by hilzoy
"12. The Dark Knight (2008): This film gives us a portrait of the hero as a man reviled. In his fight against the terrorist Joker, Batman has to devise new means of surveillance, push the limits of the law, and accept the hatred of the press and public. If that sounds reminiscent of a certain former president -- whose stubborn integrity kept the nation safe and turned the tide of war -- don't mention it to the mainstream media. Our journalists know that good men are often despised by the mob; it just never seems to occur to them that they might be the mob themselves.
13. Braveheart (1995): Forget the travesty this soaring action film makes of the historical record. Braveheart raised its hero, medieval Scottish warrior William Wallace, to the level of myth and won five Oscars, including best director for Mel Gibson, who played Wallace as he led a spirited revolt against English tyranny. Braveheart taught that freedom is not just worth dying for, but also worth killing for, in defense of hearth and homeland. Six years later, amid the ruins of the Twin Towers, Gibson’s message resonated with a generation of American youth who signed up to fight terrorists, instead of inviting them to join a “constructive dialogue.” Liberals have never forgiven Gibson since."
"I'm second to none in praising him on his surge leadership. But on a whole host of issues --including water boarding, tax cuts, and the freedom of speech -- he’s not one of us."
I just liked this particular juxtaposition. According to the National Review, conservatives fight for freedom, but what they mean by "freedom" is wholly unclear. It's certainly nothing I recognize.
I have this quaint belief that freedom involves the rule of law
That's not a quaint belief, it is a modern one. The founders of your nation decided the rule of law wasn't working, so they began murdering the enforcers of that law.
And it worked.
Posted by: now_what | February 14, 2009 at 06:19 PM
This still isn't as stupid as Brazil coming in at #22.
Posted by: J. Michael Neal | February 14, 2009 at 06:24 PM
now_what:
No, they had a different theory about the source of law, which they spelled out quite explicitly.
-----
Hilzoy:
I quite like DKR, and I'm not convinced it's conservative. They try torture two or three times in that movie, and EVERY time, it's a horribly bad idea that blows up in their face. Rachel Dawes actually died because they tortured the Joker until he gave them misleading intelligence.
Posted by: Anthony Damiani | February 14, 2009 at 06:31 PM
Braveheart is a popular movie among "American youth" in 2009? Anyone else get the feeling the NR writers are the sort of folks who think 'jiggy' is current slang?
Posted by: mythago | February 14, 2009 at 06:37 PM
Poor, silly, confused, quaint Hilzoy; obviously no one ever explained to you that freedom is freedom to, not freedom from.
Posted by: Nombrilisme Vide | February 14, 2009 at 06:43 PM
No, they had a different theory about the source of law, which they spelled out quite explicitly.
That's extremely amusing. If someone else has a different theory about the source of law and spells it out quite explicitly, may they expect to be accommodated? Or only if they have enough troops?
Such silliness. Might made the murderers who founded your nation right, not anything else.
Posted by: now_what | February 14, 2009 at 06:43 PM
Better yet, you should see number 22, Brazil:
No sense of irony. No shame. That is today's National Review.
http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=MTkyNjE5NTg0ZTU3ZjYyMjI2YzU2YTVlMmM2MzBjZGM=
Posted by: calipygian | February 14, 2009 at 06:47 PM
Pandagon had a good post on this nonsense, including the following two rebuttals to the Corner's posts on the two movies you mention, one of which I've slightly bowdlerized:
(Jesse didn't comment on the surveillance and due process issues the movie raised)The Dark Knight
Braveheart
Posted by: Warren Terra | February 14, 2009 at 06:52 PM
William Wallace was an illegal combatant who ended up in the 14th-century equivalent of Bagram Airbase, tortured to death because he believed he had a right to fight back against foreign invaders/foreign occupation.
William Wallace was Scotland's Osama bin Laden. Minus the aeroplanes.
Posted by: Jesurgislac | February 14, 2009 at 07:03 PM
Anyone living in the US today who believes they are living in a tyranny has more information than they can effectively process. Rule of law is, in fact, one of the conditions we expect to experience when we live with freedom. I now have a high comfort level that the rule of law works in the US and is the appropriate avenue for citizens to pursue to protect their freedom.
I have some trouble trying to apply the concept in a governing environment where the expectation that following the rule of law will work is low. If, for example, some of the events we observe going on in Mexico related to drug cartels and gang violence were to spill over into the US, and the law enforcement here were as ineffective as it apparently is in Mexico, and citizens' efforts to get their government to control those conditions failed, I can see a valid reason for citizens to take other measures to protect themselves.
This is why we have the Second Amendment, not for hunting. And it is also why conservatives encourage the government to take actions early enough to curb these kinds of developments before conditions get beyond its control.
Posted by: GoodOleBoy | February 14, 2009 at 07:04 PM
I'm not sure I see that collection of movies, as a body, as particularly conservative, or emblematic of conservative thought.
It looks like just another cultural land-grab to me.
Posted by: Slartibartfast | February 14, 2009 at 07:10 PM
'Our journalists know that good men are often despised by the mob'
Unfortunately this is frequently distorted into 'if the mob despises you that means you must be doing the right thing'.
(BTW do NRO types continue to use sexist language - 'men' when 'people' would be much more accurate, or would they call Thatcher a man? - purely as a childish nose-thumbing to us despised liberals?)
Posted by: Ken Lovell | February 14, 2009 at 07:20 PM
I now have a high comfort level that the rule of law works in the US and is the appropriate avenue for citizens to pursue to protect their freedom.
I'm curious. Have you ever been arrested?
Posted by: Elemenope | February 14, 2009 at 07:22 PM
FWIW, also, the thesis of TDK seems to pull the rug out from under the conservative theory of fundamental human depravity; that if it weren't for the necessary evil of government and its enforced social rules, we'd all be slitting each others' throats. The boat-scenario at the end concluded with people being unwilling to kill others to increase their own safety.
I did find it interesting that the boat that used democratic processes to choose their course of action chose "wrong", whereas the boat that simply abrogated authority to a really big dude chose "right". The first boat only shifted to the "right" column when the decision was eventually in one guy's hands.
Posted by: Elemenope | February 14, 2009 at 07:28 PM
Whenever I encounter anything from the National Review these days, I can't help but imagine that what I'm reading has been written by the folks who ran the New Frontiersman in "Watchmen."
Posted by: Dave C (the uppity newcomer) | February 14, 2009 at 08:21 PM
I now have a high comfort level that the rule of law works in the US and is the appropriate avenue for citizens to pursue to protect their freedom.
But only citizens? The Constitution refers to citizens only to spell out who's eligible to vote or hold office. Rights to habeas corpus, freedom from unreasonable search and seizure--not restricted to citizens.
What's your comfort level there, with the non-citizens?
Posted by: josefina | February 14, 2009 at 08:44 PM
Well, I'll give them Red Dawn. John Milius is a certified fascist gun nut (quite talented nonetheless) who epitomizes the inherent ideological contradictions of contemporary US "conservatism", as well as its irrational, juvenile and compulsive nature.
Posted by: novakant | February 14, 2009 at 09:11 PM
"I have this quaint belief that freedom involves the rule of law"
funny, I always kind of thought that was the whole point of the movie... how the english were above the law...
Ya think?
Posted by: tom p | February 14, 2009 at 09:27 PM
It's always been a mystery to me how Braveheart makes any sense whatsoever to anybody. Wallace is fighting for the "FREEDOM" to... live by the rule and at the whim of a Scottish king. A king, btw, whose ideas were so much in sync with the English king Wallace was fighting against that the Bruce actually was allied with the English and against the Scots.
Which I suppose is an even better case for it being a top conservative movie, because it's a sterling example of how you can sell anything you like to Americans, up to and including a war to install a monarch, if you call it a fight for "freedom."
Posted by: jenniebee | February 14, 2009 at 09:56 PM
Rule of law is, in fact, one of the conditions we expect to experience when we live with freedom
This is completely opposite of what happened when the US was created. The rule of law was broken, those who tried to enforce it were killed.
Was America less free after the revolution than before it?
Posted by: now_what | February 14, 2009 at 10:06 PM
Rule of law is not the only thing expected when a people live in freedom. Equal treatment under the rule of law is also important. The colonists were objecting to being subject to taxes imposed by the English parliament without representation equal to other English subjects. The people in the colonial states were on the road to greater freedom after the revolution.
I think Mel Gibson's 'The Patriot' better represents a conservative viewpoint of a conflict joined to gain freedom than does 'Braveheart'. Since I have ancestors who fought with the patriots at Kings Mountain and Cowpens, I believe the movie tracks history better than 'Braveheart'.
Posted by: GoodOleBoy | February 14, 2009 at 10:44 PM
Were the founding fathers free or weren't they, GoodOleBoy?
They certainly had no respect for the rule of law, they revolted against it. You say they had reasons for disobeying the law. What criminal doesn't?
May I choose which laws to follow, and discard the others? What law specifies the valid reasons for disobeying the law?
Posted by: now_what | February 14, 2009 at 11:08 PM
That's extremely amusing. If someone else has a different theory about the source of law and spells it out quite explicitly, may they expect to be accommodated? Or only if they have enough troops?
Such silliness. Might made the murderers who founded your nation right, not anything else.
The ancient Chinese had this philosophy certainly. If an uprising overthrew the Emperor, than clearly it he had lost the mandate of Heaven, and the revolt was legitimate. Otherwise, the uprisng was mere treason.
The view of the American founders was British rule in the colonies had no basis; it was illegitimate.
In essence what they said isn't: we reject law. It was: we reject the idea that the British government has the power to make laws to govern us; thus these are not "law" in the sense of something with moral force that needs to be obeyed. In order to do this, they needed to construct an entire philosophical edifice as to where law comes from.
To wit:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.
The founders were very deeply concerned with legitimacy of authority, and the rule of law.
Posted by: Anthony Damiani | February 14, 2009 at 11:24 PM
In order to do this, they needed to construct an entire philosophical edifice as to where law comes from.
No, in order to do that, they needed guns and bullets and help from a foreign navy.
You might well decide that your government is not a moral force to be obeyed. Let us know how that works out for you.
America was founded by people that would rather kill than pay their taxes, and like all people who don't want to pay their taxes, they were quite inventive in coming up with reasons why they should not have to.
They won the war, so they are considered heroes. If they had lost the war, they would be considered common criminals. Gaining freedom rarely involves the rule of law.
Posted by: now_what | February 14, 2009 at 11:36 PM
Well, now_what, some of them were not as free as they wanted to be. As I said, some of them did not want to pay taxes they thought were imposed on them unjustly by the Parliament. Not all law is just. Civil rights efforts have advanced under this same principle. There was certainly not agreement among the colonists on this issue of freedom, sometimes referred to as self-determination, and that resulted in the American Revolution being a civil war as much as a rebellion against British rule. I try to avoid dealing too much in absolutes, and I suspect any person's freedom may be measured in degrees, rather than just saying one has it or doesn't. So the next issue related is tolerance. How much tolerance does any given person have for any given level of perceived loss of freedom. Another related concept is custom. To what degree of freedom is a person accustomed. So it can get complicated rapidly. I don't know you, but if you are a young person, you will likely in your lifetime be faced with conditions where you will have to decide if your individual liberty in the life circumstances you find yourself is important enough to you to cause you to want to take action, just as I and my ancestors have done. Not all decide to act, they just take what comes. To each his own.
Posted by: GoodOleBoy | February 14, 2009 at 11:40 PM
Of course, things might have been different if King George III didn't possibly suffer from porphyria
Posted by: liberal japonicus | February 14, 2009 at 11:56 PM
some of them were not as free as they wanted to be
Who is? And what does that have to do with the rule of law?
As I said, some of them did not want to pay taxes
Many don't. And what does that have to do with the rule of law? If the law says you have to pay taxes, you either pay your taxes or you say screw the rule of law. It's that simple. America's founders said screw the law, we're not paying taxes and we will kill anyone who tries to make us pay taxes.
And then they followed through.
Posted by: now_what | February 14, 2009 at 11:57 PM
now_what, you can legitimately comment on events - the founders objected to laws they deemed unjust, challenged the existing authority, managed against all odds to prevail in the conflict initiated by the British, and established the greatest nation in the history of humankind.
You venture into areas you cannot possibly have knowledge of when you question the motives, morality, and nobility of the American patriots. Your conclusion regarding the founders' respect for the rule of law among other things is not simple but rather simpleminded.
Posted by: GoodOleBoy | February 15, 2009 at 12:12 AM
the founders objected to laws they deemed unjust
They very violently objected to laws they deemed unjust. They killed the people sent to enforce those laws.
Your conclusion regarding the founders' respect for the rule of law among other things is not simple but rather simpleminded
This is not open for argument. The founders did not follow the rule of law. They broke the law and killed the people sent to enforce it.
I know, I know, facts are stupid things.
Posted by: now_what | February 15, 2009 at 12:17 AM
This reflects a fundamental misunderstanding of the revolt, methinks. America didn't object to taxation so much as arbitrary, enforced taxation. Pre-revolution America wanted to be British subjects, with representation in the British Parliament, and thus have some say-so about how they were taxed.
Unfortunately, England had other ideas, and badly needed the money to pay for their war against the French. And England rejected American appeals to be treated as full subjects, rather than a colony.
So saith Alan Guelzo, as I understand him.
Posted by: Slartibartfast | February 15, 2009 at 12:49 AM
now_what's notion of 'rule of law' and hilzoy's notion of 'rule of law' seem to be quite at odds. Hilzoy's view, because it requires freedom in order to qualify as 'rule of law' and freedom requires certain conditions outlined in Hilzoy's posting that did not exist in the colonies prior to the American Revolution leads me to conclude that now_what's assertions regarding the patriot's actions are without force and meaningless. The British tyranny under King George III cannot be viewed as operating under 'rule of law' by any reasonable and right thinking person.
Posted by: GoodOleBoy | February 15, 2009 at 12:50 AM
I think the American colonists were very pleased that England never offered representation in the Parliament to the colonies.
Posted by: GoodOleBoy | February 15, 2009 at 12:54 AM
America didn't object to taxation so much as arbitrary, enforced taxation
Yes, if I must be taxed, the unenforced taxation is much to be preferred.
Posted by: now_what | February 15, 2009 at 01:04 AM
The British tyranny under King George III cannot be viewed as operating under 'rule of law' by any reasonable and right thinking person
If it is left up to individuals to decide what is reasonable and right, very few laws will be obeyed.
The founding fathers did not obey the law, they smashed it.
You can spend all night coming up with just so stories explaining why it is ok for one group to ignore the law and not ok for another group to do so.
I think they did the right thing.
That's the point here, I object to people talking about "rule of law" like it is an absolute good.
Some laws just suck, and they need to be flouted.
Some governments suck, and they need to be overturned.
When someone says freedom involves the "rule of law" it makes me tense up, there is a natural contradiction between the two.
Posted by: now_what | February 15, 2009 at 01:16 AM
And that's why we have the Second Amendment, in case we have to do it again.
Posted by: GoodOleBoy | February 15, 2009 at 01:19 AM
When someone says freedom involves the "rule of law" it makes me tense up, there is a natural contradiction between the two.
I think the term does not mean what you think it means.
Posted by: Anthony Damiani | February 15, 2009 at 03:25 AM
As a disinterested observer I have to say I think now_what has won the argument by a country mile.
The rule of law is a meaningless concept in the abstract, without a theory of state power to explain where the law comes from in the first place and the circumstances, if any, under which it can be broken.
If you follow Rousseau you believe the state is always right because it reflects the general will and should therefore never be disobeyed. If you are a Hobbesian you also believe that the state must always be obeyed no matter how oppressive and unjust its behaviour, because without the state we will quickly degenerate into anarchic violence (think Iraq 2004 - 7).
However if you accept the Lockean view you believe that the state should only be obeyed as long as it has the willing support of the citizenry, which can be withdrawn at any time. Needless to say this theory of the state gives rise to all sorts of difficult questions such as who decides when the state has lost the confidence of its people and individuals are justified in dusting off the trusty M-16 under the bed so they can be latter-day minutemen.
Without a clearly-enunciated theory of state power, talk of the rule of law is pretty waffly and as shown on this thread, means all sorts of different things to different people.
Posted by: Ken Lovell | February 15, 2009 at 07:02 AM
If I were throwing around goofy platitudes like established the greatest nation in the history of humankind. -- as if there were an objective measure of such things!! -- I'd probably hesitate to call others "simpleminded."
And that's why we have the Second Amendment, in case we have to do it again.
Yeah, we saw how well that worked out when confronted with a government that claimed the right to make US citizens disappear forever without trial, to spy illegally on its own citizens, etc.
Posted by: Phil | February 15, 2009 at 07:51 AM
But seriously, if the day ever comes when "we have to do it again," good luck with that. I'm sure that privately-owned firearms would do a world of good when a bunch of squaddies with body armor and M-16s come rolling through the door backed up with an M-1.
I support the Second Amendment, and believe private citizens have a right to own firearms, but the maintenance and development of a standing military has far outpaced and possible effectiveness the Second Amendment could possibly have in support of a citizen revolution.
Posted by: Phil | February 15, 2009 at 08:24 AM
Wolverines!
Posted by: liberal japonicus | February 15, 2009 at 08:46 AM
Hey, a rousing mix of gung-ho martial enthusiasm, and nostalgia for those simpler times of yore, when men were men, women were women, and none of these folks were actually, you know, alive.
And, oh yeah, really buff semi-naked guys with swords and spears!!
Not that there's anything wrong with that.
My personal favorite comment:
A welcome glorification of Reagan’s decision to liberate Grenada in 1983, the film also notes how after a tie in Korea and a loss in Vietnam, America can finally celebrate a military victory. Eastwood, the old war horse, walks off into retirement pleased that he’s not “0–1–1 anymore.”
Our new national motto:
"If you set your sights low enough, you can always find somebody whose ass you can kick."
These are very strange people.
Posted by: russell | February 15, 2009 at 09:20 AM
Russell, it's a good thing Eastwood's character wasn't sent to Lebanon instead.
Now_what, there's a big difference between a citizen taking the risk of civil disobedience, and flouting a law with which he disagrees, and a government flouting a law which constrains it from violating human rights. I don't think our ancestors flouted the law particularly -- they thought certain laws inapplicable, and didn't follow them. The lead-up to the revolution was pretty legalistic, what with the Boston massacre trial, and petitions to the king, and all the rest.
NR -- Glad I don't read it. What's funny, though, is that anyone would equate GWB with Wallace, rather than with Edward I. (Or is GWB really more like Edward II??)
Posted by: CharleyCarp | February 15, 2009 at 02:08 PM
jenniebee - remember that the NR folks are the same ones who applauded the idea of a "unitary executive," which is "king" without the god-anointing part. So of course they're fans of a movie about supporting a monarchy.
Posted by: mythago | February 15, 2009 at 03:43 PM
I don't think our ancestors flouted the law particularly -- they thought certain laws inapplicable, and didn't follow them.
Oh, they didn't treat the law with contempt, they just ignored laws they didn't like. I see. What would it take in your opinion, then, to be seen as treating the law with contempt?
Am I, also, allowed to pick and choose the laws that apply to me without being seen as treating the law with contempt?
The lead-up to the revolution was pretty legalistic
They committed treason. It is as simple as that. I am glad they did so. If they had lost the war, they would have all hung separately. The winning side gets to write the history, but a criminal is a criminal.
Posted by: now_what | February 15, 2009 at 03:47 PM
I'm sure that privately-owned firearms would do a world of good when a bunch of squaddies with body armor and M-16s come rolling through the door backed up with an M-1.
Hezbollah laughs at you. Bury an M-16 in the mud for a week, dig it up, see how well it works. Do the same thing with the latest version of the AK. See which works best. You can bury an AK next to the house of whichever neighbor you hate the most. No one here but us simple peasants.
The guy you thought was a retard who took metal shop in 11th grade can make an AK. An RPG is not some advanced alien technology.
If you think improving technology always favors those in power, you're wrong on the specifics. It did until about 1940. Now it's going the other way.
Two AK-47s providing cover for the RPG. Cheap and effective, easy to make, easy to hide, easy to move. The Israeli army in Lebanon, that's your history lesson for the day.
The squaddies ran home with tucked tail and decided to beat up on the helpless Gazans instead.
Pathetic cowards.
Posted by: now_what | February 15, 2009 at 06:13 PM
"Liberals have never forgiven Gibson since."
Let's skip right over that whole raving antisemitism thing.
I'm going to guess that GoodOleBoy doesn't have a very dark-skinned appearance. Do I win anything if I'm right?"Since I have ancestors who fought with the patriots at Kings Mountain and Cowpens, I believe the movie tracks history better than 'Braveheart'."
A dubious achievement to be sure, given how awfully Braveheart tracks history (painting their faces blue? Giving them kilts? Changing one of the most famous battles in British history, the Battle of Stirling Bridge, to somewhere with no bridge? Braveheart's entire romance taking place with a woman he never met, and the thwarting of the non-existent romance [the marriage to the Prince of Wales] taking place three years after the death of Braveheart? Some tracking of history: why not give the Scots muskets and spandex?)
But as regards the accuracy of "The Patriot," since when did the British go around locking people into barns and setting them on fire? That movie turned the British into Nazis.
Here's what an actual highly reputable professor of American history made of it:
Btw, I also like the list of 25 "runner-up" "best conservative" films: speaking as someone who read the script of Hamburger Hill long before it was filmed (and worked on a very long list of Vietnam War books, both nonfiction history, and fiction), and worked on finding the right author to novelize it, I can say there's nothing either "liberal" or "conservative" about it: it's just a straight-out narrative of the real fight to take that hill, told via the POV of some fictional characters; there's nothing whatever political about the film, unless the fact that it's about a battle is inherently conservative.And Thank You For Not Smoking is conservative? Did these people see the film? The one that ends like this?
This is pro-conservative?Posted by: Gary Farber | February 15, 2009 at 08:04 PM
Just back to ObWi after three days from hell.
It all started Thursday when I got home from work, got the mail -- and when I saw Homeland Security/Immigration Services on the return address -- I knew this was what we'd anxiously been waitng for: my wife and son's permanent Green Cards, their conditional resident status of the last five years expiring on April 7.
Kept quiet and got a bottle of wine ready while my wife was downstairs cutting one of her girlfriend's hair.
Finally, at 10:30 p.m. when she finished, I handed Olga the envelope to open and uncorked wine.
What a cruel joke.
Instead of the Green Cards we applied for a year ago this month, we got a nasty notice that our application was incomplete -- that we had not supplied enough proof that our marriage was genuine -- and, if it wasn't corrected to the agency's satisfaction by March 24, INS could begin deportation proceedings.
My wife went numb.
I got angry, the wine taking on a different taste, my own government having worded a letter that made our marriage -- our family -- of the last five years sound like a scam.
Told Olga this is why we should have hired a lawyer last year to fill out the latest minefield of crap the INS requested, another application that almost seems by design to trip up even honest, law-abiding Americans and their immigrant spouses.
Told the wife this is no time for do-it-yourselfing and randomly picked an immigration attorney out of the phone book (her address was closest to ours) and she returned my 2 a.m. message at noon on Friday.
Four hours later, I was in her office knowing we were in the good hands of a lefty, Bush-hating, crusading attorney who just happened to have graduated 3 years earlier from the same high school I did in 1980. In no time, after breezing through the materals I had brought, Ms. Attorney was as aghast as we were as to why we had been so rudely threatened (and turned down).
Bad timing didn't help, she said, saying that the Bush Administration's philosophy on immigration was known as a "Culture of No" in her circles and that it had no problem turning down applicants on the simplest and most innocent mistakes -- compassionately conservative, they were not.
So, today and yesterday, my wife and I assembled an avalanche of paperwork and pictures. Ms. Attorney said it's her custom to overwhelm our immigration system that is awash with red ink with a filing that is at least 3 or 4 inches thick -- the bigger, the better the submission, the INS apparently feels.
I liked this lady from the jump, spotting Al Gore's "Assault On Reason" on the bookshelf next to her framed degrees from the University of North Carolina and Pepperdine. She was funny and smart and clearly has seen everthing during two decades running a solo law practice.
Now -- thanks to the tax return that came early this year -- I can give Ms. Attorney her $1,000 retainer on Wednesday, the day after I see my ankle doctor to determine what type of surgery is necessary for me to start walking normally again and relatively pain-free.
All of which made me want to throw up at the very notion of a list of movies that smug right wingers feel were made just for them.
Fnck the so-called conservative movie list Hilzoy linked.
Anyone care to show your liberal stripes and come up with a Top However-Many List of Good Lefty Movies?
How about:
****Three Days of The Condor: a Redford-Dunaway pairing truly worthy of four stars, and its two stars dashingly and paranoidly running away from a CIA assasin because numbers-cruncher Redford witnessed the innocent killing of an office filled with his co-workers.
***Spy Game: Redford again foiling the CIA as a retiring analyst who fools the department's big shots by bringing protege Brad Pitt home safely after the agency thinks Mr. Jolie had gone rogue in the Middle East.
****The Candidate: Redford as an idealistic young, and somewhat reluctant, naive U.S. Senate candidate who upsets The System and wins. Best political election race movie ever.
****All The President's Men: Hell, I may as well make this an all-Redford list, whose leading-man good looks have belied his great skill as an actor, I've always felt.
****Reds: Let's get away from Redford and shine a spotlight on fellow Hollywood lefty Warren Beatty, whose epic about journalist John Reed's love affair with Communism and a blushing and ballsy Diane Keaton's Louise Bryant breaks my heart every time I watch it.
****Missing: Jack Lemmon breaks my heart even more trying to find his son, played by John Shea and based on the true story of American journalist Charles Horman, who disappeared in the bloody aftermath of the U.S.-backed Chilean coup of 1973 that deposed President Salvador Allende. Lemmon, whose character is an old-school conserative businessman, overshadows the film's politics with his fatherly anguish.
****Norma Rae: Sally Field goes all pro-union on us and makes us, once and for all, forget she was The Flying Nun, who was probably a liberal, too.
There must be more, right?
Please list a few.
Posted by: bedtimeforbonzo | February 15, 2009 at 08:05 PM
"America didn't object to taxation so much as arbitrary, enforced taxation."
Does "enforced" do any work in this sentence besides be redundant? Do many people object to unenforced taxation?
"I think the American colonists were very pleased that England never offered representation in the Parliament to the colonies."
There is no "the" there, of course, there were a variety of rules, but what you think is just a wacky misrepresentation of the facts. Here's a book on the subject.
Why do you think the slogan was "No Taxation Without Representation?, rather than just "No Taxation"?The American demand was for actual voting represenation at Westminster, rather than the theory of "virtual representation" put forth to them. If you don't know this, you've been taught some very strange "history" indeed.
"And that's why we have the Second Amendment, in case we have to do it again."
And when the time came that the right to habeas corpus was actually taken away from people, on whim of the president, and the president issued an order authorising himself to, purely on his own, indefinitely detain anyone he thought it was a good idea to detain, the defenders of the Second Amendment were nowhere to be found.
It took the much-reviled-by-conservatives Supreme Court to stand up for our basic constitutional rights.
Posted by: Gary Farber | February 15, 2009 at 08:27 PM
Bedtime: that's horrible. I'm so sorry you had to go through that. Let us know how it turns out, and if there's anything we can do.
Liberal movies: Bob Roberts, whose politics make me think 'gee, that's pretty heavy-handed', but which has truly excellent music. (If you don't know it: the premiss is that a conservative Bob Dylan appears, becomes famous, and runs for Congress; the movie is an alleged documentary about his campaign. Tim Robbins plays lead, and wrote a bunch of wonderful songs for it, which he never released because he thought they would be taken the wrong way. Sample lyrics:
"We are fighting for the children
We are fighting for the poor
We are fighting for self-interest
We'll fight forever more"
(Sung by his Joan Baez type, in a haunting voice.)
Fun.
If I were as irony-free as NR, I'd suggest, oh, Schindler's List: in which Schindler shows that we can fight against the cruelty and lawlessness of a rightwing government. But I'm not, so I won't.
I will, however, nominate Gandhi.
Posted by: hilzoy | February 15, 2009 at 09:01 PM
Ok, that was poorly worded. "arbitrarily levied" may have been a better choice, but I'll like as not find out otherwise.
This wasn't directed at me, but this is exactly what I was getting at: American colonials weren't initially all that interested in being independent; they just wanted to be British subjects with representation in Parliament.
But my bare familiarity with this part of our history is nothing compared with Gary's, so I ought to just shut up and let him talk.
Posted by: Slartibartfast | February 15, 2009 at 09:13 PM
Liberal movie: Matewan, but then I like John Sayles. Would like to see a review by Sebastian. ;-)
Posted by: 243 | February 15, 2009 at 09:24 PM
Anything by Ken Loach
Posted by: liberal japonicus | February 15, 2009 at 09:51 PM
"Inapplicable" has a different meaning from "I don't like it."
One can say "I don't believe that the British Parliament has the legal authority to dissolve Massachusetts town governments" and then convene town meetings. Calling this picking and choosing which laws to obey, or treason, is simplistic.
Of course if the Brits had won, they would have executed the military leaders as traitors. Were I captured by Al Qaeda, I might be beheaded as an infidel. In a certain frame of reference, they'd be right. In my own, fidelity is a big deal, and so the label is easy to reject.
Say what you want about the legalities, but the British Army in Boston in 1775 was in a cultural position a lot more like the US Army in Iraq than like the US Army in Kentucky. Why? It was a foreign post, and they were foreign troops, sent to maintain empire.
Posted by: CharleyCarp | February 15, 2009 at 10:54 PM
Gary,
Your history professor correctly notes that the massacre of the people locked in the church never took place, but I find his defense of Colonel Tarleton feeble and disingenuous since the Colonel had ample credit for an actual massacre of patriots surrendering under white flag at the Waxhaw Massacre from which the now infamous military term 'Tarleton's Quarter' is derived and used to denote the action 'take no prisoners'.
The professor also belittles the very effective military actions taken by Generals Morgan and Greene against Cornwallis in South Carolina and North Carolina. Greene's strategy to wage a battle of attrition against British and loyalist personnel and logistics affected the ability of Cornwallis to challenge continental forces when he finally got to Virginia. General Washington was not involved directly in the southern campaign except by his excellent selection of Nathaniel Greene to command.
I can accept his criticism of the film, but not his version of the history.
Posted by: GoodOleBoy | February 16, 2009 at 12:05 AM
@btfb: Best wishes in your and your wife and child's immigration struggle, and congratulations on your choice of lawyer.
Liberal movies: Hmm. Silkwood? El Norte... A World Apart...
Left-wing movies are all documentaries, or quasi-docos. But great ones:
The Times of Harvey Milk - I'm sure the Hollywood version's great, and I'm looking forward to seeing it. But this is how it really was, not just Cleve Jones' edited recreation.
Harlan County, U.S.A. Barbara Kopple.
Full of painful ironies for those familiar with the subsequent history of many of the players.
The Willmar Eight - women bank workers in a Minnesota town get fed up with training men to be their bosses. They strike.
And the great one:
Salt of the Earth 1954 - blacklisted in the land of the free. One of the great lucky accidents of my life was the chance to meet and thank Paul Jarrico. Here are some brief remarks from the last day of his life.
Posted by: Nell | February 16, 2009 at 12:41 AM
There must be more, right?
"It's A Wonderful Life".
btfb, best of luck with the INS. My brother-in-law, who is married to a Colombian women, is dealing with the same shite right now.
Sounds like you're in good hands now. Press on, you'll get there.
Posted by: russell | February 16, 2009 at 11:15 AM
1770s: the British colonial government restricts the expansion of the colonies west, in response to the concerns of Native American tribes, who had fought on the British side against the French - a move which infuriates the land-hungry colonialists
1773: The British government undercuts the highly lucrative North American tea smuggling trade by allowing the East India Company to ship tea directly to the colonies; the result is cheaper tea for the population, but massive financial harm for the smugglers
1775: Summersett's Case - the British High Court rules that slavery cannot be permitted under British law - the first step in undermining the system of slave plantation farming which had made so many colonial landlords rich
1776: Led by a collection of wealthhy farmers, plantation owners and tea smugglers, the colonies draw up the Declaration of Independence, which cites grievances including the imposition of laws on the colonies by the British government, British tax policy and the failure of the British to attack the Indians in order to seize their land for further settlement
Any questions?
Posted by: ajay | February 17, 2009 at 05:39 AM
Man, bedtime, that's harsh; Me and the wife just sent in the paperwork for that a couple of months ago, and got back a receipt and a one year extension letter to cover her during the processing after her provisional green card expires (In a few weeks.)
For what it's worth, I'm told that, if the INS rejects you, if you both show up together at the appeal hearing prevailing is essentially a done deal.
"But seriously, if the day ever comes when "we have to do it again," good luck with that. I'm sure that privately-owned firearms would do a world of good when a bunch of squaddies with body armor and M-16s come rolling through the door backed up with an M-1."
My own opinion, for what it's worth, is that there's a world of difference between using a professional military against somebody else's insurgency, and using it against your own. SOP against an insurgency tends to turn a nation into a basket case that can't support the military needed to execute those tactics.
I think it's true that the decision to maintain a standing army violates the chief way a militia was expected to secure our liberty: By rendering the dangerous standing army unnecessary. None the less, I think an armed populace does somewhat secure our liberty still, by discouraging casual use of force against said citizenry... The stakes in such confrontations being so much higher if the population is armed.
And the way the government treats that explicitly guaranteed right does serve as an excellent canary in the mineshaft, revealing nasty tendencies before they mature too much to do anything about.
Posted by: Brett Bellmore | February 17, 2009 at 06:49 AM
Brett B.: there's a world of difference between using a professional military against somebody else's insurgency, and using it against your own
No, there's not; it's a difference of degree, not kind. It corrodes the society from which the military is drawn, just not as quickly as in the repress-one's-own-population scenario.
My mantra has been and remains: If you're doing counterinsurgency, you're somewhere you shouldn't be.
Insurgency is the failure of a political process, as war generally is. It arises because legitimate political demands are denied any room for expression or satisfaction.
It's often the case, though, that once things get to the point of insurgency, the process takes on a dynamic of its own, and the political meaning and outcome mutates well beyond the original points of dispute. [This bears on ajay's comment above.]
The non-military method of quelling an insurgency is to create conditions that allow for the political demands on which the insurgency is based to be expressed and to some extent satisfied.
Posted by: Nell | February 17, 2009 at 04:09 PM
"None the less, I think an armed populace does somewhat secure our liberty still, by discouraging casual use of force against said citizenry... The stakes in such confrontations being so much higher if the population is armed."
I don't understand how this reflects reality at all. Practically every rinky-dink village now has a militarized SWAT team of their own, and said teams invading the wrong homes, and gunning down innocent people is a story that happens somewhere in the U.S. several times a year. The fact that more people are armed only seems to make for more of these incidents.
It doesn't justify such incidents in the slightest, of course, but the presence of guns doesn't deter the use of force against the citizenry in the slightest: where, exactly, has this ever happened?
And BTFB, awfully sorry to hear about your INS problems; sympathies.
"Insurgency is the failure of a political process, as war generally is. It arises because legitimate political demands are denied any room for expression or satisfaction."
I think this may be an over-generalization. Look at the Naxalites, for example. I mean, yes, there are legitimate grievances, but there are legitimate grievances in the majority of countries on the planet, and it doesn't follow that an armed insurgency is a moral or sensible response, and if it isn't, then sometimes an armed counter-response by a government may be a necessary part of responding to an insurgency.
That is, I don't disagree with what you wrote, and I may be misreading what seems to be an implication that in responding to an insurgency, armed force is never justified. If you don't mean such an implication, forget my point here.
"The non-military method of quelling an insurgency is to create conditions that allow for the political demands on which the insurgency is based to be expressed and to some extent satisfied."
Who would disagree? But sometimes if a bunch of armed people are running around shooting government officials, and terrorizing people, even if they have perfectly legitimate grievances against the government, shooting back may be occasionally necessary.
Posted by: Gary Farber | February 17, 2009 at 05:04 PM
btfb,
Best wishes in your struggle with the INS.
Since I haven't seen anyone else nominate this for the list of liberal movies, let me ad: Dr. Strangelove
Posted by: ThatLeftTurnInABQ | February 17, 2009 at 05:41 PM
You liberals are going to lead us into a mine-shaft gap, and the loss of the purity and essence of our natural fluids.
Posted by: Gary Farber | February 17, 2009 at 06:00 PM