Sipsey Street Irregulars: Classic Moments of Pragmatism in Film

Sunday, December 7, 2008

Classic Moments of Pragmatism in Film

Today we open a new periodic series entitled "Classic Moments of Pragmatism in Film." Number One is my favorite scene from "Team America: World Police." The United Nations has sent Hans Blix to determine once and for all whether Kim Jong Il has weapons of mass destruction.

Kim Jong Il: Hans Brix? Oh no! Oh, herro. Great to see you again, Hans!

Hans Blix: Mr. Il, I was supposed to be allowed to inspect your palace today, but your guards won't let me enter certain areas.

Kim Jong Il: Hans, Hans, Hans! We've been frew this a dozen times. I don't have any weapons of mass destwuction, OK Hans?

Hans Blix: Then let me look around, so I can ease the UN's collective mind. I'm sorry, but the UN must be firm with you. Let me in, or else.

Kim Jong Il: Or else what?

Hans Blix: Or else we will be very angry with you... and we will write you a letter, telling you how angry we are.

Kim Jong Il: OK, Hans. I'll show you. Stand to your reft.

Hans Blix: [Moves to the left]

Kim Jong Il: A rittle more.

Hans Blix: [Moves to the left again]

Kim Jong Il: Good.

[Opens up trap, Hans falls into tank where he is torn to pieces by Kim Jong Il's pet shark.]

Number Two is from Mel Brook's 1974 classic, Blazing Saddles. Black Bart, the new Sheriff of Rock Ridge, has arrived to claim his office. The townsfolk react poorly to a black sheriff and pull out their firearms. Bart is covered by at least twenty weapons. The Reverend Johnson seeks to calm the situation:

Reverend Johnson: Gentlemen, gentlemen, allow not hatred to rule the day.
[holds up his Bible]

Reverend Johnson: As your spiritual leader, I implore you to pay heed to this good book and what it has to say!

[Townspeople shoot the Bible, blowing it apart]

Reverend Johnson: [turning to Bart] Son, you're on your own.

Readers are free to make their own submissions. Send to GeorgeMason1776@aol.com.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...: from "V for Vendetta" - two classic quotes:

Dominic: What do you think will happen?
Finch: What usually happens when people without guns stand up to people with guns.
---------------------------
V: People should not be afraid of their governments. Governments should be afraid of their people.; December 7, 2008 at 2:48 PM

"Progress made under the shadow of the policeman's club is false progress."

I believe that liberty is the only genuinely valuable thing that men have invented, at least in the field of government, in a thousand years. I believe that it is better to be free than to be not free, even when the former is dangerous and the latter safe. I believe that the finest qualities of man can flourish only in free air – that progress made under the shadow of the policeman's club is false progress, and of no permanent value. I believe that any man who takes the liberty of another into his keeping is bound to become a tyrant, and that any man who yields up his liberty, in however slight the measure, is bound to become a slave. -- H.L. Mencken

"The Fate of Unborn Millions. . ."

"The time is now near at hand which must probably determine, whether Americans are to be, Freemen, or Slaves; whether they are to have any property they can call their own; whether their Houses, and Farms, are to be pillaged and destroyed, and they consigned to a State of Wretchedness from which no human efforts will probably deliver them. The fate of unborn Millions will now depend, under God, on the Courage and Conduct of this army-Our cruel and unrelenting Enemy leaves us no choice but a brave resistance, or the most abject submission; that is all we can expect-We have therefore to resolve to conquer or die." -- George Washington to his troops before the Battle of Long Island.

"We will not go gently . . ."

This is no small thing, to restore a republic after it has fallen into corruption. I have studied history for years and I cannot recall it ever happening. It may be that our task is impossible. Yet, if we do not try then how will we know it can't be done? And if we do not try, it most certainly won't be done. The Founders' Republic, and the larger war for western civilization, will be lost.

But I tell you this: We will not go gently into that bloody collectivist good night. Indeed, we will make with our defiance such a sound as ALL history from that day forward will be forced to note, even if they despise us in the writing of it.

And when we are gone, the scattered, free survivors hiding in the ruins of our once-great republic will sing of our deeds in forbidden songs, tending the flickering flame of individual liberty until it bursts forth again, as it must, generations later. We will live forever, like the Spartans at Thermopylae, in sacred memory.

-- Mike Vanderboegh, The Lessons of Mumbai:Death Cults, the "Socialism of Imbeciles" and Refusing to Submit, 1 December 2008

"A common language of resistance . . ."

"Colonial rebellions throughout the modern world have been acts of shared political imagination. Unless unhappy people develop the capacity to trust other unhappy people, protest remains a local affair easily silenced by traditional authority. Usually, however, a moment arrives when large numbers of men and women realize for the first time that they enjoy the support of strangers, ordinary people much like themselves who happen to live in distant places and whom under normal circumstances they would never meet. It is an intoxicating discovery. A common language of resistance suddenly opens to those who are most vulnerable to painful retribution the possibility of creating a new community. As the conviction of solidarity grows, parochial issues and aspirations merge imperceptibly with a compelling national agenda which only a short time before may have been the dream of only a few. For many Americans colonists this moment occurred late in the spring of 1774." -- T.H. Breen, The Marketplace of Revolution: How Consumer Politics Shaped American Independence, Oxford University Press, 2004, p.1.

Sipsey Street Irregulars

Sunday, December 7, 2008

Classic Moments of Pragmatism in Film

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