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Fantasy » alt.fan.tolkien » Ents of Europe (was Re: For our Uk Friends) (OT)
| Ents of Europe (was Re: For our Uk Friends) (OT) [message #76628] |
So, 10 Juli 2005 05:16 |
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I rarely post editorials, but here's a very timely piece written by the
great Prof. Victor Davis Hanson. And it even has a Tolkien angle...
The Ents of Europe
By Victor Davis Hanson
One of the many wondrous peoples that poured forth from the rich imagination
of the late J. R. R. Tolkien were the Ents. These tree-like creatures,
agonizingly slow and covered with mossy bark, nursed themselves on tales of
past glory while their numbers dwindled in their isolation. Unable to
reproduce themselves or to fathom the evil outside their peaceful forest -
and careful to keep to themselves and avoid reacting to provocation of the
tree-cutters and forest burners - they assumed they would be given a pass
from the upheavals of Middle Earth.
For Tolkien, who wrote in a post-imperial Britain bled white from stopping
Prussian militarism and Hitler's Nazism, only to then witness the rise of
the more numerous, wealthier, and crasser Americans, such specters were
haunting. Indeed, there are variants of the Ent theme throughout Tolkien's
novels, from the dormant Riders of Rohan - whose king was exorcised from his
dotage and rallied the realm's dwindling cavalry to recover lost glory and
save the West - to the hobbits themselves.
The latter, protected by slurred "Rangers," live blissfully unaware that
radical changes in the world have brought evil incarnate to their very
doorstep. Then to their amazement they discover that of all people, a hobbit
rises to the occasion, and really does stand up well when confronted with
apparently far more powerful and evil adversaries. The entire novel is full
of such folk - the oath-breaking Dead who come alive to honor their
once-broken pact, or the now-fallen and impotent High Elves who nevertheless
do their part in the inevitable war to come.
Tolkien always denied an allegorical motif or any allusions to the
contemporary dangers of appeasement or the leveling effects of modernism.
And scholars bicker over whether he was lamenting the end of the old
England, old Europe, or the old West - in the face of the American
democratic colossus, the Soviet Union's tentacles, or the un-chivalrous age
of the bomb. But the notion of decline, past glory, and 11th-hour
reawakening are nevertheless everywhere in the English philologist's Lord of
the Rings. Was he on to something?
More specifically, does the Ents analogy work for present-day Europe? Before
you laugh at the silly comparison, remember that the Western military
tradition is European. Today the continent is unarmed and weak, but deep
within its collective mind and spirit still reside the ability to field
technologically sophisticated and highly disciplined forces - if it were
ever to really feel threatened. One murder began to arouse the Dutch; what
would 3,000 dead and a toppled Eiffel Tower do to the French? Or how would
the Italians take to a plane stuck into the dome of St. Peter? We are nursed
now on the spectacle of Iranian mullahs, with their bought weapons and
foreign-produced oil wealth, humiliating a convoy of European delegates
begging and cajoling them not to make bombs - or at least to point what
bombs they make at Israel and not at Berlin or Paris. But it was not always
the case, and may not always be.
The Netherlands was a litmus test for Europe. Unlike Spain or Greece, which
had historical grievances against Islam, the Dutch were the avatars of the
new liberal Europe, without historical baggage. They were eager to unshackle
Europe from the Church, from its class and gender constraints, and from any
whiff of its racist or colonialist past. True, for a variety of reasons,
Amsterdam may be a case study of how wrong Rousseau was about natural man,
but for a Muslim immigrant the country was about as hospitable a foreign
host as one can imagine. Thus, it was far safer for radical Islamic fascists
to damn the West openly from a mosque in Rotterdam than for a moderate
Christian to quietly worship in a church in Saudi Arabia, Iran, or Algeria.
And yet we learn not just that the Netherlands has fostered a radical sect
of Muslims who will kill and bomb, but, far more importantly, that they will
do so after years of residency among, and indeed in utter contempt of, their
Western hosts.
Things are no less humiliating - or dangerous - in France. Thousands of
unassimilated Muslims mock French society. Yet their fury shapes its foreign
policy to the degree that Jacques Chirac sent a government plane to sweep up
a dying Arafat. But then what do we expect from a country that enriched
Hamas, let Mrs. Arafat spend her husband's embezzled millions under its
nose, gave Khomeini the sanctuary needed to destroy Iran, sold a nuclear
reactor to Saddam, is at the heart of the Oil-for-Food scandal, and revs up
the Muslim world against the United States?
Only now are Europeans discovering the disturbing nature of radical Islamic
extremism, which thrives not on real grievance but on perceived hurts - and
the appeasement of its purported oppressors. How odd that tens of millions
of Muslims flocked to Europe for its material consumption, superior standard
of living, and freedom and tolerance - and then chose not merely to remain
in enclaves but to romanticize all the old pathologies that they had fled
from in the first place. It is almost as if the killers in Amsterdam said,
"I want your cell phones, unfettered Internet access, and free-spirited
girls, but hate the very system that alone can create them all. So please
let me stay here to destroy what I want."
Turkey's proposed entry into the EU has become some weird sort of Swiftian
satire on the crazy relationship between Europe and Islam. Ponder the
contradictions of it all. Privately most Europeans realize that opening its
borders without restraint to Turkey's millions will alter the nature of the
EU, both by welcoming in a radically different citizenry, largely outside
the borders of Europe, whose population will make it the largest and poorest
country in the Union - and the most antithetical to Western liberalism. Yet
Europe is also trapped in its own utopian race/class/gender rhetoric. It
cannot openly question the wisdom of making the "other" coequal to itself,
since one does not by any abstract standard judge, much less censure,
customs, religions, or values.
So it stews and simmers. Not to be outdone, some in Turkey dare the
Europeans, almost in contempt, to reject their bid. Thus rather than
evolving Attaturk's modernist reforms to match the values of Europe, the
country is instead driven into the midst of an Islamic reactionary revival
in which its rural east far more resembles Iraq or Iran than Brussels. So
the world wonders whether Europe is sticking a toe into the Islamic Middle
East or the latter its entire leg into Europe.
Everyone gets in on the charade. The savvy Greeks discovered that they
didn't want to be tarred with the usual anti-Ottoman obstructionism and so
are keeping very quiet about their historic worries (legitimate after a near
400-year occupation) as a front-line state. And why not, when EU money
pouring into Turkey might jumpstart the Eastern Mediterranean economy and
lead to joint Greek-Turkish deals? With the future role of NATO and the 6th
Fleet undetermined, is it not better to have the Turkish military inside the
tent than for poor Greece to have a neighbor's ships and planes routinely
violating Hellenic air and sea sovereignty - while it waits for the Danish
air force or the French army to provide a little deterrence in the Aegean or
Cyprus?
Of course, we are amused by the spectacle. Privately, most Americans grasp
that with a Germany and France reeling from unassimilated Muslim
populations, a rising Islamic-inspired and globally embarrassing
anti-Semitism, and economic stagnation, it is foolhardy to create 70 million
Turkish Europeans by fiat. Welcoming in Turkey will make the EU so diverse,
large, and unwieldy as to make it - to paraphrase Voltaire - neither
European nor a Union. Surely Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia will wish to get
in on the largess. Were they not, after all, also part of the historical
Roman mare nostrum, and did they not also enjoy long ties with France and
Italy?
So, to our discredit I suppose, we are enjoying schadenfreude after our
recent transatlantic acrimonies: Europe preached a postmodern gospel of
multiculturalism and the end of oppressive Western values, and now it is
time to put its money (and security) where its mouth is - or suffer the
usual hypocrisy that all limousine liberals face. The United States has its
own recent grievances with the Turks - its eleventh-hour refusal to allow
American troops to come down from the north explains why the now red-hot
Sunni Triangle never saw much war during the three-week fighting. Recently a
minister of a country that gave rise to the notion of 20th-century genocide
slurred the United States for resembling Hitler, who in fact was an
erstwhile Turkish near ally. Still, our realists muse, how convenient that
Europe may carry the water in bringing Turkey inside the Western orbit and
prevent it from joining the radical Islamic fringe. Knowing it is in our
interest (and not necessarily in the Europeans') and will cost them lots and
us nothing, we "on principle" remonstrate for the need to show Western
empathy to Turkish aspirations.
But gut-check time is coming for Europe, with its own rising unassimilated
immigrant populations, rogue mosques entirely bent on destroying the West,
declining birth rate and rising entitlements, the Turkish question, and a
foreign policy whose appeasement of Arab regimes won it only a brief lull
and plenty of humiliation. The radical Muslim world of the madrassas hates
the United States because it is liberal and powerful; but it utterly
despises Europe because it is even more liberal and far weaker, earning the
continent not fear, but contempt.
The real question is whether there is any Demosthenes left in Europe, who
will soberly but firmly demand assimilation and integration of all
immigrants, an end to mosque radicalism, even-handedness in the Middle East,
no more subsidies to terrorists like Hamas, a toughness rather than
opportunist profiteering with the likes of Assad and the Iranian theocracy -
and make it clear that states that aid and abet terrorists in Europe do so
to their great peril.
So will the old Ents awaken, or will they slumber on, muttering nonsense to
themselves, lost in past grandeur and utterly clueless about the dangers on
their borders?
Stay tuned - it is one of the most fascinating sagas of our time.
***
--Ty
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| Re: Ents of Europe (was Re: For our Uk Friends) (OT) [message #76646 ] |
So, 10 Juli 2005 13:39 |
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Ty wrote:
> I rarely post editorials, but here's a very timely piece written by the
> great Prof. Victor Davis Hanson. And it even has a Tolkien angle...
Apparently the "great" professor never read the book either, so
it would be more appropriate to call it a Peter Jackson angle...
Morgil
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| Re: Ents of Europe (was Re: For our Uk Friends) (OT) [message #76656 ] |
So, 10 Juli 2005 16:36 |
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Morgil wrote:
>> I rarely post editorials, but here's a very timely piece written by the
>> great Prof. Victor Davis Hanson. And it even has a Tolkien angle...
>
> Apparently the "great" professor never read the book either, so
> it would be more appropriate to call it a Peter Jackson angle...
Did he get something wrong? His LotR references looked OK to me.
-- FotW
"If you must read newspapers and magazines at least
give yourself a mouthwash with The Lord of the Rings."
-- C.S. Lewis
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| Re: Ents of Europe (was Re: For our Uk Friends) (OT) [message #76659 ] |
So, 10 Juli 2005 17:05 |
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Flame of the West kirjoitti viestissä ...
>Morgil wrote:
>
>>> I rarely post editorials, but here's a very timely piece written by the
>>> great Prof. Victor Davis Hanson. And it even has a Tolkien angle...
>>
>> Apparently the "great" professor never read the book either, so
>> it would be more appropriate to call it a Peter Jackson angle...
>
>Did he get something wrong? His LotR references looked OK to me.
Well, his mischaracterations of Ents seems mostly movie based
where Ents voted against going to war and had to be told by Pippin
that their forests were being cut down, and the "exorcism" of
Theoden is a clear movie-ism. Also the part about "impotent"
High Elves doing their part in the war would seem to be refering
to the Elves at Helm's Deep, rather then the events in book.
Morgil
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| Re: Ents of Europe (was Re: For our Uk Friends) (OT) [message #76663 ] |
So, 10 Juli 2005 19:11 |
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Morgil wrote:
>>Did he get something wrong? His LotR references looked OK to me.
>
>
> Well, his mischaracterations of Ents seems mostly movie based
> where Ents voted against going to war and had to be told by Pippin
> that their forests were being cut down, and the "exorcism" of
> Theoden is a clear movie-ism. Also the part about "impotent"
> High Elves doing their part in the war would seem to be refering
> to the Elves at Helm's Deep, rather then the events in book.
OK, I see your point. He does seem to phrase things like
someone who's got the movies in mind rather than the books.
-- FotW
On the Internet, no one can tell you're a Balrog.
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| Re: Ents of Europe (was Re: For our Uk Friends) (OT) [message #76694 ] |
Mo, 11 Juli 2005 02:21 |
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On 2005-07-10, Flame of the West <jsolinas [at] comcast.net> wrote
in <avqdnQD3npEAy0zfRVn-oQ [at] comcast.com>:
[snip everything except .sig]
> On the Internet, no one can tell you're a Balrog.
Are you a Balrog? Are you a sword? Or something else?
--
Huan, the hound of Valinor
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| Re: Ents of Europe (was Re: For our Uk Friends) (OT) [message #76699 ] |
Mo, 11 Juli 2005 03:05 |
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Huan the hound wrote:
>>On the Internet, no one can tell you're a Balrog.
>
>
> Are you a Balrog? Are you a sword? Or something else?
Actually, the original phrase used "dog", which means
it's a better sig for you than for me.
-- FotW
"If you must read newspapers and magazines at least
give yourself a mouthwash with The Lord of the Rings."
-- C.S. Lewis
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| Re: Ents of Europe (was Re: For our Uk Friends) (OT) [message #76706 ] |
Mo, 11 Juli 2005 03:59 |
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On 2005-07-11, Flame of the West <jsolinas [at] comcast.net> wrote in
<7MWdnUvweJojWEzfRVn-ig [at] comcast.com>:
> Huan the hound wrote:
>
>>>On the Internet, no one can tell you're a Balrog.
>>
>> Are you a Balrog? Are you a sword? Or something else?
>
> Actually, the original phrase used "dog", which means
> it's a better sig for you than for me.
:-) Right. Who wrote it?
Since my .sig and the "From:" line identify me as a hound, it would be
more fitting for me if the original said "human."
> "If you must read newspapers and magazines at least
> give yourself a mouthwash with The Lord of the Rings."
>
> -- C.S. Lewis
By the way, I've read the old version of Lewis's letters (there *is* a
new one, right? or am I totally misremembering?) and he didn't express
that quite as concisely as you have it quoted above. ;-)
--
Huan, the hound of Valinor
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| Re: Ents of Europe (was Re: For our Uk Friends) (OT) [message #76708 ] |
Mo, 11 Juli 2005 04:23 |
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Huan the hound wrote:
>>"If you must read newspapers and magazines at least
>>give yourself a mouthwash with The Lord of the Rings."
>>
>> -- C.S. Lewis
>
>
> By the way, I've read the old version of Lewis's letters (there *is* a
> new one, right? or am I totally misremembering?) and he didn't express
> that quite as concisely as you have it quoted above. ;-)
I only have one volume and it's from before LotR. I pulled
the quote from Joseph Pearce's bio of CSL; he must have
been paraphrasing. I'd be interested in seeing the exact
quote if it's not too much trouble.
-- FotW
Reality is for those who cannot cope with Middle-earth.
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| Re: Ents of Europe (was Re: For our Uk Friends) (OT) [message #79605 ] |
Do, 14 Juli 2005 04:34 |
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On 2005-07-11, Flame of the West <jsolinas [at] comcast.net> wrote
in <cP-dnb9udu6IRUzfRVn-pw [at] comcast.com>:
> Huan the hound wrote:
>
>>>"If you must read newspapers and magazines at least
>>>give yourself a mouthwash with The Lord of the Rings."
>>>
>>> -- C.S. Lewis
>>
>>
>> By the way, I've read the old version of Lewis's letters (there *is* a
>> new one, right? or am I totally misremembering?) and he didn't express
>> that quite as concisely as you have it quoted above. ;-)
>
> I only have one volume and it's from before LotR. I pulled
> the quote from Joseph Pearce's bio of CSL; he must have
> been paraphrasing. I'd be interested in seeing the exact
> quote if it's not too much trouble.
Wow, I'd have mentioned it earlier if I hadn't thought you shortened it
yourself! The letter was interesting enough to me for me to keep some of
it in a file, so here it is:
begin quote
TO MISS JANE GASKELL. 2 September 1957
.... 2. ... In a fantasy every precaution must be taken never to break the
spell, to do nothing which will wake the reader and bring him back with a
bump to the common earth. ...
3. Never use adjectives or adverbs which are mere appeals to the reader
to feel as you want him to feel. He won't do it just because you ask
him: you've got to /make/ him. No good /telling/ us a battle was
"exciting". If you succeed in exciting us the adjective will be
unnecessary; if you don't, it will be useless. ... I can hardly tell you
how important this is.
4. You are too fond of long adverbs like "dignifiedly", which are not
nice to pronounce. I hope, by the way, you always write by ear not by
eye. Every sentence shd. be tested on the tongue, to make sure that the
sound of it has the hardness or softness, the swiftness or languor, which
the meaning of it calls for.
5. ... No /man/ wants to hear how she was dressed, and the sort of woman
who does seldom reads fantasy; if she reads anything it is more likely to
be the women's magazines. By the way, these are a baneful influence on
your mind and imagination. Beware! they may kill your talent. If you
/can't/ keep off them, at least, after each debauch, give your imagination
a good mouth-wash by reading ... the _Odyssey_, Tolkien's _Lord of the
Rings_, E.R. Eddison's _The Worm Ouroboros_, the romances of James Stephens,
and all the early mythical plays of W.B. Yeats. Perhaps a touch of Lord
Dunsany too.
--
Huan, the hound of Valinor
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