I Went to See "Act of Valor"

I have to admit that my desire to see Act of Valor had been tempered a bit before I went because of a rant I saw somewhere that went off on the film and the film makers because one of the principal ‘bad guys’ in the film was a Jew. So I’ll address that little aspect of the film first and then get to my own take on the film.

The ‘device’ in the film of having a bad guy portrayed as a wealthy Jew who has been corrupted by his quest for wealth to participate in unspeakable acts… worked - on about a million different levels. I’m not going to spend a lot of time on this now, other than to say that condemning the film on this basis is beyond bogus – on about a million different levels. And if someone wants me to expound on that in a separate post, I’ll think about it.

Now to the film on its merits:

Heartbreak Ridge. I’ll probably tweak a few people with this, but in my opinion, that movie was weakly acted, feebly directed and at least partly based on a ludicrous premise (Recon Platoon of Marines runs amok… yada, yada), yet that movie is on lists of all time great military movies. The movie was made by, and acted by, “professionals” in movie making.

Act of Valor. The acting was pretty good. Compared to the acting in Heartbreak Ridge it was great. The acting did what good acting is meant to do in this medium; have the audience relate to the characters. I related – strongly. The premise of the movie was totally believable and the scenes and the sequences were utterly authentic. I say this not because I know, but because I knew going in, that the Seals in the movie had been granted enormous leeway in making the film authentic. This made following the movie… unusual, to say the least - like say, watching a silent movie in this day in age. Could never happen, right?

I have one major complaint with this movie; Because of the way the movie was made, because of the shorthand nature of the acting in the conduct of the ops, the movie was simply not long enough. The sequences of the operators in the actual buildup to the action sequences could have been much longer, in my opinion… Or maybe the movie was just too short. I don’t know.

Bottom line: I loved this movie and I will see it again - probably multiple times. For me, it wasn’t about the movie, it was about the men. The movie made me feel proud of these men and now, when pride is increasingly hard for me to feel, the men make me proud of this country.

There is certainly no shortage of memorable – and when well acted – incredibly moving scenes, in Shakespeare’s plays. This movie reminds me of one of them; the St. Crispen’s Day speech from Henry V. Maybe to others that’s not significant, but to me it is – greatly.
Could the acting have been better? Of course, but these guys are Seals, not actors. They seemed like they might have been Seals acting normally without the gloss of actors performing their craft to appear to be Seals acting normally. Could the story have been better? Probably not. Should the movie have been longer? Definitely (IMO).

This movie will be one of the great military films of all times, or at least it will be on the list right above Heartbreak Ridge. I hope they do this type of thing again. In times like these, we need movies like this. I’m not saying that all men should convince their sons to all aspire to become Seals, but from time to time, we as fathers need movies like this to show our sons what some men have within them to achieve - that being able to look at the world and discern that there exist things in life that are worth one's life to see preserved is rare and precious trait still worth cultivating in an honorable person's character.

Listen. It’s not only Seals, or Rangers, or Green Berets, or Delta Force, or Para-Rescue or any of the other special operators out there. It’s our military men and women. Since 9-11, they’ve been the best. And this from a generation of kids that up to 9-11 people called the Generation X’ers for their promise of not ever amounting to anything. Talking about missing the mark!

And we’ve lost too many of them. This film is a tribute to them all, in my mind.

So Here We Are

And very few people on the right are happy about being here. Many are thinking, “Why?”

Well let me take off my amateur climate and global warming expert hat for a moment and put on my amateur psychoanalyst hat, and I’ll tell you.

The right is in uncharted territory. I’ve said that, in my opinion, one of the greatest successes that the left has had over the past number of years is that they were able to redefine ‘moderate’ to mean conservative and ‘conservative’ to mean radical. In so doing, they shifted the entire political discussion left. So what we have is a lot of people, from both parties really, traipsing around in unfamiliar fields of politics - lost.

Patience, Grasshoppa, all will be revealed.

Up to a couple of weeks ago, this was a two man race. One of them isn’t who you think. Even though the polls and primary results reflected otherwise, the race was really between Romney and Perry.

Romney was the candidate that very few outside of the GOP “establishment” wanted but whom many had decided to support because he was who the party said was going to be the nominee - party loyalty and all that. Perry, on the other hand, was initially the anti-Romney whose poor debate performance capsized his ratings. His failure to recover though, even after some very good performances, some very good advertising and a record that should have spoken at least a little for itself, continues to baffle many of his supporters and probably many more who now wish they’d given him a closer look.

Perry, I think, failed to recover for an interesting reason.

President G. W. Bush was a President who many on the right deeply admired. He was outwardly, yet humbly a man of great character. The way he cared for people, especially America’s service members was movingly obvious. That depth of character is what many on the right view as a foundation stone of conservative ideology. Ironically, it was also a trait shared by Governor Perry. But Bush was also given to the regular misstatement – the regular mispronounced word – the regular good ole boy -ism. Something that came to people’s minds when they reflected on Gov. Perry’s debate performance. And being reminded of G.W. also brought to mind some other less attractive characteristics of the former President, like the fact that G.W.B. spent like a drunken liberal, and unfortunately that wasn’t all. People didn’t want to go through that same experience again – that deeply liking the President while having their conservative ideals muddled by “compassionate conservatism”.

So, in effect, the race was between a candidate that nobody wanted, but whom people were reluctantly willing to support and a person that many, many people wanted to support, but couldn’t bring themselves to.

Insanity? Maybe, but think about this; how strong was Newt’s support before Gov. Perry left the race? He had a faction of core support a whole lot smaller than Romney’s, who remembered the Contract With America with some fondness and who were willing to forgive his previous political activity and character flaws and the fact that Newt, in reality, is a master of political chess - an ability that handed him the Speakership. He is a candidate who, just a few short weeks ago, had no chance – and for good reason. He is a candidate who is very well liked by a relatively few people. He is also a candidate who is disliked by a relatively large number of people. Newt is easy to dislike for a number of reasons including arrogance, hostility, cunning, and deceit, just to name a few. The fact that he went from obscurity to prominence in the race by virtue of a sound bite, isn't lost on people either.

So we have what is in reality, a two candidate race. And if we are honest with ourselves, we have a two candidate race consisting of two candidates whose Republican bone fides are moderate, at best. And this isn’t the old moderate, before the left’s successful redefinition, but the new moderate. In fact, had any of the current field of candidates hailed from the southeast (with the exception of Paul), they all would have most probably fit the mold of Blue Dog Democrat.

We all know that Santorum is not going to win. He’s a likable guy, with a wonderful family, who is strongly socially conservative. But that resume will not sell in this election. Many people on the right are way past being part of a movement that supports having the government be the arbiter of social behavior. Not that “traditional values” are any less important, it’s just that traditional values are being seen as a social responsibility, not a political one. For me, it’s like one morning I got up, splashed some water on my face, and there was a much less handsome Clint Eastwood staring back at me saying in that imposing gravelly voice, “I don’t give a f—k who marries who.”

Though certainly not universal, I think many people on the right have come to grips with a gnawing concept that freedom necessarily means freedom and the pursuit of happiness applies to everyone even when it makes us uncomfortable or impinges on our deeply held convictions.

Whatever! Not this time. Moral activism is often a good thing, but it’s something society must deal with. And that means the fight against the left’s imposition of their compromised value structure on the rest of society must continue as well. Taxpayers should not be bribed, cajoled or constrained by law into supporting repugnant social concepts. This is a legitimate struggle.

Paul, as we all know, won’t win and he can’t win. But he and his perpetual campaigning, deserves credit for bringing the hypocrisy of our tortured ideology to light. Libertarianism in some moderated vestige (hopefully moderated), is here to stay I believe.

So this is where we find ourselves – one fine mess. We’ve given ourselves a choice between two moderate/left candidates either of whom are not only disliked, but despised by factions of the right. But it goes deeper than that. We have a conservative movement run amok that is no longer conservative, and a Republican Party that represents an ever shrinking minority in the conservative movement. Even many of the Pundits that we’ve seen as anchors for conservatism over the years have had weaknesses in their rhetoric exposed that may damage them permanently. At least I believe that it should.

Our country is in decline, there is no questioning that. How far will it decline before it turns around? If Obama is reelected, then probably a long way. If either of these candidates is elected, then we can at least hope. But because these candidates are who they are, when we are honest with ourselves, we know that hope is not as strong as it should be.

There remains a possibility, however so slight, that I am wrong.