High Noon in Colorado

Forgive me if I take a different lesson from the Aurora massacre. In that audience of several hundred, there were actually four young men who threw themselves in front of the young woman they were accompanying, to save her life. (As I understand, one girl was sitting between her boyfriend and her brother, both of whom shielded her. The brother lived; the boyfriend didn't.) What is it that gives young men such courage? And how is it that, after a generation of hearing the elites scoffing at "machismo," it still exists in the hearts of men? And--most challenging of all--could it only have happened in America, or perhaps only in the American West? (I don't recall that in the Norway massacre a year ago, there were any incidents of human shields.)

Here they are, three heroes in whom the spirit of High Noon lived on into the 20th century: