Last week, I said a few things about the effeminacy and weakness that all but define the average man today. There are many terrible symptoms that come with this decline in masculinity, but one in particular is on display across the country today: the inability to stand for liberty.

Florida threw out all restrictions related to the coronavirus a couple of weeks ago. Michigan’s supreme court, in a 7-0 decision, nullified hundreds of executive orders that the woman who governs the state created; that’s an average of 3-4 each week. There are times when the motivation behind Isaiah’s mockery that “youths oppress my people and women rule over them” comes again into living memory. (If you want a balanced, Biblical, and anti-egalitarian (but I repeat myself) view of women in government, I think Doug Wilson did a pretty good job here.)

Michigan in particular (like many Democrat-run states) had months worth of policy with very little – if any – rationale behind the policies. A good and just governor might say “here is the policy I propose to the legislature; here are the limitations of the policy; here is the scope; here is the date we will end the policy; here are the signs to look for to end the policy early”. But when a governor sees herself as a mother rather than a public servant, she creates rules from her emotions and cannot be made to give an account for her reasons or reasoning.

Despite all of this, there is a great reluctance throughout both states to get things back to the way they were before the government overstepped its authority and made arbitrary rules. Stores, restaurants, and school districts enforce arbitrary policies out of fear. They are afraid of complaints. They are afraid of liability. They are afraid of making a mistake. They are afraid of appearing reckless. No matter the texture of their motivation, the nature is fear.

Being in an age of weak men means that when business owners, school superintendents, church leaders, and event organizers make decisions, they don’t take responsibility for their own fear and make the best choice in spite of their uncertainties. They instead embrace “safety first” as a golden rule and subject all decisions to it. Unfortunately, the nature of living in the real world with a certainty of death and suffering means “safety first” is, at best, an impractical goal and, at worst, is completely impossible. This helps explain why many churches that opened back up began requiring all of their congregants to wear masks. The danger of driving to church is greater for most people than the coronavirus. With fully half of the deaths “with covid” in the United States being in nursing homes, that’s 100,000 deaths in one year compared with 40,000 deaths in car accidents every year.

Schools likewise want to open their doors to students again, but don’t see the irony that students are far, far more likely to die en route to their classes than from this virus, which children don’t even spread.

There’s also the curious situation with Halloween, where adults who buy food through drive-thru’s every day refuse to let their children grab candy one night.

The word for this method of dealing fear is “cowardice”. It isn’t “caution”. It certainly isn’t “love”. It’s hard to love your neighbors when you are so cowardly you won’t approach them. Gnostics hate the physical world and believe it to be evil. Christians believe God made the world good. It’s interesting to see the Gnostic view manifest itself in the way many Christians are comfortable replacing physical presence with virtual software.

The people running many schools, businesses, churches, and other organizations are, not to mince words, cowards. In an age of weak men, we should not be surprised to find cowards running the show.

The ubiquity of cowards does present an interesting advantage, though. Cowards are easily pressured when they feel like the majority is against them. With a little organization, even a relatively small minority of brave men who are tired of the hysteria will be able to make local cowards feel pressure they cannot handle. I suggest doing this at every opportunity. The ultimate solution is to replace cowards with men of character, but in the near term, this other method may be useful.

I am convinced that the difference between this new coronavirus and every other epidemic to spread across the world is not the nature of the illness or even our technology. The difference is the sort of men who run the world. The most powerful are wicked.

The rest are cowards.