This just in: Tolkien was not a modern liberal

Alan Jacobs defends Tolkien from Adam Gopnik’s assertion that “Lord of the Rings” is too morally black and white. Jacobs says that’s not true, and gives example. Then:

Modern liberalism likes to think that all our problems are epistemological: we are afflicted by never knowing with sufficient clarity what we ought to do. Our fictions tend to reflect that assumption. Tolkien, not being a modern liberal, thought it more interesting to explore situations when people know what they need to know but may lack the strength of will to act on that knowledge. He might say, and with some justification, that contemporary literary fiction is not simplistic in regard to such problems but oblivious to them.