[Betaille]

Tolkein was a hard-line conservative. I don't know why this question is even up for debate.

[Tribune7]

That's a good website.

[lizma]

Isn't the more important question - "Was he gay?" /s

[Stringfellow Hawke]

Theoden sounds like a conservative to me, at least the one in the movies. It's been too long to recall the one in the books.

Any how, his reply to Saruman when Saruman asks for peace, Theoden tells him there will be peace when Saruman is dead, I think that's perfect conservative logic. Perhaps I'm reading too much into that?

I figure a liberal would give Saruman a slap on the wrists, a lit tap is more like it, and then let him go.

[Corin Stormhands]

ring ping

[Corin Stormhands]

Quite simply, LOTR is conservative.

Good is good. Evil is evil.

Right is right. Wrong is wrong.

And the truth is important.

No way you can spin that into lie'bralism.

[HairOfTheDog]

Tolkien is way above pandering party platforms, ... But I think the answer to who the themes ring truer with is clear on Free Republic, where there is a very devoted following of LoTR fans, and DU, where it is scarcely mentioned.

[sockmonkey]

From the article's footnote:

None was as bizarre, btw, as that of the Ecuadorian writer Luis Yerovi. Out of the raw material of Tolkien's epic, he created a whole new storyline, with America as Mordor, the WTO, the World Bank and the IMF as Ring Wraiths, Blair and other western leaders as so many Sarumans, Fox News as Wormtongue, western consumers as orcs, and free trade as the One Ring to Rule Them All. To crown it all, the author observed that he "cannot help but wonder whether Mohammed Atta and the 18 hijackers … had considered themselves to be analogous to the members of the Fellowship of the Ring. In their eyes, it is possible that Mt. Doom, the heart of Saurons' empire, was synonymous to the World Trade Center and Pentagon, the symbolic heart and muscle of America's imperialistic empire." Both Frodo and Atta, you see, "attacked these centres in their epic struggle between "power" and "freedom"." As they say in California: whatever dude!

---

Sockmonkey thinks that Mr. Yerovi has spent too much time in front of a Palantir.

[Billthedrill]

I do not honestly think that "liberal" or "conservative" are reliable labels in this context. What LOTR is, most of all, is a work about choices and moral values, and about the fact that even the silliest, most self-serving individual can find himself faced with the deepest of moral choices and the knowledge that the outcome for him personally might well be one of sacrifice so that those he loves may enjoy what he gave up. Frodo, in that sense, embodies the broken, gassed, shells of men with whom Tolkien served in the trenches of WW1.

It is the moral failure of the "progressive" wing of liberalism that leads us to the mapping suggested in the article. Old-time Democrats such as Humphrey and Jackson would have had no problem with the stark identification of good and evil in LOTR because it was second nature to them, as it is to everyone uncontaminated by moral relativism and a desperate desire to deny the existence of evil. That is a craven, non-judgmental approach to human discourse that would have Frodo toss the ring into a ditch in the certainty that no one who could find the ring could be any worse than those who had.

None of these notions are foreign to what we loosely term liberalism. They are, however, foreign to the ideologues who will say anything for power, in the hope that nothing they could say could be any worse than what their opponents do. For them Tolkien's book is silly, and a lot of them have said so.

[teeman8r]

i may be wrong, but LotR is just a movie...

it must be liberal, cause only they would place such importance on media.. ie farenheit 9-11...

just kidding... loved the movies... will reread the books... and can't wait for the sequels that tell where the elves went to...

teeman...

favorite part in the books-- baromir's demise... lost something in the movie... perhaps his change of heart... while fighting...

[SaltyJoe]

HA! Within the decade, and if Christ doesn't come back beforehand, evil men will try to pursuade the public that J.R.R. was a raving limp-wristed homosexual. I'll bet one American dollar on that (and will be happy to lose it if it never comes true)!

[Cicero]

I've said often that it's a BIG MISTAKE for conservatives to let the liberals drive them into opposition to genuine efforts to preserve the environment.

As already noted, just because the environmental organizations were hijacked by leftists doesn't mean that cleaning up polution and preserving natural beauty is a leftist concern. The only thing wrong with the leftist environmentalists is that they have no common sense and no sense of priorities. Rather than making fun of environmentalism, we need to take it back from the crazies.

Tolkien was indeed a faithful Catholic. He was also a lover of nature. Nature is the work of nature's God, and its beauties are His gift. Man is entrusted with stewardship of nature, a biblical idea.

Tolkien was NOT a laissez-faire conservative. He believed in duty, honor, responsibility: the freedom to do the right thing, not the freedom to do whatever you please.

[GVnana]

America as Mordor, the WTO, the World Bank and the IMF as Ring Wraiths, Blair and other western leaders as so many Sarumans, Fox News as Wormtongue, western consumers as orcs, and free trade as the One Ring to Rule Them All. To crown it all, the author observed that he "cannot help but wonder whether Mohammed Atta and the 18 hijackers … had considered themselves to be analogous to the members of the Fellowship of the Ring. In their eyes, it is possible that Mt. Doom, the heart of Saurons' empire, was synonymous to the World Trade Center and Pentagon, the symbolic heart and muscle of America's imperialistic empire." Both Frodo and Atta, you see, "attacked these centres in their epic struggle between "power" and "freedom"."

I knew there was a reason why I can't stand Tolkein freaks.

[Former Dodger]

*Ping...thought this might interest you