| By L&T Publisher Earl Watt
Perhaps the most gripping lines from Hollywood in more than a generation that reminds us of who we are as a nation comes from the comic book come-to-life adventure of “The Avengers.”
As it is with most comic books, this movie is a classic battle about good versus evil.
Unlike the kid stories that pit a super villain against those trying to save the planet from destruction, there is a true message of what makes America unique, or at least it used to.
The message couldn’t have been delivered more clearly than by using the ultimate image of freedom from an era when true sacrifice was more than going without a cell phone for a week.
Steve Rogers was a soldier in World War II that was enhanced to become Captain America. More than anything, Rogers wanted to fight for his country. He wanted to protect the American way of life.
After he helped defeat tyranny in that era, he ended up frozen (the comic book part of the movie) only to be discovered and reanimated in current day America.
What he sees is not what he fought for in World War II.
I think many Americans from the Greatest Generation would feel the same, and some of the rest of us, too.
Rogers tries to withdraw from society, and in the movie he is found in an old boxing gym taking shots at the punching bag.
When asked to help fight a new threat, and even told that his Captain America uniform is ready for him, he says, “Isn’t the Stars and Stripes a little old fashioned?”
Agent Nick Coulson responds by saying, “With everything that is happening, things about to come to light, people might need a little old fashioned.”
The threat is a tyrant not trying to destroy the earth but trying to rule it. He uses the phrase that “freedom is life’s biggest lie,” and that peace can only be gained through a dictator.
In one scene, the evil Loki tell a group to kneel, and they all do.
But one elderly man stands up against the tyrant and said he would not kneel to Loki.
Only one.
That’s when Captain American and his group of Avengers step in to stop the would-be tyrant.
I couldn’t help but think how we have been pushed to question the notion that freedom is a lie.
Governments were created to protect our inalienable rights, our freedom. Instead, they become our masters, ruling over us and dictating what we can and cannot do.
It comes as no surprise that Captain America is disappointed in what he sees in today’s land of the free from what he fought for in World War II.
Freedom in America isn’t being lost to a tyrant from abroad. Instead we are forging the chain one link at a time, slowly, methodically, until the government and its ruling class have imprisoned us all.
When we silence one bigot for a stupid statement, we have all been muzzled.
When we regulate every business because one or two were irresponsible, we add to the chain.
When we stop teaching our children the value of hard work, self-reliance, we sacrifice another piece of freedom.
When we stop asking what we can do for our country instead of what our country can do for us, the battle for freedom is lost without a single shot being fired.
There’s another poignant moment in the film, when Norse gods Loki and Thor are thrust into a conflict and jump out of a plane.
Captain America grabs a parachute and begins to follow when he is warned by the Russian Black Widow, “You might want to sit this one out Captain. This is a fight between gods.”
Captain America replies, “There’s only one god, ma’am, and I don’t think he dresses like that.”
That is the heart of America — a belief in one God, in one creator that endowed each of us with our rights, and that we established a government not to limit those rights but to protect them from threats.
It takes a comic book movie to cut through the political correctness of today and remind us of that smoldering ember of freedom that burns inside each one of us, but we’ve been too afraid to show it. This movie reminds us of the constant choice we face between freedom and tyranny, between tolerance and totalitarianism.
America is free not because superheroes protect us from our enemies, but because, like the old man who stood against the tyrant, Americans have been willing to sacrifice for freedom.
Americans put God first, and they are willing to die for their beliefs.
Or do we kneel to those who try to silence us by telling us that freedom is a lie?
Americans have always stood for something. And we can do it again.
The fire is still there. Don’t forget it. Don’t let it die out. Freedom is worth fighting for.
|
