for the national anthem, courting the attention of the media and the fans for his solidarity with...something or other.

     The C.S.O. is an NFL addict. Yes, she’s aware that half the players are convicted felons and the other half are Communist spies. It simply doesn’t matter to her. She’ll watch any NFL game in preference to any other sort of leisure-time activity except a New York Rangers hockey game...and she’ll slough the Rangers game if the NFL game is “important enough.” So in the interests of marital harmony, I endured as much of the Chiefs / Patriots game as I could before the Sandman managed to drag me to his lair.

     There’s no point in asking why. Pro football is most definitely an acquired taste. Those who can’t ignore it and those who can’t abide it are utterly and absolutely incompatible. They might even be mutually infertile. Science has yet to render a verdict. As for me, I’d rather read.

     But needless to say (though in time-honored Curmudgeon Emeritus style, I’ll say it anyway), that’s not really the point of this piece.

---

     Today, Amanda Green’s piece at According to Hoyt starts out by speaking of the NFL, its drug abuse rules – enough with the “substance abuse” crap, please; everything is a “substance” — and some Dallas Cowboys clown and his suspension from play for beating his girlfriend. This is typical of the sort of thing we see today in a piece about “heroes.” It’s also about as destructive a conflation as the English language will support.

     Why heroize some black thug for his ability to run with a football? Why put such a person in the same sentence as the word hero? What the Hell kind of mentality is revealed by such a juxtaposition? Yet it’s done far too often for me even to keep track.

     Long, long ago (2001), I wrote:

     Racing giant Dale Earnhardt died recently. Before his body had cooled, the media were trumpeting the loss of a great American hero. I haven't seen one dissent from this characterization, nor do I expect to see one. The word “hero” has been shorn of its meaning.

     Heroism is a concept that needs and deserves respect.

     There can be no doubt that Earnhardt bravely courted great risks in pursuit of the prizes of his sport. The same could be said of many other sports figures from many places and times. But this does not make him, or them, heroes. To court risk for personal gain does not a hero make.

     A hero is one who puts himself at risk for someone or something else.

     That is the only way to distinguish between heroism and mere courage in pursuit of a prize, whether the prize is a rushing record or the Ark of the Covenant. To laud sports figures as heroes – indeed, even to suggest that heroism is possible within a sporting context – destroys that distinction entirely. It also puts uncounted numbers of impressionable young men at risk.

     Today, when the material and social rewards for athletic achievement are at an all-time high, when the most sought-after professional athletes are paid more than anyone else in this country, and when pro athletes’ behavior is worse than it’s ever been in the history of sports, do we really want our young men to look to the world of pro sports in search of heroes?

---

     I revisited this subject five years ago:

     A society's hero figures are critically important to that society's spirit -- to its conception of its virtues, its strengths, and its destiny. Consider: America became the world's savior, defeating totalitarian powers in three successive world wars, because we stepped up. We weren't fighting for advantages for ourselves, or for our nation; we were fighting for freedom and justice. To the extent that they've served as the world's policemen, our fighting men have been willing to do so largely for the same reason: because we regarded freedom and justice as too important not to be defended, even at great national cost and great individual risk.

     Apropos of the above, the rise of a careerist ethic in the ranks of our senior officers tracks strongly with the entertainment world's promotion of cynicism about heroes, and by extension, about our national character. It's not yet pandemic, but even a hint of it should be viewed with great alarm: a nation whose military commanders think more of their prospects of winning high rank than of the nation and the ideals for which it stands is a nation in danger of being abandoned by its own defenders.

     A nation is more than a demarcated territory. It's more than a Constitutional tradition. It's certainly more than a common language and culture. If it is not more than these things, singly or in aggregate, it has little chance to sustain itself against the assaults and villainies of those who would profit from its diminution or demise.

     I can make a very strong case that no nation, however virtuously inclined, should serve as the “world policeman.” It has all sorts of negative effects over time. But it remains the case a man willing to go to war for others’ sakes exhibits infinitely more heroism than any athlete, regardless of his sport. America’s fighting men did so twice. Time was, we looked to such heroes for models to put before our young men. Alvin York. Audie Murphy. Rodger Young.

     What about Horatius and his fellows?

But the Consul’s brow was sad,
     And the Consul’s speech was low,
And darkly looked he at the wall,
     And darkly at the foe.
‘Their van will be upon us
     Before the bridge goes down;
And if they once may win the bridge,
     What hope to save the town?’

Then out spake brave Horatius,
     The Captain of the gate:
‘To every man upon this earth
     Death cometh soon or late.
And how can man die better
     Than facing fearful odds,
For the ashes of his fathers,
     And the temples of his Gods,

‘And for the tender mother
     Who dandled him to rest,
And for the wife who nurses
     His baby at her breast,
And for the holy maidens
     Who feed the eternal flame,
To save them from false Sextus
     That wrought the deed of shame?

‘Hew down the bridge, Sir Consul,
     With all the speed ye may;
I, with two more to help me,
     Will hold the foe in play.
In yon strait path a thousand
     May well be stopped by three.
Now who will stand on either hand,
     And keep the bridge with me?’

Then out spake Spurius Lartius;
     A Ramnian proud was he:
‘Lo, I will stand at thy right hand,
     And keep the bridge with thee.’
And out spake strong Herminius;
     Of Titian blood was he:
‘I will abide on thy left side,
     And keep the bridge with thee.’

‘Horatius,’ quoth the Consul,
     ‘As thou sayest, so let it be.’
And straight against that great array
     Forth went the dauntless Three.
For Romans in Rome’s quarrel
     Spared neither land nor gold,
Nor son nor wife, nor limb nor life,
     In the brave days of old.

     Need I say more?

---

     Sport is entertainment. Those who play it for a material reward are professional entertainers. The promotion of such persons as heroes is an important component of our social degeneration. It’s really part of the larger problem of Celebritarianism, which has made it possible for attractive persons with an entertainment-related ability to sway large numbers of persons into emulating them.

     And it must be brought to a halt if we’re to have a posterity that’s worth our blood, toil, tears, and sweat.

The Vent: A Coda

     Many are the mornings I awaken feeling, in Carole King’s well-known words, uninspired. I suppose a goodly fraction of my morning dreariness arises from ordinary physical fatigue; at my age it’s normal to be weary much of the time. But not all of it. Quite a bit is identifiably of the “why bother?” variety: the sense that my efforts, such as they are, matter very little if at all to anything of importance.

     I know all the aphorisms: Orwell: “Sanity is not statistical.” Thoreau: “Any man more right than his neighbors constitutes a majority of one.” Louis L’Amour: “There’s no stopping a man who knows he’s in the right and keeps a-coming.” But aphorisms, as at least one other wag has noted, don’t put bread on the table, a shirt on the back, or shoes on the horse. To proceed with one’s work, one must feel that it has purpose and value.

     So I arose this morning after yesterday’s verbal unbuttoning thinking “Perhaps the time has come. Perhaps I’ve received the signal I require. Perhaps it’s time to pull in my horns and spend what remains of my days tending strictly to my own affairs. There are plenty of books I haven’t read yet, plenty of pretty girls I haven’t ogled yet, plenty of video games I haven’t yet sworn over. Draw the moral. Surf the Web for your own pleasure and let the world go to hell without your contributions.”

     But what do I find at the very top of my favorite colleague’s final posting of last night:

     It is curious that physical courage should be so common in the world and moral courage so rare. -- Mark Twain

     And I started chugging along on all sixteen cylinders once again.

---

     I’ve written extensively about the transcendent importance of moral courage. All the martyrs had it. Many of the great secular heroes we honor displayed it along with the physical courage it inspired. My fiction readers’ favorite character possessed it:

     It was an ordinary July evening in Onteora: hot, damp, the air too still, the black gnats too numerous. Most of the city's residents had retreated behind closed doors and powered up their air conditioners, then turned their television sets up high to mask the compressor noise. On an unlit street in the abandoned part of the city, Joseph Follett and Lafayette Buskey were enjoying a special pleasure, raping a teenage girl who had wandered onto their turf.
     They had cut away her jeans and panties, stuffed the scraps of the panties into her mouth, and bound them there with a double winding of packing tape. Buskey knelt on her arms and held a knife to her throat while Follett violated her at his leisure. They had changed places once already. Perhaps they would do so again before the fun was over. Neither had bothered to conceal or disguise his face.
     They had been at it perhaps ten minutes when a quiet patter of footsteps from the far end of the street alerted the merrymakers that they were not alone. Both looked up to see the onrush of a short, slight figure, bearing down upon them.
     Buskey had turned toward the sound but had not yet risen when the runner braked and planted. His right foot lashed out in a powerful placekicker's arc, catching Buskey squarely beneath the jaw. The snap of Buskey's spine resounded the length of the street. He flipped backwards and lay on the sidewalk, twitching spasmodically.
     Follett had pulled away from the girl, drawing his own knife. The runner turned to face him.
     "Keep back, motherfucker."
     The runner made no reply. He advanced.
     Follett dropped into a knife-fighter's crouch. He kept both hands well out in front of him, daring the man to come within slashing distance. The runner halted and watched him, apparently relaxed.
     "So this is your idea of a high old time, eh, asshole?" The runner's voice was soft. The darkness concealed his face. "Wait till some defenseless girl wanders by, take her down, rape her a few times, then gut her like a deer? Not much to take home from it, though. Not like a Grand Avenue mugging or a good B and E."
     The young tough snarled. "What do you know about B and E?"
     The runner's eyebrows rose. "Isn't that how you make your living?" He gestured at Follett's crotch. "I mean, that thing dangling from your fly isn't big enough for you to make it as a gigolo."
     Upon being reminded that his dick was still hanging out of his jeans, Follett looked down at his crotch.
     The runner whirled and kicked again. His toe caught the elbow of Follett's knife arm. The elbow cracked and bent the wrong way, and the knife flew from the hand that held it. The young thug spun and dropped to the pavement with a piercing shriek, clawing at the rough asphalt.
     The runner stepped forward to stand over his victim. Stray rays from the headlights of a car passing on a connecting street revealed the runner's expression. It was that perfection of rage that resembles perfect calm.
     "Well, so much for the muggings and B and Es. Think you can make a living as a rapist? I mean, you're going to need a new helper and all. Maybe two or three. Big nut to carry."
     The runner straddled Follett's body and lowered himself to a squat, all but sitting on the thug's belly.
     "Who the fuck are you, man? You got no business here!" Follett's voice was an agonized hiss.
     The runner pursed his lips. "Business? No. I was just out for a walk, and it went on a little longer and farther than I intended. I don't get into the city much. It's not my favorite place. But here I am, and here you are, and thereby hangs a tale."
     He paused and sighed. "I knew you were going to kill that girl when you were done with her. If I hadn't been sure of that, maybe I would have handled it another way. Or maybe not. Not that it matters now. May God have mercy on your worthless soul."
     Follett's pain had not displaced all his fear and hatred. He surged in a last attempt to throw his assailant off him as he scrabbled for his knife.
     The runner's right hand arrowed at Follett's face. The heel of that hand crashed into the bridge of Follett's nose, driving the bone into his forebrain with the impact of a well-thrown spear. The rapist's body spasmed once and was still.
     The runner waited for perhaps a minute, peering into the slack face for any indication that the body might still house life. When he was satisfied, he pulled the jeans off Follett's corpse and brought them to the girl, who had remained where she'd been held. She seemed about sixteen, not especially pretty, and frightened beyond all ability to respond. Carefully, he pulled the makeshift gag from her mouth.
     "Where do you live?"
     "Eighty-two Devlin Boulevard," the girl whispered.
     He bent to help her stand, then offered her the jeans. "I'll take you home. Sorry I have nothing else to cover you with."
     She clung to him and began to keen. He coaxed her to step into the jeans, closed the fly and buttoned them at her waist, rolled up the legs so that she could walk, and escorted her down the street, one arm around her shoulders.
     The body of Joe Follett lay still in the middle of the street. On the sidewalk, the body of Lafe Buskey twitched at lengthening intervals as the life finished seeping out of it.

     ...

     "So that's the why of it?"
     Loughlin nodded. "Moral courage is the key. Physical courage is fairly commonplace, at least in moderation. Bravery in the face of real danger is rarer, but still common enough that you'll find a few dozen cases of it on any battlefield. But moral courage is rarer than any other human trait."
     "Moral courage?"
     "Courage enough to stand by your convictions and trust in your own judgment. That's what you showed that night. You took it upon yourself to save that girl and to execute the bastards who were abusing her. You didn't wait for some committee of designated bystanders to ratify your decision. You have no idea how rare that is."

     Malcolm Loughlin’s observation about the rarity of moral courage, like Mark Twain’s above, is absolutely correct.

---

     Some years ago there was a BBC production titled An Englishman’s Castle, about an alternate history timeline in which the Nazis had conquered England. The protagonist is Peter Ingram a screenwriter for a television series about the British war effort that’s tolerated (but closely monitored) by the Nazi authorities. He becomes embroiled in British resistance to the Nazi regime. In the final scene of the final episode, the protagonist has just triggered a violent revolt against the regime. He’s done so on television, using his own face and name, despite a previous subterfuge that would have made that unnecessary. He knows the Nazis will soon be coming for him. His muscles are locked with mortal fear. Yet this is his last utterance: “I shall not behave worse than any of my fictional imaginings.”

     Well, damn it all to Hell and back, neither will I. What good is it to be old, infirm, aware that death is near and ready to face it whenever the time arrives, if I can’t stand my ground before those who would shout or slander or belittle me into silence?

     That doesn’t mean I’ll tolerate abuse. Neither does it mean I’ll allow comments that abuse my Gentle Readers. So to those to whom insult and abuse are favored tools: Be warned. I’m marshaling some tools of my own. Weapons I’ve been reluctant to use. And you’ll never see them coming.

     That’s all for this morning. Perhaps I’ll be back later. Rufus has a chemotherapy session scheduled and I have a lot of home maintenance to address, so we shall see.

Anonymity: Further Thoughts

     My comments on Internet anonymity in yesterday’s piece stimulated a reflection from the worthy Dystopic, whose core is as follows:

     If Leftists had respect for free speech, anonymity wouldn’t be necessary. And even today, as Francis says, putting your name to a thing shows a level of conviction that the anonymous often lack. But on the other hand, signing your name to a thing can carry a financial cost that one must be comfortable paying. It’s a trade off. Using your name grants authenticity, but can render you and yours more vulnerable.

     Only you can decide if the risk is worth the reward.

     Vulnerability is often a matter of personal prowess and conviction mated to one’s value in others’ eyes. I’ve been fortunate in both regards. Not only have my views been public for a long time – yes, I’ve been an out-loud-and-proud racist, sexist, homophobic, Islamophobic, ableist, lookist champion of freedom, traditional mores, and time-honored values for decades — I’m able to argue for them persuasively. Also, my stature in my field is such that my employers have always felt privileged to have me. No amount of venom can poison someone whose opinions are well founded and whose abilities are highly valued.

     But that’s a set of personal characteristics. Not everyone who wants to talk up his opinions has my assets. What protection is there for persons less well supplied with such things?

     The answer is numbers.

     “Strength in numbers” is an old maxim. However, there’s something else in numbers: the protection conferred by a crowd of allies. If only one old atavism such as FWP is public about his sentiments, he’s easily made into a target. That’s why major op-ed luminaries draw a lot of fire: there simply aren’t that many of them. Yet we should note that the Left must strain for a major scandal to bring one down:

• He who champions marital fidelity must be caught in an affair;
• He who condemns homosexuality must be caught with a lover of the same sex;
• He who thunders against public corruption must be caught misappropriating public monies;

     ...and so forth. Otherwise, the George Wills, the Ann Coulters, and the Mark Levins are protected by their stature and the sizes of their audiences.

     A somewhat different form of protection is afforded by there being many persons saying the same things and being fearless about it. If tens of thousands of commentators of no great stature – e.g., my stature; Liberty’s Torch gets only 500 readers on a good day – would behave fearlessly about their opinions, who would the Left’s mud-slingers target? More, should one be singled out as a “rising star” who must be snuffed before he can become truly dangerous, he would have tens of thousands of allies available to rise to his defense.

     Now, the above isn’t the argument that led me to go about under my right name. I did it from the beginning, out of the conviction that it’s the right thing to do if one wants to be taken seriously and presumed sincere. (Yes, I’m a crazy bastard, but if you’ve been reading my drivel for any length of time, you knew that already.) However, I did want to make the case above in the hope that others of less sass and brass might be emboldened thereby. America can always use more proud, fearless voices in the defense of liberty and justice, and anyway, I’d rather not hog all the fun to myself.

The vote heard 'round the world

First "Brexit," then Trump. If both our nations pushed back against the Globalists in the same year, that'd be some Hope & Change I could actually believe in!

Quickies: “Are you crazy? No one wants to deal with HR.”

     That's from this exceptionally important piece by David French:

     I recently spoke to a mid-level executive at a major corporation who had been forced to sit through mandatory “inclusivity” training. The topic was transgender rights, and the trainer proceeded to spout far-left ideology as fact, going so far as to label all who disagreed with the notion that a man can become a woman “transphobic.” I asked if anyone objected to any part of the training, and the response was immediate. “Are you crazy? No one wants to deal with HR.”

     French's article elucidates ordinary, decent Americans' loss of confidence in their own values -- which eventuates, in his words, in "the slow accumulation of individually defensible but collectively unjustifiable decisions not to resist."

     But how can a decision be deemed "individually defensible" yet "collectively unjustifiable?" Quite simply: Smith is principally concerned with the defense of his own interests and the protection of those he loves. His decision to "not make a fuss" might prove ideal for those purposes. However, if the majority of Smiths choose to "not make a fuss," the field has been yielded to those that are willing to "make a fuss:" the noisy, demanding minorities that gain social and legal sway through persistence and volume, in a perfect demonstration of the Public Choice effect.

     Please read it all, and keep it in mind for the next time you face the choice whether or not to resist.

UPDATE: For lagniappe:

Are we allowed to laugh at that today? Excuse me, Gentle Reader; my mascara's running.

Easy for me to say...

Let's see if I can take my own advice as events unfold, shall we?

A short video (really, honest!) about Liberty's long game + Bonus apology to FDR (gag!).

Quickies: One Media Or Two?

     I normally let the CSO have the remote control as soon as Special Report with Bret Baier has ended, so I don’t learn about interesting events on later Fox News shows, if any, until someone else writes about then on subsequent days. However, according to Andrea Shea King, during a recent O’Reilly Factor show Bill O’Reilly was unable to get his guests even to speculate about Barack Hussein Obama’s reasons for not being explicit about Islamic terrorism. As two of those guests were Mick Huckabee and Donald Trump, this struck me as simultaneously newsworthy and readily explainable.

     First, name those easily identified public figures who are willing to say anything critical about Islam, with particular emphasis on its all too obvious connection to terrorism. Do your best. Now answer the following questions:

• Which of these public figures travels openly?
• Which of them take care to let their home addresses secret?
• Which of them are ever seen in public without armed bodyguards?

     Even public figures who steadfastly refuse to speak of Islam in connection with terrorism tend to pander to Muslims whenever the subject arises. They have good reasons. There are some 3 million Muslims in America at this time. A substantial fraction of them will tell pollsters openly that they support the aims of the worldwide jihad. More, America’s intelligence agencies are certain that ISIS has representatives in all fifty of these United States. Can you think of anything that would gladden ISIS hearts as much as the public assassination of a well known American -- any well known American?

     This points up one of the clear distinctions between the conventional or “mainstream” media and the “alternative” media such as the Blogosphere. There are many – not all – on the alternative side who are much more willing to discuss things that might result in danger or harm to themselves. The proof is that some of them have been “SWATted” but have refused to be cowed. That characteristic once made the careers of true reporters – the intrepid sort that once appeared in popular fiction as heroes.

     I shan’t minimize the risk to oneself for daring to speak the truth about Islam. It’s a totalitarian cult that openly urges its adherents to go on jihad; read the Qur’an if you doubt me. But the risk is proportional to the importance of candor about this ideological enemy of freedom. If we refuse to speak publicly and plainly about a cult whose adherents shout “Death to America” and bear huge banners that read:

Behead Those Who Insult Islam

     and:

Freedom Go To HELL

     ...what are we willing to speak candidly about?

     Think about it.

DIY: Celebrate "D-Day" the Google way!

The following is an augmented screen-cap from this morning. (Note website thumbnail, bottom row, 2nd from right!)

Find a photo of my WWII-veteran father here.

I can't wait to see how Google honors the Islamic holy days of Ramadan.

Free-speech & "fine lines"

Well, we can thank Alysin Camerota (especially at 2:30 mark+) for clarifying that whole Free-Speech + "fine line" thing for us. As you've already read here at Liberty's Torch (and many other places around the web since last Sunday's jihad-attack in Garland, Texas) LOTS of media-types agree wholeheartedly with her. This cartoon and an earlier version was inspired by all of those quislings. Islam aside (oh, that it was just that easy to brush barbarians away!), consider the Sisyphean task of pleasing an entire world all at the same time...and for all time. Whew! Makes me feel like a nap.

The Culture War: A Reflection

Well, Polymath has just received its first Amazon review – those of you who purchased your copies at SmashWords can review it at both sites, you know, and I’d consider it a great favor if you’d do that – and I must say, it was far more favorable than the book (or I) deserve. But that review, plus the reactions registered in my email, plus this new emission from Larry Correia have me thinking about that struggle of insuperable viciousness that never seems to abate: the culture war.

It’s a commonplace that fish aren’t aware of water. Humans aren’t fully aware of their cultural matrix for the same reason: it’s omnipresent and unceasing. Yet there’s hardly anything more important to the national spirit or our individual tendencies when confronted by some question of significance.

When we deign to notice the fusillades in the culture war, it’s normally because some noisy interest group has made a stink about the “marginalization” of its mascots. Consider homosexuality as a case for study. Get into your DeLorean, fire up the Flux Capacitor, and go back a mere thirty years. How many openly homosexual characters were featured in prime-time television shows? The number is approximately zero. What accounts for the heavy statistical overrepresentation of homosexuals on TV in our time?

Hint: It’s not heterosexuals’ vast, previously unexpressed desire to see homosexual relationships and homosexuals’ interactions with normal people portrayed on our giant-screen HDTVs.

I could go in a myriad directions from here, but I have a specific one in mind.

---

Unless you’ve spent the last several weeks immured in a Turkish prison, you’re surely aware of all the Sturm und Drang that’s arisen around Clint Eastwood’s blockbuster movie American Sniper. I hardly need recap the movie for those of you who’ve seen it; it’s too powerful and memorable to need my tender mercies. (For those of you who haven’t seen it, see it. Now.) Those who hate it, and they are far more vociferous than numerous, seldom admit to their true reasons; those who love it aren’t always capable of articulating theirs.

The script does inject a few fictional motifs into this otherwise faithful biopic, drawn from Chris Kyle’s book of the same name. Whether those injections were vitally necessary to the movie’s impact is open to debate. What seems indisputable to me is that what elicits the rage of its detractors isn’t the drama but the depiction of the life of Chris Kyle himself. To the pansified cultural elite that dominates arts criticism in our media, Kyle is a major affront – an embarrassment. His patriotism, dutifulness, commitment to his undertaking, moral clarity, and absolute lack of regret or apology for his deeds – for me the most stirring line of the script was “I’m willing to stand before my Creator and answer for every shot I took” – paint him in the sort of pure masculine colors that the glitterati would prefer not to exist.

More succinctly, Chris Kyle was a man. His detractors are not.

Perhaps those detractors would have passed over Kyle’s book without comment had Eastwood not picked up the movie rights. Perhaps they would have dismissed the movie had it not shattered every box-office record for a January release. Perhaps the denunciations wouldn’t have been quite so thunderous had Eastwood and his scripting team injected some harsh statements about the “Bush wars” into the movie. We’ll never know.

What we can and do know is that Eastwood’s portrayal of Chris Kyle has upset the cultural applecart, at least for the moment. The glitterati aren’t happy for the rest of us to see fictional portrayals of unabashed patriotism, moral clarity, and courage. They’ve put too much work into their efforts at portraying whining self-nominated victims and moral deviates as the proper heroes for today.

It testifies to the ineradicability of Americans’ native moral sense that a single well-made movie could so dramatically countervail the glitterati’s counter-valorization campaigns.

---

One of the reasons I write fiction – indeed, perhaps the most imperative of all of them – is my desire to provide readers with heroes of the kind I favor. There aren’t a lot of heroes of that kind in the fiction coming out of Pub World; the reader pretty much has to go to the independent-writers’ movement for fare of that sort. (Back when I was fool enough to think that a conventional publishing house might take an interest in my novels, several of the rejections I received for Chosen One and On Broken Wings specifically criticized my protagonists’ moral standards.) Some does slip through, of course; the military-fiction pioneered by Tom Clancy and the espionage/special-agent-oriented books Vince Flynn wrote have too large a readership for Pub World to dismiss them. However, it’s noteworthy that Clancy couldn’t get a hearing until The Hunt for Red October was picked up by the tiny Naval Institute Press, and Flynn had to sell his books out of the trunk of his car before a Pub World house picked up Term Limits. Only the prior success of those writers as independents persuaded major New York houses to offer them a slot in their catalogs.

The dominance of Pub World by left-leaning editors began in the Sixties: a part of the cultural-colonization effort Antonio Gramsci called “a long march through the institutions.” It was contemporaneous with efforts of the same sort in cinema, the performing arts, education, and journalism. They who undertook that campaign of cultural transformation weren’t merely acting on their personal preferences; they were openly, avowedly promoting the destruction of the prior American cultural norm. The removal of the traditionally masculine, morally straight hero in favor of a variety of anti-heroes and morally ambiguous figures was central to their efforts.

I’m not prepared to say that it was a conspiracy, in the traditional sense of a coordinated effort plotted in secret and orchestrated according to a defined plan...but neither am I prepared to say that it wasn’t. It was probably more of a hive effect, in which subliminal signals and indicators effect a wide-scale coordination whose participants only recognize it consciously a posteriori.

Whatever the case, its effects have included the demonization of every traditional attribute of iconic American masculinity, with patriotism, courage, and moral clarity at the head of the list. And it was terrifyingly effective; ask any American man who came to maturity in the Seventies or afterward.

---

I am effectively convinced that Andrew Breitbart’s most famous observation – that “culture is upstream from politics” – is the all-important truth in the battle for the soul of these United States. Yet conservatives and libertarians, as the worthy Ace of Spades has noted, talk politics almost to the exclusion of culture. Our attention turns to the cultural matrix only when something either excites us or irritates us out of our ruts.

That inversion might cost us all possibility of success at restoring freedom and justice to America. Have a little C. S. Lewis:

[W]e continue to clamour for those very qualities we are rendering impossible. You can hardly open a periodical without coming across the statement that what our civilization needs is more 'drive', or dynamism, or self-sacrifice, or 'creativity'. In a sort of ghastly simplicity we remove the organ and demand the function. We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honour and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. We castrate and bid the geldings be fruitful.

A nation whose cultural institutions make vicious slanderers such as Michael Moore rich while they sneer at Clint Eastwood could hardly have expected any other result.

---

The Last Graf is exactly what you’ve expected – indeed, what I and others have been telling you all along. Reclaim the culture. If you have a creative bent, use it and push the products thereof. If you consume any of the arts, especially fiction whether in prose or in the movies and on television, aggressively support those that agree with your standards and boycott, at the very least, those that diverge from them. Refuse to back down from those standards. Be aggressive about promoting those works you find most supportive of them.

The powers of darkness have all but monopolized our journalism, our entertainment, and our educational institutions. With only those bastions, they’ve managed to “de-Americanize” at least two generations of young Americans. They’ve been at it for a long time, and they aren’t about to stop now. We have a lot of catching-up to do. You have a part to play...possibly a more important part than you imagine.

Get started now.

(PS: Yes, it’s snowing heavily. We’ve already received about ten inches and are likely to get fifteen to twenty-five more. I’ll be going out to start the snowblower in a few minutes. If you pray, please pray for everyone in the Northeastern U.S. We need it.)

Cowardice: A Midweek Rumination

Old friend Pascal recently wrote with some thoughts:

Does cowardice fall in any way in the province of one of the 7 mortal sins? Does courage fall within the purview of one of the 4 cardinal virtues?

Look. We clearly have Prog shock troop leaders in the WH. They are mounting further provocations daily. The scope and enormity of their campaign may slowly dawn on its victims. They are seeking confrontations, and then what?

But as to cowardice in the past, when something might have been done with less dread, that's my thoughts now and worrying about its consequences.

IMHO, it came to this due in great part to a lack of courage of members of society to fight the other ever more prominent fostering and displays of sins that you discuss all the time.

Orchestrated PC was certainly involved in castrating a great number. Could it have been fought better if cowardice was well-tied to the mortal sins? I don't know. But now that I think of it, it greatly troubles me.

If there’s a better topic for deep in the Advent season, I can’t imagine what it might be.

---

Is cowardice a sin? As it’s as contentious a matter as “torture,” I would venture to say: not always. I can easily think of instances where deliberately fleeing from combat or confrontation is the wisest available course. Yet there’s at least one case in which cowardice constitutes a moral default – a sin of omission.

To deny one’s faith out of fear for one’s temporal life is a sin, perhaps the only sin that’s on a par with suicide. There are other cases of seeming cowardice that appear to me to be sinful, but in some of those, the judgment of the individual involved is likely to be the deciding factor. God allows us to follow our own consciences without penalty, if we do so out of sincere conviction.

Moral courage – the willingness to act upon one’s own sincere convictions about right and wrong, without soliciting or requiring the approval of others – is exceedingly rare in our time, for reasons I hardly need to tell any intelligent Gentle Reader about. (I don’t have any other kind, do I?) Inversely, moral cowardice – the tendency to say and do nothing even when in the actual presence of evil – is quite common. That strikes me as entirely consistent with the common tendency to pooh-pooh the concept of moral courage: obliteration by derision.

The clearest example of moral cowardice publicly visible today holds regular sessions on Capitol Hill. I daresay I needn’t be more specific than that.

---

Hearken once more to the great Clive Staples Lewis:

“Courage is not simply one of the virtues, but the form of every virtue at the testing point, which means, at the point of highest reality. A chastity or honesty or mercy which yields to danger will be chaste or honest or merciful only on conditions. Pilate was merciful till it became risky.”

Courage comes in several varieties. If I may quote one of my own works of fiction:

    It was an ordinary July evening in Onteora: hot, damp, the air too still, the black gnats too numerous. Most of the city's residents had retreated behind closed doors and powered up their air conditioners, then turned their television sets up high to mask the compressor noise. On an unlit street in the abandoned part of the city, Joseph Follett and Lafayette Buskey were enjoying a special pleasure, raping a teenage girl who had wandered onto their turf.

    They had cut away her jeans and panties, stuffed the scraps of the panties into her mouth, and bound them there with a double winding of packing tape. Buskey knelt on her arms and held a knife to her throat while Follett violated her at his leisure. They had changed places once already. Perhaps they would do so again before the fun was over. Neither had bothered to conceal or disguise his face.

    They had been at it perhaps ten minutes when a quiet patter of footsteps from the far end of the street alerted the merrymakers that they were not alone. Both looked up to see the onrush of a short, slight figure, bearing down upon them.

    Buskey had turned toward the sound but had not yet risen when the runner braked and planted. His right foot lashed out in a powerful placekicker's arc, catching Buskey squarely beneath the jaw. The snap of Buskey's spine resounded the length of the street. He flipped backwards and lay on the sidewalk, twitching spasmodically.

    Follett had pulled away from the girl, drawing his own knife. The runner turned to face him.

    "Keep back, motherfucker."

    The runner made no reply. He advanced.

    Follett dropped into a knife-fighter's crouch. He kept both hands well out in front of him, daring the man to come within slashing distance. The runner halted and watched him, apparently relaxed.

    "So this is your idea of a high old time, eh, asshole?" The runner's voice was soft. The darkness concealed his face. "Wait till some defenseless girl wanders by, take her down, rape her a few times, then gut her like a deer? Not much to take home from it, though. Not like a Grand Avenue mugging or a good B and E."

    The young tough snarled. "What do you know about B and E?"

    The runner's eyebrows rose. "Isn't that how you make your living?" He gestured at Follett's crotch. "I mean, that thing dangling from your fly isn't big enough for you to make it as a gigolo."

    Upon being reminded that his dick was still hanging out of his jeans, Follett looked down at his crotch.

    The runner whirled and kicked again. His toe caught the elbow of Follett's knife arm. The elbow cracked and bent the wrong way, and the knife flew from the hand that held it. The young thug spun and dropped to the pavement with a piercing shriek, clawing at the rough asphalt.

    The runner stepped forward to stand over his victim. Stray rays from the headlights of a car passing on a connecting street revealed the runner's expression. It was that perfection of rage that resembles perfect calm.

    "Well, so much for the muggings and B and Es. Think you can make a living as a rapist? I mean, you're going to need a new helper and all. Maybe two or three. Big nut to carry."

    The runner straddled Follett's body and lowered himself to a squat, all but sitting on the thug's belly.

    "Who the fuck are you, man? You got no business here!" Follett's voice was an agonized hiss.

    The runner pursed his lips. "Business? No. I was just out for a walk, and it went on a little longer and farther than I intended. I don't get into the city much. It's not my favorite place. But here I am, and here you are, and thereby hangs a tale."

He paused and sighed. "I knew you were going to kill that girl when you were done with her. If I hadn't been sure of that, maybe I would have handled it another way. Or maybe not. Not that it matters now. May God have mercy on your worthless soul."

    Follett's pain had not displaced all his fear and hatred. He surged in a last attempt to throw his assailant off him as he scrabbled for his knife.

    The runner's right hand arrowed at Follett's face. The heel of that hand crashed into the bridge of Follett's nose, driving the bone into his forebrain with the impact of a well-thrown spear. The rapist's body spasmed once and was still.

    The runner waited for perhaps a minute, peering into the slack face for any indication that the body might still house life. When he was satisfied, he pulled the jeans off Follett's corpse and brought them to the girl, who had remained where she'd been held. She seemed about sixteen, not especially pretty, and frightened beyond all ability to respond. Carefully, he pulled the makeshift gag from her mouth.

    "Where do you live?"

    "Eighty-two Devlin Boulevard," the girl whispered.

    He bent to help her stand, then offered her the jeans. "I'll take you home. Sorry I have nothing else to cover you with."

    She clung to him and began to keen. He coaxed her to step into the jeans, closed the fly and buttoned them at her waist, rolled up the legs so that she could walk, and escorted her down the street, one arm around her shoulders.

    The body of Joe Follett lay still in the middle of the street. On the sidewalk, the body of Lafe Buskey twitched at lengthening intervals as the life finished seeping out of it.

***

    Louis was beyond astonishment.

    "You were watching."

    Loughlin nodded. "And for a few days after, until I was certain you were the genuine article. Even then you knew to kick, not punch."

    "I never saw you."

    "You weren't supposed to. I've practiced invisibility until I can almost make you forget my presence while you're staring at me. It's a useful talent for moving through cities and such."

    "But why, Malcolm? Why do you do it at all?"

    "You're not going to like the answer."

    Louis stared hard into his friend's eyes.

    "I need to know."

    Loughlin told him.

***

    Louis sat very still. Afternoon had given way to evening, and the trailer had grown dark. Loughlin watched him steadily.

    "Unless this is how you show hysteria, you're taking it a lot more calmly than I expected."

    "I'm all right." Louis tried to shake off his gathering fatigue. He'd had enough shocks that day to stop an army in its tracks, and rest was far away. "I know better than to doubt you. I should probably get home pretty soon, though, or Christine will panic. So that's the why of it?"

    "Moral courage is the key. Physical courage is fairly commonplace, at least in moderation. Bravery in the face of real danger is rarer, but still common enough that you'll find a few dozen cases of it on any battlefield. But moral courage is rarer than any other human trait."

    "Moral courage?"

    "Courage enough to stand by your convictions and trust in your own judgment. That's what you showed that night. You took it upon yourself to save that girl and to execute the bastards who were abusing her. You didn't wait for some committee of designated bystanders to ratify your decision. You have no idea how rare that is."

Do you find Louis Redmond’s execution of the two rapists admirable or despicable? Do you agree that his decision to do so constituted an exercise of moral courage? Indeed, can a man exhibit any sort of courage if he's a moral coward?

---

A final, tangential thought: If our consciences are truly intended to be our guides, and if I’m correct in my belief that even the most poorly reared individual of normal mental capacity has enough of a conscience to recognize evil, then it’s quite possible that all sins fall into one of the following categories:

• Blasphemies (denial or derision of the supremacy or majesty of God);
• Abuses of others (e.g., murder, assault, fraud, theft, false witness);
• Instances of moral cowardice: to stay one’s voice or hand when confronted by evildoing.

May God bless and keep you all.