25 best conservative movies by NewOldBrownCoat

GENERAL DISCUSSIONS

25 best conservative movies

POSTED BY: NEWOLDBROWNCOAT
UPDATED: Wednesday, March 4, 2009 07:56
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Thursday, February 26, 2009 9:24 AM

National Review Online (the Conservative magazine) recently published a list.

Let's see if I can make a link work:

http://nrd.nationalreview.com/article/?q=YWQ4MDlhMWRkZDQ5YmViMDM1Yzc0M
TE3ZTllY2E3MGM=

Looks all right, but probably won't work...

Anyway, there are some good movies on the list, even if I think ya gotta stretch pretty far to even squeeze a conservative theme out of some of them.

Serenity didn't make the Top 25, but it was pretty high up in the list of also-rans...

Just tried the link- After the message got posted, it showed up in bright yellow while I was reviewing the post, and when I clicked on it, it worked. I learned something NEW today Hooray for me.

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Thursday, February 26, 2009 9:31 AM

CHRISISALL

I love many of those movies, am I *gulp* a Conservative? Have I been living a lie? I thought I was an Independent....

"Thanks." -Hero, 2009

The laughing Chrisisall

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Thursday, February 26, 2009 9:59 AM

NEWOLDBROWNCOAT

a new movie, Twins-- starring not DeVito and Schwarznegger, but Chris and Rap

Guaranteed to not sell lots of tickets.

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Thursday, February 26, 2009 1:46 PM

CELLARDOOR

That's what it was! It was a list like this a little over a month ago on a website that reminded me I had been meaning to pick up Firefly DVDs sometime and figure out what all the fuss was about. :) (Serenity was actually the title listed, but I knew about the show). I guess it worked.

Those are some excellent movies on that list.

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Thursday, February 26, 2009 1:49 PM

CHRISISALL

Quote:
Originally posted by NewOldBrownCoat:
a new movie, Twins-- starring not DeVito and Schwarznegger, but Chris and Rap

Guaranteed to not sell lots of tickets.

People love movies about two guys that should be friends, but kick the s**t out of each other at every turn.

"Thanks." -Hero, 2009

The laughing Chrisisall

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Thursday, February 26, 2009 3:11 PM

KIRKULES

Thanks for the list, there's a few on there that I have'nt seen.

I think many conservatives and liberals cringed at the puppet sex scene in Team America, but I'm sure most conservatives enjoyed their interpretation of Sean Penn.

Sean Penn: Last year I went to Iraq. Before Team America showed up, it was a happy place. They had flowery meadows and rainbow skies, and rivers made of chocolate, where the children danced and laughed and played with gumdrop smiles.

If you haven't seen Juno, it's a must see. I thought it would be another dumb chick flick, but the performance of the young lady lead is incredible.

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Sunday, March 1, 2009 2:57 PM

DREAMTROVE

No argument here, those are some conservative movies, I haven't seen them all, but a good number.
I only have one issue to take with the list, and
[edit]
I was that no one has commented on this, but I see it was in the first post not[/edit]

Serenity is an "also ran"?

Okay, slow down there, no come to a screeching halt. Actually, can we back up a little bit?

Okay, Whit Stillman is good, and conservative, and funny, and sure. Forrest Gump really annoyed me.

Lord of the Rings is the most conservative film on the list, for none of the reasons that are stated here, though the last line is a good one. National Review's conservative creds are always suspect, but they try to play to their audience.

I always say politics splits along many axes, and the key one that comes closest to left-right is universal equality vs. preservation of a way of life. LoTR is not only the latter, fighting and dying for it, but it's deeply routed in the prehistory of europe, and how that reflects to the wars in modern europe, the quest for power, the quest for cold. Next to LoTR, the national review is a commie, no disrespect.

One thing cracked me up here: Grima Wormtongue as Keith Olbermann. If anything, he's Karl Rove, or one of that crowd, and Theoden is GW Bush, but that doesn't make it any less conservative. The thematic elements of preservation of a way of life, culture and history have value and meaning, a people, collectively, have a soul and a well, and fight against the subversive influence, assimilation and above all else, the most dangerous element, centralization of power.

This is powerful stuff.

Braveheart is pretty arch conservative, no one ever doubted that. Some of these things are in here to add credibility to the rest of the list. A lot of these are just militant. Whether or not that makes them conservative, I'm not so sure.

Master and Commander was very conservative, and watchable, I'm not sure if it was really one of the best. Very well done. I think that some how all of Jane Austen and Merchant/Ivory got omitted from a list of conservative films. While we're at it, even M. Night Shyamalan is pretty far to the right. The Village? I loved that film, I think that's probably one of the most right wing films to come out in this decade.

Gattaca is a right winger, sure, but this line makes my doubt the National Review:

"Biotechnology is a force for good, but without adherence to the ideal of universal human equality, it opens the door to the soft tyranny of Gattaca and, ultimately, the dystopian nightmare of Brave New World."

Do you people even know what conservative means? from Conserve, to keep watch, to maintain.

Yes, preservation of a way of life does mandate stopping a dystopian future, of the Brave New World... Order. But the culture we preserve is one of freedom. Freedom includes the freedom of technology. What's a nightmare about Gattaca is that it is forced on the people, by the central authority.

"ideal of universal human equality" is a noble goal, but not a conservative one, since it cannot be achieved without forcing it upon others against their will, which cannot be done without a centralization of power. Yes, you can have a central power which violates both, but a natural free social will not adhere to principles of universal equality. To do so, it would have to violate the rights of those with more, or perceived to have more, regardless of whether they worked or fought to achieve it.

I put this dichotomy here because both goals are noble ones. There is no evil in preserving your way of life, your freedom, or your individual rights; and yet there is no evil in universal equality. The devil is in the details. If to get to that end you must take a path of Machiavellian nature, then yes, evil is as evil does.

Brazil. An interesting choice. It's very much, like all dystopia, featuring the nightmare future of absolute power, and no individuality, so sure, that's a core right wing ideal. I think that some people working on this list making nominations had some idea of what conservative was and others did not.

I would point out that over the years the National Review has become increasingly neocon, which is to say commie. I'll say right here right now neocon=commie and there ain't no two ways about it. Wolf in sheeps clothing. There's an ongoing online argument about whether it was always intended to take conservatives to that destination, or whether it just got hijacked. I would say, at any rate, that right now it's latching on to anything fighting for a reason to exist after the death of William F. Buckley, Jr.

And so yes, I have no arguments with any of the choices, they were probably voted on by a group of conservatives, but the comments made by those who nominated them are somewhat disturbing. They seem to have often not only failed to get the point of the film, but of the core principles of conservatism. Conservatives do not fight for the ideal of universal equality as their ultimate goal, that would be communists who do that. Many conservative societies are very egalitarian, and Many liberal ones are not, but it's not the core principle. Univeral equality is part of universality, which is part of collectivism, this is not conservative folks.

My other quibble with the list, just to reiterate: WTF is Serenity doing down there in the second half, can we rewind and boot something like Forrest Gump...?

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Sunday, March 1, 2009 7:53 PM

JEWELSTAITEFAN

Some that I expected were there, Serenity, Hunt for Red October, We Were Soldiers, Braveheart.
When listing Amazing Grace, did they mean Amazing Grace and Chuck? I would have thought that.
Did not see Total Recall, Black Hawk Down, Harrison Bergeron, Hero(1992), A Time To Kill, Gladiator, Top Gun. How could they miss Top Gun?

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Sunday, March 1, 2009 10:47 PM

PIRATECAT

No Chuck Heston and hey where is the Duke. Some of the movies right on for conservatives but most they read way to much into it. You gotta have Chuck Heston's Mountain Men in answer to Redford's Jermiah Johnson. What about the Howard Hawkes Rio Bravo message of Americanism vs the commie message of Fred Zinnemann's High Noon. As the Duke would say "Fill your hands you son of a bitch".

"Battle of Serenity, Mal. Besides Zoe here, how many-" "I'm talkin at you! How many men in your platoon came out of their alive".

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Wednesday, March 4, 2009 7:56 AM

RIPWASH

Conservatism is certainly not communism. Neo-con? I can't speak to that, but the neocon movement I've seen depicted in movies does not reflect basic conservative beliefs. Exactly the opposite, to be honest. Perhaps someone using a conservative "sheep" suit to promote their "wolfish" agenda . . . but that's just me. Just had to get that off my chest.

For example, I love the movie "V for Vendetta" because it is about a person taking on a totalitarian government even though that government used a conservative "mask" to acheive it's dastardly ways. They were NOT conservatives if they were promoting such a strong, overwhelming government presence.

Anyway . . .

Why is Serenity/Firefly considered conservative? For one reason and one reason only - it is, at it's core, about people fighting against "Big Government". The Independents did NOT want to be united under one universal government because of the way the views of the few would be imposed on those of the many.

Two lines I can think of off the top of my head confirm this.

In the pilot "Serentiy", Simon asks Mal if it's common for the Alliance to commandere vessels and tell them where to go. To which Mal replies, "That's what governments do. Get in a man's way." Then in the movie, there's the quote by a young River at the Academy about how the government tells people what to do and how to think. That people, as a rule, don't like that.

To say that Conservatives only believe in preserving of a way of life is a little misleading. And to say that we LIKE the way governments are presented in movies like Gattaca or Brazil even more so. Conservatives that I know, and myself included, don't mind the views of other people as long as they don't force them on me. Gattaca and Brazil are about people who are trying to break free from the limitations placed upon them by government. Braveheart is about one man standing up to an entire empire to free his people from England's rule - from an oppressive government.

I apologize to Dreamtrove if I misread what she wrote, but these are just my thoughts on the matter as well.

Zoe: "Get it running again."
Mal: "Yeah"
Zoe: "So not running now"
Mal: "Not so much"
- Out of Gas

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