It has often been said that a country’s heroes reveal its character. If that is true, the fact that most Russians admire Vladimir Putin even after his criminal invasion of Ukraine and the subsequent war crimes he has committed in that country is profoundly troubling. Before we shake our heads at the Russians and their support for a criminal murderer as their head of state, perhaps we should look at the kind people Americans lionize and elevate as heroes. Doing that, it becomes obvious that our choices for heroes do little more credit to us than the Russians’ choice does to them. Our heroes have feet and legs of clay.
Who are American heroes now? As evidenced by the disdain of the opinion leaders in academia and the mainstream media, the traditional American heroes of the Greatest Generation, the Baby Boom, and Gen X are now uniformly and inarguably not heroic at all. According to this new cultural calculus, Columbus was a genocidal (via disease) racist ( though the genocide charge is a bit weak given that no one knew about germs back then); Thomas Jefferson was slave owning rapist; George Washington was a slave owner; Abraham Lincoln was a racist; all Confederate leaders were traitors, racists, and liars, Davy Crockett and Daniel Boone were genocidal land grabbers, the industrial and railroad barons who built the economy of this country were greedy, unethical and heartless exploiters of working people, and on and on, leaving those generations to wonder if they were supposed individually disavow their heroes lest they be accused of admiring those horrendous characteristics.
All people are the product of their own time and culture and only a small minority of any generation deviates tremendously from the dominant views of their society. If their society is generally just, tolerant, democratic, and based on the rights of the individual and the rule of law, the adoption of those viewpoints is overall a blessing and will stand that society in good stead as their future unfolds. They will also tend to elevate and honor heroes who demonstrate those qualities. OTOH, if their society is autocratic, corrupt, violent, and heedless of individual dignity and human life, then the long-term future of that nation is bleak. Ergo, the future of Europe looks far more promising than Russia’s.
Now that they have condemned and declared war on America’s traditional heroes, who are they proposing to elevate and honor in their steads? Margaret Sanger for one. She was still prominently displayed in Planned Parenthood clinics across the country as recently as 2020. Until 2015, the highest Award that Planned Parenthood could bestow was called the Margaret Sanger Award. Despite recent attempts to disavow her, the people running Planned Parenthood are following her playbook chapter and verse. Margaret Sanger was a vicious racist whose objective was the extermination of the black race via birth control and abortion. Liberals have also admired Louis Farrakhan for years despite his corruption, anti Semitism, and racism. Quick! Build a statue and put it on a pedestal in front of the DNC’s national headquarters!
Or how about Greta Thunberg? A Swedish teen afflicted by Asperger’s Syndrome whom the liberal media and Democrat politicians elevated to the status of a climate change deity whom no one is allowed to question. She had no life experience to speak of, no scientific credentials, and no clue about how politics works. However, her hatred of big oil companies, scorn for skeptics of human caused climate change, disdain for capitalism, and utter hostility toward her opponents endeared her to the liberal clique elite. How about an even more recent hero of the Democrat/liberal cabal, George Floyd? He was a career criminal, drug dealer, thief, serial abuser of women, drug and alcohol abuser, and in his last days, a counterfeiter of cash. He got himself killed in a street fight with rogue cops. That action vaulted George into the Democrat Hall of Fame quicker than a Viking goes to Valhalla after dying in battle. Statues were erected in his honor, hundreds of thousands of people mourned his passing, the residents of the city he died in are being forced to pay tens of millions of dollars in reparations to his family, and the entire nation was engulfed in violence on behalf George Floyd, a violent, misogynistic, drug addicted thug. Given his crucial role in getting the senile fool Joe Biden elected President, the DNC should probably erect a statue of George Floyd in the White House’s Rose Garden.
One of the first things that Iraqis did after America took over Iraq and forced Saddam to flee was to destroy all the statues and monuments that the dictator had erected to himself. Iraqis were declaring to themselves and the world that they rejected the society that lionized Saddam. It was a plain and public repudiation of the man and his misdeeds as a leader. Lately, it has been a habit of left-wing Americans to tear down statues of people with long resumes of great achievements and good deeds because their personal failings and beliefs that are repugnant to our modern sensibilities. Seeing the people that the Democrats and left-wing media are praising, it is hard not to be alarmed at the kind of society that would admire and wish to emulate such people. As the liberal acolytes tear down statues of Christopher Columbus, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt, and others who helped build this great nation, it is important to ask what kind country would admire George Floyd, Margret Sanger, Anthony Fauci, and Louis Farrakhan. Then, ask yourself if you would want to live there.
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Well, Ned, I know plenty of right-thinkers who also live with Asperger’s, myself included, who’ll be happy to throw the Big Yellow BS Flag on Garbagepail Kid Greta for y’all. 🙂
Re the autism spectrum: There is a community in Forensic Psych who suspect AS as having been the core of how Jefferson’s mind worked; personally I prefer not to think of it as a “victimizing pathology” but a “different systems architecture,” because while it can bring some frustrating weaknesses it *can* also offer strengths to balance it if an individual can learn to identify those strengths and play to them. (The example I usually cite here is the data-wrangling capability of Douglas MacArthur, who after having observed or fought against or alongside virtually every major army of his day’s world could tell you a startling amount about a soldier, his unit and his commander just from one look at his uniform and its insignia.)
Michael Bury, of Big Short fame also has Asperger’s and is certainly more genius than dummy, but he also spent years getting educated, and more years getting life experience before he became famous and recognized as a financial genius. Greta was vaulted to heroine status without the education, experience, or demonstrated achievement. Kinda like when Obama got the Nobel Prize.
True. Garbagepail Kid… well, part of me wants to feel sorry for her being brainwashed and weaponized by her Radical Left parents, but her vile personality strains the limits of compassion.
Setting aside some supposed Asperger’s Syndrome stuff. Greta Thunberg was an extension of the idea that came from, “It’s for the Children”, nothing else. Maybe the throwing in of some “disease” enhanced someone who had no creds to make the statements she supposedly had as some original thoughts, but that does not make a hero, like many heroes can be categorized. Greta Thunberg was, and maybe still is, only a useful idiot. I see little utility in idiots. As far as I’m concerned, she has no heroic anything to spout, nor does she qualify for the history books as a lasting figure of importance or heroism.
However, heaping praise on those who are deserving does not make them heroes. Heroism is for the ones who do courageous things for those they revere, and for God and country.
We use the word “Hero” too much, when sincere praise would be sufficient.
A hero, to me, is someone who would perform an extraordinary act in order to save someone’s life, without regard for his own self, because he is there.
What heroic thing did George Floyd, or Margaret Sanger do? Those who would worship that kind of false prophesy are doomed. Standing for death or using drugs, and dying in the process is nothing heroic. It is not even good idol worshiping, which is nothing to brag about. Most of the people the left hold in reverence, they only show their ignorance about what is good. Maybe it has something to do with a mis-directed and twisted ideology. It sure lacks reason or logic.
It also bears noting that each of us has our “feet of clay,” Jesus noted “let he who is without sin cast the first stone” and after he pried himself out of a bottle Pappy Boyington spent the last years of his life trying to repent and make right for the jerk he became when he fell into it and fame went to his head. (The last words of his autobiography, “Show me a hero and I’ll prove to you he’s a bum” are a little overreactive and cynical, but the basic point about man’s fallibility is still valid.)
Well, okay. I thought the topic was about heroism, not victimization. The use of Asperger’s, in the situation of dear little Greta, is a form or embellishment of victimization, in my opinion. It adds nothing else. The making of an idol. It most certainly provides no heroic trait for her, as doing drugs did for Floyd. Sanger was just a proponent for murder. What is heroic there? There are idols and there are heroes. Very little, if anything in common between idolatry and heroism.
I think the discussion lends to a comparison of the idolic to the heroic, because many confuse the two. Maybe, it is a product of what Ned said about all those pedestals that have been built, in the past, and societies becoming confused over the difference between the two.
Of my heroes, two stand out. My father and my mother. They heroically brought me into this world, and raised me. Neither were victims. They taught me valuable lessons of life. You may think I am overdoing my parents, but that is just too bad.
So, what’s next? Add Down’s Syndrome? There is a situation where I can make your eyes wet, with a heroine I know who is
one who has overcome obstacles Asperger’s compares so little by. The point is not the disease/affliction, but the base idea the author started with, which is “Heroes”!
I would hate to bore you with the story of a woman I have known my whole life who I have more respect than I could ever say. There is very probably not a living being who could compare, and she lives her life without the first bit of fanfare. She is another of my “heroes” who would tell you are the crazy one if you uttered the word to her. Those who have survived many odds against them, and remained silent, are more deserving of being heroic, because they share something that those who would go into a burning building and drag your almost lifeless ass out to keep you alive, do.
Both see something greater than themselves. They recognize that their efforts to preserve others well being and life, when all is at risk is one of the greatest respects they can give to mankind and God, so they just do it, without question.
So, what’s this about Pappy have to do with this?