Our two towers: Winning the war on terrorism means confronting Western versions of Saruman

http://www.worldmag.com/subscriber/displayarticle.cfm?id=10203 ^ | Gene Edward Veith

[Caleb1411]

Ping

[big'ol_freeper]

Ping

[Lil'freeper]

ping!

[cake_crumb]

I always believed that Hitler was Tolkein's inspiration for Sauron.

[troglodyte]

Very interesting and insightful post! But what gives you the notion that "Tolkien was not writing political allegory" - if you throw in a bit of deeply-felt religion, that is precisely what he was writing.

[NewRomeTacitus]

Those in the Ivory Towers better beware the hyperconservative Ents - slow to anger but unstoppable once motivated. I think I hear some noises coming from the forest of "flyover America" now.

[ecurbh]

Ring Ping!!

The Hobbit Hole :: Troop Support Projects

Anyone wishing to be added to or removed from the Ring-Ping list, please don't hesitate to let me know.

[cake_crumb]

"Those in the Ivory Towers better beware the hyperconservative Ents - slow to anger but unstoppable once motivated."

I agree...actually, they awoke the Ents' anger on 9/11/01.

I really like the minaret and Ivory Tower analogy to the Two Towers, the author was spot on there.

[joesnuffy]

If the Palestinians loved their children half as much as they hate Jews....they could never send them out dressed in explosive vests...to kill themselves and Israeli children...

They certainly would not celebrate such insanity...nor would Saudi Arabia be able to pay them enough to murder their own children in order to murder other children..

So why is it...we support Saudi Arabia anyway...gotta be a reason?

[Corin Stormhands]

But what gives you the notion that "Tolkien was not writing political allegory" -

Actually, Tolkien would tell you that.

[ecurbh]

But what gives you the notion that "Tolkien was not writing political allegory"

Because Tolkien himself said so in the foreward to LOTR:

"As for any inner meaning or 'message', it has in the intention of the author none. It is neither allegorical nor topical. As the story grew it put down roots (into the past) and threw out unexpected branches: but its main theme was settled from the outset by the inevitable choice of the Ring as the link between it and The Hobbit. The crucial chapter, 'The Shadow of the Past', is one of the oldest parts of the tale. It was written long before the foreshadow of 1939 had yet become a threat of inevitable disaster, and from that point the story would have developed along essentially the same lines, if that disaster had been averted. Its sources are things long before in mind, or in some cases already written, and little or nothing in it was modified by the war that began in 1939 or its sequels."

[RetiredArmy]

Winning the war on terrorism means . . .

Smashing the loud mouth, anti-American socialist democrats and all members of the left in the mouth and slamming their stinking watermelon heads against a brick wall if need be and shipping their stinking carcasses to a Soviet gulag in Siberia. Defeating terrorism at home is first in my book and the left and democrats are number one on my list as terrorists of the Republic and Constitution and the American way of life. Leftism and socialism is not the American way. Love of God, Country and the Red, White and Blue are. Not the love of the hammer and sickle and everything Soviet.

[TalonDJ]

That he was or that he was not?

[drjimmy]

Whereas Sauron uses wraiths, dragons, monsters, and his own occult powers, Saruman uses the power of scientific rationalism. He genetically engineers a breed of super-Orcs. He invents gunpowder to blow up fortress walls. He cuts down the forest as fuel for his factories, turning his own once-beautiful realm into a Mordor-like wasteland.

Sorry, but this is just another vapid example of people reading into Tolkien what they want to get out of him. Making gunpowder? Cutting down forests? Sounds a lot to me like a liberal describing corporate interests and the "military-industrial complex." There's a reason the sixties hippies loved "Lord of the Rings" (besides the pipe-weed). By the way, 10 points to the first person who can recall which liberal first used the term "military-industrial complex"--no fair if you have to Google it.

[Little Pig]

Tolkein himself swore up and down that he never wrote the book as an allegory. He simply wanted to write a great story, with the pipedream hope that it might be considered the mythology of the UK, which, he claimed, missed out when the Normans squashed Anglo-Saxon culture on the island.

[Corin Stormhands]

Was not, see ecurbh's Post #12.

Tolkien rejected the notion of political or religious allegory.

[Tax-chick]

One clue might be found in the terrorist taunt that "we love death more than you love life."

Those who are willing to kill others and themselves to make an abstract political statement share a mindset with those who see nothing wrong with aborting children, euthanizing sick people, and using human embryos for medical experiments.

[OSHA]

Check http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/1316165/posts

[stockpirate]

ping