After spending most of the previous three decades as a freelancer for various legacy media and business publications, about three years back I began writing for a  “conservative” publication, with the first of many personal essays published at Intellectual Takeout.

I put “conservative” in quotes because an editor of mine has said writing for Charlemagne Institute makes me a “Christian Nationalist”.  I can take the ribbing, even if he’s only half-joking. But it shows how there’s often a conflict in what we want to express and what we feel our jobs entail and what they allow us to express.

Our hesitation in speaking our minds truthfully about issues of great importance is a sort of spiritual impoverishment. We know what’s right in a situation, but for practical reasons, we fail to even express the most obvious truth (like men cannot become women), for fear of being frowned upon or even losing our jobs.

We even say “pride” is to be encouraged, when many of us were taught from our earliest words that pride is a sin. We feel uneasy, so we go along and deny the truth that we know deep inside. And that denial bleeds some of the joy of life we feel in our hearts.

But more and more Americans are speaking up, reminding us all of our nation’s history and the history of European culture, and that’s partly why Donald Trump won the election. The broader-based conservative majority have only just sprouted their rhetorical muscles, and must become stronger, tougher, and louder.

As perseverance begets strength, strength begets courage. In this cowardly time, boldness in a person can be gripping (“Fight! Fight! Fight!”), and audacity is often outstanding in appearance. We learn these traits—perseverance, strength of will, courage, and even boldness and authenticity—by what we do ourselves, but also from the example of others.

That’s why the more we say things that our ideological opponents thought were settled, like illegal immigration is actually terrible for both our economy and the typical American worker, the more you will hear others expressing similar truths. Courage inspires courage.

By stepping into the unknown with my first essay in Intellectual Takeout, I was continuing on a journey I’d started years before when I began to read Chronicles magazine, Intellectual Takeout, and other conservative magazines. I’d become familiar with certain writers and wanted to join the conversation, knowing it might affect at the very least how I was perceived by some of the leftist editors with whom I have worked, was working, or might want to work. (Journalism often draws those who lean so far left they get top-heavy and fall over.)

It was a risk, and I took it, but I did so because there are so many things wrong in our culture and I felt compelled to speak up. I felt like if I didn’t, how much longer would we even enjoy the right to dissent?

Often we choose whatever comfort or security we can grab, and damn the truth. We don’t stick our necks out. We don’t risk anything.

But that’s a losing game. Eventually even those who’ve played along for many years often realize they’ve been played, and finally must put themselves at risk at least a little, to show others what to do. We see that in Elon Musk and J.D. Vance, guys who weren’t MAGA types until they grew in wisdom over the years, for various reasons (one of Musk’s kids is “trans,” and Musk has vowed to “destroy the Woke mind virus”).

We see this national effrontery in Donald Trump, who wouldn’t be denied a second term even while assailed in court, when he was sure he had more to accomplish to improve America. The courage of the aforementioned, and of many commentators and writers, politicians and everyday citizens, voicing their opinions in conservative publications like American Thinker, The American Conservative, and others or just sharing with friends, are partly responsible for the U.S. being at this historic moment.

The political pendulum has dramatically swung the other way—away from the new world faith of globocommiehedonism.

Many Americans would say we should give Heaven credit, too, for this turnaround, which is really just a beginning.

Speak up, patriots and believers. People are listening.

Image: Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, CC BY 2.0, via Flickr, unaltered.