They say that at the Hollywood Preview of Mel Gibson's _The Patriot_ a
large part of the audience audibly gasped at the scene where Mel Gibson
hands muskets to the 9 and 12 year old boys who play his youngest sons.
I personally take that as a good indicator of how far from the basis
upon which our country was founded that Hollywood, the media, and the
politically correct aristocracy/intelligentsia in this country has gone.
I imagine they would have felt far more comfortable under the rule of
King George, with his taxation, gun control laws, confiscation,
stormtrooper tactics, and outright abrogation of the civil rights of the
individual.
Gibson pulls no punches in this gritty, graphic portrayal of one of the
more unconventional leaders of the US Revolution. He tells it like it
is, or was, much like Speilberg's depiction of WWII in Saving Private
Ryan and Schindler's List. No favors are made to spare the sensitivities
of current day revisionists, propagandists, or, dare I say, outright
traitors to the Constitution. The unconventional brutality Col. Martin
and his guerrilla troops visited on the British troops throughout the
Carolinas and Virginia is illustrated to be a direct product of the
brutality of the British regieme, a lesson our current government would
be wise to learn from, though I doubt they will any time soon.
It seems odd that the taxation they so strenuously rebelled against, a
mere few percent, is dwarfed by the 46% of annual income, per capita,
that we now pay in this country, or that the gun confiscation the King
wished, and men like Massachusetts Governor General William Gage
imposed, to the objections of the men at Lexington and Concord, is now
bandied about in the halls of congress and the meeting halls of the
people of the land as if it were an immenently reasonable proposition.
It seems odd that laws like the death sentence for cutting and milling
white pine which had been marked with the Kings Cross are now bandied
about to apply to millions of Americans who cut and use another
naturally occuring plant, marijuana. Two million of them are already
either imprisoned, arrested, indicted, or on probation for the harmless
use of this natural medicine and relaxant, and while we are winning a
few skirmishes in a few states, the feds use of an engineered fungus to
wipe out the Coca plant from Columbia in the most recent campaigns
presages a day when the government will use genetically engineered
biowarfare against its own citizens to eradicate the marijuana plant
from existence (Endangered Species Act be damned).
It also seems odd that strongarm tactics, like those seen in the scene
where the Dragoon Colonel shoots Col. Martin's 15 year old son Thomas in
the back (much like that young son was shot in the back at Ruby Ridge)
during an umprovoked raid on Martin's home (which is put to the torch,
much like the footage we all recall seeing during the final stage of the
Seige at Waco), are now seen as a normal tactic of law enforcement, be
it by the BATF, the FBI, the DEA, or merely your State and local police
forces. The public merely 'ho hums' at news of one more raid (if they
are even mentioned in the press, which is no longer the fifth estate,
but merely a wholly owned and operated subsidiary propaganda arm of big
government and its mercantilist multinational owners, which brings up
the subject of representation....)
Martin was originally resistant to declaring independence, and refused
to fight, as he was dealing still with the sins of his past during his
service years before in the French and Indian War, where he fought in so
brutal a manner that the Cherokee broke their treaty with the French to
avoid further atrocities against their people by Martin's men.
Speaking in the State Assembly against independence, he asked,"What is
the use of ridding ourselves of one tyrant three thousand miles away, if
we accept three thousand tyrants one mile away? An elected legislature
can strip a man of his rights just as easily as a distant king." Whether
Martin actually said this, or is merely a case of Gibson sticking a
finger in the eyes of those who claim our democracy protects us against
tyranny is immaterial, as it cuts right to the heart of the matter of
the present.
Gibson is known to run counter to the socialistic syncophants running
Hollywood and the media these days, and is avidly pro-gun rights. It is
good to see more such people like Gibson, Tom Selleck, and Ted Nugent
stand up for their beleifs, and it is about time that someone like
Gibson can realise commercial success at the same time, as it is obvious
that he is too big a cat for the dogs in Hollywood or Washington to
attempt to black ball. Nugent was sidelined, which I know is what keeps
Steve Tyler of Aerosmith at bay politically. He cares more about earning
his $50 mil a year than speaking his mind. Selleck has been pretty well
black balled, only earning the rare cameo role on pathetic shows like
Friends. Charlton Heston is just too damn old and curmudgeonly for
Hollywood to have any effect on, but both knowledgable and erudite
enough to be able to tell the press where to stick it on occasion. I can
imagine that in another 20 or 30 years, Gibson will be elected NRA
President, assuming that the NRA has not become an outlawed group by
that point in time...
What can I say? It is a heroic story, so the ending you all know is
obviously a happy one, the bad guys get their come uppance at Yorktown
(if not before), the young and innocent die young and innocent, while
the sinners among us remain to pick up the pieces and toil once again to
make this a better world. The movie is intended to make one wonder why
the present day seems to be full of either happy red coats (socialistic
syncophants), or cowardly summer soldiers and sunshine patriots, when we
are once again living in the hour of our discontent (or we are content,
so long as our stock portfolios are on the up and up, with our noses
roped to the trough of earning and debt....)
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