All of my heroes are dead.

[11 Bravo]

Shit, I tagged and bagged some of them myself.
I do, however, have a President whom I respect and admire. One to whom I'm willing to allot more than a month to clean up a mess that has been decades in the making. One whom I believe shares most of my values, but who is going to make moves with which I disagree. One who is a little to the right of me, but who actually has to govern a diverse and unruly nation, while I do not.
Barack Obama is my President, not my hero. Everything else is just noise.

[liberal N proud]

1. I have no heroes

Admiring people for positions they hold is not hero worship

[11 Bravo]

3. Nor is admiring people for what they have done.

Having a hero is not automatically tantamount to hero-worship. That term gets tossed around a lot here lately by folks who seem to feel it is some sort of snarky yet irrefutable put-down.

[patrice]

2. "We don't need another hero.

All we need is to find the way home."

[Blue-Jay]

4. My heroes have always been cowboys...

[stray cat]

5. If someone saves your life particularly at risk to their own - is he/she a hero?

or just someone who has traits you admire. I certainly believe there are people who sacrifice for the sake of others or humanity that put me to shame. Are we afraid to call someone a hero because it implies they really may have better attributes than others of us including myself. Heroes are not perfection but imperfect people who do impressive things.

Hero: Webster dictionary - the only hero I don't have is defined in A.

1 a: a mythological or legendary figure often of divine descent endowed with great strength or ability

b: an illustrious warrior

c: a man admired for his achievements and noble qualities

d: one that shows great courage

[11 Bravo]

6. That's largely my frame of reference. I'm at this keyboard now because another man ...

shit, he was a 20 year old kid, but he pulled me back into cover after I was hit, and in so doing received a mortal wound from a thrown grenade. He didn't need to do it. He had a DEEP fighting hole. (We had made fun of him the previous night for spending all of that shovel time.) But, 38 years later, I'm here with a beautiful wife and two great kids, and his momma has a folded flag and some tin. So, you tell me, was he a hero?

[Booster]

7. Absolutely he was.

[catnhatnh]

8. Morning K&R....

Stinkin' flu is keeping me off the board some....That said, you ask a hell of a question...

Wow. We just can't know. What really does make a hero? Was he scared? Did he recognize the danger and still perform a selfless act? Does that matter or only if he achieved a rescue? I just don't know. A lot of people would say that if the same grenade that killed him had finished you then what happened was just a foolish waste so in their world the outcome rather than the act defines the term.

Everyone uses the term hero and yet I don't think many can define it. For some it is a series in a lifetime of small self-sacrifices and for others a single larger than life act even if that act is in complete contrast to the entire prior lifetime.

Then you come to the contrasts of class and priveledge...can the same act performed by two individuals of different background and means and experience result in "heroism" in one case and not in the other? For instance, for a trained, payed, professional firefighter to run into a burning house and locate and rescue a victim may be no more than a difficult but routine job task where for a homeless addict it might indeed be a heroic act.

I'm betting to you he sure as Hell is and he sounds like one to me. I just wonder about how cheaply the term is tossed around and what the definition should be.