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]

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. —•

[Caleb1411]

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[big'ol_freeper]

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[Lil'freeper]

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[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]

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[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]

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