Posted on 04/06/2007 10:13:41 PM PDT by goldstategop
The movie "300" - based on a "graphic novel" (read comic book), itself loosely based on the battle of Thermopylae (480 BC) - has drawn the usual thoughtful and nuanced response from the turbaned thugs who run Iran.
The last stand of King Leonidas and his 300 Spartans denigrates the glorious Persian antecedents of present day Iran, charges Javad Shangari, art advisor to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. "Art advisor" to a terrorist state - now there's a non sequitur. Does he critique artists who work in body parts?
"Hollywood declares war on Iranians" blared the headline in a Tehran daily. More than 35,000 Iranians have signed an online petition charging that "300" presents a "fraudulent and distorted" account of the conflict between ancient Greece and the "most magnificent and civilized" Persian empire. That's as opposed to the honest and accurate portrayal of historical events usually found in comic books.
The really good stuff came in a report by IRINN TV. MULLAH-vision noted that Warner Bros., which made "300," is owned by a "famous and rich American Jew." The co-heads of the studio are a Presbyterian and a Jew, but "Presbyterian conspiracy" doesn't have quite the same ring to it.
"The Zionist Warner company is also pursuing cultural and political objectives by producing such a film," IRINN TV discloses. (Warner is the distributor of "300," not the producer.) "The Zionists and the elements affiliated to the U.S. have tried to launch a propaganda front against ancient and historical roots of Iranians."
O those famous and rich Zionist Spartans. One can almost imagine Leonidas' legion marching to glory singing "Hava Nagila"
Have you noticed how almost every pronouncement by the Iranian regime sounds like a Borat routine? ("In Kazakhstan, we have three problems - economic, social and Jew.")
Could "300" be the type of Hollywood decadence Dinesh D'Souza believes is responsible for the terrorist war on America?
D'Souza, an occasional conservative, is the author of The Enemy At Home: The Cultural Left and Its Responsibility for 9/11.
Blame the left for "a decadent American culture that angers and repulses traditional societies, especially those in the Islamic world . ... In addition, the left is waging an aggressive global campaign to undermine the traditional patriarchal family and promote secular values in non-Western cultures," D'Souza writes.
Now I hate the cultural elite as much as the next red-state American, but to blame nose rings, Britney Spears and gay marriage for jihadism is to ignore 1,300-plus years of Islamic history.
D'Souza - who fancies himself quite the thinker - swings between paranoia and megalomania (which presumably keeps him on an even keel).
In a recent offering at the online edition of National Review, D'Souza rhetorically inquires: "So, why the bellicose attacks on me? Consider the difficulty now faced by some American conservatives. The right-wing strategy based on the 'clash of civilizations' ... has proven intellectually short-sighted and politically a failure." This shallow analysis, "falsifies reality and can only be held together by branding dissenters like me wicked and heretical," D'Souza discloses.
After expending a few hundred words inveighing against us intellectually short-sighted, clash-of-civilization conservatives, D'Souza modestly reveals, "Now they are mighty upset that I've come along and shown the bankruptcy of their understanding and have proposed a new way of looking at the problem." (Mighty upset? Nice turn of phrase, Clem.)
It is a hard thing to have one's intellectual bankruptcy exposed by someone as insightful as Dinesh D'Souza.
Getting back to one of several major flaws in D'Souza's thesis, was Hollywood around in 1453, when Muslim Turks put Constantinople to the sword, erasing a millennium of Byzantine civilization and raping, plundering and enslaving the city's inhabitants?
Were thong bikinis to blame for the half-millennium Muslim occupation of Greece and the Balkans - or the Islamic conquest of the Middle East and North Africa, and the destruction of ancient Christian communities there?
Was "Brokeback Mountain" behind the Moghul dynasty in D'Sousa's native India -- a conquest and occupation that included the destruction of ancient temples and libraries and the mass slaughter of Hindus -- some 50,000 in Somnath alone, site of a celebrated temple?
D'Souza bids conservatives to align themselves with traditional Muslims against our common enemy - the cultural polluters of the left. In so doing, he suggests that garden-variety Muslims are just regular folks - like American home-schoolers - sort of Hamid and Harriet.
Within the past week, three traditional Muslims were sentenced for the decapitation of three Christian school girls in Indonesia (a country D'Souza cites as an exemplar of Islamic tolerance). Their heads were dumped in a Christian village. Next to the victims' bodies, the killers left a note that read "Wanted - 100 more heads."
At about the same time, in Northern Nigeria, traditional Muslim students beat to death a Christian teacher for reportedly tearing a portion of the Koran when she seized same from a student during an exam. The high-spirited youth also burned three blocks of classrooms and attacked the school's principal when he tried to save the teacher.
Can D'Souza name one Muslim country where religious minorities are treated decently (forget equally) - Coptic Christians in Egypt, Orthodox in Kosovo, Christians in Pakistan and Indonesia, Hindus in Pakistani Kashmir, or Jews in Iran? Even medical missionaries running clinics in such outposts of Islamic hospitality as Yemen and the Sudan are regularly murdered.
It's true; Bin Laden and company frequently cite American culture as a justification for their bloodshed. "We call you ... to reject the immoral acts of fornication, homosexuality, intoxicants, gambling, and trading with interest," Said Osama, in a 2002 communication to the American people.
And if America returned to the moral climate of the 1950s, would al Qaeda stop killing women and children? Would Hamas unbuckle its dynamite belts?
Traditional Muslims also hate us for democracy, human rights, capitalism, not treating women as chattel, and Israel.
Above all, they despise us for being infidels who rule ourselves - for our shameful refusal to convert to Islam or accept inferior status in a society governed by Islamic law. The Koran instructs the faithful to wage jihad against non-Muslims until they embrace Allah or submit to Muslim rule under Sharia.
When confronted with the Koran's jihad verses, D'Souza (in as nice an example of moral equivalency this side of the Cold War) counters by noting the instructions for warfare against the Canaanites found in the Old Testament - as if Jews and Christians were running around the world engaging in ritual decapitations and suicide bombings, and leaving behind verses from Deuteronomy to justify their deeds.
D'Souza argues:"If we're in a war against Islam, that means America is up against one billion Muslims ... . How does any sane person on the Right expect to win this kind of war?"
The question implies that conservatives can determine whether or not there is a war. But what if millions (hundreds of millions) of Muslims around the world believe they're at war with us?
D'Souza insists that we ignore reality (the left's favored approach on foreign policy questions) by pretending Islam is a "religion of peace," disregarding the brutalities regularly inflicted on Christians in the Muslim world, making believe that al Qaeda, Taliban, Hamas, Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad and the rest of their genocidal ilk don't understand their own religion - aren't fighting us because they hate us for who we are, but over Internet pornography, rap music, drugs (which the Taliban cultivates in Afghanistan) and Seagrams.
And D'Souza wonders why most conservatives don't take him seriously?
"300" has its idiotic elements (including graphic sexuality and violence), but there's something about free men taking a stand against overwhelming odds (choosing death over slavery) that's captured the imagination of the West for 2,500 years.
D'Souza asks how we can oppose a third of humanity. Herodotus informs us that when King Leonidas was told the Persian army was so vast that it blotted out the sun, he replied "Then we will fight in the shade."
Those words of defiance ring down through the centuries. "Go tell the Spartans that here we lie, obedient to their commands."
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus
BUMP
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus
I am so sick and tired of the western world treating Muslims with kid gloves. Where are these people who are against left wing fanatics? You will never see it. The Imams who were being picked on because they were acting strange on an airplane makes me sick.
Werent we attacked by fanatical muslims?
One thing for sure.
I know with whom Leonidas would side with today.
History is whispering to us even through the stylized artistic prism of this film.
I actually grow tired of the “based on a comic book”, “it’s just a movie” belittling of this film. Frank Miller knew exactly what the lesson was then, and what that message to us today is.
The message is only more obvious in this time of war with islamo-facists.
I really liked the movie!
And I don’t really recall anything that would be considered “graphic sexuality”.
It was inspiring. And its been along time since I’v been inspired by a movie. And its been a VERY long time since I’v seen a movie that was based on strong men (physically, mentally and morally).
I thought it was awsome. And those actors were definitly ripped:)
But D’Souza does have a point - even it it is an obliue one.
The “West” is an uneasy (or untested) alliance between traditional moralists and progressivist hedonists. This is an alliance that can’t stand for long. (You’re not going to see mom and pop America sending their sons off to war so we can have safe and plentiful gay bars, and other glories of liberal “democracy” in Iran.)
There is a seismic fault running through America that hasn’t seen sufficient stress to cause and earthquake.
Traditional America has two enemies in view - Islam and Leftist Westerners. D’Souza mistake in falling to discern the tripolar conflict.
“And D’Souza wonders why most conservatives don’t take him seriously? “
I haven’t read this new thing by D’Souza but I know that he captures Reagan better than any other writer I know of.
I gave up on this nasty bitch Feder a long time ago, and as far as I know he has no where near the respect of D’Souza among conservatives.
D’Souza is a major writer in the conservative world including our flag ship publication “The National Review”.
Although I haven’t yet read this book by D’Souza this nasty, little diatribe by this small timer hasn’t come close to convincing me that after all these years D’ Souza all of a sudden became a dumb ass.
Feder is actually understating his case here. Sayyid Qutb, leading intellectual of the jihadist movement, based his hatred of American decadence on a college stay in Greeley, Colorado in 1947. After returning to Egypt, he commented on what he perceived to be the decadent, sex-filled atmosphere of a church basement sock hop.
I see no possibility that we will ever be able to communicate with a culture that thinks this way. To survive, we're going to have to destroy it. Let's hope we can find a way to do that without undue loss of life.
Pssst. It wasn't all of a sudden.
L
I have to disagree, he is one of the authors I truly admire( which means I buy his books new), I recommend his book “Ronald Reagan”, a book that Feder couldn’t (and wouldn’t) write.
Persia was not Islamic, that was a thousand years before Islam even came around and it did not come from Persia.
I just saw it a couple of days ago and thought it was one of the best movies I’ve ever seen. However, there were some scenes I could have done without - but it wasn’t the one of the rear view of Leonidas ;)
D’Sousa talks sense and apparently Don Feder is upset about it.
bookmark
D'souza talks appeasement and I'm upset about it, too!
(Thermopolye was a holding action) a DIP Mission like the Fulda. (Die In Place)
Actually it is my intention God Willing to fight to the Islamofacist’s last man.
However I agree with the criticisim of De Souza here. I will condemn both the Islamofacist as well as the godless secular faith of the Left. The enemy of my enemy can only be my friend when I am not his enemy also.
I am the enemy of both the Islamofacist and the Left. Hell they have both allied against Christians and other decent folks around the world so we better just accept it and work to take them both apart.
W
D’souza talks appeasement...it is an interesting derailment for D’Souza. Almost like he had some sort of seizure.
His reaction to criticism is strange also, I think something medical/psych is up with him.
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