Courage is:
- Following your conscience instead of “following the crowd.”
- Refusing to take part in hurtful or disrespectful behaviors.
- Sacrificing personal gain for the benefit of others.
- Speaking your mind even though others don’t agree.
- Taking complete responsibility for your actions…and your mistakes.
- Following the rules – and insisting that others do the same.
- Challenging the status quo in search of better ways.
- Doing what you know is right – regardless of the risks and potential consequences
Source: http://drlill.com/
On the other hand, the fruitage of the spirit is love, joy, peace, long-suffering, kindness, goodness, faith, mildness, self-control. Gal. 5:22,23
Make character your cause for celebration
October 18-24, 2009 could be the best thing that ever happened to your town. We offer all the free resources you need to celebrate: lesson plans, Red Ribbon Week tie-in activities, and so much more! Register here »
Serena Williams. Kanye West. South Carolina Rep. Joe Wilson. Jesse Jackson. Barbara Bush. Elvis Costello. Rush Limbaugh. Glenn Beck: October 18-24, 2009 is Character Counts Week! Pass it on.
Brigitte Bardot was convicted of provoking discrimination and racial hatred for writing, in her ardent defense of animal rights, that Muslims are destroying France saying she was:
”tired of being led by the nose by this population that is destroying us, destroying our country by imposing its acts.”
Vice President Dick Cheney’s 
“joke” suggests a widely held belief of there exists a culture of generational incest in West Virginia:
“So I had Cheneys on both sides of the family and we don’t even live in West Virginia..,”
Don Imus on the the Rutgers women’s basketball team:
IMUS: Awesome rough girls from Rutgers. Man, they got tattoos.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Some hardcore hoes.
IMUS: That’s some nappy-headed hos.
Don Imus, on Gwen Ifill, distinguished journalist, moderator and managing editor of Washington Week and senior correspondent for The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer:
“Isn’t the ‘Times’ wonderful. It lets the cleaning lady cover the White House.”
Barbara Bush
on hurricane Katrina evacuees in Houston who lost everything back in Mississippi or Louisiana…
“What I’m hearing, which is sort of scary, is they all want to stay in Texas.., And so many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway so this is working very well for them.”
Costello “called James Brown ‘a jive-ass n****r’.” Of Ray Charles?’ He said, ‘Screw Ray Charles, he’s nothing but a blind n****r.’
Michael Richards…
‘Nuf said.
I could go on and on. I’m gonna channel Marvin Gaye here– “What’s going on?” Is the whole world losing its mind? Whatever happened to a little som’ sompin’ called self-control?
Dictionary.com defines self control as “control or restraint of oneself or one’s actions, feelings, etc.” It’s interesting to note synonyms include discipline and levelheadedness. In the world of personal morality, then, has it really come to pass..? One day morality is in, and the next day it’s OUT?
You don’t have to be anti this or pro that to appreciate self-control. It’s not about clinging to religion or right wing conservatism or any of these descriptors tossed about to silence those we disagree with or to disguise or justify why “WE” don’t like “you.” People are just opening their mouths and letting the toads plop wherever they may.
In the cases of Don Imus and Michael Richards, these men had deluded themselves into believing that just because they hung with Blacks who “reclaimed” the “N” word and other equally crass expressions often degrading of women, they were in the fratority. They felt safe to use the expressions themselves, after all “everybody knows I’m not a racist!” They actually believed they were not only down with them but down like them. Imus has said he’s learned his lesson. Hmmm… That’s easy for you to say, Don, now that you’re able to go on making a living.
More than racism is rearing its ugly head as these remarks and all the other recent verbal faux pas clearly demonstrate. These tiny thumbnails should be starting to switch on our collective alarm bells. These are no mere slips of the tongue. These are revelations, a heads up if you will pointing out what really lies beneath. Attention needs to be paid!
In the sixties, the hippies mantra was love, love, love. Today..? What’s going on? Where is the love?
IF you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:
If you can dream – and not make dreams your master;
If you can think – and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build ‘em up with worn-out tools:
If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’
If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
‘ Or walk with Kings – nor lose the common touch,
if neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And – which is more – you’ll be a Man, my son!
If | Rudyard Kipling
Moodz4Modernz 
