THE HEROES HAVE LEFT US: On September 5, the most elaborate funeral took place in London since that of Winston Churchill in 1965. Earl Mountbatten of Burma, Britain's naval hero of World War II and the last viceroy of India before it became independent in 1947 was honored in a deeply moving funeral ceremony in Westminster Abby. Present were all members of the Royal Family (Mountbatten was the cousin of Queen Elizabeth and the uncle of Prince Phillip), as well as many reigning and non-reigning royalty of Europe to whom he was also related.
It was a fitting tribute to the man who was variously called "the last great Englishman" and "Britain's last hero." His tragic death came at the hands of men of far lesser character, guerrillas of the Irish Republican Army, who blew up Mountbatten's yacht in Donegal Bay off the Irish coast.
In another area of the Commonwealth, Canada suffered in late August the loss of John Diefenbaker, its 13th Prime Minister from 1957 to 1963. The much loved, flamboyant "Dief the Chief" was still a member of Parliament (in his thirteenth term) at the time of his death at age 83. He was, said Maclean's, Canada's leading news magazine, "Canada's most colorful prime minister who remained a political giant and active parliamentarian to the end." On all important affairs of state, Mr. Diefenbaker was consulted by both public officials and the news media for advice.
No Leadership in America
The deaths of Mountbatten and Diefenbaker come at a time of a true dearth of leadership among the leading powers of the free world. Time magazine, in a special report in its August 6, 1979 issue titled "A Cry for Leadership," said this: "It is a comment on the state of temporal power that the world's most impressive and natural leader is the Polish Pope."
Certainly there is precious little in the way of leadership these days in the free world's biggest power, the United States. Nothing exemplifies this more than the nationwide "energy" address delivered by President Carter earlier this summer. At the end of it Mr. Carter appealed to Americans, one and all, to "help" him lead the nation through what he termed its crisis of confidence. Eugene Kennedy, writing in the New York magazine of August 5 quickly took the president to task for his remark, saying, "Americans do not want the burden of leading their leader."
Of course, Mr. Carter is now facing his biggest test of all — will he demand that the Russians take their newly discovered combat division out of Cuba? One wonders. Mr. Carter's first public utterance on the crisis was to counsel the American people to remain "calm."
God, through the prophet Isaiah, prophesied of our end-time loss of leadership and great men: "For, behold, the Lord, the Lord of hosts, is taking away from Jerusalem and from Judah...the mighty man and soldier, the judge and the prophet, the diviner and the elder, the captain of fifty and the man of rank, the counselor...." (Isa. 3:1-3, RSV). Instead of providing inspiring leaders, men of age and wisdom, God said further: "And I will make boys their princes, and babes shall rule over them ... the youth will be insolent to the elder, and the base fellow to the honorable (verses 4 & 5).
On that last point, is it not significant that the second most powerful political figure in the United States, President Carter's Chief-of-Staff, Hamilton Jordon, has been embroiled in a continual round of after-hours affairs that has publicly embarrassed the White House?
Continuing in verse 12: "My people — children are their oppressors, and women rule over them." Britain now has a woman Prime Minister, the very able Margaret Thatcher, in the service of her sovereign, Queen Elizabeth II. And in the United States, the President's wife, First Lady Roslynn Carter wields such power behind the scenes that TIME magazine called her, in a recent article, "Mrs. President."
No. Heroes Being Produced
God has taken away the great leaders from our nations. Most of the "mighty" of World War II and the immediate post-war years have now died. What is equally significant is that our societies, increasingly divorced from godly principles and plain common sense, have not regenerated any towering individuals — any heroes — to take their place. In the November, 1978 issue of Harper's magazine, author Henry Fairlie, in a remarkable article titled "Too Rich For Heroes, wrote this:
"We do not have heroes any longer, or perhaps it is more accurate to say, we do not make heroes anymore. There are some who do not mind this, and even think we may be safer without heroes. But even they acknowledge that the absence of heroes is a mark of our age, telling us something about the kind of people we are... "A society that has no heroes will soon grow enfeebled. Its purposes will be less elevated: its aspirations less challenging; its endeavors less strenuous. Its individual members will also be enfeebled. They will 'hang loose' and 'lay back' and be so 'mellowed out,' the last thing of which they wish to hear is heroism. They do not want to be told of men and women whose example might disturb them, calling them to effort and duty and sacrifice or even the chance of glory.
Fairlie was especially critical of the application of psychology to historical research — "psycho-history" he calls it — and the attempt to cut the great people of the past down to size, to emphasize their "warts" and reduce their accomplishments. "A nation that thinks unhistorically of itself is in present peril," said Fairlie. "That we no longer find heroes among our own politicians or military leaders, that we do not look up to heroes in our religions: all this is our right if it is our inclination. But we have also taken the hero out of history, unable to acknowledge him where he once was...."
Such a "demythologizing" of the greats of the past, said Fairlie, could only have taken place in the "grossly distorted individualism of today," where people are now "incapable of imagining the selflessly disinterested hero." Ours is the age of the "Me Generation," with the emphasis on "self-improvement," "self-realization," "self-actualization." most people don't even know that it is possible to sacrifice one's own desires and needs — and one's life — for a higher cause!
On this point Pete Axthelm, writing in the August 6 Newsweek (article: "Where Have All The Heroes Gone?") wondered how many people today would have done what James Butler Bonham did in 1836. Bonham was sent by the defenders of the Alamo in San Antonio to seek reinforcements 95 miles away. Informed no troops could be spared, he turned around and fought his way back through the besieging Mexican army to rejoin his Alamo comrades in their fight to a certain death.
Perhaps modern analysts, Axthelm said, would speak of Bonham's "obsession with death" or that he had "self-destructive tendencies." They might muse on what they call the "male bonding" relationship (with vague hints of homosexuality) which supposedly held the defenders of the A1am.o together! "God save us from analysts" said Axthelm, "the hoofbeats of Bonham's ride express it much better."
As a result largely of this conditioning (plus lack of respect for authority in general, compounded by the effects of Watergate and Vietnam, the United States possesses a culture, said Fairlie, that "cannot grasp the idea of a hero." Concluded this noted author: "We used to think that our civilization should be guarded, and even that at times it should advance, so that our soldiers were heroes but now we think of our generals only as stupid and knavish and war-hungry ... "America is the first country of the West whose high culture does not now know how to be patriotic, that does not seem to understand that patriotism is one of the deepest expressions of the human need for community, for which there is no substitute in the absence of a universal church or great world empire...."
ON THE WORLD SCENE
Copyright © 2024 Herbert W Armstrong Library