MY EPIPHANY

Liberals suffer from a number of maladies and delusions, but several are painfully obvious. First, not only are they incapable of taking care of themselves, they cannot comprehend why they should be FORCED to take care of themselves. They are terrified of everything that is not pre-processed, homogenized and approved by an official governmental entity.... The garden variety leftist attacks our country with every breath, oblivious to the fact that their ability to speak out, to acquire their toys, to travel and protest and whine, are provided by the very system they despise. They know only hate for those who disagree with their Utopian vision of unchecked liberalism. -- "Conservative Monitor" March of 2003:

The truth is, liberals hate America, and they detest what it stands for.... liberals see Americans as imperialists who go around the world bullying other countries in their own self interest. All of our actions are driven to fulfill greedy corporate objectives. -- "Chronwatch"

I went to see the film “Tropic Thunder” (2008) the other night and experienced what can fairly be called an epiphany. Not, to be sure, was my epiphany anything like the Epiphany in the Christian religion, celebrated on January 6 and commemorating Christ’s first manifestation to the Gentiles in the form of the Magi, but a modern day kind of epiphany, like a man in a sudden burst of insight discovering after 50 years of marriage that his wife doesn’t love him and never has and at the same time realizing and fully appreciating why, and finding a strange relief and comfort in finally knowing the origin of a half century’s worth of pain.

This film seemed to bring some kind of order to a multitude of random and disordered thoughts that I have been having over the years about the origin of liberalism (with a small ‘l’), especially as it is manifested in politics, religion, education and cultural progressions in America. In other words, where did liberalism come from? Who drives it? What is going to be the end result of its insidious permeation into every corpuscle of our cultural blood? Beside the strong possibility, of course, that Barack Obama will be elected President of the United States?

Let me take a moment to say that I do not think Ben Stiller’s film “Tropic Thunder” is a great movie, although Robert Downey, Jr. turned in a supremely artful job playing a black man. Some of his lines are classic and his delivery is magnificent and worthy of Oscar consideration in a supporting role. But the film is slapstick comedy through and through and goes out of its way to offend everything sacred to the ordinary traditionalist, especially the conservative ones. The film is nasty. It is vulgar. It is full of blood and guts, literally! It mocks everything, including the mentally handicapped, although one is hard pressed to find offense worthy of the protest some disability advocates have tried to mount. In short, the movie is grand farce, ludicrous and, for the most part, completely void of substance. But the film spoke volumes about where liberalism is headed. Moreover, in a sudden burst of insight, it strongly suggested, to me anyway, where it comes from and what is driving it.

As a philosophy, particularly as a political philosophy, liberalism is thought to be a product of the 18th century and is, as a general rule, associated with the idea of freedom: individual freedom, freedom of religion, enterprise and commercial freedom, free trade, free thinkers and so forth. Sounds for the world like early 21st century conservatism, doesn’t it?

Although these original liberal ideas continued to flow through education, politics and most aspects of public life throughout the 18th and 19th centuries, they are generally thought to have reached their zenith shortly after WWI. But it is important to remember that while losing some of its clout and political dominance after that time, the philosophy certainly did not die out. In fact, it found new purchase in the wake of the Great Depression with Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s (FDR) New Deal and other hallmarks of the modern Democratic Party. At that time, liberalism in its most characteristic contemporary expression emphasized the importance of conscience and justice in politics, advocated the rights of racial and religious minorities (although the Civil Rights act of 1964 was two or three decades away), supported the individual’s civil liberties and the right of the ordinary individual to have some say in those things that would affect him. Strong government doing for the governed what Republicans of the time thought they should do for themselves and meeting its “responsibility” to the common man were tenets of liberalism from the New Deal through Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society.

The 1960’s, however, changed things forever for liberals. During that time liberalism became indelibly associated with permissiveness, free love, mind altering drugs, live and let live in all things. Societal controls, established codes of conduct, discipline, standards of any kind were shunned. The blame game began. All social ills were somebody else’s fault and for the most part lay squarely at the doorsteps of the government and corporate America, a mantra that has since been embraced by Hollywood and the mainstream media alike.

To be fair though, we must confess that not all liberals have gone completely radical. There are remnants of the old liberalism still around to be sure. Some remain in the Democratic Party even, but by in large it is hard to deny that the radical liberals are rapidly outnumbering the traditional ones there. In fact, the radical fringes of the Democratic Party are so rapidly insinuating itself upon the Democratic Party that it is difficult not to see that they will in time completely consume it. Even now, in many, many respects one has to look to the Republican Party to see any vestiges of the old liberalism. As for the thoroughbred conservatives, well, they are being called fascists, perhaps rightly, and herded into the corral of irrelevance at a rate that credibly foreshadows their extinction.

All this is what “Tropic Thunder” made clear to me, although the reader may find my reasoning somewhat circumspect and skewered. If so, try this on for size. Ben Stiller and most of the cast and practically all of the other people associated with this film are Jewish or closely identified with ultra liberal Jews. Okay, so what? The Jews have had a solid hold on the whole of American arts and letters -- publishing, music, journalism, television, movies, theatre, everything – for some time now. Yet, some pretty good stuff with real substance is reaching the public. But at the same time, a lot of good stuff, especially stuff with traditional values and themes, is not. Is that just chance? Does the stuff reflect the audience or does the audience reflect the stuff? I don’t know. But I do know this: something has happened in our culture that permits a film like “Tropic Thunder” to be shown. And not only shown but to have Americans spending untold millions of dollars to see it.

Now I admit I tried my best to be offended by the film, but I couldn’t. It was hilarious. In more ways than one it was superbly done and acted. It is what it is. But I came away with questions.

Is it possible that “Tropic Thunder” represents an extreme version of liberalism, a version totally hostile to any form of social and legal discrimination between human beings, calling for the absolutely minimal constraints by society on individual freedom of action? Are we seeing in this film a call for complete societal anarchy, the complete elimination of religion, the mockery of concepts like duty, honor and integrity? Do these boys, Stiller, Downey, Crews, Nolte and the others, harbor the fears of the rampant nationalism that enslaved the Jews in Egypt and gassed them in Auschwitz?

Maybe! Maybe not. But don’t tell me that some form of the radical liberalism represented by “Tropic Thunder” is not holding sway in America. It is, and it very well may sweep Barack Obama into the White House! I may even vote for him myself. After all, as Downey says in the film, “I’m a dude playing a dude disguised as another dude.” And so is Obama!