Thomas loves World Trade Center

Cal Thomas praises to the skies Oliver Stone’s soon-to-be released movie World Trade Center, about the 9/11 attack. He says it’s an honest, pro-American movie, which would surely make it unlike anything Stone has ever made. Nevertheless, Thomas’s enthusiasm was so infectious that I was starting to believe him. But then he said this:

Movies like “World Trade Center”—and “United 93,” which preceded it—don’t come along very often. More should.

If the dreadful, messy, incompetently made, non-judgmental, anti-American movie United 93 (see my anatomization of it here) is Thomas’s standard of cinematic excellence and wholesome patriotism, then his praise of the Stone movie is to be dismissed.

There are certain conservatives—Rush Limbaugh is the prototype—who if they see any movie that varies slightly from the usual liberal bashing of America, any movie that has some positive content about our country—will automatically think it’s a great movie. These are the same people who worshipped Steven Spielberg’s Saving Private Ryan—a movie that denies or ignores the meaning of World War II, that makes the removal of one soldier from combat to prevent him from being killed the highest moral purpose in the war, and that portrays post-war Americans (in the person of the elderly Ryan visiting Normandy) as broken down, guilty, pathetic creatures. So stirred were the mainstream conservatives by the movie’s realistic combat scenes, that they failed to picked up on any of this. They are thus hopeless suckers for liberal propaganda. All the liberals need to do to is touch some obvious conservative button,—approval of America, approval of the military, approval of Christianity—and the mainstream conservatives become wildly enthusiastic, turning a blind eye to all the leftist anti-American content. I remind readers once again of how conservatives thought George W. Bush’s victimological, left-wing inaugural address in 2001 was a great conservative speech, all because Bush incorporated Christian imagery with his left-wing themes.

The syndrome I’ve just described is not just a passing foible of conservatives, but goes to the heart of modern mainstream conservatism and neoconservatism. What is neoconservatism, but the reduction of our country and civilization to a single idea (e.g., “all men are created equal”) or a single sentiment (e.g., supporting America in a war). The idea or sentiment wins the conservatives’ total loyalty, and then they fail to realize that what is actually being promoted by means of that idea or sentiment is undermining America as a country. Thus the reduction of America to the idea of human equality results in open borders. Thus our war on Islamic radicalism and terrorism via democratization leads to our empowering of sharia regimes and terrorists and our making a cult out of “moderate” Muslims, so that we continue to let “moderate” Muslims, along with many not-so-“moderate” Muslims, pour into our country.

As an afterthought, here is another recommendation of World Trade Center which at least differentiates it from United 93. Kathryn Jean Lopez writes:

But as tasteful and well done as United 93 was, there was something about the movie that bothered me. The filmmakers showed me a bit too much of the terrorists. Calling home. Feeling sick. Praying. Forgive me my insensitivity, but I didn’t care to see them. I didn’t care if one or another of them was nervous in the minutes before the attack. It’s not terribly Christian of me, but I don’t really care about them — most especially in a movie that’s supposed to be about the good guys. I only wanted to see our 9/11 heroes.

And in this regard, Oliver Stone delivers what United 93 didn’t. His new movie World Trade Center, which I saw in preview last week, is about us. It’s exclusively about the good guys.

I remain doubtful that Stone, who loves Fidel Castro, produced a pro-American movie.

* * *

Tom S. writes:

I suppose that I should be inured to it by now, but every once in a while, you report something that just leaves me stunned, as for instance Kathryn Jean Lopez and her reaction to the movie Flight 93. She thinks that it is UN-CHRISTIAN not to sympathize with terrorist mass murderers for their feelings of nervousness and unease prior to their attacks?!? Good God, what in the Hell is wrong with the woman? Is she insane? Nowhere does Christianity teach that we are to feel sympathy with criminals for having doubts and remorse about their crimes. I’m sure that the Manson “Family” felt some nervousness prior to the murder of Sharon Tate, or that Eichmann felt nervous prior to gassing his first batch of Jews. Are we “Un-Christian” not to sympathize with them? Simply astonishing…

With “conservative Christians” like this running America’s premier conservative magazine, it’s no wonder things are messed up on the right. If this is an example of post-Vatican II Catholicism, I thank God (literally) that I’m still a Protestant.

LA replies:

Thanks—I hadn’t picked up on that. You’re right. Lopez said:

“It’s not terribly Christian of me, but I don’t really care about them “

This is a good example of the unprincipled exception . Her liberal version of Christianity tells her that she’s supposed to care about everyone, including terrorist mass murderers. But in her heart she doesn’t care about them, and, of course, she’s right not to. But, as a liberal Christian, she has no principled moral basis on which to express her morally correct lack of empathy for murderers. Therefore she must, with apologies, momentarily abandon her liberal Christian principles to express what she really—and correctly—feels. She can only express such feelings by making an unprincipled exception to her liberal Christian principles, which tell her that we are supposed to care about everyone.

To put it more simply, liberalism deprives morality of a reasoned basis. Under liberalism, we can only embrace the true and the good by becoming (by our liberal lights) unreasonable and immoral. Liberalism thus destroys the connection between reason and the good.

However, I disagree with you on a minor point. The hijackers’ nervousness had nothing to do with their having “doubts and remorse” about their crimes. Their nervousness was simply included in the movie to make them seem sympathetic fellows rather than religiously committed mass murderers. Which makes it all the sillier that Lopez felt she had to apologize for withholding any feeling of sympathy from them.

Sage McClaughlin writes:

I haven’t seen Stone’s movie, and almost certainly never will. But your post on the subject reminded me of something that often grates on my nerves: conservatives’ drooling adoration of The Simpsons. As cleverly written as much of its humor undoubtedly has been over the years, The Simpsons is one of the most flagrantly anti-American, anti-Christian leftist propaganda pieces ever produced on television. I think the basic problem is that so many young self-proclaimed conservatives these days actually grew up on the show, before they were really able to take a cold, discerning look at its message. Thus it has come to be seen by many as an indispensable piece of Americana.

In reality, of course, the show mocks anything and everything traditionally American. The Simpson family themselves are meant to stand for the average American family (with its 3.5 kids, ha-ha) and the writers’ comment on Americans and their institutions is transparently contemptuous.

Homer is the most vile, abusive, stupid, hideous father-figure on television. The wealthiest man in town is also its most wicked, and he runs everything. The police are corrupt, brutal morons (except, of course, for the black sergeant, who is naturally the only likable member of the force). The local church—which the Simpsons attend for no reason other than fear of being ostracized—is a boring, pointless hotbed of ignorance and hypocrisy. (The only exception seems to be the Flanders family, whose children are creepy bug-eyed Stepford children with literally no minds of their own, and who are obviously identical twins—clones, in other words.) The only reasonably intelligent people on the show are Lisa (who is intelligent by virtue of her being a raging liberal) and Mr. Smithers, a homosexual who lusts endlessly and graphically after a dying, withered old man. The town’s founding myth is a pack of lies, its politicians are corrupt, ignorant drunkards (well, there may be something to that), and its skies are polluted day and night in the miserable factory where almost every man works. (Bizarrely, the pollution pours out of smokestacks … at a nuclear power plant? We’re meant to get the idea because the writers have helpfully drawn atoms on the big black towers, revealing nothing so much as their own laughably irrational fears.)

The point is, conservatives take the most hostile slurs against their country and its people without ever having noticed that they have been insulted. I see it constantly, and am amazed at how often I have to point it out before someone will even recognize it. Whenever I break down my view of The Simpsons, it amazes me how often a person will reply, “Gosh, you’re right. I never thought of that!” How this kind of blindness is possible among reasonably educated people, I’ll never know. Maybe it’s because, as a rule, we understand less about art than did the Visigoths.

Ted M. writes:

Concerning Oliver Stone’s “patriotic” film World Trade Center, I have as much distrust of it as you do. In fact I distrust any Hollywood studio that claims to make “American” films. Disney recently stated that it would make more family oriented movies—this from a company that enacted “Gay Day” at its theme parks.

Hollywood may see a market for such movie fare but how sincere can these films be when the spirit of truth is not in their creators? A counterfeit dollar bill can closely resemble a real one and yet still be a counterfeit.

The same Spielberg who made Saving Private Ryan then went on to make Munich. You can’t keep a good liberal’s liberalism and phony conservatism down for long!

We have had this mania for making into heroes the police and firemen who helped in the World Trade center catastrophe. But one can see that this “heroizing” is a way of liberals raising the efforts of single men and women without addressing the collective problem exposed by 9/11. In effect the way we have come to manically dignify the efforts of the New York fireman reminds me of the dignity accorded to the soldiers who went in search of Private Ryan.

So Oliver Stone displays the heroism of 9/11 as if this was the American essence of the disaster. Does he address the Jihadist cause that made the towers come down? Personally I never thought that Disney touched the essence of C.S. Lewis’ Narnia themes; how could Disney since it doesn’t share Lewis’ Christian world view and these cannot be plastically manufactured.

My take on Stone is that he is eventually going to try and suck Americans into his vortex of liberalism by offering them a type of Americanism (without the true essence). The same way that Barak Obama is transparently trying to woo the evangelical community into the Democratic Party by criticizing certain Democrats for avoiding a discussion of “values” and “religion.” But if a real discussion of values and religion ever occurred…their liberalism would be exposed for the sham it is.

Conservatives and Christians should not be amenable to token efforts by liberals to meet them “half-way.” To see “conservatives” such as Cal Thomas gleeful when they see such attempts is humorous. Does he honestly think there is an underlying spirit that both he and Stone share that emerges in Stone from time to time? BTW this also reminds me of the syncretism of theistic evolutionists who want it both ways…

LA replies:

You wrote:

> We have had this mania for making into heroes the police and firemen who helped in the World Trade center catastrophe. But one can see that this “heroizing” is a way of liberals raising the efforts of single men and women without addressing the collective problem exposed by 9/11. In effect the way we have come to manically dignify the efforts of the New York fireman reminds me of the dignity accorded to the soldiers who went in search of Private Ryan.

Exactly! I hadn’t thought of that. This is the cinematic equivalent of Sen. Kerry in 2004 placing all the emphasis on funding “first responders” to attacks (police and fire and medical) rather than on protecting America from attacks in the first place.

Also, focusing on firemen and police emphasizes the victim aspect. They are just helping out victims of the attack. They are not protecting America from its enemies.

> Does [Thomas] honestly think there is an underlying spirit that both he and Stone share that emerges in Stone from time to time?

This is fantastically well stated. You’ve made my day. Yes—Thomas does believe that.

Just as liberals think that Others and enemies and criminals are all basically good inside and can be like us, in the same way, liberal conservatives like Thomas think that leftists are basically good inside and can be like us. We’re all Americans, right? And the differences between us are just matters of different opinions, right? Liberals are good people. Just yesterday on a car trip I listened to Sean Hannity for about 40 minutes (which I seem to do about once every four years), and he kept saying (he never says anything once, he always says it about five times), that he has nothing against liberals, he likes liberals, he likes having dinner with liberals, he just thinks their ideas are bad for America. See—they’re not enemies of America. They’re good people like us, who just happen to have bad ideas.

> BTW this also reminds me of the syncretism of theistic evolutionists who want it both ways…

Also a good point.

BTW, to make clear the absurdity of the theistic evolutionists’ position, I refer to them as theistic Darwinians.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at July 21, 2006 01:00 PM | Send