We often hear the phrase “courage is contagious.” This suggests that courage is something that spreads from one person to another, igniting bravery among groups through shared influence. While the sentiment is well-intentioned, it inadvertently suggests that courage is fleeting and dependent on external validation or support. Instead, we should focus on making courage a habit, one that is cultivated and maintained independently of others’ influence.When we say courage is contagious, we imply that it is temporary and reliant on our social environment. If we surround ourselves with financially savvy people, we are likely to become more financially aware, reading wealth-building books and listening to relevant podcasts. Similarly, if we hang out with fitness enthusiasts, we may adopt healthier habits, such as working out more and eating cleaner.When courage is a habit, it becomes an intrinsic part of who we are, not something that waxes and wanes based on our surroundings.Conversely, if our social circle includes heavy drinkers, even the most moderate drinker might find himself indulging more frequently. This “contagion effect” means that when we remove ourselves from these influences, we tend to revert to our default habits. A person who isn’t naturally inclined to drink heavily will likely return to moderate drinking once they leave the heavy-drinking environment. The same principle applies to fitness and financial habits. Without the external influence, our behaviors revert to our natural inclinations.This phenomenon underscores why viewing courage as contagious ultimately sets us up for failure. If we believe that courage is something we acquire from others, then our bravery becomes conditional upon our environment.This is particularly concerning when it comes to the critical issue of parents standing up against political and sexual indoctrination in government-run K-12 schools. If these parents rely on a large group to muster the courage to support and defend their children, what happens when the group is no longer there?Instead, we should view courage as a habit. Habits are built through consistent practice and become ingrained in our behavior, independent of external influences.When courage is a habit, it becomes an intrinsic part of who we are, not something that waxes and wanes based on our surroundings. If courage is seen merely as a contagion, parents might only find the strength to support and defend their children when bolstered by a supportive community. If that community dissipates or their circumstances change, however, their resolve may falter.If we view courage as a habit, parents can cultivate a steadfast bravery that persists regardless of external support. This kind of courage is rooted in personal conviction and consistent practice. It means that whether parents are surrounded by a thousand supporters or standing alone, their commitment to protecting their children remains unwavering.To develop courage as a habit, it requires daily actions and decisions that reinforce bravery. This could mean speaking up at school board meetings, consistently questioning and challenging inappropriate school culture and content, and teaching children to think critically about what they are taught and not just accept the mainstream media narrative.Over time, these actions become second nature, and the habit of courage becomes ingrained. Moreover, framing courage as a habit empowers individuals. It shifts the focus from needing external validation to relying on one’s own inner strength.This internalization of courage is crucial in situations where immediate support might not be available. For instance, parents might find themselves in a position where they need to confront a teacher, school counselor, or school administrator alone. In such scenarios, the habitual courage will drive them to act to project their child, regardless of whether others are watching or supporting them.In our current climate, where political and social pressures can be overwhelming, it is more important than ever to cultivate courage as a habit. Parents need to model this for their children, demonstrating that standing up for what is right should not depend on the presence of a supportive crowd but should be a consistent practice grounded in personal integrity.While contagious courage might inspire temporary acts of bravery, habitual courage fosters enduring a lifetime of bravery. By cultivating courage as a habit, we ensure that our bravery is not subject to the whims of our environment but is a steadfast trait that empowers us to stand firm in our convictions, protect those who need it, and defend the freedoms granted us through our Constitution. Whether in the realm of parenting or personal endeavors, make courage your habit.

In May 1971, the American Psychiatric Association was bracing for trouble. The organization was preparing to hold its annual convention in Washington, D.C. The previous year’s convention in San Francisco had been disrupted by a militant band of gay activists. Strategically planting themselves in breakout sessions on sexuality, the protesters had successfully turned the academic event into a series of shouting matches. Research on conversion therapy was booed, individual psychiatrists were branded as Nazis, and demands for representation were made clear. Against this backdrop, the APA had agreed that the 1971 convention would host the organization’s first gay panel — a panel made up of self-identified homosexuals, speaking about homosexuality. But the APA suspected this would still not be enough. For him, their much-vaunted “compassion” is no compassion at all. It amounts to “a cynical agreement with Oscar Wilde, that the only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it.” This suspicion proved correct, as chief activist Frank Kameny worked with Washington’s Gay Liberation Front collective to mount another systematic disruption. On May 3, they moved in. Amidst the chaos, Kameny picked up a microphone and addressed the Convocation: “Psychiatry is the enemy incarnate. Psychiatry has waged a relentless war of extermination against us. You may take this as a declaration of war against you.” Stripping away the pretense In October of that same year, an IVP book received its first American printing, after its British debut in 1970. The main title was "The Returns of Love." The subtitle on the dust jacket was “A Contemporary Christian View of Homosexuality.” But on opening the book, readers would find a different subtitle printed on the title page: “Letters of a Christian Homosexual.” These “letters,” as explained in the introduction, were a literary device, crafted and arranged to record the author’s brutally honest struggle with unwanted same-sex attraction to his best friend. Part practical theology à la C.S. Lewis, part confession à la Augustine, they stripped away all the pretense and false hope that was stereotypically assumed to accompany a traditional sexual ethic. The name of the author, a young English Anglican, was given as “Alex Davidson.” This was not his actual name. Fifty-odd years later, the book is long out of print, though stray used copies can still be found and Open Library has preserved a couple of rentable e-copies. But it exists firmly in the realm of the artifact — a work “of historical significance,” emphasis on “historical.” Yet in its time, it was considered a landmark work of evangelical Anglicanism. The highly influential minister John Stott singled it out in his own writing on homosexuality, saying no other resource had better helped him “to understand the pain of homosexual celibacy.” Nobody has ever successfully guessed the author’s identity, including two blundering Church of England history researchers who nearly credited the book to Stott himself. From the text, one gleans only general clues that the writer is a young, well-read Christian layman, a typical representative of England’s “officer class.” He explains in the introduction that he doesn’t want to write with the voice of a minister dispensing prepackaged wisdom or a clinician dispensing “information.” He wants to write like a sympathetic friend, the sort of friend he suspects many of his readers might not have. He wants to actually do what T.H. White said he would have done, if he “had any guts”: to write a “sexual autobiography.” A wounded protest Whoever Alex was, he certainly had guts. This is hard to appreciate today, when even in conservative Christian circles, books in this general vein constitute an entire publishing niche and the writers promote them with their own names and faces. Some of these biographies are much grittier than Alex’s, including time actively spent in the writers’ respective gay scenes. Some of their writers are my friends. One could speculate about whether Alex would even have wanted to openly join them, given the choice in 2023. But in 1970, he didn’t have a choice. This historical context lends the work a unique quality, setting it apart in style and substance from contemporary work. It uses the language of its time, including now-long-retired vocabulary like “queers” or “inverts” (the latter historically used to distinguish non-practicing homosexuals from practicing “perverts”). It predates cultural touchstones like the AIDS pandemic and the rise of the religious right. In general, the work is heavy on introspection and light on social commentary. Though, when Alex does turn his focus outward, he expresses a complicated mix of emotions. At one point, he unleashes a wounded protest that men like him are not all “pansies, bohemians, maniacs, etc.” — a protest that is distinctly Christian in flavor yet echoes uneasy old tensions that still divide gay men everywhere: Here we are — there really are men like us, with a certain peculiarity in our makeup which is in itself no more morally blameworthy than left-handedness. We are not necessarily pansies, or bohemians, or maniacs, or lechers. Many of us do our best to lead decent respectable lives and to appear as normal human beings, and some of us succeed. And so long as our abnormal affections are never expressed in ways which are against the law, whether God’s law or man’s, the law speaks nothing against us. So why should an ignorant society? Why should a Pharisaic church? Alex is also a man of his time in that he is still fundamentally heteronormative and still takes orientation change therapy seriously, though with clear caveats that it’s not a cure-all and hasn’t been much help in his own case. As a Christian, he gives these caveats a distinctly theological spin, challenging the idea that the truly regenerate Christian will be “delivered” from this temptation. He presents himself as walking proof that even the most earnestly devout Christian man has no guarantee of such miraculous “deliverance,” warning against a narrow reading of Scripture that will give other men like him false hope. The map and compass At the end of the day, the “software” or “hardware” question is immaterial to Alex. Whether he was “born this way” or it was acquired it through some outside influence, his “map and compass” — God’s revealed will in natural and special revelation — will point his next steps in the same direction. Meanwhile, he’s not looking for special treatment or pity. He’s not interested in attaching himself to a victim group. He will be nobody’s mascot in nobody’s proxy war. “It’s such an easy way out,” he reflects severely, “to plead ‘I don't know what came over me, your worship,’ ‘I must have had a blackout,’ ‘It's my nerves,’ ‘It's my genes,’ ‘It's my upbringing’; anything rather than ‘It's my fault.’” Christianity alone “offers a contrast, the narrow way of accepted responsibility,” a way that, by virtue of its very severity, is uniquely dignifying. “Not even I shall be able to plead ‘It wasn't my fault, Lord, I was made that way.’ I’m a man, not a machine.” And in thus embracing his manhood, Alex takes up his cross and follows in the way of Christ, the perfect man of sorrows: “A crucified passion, like a crucified man, is a long time dying, and it dies hard and painfully. But crucified it must be. … The ‘flesh’ revives often enough, and from its cross cries out for something to satisfy it: ‘I thirst.’ Then let it thirst.” Contra Sullivan Of course, writers like Andrew Sullivan would strenuously argue the opposite. His essay “Alone Again, Naturally” makes an interesting counterpoint to Alex’s work. Doubtless, Andrew would pity Alex as a young man like he once was — at war with his “natural” self, repressing his emotions by retreat into an emotionless theological austerity. According to Andrew, a non-affirming doctrinal framework cannot even see men like Alex “as truly made in the image of God.” And so, by denying himself full sexual gratification, Alex is really denying his full humanity. But Alex deserves his own voice in this conversation. And when speaking of the sort of progressive churchmen who would agree with Sullivan, he bluntly writes, “I don’t want that kind of care.” For him, their much-vaunted “compassion” is no compassion at all. It amounts to “a cynical agreement with Oscar Wilde, that the only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it.” However much a part of him may want to be accepted “as a sinner,” he will continue to “delight in the law of God after the inward man.” To the clergy who would argue that their way is the true way of Jesus, he would say this fails to understand the harmony of law and love: God is Law, and he sets his standards fearsomely high; but He is also Love, and in Christ He gives grace and help so abundant that it is no-one’s fault but our own if we fail to measure up to those standards. Law and Love seem to move in opposite directions, but to such lengths do they both go that eventually they meet again on the other side of the globe. Because God’s reach encompasses the whole world of morality, however far His law requires me to go His love will be there to enable me. In the words of the old hymn, "the trysting place where heaven’s love and heaven’s justice meet" is the cross of Christ, but by the same token they also meet in the sinner who has been crucified with Christ; in him too the infinite demands of righteousness are fulfilled by the infinite resources of mercy. One can only imagine how Alex would assess the state of the Church of England today. Perhaps someone should recommend this book to Justin Welby, complete with trigger warning. 'Someone in daily nearness to love' At the same time, Alex is not at all sanguine about the pain that can accompany his chosen path. He dismisses progressive “hireling” ministers, but he also struggles to find traditional ministers willing and able to understand him. He writes with heartbreaking candor about his longing for “someone in daily nearness to love.” Most painfully, he retraces his fumbling attempts to sublimate his unrequited attraction to the best friend on the other side of the “letters.” We learn little about this friend except that he’s also a Christian and that unlike Alex, he has a history of homosexual hookups. Alex doesn’t hide the intensity of this “grand romantic passion.” The book’s very title, "The Returns of Love," is a nod to the gay poet Walt Whitman, who referred to his poems as “songs” written out of unrequited homosexual love. In a way, Alex sees these letters as his own baptized “songs.” His frustration reaches its highest poetic pitch in a chapter about his failed attempt to date a woman, whom he desperately wishes he could love the same way he loves his friend. It’s an unnervingly honest chapter, cruel and funny and tragic all at once. One could fairly argue it’s out of place in a work of practical theology. But then that’s part of what gives the work its oddly fascinating, unrepeatable quality. It is practical theology, but in a way, it’s also art. In his more mature, reflective moments, Alex writes in a key of lament mixed with expectation: lament for all the questions that remain unanswered, expectation “that one day my sanctification here will end and I shall be glorified in heaven, and that under the hand of God the finished product will be a splendour for angels to marvel at.” This is not escapism. It’s faith — the same faith by which Abraham made his dwelling in tents, looking to the light of the city to come. By the end of the journey, contra Andrew Sullivan, Alex has painted a self-portrait that is nothing if not deeply human. It’s a young man’s portrait, earnest and awkward, at some times unintentionally funny, at all times unblinkingly honest. And ultimately, it’s the portrait of a man who believes himself completely known and loved by the same God who bids him come and die: “‘Alex — sinful, hypocritical, embarrassed, homosexual Alex,’ He calls; and in doing so He demonstrates both that He knows all about me and that He still loves me in spite of it.” “Listen, child,” he imagines God saying to him in an epilogue. “Listen, child — you who are by the Fall a sinner, yet still by creation a man, and now by redemption a saint: these are wonders I mean to declare before the eyes of the universe. Walk with Me through the wilderness.” “Yes, Lord,” he answers. This essay first appeared on Bethel McGrew's Substack, Further Up.

By March 1944, Army Tech. 5th Grade John J. Pinder Jr. had seen over a year of combat. With the 16th Infantry, he'd participated in the Allied landings at Algeria and fought in in the mountains of Sicily. Now, he was in England, preparing for the planned invasion of Normandy. And yet, it was his family's well-being, not his own, that concerned him. His younger brother Harold, a bomber pilot in the Army Air Corps, had been shot down over Europe that January. Having managed to the get the details of his brother's disappearance, as well as his probable whereabouts in a German POW camp, Pinder wrote his father a nine-page letter sharing everything he knew. He concluded it by encouraging his father to hope for the best while implying that he would help him handle the worst: "You and I must go on trusting that 'the kid' is okay. As soon as I hear anything whatsoever, I'll let you know at once. You do the same for me, Remember there has never been anything but complete truth between all three of us boys."The boys (they also had a younger sister, Martha) grew up in McKee's Landing, Pennsylvania, a suburb of Pittsburgh. John played sandlot baseball and soon developed a fearsome reputation on the mound; his curve ball was especially deadly. He bounced around the minors for a few years, where he impressed fans and teammates with his determination, work ethic, and talent. They seemed to herald a great big-league career. These dreams were put on hold when Pinder entered the Army in January 1942.On the morning of June 6, 1944, Pinder and the 16th Infantry were the first to storm Omaha beach. Shrapnel from an artillery shell ripped through their transport when it was still 100 yards off shore, killing some men instantly and leaving the rest to wade through waist-deep water while being strafed with machine gun fire. For Pinder, the going was particularly tough. He carried the radio equipment necessary to establish communication between the Navy gunners and the men on the beach — bulky gear that weighed some 80 pounds. As Pinder made his way to shore, bullets ripped through the left side of his face; he held his cheek together and kept moving forward. Twice he ran back into the surf to gather more crucial equipment; on the second trip, machine gun fire ripped through his side, but he somehow kept going. He was helping set up the equipment when he passed out from blood loss. He died hours later; it was his 32nd birthday.His brother Harold learned of the death while still in the German prison camp. When the war ended, he was released and went home, living until 2008. Pinder was one of 12 soldiers to receive the Medal of Honor for valor on D-Day; all but four received the award posthumously. Pinder's father accepted the award on his son's behalf on January 26, 1945.

It’s been 11 days since former President Donald Trump’s conviction in a partisan Manhattan courtroom, and we can now confidently assert it did not have the impact Democrats had hoped for. For months, Democrats had pinned their hopes on a conviction in any of the four cases Democrat district attorneys and special counsels had brought. While three of the cases — DA Fani Willis in Georgia and special counsel Jack Smith in Florida and Washington — have effectively stalled out, the ugly stepson, Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg, scored the first 34 goals. The only problem? Turns out they didn’t put any points on the board. And even this conviction might fall apart. National polls remain basically unchanged. In fact, there’s been movement toward Trump in some cases, like Virginia — long a temptress for Beltway Republicans, spending their money and leaving them with a broken heart and a hangover. It's been 20 years since a Republican running for president went home with those 13 electoral votes. President Joe Biden won the state by more than 10 points. Friday morning, RealClearPolitics moved the Old Dominion into the “toss up” category. “How the heck can you be undecided at this point?” pollster Frank Luntz asked a post-conviction focus group for the New York Times. He had a point. Both men have been president for four years each. Biden is the leader of the free world; Trump might be the most famous person in it. Biden’s been on TV for 50 years; his first White House meeting was with President Richard Nixon. Trump’s been a star for 40, through ups and downs, bankruptcies and triumphs. Neither have given America a single month since their debuts without their names somewhere in the news or on the TV. And that’s just the thing about these convictions. What did they tell Trump haters and independents that they didn’t already know about Trump? That he’d probably slept with Stormy Daniels? That scandal broke in 2018, back when creepy porn lawyer Michael Avenatti was still a corporate media darling. We knew this about Trump. It’s part of the deal. Here’s what we didn’t know: that the Democrats and their self-proclaimed healer in chief are willing to put their political opponents in prison. Indeed, Republicans have been able to use that revelation to even the playing field in the one place they really were trailing Democrats: fundraising. In a race as tight as this one, that's the sort of thing that makes a difference. The Daily Caller: Biden’s fundraising advantage is quickly being erased Blaze News: CNN's legal expert offers bold prediction about Georgia election interference case — and Democrats won't like it Blaze News: 50 Cent: Black men are 'identifying with Trump' Sign up for Bedford’s newsletter Sign up to get Blaze Media senior politics editor Christopher Bedford's newsletter. IN OTHER NEWS The Bibi trap Congress and Israel finally set a date for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s joint address to Congress, and with it, an impending disaster for a Democrat Party unwilling to behave. For all the talk of “norms,” top Democrats are furious that Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and House Minority Leader Hakeen Jeffries (D-N.Y.) agreed to the invitation of House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) to the wartime PM. While the two leaders have pointed out that it’s simply good manners and precedent, a goodly number of their colleagues aren’t having it. “You do not honor a foreign leader by addressing a joint session of Congress who is currently engaged in creating the worst humanitarian disaster in the modern history of this country,” liberal stalwart Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) complained on MSNBC. Forty-two Democrats bucked the White House last week when they joined Republicans on Texas Republican Rep. Chip Roy’s bill sanctioning the International Criminal Court for its Netanyahu arrest warrant. Biden warned that the sanctions were overbroad. Democrat civil war has been on stark display since shortly after the Oct. 7 terror attacks on Israel. While campus occupations, protests, and riots tapered off with the end of the school year, summer brings its own brand of liberal church: The D.C. protest road trip. On Saturday, tens of thousands of pro-Hamas activists poured into the capital on charter buses from all around the country to surround Biden’s White House, where they vandalized American history, attacked police, and set off smoke bombs. Looks like you can wave your keffiyeh goodbye to any sort of unity in the lead-up to the 2024 election. Blaze Video: Huge pro-Palestine protest surrounds White House, smoke bombs set off, progressives demand 'butcher' Biden be arrested for war crimes Blaze News: Former Bernie Sanders staffer says her anti-Israel speech is being suppressed after The Hill fires her The fire rises: Compact: Ending Big Tech’s child exploitation Social media gobbles up children. There’s no getting around it. Suicide rates, depression, gender dysphoria, and eating disorders are up in every country where kids have easy access to cell phones and the social media platforms they host. At the same time, the tech titans who shield their own kids from using their products have taken advantage of our libertarian impulse to shield their business model. The good news is that politicians are finally waking up. Zephyr Teachout reports: Social-media firms raked in $11 billion in U.S. ad sales from minors in 2022 alone. Yet even that astronomical figure doesn’t capture the economic value that these giants derive from addicting children to their platforms. Meta, Google, TikTok, and Twitter are over-incentivized to try to ban, delay, and weaken all efforts to decommercialize children’s social media. But now, that focus on exploiting teen emotions has come back to bite Big Tech. Parents—who for a decade blamed themselves in isolation for the rising depression, anxiety, and self-harm among teens—are now joining together to demand that social media, the central institution of their children’s lives, be made safe. Bipartisan parents’ groups are building a new movement; 2024 is turning out to be the year that we will stop gross and deadly exploitation of children’s emotions for profit. Friday marked a major development in this battle. By a nearly unanimous bipartisan vote, the New York legislature passed landmark legislation that goes straight at the exploitation business model. The New York approach—a version of which has also been introduced in both California and Kentucky; talk about bipartisan!—is disarming in its simplicity. The laws prohibit three different design features for minors on social-media platforms: targeted feeds, notifications between 12 a.m. and 6 a.m., and commercialization of children’s data. (It’s a default measure: All of those design features can be deployed if there is verifiable parental consent.)... Bedford: Big Business’s century-long war on kids

The Tech Takeover: How Cutting-Edge Technology Is Revolutionizing Politics

Caitlin Clark Snubbed for US Olympics Women’s Basketball Team; She Responds With Grace and Class

WWDC 2024 starts later today. As we expect Apple to unveil iOS 18, iPadOS 18, macOS 15, watchOS 11, tvOS 18, visionOS 2, and its long-rumored plan for AI, reportedly called Apple Intelligence, we can't wait to catch up with the company's developer conference later today. Even though some media personalities and developers were invited to watch the event from Apple Park in Cupertino, California, people all over the world can watch it online, as the keynote will be pre-recorded, just like in previous years. That said, it doesn't matter where you are. In this article, we'll teach you how to watch WWDC 2024 from your Apple, Windows, or Android device. Best Apple's WWDC 2024 live stream options to watch online If you're planning to watch WWDC 2024 live, there are three possible options to stream the conference: From Apple's YouTube channel, the Apple TV app, and the company's website. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RXeOiIDNNek While I usually tune in to the WWDC conference from my Apple TV app on the Apple TV set-top box, the easiest way to watch WWDC 2024 is from the YouTube page, as you can watch it from any device. To watch it from the Apple TV app, open it before the conference starts, and you'll see a banner for the event banner, which you can click. The same is worth it about watching the keynote from Apple's website here. What time does WWDC start? If you're watching from California, WWDC 2024 starts at 10 am PT. This means: New York: 1 pm ET Sao Paulo: 2 pm London: 6 pm Berlin: 7 pm Beijing: 1 am Tokyo: 2 am Sydney: 3 am Now that you know how to watch the WWDC 2024 keynote live, you can discover what we expect Apple to unveil later today in our article below. Don't Miss: 12 Apple announcements to expect at WWDC 2024 The post How to watch Apple’s WWDC 2024: Live stream, start time, more appeared first on BGR. Today's Top Deals Today’s deals: $189 AirPods Pro, $169 TP-Link WiFi 6 mesh system, $45 KitchenAid hand blender, more Today’s deals: Amazon Father’s Day sale, $714 Apple Watch Ultra 2, $23 Fire TV Stick 4K, more Memorial Day deals: $189 AirPods Pro, $43 camera drone, $179 Roomba, Crest 3D Whitestrips, Instant Pot, more Best Apple deals for June 2024

South Korea and the United States were set to hold talks Monday in Seoul on better coordinating an allied nuclear response during a war with North Korea, amid anxiety over Pyongyang's growing arsenal, Seoul officials said.

Belarus said Monday its army was taking part in the second stage of Russian exercises ordered by President Vladimir Putin to practice the deployment of tactical nuclear weapons.

They are called zombies, companies so laden with debt that they are just stumbling by on the brink of survival, barely able to pay even the interest on their loans and often just a bad business hit away from dying off for good.