by Michael Peirce
Having read the numerous critiques of Mel Gibson's new movie, "The Patriot,"
I must admit that I was predisposed to like it. Watching the British get
into an uproar over an imagined injustice starts my day off right. When
traitorous American liberals got in on the fun I began to think this might
really be my kind of film. Once again the Brits and the Tories have teamed
up to attack freedom-loving Americans so it's time to fire yet another shot
over their bow.
Let's review what those outraged individuals have been saying about our
revolutionary war as depicted in Mel Gibson's new film:
The British soldiers behaved like gentlemen and are misrepresented in this
movie.
Consider the British prison hulks where American captives were kept for an
excellent example of how they waged war. Not too gentlemanly for the
American captives who starved to death there. The massacre at Waxhaws was
not invented, and Bloody Ban Tareleton was a real person - and a war
criminal. That he was popular in Liverpool after the war (a claim made
recently) says more about the people there than it does about Tareleton.
Don't forget for a second that it was the British who invented the
concentration camp, not the Germans. Remember their war of aggression
against the Boers?
It was not the Americans who brought scalping to the American Indians, or
brought the Indians into the American Revolution, unleashing that particular
horror against the settlers. A horror that would be repaid in full. It was
the British, paying their Indian allies by the scalp, with no qualms about
who it had belonged to, whether man, woman, or child. How very civilized. I
am reminded that Lord Jeffrey Amherst introduced a nice tweak to frontier
fighting: germ warfare via smallpox-infected blankets to the Indians who had
offended the Crown..
Atrocities like those depicted in the movie never happened.
Really? Study up a bit and you'll find that the civil war that raged in the
midst of all this was fought with astonishing brutality on both sides. It
should be noted that Colonel Banastre Tarelton or "Bloody Ban" as he was
called - actually commanded a Tory Legion of green-coated American loyalists
who were quite as brutal as anything depicted in the movie. In the movie
Tarelton is depicted in the Tavington character who while overage for the
job (Tareleton was barely twenty when he killed his first prisoner)
certainly brings a Snidely Whiplash sort of villainy to the screen.
As for atrocities? Are these people such pollyannas? What do they think
happens in a war? How many churches were destroyed, people and all, when the
British and Americans firebombed Dresden? Or is out of line, somehow, to
mention that sort of atrocity? The British practically invented atrocities.
Hasn't anyone read the classic Island Fortress, which American kids used to
grow up on? A wonderful tale about Francis Marion and the war in the South.
No doubts about atrocities for those of us who grew up on classic Americana.
We fought for freedom against a wicked pack of scoundrels and their foreign
mercenaries. Are there any questions? No sir!
Twelve million Indians were killed by the Americans.
Huh? What did the settlers do, set up Auschwitz on the Hudson? It's way past
time to get in the face of liars who make such statements. To find 12
million dead Indians one must look to the sub continent; where of course the
British held sway. Ever see the images of Sepoys tied to the mouths of
cannons? That is British justice, and they didn't learn that from the
Germans or from the Americans
The movie depicts the British as behaving like the Waffen SS.
Saying the British are depicted as SS men is entirely backwards - it would
be far more appropriate to say that the SS men behaved like the British.
Although, even Hitler never came up with a horror like the punishment King
George used for those convicted of treason: have you by chance a clue as to
just what it means to be hanged, drawn, and quartered?
Realpolitic is a German usage but they learned it from the British, after
enduring an uneasy alliance with them during the Napoleonic Wars. For more
on that see Peter Hofshroer's two volume classic on the 1815 campaign and
see for yourself who started the dynamic that led to two world wars in the
next century.
It should be stated that the SS men would have found no place in Germany had
not the British (and French) pursued their abominable Versailles treaty and
attendant policies which virtually assured a second world war. Finally, it
was the English who brought America into the first war, one in which we had
no national interest, but which having involved ourselves, tilted history in
a way that haunts us still.
The movie is based solely on Gibson's Anglophobia.
Wrong again. Historically speaking, in this movie the British didn't come
off all that badly. We have identified quite a few things Gibson chose to
ignore which could have made the British look really bad.
Slavery was a peculiarly American problem and blacks were depicted
inaccurately in the movie.
Who settled the slave states? Oh...it was the British and it was they who
brought the slaves here in the first place. Slavery was quite as legal in
Britain at that time as it was in the US. Yet one never found too many free
blacks in Britain or perhaps someone would care to note a painting that
shows one, or a book that mentions one? Freeing slaves came much later and
certainly not in London - that would have been unseemly. Indeed, in Britain,
white men were treated as slaves.
There were indeed free black men fighting in the revolution against the
British and to those who wish to open a book, instead of their mouth, it can
be readily ascertained that it a free black was one of those killed at the
Boston massacre. See the early paintings of the battles in the South and at
Breeds Hill for contemporary views of black men at war.
Worst of all, are the lies spouted by Americans revisionists who claim that
the colonists didn't really own their own personal muskets, the assault
rifles of the day.
When you hear this particular bit of mendacity, tremble, for your very
freedom is at stake. As a recent college graduate told me over lunch: he had
at least six classes which used frequent references to the Communist
Manifesto and other Marxist claptrap, but could not remember a single class
that discussed the verities of the American experience or our history. His
degree is not in economics by the way, but in computer science. Bar the
doors, there are ravening wolves out there.
The liars who say we did not own our own weapons know very well what
actually went on back then, they just don't want you to know - it is merely
a tactic. One imagines them finally collecting all our personal weapons and
then turning around and taking off the smarmy mask and croaking in a
paroxysm of devilish humor, "Surprise!" And darkness gathers over the land.
As to the movie itself? I was kind of disappointed - I'd heard the battle
scenes ran too long and found quite the opposite to be true. I missed the
stirring sound track of "Last of the Mohicans" but no one could fault the
visual imagery. John Ford could have helped a lot with this movie but the
bottom line I guess, is this: I loved it despite its flaws. I hadn't had so
much fun since I sang every verse of Johnny Horton's classic "The Battle of
New Orleans" to a bunch of British types in the Corporal and Private's Mess
in Salisbury. It really riled 'em when I got to the part where it says "They
RAN through briars and they RAN through the brambles and they RAN through
places where a rabbit wouldn't go!" Everybody but the Brits joined in on the
chorus and we all had a great laugh. Eventually, though, even the Brits saw
the fun and we moved on to "I'm proud to be a Londoner." In these perilous
times however, it's no longer fun and every thing is about ideology. Our
country (and theirs too, by the way) has sunk into a despotic morass and
sadly, the time for fun is well behind us.
So God bless Mel Gibson, and the men and boys who shouldered their muskets
and drove those rascals back across the Atlantic, where their empire finally
festered and died. There are quite few of those type of people still hanging
around, gnawing at the fabric of our republic, so keep your powder dry and
for God's sake, do NOT let those miserable scoundrels take your guns. The
enemy is always the same, although he has switched from red coats to black
SWAT drag; and his intention is always the same, which is to enslave us. Our
response, too, must always be the same.
July 14, 2000
Mr. Peirce fought with the Rhodesian freedom fighters (the Ian Smith side,
of course).
Copyright 2000 LewRockwell.com
Having read the numerous critiques of Mel Gibson's new movie, "The Patriot,"
I must admit that I was predisposed to like it. Watching the British get
into an uproar over an imagined injustice starts my day off right. When
traitorous American liberals got in on the fun I began to think this might
really be my kind of film. Once again the Brits and the Tories have teamed
up to attack freedom-loving Americans so it's time to fire yet another shot
over their bow.
Let's review what those outraged individuals have been saying about our
revolutionary war as depicted in Mel Gibson's new film:
The British soldiers behaved like gentlemen and are misrepresented in this
movie.
Consider the British prison hulks where American captives were kept for an
excellent example of how they waged war. Not too gentlemanly for the
American captives who starved to death there. The massacre at Waxhaws was
not invented, and Bloody Ban Tareleton was a real person - and a war
criminal. That he was popular in Liverpool after the war (a claim made
recently) says more about the people there than it does about Tareleton.
Don't forget for a second that it was the British who invented the
concentration camp, not the Germans. Remember their war of aggression
against the Boers?
It was not the Americans who brought scalping to the American Indians, or
brought the Indians into the American Revolution, unleashing that particular
horror against the settlers. A horror that would be repaid in full. It was
the British, paying their Indian allies by the scalp, with no qualms about
who it had belonged to, whether man, woman, or child. How very civilized. I
am reminded that Lord Jeffrey Amherst introduced a nice tweak to frontier
fighting: germ warfare via smallpox-infected blankets to the Indians who had
offended the Crown..
Atrocities like those depicted in the movie never happened.
Really? Study up a bit and you'll find that the civil war that raged in the
midst of all this was fought with astonishing brutality on both sides. It
should be noted that Colonel Banastre Tarelton or "Bloody Ban" as he was
called - actually commanded a Tory Legion of green-coated American loyalists
who were quite as brutal as anything depicted in the movie. In the movie
Tarelton is depicted in the Tavington character who while overage for the
job (Tareleton was barely twenty when he killed his first prisoner)
certainly brings a Snidely Whiplash sort of villainy to the screen.
As for atrocities? Are these people such pollyannas? What do they think
happens in a war? How many churches were destroyed, people and all, when the
British and Americans firebombed Dresden? Or is out of line, somehow, to
mention that sort of atrocity? The British practically invented atrocities.
Hasn't anyone read the classic Island Fortress, which American kids used to
grow up on? A wonderful tale about Francis Marion and the war in the South.
No doubts about atrocities for those of us who grew up on classic Americana.
We fought for freedom against a wicked pack of scoundrels and their foreign
mercenaries. Are there any questions? No sir!
Twelve million Indians were killed by the Americans.
Huh? What did the settlers do, set up Auschwitz on the Hudson? It's way past
time to get in the face of liars who make such statements. To find 12
million dead Indians one must look to the sub continent; where of course the
British held sway. Ever see the images of Sepoys tied to the mouths of
cannons? That is British justice, and they didn't learn that from the
Germans or from the Americans
The movie depicts the British as behaving like the Waffen SS.
Saying the British are depicted as SS men is entirely backwards - it would
be far more appropriate to say that the SS men behaved like the British.
Although, even Hitler never came up with a horror like the punishment King
George used for those convicted of treason: have you by chance a clue as to
just what it means to be hanged, drawn, and quartered?
Realpolitic is a German usage but they learned it from the British, after
enduring an uneasy alliance with them during the Napoleonic Wars. For more
on that see Peter Hofshroer's two volume classic on the 1815 campaign and
see for yourself who started the dynamic that led to two world wars in the
next century.
It should be stated that the SS men would have found no place in Germany had
not the British (and French) pursued their abominable Versailles treaty and
attendant policies which virtually assured a second world war. Finally, it
was the English who brought America into the first war, one in which we had
no national interest, but which having involved ourselves, tilted history in
a way that haunts us still.
The movie is based solely on Gibson's Anglophobia.
Wrong again. Historically speaking, in this movie the British didn't come
off all that badly. We have identified quite a few things Gibson chose to
ignore which could have made the British look really bad.
Slavery was a peculiarly American problem and blacks were depicted
inaccurately in the movie.
Who settled the slave states? Oh...it was the British and it was they who
brought the slaves here in the first place. Slavery was quite as legal in
Britain at that time as it was in the US. Yet one never found too many free
blacks in Britain or perhaps someone would care to note a painting that
shows one, or a book that mentions one? Freeing slaves came much later and
certainly not in London - that would have been unseemly. Indeed, in Britain,
white men were treated as slaves.
There were indeed free black men fighting in the revolution against the
British and to those who wish to open a book, instead of their mouth, it can
be readily ascertained that it a free black was one of those killed at the
Boston massacre. See the early paintings of the battles in the South and at
Breeds Hill for contemporary views of black men at war.
Worst of all, are the lies spouted by Americans revisionists who claim that
the colonists didn't really own their own personal muskets, the assault
rifles of the day.
When you hear this particular bit of mendacity, tremble, for your very
freedom is at stake. As a recent college graduate told me over lunch: he had
at least six classes which used frequent references to the Communist
Manifesto and other Marxist claptrap, but could not remember a single class
that discussed the verities of the American experience or our history. His
degree is not in economics by the way, but in computer science. Bar the
doors, there are ravening wolves out there.
The liars who say we did not own our own weapons know very well what
actually went on back then, they just don't want you to know - it is merely
a tactic. One imagines them finally collecting all our personal weapons and
then turning around and taking off the smarmy mask and croaking in a
paroxysm of devilish humor, "Surprise!" And darkness gathers over the land.
As to the movie itself? I was kind of disappointed - I'd heard the battle
scenes ran too long and found quite the opposite to be true. I missed the
stirring sound track of "Last of the Mohicans" but no one could fault the
visual imagery. John Ford could have helped a lot with this movie but the
bottom line I guess, is this: I loved it despite its flaws. I hadn't had so
much fun since I sang every verse of Johnny Horton's classic "The Battle of
New Orleans" to a bunch of British types in the Corporal and Private's Mess
in Salisbury. It really riled 'em when I got to the part where it says "They
RAN through briars and they RAN through the brambles and they RAN through
places where a rabbit wouldn't go!" Everybody but the Brits joined in on the
chorus and we all had a great laugh. Eventually, though, even the Brits saw
the fun and we moved on to "I'm proud to be a Londoner." In these perilous
times however, it's no longer fun and every thing is about ideology. Our
country (and theirs too, by the way) has sunk into a despotic morass and
sadly, the time for fun is well behind us.
So God bless Mel Gibson, and the men and boys who shouldered their muskets
and drove those rascals back across the Atlantic, where their empire finally
festered and died. There are quite few of those type of people still hanging
around, gnawing at the fabric of our republic, so keep your powder dry and
for God's sake, do NOT let those miserable scoundrels take your guns. The
enemy is always the same, although he has switched from red coats to black
SWAT drag; and his intention is always the same, which is to enslave us. Our
response, too, must always be the same.
July 14, 2000
Mr. Peirce fought with the Rhodesian freedom fighters (the Ian Smith side,
of course).
Copyright 2000 LewRockwell.com