Moral Courage
Moral courage is the courage to take action for moral reasons despite the risk of adverse consequences. Courage is required to take action when one has doubts or fears about the consequences. Moral courage therefore involves deliberation or careful thought.
Reflex action or dogmatic fanaticism do not involve moral courage because such impulsive actions are not based upon moral reasoning.
Moral courage may also require physical courage when the consequences are punishment or other bodily peril. www.definitions.net/...
Bloody Sunday at Edmund Pettus Bridge
Margaret Moore, a teacher, also tried to convince [9-year-old Sheyann Webb] to stay home that Sunday. “There weren’t many teachers who would take the risk of losing their jobs to participate in that march,” Webb-Christburg said. “I went to her and she was trying to discourage me too, and I was crying, just started crying because it was like I was alone and I knew what was in my heart. She held me as I continued to cry. She grabbed my hand and said, ‘OK, child, let’s put our marching shoes on.’ ”
As the marchers — led by future Georgia Congressman John Lewis and
Southern Christian Leadership Conference standout Hosea Williams — walked to the outskirts of Selma, they reached the Edmund Pettus Bridge, named after a Confederate general and reputed Ku Klux Klan leader. People had begun throwing things and spitting at the marchers, Webb-Christburg said.
“My heart had begun to just rumble,” Webb-Christburg said. “It was like I was looking at a sea of blue. Hundreds of state troopers with billy clubs, policemen with tear gas masks, the dogs and horses. My heart had begun to beat faster because I knew that something was about to happen.”
As the marchers kneeled to pray on the bridge, Webb-Christburg said, police ordered them to turn around. The marchers refused. “After the marchers refused, racism unleashed its brutality,” Webb-Christburg added. State Police on horseback charged the marchers, and troopers also released dogs and fired tear gas. The marchers ran for their lives back to the Selma side of the bridge, chased by the troopers and dogs. www.timesnews.net/...
VS
Moral Cowardice
Today’s Republican party is 100% the party of Trump
Apparently they are suffering from “Understandable Cowardice”
Really? Is this where we are today? At Understandable Cowardice?
WAPO column by Michael Gerson Jan. 27, 2020
...If Republican senators refuse to call new witnesses (including Bolton) under these circumstances, there would be only one plausible explanation: They fear Trump’s retribution.
Such fear, of course, is justified.
In this case, going off the reservation is to enter a minefield. The first few GOP defectors on the issue of witnesses would come under enormous pressure. The first few GOP senators who support conviction would face a torrent of abuse from an unstable, thuggish narcissist, and from people convinced that disloyalty to Trump is treason or blasphemy.
[Below are abbreviated bullet points from fuller paragraphs. Read the original, if you can at: www.washingtonpost.com/… ]
- Understandable cowardice is still cowardice.
- Tolerance for corruption is a form of corruption.
- The political risks I’m recommending, while difficult, are not comparable to the physical risks taken each day [by others serving] the common good... [So] moral perspective is in order.
- Every Republican senator who does not support Trump’s removal should publicly embrace some form of censure and be seeking a way to demonstrate this commitment en masse.
- The “disturbing but not impeachable” argument is not convincing.
- Those senators who are not offended by the president’s threats against them if they display independent judgment have lost all pride in the Senate’s purpose. [Original at www.washingtonpost.com/… ]
How Republicans came to deify the presidency
US Politics: Trump’s acquittal will reflect deference towards the office as well as partisanship
When the Senate acquits Trump in the coming weeks, partisan fealty will be the main reason. That, and what Michael Gerson, the former speech writer to George W Bush, calls “understandable cowardice”. Republicans who believe that Trump has a case to answer also know that he will turn his tweets, his voters and his donors on any who defy him.
There is another motive at work, though, and it is as troubling as
naked fear and my-party-right-or-wrong. Lots of Republicans sincerely believe in an all-powerful presidency, at least when one of their own occupies it. Their vote to acquit is the culmination of half a century of conservative thought in that direction. And for all the uniqueness of Trump, his special knack for reducing once-serious conservatives to jelly, this deference to executive power will not vanish when he goes. — Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2020 www.irishtimes.com/...
Call your senators anyway.
Call Dems to thank them. Call Rs to exhort them.
My message to my NC Senators— Richard Burr & Thom Tillis
If/When you vote to acquit Donald Trump, you are each responsible for each and every crime Trump commits henceforth.
And you know he will commit other crimes.
Within 24 hrs of thinking he got off scot-free from the Mueller investigation, Trump tried to bribe and coerce the new Ukrainian President into announcing a fake investigation of a rising political opponent.
Trump is a hero in his own mind.
After you vote to acquit Trump, he will believe that the US Constitution AND the US Senate say he can do anything he wants, because he is president.
Impeachment is your last best chance to stop this criminal.
Otherwise, you are all driving the get-away car and responsible for the crimes that happened in the extortion attempt gone bad, and all of the follow-up crimes in the current election season 2020.
Why some have moral courage and others do not—
Why do some people risk their lives to help others?
...To answer that question, I returned to my World War II rescuers and compared them with people who were bystanders or even Nazi supporters during the war. I found clear differences in worldview, self-image, and the way the different groups classified themselves in relation to others.
Rescuers have self-images that are inclusive and broadly based, with a strong sense of agency; bystanders see themselves as people who are weak on agency, with little control over their lives and little they can do to affect outside events. They think in terms of group identity more than do rescuers, seeing themselves as members of exclusive groups while rescuers see themselves as members of a common humanity.
Finally and ironically, Nazis have a victim mentality, seeing themselves as members of a group that had been treated badly and threatened by Jews, Social Democrats, homosexuals, etc.
Their sense of agency was strong but only insofar as they felt connected with the winds of history. Nazis were the strongest communitarians, feeling close ties for members of their own self-defined group but having little (if any regard) for those who fell outside their group. greatergood.berkeley.edu/...
Why Moral Courage is so Rare—
Because, in the end, moral courage is an individual decision, and it is rare. We do well to minimize the situations in which it is necessary. We do better to act intentionally to enable moral courage when it is required. mays.tamu.edu/...
Be Brave. Resist. Truth Matters.
Telling the Truth is Heroic today.