Just Call Me Captain Courageous

by hilzoy

I'm trying to get a handle on conservatives' views about virtue. I've been puzzled for a while, but I only entered full bewilderment when Bill Bennett published his annoying book The Death of Outrage, which argued, iirc, that the fact that more people weren't willing to impeach Bill Clinton just showed that we had completely lost our moral compasses. I said to myself: huh? The mystery deepened when I heard such moral paragons as Rush Limbaugh going on and on about liberals and our lack of concern about morality, and when "moral values" started to be used as though it meant not generosity, decency, kindness, courage, and honor, but a willingness to deprive gays of everything from civil rights to ordinary human kindness.

I mean: I, an ethicist, was baffled. I read and reread Kant and Aristotle and even Edmund Burke, but it still didn't make any sense.

I was particularly puzzled by conservatives' views on courage. When Max Cleland lost his limbs in Vietnam, "there was no bravery involved." Despite having volunteered to serve in Vietnam and receiving a bronze star and three purple hearts, "John Kerry is no war hero." Apparently, conservatives do not count physical bravery as courage, for conservatives. Nor do they seem all that enthusiastic about moral courage -- the willingness to stand up for what you believe in, even when it's unpopular -- to judge by their treatment of apostates in their own ranks.

So what, exactly, do they mean by courage? It's a puzzlement. Luckily for me, a RedState diary explains all. I will display my own bravery below the fold.

Sometimes I'm so courageous, I scare myself.

Can I have my medal now?

Comments

[Jesurgislac]

Hello. My name is Inigo Montoya. You wished me Merry Christmas. Prepare to die.

[Nell]

Well, Brian, we'll just have to disagree. Because, in fact, what people have to face when they say "Merry Christmas" is not a reaction that requires courage. Of course there's such a thing as non-physical, moral courage, and it's quite a slight to hilzoy to claim she doesn't recognize it. Describing this ridiculous right-wing campaign as 'courage' cheapens the whole concept of moral courage exactly because it is so counterfactual, silly, and entitled.

Demanding that one's majority become total: not courageous. Arrogant, self-centered, entitlement. Not courage.

[lily]

There is a quote from someone or other that goes: courage is just lack of imagination.

I don't agree but I think the abiity to control one's imagination must be part of courage.

The amount of control over one's imagination that is required in order to say "Merry Chhristmas" is considerably less than the amount of control needed to report abuse at Abu Graib or to face life with three missing limbs from a war wound while being slimed by chickenhawks.

In fact the person who needs courage to express Christmas greetings must have an over active imagination in order to conjure up a reaction worth worrying about. Which is the opposite of that definition of courage.

OAS I'm bored with "Imagine", too, and I love traditional Christmas carols. I put up the tree yesterday to Emmylou Harris's "Light of the Stable". God, can she sing!

[hilzoy]

I wasn't meaning to disparage courage, physical or moral. My entire feigned perplexity, in fact, was (feignedly) produced by the fact that RedState et al did not seem to recognize either physical or moral courage as forms of courage at all.

Fwiw.

Also: apologies for not posting more. Several deadlines have decided to interfere with blogging in the most annoying fashion. Drat that actual full-time job!

[matttbastard]

I wonder what Bill O'Reilly and co. think about Christians who don't celebrate Christmas?

(Courage, Great White North style.)

[Steve]

I hate it when people on the right say that certain individuals (Ward Churchill comes to mind) are the true face of the ideology, and they are therefore allowed to make sweeping generalizations about the left. This sounds similar.

Similar in the sense that Ward Churchill is similar to Rush Limbaugh and Bill O'Reilly, which is to say, not remotely similar.

[Brian]

I didn't mean to leap upon a pedastal and denounce you, hilzoy; I can only blame my writing for inflating my posture.

As for whether there's negative consequences, Jesurgislac: of course there are. Stores (who are the ones the diary is advocating courage for) are in the business of selling things; most of the time they seem to just want to avoid controversy. If they make a point of saying Merry Christmas to all, then they're injecting themselves into the controversy. (That 80% of the country is ostensibly Christian doesn't matter; try talking to the home office about why your sales just dropped by 20%, or even 5%, or even 0.5%, for something which is tangential at best to the store's purpose).

I used the example of asking questions in class for a reason. In class, there are some who don't have a problem speaking. But for others, it's quite a process to speak up, particularly if it's to disagree with something (or attack the premise). When they do, they are exhibiting some courage -- despite the fact that students are supposed to it, probably no one would remember it after that day, and they may be right.

Courage in small matters remains courage.

[Jesurgislac]

If they make a point of saying Merry Christmas to all, then they're injecting themselves into the controversy.

If it's now controversial in the US to be polite to non-Christians, even for commercial purposes, then I suppose you're right: the same kind of "controversy" created by conservatives howling that an anti-Constitutional religious test ought to be imposed on a Muslim elected to Congress.

Courage in small matters remains courage.

It's still hard for me to understand, however, why you see being rude to a minority in order to publicly side with the majority as courageous.

[Hogan]

I'm trying to get a handle on conservatives' *views* about virtue.

Yes, because there is *a single "conservative" view* on courage.

Am I the only one who can't find the sequitur here?

[rilkefan]

Jes: "It's still hard for me to understand, however, why you see being rude to a minority in order to publicly side with the majority as courageous."

Unless "courage" has to be "doing something scary that's good", I think you're missing the point, Jes. Unless I'm mistaken Brian is talking about people like me, who don't want to be Merry Xmas'd when shopping. If store X and store Y sold the same stuff at the same prices but store X's clerks said "MX" while store Y's clerks said "Happy Holidays", I'd definitely go to Y. (If store Z's clerks just said "Thanks for shopping at Z" that's where I'd go.) The store at which I bought the vegetables I'm about to turn into stew just started "HH"ing me; standing in line last night I was a touch apprehensive it was going to be "MX". Surely the store's manager has made a decision about what phrase to use; at least in my neighborhood I suspect it was the expedient choice, the choice dictated by fear of a bad reaction from people like me. If the manager thought it right to "MX" the majority Xian shoppers (who I take it like to be "MX"ed), that might be said to require courage. (Though my neighborhood may not be majority Xian in which case imagine another.)

[Gromit]

Judging by the context of the RedState diary and, by extension, Hilzoy's satirical post, "courage" is meant in this case to describe a virtue. If by "courage" we mean simply overcoming fear of negative consequences, there are all manner of stupid or atrocious acts that require some degree of courage. It takes courage to rob a bank, or to eat bugs on TV, or to try to hand the President a chocolate revolver, a la Jack Handy, but I don't think this is a sense of "courage" you'll find popular on RedState (their idiosyncratic view of courage being one of Hilzoy's main points, after all).

[rilkefan]

Bill Maher got into trouble for saying, "It took courage to fly those planes into the WTC".

I imagine from the RS point of view it would be acting virtuously to celebrate xmas in a xian nation, so I think "courage" is the right word even in the hilzoyan POV. The point is that they're wrong about the premise - chiding them for reaching a logical conclusion is mistaken.

[Jesurgislac]

Rilkefan: Unless I'm mistaken Brian is talking about people like me, who don't want to be Merry Xmas'd when shopping.

Then I still say that "courage" is the wrong word to describe "commerically expedient decision". It doesn't take courage to make your employees use one greeting or another: it's done for sales.

[rilkefan]

'Then I still say that "courage" is the wrong word to describe "commerically expedient decision". It doesn't take courage to make your employees use one greeting or another: it's done for sales.'

I take it the RS POV says that to MX people whether they like it or not is the right thing to do, and may hurt sales, hence "courage" makes sense. The wacky part is thinking it's right to MX me. Maybe it's wacky for RS to be telling companies how to run their businesses - I thought that's evil liberal meddling - but I've now thought more about RS than I have any reason to and will quit.

[Jesurgislac]

Rilkefan: I take it the RS POV says that to MX people whether they like it or not is the right thing to do, and may hurt sales, hence "courage" makes sense.

No, it doesn't. "Courage" is not a word that can be used to describe a business decision, even if I were to accept for the sake of argument that RS are right and saying "Merry Christmas" to customers will hurt sales. I gather it's WalMart who have made this decision? The notion that WalMart would do anything to hurt sales is ludicrous.

[Anarch]

Hello. My name is Inigo Montoya. You wished me Merry Christmas. Prepare to die.

You've just given me my new sig.

[rilkefan]

Dunno - if red-state-based company X made the business decision to give domestic partnership rights to all its employees, although some customers would likely move to company Y, we'd call that "courage", wouldn't we? If upon hearing of a boycott by Dobson, X rescinded the policy, wouldn't we say that showed a lack of courage?

I think it's not a question of WalMart or BestBuy or whatever - it's a question about the entire service industry.

If you're going to say a company can't show courage, I'm going to switch to arguing that since there's no free will there's no courage period.

[Jesurgislac]

Rilkefan: if red-state-based company X made the business decision to give domestic partnership rights to all its employees, although some customers would likely move to company Y, we'd call that "courage", wouldn't we?

Well, you might. I would call it a sensible business decision based on not wanting to lose good employees. ;-)