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I’m Henry XVIII, I Am, I Am

V for Vendetta fever has reached the LRC Blog, perhaps too much so, with Anthony Gregory making the necessary excuse-making for why Vendetta’s obvious anti-Christian references and anti-clericalism are not really anti-Christian because, well, we all know that real Christians would never act in the way that the Wachowski Brothers portray them as acting. That’s […]

V for Vendetta fever has reached the LRC Blog, perhaps too much so, with Anthony Gregory making the necessary excuse-making for why Vendetta’s obvious anti-Christian references and anti-clericalism are not really anti-Christian because, well, we all know that real Christians would never act in the way that the Wachowski Brothers portray them as acting. That’s rather like saying that a bigot isn’t being bigoted against anyone when he uses a stereotype that the target of his mockery does not accept. Because the bigot uses a false stereotype, even though he believes it to be true, the person he ridicules and attacks has no need to worry about being stereotyped in a negative and hateful way. And I’m sure that the Preacher “graphic novel” isn’t hostile to Christianity, even though it engages in screaming polemic against everything Christianity teaches and outstrips The DaVinci Code in inventing lies about Christ. Yeah, sure.

My enthusiasm for Guy Fawkes seems to have caught on in an undesirable way. Here is Casey Khan’s affirmation that Guy Fawkes was rebelling against the state-church alliance established by Henry XVIII [sic].

A word to the wise libertarian: perhaps one small reason why more than a few Christians in this country find themselves siding with ludicrous worshipers of state power and disdaining libertarian and liberal critiques of the regime is because of the extraordinary lengths some libertarians will go to in defending a movie that seems, by many accounts, to regard Christians as the natural allies of fascism and despotism. Given the choice of siding with opponents of the regime who mock their faith or make excuses for those who mock their faith (whether the opponents of the regime think they are doing this or not) or with supporters of the regime who pay lip service to their faith, many will reflexively side with the supporters of the regime.

Vendetta might serve as a powerful indictment of the tyrannical autocracy taking hold in this country and the many abuses of the government over the past many years, and this may make it worth watching in spite of its many typically Wachowskian flaws, but I think we should have no illusions that it does not engage in an extremely hostile, bitter and not very veiled attack on Christians and Christianity as props of incipient fascism. It apparently does, it is apparently not subtle about it, and we should not kid ourselves on this score.

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