My List of American Heroes

This is taking a leaf out of Guam’s blog, and listing for the hell off it.

This list was inspired by a conversation I had with my British friend when I returned his audio book of “In search of British Heroes”. I told my friend the same thing I wrote on this blog, namely that given all the heroes in British history, I was surprised by their selection. We debated a list of the greatest British heroes briefly, and then he turned the question back on me. “Alright, what are the 5 greatest American heroes?”

“Well,” said I, “I guess that depends on how you define the question. Do you mean the five greatest American heroes as defined by common consensus (think Washington, Lincoln, etc) or do you mean my personal heroes (Emma Goldman, John Brown) or do you mean folk heroes, the American equivalent of Robin Hood and King Arthur?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “All of them I guess.”

So, here are my lists. The first one is the stereotypical answer you might find in any high school civics textbook. In no particular order…
1. George Washington
2. Abraham Lincoln
3. Martin Luther King Junior
4. Thomas Jefferson
5. Elvis Presley

I think these are all pretty safe bets. I suppose you could make a case for JFK or FDR in spot number 5 instead of Elvis, but then the right-wingers get little uncomfortable. The first four are solid anyway.

Now remember, this is the typical list. This isn’t my personal list. Personally I tend to agree with Public Enemy’s declaration, “Elvis was a hero to most, but he never met shit to me. Straight up racist that sucker was simple and plain, fuck him and John Wayne.” Lincoln was a political opportunist, and not the devoted abolitionist people remember him as. If you’ve read some of his quotes, you know he wasn’t quite as noble on the question of slavery as we often think, and probably wouldn’t even have abolished slavery had not the Southern succession and the civil war forced his hand. I don’t admire people like that. Abolitionists like John Brown and Fredrick Douglas are people I admire.

Which brings me to my own list. Again, no particular order
1. John Brown
2. Fredrick Douglas
3. Martin Luther King
4. Emma Goldman
5. Thomas Jefferson

It really kills me to limit myself to 5. I would love to add Eugene Debs, Malcolm X, Huey Newton, William Lloyd Garrison, Joe Hill, the Haymarket martyrs (as a collective entry), etc. But if forced to limit myself to 5, these are the ones I choose.

All of these individuals are flawed in some way. Heroes don’t really exist in real life, only in our minds. Real people all have serious flaws. I won’t defend everything all of them did. But I admire the way they stood strong for their beliefs, and I admire the ideals they dedicated their lives to. Jefferson has obviously been a controversial choice lately, but I still admire his republican principals even if he didn’t extend them to all people.

Since these are my personal picks, I guess there’s not a lot of room for debate, but I’d love to here your own list if anyone wants to join in my game.

Next, folk heroes:
1. Davy Crockett
2. Zorro
3. Wyatt Earp
4. Superman
5. Elvis Presley

With John Wayne and Jesse James as runners up.

America is too recent a country to have mythical heroes lost in the mist of history like King Arthur, Joan of Arc, or Romulus. Our fiction and history is too clearly separated, and so I think you have to mix the two to get a feel for the American mythos.

Notably exceptions to this list are Paul Bunyan, John Henry, Pecos Bill, and other figures which for most people constitute the very definition of “American Folk Hero”. But these are more children’s stories than mythical figures on par with King Arthur. They’re not taken seriously, and strike me as stories librarians and schoolteachers have tried to force into folk hero legitimacy just so people can say that America has folk heroes too. Furthermore they’re barely known outside of America’s boarders, and certainly don’t have the worldwide recognition that a figure like Superman carries. (Some of them might make my top 10 list though)
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Finally, my friend asked me for my list of top 5 living American heroes. This is very difficult, since heroes are often by definition dead, but the following represents my stab at it:
Noam Chomsky ,
Bob Dylan ,
Cindy Sheehan
Howard Zinn
Dan Quayle (in a Don Quixote type way, in memory of his epic fight against the windmill “Murphy Brown”)

Runners up would include Barak Obama as a prediction.

Just for fun, I thought I’d make a stab at the top 5 American villains. I suppose I could drag this out into 4 separate lists as well, but for the sake of simplicity I’ll contain it to just the generic stereotypical villains.

1. Benedict Arnold
2. Aaron Burr
3. Jefferson Davis
4. Richard Nixon
5. George W. Bush

The top four are pretty solid. I guess I’m showing my liberal bias a bit with the last one, but it’s more of a prediction. I honestly think 50 years hence the Bush presidency will be universally regarded as a disgrace. We’ll see what happens with that one.

Runners up are: Lt. Calley and Captain Medina, Charles Manson, Ted Bundy, and Charles Whitman.

So, if anyone wants to play this game with me, show me your own lists or make other suggestions.

Link of the Day
"Viva Iraq" a video compilation of US atrocities in Iraq