Posted on 01/07/2005 12:20:53 PM PST by Caleb1411
J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings triology is about the epic struggle of "the free folk of the West" to ward off and defeat the temptations and the enemies that would destroy them. As such, the movie version has had a powerful cultural resonance for the free folk undergoing the war on terrorism. Now all three movies are available in extended DVD versions, forming a single 12-hour saga that sheds light on one of the strangest phenomena of our current war: the alliance between our left-wing intellectual establishment and radical Islam.
In Tolkien's epic, all of Middle Earth is under attack. Sauron, the demonic Dark Lord whom the free folk assumed had been defeated long ago, is back in force, determined to wipe out everything good in Middle Earth and make it like his own hellish realm of Mordor.
But Sauron has an ally from within Middle Earth, who represents that civilization's highest accomplishments. Saruman the White is the head of Gandalf's order. He is an intellectual, a scientist, a technologist. Saruman decides to support Sauron. 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.
The "Two Towers" of the trilogy's second title refer to the Dark Tower of Sauron and the White Tower of Saruman, the two different but allied threats against which the free folk must contend.
Tolkien was not writing political allegory, but similar alliances have characterized the last two centuries. When Hitler assaulted Western civilization, he had enthusiastic allies in Western intellectuals, such as the existentialist philosopher Martin Heidegger, the modernist poet Ezra Pound, the deconstructionist literary critic Paul de Man, and Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger. With the next threat of Communism, Western intellectuals and artists were even more open in siding with the Soviets working to bury us.
Today, much of the Western intellectual establishment supports the Islamic terrorists. This goes beyond simple opposition to the war in Iraq. (Tolkien also depicts the response of hopeless pacifism, as in King Theoden—still under the influence of Saruman's agent Griga Wormtongue —when he laments, "Hasn't there been enough killing?" and refuses to attack the enemies at his door.) The hardcore leftists want the Iraqi insurgents to win. Filmmaker Michael Moore calls them "minute men" and "freedom fighters." Left-wing websites celebrate the killing of American soldiers and claim solidarity with Muslim revolutionaries. Some of the most virulent anti-Israeli rhetoric can be found in American and European universities.
Western leftists are feminist, pro-gay, and morally permissive. And yet, they are willing to make common cause with radical Islamists who brutally repress women, punish homosexuals by execution, and impose the harshest of legalistic codes. Just as Sauron would eat Saruman for dinner, Western intellectuals would not last one day under an Islamist republic. And yet, the hatred Western intellectuals have for the civilization that brought them into existence is so great that they will embrace its every enemy. How can this be?
University professors and students have long been deconstructing the great achievements of Western civilization, chanting in anti–liberal arts demonstrations, "Hey, hey, ho, ho, Western civ has got to go." The vogue of multiculturalism has meant criticizing Western culture in favor of non-Western cultures. Many Islamist terrorists are graduates of these universities, which schooled them well in the evils of the West.
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.
The Saurons and Islamists hold to a religious nihilism, full of a spiritual energy that is wholly negative. The Sarumans and left-wing intellectuals hold to a secular nihilism that is equally negative. The free folk must confront the two towers, both the Minaret and the Ivory Tower. —•
Saruman did create some sort of bomb (the book is not as clear as the movie is), and used it to breach the walls of Helms Deep. He also started clear-cutting the forest around Isengard, and had actually started earlier in the book than he did in the movie. In the book, the Ents were already aware of Saruman's cuttings before the arrival of Pippin and Merry, though in the book many of the clearcuts were simple maliciousness on the part of orcs.
It was not allegory. Tolkien said so.
It was JUST a good story. Jeez...
Also, Orthanc was a dark tower, made of black stone, and Saruman originally was a good guy with the same charge to combat Sauron, but was turned to evil by the lure of the One Ring.
When Saruman realized that Sauron would probably acquire the ring first, then he allied himself with Sauron.
Eisenhower?
Tolkien was not writing "allegory", that is, he was not writing a fake "history" that paralleled what was going on in 1944 (he started writing it in 1938, and in 1944 was writing the Two Towers section of the novel).
However, he was writing imagined "history"...and did note that historical stories had APPLICABILITY to the present day world.
So anytime we confront evil, we see similarities. Islamofascism is no different from the evils of Naziism or communism: They seek to take over the world with power to remake simple human beings, and to replace God (Eru in the books) with themselves...there is no place in these utopias for simple hobbits who seek merely a normal family life and simple pleasures like beer and parties...
Ironically, Tolkien compared Saruman with the materialistic West, including the USA, which gloried in mechanics and industry but ignored nature and having fun (hobbits). That is why the "greens" love him...
Very well put!
I really think you have that backwards. No doubt their was some "political" allusion, but IMHO, it is a timeless Biblical good vs evil epic and very much in the the Catholic tradition --- evil is 100% evil yet seductive and powerful far beyond the ability of flawed humanity to resist. Only the most innocent, pure and humble spirit could possibly defeat the evil.
Although not written as an allegory, there are times in history when the themes of The Lord of the Rings leap out at us from history books or front pages. Today is one of those times.
I think it is appropriate to ask ourselves "How is the war on terror like the war against Mordor? If we were casting the roles from current public figures, who would most fit in what role?"
Tolkien had no way to know that we would be in a struggle with Islamic terrorists. However, evil often has the same face, and his novels are eerily prescient in their themes.
Ike it was.
Brilliantly put.
You know, now that you mention it Michael Moor does remind me of Griga Wormtongue.
But I wouldn't call Ike a "liberal." He was correct on his warnings about the "military industrial complex" that tended to spend for the sake of spending as opposed to spending to meet realistic threats. Ike understood the military better than an president and he understood the Congress and their penchant to pork.
Although Ike's warning was picked up and distorted by the left to oppose any spending, his point was valid. Kennedy (of the "Missile Gap" election) ignored Ike's warning and opened the spigots, Johnson was overwhelmed by providing guns and butter, (sweet & sour pork) and in the 70's "butter" (social pork) won. By the 80s, we needed radical spending to catch up from the 70s maladministrations and come the 90s, we over reacted in the opposite direction with the so-called "peace dividend" diverting military spending to feed the powerful and ever hungry "bureaucratic-institutional complex."
Now, Rummy is taking heat from both the left and right for attempting to rationalize threats and spending. Maybe 50 years after Ike asked for some rationality on the most deadly serious portion of the budget, we will take his words seriously and we will quit making the DoD budget a political yo yo.
You make fun of this, and then comment in another post about the implications of the relationship between Sam and Frodo? Just what is it that YOU are reading into that relationship? I read about two characters who were a team in bringing about the destruction of the Dark Lord, but reading your statement makes me think you read something a bit more salacious! Vapid indeed!
AMEN! I agree!
I always thought of Moore more as the Uruk Hai type...
The Islamakazis are obviously the orc hordes and IMO the author is correct in analogizing the left as Saruman, I'd like to add Denethor to that analogy, because so many people have run around for so many years, thinking only THEY understood the threat of terrorism. Then when it happened in the US, those same people insisted that we all might just as well give up now and do whatever the terrorists want because everything was all over.
He was writing a myth, in which certain truths about human nature and human interaction are captured in a fictional setting which has no direct correspondence to any actual events.
Eisenhower, right?
Exactly how the Urak-hai are made is not described, but GE is as good a guess as anything else.
I don't see much "reading into" of Tolkien here, jmho.
No way. Moore is too fat, lazy, and (my impression) and chicken to be an Uruk-hai. Maybe he could be a rabble-rouser amongst the Easterlings or Wild people.
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