June 6, 2010  We are struck by this reminder that nothing good comes of societies that lack the cojones to stand and deliver moral behaviors. All Ecuadoreans are taught very well how to manipulate and how to run away. This needs to end. Stand up and stop running away. Show some cojones for defending your rights to liberty for once.

Study these words well:    “Courage does not mean the absence of fear. Indeed, without fear there can be no courage, because it is the willingness to proceed even in the face of fear, to do one's duty even at known risk of life and limb, that defines courage. Even physical courage involves making moral judgments, because willingness to sacrifice in the name of evil can be seen as bravery of a sort, but without moral content we cannot comfortably call that real courage. “

You think your duty is to pretend that the total Cubanization of Ecuador, as has already taken place, is a good thing? You think this exhobits your moral fiber at its best? We hope you are ashamed enough to throw off your addiction to manipulative living and stand up like a moral person and defend Ecuador against your Cuban manipulators and your domestic manipulators constantly telling you to lie… A lot. Their yoke is cowardice and deception. Courage demands moral content.

The author here notes, “Moral courage—the willingness to put reputation or fortune at risk in order to stand for something simply because it is right—is just as essential to the preservation of liberty as physical courage. “

Anyone in Quito today practicing the acts of putting reputation or fortune at risk because it is the only step toward reviving this nation? Anyone? No. Your manipulators warn you away from any honorable steps. And you- you run and do their bidding. If you are not honest in your own thinking, the truth will never, ever find its way into societal practice. Is this engender shame, so be it.
 
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The Wall Street Journal
OPINION

 JUNE 5, 2010

America and the Meaning of Courage
Abraham Lincoln called the U.S. last best hope of earth—and that description is at least as true in our own day as it was in his.
By MICHAEL B. MUKASEY
The following remarks were delivered by the former U.S. attorney general on Memorial Day in East Hampton, N.Y.:

What we recall here, and offer tribute to here, is courage. Courage is the highest public virtue because, as philosophers from Aristotle to Winston Churchill have taught us, courage is the one virtue that guarantees all the others; without it, all the others are useless.

Service in the Armed Forces today is voluntary, but there is nothing optional in the commitment that those we remember here today, and you veterans and active members of the armed forces who are here today, have made, whether as draftees or as members of a voluntary force. A willingness to do what they have done and what you have done is at the core of what it means to be a citizen of the United States.

In fact, the oath of citizenship administered to all new citizens, young and old, men and women, contains a passage in which each new citizen must commit to take up arms, if necessary, to defend the nation, or to do work of national importance in wartime when called on to do so by those in authority, in order to defend the country.

So regardless of whether citizens actually serve in the armed forces, they must recognize—we all have to recognize—that in that service lies something that is at the essence of what it means to be a citizen. That something is courage, and it is the quality we honor on Memorial Day.

Courage does not mean the absence of fear. Indeed, without fear there can be no courage, because it is the willingness to proceed even in the face of fear, to do one's duty even at known risk of life and limb, that defines courage. Even physical courage involves making moral judgments, because willingness to sacrifice in the name of evil can be seen as bravery of a sort, but without moral content we cannot comfortably call that real courage.

We have had examples of that in every conflict this country has faced, including the one in which we are now engaged with a fanatical enemy that seeks to dominate in the name of religion, just as others in the past sought to dominate in the name of race or nation. We see examples of it every day as we see on television or read in the newspapers reports of American armed forces in combat with Islamist fanatics trying to murder others by blowing themselves up.

Both those bombers intent on killing themselves and others, and the soldiers who seek to frustrate them, show a willingness to face physical danger, even death. But no one who has any moral sense would describe what those fanatics do as courageous, any more than anyone with a moral sense would describe what those soldiers do as anything but courageous.

Thus far, I have been speaking about physical courage, the kind that the members of the armed forces we remember today, and you who are veterans or members of the armed forces, have shown. Their courage and yours has had a moral content, because their cause and yours was nothing less than the security of this country, the country that Abraham Lincoln called the last best hope of earth—and that is a description that is at least as true in our own day as it was in his, perhaps even more so.

Moral courage—the willingness to put reputation or fortune at risk in order to stand for something simply because it is right—is just as essential to the preservation of liberty as physical courage.

The occasions for exercising moral courage sometimes can be more complex than the occasions for exercising physical courage. When physical courage is called for, it is generally not difficult to distinguish the morally right choice from the morally wrong one, as in the example of soldiers locked in mortal combat with fanatics.

But the exercise of moral courage involves not only sticking by a choice, but also making the correct choice, or else what is intended to be courage becomes simply stubbornness. It involves also being willing to look facts straight in the face, without allowing polite and conventional labels to hide plain truths.

One such truth is that however modestly we may wish to see ourselves, this is an exceptional, indeed a unique country. It is the only country in the history of the world to define itself based on adherence to a legal document, the constitution, rather than on blood or soil, and as a result its citizens have built the most open and prosperous society in the history of the world, and the most powerful one as well. Another truth is that openness and prosperity are seen by Islamist fanatics as morally reprehensible—because they substitute the will of people for what those fanatics regard as divine will.

Yet another such truth is that the war in which we are engaged with that belief system was not started or declared by us, and it will continue to be waged against us whether we choose to recognize it as a war or not, as it was even before the first World Trade Center bombing in 1993 and as it is today. And just as our freedom, prosperity and power are unprecedented, so too our ability to oppose and ultimately to prevail over the fanaticism that now seeks world domination is without equal so long as we summon the will to bring it to bear.

In the months and years ahead we are going to need both kinds of courage—physical and moral—in order to make sense of what we face, and to deal with it; we are going to have to take the counsel of our common sense and not of our fantasies and wishes, or the fantasies and wishes of others. We are going to need both kinds of courage if the sacrifices that the people we remember today have made, and that those of you who serve and have served in the armed forces have made, are not to have been made in vain.

One of the many comforting things about being at a ceremony like this is that it reminds us what a resilient country this has been, how often it has risen to the occasion when the occasion demanded it. We can think of the people we honor and remember here, the members of the armed forces, the veterans both living and dead, and have good reason to believe that both physical and moral courage will not be in short supply in our own day.

We should all be grateful for the courage and sacrifice of those we remember today, and their families. We should be grateful as well for the courage of those who are serving today and who have served in the past, and their families. And finally we should be grateful for the hope that those we remember today, and those who have served who are among us today, offer for the future based on the splendid example they have already set.

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ECrisis clearly states that Rafael Correa is a fanatic. He is a fanatic for lying, stealing and manipulating. He runs a con game- a racketeering government of deception. Every time Correa lies, you should weep and counter his lies. Otherwise, you like like the supporters of Iran, seen here in a parody of the disgusting terror group, Hamas-Hezbollah conning the world with their fake aid and development gifts when in fact they are growing terror network supports. See it here .  And yes we mean every time Correa tells you something, he is lying.

You do not have to be a lying, manipulative dishonest Ecuadorean. You can chose to have moral courage. Make your choice. Your ALBA constitution mandates that you are a lying, useless racketeering agent for the greater good of evil vermin. You can chose to just say no and stand with moral courage.

Otherwise, you will look at debauched and stupid as the pro Iran choir in the above video spoof. So- sing along! You do not need to con anyone nor be conned. Do what is honorable. You can also tell Correa and Hillary that you will not be a patsy any longer for manipulative trash.

You do not have to abandon reason.

-Pedro Camargo for ECrisis