I have been going through the 12 points of the scout law to kick off this meme. Today we’re looking at point 10, a scout is brave.
When we think of bravery, images of people running into a burning building to rescue somebody come to mind. That certainly is one form of bravery, but that’s not what we mean here. Rather, bravery is having the courage to stand up for what you believe in and to be yourself.
It’s ironic that the few boys with the courage to come out of the closet and proclaim they are gay lost the right to become an eagle scout. That’s one reason why I was pleased to see National considering a removal of the ban on gay youth. I don’t want to discuss that further here for two reasons: First, the Thursday Thoughts meme is not supposed to be about boy scouts despite being the source for the first twelve posts. It’s about being as good a person as you can be. Second, I already discussed this at length.
More to the point, bravery is about standing up for who you are and what you believe. If you think about it, bravery is closely linked to integrity, and that is something we need more of in today’s society. Making it even more menacing, some people in powerful positions are very very good at lying about their integrity, making it difficult to ascertain what is real and what is corrupt–who is the brave person calling out corruption and who is the coward calling innocent people corrupt.
In Arizona especially, we have a high number of politicians with questionable ethics and motives. A former county attorney prosecuted political enemies and was a few years later disbarred. All of this in the name of “fighting corruption” while protecting some of the most corrupt figures we have in office. (Now this joker wants to be our governor.)
Standing up to this county attorney took courage that turned out to be extremely expensive. It’s easy to lie low. It’s hard to stand up to this sort of figure.
Bravery is hard.