“In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.” 

– Martin Luther King Jr.

I’ve spent enough time watching people wear labels they never earned to know how dangerous that can be. I’ve known many who bear the title of Christian, though you’d never see it in their steps; only hear it in their claim.  I’ve noticed masculinity celebrated when it’s steady and protective, but left unchecked until it hardens into something brittle and defensive. I’ve watched pride glow warm in gratitude, then swell into an arrogant conviction that our country is beyond reproach. And I’ve seen how, when these identities are handed out without the tools to examine them, they start to calcify. The label becomes the proof. You are right because you are one of us.  

It doesn’t take much for that to drift. Masculinity can stray into a posture that mistakes domination for strength. National pride can turn into a belief that your nation’s story is the only one worth telling. Faith can shift from a well of humility into a badge that says you are righteous by default. When the sense that the world is rigged against you creeps in, it fuses with those identities until questioning them feels like questioning yourself.  

And even when someone does see the drift, fear steps in. Fear of criticism. Fear of reproach. Fear of being pushed out of the circle you’ve always belonged to. That fear fortifies the walls around those in power, keeping the rest quiet while things get out of hand. In the quiet, they stop being bystanders and start being enablers.  

Criticism from the outside doesn’t break through. If it comes from people you’ve been taught to see as the enemy, it only confirms your righteousness. History is retold to make the present feel inevitable. The voices you trust are the ones with power, the ones who are everywhere, the ones who make it feel like everyone important agrees. Around it all is the insulation of community and media that keep the story intact.  

Together, these labels create an almost impenetrable fortress. And if you think this is just a metaphor, look at Jerry Falwell Jr, the president of a Christian university that banned sex outside marriage and alcohol, all while he and his wife maintained a years‑long sexual arrangement with a much younger man they first met when he was a 20‑year‑old pool attendant. Falwell resigned in disgrace after the story broke, but not before Liberty University paid him millions to walk away.  

And he’s not alone. Mike Bickle, long celebrated as a Christian leader, was able to prey on women in his own flock for decades under the cover of his reputation. Mark Driscoll built a megachurch empire on hyper‑masculine preaching, tied manhood to the moral fate of America, and wrapped it all in the authority of the pulpit.  

These aren’t outliers. They are proof of what happens when faith, national pride, and masculinity are handed out as identities without the discipline of self‑judgment, and when fear keeps the people around them from saying, “This has gone too far.” The fortress doesn’t just stand on its own. It’s held up by the silence of those who know better, and it grows taller every time that silence wins.  

“To sin by silence when they should protest makes cowards of men.” 

– Ella Wheeler Wilcox