Our heroes jog heroically upon prosthetic engineering marvels, hand-in-hand with weeping supporters, down paved streets lined by cheering well-wishers.

Our heroes go to work, get good grades and tell the truth when it is inconvenient.

Our heroes believe in the aspirations of children and speak out about their unconventional sexuality.

Our heroes suffer the indignity of disease with dignity and overcome stifling handicaps.

Our heroes are people that I believe are worthy of note. But, in no age before ours, would they be heroes. There was a time when a hero was a hero because he fought, or, if he did not, took great physical risk in the face of mighty peril.

This series is dedicated to the memories of heroes who were heroes, not victims, not supportive teachers or outspoken political activists. Some heroes will have multiple entries. The focus is on heroic acts. A hero does not have to be a man, or even an adult, and does not have to be a good guy. To qualify as a heroic act the hero must be in mortal danger, must be the subject of bad intentions, and must have committed the act before the dawn of The Victim Hero Age.

I define the end of Western Martial Culture, and the start of The Victim Hero Age, to be the launching of Operation Iraqi Freedom, March 19th, 2003, by the globalist autarch King Shrub The Younger. During the course of this conflict—which seems to have been initiated to provide construction contracts to the friends of King Shrub The Younger—a female U.S. support soldier was hailed as a hero for being captured as part of a resupply convoy targeted by the enemy. That coed convoy as combat operation and the subsequent extermination of approximately 2 million ‘terrorists’ [in Iraq and around the world], largely non-military and non-combatant in nature, and killed largely by remote means [drones, air strike, sniping from fortified positions as opposed to contested hides, from the vantage of the invulnerable Abrams tank] overshadowed the real heroic hells of the men who took Iraqi cities on foot, and has robed the combat infantryman of his heroic status.

Achilles would be appalled.

I feel very strongly that, in this new age of feminized masculinity and victimized heroism, that the real men and women who have fought heroically in the past should not be forgotten. Sources will be footnoted to facilitate further reading. I will concentrate on fields I am already, or have already, read in. This will naturally weight the process toward certain periods, cultures and places. So please, if there is a period or a hero that you are curious about or simply a story that you think should be told, e-mail me through the bio page or leave a comment here or on one of the installments in this series. I will do my best to tell the tale.

Here is to all the ages past, when heroes fought, and when the best warriors were not masked men who stood above sleeping foes and put two bullets in their brain, and then escaped into the night on what amounts to a flying carpet.

Here is to the heroes who carved out a place for themselves from a ruthless world.

To be continued in The Black Foot: When Heroes Fought #1

James LaFond, 4/23/14