How many times have you heard the admonition “Don’t be a hero” in any given circumstance involving danger? To the extent it’s meant as a caution against foolhardiness and the kind of bravado sought for bravado’s sake, it’s wise advice. There’s nothing praiseworthy in risking your life and others’ when the object is impossible or vainglorious.

But I’ve lately come across a set of stories, related in Mark Steyn’s book, After America, in which the writer catalogs a frightening number of instances when the admonition became not just a caution, but a twisted rule. The author points to stories from Great Britain over the past decade:

In May 2010, the Daily Mail reported that a woman was drowning in a Glasgow river. Despite the dire state of affairs, the police only held the crowd back rather than attempt to save her. In the end, the officers watched as three university students—two boys and a girl—jumped into the river and collectively dragged the woman to safety.

When asked to explain, the spokesperson for the department said that it was the Fire and Rescue Service who had the responsibility for saving the woman, not the police. The officers were only following procedure. While the spokesperson praised the youths for their “heroics,” he also commended the officers for following protocol.

Standing on the shore, watching the woman drown as three twenty year-olds risked their own lives was a laudable thing?

This was not an isolated incident. A few years earlier, a ten year-old boy drowned in Greater Manchester. The boy had jumped into a pond to save his sister, who was rescued by some fishermen even as the boy went down in the process—literally and figuratively—since this all happened under the watchful gaze of police officers. They’d recused themselves from duty because they were not properly “trained” in such matters. Headquarters then applauded their lack of effort as in keeping with regulations.

To make matters worse, in the very same year, a Perth Fire and Rescue veteran jumped into a raging river to save a drowning girl. But rather than being cheered for his success, he was subjected to disciplinary action by his own service. Tam Brown later said that as a father, he couldn’t stand by and let the girl drowned just because there was a rule requiring that he let someone better qualified save her.

Things only get more horrific. Steyn reports: “In 2008, Allison Hume fell sixty feet down an abandoned mine shaft. An 18-strong rescue crew arrived, but the senior officer said that a recent memo had banned the use of rope equipment for rescuing members of the public. It could only be used to rescue fellow firefighters. So Alison Hume died, in compliance with the memo.”

And just so we don’t get the idea that such thinking is a peculiarly British malevolence, the same thing happens here. In 2010, a fifteen year old Seattle girl was savaged by a crowd at a bus station. The girl had hoped that standing next to some security guards would keep her safe. The guards said they’d been trained not to interfere and were—as you can probably guess by now—commended by their superiors.

Of course, it goes without saying that there are plenty of officers who would have done otherwise in these circumstances. But the trend of the things just related is nevertheless mind-boggling. It’s a sad indictment on reality when you feel sheepish about wishing someone would be a John Wayne in these cases, not an administrative automaton.

When did procedures and protocols like these short circuit the human instinct to help another member of the herd? Must we consult committees and sound out study-groups about “optimum risk avoidance” before we dare to provide help?

Whenever I pass over the Fourteenth Street Bridge here in D.C., I see a sign in memory of Arland Williams. In 1982, he was aboard a plane that crashed and dumped its passengers into the frozen Potomac. Time and again, when rescue helicopters dropped lifelines down to the dying people, Williams passed the line to another. Ultimately, he succumbed beneath the ice.

That’s a life and a death to emulate.

But in a nauseating contrast, Steyn relates the sinking of the 1994 ferry Estonia in Swedish waters. Forty-three percent of the survivors were young men under twenty-four. Only five percent of the women made it. One lady with shattered legs was reported begging for a life jacket, but none of the hale young forty-three percent could be bothered with that; they were too busy stepping over children to get to the railing themselves, as the news stories informed us.

I find all this disgusting, and it’s no argument to snap back: “Oh, you’d do the same thing…you’d be the first to run.” True as that may be, as Steyn suggests, isn’t it better to fail a heroic norm than to have a norm that makes us morally-castrated bureaucrats or self-preservationist cowards?

Isn’t it better to be disappointed in yourself for not living up to a noble standard than to have no standard at all, or worse yet, one that puts you in the lifeboat first—and both expects and receives praise for such a thing as a matter of “survival instinct” or “good policy and protocol”?

I’d say it’s better to live with a code like Arland Williams’—one you may fear you’ll fall short of, but at least hope you’ll live up to when the time comes; either live up to or die trying.