Is It Wrong to Use the Word "Courage" to Describe Behaviors That Are Ordinary or Self-Interested?

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Assignment:Is it wrong to use the word "courage" to describe behaviors that are ordinary or self-interested? --------------------------------------------------------------------- "Towering genius disdains a beaten path, it seeks regions hitherto unexplored." The words of wisdom from Thomas Paine, a great American revolutionary thinker, clearly justify the paramount importance of breaking the established ways of thinking. In my opinion, breaking these established ways of thinking is a truly courageous behavior so I believe it's wrong to use the word "courage" to describe behaviors that are ordinary and self-interested. Examples from the realms of politics and economy will justify my point. At the beginning of American Revolution, most states only favored restricted independence of the states and dismissed the idea of complete independence. More conservative were the loyalists who firmly opposed to all forms of American independence. So courageous was Thomas Paine that under such circumstances he was courageous enough to publish his epoch-making masterpiece Common Sense, which promulgated the ideas of liberalism and republism and called for the complete independence of all American states in an outspoken way. The book was a huge success. It spread as quickly as an epidemic among the literate and 300,000 copies were sold in only three months. His ideas became one of the paramount ideologies of the American Revolution. Thomas Paine's actions can be classified as "courageous" because he had to face opposition. But his motives are neither ordinary nor self-interested. He was writing for the sake of all the Americans. Therefore, the example of Thomas Paine totally contradicts the claim presented in the assignment. Not only in the sector of politics but also in the domain in the economy exists courageous innovative genius whose actions are altruistic. Franklin

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