[Core_Conservative]

Awesome Article - Hope it converts someone - even one is a start.

[harleyrider]

bump

[Lunatic Fringe]

We did not lose a single engagement in Vietnam, not one.

Some vets might disagree with this claim....

[fporretto]

Though much here is true, I must dispute the characterization of Apocalypse Now as an anti-war movie.

Apocalypse Now was about contradictions and what they do to men's minds.

Kurtz was driven insane by the contradictions of the war, a war in which America tried to create a viable, defensible South Vietnamese nation without any support from the South Vietnamese themselves, a war in which Vietcong monsters willing to hack off children's arms sheltered among the very people America was trying to defend, a war which the commanders above him would not permit him to fight effectively, even though he could prove that his methods would work. Willard was at the edge of insanity, remaining functional only because he had a mission to focus on. The Dennis Hopper character was perhaps the best give-away that the movie's focus was on the personal deterioration that accompanied sustained immersion in contradictions that enveloping and savage.

In interpreting this masterpiece of a movie, remember that Kurtz himself agrees with the decision to have him killed, and facilitates his own execution. Compare his bludgeoning to death with the exactly parallel sacrifice of the ox by the Montagnards whom Kurtz had gathered around him, while befuddled American soldier Lance Johnson looks on. And regard the exit scene, in which Willard the executioner presents himself to the Montagnards immediately after killing Kurtz, and, instead of taking his life in payment, they disperse.

When rationality fails, all that remains is the Leader's will. When the Leader falls, nothing remains at all.

Apocalypse Now is a fitting cinematic epitaph to the War in Vietnam and the 56,000 brave Americans who died there, vainly trying to defend a country that was not a country, with one hand tied behind their backs and their legs hobbled by commanders that would not permit them to win.

Freedom, Wealth, and Peace,
Francis W. Porretto
Visit the Palace Of Reason:
http://palaceofreason.com

[P.O.E.]

If there was one word I now wished never existed, it's the word "Cool".

Everything and everybody has to be "cool".

If you're a black person in crime-ridden neighborhood you can't turn a local thug over to the police. That's not cool. If you're a smart kid in a failing school, that's not cool, and the thugs will beat you until you conform.

Men on sitcoms are either effeminate or bumblers. Men who are strong and decisive, well, that's not cool. That's being controlling.

War is definitely not cool. War is about the most uncool thing imaginable.

That one I agree with wholeheartedly.

But sometimes you have to do the uncool thing: aka, the right thing.

Coolness can really only be bestowed by others. Look at how the liberal amongst us are obsessed with how they look in the polls (if they're politicians), how they look on TV (if their Hollyweirders), etc. They are overgrown teenagers, still dealing with fear of peer pressure.

Tell you what, now that I'm older, I don't have to be cool. It's the most liberating feeling. I don't have to worry about how I'm dressed, what music I listen to, etc. Of course I obsess with keeping the mortgage paid and my family safe. But I don't have to be cool. I haven't completely descended to "squaresville" - no bermuda shorts, white socks and sandals. But even that really wouldn't bother me, either, now that I think about it.

[buffyt]

Clinton sent more cruise missiles into Iraq during his impeachment trial than were sent during the entire Gulf War. I can't remember a single protest.

EXCELLENT POINT! Where were the protestors then????

[uncbob]

Hollywood believes itself to be beyond war

Not TRUE
Hollywood still loves WWII and fighting Nazis that is why movies like Saving Private Ryan which was a complete farce in its main premise ( that of sending a unit to find private Ryan) is hailed as a GREAT movie with vivid depiction of battle scenes and Black Hawk down and The Patriot are mocked for their ENDLESS BLOOD AND GUTS

The War in the Balkans didn't find disfavor in Hollyweird either

[eureka!]

Great post. What really irks me most about the Hollywood left is the lack of reason and intellectual honesty in their positions. Facts don't matter. Also, the ones who take the lead in their politics (Babs, Cooney, Penn etc.) are not the sharpest tools in the box. Downright dumb they are. Cerebral celebrities are few and far between (Ben Stein is one.) Thanks again for the post....

[DeuceTraveler]

"After the Tet Offensive, the war was won. The North attacked the South and we beat Ho's children back...
You cannot win a war if you don't want to be there. If the military had been allowed to do its work -- if we had bombed the North more definitively -- that would have been the end of it and the Vietnamese people could have started ordering from the Sears catalogue, opening factories to knock off Wranglers, and dancing with "The Disco Duck." "


I don't believe the Tet Offensive could have led to a US victory if we used a more intensive bombing campaign. I think we needed to go north and take over the country instead of sitting on our laurels while the north regrouped. You should never let an exhausted enemy regroup and have the time to learn from its mistakes. But we were afraid of China and a repeat of the Korean War.

[Grampa Dave]

Thanks, I have bookmarked this excellent article.

[merak]

The true madness of Vietnam, however, was not in the jungle -- the soldiers over there were doing their job and doing it well....

The true madness of VietNam was the notion, popular at the time, that it somehow made sense to draft the boy next door and tell him it was somehow or other his patriotic duty to risk being killed or maimed in a political game in which nothing remotely resembling a declaration of war was in evidence.

Not that American presidents don't have to be able to play those kinds of games at times, but you play games with petty cash and a handful of soldiers of fortune, and not with 500,000 draftees and huge sums of national treasure. Ronald Reagan obviously understood that and his presidency will go into the books as a huge success, unlike the cases with LBJ and Nixon.

[Dionysius]

These people are eaten up and controlled by their narcissism. Intelligence doesn't enter the mix. Thank God for those like Mel Gibson who's not ruled by his ego, but by his better instincts.

[HairOfTheDog]

Well, he never did explain to me *why*, as promised in the headline, but his conclusions about the effect of it rings true:

They do not understand that they are enabling and empowering the energies of evil, with their foolish, sophomoric and clichéd rhetoric.

The pacifists actually believe that they can make the enemy love them if they are just nice. They don't understand at all. Battered wives think the same way, and their batterers are rarely inspired by the passivity of their victims, but rather pleased by the power.

[headsonpikes]

"Cannonize" Nelson Mandela.

I can go along with that. ;^)

[sparkomatic]

There's still a few of them out there. When I was in the Gulf #1, I was entertained by Jay Leno and Gerald McRainey aka "Major Dad". I was even on the front page of the "Stars and Stripes" newspaper with Gerald McRainey.
I don't know the political leanings of these two in particular, but they were there.

[First_Salute]

There is more to the equation.

Hollywood actors and actresses also "hate conservatives" because these "artists" do not understand accounting.

The web of intrigue in Hollywood Accounting Generally Accepted Practices but no Principles, is, well, vicious. The artists have long been excluded, in their minds, from the wealth they have believed should be theirs, and they look upon the accountants as tight-wad conservatives.

Nevermind the impatience of these artists to research and find reliable, honest accountants.

Nevermind that these artists sell quite of lot of their souls, in order to "act out," at the expense of their unwillingness to accept as part of their trade, self-discipline in the management of their "personal affairs."

Focusing their mystification upon the ones whom the artists perceive as holding their leash, these artists argue from the particular to the general, that all conservatives are like their opposition: their accountant(s).

Now, we must not be as deceived as these artists, by their own abhorrence of knowing some truth, for actually, many of their accountants are "descendants of the Ottoman Empire" and not conservative, but quite liberal.

In fact, the highest donor dollar contributors to Marxism's 'More Government is the Solution' here, are from "the rich" among the vast left-wing conspiracy (go back and see the FR threads around the 2000 Election, regarding Democrat Donor Dollars).

That's right, big-time lefties (including these artists), donate more to "the left" than big-time righties donate to "the right."

Anyway, the "hatred" is mostly the artists' reaction to their usual misperceptions of who people are, based upon said artists' more narrow lack of appreciation, right or wrong, for their financial masters, who are masters, because such artists give up the freedom to be their own --- no surprises, there!

The loudest of the left-wing artists are the more careless with their money, and in particular, "reading the fine print" of their contracts. They view their financial masters, the accountants, as being extreme threats to their "creativity."

They resent the intrusion but are unwilling to defend themselves; it's easier to blame other people --- no surprises, there!

[WriteOn]

Blindness to evil is itself evil.

[PJ-Comix]

In the overrated and drug-induced film, Apocalypse Now...

Sorry, but it was NOT overrated. Remember the script was written by one of the few conservatives in Hollywood---John Milius.

[dfwgator]

These people are not "anti-war." The only people that are really anti-war are Quakers. These people believe that we are fighting the wrong side. Where were they when Clinton bombed Yugoslavia. Sheryl Crow, Ms. "War is never the answer" went with Hillary to Kosovo. She sure seemed to thing "war WAS the answer" then.