ALAN writes:

To glorify the Communist future, one must first blacken the American past and demonize the white men who built American civilization and defended it.  That is why American patriots and heroes are now routinely demonized by the Fascist Left and their well-trained agitators.

John Wayne was an American patriot, exemplified masculine authority, and upheld a code of chivalry in his portrayal of heroic men in many motion pictures.

Those are some of the reasons why he is being demonized by the Left:  Not for his faults, but for his virtues.

Public officials in California who were not yet born when John Wayne was earning the respect and admiration of millions of Americans were outraged that some people wanted to establish a day to honor John Wayne for his life’s work. Why were they upset? Simple:  Because Mr. Wayne had the temerity to imagine (a) that he was living in a free country, (b) that he had a right to express his views, and (c) that he had no obligation to get the approval of Communist-trained agitators before expressing those views.

“We can’t all of a sudden get down on our knees and turn everything over to the leadership of the blacks. I believe in white supremacy until the blacks are educated to a point of responsibility. I don’t believe in giving authority and positions of leadership and judgment to irresponsible people,” John Wayne said in a 1971 interview.   [“Lawmakers reject John Wayne Day over Racism Concerns,” AP, April 29]

In making such remarks, John Wayne’s only crime was extreme good sense and sound judgment.  American blacks in the half-century since then could have proven him wrong by acting responsibly and upholding minimal standards of civilization.  Instead, they proved him right by doing the opposite.  They proved beyond doubt that they hate responsibility by:

— Sending the crime rate to astronomical altitude.
— Destroying their families and Inflating welfare rolls to unprecedented proportions.
— Helping cities like Detroit and East St. Louis become sites of desolation, ruined buildings, and vacant lots.
— Destroying other people’s property and lives in riots in Detroit, Cincinnati, Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, Baltimore, and Ferguson, among many other cities.
— Destroying clean, modern apartment buildings like the Pruitt-Igoe and Darst-Webbe apartments in St. Louis.
— Infesting public transit companies with parasites and opportunists (see Washington, DC).
— Infesting school boards with liars, frauds, and cheaters (see Atlanta).
— Demanding unearned privileges like “affirmative action.”
— Infesting public schools with lowered standards, fights, assaults, anarchy, and gangs of thugs-in-training.

And stupid white Americans – “Liberals” and “Conservatives” alike – agreed to put up with all of that because they stood John Wayne’s advice on its head:  They agreed to give power and privileges to people who had not earned them and did not want to earn them.

The unearned power and privileges given to blacks matched the unearned guilt accepted by foolish whites.

An additional reason John Wayne is demonized is that he recognized Communists as the noxious revolutionary predators that they are.  Along with a handful of patriotic American actors and actresses in the 1940s, he fought to oppose Communist involvement in the motion picture industry—for which he was demonized then and is still demonized in biographies by politically-correct writers who repeat standard Leftist lies about the insignificance of Communist agitation in American culture and government in the 1940s-‘50s.

That he opposed do-gooder government is yet another reason why the Left must demonize John Wayne.  “I don’t want any handouts from a benevolent government,” he said.  Now here’s the challenge:  Try to imagine that statement coming from any group of American blacks.

To call John Wayne a “racist” is both a calculated lie and laughable in the extreme.  “Racist” and “racism” are demon terms whose purpose is to immobilize American white men from defending and preserving the nation their ancestors built.

Kent Steffgen pinpointed this purpose fifty years ago.  The purpose of such words, he wrote, is “to neutralize resistance to advancing socialism.   …..anyone who stands in the way is a ‘racist’, or he may be a ‘bigot’ or a ‘white supremacist.’ The price Americans pay by fleeing in terror before these bogus terms is the abandonment of their property rights and their status as free citizens.  Communist political warfare has no other purpose and scare words are simply the tools of the trade…..”      [ The Bondage of the Free, Vanguard Books, 1966, p. 60 ]

It is appalling to see how little Americans learn from history and how easily they are intimidated by such name-calling.  Are there men anywhere on earth who know how to remain mute better than feminized American white men when their ancestors, patriots, and heroes are being demonized?

In the years when John Wayne rode tall in the saddle, American white men took pride in enforcing rules and not rewarding rule-breakers.  Today they do the opposite.  Rather than enforce rules and punish blacks for their mayhem, stupid white men now genuflect before them or their apologists in order not to be called “racist.”  This is an example of what John Wayne opposed—and he was 100% right.

If American white men had had the good sense and sound judgment of men like John Wayne, they would not have permitted themselves to become feminized in the first place and would not have permitted savage and irresponsible blacks to do the things listed above.

My father admired John Wayne, as did the men in my extended family, as do I.  He was neither a demon nor a deity, but a thoughtful man and talented actor who provided decent, inspiring entertainment for millions of Americans.  He deserves to be remembered for his portrayal of heroic men in movies ranging from his early B-Westerns like “Riders of Destiny” (1933) to classic westerns like “Stagecoach” and “The Searchers” to dramatic films like 1954’s “The High and The Mighty,” which was unforgettable both for Dimitri Tiomkin’s beautiful theme music and for John Wayne’s portrayal of a veteran airline pilot who understands responsibility and valor, qualities that most blacks and many whites have never understood.

The now-fashionable claim that John Wayne’s character in “The Searchers” is a “racist” has been expertly dissected and exposed as a myth by Professor Samuel Hux in an essay in the current New English Review.

Chicago’s Mike Royko spoke for millions of John Wayne fans when he wrote:

“I never went to a John Wayne movie to find a philosophy to live by or to absorb a profound message.  I went for the simple pleasure of spending a couple of hours seeing the bad guys lose…”

                 —  Mike Royko, “Why Did So Many of Us Like John Wayne”, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, June 18, 1979

In the 1930s-‘40s-‘50s, the bad guys in American westerns always lost—because of the inflexible moral code upheld by heroes like John Wayne, Hoppy, Gene, Roy, and countless others.

“What men find in the spectacle of the ultimate triumph of the good [ over evil, as in John Wayne’s movies and other classic Westerns ] is the inspiration to fight for one’s own values in the moral conflicts of one’s own life.”

                          —  Ayn Rand, The Romantic Manifesto (World Publishing Company, 1970), p. 134.

And, I would add:  Those who admired John Wayne also found in his movies the reassurance that virtue and decency are achievable in a world filled with evil and ugliness.

Please follow and like us: