To address the Custer etc thread-drift: Being brave doesn't mean you aren't doing wicked things; people who do wickwed things aren't necessarily cowards.

It's just that we tend to throw the word coward at people who do something horrible, because it's one of the most powwerful insults we can think of when directed against an enemy. So you get absurd things like Clinton the other day denouncing the suicide bombers in Yemen as "cowards" - which is the one thing you can't reasonably say about a suicide bomber. The very same Nazis who carried out appalling atrocities were often insanely brave themselves. The same goes for many of the US Cavalry who did the same kind of things as the Nazis back in the 19th century. And scumbags seems a reasonable, if restrained way of referring tomthem

But I took it that GospelPicker was using this as an example of how, when you say something true - (eg that the US Cavalry were involved in genocide) - you have to be ready for it to have consequences in real life, (because in the instance given they might have decendents with similar proclivities.) And in the same way, if you come to a belief in a principle, or a committment to a person (in this instance, God), that has real consequences, and isn't just a theoretical idea to be toyed with and put away.

Anyway, that's how I understood it. But I'm not too clear where the thread is headed.