“There is nothing in the middle of the road but yellow lines and dead armadillos.”

It’s a shame there has to be a post-mortem to understand how and why something dies. It seems (though I did not participate and did my best to avoid every mention of it) the majority of American television viewers and Internet users tuned in around-the-clock as medical examiners determined what caused the death of Playboy pin-up and old-geezer picker-upper, Anna Nicole Smith. Why do we care “why?”

It will be that way for Western Civilization. Though, I can already tell you what historians (those who dissect and study the lifeless organs of civilizations) will find.

In 1978, Russian dissident, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, addressed Harvard University's graduating class. In his speech titled A World Split Apart, he assailed the West's unwillingness to directly confront communism.

Here are the two paragraphs I find most remarkable about his speech:

“A decline in courage may be the most striking feature which an outside observer notices in the West in our days. The Western world has lost its civil courage, both as a whole and separately, in each country, each government, each political party and of course in the United Nations. Such a decline in courage is particularly noticeable among the ruling groups and the intellectual elite, causing an impression of loss of courage by the entire society.

“Political and intellectual bureaucrats show depression, passivity and perplexity in their actions and in their statements and even more so in theoretical reflections to explain how realistic, reasonable as well as intellectually and even morally warranted it is to base state policies on weakness and cowardice.”

I think Mr. Solzhenitsyn diagnosed our true social disease almost thirty years ago: a severe lack of courage. And as far as I can tell, we have been treating the symptoms, but doing nothing to stop the disease and cure our cultural body.

The great Churchillian lion of the Greatest Generation is now a frail, shivering, scaredy cat.

I don’t care which societal ill you name, the root of the problem is our lack of courage in dealing with it:
Outstripping oil needs

Increased drug use

Lack of affordable insurance

Spread of AIDS

Loss of American jobs

Rape of manufacturing sector

Education mediocrity

Illegal immigration and depression of wages

Disappearing family farms

Shortage of potable water

Spike in childhood obesity

Epidemic of adult diabetes

These crises (and they are crises) are tough, unforgiving, rude, and uncaring. The solutions to them are much the same. Solving each one requires sacrifice and some brief pain—like pulling a long-worn Bandaid off a healing wound. If we had backbone, we would take these problems on head-on and deal with them, they would be solved and our culture better for it. Better because the ill would under control and because we worked together and sacrificed together to do it. Instead our “leaders” give us sound bites and wishy-washy, flippy-floppy replies. They don’t want to upset anyone. Not even a Snaildarter or a rare fern.

One of my current favorites is Sen. Hillary Clinton’s answer to the simple question: Are you for or against the war in Iraq. The question comes up because she is appealing to anti-war supporters one day by denouncing the war and the Bush Administration, yet is on record voting to support going to war in Iraq. So, does she take a courageous stand here? You tell me, here’s her quote, "I have continually raised doubts about the President's claims, lack of planning and execution of the war," Clinton said, before adding, "while standing firmly in support of our troops."

So, is she for or against the war?

Maybe this quote will make it clear: “Obviously, I've thought about [my vote in favor of going to war] a lot in the months since. No, I don't regret giving the president authority because at the time it was in the context of weapons of mass destruction, grave threats to the United States, and clearly, Saddam Hussein had been a real problem for the international community for more than a decade."

Is she for or against the war? No idea? Me either.

I’m not picking on Hillary (that would be like taking candy from a fat baby), no, instead I am using her as the model of our current crop of leaders in the U.S. Congress. I can tell you from my two years of trying to get a Member to carry the most encompassing illegal immigration legislation in our country’s history that she is the rule and not the exception. The pots are calling the kettles black when they point fingers at Ms. Clinton for standing in the middle of the road on tough issues. I can only name a handful who do not prefer the safe middle to the boisterous sides. Remember what Texan Jim Hightower says about not taking a side, “There is nothing in the middle of the road but yellow lines and dead armadillos.”

Courage is our most endangered natural resource. Not oil. Not coal. Not water. Not green-space. The courage to do what is right. To say what is right. To be what is right is what we lack most. To get it back on a cultural level we use good ole fashioned Fred Selfe’s Gosh Dandy, Bullfrog! wisdom –start with your own life. Stop talking about doing something and DO IT! You and I must possess it, own it, become it and use it. We must become courageous before we can pass that courage along to anyone else.

What do we risk by not doing it? Let’s go back to Solzhenitsyn’s speech: "Should one point out that from ancient times decline in courage has been considered the beginning of the end?" He lamented that "[N]o weapons, no matter how powerful, can help the West until it overcomes its loss of willpower."