A Sadly Accurate Societal Diagnosis

This brief but rousing post from the Musings of a Geek with a .45 blog takes a mighty swing of the clue bat and crushes one out of the zip code. As writer Dave Kopel so eloquently stated once in a piece advocating that teachers who have concealed-carry permits be allowed to carry at school to protect the school, themselves, and their students, "To some people, the notion that teachers or students should engage in active resistance is highly offensive, and the idea that teachers and students should be encouraged to learn active resistance is outrageous. Our nation has too many people who are not only unwilling to learn how to protect themselves, but who are also determined to prevent innocent third persons from practicing active defense. A person has the right to choose to be a pacifist, but it is wrong to force everyone else to act like a pacifist." I say it often, but it's easy to read it all with this one, because it's both short and spot-on.

"I reflect that some people will actively reject a diagnosis of national pussydom as being a central cause of many of our various national symptoms, but I also reflect that people often reject a diagnosis not on its merits, but because they fear that the antidote is worse. In the minds of many people, the opposite of "pussy" is the sort of slope headed, testosterone poisoned tattooed tough guy bully, incapable of nuance or reason that most of us learned to detest in junior high school. Sadly missing from our national conciousness is a positive template or role model of a whole, complete and balanced human being capable of the full range of human expression that includes: mental agility, a well calibrated moral compass, and demonstrable courage, who knows when to run, fight or negotiate, and is equally facile in all three. Sadly, people who exhibit such traits are dubbed heroes, and placed separate and apart from common men, behind a velvet rope, thus relieving the masses from the burden of having such expectations placed upon them.

We can no longer afford to be a nation of the craven, allowing our public policies to be driven by the cowardly and the pusillanimous who seek the illusion of zero risk and absolute safety. We are called to be a nation of heroes, each and every one of us, to practice in our everyday lives the traits we find noble and admirable, until we awaken one day to find that we accept and embrace our own magnificence. In so doing, we serve ourselves and our nation well."