Let's Talk About Courage
"Courage is a resistance to fear, mastery of fear -- not the absence of fear."
What is courage? Mark Twain defined courage as "a resistance to fear, mastery of fear -- not the absence of fear." Courageous people are not necessarily fearless, but they won't let fear stop them from doing the right thing.
I've been thinking about courage often as I read the news about Ukraine. Russia's invasion of Ukraine has been going on for a little more than a week by now. In the beginning, Russian President Putin seemed to hold all the cards.
Russia, a country with nuclear weapons and 145 million people, clearly has an advantage over 43 million Ukrainians. Putin, a former KGB officer and a shrewd politician, has been in power for several decades and has planned and executed wars with neighboring countries with a track record of success: occupying territories from Georgia in 2008 and annexing Crimea from Ukraine in 2014.
Ukraine is a young democracy with a long history of being bullied by powerful adversaries, from the Nazis to the former Soviets. After the fall of the USSR, Ukraine gave up its stockpile of nuclear weapons in exchange for a security guarantee from the west in the early 1990s. The nation's democracy is far from perfect, and it has seen its share of corrupt leaders who were only too willing to be Moscow's puppet. Ukraine's current president, Volodymyr Zelensky, was a TV actor and political novice before coming into office in 2019.
Putin reportedly had hoped to achieve a swift and decisive victory in Ukraine. But he was quickly proven wrong. Despite being outnumbered, Ukrainians have fought back with all the courage and valor. The Russian army reportedly were poorly coordinated and equipped, and has suffered an estimated 6,000 casualties as of this Thursday.
The Ukrainians are paying a heavy price too. More than 1 million Ukrainians have fled the country, and Ukrainian officials estimated that the civilian death toll was over 2,000, including 21 children. There is a widespread food shortage in the country. Yet the deaths and the suffering have only strengthened Ukrainians' will to fight back invaders.
I see courage in Ukrainian people, including an 80-year-old Ukrainian grandpa who showed up to fight for his grandkids. Armed civilians are stationing throughout the county to assist the Ukrainian military, and social media is full of their surprise successes.
I see courage in the Ukrainian leadership. President Zelensky refuses to flee the country for his own safety, as the Biden administration suggested. Instead, he is often seen dressed in ballistic vests in the middle of the action and urges Ukrainians to fight on.
Zelensky's emotional plea has persuaded the initially timid EU nations to speed up tougher economic sanctions and take a firm stand against Russia. Germany made the most drastic change by announcing that it would increase defense spending and halting the Nord Stream 2 pipeline project, which would bring Russian gas into Germany. Even Sweden, a nation that usually stays out of international conflicts, announced it would send military aid, including anti-tank weapons. It seems that Zelensky's leadership and his compatriots' courageous resistance have strengthened the EU's backbone, and now there is a united front against Russian aggression.
But courage is more than just fighting back against all odds. One of the most viral videos out of Ukraine shows that Ukrainians gave a captured Russian soldier food and tea, and they also called his mother to tell her he was ok. Sometimes, such acts of generosity and mercy are more powerful than guns and tanks.
I see courage in ordinary Russian people who took to the street to protest Putin's war on Ukraine. About 6,500 Russian protestors have been arrested, and some could face 20-year jail time. Yet, despite the government's repression and intimidation, Russia's anti-war movement is gaining momentum, and more Russians are joining the protests.
This is why I found the "canceling everything Russian" movement in the west, including canceling Russian literature in schools, banning Russian hockey players, and even barring Russian cats from the competition, so silly. We should, by all means, hold Putin and his thugs accountable for their aggressions. But punishing Russian civilians, literature, goods, and even animals are not an act of courage but useless virtual signaling.
None of us knows how the Russia/Ukraine conflict will end. Please pray that the mighty God will protect the innocent and punish the wicked. War is hell. If you like to provide some humanitarian assistance, here are a few vetted organizations:
· The Ukrainian Red Cross (not ICRC or American Red Cross) which is comprised of Ukrainian citizens.
· The National Faith Advisory Board, which is organizing to send one million meals to Ukraine and will distribute these meals through local churches.
Back in the United States, we Americans are blessed in the sense that we are still blessed with relative peace and prosperity, not facing any imminent threat from external forces. But make no mistake, we face a different kind of war, a cultural war. It has divided families and communities, pitting ethnic groups against one another and threatening the very moral foundation of this nation. Although this war doesn't involve guns and tanks, the outcome still poses an existential threat to this republic. To fight this cultural war also requires courage.
I recently met one such courageous cultural war warrior. His name is Stanley "Cain" J Young Jr, and he lives in Northern Colorado. When we first met, Cain insisted on introducing himself as "a proud American N***o." I told him that I would get into trouble by writing down the n-word, even in a quote. To today's woke left, context doesn't matter. But Cain insisted that this was how he would like to introduce himself. After learning about his story, I understood why.
Cain and his four siblings were raised by a single mother. The family lived on welfare till Cain was 13-years-old. Cain said his mother was a hero. Despite the hardship, she always set high expectations for her children and led by example. When Cain was still in high school, his mother worked hard to get her high school diploma. She graduated from college with a nursing degree and eventually became a teacher.
Upon graduating from high school, Cain joined the U.S. Army. After being honorably discharged, Cain became a police officer. Later on, Cain quit public service and became a successful businessman and a serial entrepreneur. He could have sat back and enjoyed all his material successes. Instead, Cain has jumped in the ring of the cultural war. His target is the Critical Race Theory (CRT).
Cain told me his motivation came from his upbringing and love for his grandchildren. He has four grandkids, two black and two white. He adores all of them, and they love him back. They call him "papa." Cain worries that CRT is indoctrinating these kids to see him not as "papa" but as a "chocolate papa" someday. Cain said that white people in his life had never oppressed him, and he would "never allow any teacher or administrator to teach my grandkids that I'm a victim who cannot make it on my own." He is also concerned that his grandkids of different races may hate each other because of CRT's teaching. So he decided to do something about it.
A few months ago, Cain started an organization called "Task Force Freedom," aiming to "defeat and remove the destructive Racist policies of CRT/SEL that have been forced upon our children in the school system." The organization focuses its activities on four areas:
Being a resource for parents.
Educating the public on the true history of slavery.
Organizing peaceful protests to oppose CRT.
Filing civil lawsuits.
TFF is 100% volunteer-based and most volunteers are parents. Cain said he was called "Uncle Tom" because of his political activism. But none of these name-callings will stop him from doing what he believes is right and necessary.
Never started a nonprofit organization before, Cain said he was "building a plane while flying it." TFF doesn't have a website yet and is still getting its nonprofit status approved by the IRS. But Cain said he didn't have the luxury to wait until everything was figured out because he had already seen how much harm CRT has caused in our education system and race relations. Cain told me what he needs most is volunteers. So if you want to help, please email him: TaskForceFreedom@aol.com
People often ask me what to do to protect their freedom and keep our republic. I'd say learn from people like Cain. Don't wait for all the answers. Take action now to defend what's most important to you. That is courage.
My Letter to the Editors in the Wall Street Journal on 02/24/2022:
The Asian-American Political Awakening
I wish the editorial “San Francisco’s Political Foreshock” (Feb. 17) had emphasized that the school-board recall campaign was a grass-roots effort led mainly by Asian-American parents, many of whom are lifelong Democratic voters. Some are immigrants who had never before been politically active. Running a political campaign was unthinkable to many Asian-Americans before this recall.
Postelection analysis shows that the most substantial “yes” votes to recall came from the city’s Asian-majority districts. The recall marks a new political awakening and a rejection of the policies advocated by the Democratic Party’s far-left wing. Since Asian-Americans are the fastest-growing racial and ethnic group in the nation, expect the awakening to influence America’s future.
Op-ed in the Federalist:
A federal judge ruled that the Fairfax County school board’s race-based admission process to an elite high school illegally discriminated against Asian American students. Read more here.