Heroes represent a society’s values and aspirations. If you don’t know who they value, you don’t know what they value. That’s why it’s important to take a good look at the people the Democrat party has put in its heroic pantheon.

Americans used to have a collective sense of cultural heroism. That is, if you’d asked them to name those Americans whom they admired, you’d get politicians (e.g., the Founding Fathers, Abraham Lincoln), warriors (e.g., Alvin York, Audie Murphy, every Medal of Honor recipient), and, sadly, a few Hollywood stars, as Americans confused onscreen personas with offscreen reality.

No matter, though, whether the heroes really were heroic or if they were merely handsomely parading shadows on the screen, the virtues these people represented were the same: Courage, honor, and a commitment to individual liberty. (And yes, that’s still true for those Founding Fathers who were slaveholders because all recognized slavery’s evils even when they were weak enough that they could not disentangle themselves economically from the system.)

Over the years, we added new heroes to the American pantheon, for we recognized that there were minorities and women who embodied these same virtues: Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman, Clara Barton, Martin Luther King, etc. Again, these people were courageous and morally clear about the things that mattered to American greatness. Martin Luther King may have had a seedy private life, but in the public sphere, he showed unmatched courage and articulated the values around which this country was built and that we had, until then, failed to bring to all citizens.

As Democrats shifted leftward and embraced identity politics, they added to the pantheon people chosen less for the great things they embodied and more for their identities. Suddenly, we’re celebrating Harvey Milk, an ephebophile who campaigned against dog poop to become America’s first openly gay elected official, and Cesar Chavez, a fervently anti-illegal immigration Hispanic labor agitator. Still, these were people of accomplishment, if not traditional virtue.

But somewhere along the line, the whole notion of virtue dropped out of favor with the Democrats. Perhaps they were influenced by the anti-hero movies of the 1960s, films such as Rebel Without A Cause and Bonnie and Clyde. Being virtuous was uncool and boring. Getting back at “the man” was where the energy was.

But mostly, of course, the Democrats have been influenced by their utter disdain for America. As Groucho Marx sang in Horse Feathers, “Whatever it is, I’m against it.” If Americans valued the Founders, they were slavers; if they valued Lincoln, he had to be gay; and the various war heroes were (pick one) racist, sexist, homophobic, etc., etc.

In the last decade, however, leftists have gone into overdrive when it comes to choosing anti-heroes. The newest batch hasn’t consisted of cool, amoral loners who nevertheless challenged actual societal abuses. They’ve simply been career, low- to med-grade criminals, men and women who died committing crimes.

You know the names: People like Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, and, of course, the sainted George Floyd, a convicted felon who once held a gun on a pregnant woman’s belly, abused drugs, passed counterfeit money, and died from all the drugs in his system. This was a bad man who lived a life without courage or virtue and most certainly did nothing to benefit Americans.

One would think this was the Democrats’ “hero” abyss, but it turns out that they could still sink lower. Now, in their passionate commitment to thwarting Trump, they are adamantly defending admitted murderers, illegal aliens who have committed violent crimes (including murder), and legal aliens who openly advocate for terrorism, whether the genocide of world Jewry, the death of all Christians, or the overthrow of America (or all three, of course). Nothing more perfectly brings this home than a single meme:

Meme; creator unknown

I opened this essay by saying heroes represent a society’s values and aspirations. If you don’t know who they value, you don’t know what they value. The Democrats’ heroes are murderers, antisemites, anti-Christians, and anti-Americans. Don’t listen to their fine speeches. Look at their heroes.