Americans deeply conflicted about the idea of heroes

Michael Phelps smokes pot. A-Rod took steroids. What's next? Will US Airways Capt. Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger get busted, too?

Americans love to put their heroes on pedestals almost as much as they enjoy tearing them down. We trot out the outrage when they're disgraced. We wring our hands over what it'll do to the poor kids who look up to them. But if, as the ancient Greeks said, people are known by the heroes they crown, then Americans' penchant for exalting and denouncing says a whole lot about us as a country.

The truth is that we are deeply conflicted about the idea of heroes. Men and women who are larger than life attract and repel us. On the one hand, our deeply ingrained egalitarianism makes us bridle at the notion that anyone is better than everyone else. On the other, our patrimony — life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, not to mention constant change — is abstract and ephemeral; it's difficult to grab hold of. Other nations and their citizens get to define themselves as unchanging through the generations; we seek continuity and meaning in symbols, from the Founders to apple pie.

In the 19th century, Abraham Lincoln's secretary of State, William H. Seward, liked to tell a story about a man after the American Revolution who insisted on planting a "Liberty pole" — a kind of flagstaff erected as a symbol of protest against British tyranny — in his village. When the man's neighbors asked why he still needed one and whether he wasn't already free enough, he'd respond, "What is liberty without a pole?"

We don't exactly have Liberty poles anymore (although we run up the Stars and Stripes at every opportunity). Mostly, we choose human talismans of skill and achievement that symbolize who we want to be — the indispensable nation — and where we hope we're heading as individuals: to the top of the heap. Phelps gained fame by winning gold medals for the U.S. at the Beijing Olympics in a frenzy of near perfection. Alex Rodriguez, admired for his excellence as a baseball player, was supposed to help clean up America's pastime in the wake of the Barry Bonds steroids scandal.

When tens of thousands of football fans applauded Sullenberger at the Super Bowl in Tampa, Fla., they were congratulating themselves as much they were the cool, heroic pilot and his crew.