Author: Oliver Herndon

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Reading and Film Presentations and Discussion

United 93 ERA

The film United 93 presents a harrowing rendition of the events that transpired on 9/11. The story is told from three different perspectives. First, are the terrorists who committed this vile atrocity. The movie begins with them leading prayers, arming themselves, and heading to the airport. The second is those in the FAA and the military who watched the situation unfold and tried to do something to stop it before it was too late. The third perspective is those on flight 93, passengers, pilots, and stewardesses who directly experience the hijacking. 

The only one of these perspectives which can be confirmed to a true and accurate recounting is the second one; those working from government departments trying to stop the assault lived to tell the tale. The other two perspectives are reasonable depictions for sure, but the film solely points out that we will never know what happened on that flight.  

The most effective medium the filmmakers used to put across their message was the telling of the story by showing the people involved. Even when the first two planes struck the towers, the focus only briefly shifted to a video of the destruction before returning to capture the reactions of the witnesses. No one character was the main focus of the film for a substantial amount of time, yet the personal interactions, encounters, actions, and emotions they showed left audiences feeling like they knew many of them.

The portrayal of the personal human tragedy involved was the perfect way to capture the essence and sentiments of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. While they were a significant threat to national security, the threat did not come close to that of a land invasion or repeated carpet bombing of major American cities. The pain and shock of this attack was felt personally by every American, whether they had loved ones in the towers/pentagon/planes or not. For every passenger on the plane, there were two or three million more Americans just like them. That is who the attacks hurt the most.

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Catch-All/Student Discussion Questions

Bias against the religious in “The VVitch”?

It has long been known that Hollywood and ‘big entertainment’ producers often have a significant bias against religious people. One classic example is Fox cartoons, in which the religious people, Ned Flanders from the Simpsons, Mort from Family Guy, and so on are portrayed negatively. Whether they are made to look unsophisticated, unrealistic, unintelligent, “pie in the sky,” or whatever, this trend is so prevalent as to infer that in some cases it is being purposely done. 

The Witch is a far cry from any of the cartoons I mentioned previously and most other films coming out of Hollywood in terms of its characters and subject matter. These religious dissidents in the new world are very different from the religious people of today or 50 years ago who are frequently lampooned in popular media. I tend to think that the film did a good job for the most part of not making the characters with a bias. The belief in witches, demons, curses, and other such things were quite normal in the time period this movie was about, especially amongst the less educated. I also think the film portrayed the characters as religious visionaries similar to thousands of other real families who came to the land that would become America seeking “the kingdom of God,” even down to the ‘dialect’ of English the characters speak.

There is, however, one element of this film that stood out to me when I watched as potentially likely that someone at some level of the creation of the plotline put in this detail to cast the religious in a negative light. I am specifically referring to the perverse sexual attraction of the younger boy to his older sister. There are two times where the focus on the screen is the brother admiring his sister’s body in an explicitly sexual way. 

The reason why I am suspicious about the motives for these scenes is that they do not fit in with the broader plotline of the movie at all. There is never an insinuation that the parents were brother and sister or close cousins or something of that nature. If the child is has a sexual desire for his sister, it had to come from somewhere, and I believe there is definitely the chance that this scene was designed to accomplish the goal of casting religious people as creepily inclined towards incestuousness, or at the very least, extremely morally backwards relating to sexuality. 

While this is my hunch, I’m not about to bet my life savings on this theory. It could have simply been an element to freak audiences out to prime them for more horror to come, or it could have been tied to the plot in a way I missed. If you picked up on this too, even if you didn’t, and you think I’m dead wrong or dead right, feel free to comment.

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Catch-All/Student Discussion Questions

Shane and Heller v. D.C

This past summer I was interning at a law firm in another state. Thankfully, I had distant family living close to where I was working so I moved in with them and lived there for about 3 months. 

The reason I bring this up is that the family I moved in with was more vehemently anti-gun than anyone I had ever met. Concerns about home security, protection from tyranny, and protecting one’s own physical body did not shake their resolution in the least. They did not view firearms as a value-neutral purpose-driven tool; they viewed them as a magnitudinous evil. They even refused to let anyone who carried a weapon into their house, even if they were family or long-time friends. 

Recently coming out of this personal environment truly made the attitude of the movie towards guns stand out to me. Shane is the perfect example of how, even after the civil war, American’s new that the Second Amendment protected the right of the individual to keep and bear arms. Every character in the movie owned multiple guns and had them ready to use to defend themselves at a moment’s notice. Joe Starret and his friends are the militia the founders were referring to. The word at the time simply meant all male citizens of a certain age. 

I think that the characters of Shane would practically scoff at the four justices of the Supreme Court who descented in Heller v. D.C and wonder how they did not recognize the ability to own firearms as a fundamental Constitutional right. I also think they would be baffled by people who thought like the relatives I moved in with over the summer, especially by the fact that they would openly refuse to allow an uncle or an old family friend into their house if they had the audacity to exercise their constitutional rights. The movie Shane is chock-full of overtures to family and community, and I believe that people who place politics above even those ideals would shock the characters in the movie most of all. 

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Catch-All/Student Discussion Questions

Tocqueville on Native Americans Today

In the chapter “The Present and Probable Future Condition of the Indian Tribes that Inhabit the Territory Possessed by the Union” Tocqueville discusses the plight of the American Indians and makes a prediction about their eventual fate. He writes that they have two choices, to civilize or be destroyed, and goes on to articulate how the Native American spirit has been shaped by their cultural experience such that deciding to civilize (according to the European definition of the term) would be a painful decision for them to make. 

When reading what Tocqueville was writing about in 1835, I began to wonder what he would think about the plight of Native Americans today. The American political dialogue does not often go near the subject of Native Americans unless they become relevant to a more pertinent issue, such as oil pipelines and climate change. I, however, believe that the condition of Native Americans is deserved of much more attention from both sides of the aisle.

It is well known that Native Americans have higher rates of poverty, alcoholism, and suicide than the rest of the population. The government-run schools provided for them on their reservations are very low quality. Native Americans also have the lowest labor participation rate out of any ethnic group in the country. 

Everyone can see the problem, but the solution is where politics enters the fray. I believe that one of the first steps towards ameliorating the heartbreaking condition of the Native Americans would be to allow them to own their land. Because they do not, it is very hard for Native Americans to get business and personal loans because they do not have their land to offer as collateral. Furthermore, many reservations are in natural resource-rich areas of the country; giving the people property rights could bring income and groundbreaking social change into these struggling communities. 

I think Tocqueville’s worst prediction, that the Native Americans would cease to exist as a group, has thankfully not been carried out. Through the public policy choices we make as a country, we can prevent it from ever happening.

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Catch-All/Student Discussion Questions

God and/or Nature in Tocqueville’s Explanation of the Physical World

Democracy in America was written in 1835, before philosophies such as Marxism, Nihilism, Scientific Materialism, biological determinism/sociobiology, moral relativism, moral subjectivism, began to become prominent influences in shaping people’s worldviews from the mid-late 1800s about to the present. A recent WSJ poll found that only 30% of Gen Z and Millenials describe religion and belief in God as important values, demonstrating just how far most of us are from how Tocqueville would have understood reality. 

*article link WSJ Poll Article

The reading on the Origins of America caught my attention because it demonstrates an “Old World” perspective on how the world came to be. Centuries of scientific materialism have made the idea of divine providence being at work in nature seem almost laughable in the eyes of many modern people. Couple this with the understanding that people 150+ years ago comprehended so little about the physical sciences compared to where we are today and the argument for why a modern man may scoff at an 1800s man’s description of geography and natural history. I believe that this passage is noteworthy because it is a great example of how Toqueville’s discussion of American geography flies in the face of this modern interpretation. 

Tocqueville demonstrates his true understanding of this country’s physical reality by explaining it proficiently and concisely. He, a Frenchman, knows America’s geography better than any American I know personally, even though any of us could be on Google Earth in a matter of seconds and have access to more and better information than Tocqueville could have ever dreamed of. 

Another way he demonstrates his understanding of the natural world is through accurate and informed descriptions of the forces of nature at play. He mentions the “convulsions of the globe” that formed the Mississippi and the effect of frequent flooding on Northeastern soil as it relates to agriculture. There are many other examples of similar analysis throughout the text as well. 

Yet, right after he discusses the Mississippi river, he writes “the valley of the Mississippi is, on the whole, the most magnificent dwelling-place prepared by God for man’s abode.” A phrase like this would stop a secular-modern-materialist person in their tracks. To them, the ideas of the valley of the Mississippi was formed by geological forces, not God. What they would find truly baffling is that Tocqueville’s position is not that they were not formed by natural forces. He fully acknowledges that and understands it as well as anyone with 1800s science can. What I believe to be most confounding to a secular modern thinker is that Tocqueville offers both explanations, that it was formed by natural forces and it was formed by God. He is saying that it was God’s intention for the valley to be this way, and natural forces were the means he used to make it so. 

In the modern secular paradigm, a notion such as this causes countless philosophical problems and is utterly irreconcilable with the secular materialist view of reality. What boggles my mind is that in 1835 when this was written, there was hardly a question about it. And I don’t mean a question about whether God intended the Mississippi valley for the American people or for the native Americans or for some other nationality, I mean no one would question that natural forces are controlled in some part by God to accomplish his ends. 

 To any religious members of the class, maybe this passage did not stand out to you in this way, but for any agnostic or atheist or even polytheists reading this, did this stand out to you like it did to me? Did you find the same problems with it that I did, or find something completely different? If your interested in responding to my post, I’d be happy to discuss this topic more.