The Fellowship Of The ‘Tolkienophobes’

English, Media

I have no time for Tolkien and his “hobbit-worshipping” “hobbitomanes,” as writer R. J. Stove dubs them.

In “Vanilla Pie-in-the-Sky with Diamonds” I wrote:

The Lord of the Rings was once considered a children’s book. It appealed to adults with a proclivity for hobgoblins and gobbledygook. Never would I have predicted that grown-ups would levitate so far above their rational minds as to find this flight from reality worthy of such gush. At some stage it would seem developmentally appropriate for adults to cease craving a steady entertainment diet of fantasy, and develop an interest in real people, in relationships and in how flesh-and-blood make their way—and interact—in a complex world.

“Hollywood’s Hateful Hooey About the South” offered a variation on the theme:

Confronting Tolkien’s mediocre, myth-obsessed mind, Hugo Dyson, a member of Tolkien’s inner circle, let rip with a spontaneous slip of the tongue. As writer Kevin Michael Grace related, Dyson “once reacted to a Tolkien reading with, ‘Oh no! Not another f—ing elf!’ …
Recent ferment makes the nation’s entertainment choices even more alarming than I had previously thought.
In fact, it is particularly significant that a country which has created its own fable of reality in Iraq manifests a disturbing preference for entertainment with mythical and infantile subject matter. The American solipsistic view of reality lends itself nicely to the preoccupation with Tolkien, Harry Potter, and Peter Pan.
Having said this, let me offer a correction: Tolkien appeals to adults who believe in hobgoblins—the kind who believe that hobgoblins can make WMD vanish and can also unleash democracy from a genie bottle.

Now comes Stove and does one better in “The Pen and the Cross,” a book review for The American Conservative. Please note that Stove’s hobbit-hating interlude was provoked by the atrocious literary taste of the author whose book he was reviewing. Here is Stove’s response to said Tolkien terrorism:

Regarding Tolkien: here, launching timidly and vertiginously into the first person, I must declare a fault which may well scandalize at least half of TAC’s readership. I can no longer read any Tolkien; have never finished any of his books except (under duress) The Fellowship of the Ring; and have never been inspired by Tolkien to any emotion except sheepish ennui. Therefore I must take on trust Pearce’s glowing assessment of JRRT’s magnum opus. Evidently Lord of the Rings means more to him than even the Chesterbelloc does. If a Catholic Tolkienophobe may respectfully address a Tolkienophile, I would point out the oft-forgotten fact that although millions of Catholics now regard Tolkienophilia as an article of faith, this is an extremely recent phenomenon. During my 1970s adolescence (Pearce and I were both born in 1961), his cultists consisted largely and perhaps wholly of hirsute flower-children – beards imperative for both sexes – who regarded LOTR as a 1000-page acid trip. Hobbits, man, forests, man, far-out, man, groovy, man. Nobody ever told either the flower-children or me that the character of Galadriel alludes to the Virgin Mary. Nor, if we had been told it, would we have believed it. The championing of Tolkien by hippies, whom he would have rejected with the most blatant scorn, has implications for those who confuse other artists with such artists’ more asinine groupies. (Wagner, anyone?) Clearly Tolkienophiles will need Pearce’s latest exegeses to devour, to digest, and doubtless to argue about.

The Sovereignty of Strangers

America, Christian Right, Islam, Israel

I can’t recall who wrote this or where. All I know is that some libertarian had asserted that the evangelical leader Pat Robertson was a traitor for advising Israel against appeasing the United States of America.
Come again?
Patriots for a sane American foreign policy—myself included—ought to encourage all America’s friends to push back and do what’s in their national interest, not ours.
More so than most, libertarians know the U.S. often acts unjustly. Why then would we want our friends to prostrate themselves before us? Those of us who want the U.S. to stay solvent—and out of the affairs of others—recognize that sovereign nation-states, who resist, not enable, our imperial impulses, are the best stopgaps against hegemonic overreach.
Such libertarians generally concede the U.S. should not override the sovereignty of other nations. That some make an exception for Israel, illustrates how irrational hatred distorts principles and their consistent application.

All Speech Should Be Free

Anti-Semitism, Britain, Free Speech, Individual Rights, Islam

Writer Robert Locke recently warned that “free speech may become illegal in England.” He focused specifically on the case of Nick Griffin, “chairman of a small opposition party called the British National Party.” Griffin is apparently facing trial for saying, “at a private political meeting,” that “Islam is an evil and wicked faith. Unfortunately for him,” Locke reported, “government thought police were watching, and recorded him on video tape… Such things really do happen in Britain today. Let us pray they do not happen in America tomorrow, and draw the line now,” Locke excoriated:

“Most Americans know that America’s precious civil liberties were born in England, out of English common law, English ideas of individual rights, and British parliamentary democracy.
Most Americans don’t know that this glorious tradition, in defense of which Americans and Britons fought two world wars and a Cold War together, is dying where it was born.
Today, believe it or not, civil liberty is under attack in the UK as it has not been since the dark days of 1940.
Then, as now, it is threatened by a would-be United Europe, and by those at home who lack the courage to defend it.
Today, European Union laws have snuffed out many of the cherished rights in Britain—rights Americans still take for granted, like the presumption of innocence and the right to elect their own government—and they threaten to snuff out more, from freedom of speech to the right to trial by jury. British liberty is in danger of being swallowed whole by the alliance between Political Correctness and an alien and Napoleonic legal tradition from the Continent, where freedom is nothing more than a loan from the state, revocable at its convenience. [More on the European “superstate” in Adieu to the Evil EU]
Make no mistake: the unelected masters of the European Union know full-well that British liberty is one of the biggest roadblocks on their drive to create a superstate that will rival and displace the USA. They cannot allow the virus of freedom to infect any part of their bureaucratic despotism, and they mean to eradicate it. Tony Blair is their enthusiastic collaborator.
The present British government—just like in the 1930’s—has responded to the aggression of a diabolical foreign ideology by deciding to appease it. Then it was major newspapers hushing up the truth about Hitler. Today it is the fact that in Britain, a man can be thrown in jail for telling the truth about Islam’s agenda of world conquest [my emphasis].
If you know that Islam has waged holy war from Arabia to Lower Manhattan for 1,400 years, aiming at the forcible conversion of the world, you will know this is the simple truth. If you know its holy book, the Koran, explicitly commands every Moslem to wage jihad, you will understand why the world needs to know. If you remember 9/11, you will understand why this is the crucial issue of our time.
…You understand how important free speech is. Without it, all other liberties are moot, as no-one can tell the truth about threats to them [my emphasis]. Islamic radicals are hoping to exploit the British courts—using rights Islam would abolish—to silence criticism of their jihad agenda. If they win this case, they will have acquired enormous powers of intimidation.”

I share Locke’s outrage. England has stooped as low as Turkey, which is prosecuting novelist Orhan Pamuk for “denigrating Turkishness.” That’s Orwellian for daring to acknowledge and decry the Armenian genocide during the First World War and the mass slaughter of the Kurds, also vital truths that should not be forgotten. Locke and I, however, would agree that Turkey has no legacy of free-speech to lament.

In 2002, France prosecuted the brilliant author, Michel Houellebecq. He was dragged before a French Revolutionary Assembly (English for a Parisian court) for calling Islam “a stupid religion.” And there’s Oriana Fallaci, forced to flee her native Italy, because of persecution by that government, acting as a proxy for Muslim groups. Although Locke would not be surprised by these events, I’m sure he’d condemn the assaults on these people.

However, it is not entirely clear whether Locke would defend Holocaust denier David Irving’s right to speak his misguided mind. Unless I have misunderstood him, Locke appears to decry the state’s assault on Griffin because he happened to speak the truth. What of liars? Is their speech a legitimate target of state aggression? Do the British “Rights of Englishmen”—the inspiration for the American Founding Fathers—protect only speech that is true?

American jurisprudence allows the regulation of speech only under very limited circumstances. If speech poses a “Clear and Present Danger,” it can be censored. While the Supreme Court has ruled that the First Amendment doesn’t protect words that are likely to cause violence, the required threshold is extremely high. And so it should be. In fact, the preferred course of action against imams who publicly preach and incite violence against Americans on American soil is deportation, not censorship.

Locke ought to have emphasized the imperative of protecting all speech, truthful and untruthful. That’s the American way—and the right way—although it is clearly no longer cool in Cool Britannia.

Director of Premier Israeli Free-Market Think Tank Responds to ‘Reality on the Palestinian Ground’

Free Markets, Israel, Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, Terrorism

Daniel Doron, director of The Israel Center for Social & Economic Progress, and a columnist for The Jerusalem Post, responds to “Reality on the Palestinian Ground“:

Dear Ilana,

As usual you write brilliantly, and with incandescent moral passion. Two small remarks:

Yes, we should hold the Palestinians responsible for their actions, but we should consider (even when sentencing a murderer) extenuating circumstances.

Palestinian society was destroyed during the 1936-9 “Arab revolt” when the British for their nefarious divide-and-rule purposes established the arch terrorist Haj Amin El-Husseini as Mufti of Jerusalem. He embarked not only on a war against Jews and the British but mostly on his own people, assasinatng many of his political opponents, and making most of the Arab elites flee their country. This is why in 48 Palestinian society, deprived of its traditional legitimate leadership and at the mercy of terrorists and hired hands, could not undertake a project of state building.

The Mufti’s wholesale liquidation of any alternative leadership is also the reason why while all other Arab dictators have an opposition, albeit in exile, Araft had none. All potential opposition was simply eliminated or terrorized.

So was the Arab population. It was not only terrorized but it has been, since Oslo, subject to the most horrendous camapign of indoctrination and brainwashing (with funds donated by Europe and the US). Before Oslo hundreds of thousands of Palestinians worked in Israel, and they could have created mayhem and destruction had they tried to engage in terrorism. But terrorist incidents were far and few between until Oslo brought Arafat and his criminal gangs to the West Bank and Gaza, and until the Arab population was subject to intnese brainwashing. (Consider what three years of Geobbles indoctrination did to a nation that was reputedly very civilized!)

Another factor that is often neglected is that Palestinian factions are usually proxies of Arab nations plus Iran and Saudi privateers. They are financed by them and advance their intra-Arab rivalries. The only factor that unites them is hatred for Israel, which they exploit to advance these Arab imperialist interests, all the while betraying their own people and their best interests.

Best,
Daniel