American Heroism

By William Thomas

On September 11, people stared death in the face and, setting fear aside, did what they thought needed doing. They strode into burning buildings to save lives. They attacked armed hijackers with their bare hands. They steadfastly flew their stolen airliners into their targets at the price of certain death. They were acclaimed as martyrs. They were acclaimed as heroes. Or they were deplored as fanatics and villains.

Which was which depended on who was handing out the moral praise. But in either case, the essence of moral worth was assumed to be self-sacrifice. Being a hero, it seems, means dying for a noble cause.

I do not intend to equate the terrorists, who purposed the deaths of thousands, with the courageous and decent firefighters, policemen, and airplane passengers who died in their struggles to prevent or mitigate the tragedies of that black day. The similarity is superficial. Those who court death and those who strive for life are not on a par.

But what is the difference between our heroes and the villains? Is it simply a matter of cultural affinity? Would Americans think it heroic if partisans of our ideas conducted suicide bombings of enemy targets? Perhaps many would, if Hollywood is any measure of contemporary culture. In the movie, Independence Day, it is the selfless sacrifice of Randy Quaid's boozing crop-duster pilot in a kami-kaze style attack that makes him a hero to his country, his children, and the world at large.

More generally, large segments of our culture seem to think self-sacrifice is the measure of moral greatness. Before the attacks on the Twin Towers, reports the New York Times (9/15/01) in a story about how attitudes toward New York have changed in the heartland, "Debi Koss, a nurse, used to think of New York as a faceless, godless cinderblock. But she has revised her views. 'I've seen a lot of selflessness,' Ms. Koss said." The Times reports that "Jim Rector, a factory worker," remarks that the post-disaster spirit of mutual aid contrasts favorably with the normal run of business: "Before, they appeared to be selfish with their time."

Objectivism holds that life and happiness are and should be the lodestones of value for every individual. Your life. Your happiness. The Objectivist ethics is an egoist moral code, down to the root. It is an ethic of rational selfishness and principled self-interest. It was the opposite principle, self-sacrifice, that lay at the core of what the terrorists achieved. And it was the love of life, not merely facing death, that was the essence of the heroism we have seen.

A hero achieves the best within himself and the best possible to man. In action, he epitomizes the powers of reason and achievement that are man's glory. A civilian onboard an hijacked airliner, such as Jeremy Glick, becomes a hero for facing facts and taking the action that the facts required in the face of uncertainty, danger, and fear. It takes a rare commitment to reason and objectivity—and a rare love of life—to face up to the fact that one is in the power of suicidal maniacs and to throw oneself into a one-sided battle, a battle that one must win, though the odds be against it, to have a chance at life. This attitude is exemplified by Thomas Burnett, whose wife told the AP her husband "thought he was going to be home. He was going to solve this problem." (CNN.com 9/13/01) That was what he and others on board United Airlines flight 93 were trying to do when the plane went down near Pittsburgh: solve the problem. That's heroism.

The essence of heroism is courageous loyalty to values. Courage is the virtue of pursuing one's values consistently in the face of risk. It is not courageous to seek death and destruction: there is no value there. Nor is it courage if a foolhardy person acts in disregard of the risks. Nor is courage shown only in emergencies. We see courage when an entrepreneur struggles to bring to market a new product, against the risk of financial ruin. We see courage in the arduous journey of an immigrant, who risks professional failure, poverty, and cultural alienation to seek a better life in a new country.

The courage of the firefighters in New York and elsewhere was of a special order because the risk they face is injury or death. But firefighters are professionals committed to preventing fires and providing rescue services to those in danger. And as professionals, they train to cope with the danger. In the Objectivist view, a person who trained for this profession is a hero for pursuing his profession effectively, prudently, and courageously. The firefighters and policemen who raced into the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center after the explosions did not go there seeking death: they sought to save lives. They were all trained to cope with dangers such as fire and smoke. No one expected the sudden collapse of the towers when it came. The fallen firefighters' heroism lies in their steadfastness to their professional values. But it was heroism equaled by the surviving firefighters who worked with the same steadfastness in the face of the same risks.

By an Objective standard, by the standard of loving life, it is not facing death that makes a hero. Even those who hate the good can face death. But there were heroes aplenty on September 11, many of them still with us, and there is more heroism every day as the productive genius of our society gets back to work.

-- Eve (eve_rebekah@yahoo.com), September 23, 2001

Answers

An outstanding line from an otherwise mediocre B-movie: "Courage is not the abscence of fear but doing what's right in the presence of fear."

-- Movie (Buff@Cinema.com), September 23, 2001.