Kardinal Virtues

Mr Andrew Klavan, a myster writer, pens this piece which somehow was published in the opinion pages of the Wall Street Journal.  Hopefully this is not a trend relating to Newscorps’ buyout of one of our most trustworthy news sources:

http://online.wsj.com/article_print/SB121694247343482821.html

What Bush and Batman Have in Common
By ANDREW KLAVAN
July 25, 2008; Page A15

There seems to me no question that the Batman film “The Dark Knight,” currently breaking every box office record in history, is at some level a paean of praise to the fortitude and moral courage that has been shown by George W. Bush in this time of terror and war. Like W, Batman is vilified and despised for confronting terrorists in the only terms they understand. Like W, Batman sometimes has to push the boundaries of civil rights to deal with an emergency, certain that he will re-establish those boundaries when the emergency is past.

And like W, Batman understands that there is no moral equivalence between a free society — in which people sometimes make the wrong choices — and a criminal sect bent on destruction. The former must be cherished even in its moments of folly; the latter must be hounded to the gates of Hell.

I know that Klavan’s point here is to address how we should fight terrorism, but all too much of his piece sets up a strawman “us vs them” argument, pretty much explicitly stating that liberals:

1. Think terrorists are morally the same as we are and
2. Think fighting terrorism is unacceptable in and of itself

Both are false on their face, and worse, only serve to make it even more difficult for us to come to a national consensus about how this war on terrorism should be fought.  Make no mistake; I am convinced that nearly everyone in this country thinks we need to fight Islamic fundamentalist terrorism.  We only disagree on how, and who the targets should be.

And like W, Batman understands that there is no moral equivalence between a free society — in which people sometimes make the wrong choices — and a criminal sect bent on destruction. The former must be cherished even in its moments of folly; the latter must be hounded to the gates of Hell.

“The Dark Knight,” then, is a conservative movie about the war on terror. And like another such film, last year’s “300,” “The Dark Knight” is making a fortune depicting the values and necessities that the Bush administration cannot seem to articulate for beans.

This is what bothers me perhaps most about conservatives today (okay, besides the idea that we don’t have to be fiscally responsible, it’s okay to torture anyone, and that it’s okay to wiretap Americans without a warrant); they equate “Not supporting the war in Iraq” with “Not supporting the war ON TERROR”. Liberals disagree with us that the war in Iraq has any impact on fighting terrorism. They think we should focus on finishing Afghanistan, on means IN ADDITION TO, not instead of, but IN ADDITION TO violence to address the problem of terrorism. We can disagree on this, but liberals do not simply believe that terrorists are just as morally right as we are. They don’t think terrorists are good people fighting for their rights; liberals think that terrorists are bad people going about achieving recognition their rights in entirely the wrong way, in an unacceptable way, and in a way that requires a violent response in certain circumstances.

And continuing to characterize liberals as people who think terrorists are fine and dandy isn’t help ANYTHING, including our cause.

That’s real moral complexity. And when our artistic community is ready to show that sometimes men must kill in order to preserve life; that sometimes they must violate their values in order to maintain those values; and that while movie stars may strut in the bright light of our adulation for pretending to be heroes, true heroes often must slink in the shadows, slump-shouldered and despised — then and only then will we be able to pay President Bush his due and make good and true films about the war on terror.

Liberals are not opposed to killing terrorists. They’re opposed to killing people who are NOT terrorists in order to stop terror. And who isn’t?