As the header says, just pull up a seat...
What is courage? Well, beyond the dictionary definition, it's probably safe to say that one's a little bit nebulous. Subjective, even. You ask ten different people what courage is, and you're gonna get ten different answers. When I think of courage, I think of many things, and here are a few...
The Stand in Tiananmen Square, April-June 1989. Student-led demonstrations against the Chinese government were brutally suppressed by the Chinese military. Estimates of deaths ranged from 400 to 2,600, injuries from 7,000 to 10,000. Courage was captured, I daresay perfectly, in this image, taken by Jeff Widener of the Associated Press. Even if that image was purely symbolic, it still said so much -- a single protestor, single-handedly stopping the advance of a tank column, simply by just standing it in its way.
Courage, Example No. 2: The Civil Rights Movement in the United States, starting with Rosa Parks and the Montgomery bus boycott. Just a simple Southern seamstress, with her quiet, subtle act of defiance, sparked the epic battle for civil rights and equality, that this nation might do a better job of living up to the Declaration of Independence's bold contention that "all men are created equal." You can add to this all the other brave souls who risked everything and even gave their lives to see to it that America lived up to its creed.
Courage, Example No. 3: The Warsaw Ghetto, 1943. Faced with deportation to the concentration camps and certain death, Jews in the Polish capital rose up and fought against the Germans who had come to take them to their deaths. Some 750 to 1,000 Jews, with smuggled-in and air-dropped weaponry -- guns and explosives -- fought off over 2,000 German troops and SS officers for about four months; the uprising was, of course, eventually crushed by the Germans and some 50,000 residents of the ghetto were sent off to the death camps.
Now, with those examples firmly entrenched in your mind, let's take a look at what many other people think of as courage. *ahem*...
No. 4. March 2003. Natalie Maines -- the frontwoman for the Dixie Chicks, one of the most successful bands in American country music history, with 15-million-plus copies of their three studio albums sold -- says, before a largely sympathetic audience in merry olde England, "...we are ashamed that the president of the United States is from Texas."
Let's see here. In the first two examples, we had people risking and sacrificing their lives, and one could say, their fortunes, even (and NOT the monetary kind -- this one is much more valuable) for what they believed in. In No. 3, an oppressed people stood up and declared quite loudly that they would not go gently into that good night, that they would go down fighting and retain their dignity rather than surrender to the barbarians who intended to slaughter them. And in the last example, we have...someone who makes TONS of money, who arguably has more of it now than her children's grandchildren could ever spend, daring to criticize the president of her home country...in front of an audience who largely agreed with every word she said. Just...wow. How utterly...pedestrian...
I am fully aware that Ms. Maines had some idea of how her comments might be received back in the good old U.S. of A....and, well, pardonnez mon francais, but in the words of the great Merle Haggard, "if someone said I ever gave a damn, they damn sure told you wrong." I didn't agree with the backlash the Chicks received. I still have all my Chicks cds and still listen to them. But...courage? This may be the raving right-winger in me, but it just seems to me that the Chicks' actions on that London stage and in the aftermath, leading up to this day, are nothing more than the symptoms of a full-blown case of Bush Derangement Syndrome. Real courage would have required coherent, reasonable and logical arguments that addressed the other side's arguments, and what I saw from many supporters of the Chicks was just more of the same pedal-to-the-metal leftist moonbattery that is already in plentiful supply at sites like the Daily "Screw Them" Kos and the Democratic Underground.
Courage? More like abject, utterly cheap pandering. The comment was made right before they went into Bruce Robison's "Travelin' Soldier," itself an exquisite, heart-rending tale of a soldier going off to the jungles of Southeast Asia. I support the war in Iraq, but I can still see quite clearly how Bruce Robison's song resonates today, even though it speaks of a different war in a different time. I remember the first time I heard the Dixie Chicks' rendition of it...in my car coming home from work in the heat of Southeast Texas in mid-July, it gave me chills. Songs like that speak loud enough all by themselves, and it was more than a little crass for the Chicks to do what they did, even though they did believe what they said. Courage? Much more courage like that and this country is most assuredly doomed...
What is courage? Well, beyond the dictionary definition, it's probably safe to say that one's a little bit nebulous. Subjective, even. You ask ten different people what courage is, and you're gonna get ten different answers. When I think of courage, I think of many things, and here are a few...
The Stand in Tiananmen Square, April-June 1989. Student-led demonstrations against the Chinese government were brutally suppressed by the Chinese military. Estimates of deaths ranged from 400 to 2,600, injuries from 7,000 to 10,000. Courage was captured, I daresay perfectly, in this image, taken by Jeff Widener of the Associated Press. Even if that image was purely symbolic, it still said so much -- a single protestor, single-handedly stopping the advance of a tank column, simply by just standing it in its way.
Courage, Example No. 2: The Civil Rights Movement in the United States, starting with Rosa Parks and the Montgomery bus boycott. Just a simple Southern seamstress, with her quiet, subtle act of defiance, sparked the epic battle for civil rights and equality, that this nation might do a better job of living up to the Declaration of Independence's bold contention that "all men are created equal." You can add to this all the other brave souls who risked everything and even gave their lives to see to it that America lived up to its creed.
Courage, Example No. 3: The Warsaw Ghetto, 1943. Faced with deportation to the concentration camps and certain death, Jews in the Polish capital rose up and fought against the Germans who had come to take them to their deaths. Some 750 to 1,000 Jews, with smuggled-in and air-dropped weaponry -- guns and explosives -- fought off over 2,000 German troops and SS officers for about four months; the uprising was, of course, eventually crushed by the Germans and some 50,000 residents of the ghetto were sent off to the death camps.
Now, with those examples firmly entrenched in your mind, let's take a look at what many other people think of as courage. *ahem*...
No. 4. March 2003. Natalie Maines -- the frontwoman for the Dixie Chicks, one of the most successful bands in American country music history, with 15-million-plus copies of their three studio albums sold -- says, before a largely sympathetic audience in merry olde England, "...we are ashamed that the president of the United States is from Texas."
Let's see here. In the first two examples, we had people risking and sacrificing their lives, and one could say, their fortunes, even (and NOT the monetary kind -- this one is much more valuable) for what they believed in. In No. 3, an oppressed people stood up and declared quite loudly that they would not go gently into that good night, that they would go down fighting and retain their dignity rather than surrender to the barbarians who intended to slaughter them. And in the last example, we have...someone who makes TONS of money, who arguably has more of it now than her children's grandchildren could ever spend, daring to criticize the president of her home country...in front of an audience who largely agreed with every word she said. Just...wow. How utterly...pedestrian...
I am fully aware that Ms. Maines had some idea of how her comments might be received back in the good old U.S. of A....and, well, pardonnez mon francais, but in the words of the great Merle Haggard, "if someone said I ever gave a damn, they damn sure told you wrong." I didn't agree with the backlash the Chicks received. I still have all my Chicks cds and still listen to them. But...courage? This may be the raving right-winger in me, but it just seems to me that the Chicks' actions on that London stage and in the aftermath, leading up to this day, are nothing more than the symptoms of a full-blown case of Bush Derangement Syndrome. Real courage would have required coherent, reasonable and logical arguments that addressed the other side's arguments, and what I saw from many supporters of the Chicks was just more of the same pedal-to-the-metal leftist moonbattery that is already in plentiful supply at sites like the Daily "Screw Them" Kos and the Democratic Underground.
Courage? More like abject, utterly cheap pandering. The comment was made right before they went into Bruce Robison's "Travelin' Soldier," itself an exquisite, heart-rending tale of a soldier going off to the jungles of Southeast Asia. I support the war in Iraq, but I can still see quite clearly how Bruce Robison's song resonates today, even though it speaks of a different war in a different time. I remember the first time I heard the Dixie Chicks' rendition of it...in my car coming home from work in the heat of Southeast Texas in mid-July, it gave me chills. Songs like that speak loud enough all by themselves, and it was more than a little crass for the Chicks to do what they did, even though they did believe what they said. Courage? Much more courage like that and this country is most assuredly doomed...
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