In President Tweety Trump, the fight response is easily triggered. In him, brashness predominates - not the cardinal virtue of courage.
However, the cardinal virtue of courage does not function by itself, as it were. For Aristotle, human persons are rational animals. The thumos (or thymos) part of the human soul (or psyche) also works closely with the rational part as its guide. In short, the rational part animates contemplation, while the thumos (or thymos) part animates actions involving fight-flight-freeze responses.
Now, my general thesis is that our political activism should be animated primarily by the rational part of the human soul (or psyche) to be strategically effective, but also animated simultaneously by the thumos (or thymos) part to be existentially sustainable.
For further discussion of Ong's thought, see my OEN article "Fredrik Logevall's New Book About JFK, 1917-1956" (dated December 28, 2020):
THE TESTIMONY OF HARVEY C. MANSFIELD
And here to help us understand how these two integral parts of the human soul (or psyche) can work together simultaneously, at least when one part or the other is not functioning sub-optimally (e.g., through over-development or under-development), is the self-described conservative Harvard political scientist Harvey C. Mansfield (born in 1932) in his 2007 Jefferson Lecture titled "How to Understand Politics: What the Humanities Can Say to Science."
Unfortunately, he chooses to manifest his conservatism in this essay by using generic masculine terms at times, which he could have chosen not to use.
Mansfield made a name for himself as a scholar and translator of the Italian Renaissance humanist Niccolo Machiavelli (1469-1527). In addition, Mansfield, with Delba Winthrop, has translated Alexis de Tocqueville's Democracy in America (University of Chicago Press, 2000) - and Mansfield gives a shout out to Alexis de Tocqueville in his 2007 Jefferson Lecture.
But stand forewarned. At the end of Mansfield's contemplative 2007 Jefferson Lecture, he explicitly states that he has left love out of his discussion.
For a relevant discussion of love, see the remarkably articulate Martha C. Nussbaum's 2013 book Political Emotions: Why Love Matters for Justice (Belknap Press/ Harvard University Press).
In other words, Mansfield could operationally define and explain just a certain number of key concepts in the course of his 2007 Jefferson Lecture. Indeed, he did operationally define and explain a great number of key concepts in it: having nerve; contests; names; thumos as used by Plato and Aristotle (and amplified by Mansfield); politics; what makes you angry; equality/inequality; honor/shame; identity politics (as exemplified by the black civil rights movement and the women's movement); pre-modern thought (soul or psyche) versus modern thought (e.g., "self" and self-interest); science versus humanities; science as involving mathematics (and quantification); the body; animality of the human body; reason; passionate statement (of politics and political contests) versus dispassionate statement (of philosophy and modern science); the movement from anger to reason to politics; self-interest and peace; protection; realism versus idealism; humans as self-important animals; the importance of human importance; science as replicable; literature as entertaining; human greatness; great ambition; and humans as animals with pretensions. Whew! No wonder he left out love.
But let me now highlight certain key points Mansfield makes in his 2007 Jefferson Lecture.
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