Courage and Democracy

            In the middle of World War II, E. B. White wrote this about the meaning of democracy: "It is the line that forms on the right. It is the don't in don't shove. It is the hole in the stuffed shirt through which the sawdust slowly trickles; it is the dent in the high hat. Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half the people are right more than half of the time. It is the feeling of privacy in the voting booths, the feeling of communion in the libraries, the feeling of vitality everywhere. Democracy is a letter to the editor. Democracy is the score at the beginning of the ninth. It is an idea that has not been disproved yet, a song the words of which have not gone bad. It's the mustard on the hot dog and the cream in the rationed coffee."

            We have a sense of America in these words. It's the confidence that what's right and decent will prevail. It's the sense that people in the Heartland are far more genuine than narcissistic politicians who think they're above the law. It's the conviction that freedom of speech and freedom of worship will not give in to political correctness and secularism. It's the belief that the fight to preserve our values will win out over hedonism and moral dissolution.
            Are E. B. White's words, written seventy years ago, still valid in 2013?
            Our fathers and grandfathers fought against evil in World War II. Their wives back home did their share by living with wartime shortages, while keeping the children safe, taking them to church on Sunday, and making sure they did their homework. That took sacrifice and courage at both ends.    
            Where is the sacrifice today among people who think it's the government's job to take care of them from cradle to grave? Where is the courage among our leaders who value re-election more than the future of our country?
            Whatever happened to the virtues of hard work, honesty, fair play, and self-reliance?  And the ability to see the difference between right and wrong? Sadly, the moral relativism espoused by society's elite has become the norm and is corrupting these virtues.
            More than ever we need leaders who have the courage to do the right thing, even if it means risking the loss of cherished perks, the power of office, and the adulation of the masses.
            "Courage," Winston Churchill once said, "is the essential virtue, because it guarantees all the others." But courage, it seems to me, is in short supply these days.