Are You Cowering Behind the Courageous?

Fear of conflict enables tyrants

I watched this video yesterday where this guy, Sam Hyde, gives a very slick and stylized presentation, almost hypnotic. He flashes small photos of Charlie Kirk and Iryna Zarutska one at a time while chanting in a slow cadence “this is you, this is your wife, your sister, your daughter, this is you…” before going on to give a speech about how “they” are a direct threat to you, etc, etc. Powerful piece of agitprop, that. It takes full advantage of the two murders that occurred back to back- both beautiful, vibrant, young people, both publicly shot/stabbed through their throats, the place where our voices come from.

The problem is (well, there are other problems, but for the sake of brevity I’ll pick one), you are probably NOT Charlie- more likely you are the person keeping a low profile behind him and other free speech advocates, letting them speak for you while you placate the woke tyrants. And this video and the myriad similar calls to action, like my respected friend and colleague Jenny Holland’s impassioned demands that we are in a WAR and must “crush the left” for their mockery of Charlie’s life and death miss a crucial point: people like Charlie who speak freely in the face of woke overreach are operating as a human shield for the average non-woke, non-progressive citizen who is too timid to push back. In a sense, yes, he took a bullet for you. But if you hadn’t been cowering behind him he never would have been in the position to do so.

Did your cowardice lead to his death? Did you value “getting through school” or “keeping your license” or holding onto your job or keeping the status quo with your kids’ school or your art collective over pushing back when your values were violated? Did your lack of courage allow you to be passive when the woke wave swept through in 2020? Did your fear of standing out leave Charlie alone on a stage facing the incredulity of those who are unused to having their delusions challenged?

The truth is all these calls for war against “the left” are the whisper-shouts of people safe behind keyboards and webcams, reacting to reactionaries. They remind me of the meme where the kid is drowning in the ocean before he realizes he just needs to stand up, because the water is actually only about knee-deep. We don’t need to fight “the left,” we just need to finally stand up to them.

What that looks like is this: you need to stop hiding behind a fake front, allowing woke policies and progressive teachings to go unchallenged. You need to learn to say NO when you are imposed upon and stand by your actual values, rather than hoping some bright, good natured, unflappably articulate guy like Charlie is going to find all the words for you and convince “the left” that they are wrong. If he could’ve, he would’ve, but it’s actually up to you to do it. It doesn’t look like war, but it does take courage. Here are some things you might actually have to say to a person who intimidates you:

“I object to what you are saying”

“No, I disagree”

“Racism is wrong, even when it’s aimed at white people”

“I don’t think we should talk about (men, white people, heterosexual people, Trump supporters) that way”

“I did vote for Trump, and the way you are talking about ‘Trump supporters’ isn’t fair”

“I don’t feel comfortable with using wrong-sex pronouns, and don’t believe in gender ideology”

“I am not comfortable sending my child to a classroom with those flags up”

“I cannot support this policy/sign this statement because it violates my conscience”

You don’t owe anybody an explanation for your values. You don’t have to come with “all the facts” and convince them. You just need to decide where the line is for you, and hold it. Be respectful in disagreement, find humility, and admit when you’re wrong, but respect yourself enough to draw a line when your values are being violated.

And you don’t have to be as eloquent or smart as Charlie was. God knows I’m not, but I’ve been speaking openly and in good faith for years now, and I’m better for it. I did lose my job- in 2020 I lost a job I’d held for 6 years because I questioned the Covid mask policy. And I did get kicked out of graduate school for criticizing the race and gender education we were receiving as counselor trainees. But that was not WAR- just the ordinary courage of conviction. I don’t regret the moments when I acted in courage- but I do regret the moments when I have cowered.

Recently I discovered the pseudo-diagnostic phenomenon of “Pathological Demand Avoidance” (PDA) and I am struck by the parallels between the parent/child relationship in PDA and the relationships between non-progressives and the woke ideologues in our bureaucracies. PDA describes a situation in which the parent claims their child is so averse to even the mildest whiff of criticism, correction, or direction that they completely melt down in a state of “nervous system overload” and can no longer “access basic needs, like food and toileting.” So the PDA parent is held hostage and has to acquiesce to all manner of irrational demands (one influencer lets her “PDA kid” walk on her car, assault the nanny, scream and growl at her, sit on the couch all day with an iPad demanding specific junk foods) without ever asserting a boundary.

We can all guess that that child is going to be a holy terror as a teen, right? When the kid who has no boundaries to push gets to an age when he really starts looking for a boundary to push, what then? He’s been allowed to hit the nanny at age 9- what happens when he’s 15? What happens when he’s a full grown man? Will you have raised a monster who holds you captive and abuses you?

This is a dynamic that takes two: the child/identified patient and the enabling parent.

The way I see it, woke progressives are analogous the “identified patient” in this scenario- we can all see how nuts they seem with their 47 genders and their “equity” obsessions that are wildly contradictory and unprincipled. But they never could have gotten where they are without so many centrist and conservative enablers who could have said no but didn’t. If you placate the tantrums of a tiny tyrant, you enable the growth of a massive tyrant. Progressive bureaucrats, educators and those speaking the scripts they’ve learned from their screens have been allowed by cowering non-believers to impose irrational beliefs without challenge for so long that they’ve become sneeringly smug in their disdain for anything even vaguely centrist- let along right-wing. So as with the parent of the now-teenage tyrant, standing up to them becomes even more intimidating. But it still must be done, and it’s still not a war.

You will experience awkwardness. You may have an argument. Someone might yell at you. You might have to pull your kid out of school and learn to homeschool. You may lose your job or have to leave your own school program. If you choose to confront someone who seems really unstable, you might even end up in a physical altercation. Some things about your life might have to change if you start saying no. But it’s still not WAR. And timidity does not lead to reform.

I know these are strong words from someone who usually doesn’t offer a lot of directive advice. And if we were talking one on one and you told me why you couldn’t… I’d probably understand and sympathize. But the answer here is so painfully simple, and it hurts us all when each of us fails to do the right thing.

If Charlie Kirk’s horrific assassination hit you in a deeply personal way, maybe in part it was because he was doing what you are too afraid to do but knew you should. Maybe you’ve been cowering when you could be more courageous, and you know you are enabling the very tyranny that intimidates you. No system reforms when those who wish for change hold their breath and hide. Maybe it’s time that you stop whisper-shouting behind your keyboard and put your money where your mouth is while you still have a voice.

Before it’s a war.

In the words of Canadian teacher Chanel Pfahl: "Atrocities have occurred throughout human history, and the only reason that they've occurred is that individuals have been cowards. They've put themselves first - they've thought 'I'll save myself in the short term and hopefully other people will figure it out.' And often it doesn't go that way. Nobody's asking you to go to war. We're not telling you to put on a suit and you might get blown up. We're saying literally just speak up."