[PvK]

Originally posted by President Elect Shang:
... Tillman is a hero! So are all the others in our armed forces. They are heroes because they chose to join. He didn’t go over to die, he went to serve. Damn the Webster definition of a hero. If you save a baby in a burning car does that make you a hero? If you help a trapped man after a storm does that make you a hero? Yes it does and why? Because you chose to help and he [Tillman] is a hero, along with all the other men and woman of the armed forces, because he choose to serve!

So if the word "hero" must now mean anyone who joins an army or who helps someone in need ... what words would you use to explain the difference between say, Audie Murphy or John Paul Jones, and random soldiers, or anyone who helps anyone else out?

I suppose (even without taking hyperbolic language abuse by commerical news media into account), the word "hero" has long been used in a very broad range of ways, to mean everything from, as you say, simply helping someone else or doing something dangerous and selfless, to tales of Hercules.

The problems then are abuse and misunderstanding. It's not as a specific term as some people take it when it bothers them. The speaker needs to make clear what they mean, and the listener must understand, or major misunderstanding can easily occur. When either doesn't appreciate the subtlety, and has fixed but different ideas about the term, it gets worse. When the media is over-using charged terms just to boost the hype level, it gets out of control. For the local news, any unexpected death is an excuse to bring out the word "tragedy".

Seems to me the words don't have much meaning by themselves in a modern context where they've been abused so much. Arguing about whether someone is a "hero" or not usually boils down to a difference of definitions, which the arguers mis-cast as a disagreement about something more concrete.

PvK