How Valuable Is Courage?

 February 12, 2026

   I took another swing at a certain, lovable, south of the border cowboy:

Daily Revised Whip Out: 

"New Old Vaquero In Red"

"To care enough is the beginning of courage."

—Old Vaquero Saying

   Speaking of courage, my friend John Boessenecker uncovered some very unpleasant facts about the Earp boys for his book, Ride The Devil's Herd:

“All had seen the inside of a jail. Wyatt in Arkansas and Illinois, Jim in Montana, Virgil in Iowa, and Morgan in Illinois and Missouri. Wyatt and Jim were jailbreakers. Wyatt, Jim, and Morgan had all been pimps. Virgil had been charged with both arson and fraud.”

—John Boessenecker

  Ouch! Hard to believe anyone could recover from this public expose and shaming, but somehow, some way, Wyatt Earp keeps rising back to the top, perhaps because of this simple fact: courage never goes out of style. And, when push comes to shove, apparently, we’ll take the blemishes with the bravery.

   All of which brings up our distorted notions about the past. We all romanticize the Old West and sometimes we foolishly convince ourselves that we are living in the wrong era.

"I exaggerated the vitality and beauty of the past and ignored its squalor and cruelty and morbid greed. If I was transported back there, I would loathe it. The stupidity and waste would suffocate me or make me insane."

—Ian McEwan, What We Can Know