Have The Courage of Your Convictions

Thursday, February 12, 2026

Yesterday we looked at how, in so many areas, policy was driven by “bullying,” not reason.  In areas like weed legalization, D.E.I., climate and covid everybody knew the policies were just a tad bit over the line, but social pressure (these days called bullying) was used to enforce the policy too far.  In the last 24 hours I have run into a couple of articles that offer a simple solution.

The first addresses the cheating scandal in academia through the use of A.I.  The article suggests that the best way to deal with it is to simply enforce the standards against cheating.  The article seems somewhat odd in a preliminary, but soon dropped, focus on Asian students, but the guy has a point.  The author cites a number of reason why the standards are not enforced, some financial, some bureaucratic and some legal.  All reflect the simple fact that in the end people lack the conviction that cheating is really that big a deal.  If it was a big deal they would simply put in the enforcement effort.  Instead they just complain about it all the time.  They lack the courage of their convictions.

The other article is by Jonathon Haidt who wrote the massively influential book, “The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness” which is all about the deleterious effects of social media on children.  Haidt notes that countries are now, almost en masse, enacting laws to place age limitations on social media access.  He notes an interesting psychological and sociological phenomenon:

The cognitive psychologist Steven Pinker can help explain it. His most recent book, When Everyone Knows That Everyone Knows: Common Knowledge and the Mysteries of Money, Power, and Everyday Life, explores the massive social change that can occur when widespread private knowledge suddenly becomes public knowledge. For example: Many people may privately know that a dictator is brutal, or that an ideology is bankrupt, yet nothing changes for many years until something happens that lets everyone know that everyone else knows it too, and that everyone knows that everyone knows that everyone knows. Once that threshold is crossed, new forms of coordination become possible. Social movements ignite. Regimes and walls fall. Norms can change almost overnight.

Once again we see that people lack the courage of their convictions.  They need an approval signal from the larger culture before they will speak what they know to be truth.

Democrats have relied upon this for a long time now.  That is really what yesterday’s piece was about.  Trump is so despised because he has the courage of his convictions and was willing to speak them loudly and from the biggest stage in the world.  He won elections because most people agree with him.  He is the “something that happened” that has told everyone it is “OK” to admit what you have known all along – leaving Democrats in a very serious lurch.

What concerns me is why has the average American lost that courage of their convictions?  To this day I do not understand why we complied with so much of the utter drivel that passed for covid policy.  I certainly stretched it as far as possible, short of being jailed which was a distinct possibility in California, and as I pointed out yesterday more than once suffered the consequences.  But most people followed the pack like lemmings off a cliff.  Why? Why does the average American, a citizen of a country born in breaking with the prevailing crowd in Europe, lack the courage of their convictions?

The answer is straightforward – a lack of faith.  A lack of faith in their own convictions, but more importantly a lack of faith that God has their back.  I think the Apostle Paul said it best:

What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who is against us?…For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

There dear friends is where we find the courage of our convictions.  God is the “something that happens.”