Tolkien's King Confused Over Right And Wrong
By Gregory J. Rummo (01/15/04)
AMERICA IS A wonderful country where one is allowed to speak his mind—even if the opinion being offered is mindless.
Michael Medved’s January 12 USA Today column, “Actors’ politics pollute ‘Ring’” is the latest expose of ignorance, arrogance and hypocrisy among the acting fraternity.
Medved’s column deals with the movie, “The Return of the King,” the third installment in the “Lord of the Ring” trilogy.
The Lord of the Rings is a story about the corrupting influence of power and the ultimate triumph of good over evil. It is a film in which the demarcation between these two forces could not be sharper.
Apparently this aspect was lost on Viggo Mortensen, who plays Aragorn, the rightful heir to the throne of Gondor; the leader of the race of men.
Medved writes: “This fall, with the distribution of the biggest movie of his career just weeks away, he appeared at a Washington anti-war rally sponsored by International ANSWER (a coalition to ‘Act Now to Stop War and End Racism’), identified by its own leaders as an offshoot of the Socialist Workers Party, a Stalinist fringe group…[which featured]…speakers defending Palestinian terrorists, Cuba’s Castro regime and the saber-rattling North Korean government.”
“Mortensen read an interminable original poem about exploding bombs, burning flesh, flattened huts and American guilt.”
No one denies a person the right to offer his opinion. I do it all the time right here on the opinion page of this newspaper. But while everyone is entitled to his own opinion, not all opinions are morally equal.
There are forces of evil attempting to drag 21st-century American culture deeper and deeper into the abyss of moral relativism. Those helping to push us in the wrong direction contend there are no moral absolutes. Tolerance has taken on a new meaning—we are no longer allowed to criticize improper social behavior or lifestyles deemed immoral or perverted by previous generations. We must now accept all behavior no matter how bizarre or risk being branded as ‘intolerant’.
These are the same people who see nothing strange with the behavior of Michael Jackson for example.
This is nonsense. Right and wrong has never changed. And it can be applied to both fact and opinion.
In the case of Mortensen’s tirade set to verse, he is simply wrong.
What is happening in Iraq occurred because a president, elected by the people—something that never happened under Communism by the way; a small detail Mortensen obviously overlooked—worked together with an elected Congress who gave him the power to exercise whatever means he felt was necessary in the US’s war against terrorism in the wake of 9/11.
The president however went a step further. In an attempt to cement world opinion, he sent his Secretary of State, Colin Powell, to the United Nations to make America’s case. This resulted in over a dozen UN resolutions urging Iraq’s dictator to comply with the demands of the international community. While Saddam procrastinated for months, the US built a coalition of 44 nations before actually going to war last spring.
Coincidentally, two days after Medved’s column appeared, USA Today ran a page of interviews with all of the stars from “The Return of the King,” in its entertainment section. Entitled “Life after Middle-earth,” the actors were asked questions such as “What was your favorite moment in King?” and “What will you miss most?”
Another question was, “What would you throw into Mount Doom?”
Viggo Mortensen’s answer—I kid you not—“arrogance.”
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