Minnesota Just Admitted That Illegals Can Vote in Their Elections
Well, That's Certainly an Interesting Donor You Have, Mikie Sherrill
RFK Jr's Wife Wasn't Going to Let the Clowns on The View Get...
HBO Host Has a Total Meltdown Over CBS News' New Editor-in-Chief
Why Did Democrats Lose White Men? John Fetterman Has the Answer.
Forget 'No Kings' and Observe 'No MSNBC' Instead
Bondi’s Senate Performance Should Be Required Study for GOP Members of Congress
Donald Trump and the 2026 and 2028 Elections
The Direct Path to Affordable Medicines
Why Has the World Not Woken Up to Iran's Execution Spree?
Nutrition Education Is the First Bite to a Healthier America
The Middle East: Juxtaposing Israel's Just Military Victories and the Moral Defeat of...
Trump Set the Stage for Strategic Engagement With the Caucasus – Now Congress...
Bipartisan Bill Aims to Combat Organized Retail Theft
Don't Be Fooled by Chicken Little Predictions About Air Travel
OPINION

On Leadership and Courage

The opinions expressed by columnists are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of Townhall.com.

The timid civilized world has found nothing with which to oppose the onslaught of a sudden revival of barefaced barbarity, other than concessions and smiles.”--Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

A woman and boy were shot in the head yesterday in Baltimore, making this the deadliest month in Baltimore history with 38 murders; we have a President who actually espouses the potential for rational negotiations with Iranian anti-semitic zealots; and China, meanwhile, is building artificial islands in the South China Sea (a region that the US has kept open to shipping since WWII) and orders our military aircraft to leave international airspace.

Advertisement

When debating issues such as these with liberals, one is confronted with the same general defense: “You (the conservative) don’t understand the complexity of the issue. The issue has no clear cut right or wrong answer. It is much more nuanced than any conservative can grasp.” Poppycock.

In the final analysis, the arguments from liberals on this and many other issues require something that they themselves are not capable of…moral clarity. The positions they take are not about nuance, they are about cowardice. They are a reflection of the continued refusal by the left to see even the problem of Islamic extremism in anything resembling a realistic way. Better to pretend the problem doesn’t exist, or that appeasement isn’t appeasement, than to be forced to make courageous decisions to confront it.

The man quoted above, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, was a brilliant Christian writer who lived under the thumb of a different evil, Soviet Communism. He spent years in a gulag because he spoke out against that evil. In a 1978 speech to Harvard University, he warned this nation about this pattern of cowardice that he had already noticed developing in our leadership. In that same speech he also said this:

Advertisement

A decline in courage may be the most striking feature which an outside observer notices in the West. The Western world has lost its civil courage…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 (our military and a handful in Congress) but they have no determining influence on public life...”

How prophetic Solzhenitsyn was. At a time such as this, when the world can be said to be dangerous in more different places than at any time since WWII, we are living in a culture rife with political correctness (another term for cowardice). As a citizen I long for political leaders who demonstrate valor over expediency and who do not seek nuance within issues that are quite black and white. ISIS should have been destroyed weeks ago and Iran should have been properly dealt with thirty-five years ago. Rather than shrink our navy in the face of a grave Chinese threat to shipping, we should be building it up and modernizing it. Many of the problems facing this nation could be corrected if only they were approached with solutions that were as straightforward as the threats. We need to elect leaders who will do so…and soon.

Advertisement

Join the conversation as a VIP Member

Recommended

Trending on Townhall Videos

Advertisement
Advertisement
Advertisement