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That movie celebrates the West.

It celebrates what the Greek city states established.

It cautions that free men must defend the civilization they’ve created.

The movie extols military virtues, courage, self-sacrifice, loyalty.

That movie demonstrates that treason is morally repugnant and disgraceful.

As such, ————————— the Left MUST attack that movie.

If you think about it, in many ways, that movie rips and tears into what the Left has been trying to establish for decades now.

And that movie heartens Conservatives.

The Left hates that move perhaps more than they do Mel Gibson’s The Passion of The Christ.

Dr, Hanson, after reading your take on ‘300′ I was better able to enjoy the film in a distinct variety of viewing modes - aesthetic, dramatic and historic. One reason I’d guess that cynics conflated an audience’s cheers with an overly-literal perspective is due to that unthinking reductionism which - whether one is aware of it or not - assumes an ultimate identity between the “personal and the political”, collapsing all modes into one. That is, until such cynics themselves experience what used to be known as “art” (if and when they’re able), at which time such a tyrannical equation is suspended … for them.

Surely the masses have none of the interpretive equipment required for a proper experience of, well, anything. Thus a tyrant is able to celebrate a specious multiplicity while being totally blinded to the diversity and richness - of mind, of emotions, of aesthetics, of humor - of the ineluctable crowd. The vox populi is only acceptable when it apes back their learned irony. Sadly, in the absence of such noble sentiment that we felt in ‘300′ the form that that aping takes is often quite crass, but the crassness was there to begin with: in the initial cynicism, the unwitting slogan, the double-standard, the projected literalism, and so on.

I’m always glad when you remind readers about Newsweek’s erroneous Koran-flushing story and its real-world consequences. I vowed at the time, 3 years ago, never again to read anything Michael Isikoff or John Barry (the story’s authors) had to say, and I’ve stuck to it. This sometimes required changing a TV channel. But who still reads Newsweek? Beats me.

Essential vdh

Did you ever think that you could make a living by simply responding to idiots?

As a farm boy doing things that mattered to your extended family I doubt it entered your mind. How far we have come.

I believe it will be a sense of relief when things get so tough that only the important things will be important.

Things like character, patriotism, individual responsibility, stories to tell our children that establish the need for personal character, individual responsibility and that Freedom is worth fighting for.

Fear enough, real fear that recognizes that we may not make it without God’s help, the ultimate advantage we need, fear to the point that we will ask for God’s help. Will it be a crutch, no–it will be a necessity due to our inherent weakness as humans. It will be the strength that was needed to establish America in the first place. All else will have been blown away.

Dear Doc:

This gives me a chance to ask a question I should have asked when 300 first came out:

Given the ferocity of the Spartans, even when outnumbered, how did Phillip defeat them?

There is some type of business relationship between MSNBC and “Newsweek.” Since the profile of Keith Olberman in “The New Yorker,” I’ve watched “Countdown” a few times. It’s like peering into the psych ward.

Olberman defines smary. He foams at the mouth.

But what is really creepy is that Olberman interviews some “Newsweek” guy named Richard Wolfe. Wolfe looks like Olberman’s younger brother or clone, but with a British accent. Wolfe is some sort of US political “expert.”

If you want to see American come apart, watch Keith Olberman for about five minutes.

Bravo! It’s amazing how far “Newsweek” has sunk - the bogus “Flushed Koran” story really should have put them out of business, and it’s sad that they’re still around.

I guess it should come as no surprise, then, that they could put this absurd spin on the “300″ movie, and cast you as some sort of neo-colonialist.

Watch for their follow-up references to you a year or so from now, when they’ll speak you of in tones that assume that their own conjectures have become conventional wisdom, such as “Dr. Hanson, neocon consigliere to the Bush Administration, who established his bona fides via backdoor conferences with Dick Cheney on how best to use military strategies to deal with the increasingly expansive dark-skinned peoples of the Middle and Far East”

It may sound like absurd satire right now, but look at the number of albatrosses they have hung around the necks of their preferred targets.

It’s quite simple. 300 progenitors of the West stood and died not knowing that future millions would inherit a legacy far different than current daily life in the political and social culture of, say, Tehran. Or Damascus. Or Pyongyang. Dr. Hanson once pointed out the watershed nature of the 3 days they spent fighting on that narrow,dusty trail as those largely nameless men swung shut one hinge of world history and probably rescued our present way of life.

I wonder, had the Spartans run, and History flowed in another direction, it’s in interesting image to see “religious guardians” kicking in the doors at Newsweek. But, phooie, there would be no Newsweek and the editors might likely have chosen the expediency of becoming mullahs themselves. The morally feckless have so many more opportunities for advancement!

VDH:

I appreciate your essays on the movie, but 300 still strikes me as somewhat juvenile, like watching a graphic video game being played. I had no idea the director was trying to be true to contemporary Greek art. Still, I doubt the American public will understand this. We no longer identify with the Greeks and we are not the underdog militarily. Nor will the Persian bogeyman supplant the erstwhile USSR in the American psyche as an existential threat. Until, that is, Iran obtains nuclear weapons, at which point the rules of the game will change. Should that happen and the mullahs block the Strait of Hormuz while threatening a nuclear response to attack, America may wake up. When our economy crashes, our Arab allies medize and your average latte liberal is unable to drive Johnny to his soccer games or get that limo for Ashley’s Sweet Sixteen BDay party, we may hear a different tune from the American public. It won’t be Manichaean right and wrong. It won’t be pretty. And our response may rival the Spartans in its ferocity. Unfortunately, that may be what it takes to awaken us from the stupor induced in us by the MSM, of which Newsweek is a prime example. Once we’re staring at the gates of Hell, the story of the 300 may be better understood.

Hope everyone, especially the Obamaniacs, was watching Ingrid Betancourt describe her rescue along with 10 other hostages (3 American DOD contractors) today in Columbia. Held for years by Leftist (FARQ) rebels the hostages were transferred to a group of “rebels” wearing Che Guevara T-shirts. Turns out the new rebel group was Columbian Military and they were free. Betancourt, a former presidential candidate, couldn’t say enough good things about her country, how proud she was to be Columbian and of course how spectacular the operation was. Note, whichever Columbian unit pulled this operation off no doubt had previous training from our own SOF. Our relationship there goes back to a combined Columbian/U.S. operation which put Che out of business in the early 60’s. Job well done by our most important ally in South America.

If only the villains had been turned into stereotypical blond neo-Nazis as CAIR ruined Tom Clancy’s The Sum of All Fears. Then it would have been OK presumably.

Not all brown people are good, nor all white people bad. That’s become especially clear since we learned about Black Liberation Theology.

Minerva,

Much like today’s German Army is nothing more than a terrible joke compared to the professionalism of the German Army which conquered Europe by 1940, the Spartans had, like the Germans, self-imploded.

I think the decapitations on recent Al Qaeda videos were way more gross than 300.

I hope I have a fierce love of freedom. I wish everyone would.

I wish I had 6 pack abs.

Dear Classics Scholar Victor Davis Hanson,

Buchannan OK. At least he ran for president. “TELL JOSE TO GO BACK WHERE HE CAME FROM.” That you mentioned this guy’s name is the best press he’s ever gotten. He should thank you.

I always liked TIME and US NEWS AND WORLD REPORT better.

I wish you had had lunch with General Petraeus…one on one. He might have learned something. I’d be surprised if he hadn’t read your books.

I wish someone would come out with a book about the authorizations for the Iraq war. It should have been done a long time ago. Fieth’s book is getting tedious.

General Clark should be demoted.

Honolulu Hoosay’s still in the game.

Wake up folks.

Correction: Che was killed in Bolivia. He’s still hero to FARQ and Obama supporters. ‘Nuff said.

Essential vdh

All else will have been blown away.

We will have been disarmed, dispirited, victimized, segregated into victim groups, voting as victims, learning as victims, whiny losers, left defenseless, mentally and physically, helpless, like a beached whale carcuss left to scavengers who don’t have the sense God gave to idiots. Who don’t realize they are feeding on themselves.

Who are they, the whiny losers the scavengers? Ourselves of course.

How?–We believed that we created a world where one could get something from nothing for nothing. A Utopia dream, a real nightmare.

Something for Less than nothing, by lying, cheating, stealing, extortion, blackmail, race baiting, vote “stuffing” in the name of “Community Action”. On and on with no independent true values other than what was decided at the moment.

Fortune and opportunity not from production but by litigation, extortion, blackmail, Political scams, power brokering, Racial strife, endless flim flam. An endless stream of Al Sharptons, Jesse Jackson’s, Obama’s

It began, the slide into hell, with the “Great Society”, It ended with Affirmative Action and an Affirmative Action product for a President. In the name of a mythical god called Political Correctness created by man who having replaced the real one created his own. A Convenience.

No one was left who was not a victim trying to feed on a carcuss long dead. Not like the 300.

The good news is that our Gene pool–aborted in the name of “freedom of choice” for women.

I guess there was always “Hell to Pay”.

The bill was due and it was paid. The books balanced and closed out. Next!?.

There are no level plains in real life. We are either ascending or descending.

TLM,
Strange, but Butch Cassidy and Sundance were also martyred in Bolivia. Perhaps Obama should also put up posters of Newman and Redford?

So Newsweek feels it necessary to denounce a comic book fantasy by responding with a left-wing fantasy (aka the “narrative”). Yeah, well, most of us rubes in flyover country are aware that “300″ is a wee bit of a stretch from the historical facts. It’s entertainment after all. The irony is that people like Evan Thomas accept their own fantasy as fact: America is a racist, fearful, bigoted, homophobic society. Not much entertainment here. It’s getting old already.

Of all the current threats to our nation, the malfeasance of our Main Stream Media is near the top.

With a population more interested in the next Brittany Spears train-wreck photo op, J-Lo’s new baby and Pitt & Jolie’s personal lives, we all have a lot to fear. The uninterested, uneducated, and easily influenced are out there voting, based on the detritus being reported by Newsweek and others.

Regarding the “Asian hordes” and the Islamophobia that the phrase implies, I have to admit that Islam does in fact scare me to death. Since 911, Jihadists have murdered civilians in France, Thailand, Somalia, Russia, Jordan, India, Indonesia, Turkey, Egypt, Ukraine, England, Israel, Pakistan, Spain, Saudi Arabia, Holland, and Lord knows where else. And about no terrorists attacks in the US, how about the father and son sniper team in the DC area, the nutbag in Seattle, the lunatic in San Fransisco, the guy in Salt Lake City, etc. Making it all the more scary is that magazines like Newsweek and Time give aid and comfort to our enemies.