I’ve always been a DC comics kind of guy, but on occasion I would really enjoy a marvel story and after reading John Hawkins article I thought of What If 43: What if Conan was stranded in the 20th century?
The story was interesting and if you want more detail to the story you can check out this blog, but there is one particular moment that really strikes home.
During the course of the story Conan forms a gang and they break into a museum. When the alarm goes off Captain America shows up and the fight begins.
Captain America being Captain America kicks, punches and hits Conan with his shield. It rocks Conan something nasty. Conan being Conan has a different strategy.
What happens when you come to a swordfight without a sword.
Conan and his gang escape and Captain America is left bleeding at the scene.
This comes back to the Jacksonian way of combat:
Jacksonian America has clear ideas about how wars should be fought, how enemies should be treated, and what should happen when the wars are over. It recognizes two kinds of enemies and two kinds of fighting: honorable enemies fight a clean fight and are entitled to be opposed in the same way; dishonorable enemies fight dirty wars and in that case all rules are off.
Our friends on the left tend to use jacksonian tactics against us on the right while trying Wilsonian tactics abroad. We tend to do the opposite because frankly we see our countrymen as…our countrymen.
Politically this can’t continue as Hawkins notes:as Hawkins notes:
For example, look at the media jihad that was shamelessly launched against Sarah Palin’s family. There was a not-so-subtle message being sent: if you’re a Republican woman, you better stay in the shadows or we’re going to destroy your family to get you. The left gave the same kind of intrusive, public scrutiny to “Joe the Plumber,” a private citizen who merely asked an inconvenient question to Barack Obama. While conservatives defended both Sarah and Joe as we complained incessantly about the way they were treated, the reality is that the Democrats paid no price whatsoever for the out-of-bounds attacks.
Instead of continuing to complain, here’s a better idea. Why don’t conservatives do opposition research on the journalists endlessly running stories about Bristol Palin and Joe the Plumber? Have they ever been arrested? Whom do they own property with? Have they ever been paid to do a speech for someone and then run a favorable news story about him? Certainly Keith Olbermann’s personal life is just as newsworthy as Joe the Plumber’s, and the details of Maureen Dowd’s life are just as noteworthy as those of Bristol Palin — are they not?
I think Hawkins is right it’s time for us to be a lot less Captain America politically and a lot more Conan. Otherwise we are going to get a sword in the arm.
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