Why Courage Matters: The Way to a Braver Life (Hardcover)

Page 13 we read (and this is what got me hooked on the book) 'My late colleague Pat Moynian coined a phrase defining deviancy down to criticize how American culture in the late twentieth century embraced situation morality in reaction to increasing rates of crime and other social ills rather than insist on the preservation of moral absolutes as the foundation of a functioning liberal society. America, he argued, evaded the hard choices such absolutes require and had, disastrously, learned to tolerate 'much conduct previously stigmatized."

He then continues: 'Similarly, American culture over the last thirty years or so has defined courage down. We have attributed courage to all manner of actions that may indeed be admirable but hardly compare to the conscious self-sacrifice on behalf of something greater than self-interest that once defined courage. We have come to identify one or more of the elements of courage -- fortitude, discipline, daring, or righteous, for example -- as the entire virtue. Today, in our excessively psychoanalyzed society, sharing ones secret fears with others takes courage. So does escaping a failing marriage. So does 'having it all,' a career, children, and leisure. Refusing to help enable a loved one to indulge a ruinous vice is an act of courage. We say it takes courage to be different from the main stream in our preferences in fashion, music, the length and color of our hair'.

'These are, of course, absurd examples of our profligate misidentification of the virtue of courage.'

While there are some courageous military examples given there are also a lot of others. Like John Lewis one of McCains congressional colleague, or Hannah Senesh the young Hungarian girl who would immigrate to what would become Israel but who would return to Europe to aid those the Nazi's sought to harm and kill, only to be caught and executed. And Aung San Suu Kyi the wonderful woman from Burma who is the 1991 Nobel Peace Prize. Her story still gives me goose bumps.

Page 205 'If you do the things you think you cannot do, you'll feel your resistance, your hope, your dignity, and your courage grow stronger every time you prove it. You will someday face harder choices that very well might require more courage. You're getting ready for them. You're getting ready to have courage. And when those moments come, unbidden but certain, and you choose well, your courage will be recognized by those who matter most to you. When your children see you choose, without hesitating, without remark, to value virtue more than security, to love more than you fear, they will learn what courage looks like and what love it serves, and they will dread its absence.

We're all afraid of something. .... No one is born a coward........'

Now I have two hopes. One is that a lot of Americans read the book and the other is that John McCain write Why Courage Matters II and try and find some younger adults who have the courage you speak of because I think young people need to know that one need not be 'old' in the twenty-first century to have courage.

I am also reminded of the well know (paraphrasing) quote of Neitzsches. What doesn't kill me makes me stronger.

Any American born citizen should read everything of his published works and stand behind this man. He is the last politican who truly believes in the American Dream.

Only review I ever gave 5 stars. Haven't even finished the book and will tell you this is priceless knowledge.