Recent Courage Commentaries

Featured image for “Heroes, We Need Them More than Ever!”
Heroes, We Need Them More than Ever!
Earlier this month, Fort Benning, the military’s training base in Georgia, was renamed Fort Moore, after Lt. General Hal Moore who served as commanding officer of the 1st Battalion, 7th Cavalry, 1st Cavalry Division (Airmobile) in the first and perhaps, fiercest battle in the Ia Drang Valley in Vietnam. Surrounded by a massive force of the People’s Army of Vietnam,...
Read More
May 26, 2023
Featured image for “What America Needs Most”
What America Needs Most
In the face of near-impossible odds, George Washington–tasked with leading his relatively untrained, beaten-down, militiamen demoralized by the deaths of 2,000 from disease–ultimately turned the tide with his victory over the British at the battle of Princeton. How did he succeed in his greatest test of character and courage? Washington’s unequivocal moral integrity earned him the trust of his men...
Read More
April 11, 2023
Featured image for “April 15, 1947”
April 15, 1947
At the end of the month, 30 teams will step out of the dugout to begin another season of Major League Baseball. Thirty rookies are among them. Seventy-six years ago, a rookie stepped out of the dugout and into history. His name was Jack Roosevelt Robinson. In a conversation for my book, What Do You Stand For? documentarian Ken Burns...
Read More
March 7, 2023
Featured image for “Lessons From Ukraine”
Lessons From Ukraine
Think about this. Because of Putin’s war against Ukraine, millions of Ukrainian men, women, and children are enduring the harshest conditions imaginable: nightly bombing; an absence of light, heat and water. Ukraine’s health system cannot keep up with the sick and injured. Schools have closed in much of the country. Despite help from European and Western allies, life in Ukraine...
Read More
February 24, 2023
Featured image for “Shortness of Breath”
Shortness of Breath
How much anger and rage do five police officers have to have to beat a man to death after being pulled over for a traffic stop? Watching and listening to Tyre Nichols’s plea for help during a police gang attack in Memphis, Tennessee, the most heart-wrenching moment came when Nichols called out to his mother, twice. Nichols’s death is another...
Read More
January 31, 2023
Featured image for “Stand for What’s Right!”
Stand for What’s Right!
Integrity: firm adherence to a code of moral values—uprightness. A rap star spouts antisemitic and anti-Black remarks and refuses to apologize. A basketball star apologizes for antisemitic remarks only after he was suspended for his actions. A Supreme Court Justice will not step aside from legal decision-making on any issue brought before the court regarding the 2020 election involving the...
Read More
November 7, 2022
Featured image for ““I. Do. Not. Like. Bullies.””
“I. Do. Not. Like. Bullies.”
That’s Arizona Republican and Speaker of the House . . . correction, former Speaker of the House, Rusty Bowers who had been abruptly shown the door by his own Republican Party after Bowers refused to accede to Donald Trump’s wishes and overturn the will of 3.4 million Arizona voters who voted for Joe Biden in the 2020 election. If his...
Read More
September 16, 2022
Featured image for “The Man Who Made America’s Spirit Come to Life”
The Man Who Made America’s Spirit Come to Life
Of all the books written by historian David McCullough the book I return to is a compilation of his speeches. The American Spirit offers exactly what its title implies and at this moment, we need a big dose of that spirit more than ever. In a speech to Dartmouth College in 1999, McCullough draws inspiration from a line in the...
Read More
September 6, 2022
Featured image for “American Integrity in the Era of Trump”
American Integrity in the Era of Trump
“A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong gives it a superficial appearance of being right and raises at first a formidable outcry in defense of custom. But the tumult soon subsides. Time makes more converts than reason.” In the depths of the Revolutionary War, George Washington’s troops struggled with disease, hunger, and defeat. What Washington needed was a...
Read More
July 29, 2022
Featured image for “Will It Matter?”
Will It Matter?
The country is facing a confluence of alarming events that challenge even the best optimists. Thus far, the House committee investigating the January 6 attack on the Capitol has held 8 hearings with testimony from key witnesses. Among them: Capitol police, Justice officials, White House aides, state Republican election officials, a conservative judge, a member of the Oath Keepers whose...
Read More
July 26, 2022

Read Some of the Most Recent Articles
The Latest... And Often Greatest