The way we commemorate history is often – too often – by celebrating an individual with a statue, a place name, a holiday. Still, maybe the age of individual heroes is fading. Cesar Chavez is only too useful an example: too many people made over into heroes did things that should have disqualified them. Sometimes one person as a writer, a preacher, a visionary inspires the many to do the work of changing the world. And maybe democracies are antithetical to heroes, at least heroes as people put on a pedestal and presumed better than the rest of us.

Source: The Guardian March 31, 2026 17:31 UTC