21st Century Tolkien Studies: "So if you're still with me after my pop heresy, I want to complain about a little comment that Instapundit slipped in with his Two Towers review:

""And yeah, Viggo Mortensen's occasional off-camera antiwar blather notwithstanding, the inevitability of war, and the importance of having the will to resist evil despite the burdens and the horror is a repeated theme, twined in and around the despair and temptation points I mention above. Indeed, one speech in which Aragorn explains to Theoden that this isn't just the usual raiding, but an effort to stamp out his civilization, seems especially on point.""

If you were non-white or didnt read the corporate media and the right blogosphere you might at first misinterpret this passage. Yes, reality had to be faced that the Iraq war was inevitable from about the middle of 2002, and it was not merely a bombing raid but 'an attempt to stamp out Muslim civilization', one might conclude. And yes the Iraqi people had to consider 'the importance of having the will to resist evil despite the burdens and the horror.' But of course it was the United States, according to the likes of Instapundit, really just a tiny, defenceless and peaceloving nation, which was being forced to face the dire possibility, nay reality, of 'evil' in the form of the Beast of Babylon no less storming across the Atlantic and enslaving or killing everyone.

21st Century Tolkien Studies: "So if you're still with me after my pop heresy, I want to complain about a little comment that Instapundit slipped in with his Two Towers review:

""And yeah, Viggo Mortensen's occasional off-camera antiwar blather notwithstanding, the inevitability of war, and the importance of having the will to resist evil despite the burdens and the horror is a repeated theme, twined in and around the despair and temptation points I mention above. Indeed, one speech in which Aragorn explains to Theoden that this isn't just the usual raiding, but an effort to stamp out his civilization, seems especially on point.""

If you were non-white or didnt read the corporate media and the right blogosphere you might at first misinterpret this passage. Yes, reality had to be faced that the Iraq war was inevitable from about the middle of 2002, and it was not merely a bombing raid but 'an attempt to stamp out Muslim civilization', one might conclude. And yes the Iraqi people had to consider 'the importance of having the will to resist evil despite the burdens and the horror.' But of course it was the United States, according to the likes of Instapundit, really just a tiny, defenceless and peaceloving nation, which was being forced to face the dire possibility, nay reality, of 'evil' in the form of the Beast of Babylon no less storming across the Atlantic and enslaving or killing everyone.