OT-Food for thought

Gunner Asch · 2008-09-30T08:59:20+00:00

The Undefended City By Bill Whittle When I first got to college, back in the last few weeks of the Seventies, I finally got a chance to see an ordinary game of Dungeons and Dragons. My immediate inclination was to play as a Paladin: the pinnacle of Lawful Good, a character required to dash in and fight overwhelmingly powerful evil forces anywhere and at whatever odds. These contests were short, depressing and hilarious, but all D&D really came down to in the end was slaying small monsters, taking their gold, buying slightly better gear and then slaying slightly larger monsters. Why not just save some time and become a Vorpal Sword distributor? Then you get the weapons and the gold, and people bring them both to you. And so a larval conservative was born. And I never played again. That was the attitude I took into The Lord of the Rings when the first of the trilogy appeared in 2001, just a few months after the Two Towers actually did fall and the idea of good and evil suddenly became - to me and no doubt to you too - a great deal less ironic and a great deal more real. And there, in the darkness, staring up at that screen, I marveled at this monumental font of deep and eternal ideas: the aversion to facing danger, even when it is right in front of us; the value of old and true allies; the corrosive force of addiction; responsibility forsaken, then reclaimed... and through it all the fear that we may be lesser sons of greater fathers, and that we may no longer have the courage or the will to defend the City entrusted to our care. This, and more, what was what John Ronald Reuel Tolkien was trying to teach me, down that dark river of the future - and he ought to know. The Lord of the Rings was written between 1937 through 1949... years of dark waters, indeed. A few years before Tolkien put pen to paper, an event took place that a man of his education would have undoubtedly been aware. On February 9th, 1933, the ruling elite of the world's great Civilization held a...

Sep 30, 2008 40 Replies

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Gary Pewitt 17 years ago

Bill, a very beautiful and moving post. Thank you. If you don't mind I'd like to send copies of it to several friends. I wish I could distribute it to every school in America. Thanks and God Bless you. Gary N9ZSV

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