This is my column in today’s Greenville News.  Go forth and be heroes.

https://www.greenvilleonline.com/story/opinion/contributors/2015/08/29/world-got-see-heroism-looks-like/71330336/

Last week, a Moroccan immigrant was on a train traveling from Amsterdam to Paris. He was armed with an AK-47 rifle, a Luger handgun, hundreds of rounds of ammunition and a box-cutter. A French passenger, three young Americans (one active duty Airman, one National Guard soldier fresh from Afghanistan and their civilian friend) as well as a 60-year-old Briton saved untold lives when they deduced that the heavily armed individual in their train car probably wasn’t out for a day of target shooting.

So, forming a committee they deliberated about the best course of action. They issued surveys to the other passengers on the train to make sure that they were in line with current cultural, political and economic trends. They posted their thoughts to Twitter and Facebook and took a short class on tolerance.

Finally, they contemplated their European privilege, and the ways in which they might well have personally caused the obviously oppressed and disaffected individual to want aerate the passengers with 7.62 x 39 mm ammunition and filet them with a razor blade.

No, I’m just kidding. The five rushed him, tackled him, disarmed him, beat him with his own rifle, John Wayne style and choked him unconscious. They then left him hog-tied, after which he was arrested and the injured heroes given medical treatment for the serious wounds they incurred.

Subsequently, the French media asked everyone to be concerned about the feelings of the poor terrorist, who was not at all responsible for his actions and who was just holding the weapons ‘for some guy.’ The men who attacked the unfortunate rifle bearer were held and their motivations questioned by gendarmes who consider Americans uncouth and barbaric. Charges were filed for disturbing the peace and for handling unlicensed illegal firearms (disarming someone is no excuse to touch a gun).

Nope, still kidding. The same week it happened, French President Hollande presented these heroic gentlemen with the Legion of Honour, the highest French award for heroism. I suspect that the five have been gulping down free champagne and dancing with hot French girls, even as their knees occasionally go week with the realization that they were each about one trigger-pull from eternity. But that’s what heroism looks like. And God knows the world could use some more of it.

During the tragic, fatal shooting at the recruiting station in Chattanooga over the summer, one or two active duty members returned fire with with personal weapons. There were serious discussions about the legality and propriety of this action and the Navy commander of the site may still face disciplinary action. Personally, I believe he deserves praise and honor. If he did shoot back, he did the right thing, at the right moment, when there was no time to ask for permission or contemplate the larger implications of the action.

We live in a difficult, troubled world. I believe that all free people should be able to protect themselves, because the police and military (God bless them) can’t be everywhere. Only when predators do not know who will resist, do not know who is armed or prepared, will they have reason for pause. But the issue for our time is far more than terrorism.

It is too often the belief that regular citizens should not be expected to protect the endangered, rescue the imperiled, contribute to the needy, feed the hungry, fight evil with force, free the slaves, educate the illiterate. That only through the inefficiency of government and the relative anemia of our own favorite politicians is good accomplished. But this is merely moral sloth; little more than the transfer of our own human duty to other agents (who care far less about our own problems than we), in order to assuage our guilt.

Most of us will never see, much less assault, a terrorist. However there is other heroism to be accomplished. We can give to the needy, comfort the hurting, educate and feed the children, visit the aged. On our own dime, and on our own time. It requires only the personal decision to act and the courage to sacrifice time and resources. Well, that’s not entirely true. We have to take time out from screaming at each other online and actually do something other than hoping for the next politician or election to make our ideological dreams come true or our wallets fat.

Ultimately, heroism comes in many incredible forms. But to act heroically we need (as the King said) ‘a little less talk and a lot more action.’

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