Some of My Heroes

Tina belts out the tune "We Don't Need Another Hero". On the contrary, we are in desperate need of heroes. We need them as ideals to look up to and, most importantly, emulate. In dark times like these, it's very easy to give way to despair and hopelessness. You look around and see everyone operating on one basis: Every man for himself. Screw your neighbor. Rip off the customer. Cover up your crimes. Grab as much money from the roulette table before last call. To hell with the human race.

The Titanic is sinking fast and there's no time for our better natures to show through. It's a raw brutal race to see who survives. Darwin was right. We're no different than wild beasts on the savannah. Kill or be killed. Whoever's left standing, wins.

What makes a hero? In my book, it's someone who risks comfort, safety, liberty, wealth, the approval and acceptance of society, or even life, for principle. After a lifetime of struggle and toil, most of us have attained some degree of prosperity, comfort and affluence. Our sacrifices and deferments of gratification have paid off, and we are beginning to reap the rewards. We have accumulated enough stuff that we start altering our actions to preserve all that stuff. We don't rock the boat as much, we aren't as vocal about criticizing the government. We don't want to lose all our toys and goodies.

Heroes put it all on the line to defend a principle. They risk everything for something you can't see. It's the one thing that separates us from the lower orders. Otherwise, we are no better than wild beasts that kill, eat, defecate, sleep, copulate and reproduce.

Nothing distinguishes the cycle of our days from the animal world's like our altruistic impulse to do something that could result in our premature and untimely deaths, if only to save someone weaker and more helpless than ourselves from brutal attack by thugs. I think of Sydney Carton in Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities, taking the place of Charles Darnay on the scaffold. [Aside: I read the story of a Brazilian boy biking down a dirt road with his dog, when they were set upon by a huge deadly swarm of killer bees. The dog managed to knock the boy to the ground and cover him, shielding him from the bees, which stung the dog to death but the boy was saved. Now: how to explain such an altruistic impulse in the animal world? Could it be that centuries of domestication and living in proximity to humans have caused some of our better qualities to "rub off" on some of the animal kingdom?? Maybe. After I read that and thought some more about dogs' selfless devotion, loyalty and willingness to self-sacrifice, I have to qualify/amend my earlier statement about those traits that separate us from the "lower orders". End of aside]

Heroes in my life have been:
a) my late father, of course
b) Irwin Schiff
c) Ernst Zundel
d) Mordecai Vanunu
e) Joe Banister

My father for his whole life was a man of principle. He started with nothing, survived the Great Depression, fought with honor in World War II (won 9 combat stars in sea battles in the Pacific), came back home and joined his father's company rather than attend graduate school at Harvard, always dealt fairly with people in business and society. I never knew him to commit an underhanded or treacherous act towards another, although he was on occasion the recipient and victim of treachery by others. He was a pillar of the church, raised us to be moral beings (what we did with that foundation afterwards is our own fault or reward), and, I would say, many times sacrificed his own wishes, ambitions and dreams for the betterment and support of his family, who oftentimes returned his sacrifice with scorn and indifference. He exhibited selflessness on a scale I have not seen before or since in my immediate circles, and am still looking for in society at large. His kind will not be seen again in this country.

Irwin and Ernst are currently imprisoned, with no prospects for release, for "crimes" of conscience, for speaking truth to power. Mordecai has been released from a hellish 18+ year sentence of which 11, I believe, were served in solitary confinement, but he is at present under some kind of house arrest where his after-prison life is little better than before. Joe beat the Evil Empire in a criminal case after leaving the certainty of a government sinecure to tell the truth about his bosses. All my heroes could have taken an easier, more profitable route, but they didn't, and we are all the more wealthy because of their sacrifices.

I'm sure there are others, and they will be added as they surface in my crowded psyche.