>From www.antiwar.com/goldstein/pf/p-g072400.html
}}>Begin
Airstrip One
by Emmanuel Goldstein
Antiwar.com
July 24, 2000
The Patriot Sucked
Actually, I quite liked the film but I like audience figures better
YOU ARE SEEING WHAT?
"You're going where?" my leftwing (but surprisingly intelligent) friend said.
Surprised, and more than a little amused by this reaction I repeated that I was
going to see the Patriot. "You're giving money to Mel Gibson?" Well, yes. I was
surprised, for while not the self-hater that many lefties are I would not have
put him on as a rabid English nationalist. Moreover, if the American Revolution
was not a victory for progress towards the left in some sort of way, what in
heaven's name was? I am saying this as a royalist, proudly British, religiously
minded person; republican, cosmopolitan, agnostics should see this far more
clearly. So why has a film that states that the American Revolution was a good
thing so raised the hackles in a society that largely accepts that it was on
the wrong side of this scrap?
RATIONAL REACTION
Why has a film that in the end makes a uncontroversial point, that the American
Revolution was a hard fought and bitter war for a just cause, met with so much
derision over here? Brits don't care about the same things that the American
liberals care about, we don't care about guns and kids, its Hollywood and we're
used to it. The blood and soil allusions go over our head, as do any Teutonic
links to axe wielders. So all those conservatives who have said that criticism
of the Patriot is akin to supporting Hilary Clinton are simply wrong (and a bit
silly). In addition, it is not sour grapes; Gandhi shows that we are actually
rather good at making films bashing ourselves, thank you very much. As far as
anti-Americanism goes, this really does not wash in a market that takes just
about any Hollywood blockbuster going.
THE TRUTH MATTERS
The main complaint is actually that the film tells fibs. Now before I get one
more e-mail saying "hey it's entertainment" just let me know what was remotely
entertaining about the church burning? Now it may be a synonym for Waco, but
Waco was done by the Feds not the redcoats. Let me assure you that I fully
recognise the difference between an inaccuracy (the French banner with Parisian
red in it – before the Revolution?), a genuflection to political correctness
(those black farmhands were servants – yeah, right) and downright pick-a-fight
slander. The church burning was not a jokey moment, and The Patriot is not a
lightweight film. It is intended in part to show that the American Revolution
actually meant something, and to make up an atrocity means that many critics
can now say that it means nothing. That in itself was a bad, bad thing. Truth
matters because history matters. If we do not understand from where we spring,
we will not be able to steer where we are going. This may sound more profound
than my usual offerings (which usually means I've unconsciously plagiarised it
from somewhere) but it doesn't make it false. The church burning was wrong
because it didn't happen. Now I know we did have prison hulks, but to argue
that this justifies the church burning is stupid. It argues for the inclusion
of prison hulks (or slave beating or tarring and feathering loyalists) and not
of fictitious church burning. I mean look at the title of this. If I called it
"The Truth Matters" or "Well, actually I rather liked the Patriot and would
recommend seeing it" you wouldn't have even clicked on this column, would you?
However, it does not make it a better column, and in the long term will
probably detract from its value.
BACK TO WACO
Waco is rather apt, in a strange sort of way. Do you remember Waco? You know
the real, live burning of a church with real, live innocent people being
burned. Well remember the sort of untruths that started that off. They were
abusing children (untrue). They were planning a takeover of the city
(laughable). They were manufacturing drugs (if they were they'd obviously sold
too many to the BATF). That they were led by an unusual chap was true and that
they held some, well, unorthodox opinions may have been true but they did not
justify this massacre. That other religious groups in history have done bad
things also does not justify this waste of life. You see, the truth matters,
and how many of the people who watched this film will really believe that the
English did not burn the church down?
GUIDE TO LIKING THE PATRIOT
Now my British readers may be feeling ignored here, so I will say now; you,
too, can like this film. Just follow some simple instructions:
Remember that the American colonists were more English than the German king
they were fighting.
Tarlington looks just like Peter "file" Mandelson, the Labour "spin doctor" and
future foreign secretary. That explains a lot.
The battle scenes are gory but fantastically filmed.
Gibson actually acts well. Better than Braveheart any way.
The sickly sentimental bits do not really come until about two thirds of the
way through.
Ignore the gratuitous inaccuracy of the church burning.
Blair hates the film (probably because of Mandelson appearing in it)
The film conveys, if one-sidedly, both the very real constitutional issues
involved and the love of land and neighbour that compelled people to fight (on
both sides).
Gibson was a reluctant warrior and this film in no way romanticises war.
In the end, we were wrong on this one, and we deserved to lose.
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A<>E<>R
Integrity has no need of rules. -Albert Camus (1913-1960)
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The only real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking
new landscapes but in having new eyes. -Marcel Proust
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The libertarian therefore considers one of his prime educational
tasks is to spread the demystification and desanctification of the
State among its hapless subjects. His task is to demonstrate
repeatedly and in depth that not only the emperor but even the
"democratic" State has no clothes; that all governments subsist
by exploitive rule over the public; and that such rule is the reverse
of objective necessity. He strives to show that the existence of
taxation and the State necessarily sets up a class division between
the exploiting rulers and the exploited ruled. He seeks to show that
the task of the court intellectuals who have always supported the State
has ever been to weave mystification in order to induce the public to
accept State rule and that these intellectuals obtain, in return, a
share in the power and pelf extracted by the rulers from their deluded
subjects.
[[For a New Liberty: The Libertarian Manifesto, Murray N. Rothbard,
Fox & Wilkes, 1973, 1978, p. 25]]
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