The Cowboy Myth

ANTI-AMERICANISM EMPLOYS A SET OF CLICHÉS as predictable and stale as the conventions of supermarket romance. Every time, for example, the United States acts forcefully abroad to protect its interests, you can bet the farm some pencil-neck in America or Europe will whip out the charge that America once more is acting like a "cowboy."

This charge is usually tossed off with the smug assurance that acting like a cowboy is about the most horrible thing one could do. The ignorant masses might think that the cowboy myth is about qualities such as the courage to risk one's life for one's convictions or to protect others, but what do those oafs know, brainwashed as they are by movies and ads? The right-thinking elites know the real score--the cowboy is the racist enforcer of manifest destiny, a sadistic, genocidal thug, probably a repressed homosexual, and the mythic peddler of cigarettes and pickup trucks and other proletarian accessories.

This misreading of the cowboy myth of course reflects the world-view of what the cowboy himself would call a "tinhorn" or a "tenderfoot," those usually Eastern city-boys who are unable for whatever reason to use violence when violence is necessary to stop evil. Sometimes the tenderfoot is merely a coward who camouflages timidity with principle. Other times he's a naïve idealist who thinks that the protocols of civilized justice and reasoned debate will work in the Darwinian world of the frontier, even though there the rudimentary social structures are themselves either ineffective or corrupt.

The constant theme of the cowboy myth is that such idealism is dangerous, for force is always the tragic choice necessary for destroying evil and protecting civilization. Nor is this choice simple: in the best movie westerns, the cowboy understands that his willingness to use force to protect civilized innocence is itself uncivilized and creates a moral burden, which he must accept and bear. As Alan Ladd says in Shane, "There's no living with a killing."

As such, the cowboy myth is one of the last great expressions of the tragic view of life increasingly absent in our therapeutic world, but necessary now more than ever. We have instead adopted a weird hybrid of Enlightenment and Romantic myths that tells us people are basically good and rational, and only behave destructively because an unjust and oppressive society robs them of self-esteem and causes them to "act out." Reform society, offer therapeutic, esteem-building solace through psychological technique and sensitivity, and then we can create the utopia in which everybody is happy, evil is banished, violence disappears, and all problems are solved through reasoned discourse.

The cowboy knows better. He knows that some people are evil, and their evil afflicts the innocent. Maybe they have an excuse for their evil, maybe they don't, or maybe they're just no damn good, but ultimately what matters is keeping that evil from destroying the good. Reason, law, appeals to morality ultimately cut no ice with the bad guy. He respects only one thing-- overwhelming, devastating and, usually, lethal force. Since the legal and social structures for applying force and judging evil are usually ineffective or corrupt, that force has to be applied by the man (or the woman, like Grace Kelly at the end of High Noon) who is willing to kill for the right.

Our modern tinhorns and tenderfeet, those intellectual deconstructors of every mythology save their own, scorn the cowboy as simplistic. His "good" and "evil" are old-fashioned concepts modern psychological science has shown to be no more real than fairy tales. His dependence on force is crude and primitive, and ultimately more noxious than the evil against which he fights. Better, like the intellectual in his universe of words and ideas, to rely on talk, negotiation, persuasion, and all those other confabs in which the verbal adept shines.

This belief in talking evil out of its evil ways strikes me as peculiar, and one certainly not supported by the evidence of 20th century history. The two great totalitarian threats to human freedom, fascism and communism--whose collective tally of dead is at least 150 million people-- were stopped by force or the threat of force. It was Hitler after all who scorned the GI's landing at Normandy as "cowboys" his panzers would quickly teach a lesson. The next time some Eurocrat sneers about American "cowboys," he should remember that if not for those "cowboys" Europe wouldn't even exist today.

Talk can work with those who respect talk, who share a common tradition of democratic values and rational discourse. It can work with those who don't respect talk if talk is backed up by a believable threat of force. But talk fails utterly with those who scorn negotiation and give-and-take as evidence of weakness. With such people talk merely provides the cover for their aggression and emboldens them into thinking their use of force will succeed. As Jimmy Stewart--the idealistic Easterner who wants to counter evil with reasoned law in John Ford's The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence-- finally learns, "When force threatens, talk is no good."

Again, talk can work when validated by sufficiently deterrent force. But ever since Vietnam, our talk has not been so validated, with the exception of Reagan's build up of potential force that brought the Soviet Union to its knees. Elsewhere we threatened and blustered, we negotiated and bribed, we dickered and haggled, but the message was clear: America will blink and stay its hand. It took the most devastating attack on American soil finally to rouse us from our therapeutic slumber and wake us up to a hard world filled with evil people who need not to be talked to, but killed before they kill others.

Aw shucks. I thought this was going to be a great article. So the author is confronting cowboy myths by citing Hollywood cowboys?

Real cowboys did not pick fights. They--as their daily experience with Mother Nature taught them--were non-confrontational and non-interventionist. Above all they would not interfere in feuds of which they knew nothing.

Contrary to urban myth, the best cowboys did not "break" horses. They persuaded them at critical moments. They respected the nature of horses and didn't engage in fruitless efforts to make that nature conform to their prejudices.

It was not cowboys who fought Indians. It was the US government in one of its many "regulation" and human improvement schemes--schemes which we conservatives know and love so well.

The "violence" practiced by cowboys was always strictly limited--except, perhaps, when drinking. And that is kind of a self limiting activity.

So we can clearly see why the myth of cowboys must reamain just that-a myth.

By the way, cowboys abhorred blowhardism. For example if a "cowboy" loudly declared: "Osama, wanted dead or alive," and then, several months later shrugged and said "We don't really care about Osama," that cowboy would be seen as a callow blowhard....

Oh, and a real cowboy would not concern himself overmuch with contemplation of Evil--especially the purported evil of foreigners in distant lands. There was too much work to be done on the ranch.

Maybe America declined into an Empire because we have waaay too much time on our hands.

Aw shucks. I thought this was going to be a great article. So the author is confronting cowboy myths by citing Hollywood cowboys?

In fact, unless they've changed the plots of the two movies referenced by the author (Shane, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance), they would seem to work well with your stated premise. So what's the beef?

Contrary to revisionist myth, they hardly broke them at all. Not out of any genteel concerns for nature's feelings, but they had a job to do. If the horse would carry you, he was as broke as he was gonna get...

It was not cowboys who fought Indians. It was the US government in one of its many "regulation" and human improvement schemes--schemes which we conservatives know and love so well.

Again, what this has to do with the movies referenced is sketchy. However, I imagine you are taking a more general view. Okay. I'm trying to think of a movie in which I saw cowboys fighting indians, per se.

The Searchers, of course, comes to mind. Were there no skirmishes between settlers and Indians in the west? Amazing...

The "violence" practiced by cowboys was always strictly limited--except, perhaps, when drinking. And that is kind of a self limiting activity.

There is a book my father had, with a journal from one of the earlier expeditions to California (pre-civil war). It describes what these guys did for fun. From the description, it seems that boys will play with boy's toys (knives, guns, and fists) no matter what. Unless of course the journals writer was lying in his journal. I suppose that's possible...

See, this was before WWF. We of the XY chromosome need a bit of raw meet with our tofu, and we'll get it where we must...

So we can clearly see why the myth of cowboys must reamain just that-a myth.

In the first place, who's we?

In the second place, I'd tend to classify it as 'legend' rather than 'myth.' Oh, doubtless there's some embellishing going on. But myth says to me that they never existed at all.

Or, are you stating that there were no such men? Ever?

How did real cowboys feel about complaining about the job before it's done? What would a real cowboy say about someone who, let us say, heckled and annoyed the local sheriff over his apprehending the rustlers but not the gang leader? Especially if the job was in progress?

See, I'd buy your argument here if only someone had said "that's it; we're done, we've won." That hasn't been said. But stand fast, they could disappoint me yet. There's always hope...

Oh, and a real cowboy would not concern himself overmuch with contemplation of Evil--especially the purported evil of foreigners in distant lands. There was too much work to be done on the ranch.

Quite right. And, when the (Injuns, rustlers, outlaws, what have you) came by and killed his family, he'd ignore it. As you said, much work to be done. No time for 'justice,' and all that.

Actually, from all I've read, if you were on the frontier, you were pretty much the police force, fire department, et cetera. Courts, juries, police forces and such come with cities and more civil times. Why should a cowboy bring a man in who he just caught with a running iron, when that means he has to leave the ranch for court. Especially when there are a number of sturdy trees handy.

Maybe America declined into an Empire because we have waaay too much time on our hands.

What you mean 'we', paleface? (thank you, Bill Cosby)

And more to the point; maybe America declined into Empire because Empire is the natural state of man. And the natural action of an empire is expansion. So, if you're right, the next century or so should be interesting.

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