I’ve been thinking about superheroes. Superman might be able to stop crime in Metropolis and Spiderman might take good care of Queens, but they can’t be everywhere all at once. So, they must prioritize. A petty criminal is not a “job for Superman,” but Lex Luthor’s plans for world domination require his full attention. Even our real-life superheroes, our first responders, can’t be everywhere. With 347 million people in the US, and 8.3 billion on the planet, our real-life heroes are often spread extremely thin. They must rely on the rest of us to police ourselves.
Some believe “good guys with guns” are what we need. To be sure, there are many good guys with guns. Again, their problem is one not of good intentions, but of time and space. A good guy must be there with his gun at the right time and in the right place, but the odds are against that. Also, good guys with guns must have adequate training and skill, or they could easily make the situation worse, especially if law enforcement officers show up. Then the good guys might be difficult to separate from the bad guys.
This is in no way an argument against the right to bear arms, simply an observation about how it’s not easy for good guys to be where they need to be. Movies and TV shows often imply that a hero will appear when you need one. But most of the time this is not the case. And Good Samaritans are sometimes injured or killed trying to help. This does not mean we shouldn’t try. If the strong don’t try to protect the weak, what will we have left of civilization?
A big problem with “good guys” is that “good” is often hard to define. Sometimes those we thought were good turn out to be bad after they’ve had a taste of real power. It might not be that “absolute power corrupts,” but that bad guys posing as good guys are drawn to it. In other words, we don’t really know what will happen until after a guy gets power. They might promise to use it “to make life better,” but what if they use it “to make their life better” – or richer? Literature is full of examples of people who were believed to be saviors who ended up using the same selfish, corrupt, brutal tactics their predecessors used. In real life, those who depose dictators often become dictators themselves.
Lately, a lot has been said about explorers and founding fathers. Many people think of them as “good guys,” deserving praise and honor, but that doesn’t make them good. Exploiting and killing natives, as well as owning other human beings as chattel property are not “good” actions. Yet, none of us are entirely good either. “As it is written: No one is righteous; No one understands; No one seeks for God. All have turned aside; together they have become worthless; no one does good, not even one.” [Romans 3:10-12]
We all like to think of ourselves as good. We like to think of our founding heroes as good too. The trouble is that history is complicated. As much as we owe the great explorers and national founders a debt of gratitude for their courage and perseverance, we must acknowledge that they sometimes did horrible things.
Harry Truman made one of the most difficult decisions in history – to use two atomic bombs to end a long, deadly war, and possibly save lives by shortening it. Truman had a sign on his desk that read, “The Buck Stops Here.” He felt it was important for a president to take responsibility for his decisions. He didn’t blame them on someone else. He acknowledged that he had chosen to unleash a doomsday weapon on the world. To this day, the US is the only nation to have used nuclear bombs in wartime. Is it possible that good men sometimes feel compelled to do bad things? All I can say is that I’m glad I wasn’t called on to make that decision.
I remain convinced that none of us are truly “good guys.” Posterity will be the judge of how good or bad we were. We can nevertheless respect people like Truman, who accepted responsibility. We can also respect people who admit their mistakes. I was taught that “it takes a big man to admit he is wrong.” Nevertheless, it’s easy to see the mistakes of the past with 20-20 hindsight. We can criticize those who made them. Some even try to rewrite history as if those mistakes didn’t happen. However, in the end, we find that all of us are a mixture of good and bad. Let’s try to be good guys anyway.
This raises an important point about how much easier it is to divide people into “good” and “bad” than to deal with the complexity of real human beings. I especially agree with the importance you place on responsibility—our choices matter, but so does being willing to acknowledge when we were wrong. History becomes more useful when we can recognize both admirable achievements and serious failures instead of pretending one cancels out the other. Perhaps being a “good guy” is less about believing we are good and more about continuing to examine our choices and trying to do better.
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