FOR THOSE of you wondering why there were no classes Monday, we were commemorating George Washington's birthday. Abraham Lincoln's birthday, incidentally, was last Tuesday.

Last year, I marked Lincoln's birthday with a certain bravado. At dinner, I toasted "the noblest man to have ever graced this continent."

I was greeted with scorn. One person asked, "When is Eugene Debs' birthday?" I'm the last person you'd want to ask that. Some one else informed me that Lincoln was a tyrant.

AND THERE it is. Not knowing that we need heroes, we debunk them. Pale and sickly scholars, incapable of heroism, reveal the "truth" about the men we would do well to revere.

George Washington--a hero? Please, they whine. Washington was an eighteenth century Reagan, (who, by the way, lacks intellectual sophistication). Washington cut an impressive figure, sure. But Alex Hamilton really ran the show.

As for Lincoln, the moaning continues, he was a "self-made myth." Those school yard taunts about his height haunted him. The Civil War was simply his attempt to overcome a deep-seated fear that he was inadequate as a man.

One woman who recently received tenure in the Sociology Department has written a long, silly book attributing every momentous event in history to peasants.

Did you seriously think Washington had something to do with the American Revolution? That's a laugh.

He who understands peasants understands all.

I have nothing against peasants. Some of my favorite ancestors were peasants. Let's just say I have doubts about the extent to which they shaped history.

BERTHOLD BRECHT expressed the contemporary view best: "Unhappy the land with heroes." Since Brecht wrote many things, so much of it stupid, permit me a correction: Miserable the land without heroes.

Fashionably thinking individuals have co-opted Brecht's argument. They contend that to call one man nobler than another leads inevitably to... (Please read the ellipsis as an ominous allusion to Nazism.)

This argument ranks with the typical argument against censorship. Once one bans sadomasochistic homosexual child pornography, it is said, it won't be long before you're banning Plato.

I've heard it said that it is not difficult to distinguish Playboyfrom Plato. I cannot imagine that it is much more trouble distinguishing between Hitler and Lincoln.

DEMOCRACY IS not incompatible with heroes. To the contrary, democracy presupposes heroes.

Revering men like Lincoln ensures that the American people will forever be up to the challenge of republican self-government in his speeches, we come to understand the nobility of the American project, that of conceiving a nation in liberty.

The noble Lincoln was heroic precisely because he defended the people against others who would tyrannize them. With the power of a Caesar, he played the role of an anti-Caesar.

Though they rejected his senate bid in 1858, Lincoln never rejected the people. In 1860, the people discerned his greatness and made him their president.

TODAY, HOWEVER, we are encouraged to look for greatness only within ourselves. Self-perfection used to be the work of a lifetime. Today, it is what happens after a weekend at the fat farm. Character used to mean demanding more of oneself than one could expect of others. Today, it is riding one's biorhythms to a new high of self-awareness. Being a hero used to involve the self-discipline needed to overcome daunting odds. In our post-mood ring society, being a hero is being yourself.

For almost all of us, that's not much of anything.

Heroes set a standard for the rest of us. The value of revering heroes does not lie in attaining such a standard. Most of us won't. It lies in the strivings to which their heroic ideal inspires the rest of us.

Lincoln was the highest democratic man. By studying him, we glimpse a peak of human excellence. Small-souled men throw spit-balls at the mountain. Ignore them. Join the others embarking a climb. They may not reach the top. They may not become Lincolns. But they just might become serious human beings. That's no small distinction.

So the next time you're accosted by a sociology professor peddling the joys of debunking heroism, don't give in. Just say no.