The paleocons are not really a part of the Republican coalition, and they have opposed the Iraq war from the beginning. In some ways they see Islam as an even greater threat than the others; in most other ways, less so. They are concerned more by what they regard as the intrusions of Islam into the Western world, mainly through immigration (both legal and illegal) and through the proposed admission of Turkey into the European Union. The more reasonable among them believe that a modus vivendi with Islam can be reached by withdrawing the intrusive Western (mostly American) military presence from the Middle East and ceasing financial and military support for all regimes in the region. That coupled with some real border security would render us safe at home and allow us to consign the Department of Homeland Security to a bad memory. However, there are some crazy paleos who can rival the neocons in the stridency of their hysteria. One actually accused Ridley Scott of “aiding and comforting the enemy,” treason, a capital crime under the U.S. Constitution. Others have called on Mel Gibson to make a real movie about the Crusades, one that depicts the Muslims in all their villainy.

Certainly, there is a case to be made for a more restrictive immigration policy (on many grounds) in Europe and North America alike (while leaving a wide scope for study, travel, and commerce); and William Pfaff, writing in the New York Review of Books (July 14, 2005) has argued eloquently against Turkish membership: “The EU is not an international aid or development agency; it is not aimed at reforming humanity or reconciling civilizations”; “the first obligation of any political society, whether national or multinational, is to itself, its own security, integrity, and successful functioning.” But it’s not necessary to demonize Turkey, or Muslims, or exaggerate the threat posed by Islamic extremism, and still less to indict Hollywood movie directors for not stoking the fires of paranoia and fear. –H. Arthur Scott Trask, LewRockwell.com

Before I criticise Dr. Trask a little for his unfortunate boosting of Ridley Scott’s Kingdom of Heaven, I did want to note my appreciation for the generally fair and accurate descriptions of paleo positions. This is understandable, since Dr. Trask has written on many occasions for Chronicles. I appreciate that there can be amicable disagreements about this film and the kind of criticism to be leveled against Islam. However, such amity should not preclude the correction of mistakes and anachronisms, both in the film and in Dr. Trask’s review. I would also like to make a note of the short description of paleocons he gives that I find pretty accurate: “a dissenting minority, intellectually formidable, who are without much influence.” Yes, and now I must begin my (let’s hope) intellectually formidable dissent that will, alas, likely have little or no influence.

Dr. Trask takes aim at the “crazy” paleos who, among other things, do not repeat saccharine untruths about the religion of Muhammad and who (correctly) do not regard Islamic aggressiveness or violence as some latter-day aberration that can be solely explained by any kind of Western involvement in the Islamic world. In point of fact, I think most who would call themselves paleoconservatives would agree with the substance of most of what the “crazy” paleos, particularly Dr. Trifkovic (to whom I assume Dr. Trask is referring), have to say about Islam. Dr. Trask includes references to what I assume must be Dr. Trifkovic’s review of the film from eight months ago (there was no link in the original article), and I will also be returning to that review from time to time.

There is, as I understand it, a major problem with Ridley Scott’s movie. It is not only, as virtually all historical movies are, inaccurate, but it is deliberately and consciously propagandistic so that its errors of fact (which are apparently considerable) are part of an orchestrated argument against Christendom’s all together meager and belated attempt at self-defense and the protection of other Christians (a.k.a., “the Crusades”) and ultimately against any effort to defend our civilisation and Faith.

That is the larger, anti-Christian argument to which the movie’s paleo critics have objected, even if I were convinced by the argument that showing the institutional Church in a horrible light while affirming pietistic, moral individuals was not fundamentally hostile to at least a broad section of traditional Christianity. How often do the “men of Christian faith and principle” actually, I don’t know, refer to Christ or pray? I’m not a dramatist, but it would be rather hard to make a movie about medieval people and avoid prayer, yet my impression from everything I have read about the movie is that it might well be prayer-free.

The movie accomplishes its anti-Christian bent by rehearsing a story whose purpose is to convince us that the problem behind events such as the Crusades is not the original Islamic conquests or the repeated, violent expansions of Islam over the centuries, against which the Byzantines and Spaniards, among others, frequently fought for their (and our) very existence, but the problem is instead the Christians or more generally anyone who takes his religion seriously.

Here Dr. Trifkovic on the Crusades and the film:

Far from being wars of aggression, the Crusades were a belated military response of Christian Europe to over three centuries of Muslim aggression against Christian lands, the systemic mistreatment of the indigenous Christian population of those lands, and harassment of Christian pilgrims. The modern myth, so comprehensively propagated by the Kingdom of Heaven, has been promoted by Islamic propagandists for centuries and supported by their Western allies and apologists for decades. It claims that the peaceful Muslims, allegedly native to the Holy Land, were forced to take up arms in defense against European-Christian aggression. This myth takes A.D. 1095 as its starting point, but it ignores the preceding centuries, starting with the early caliphs, when Muslim armies swept through the Byzantine Empire, conquering about two thirds of the Christian world of that time

.

Just judging from what Dr. Trifkovic tells of it, we see that in Scott’s story Saladin, for example, instead of being shown as the honourable but nonetheless convinced Muslim and determined warrior that he was, remains noble but is also made into a performer in a multiculti circus whose example is recommended to us as the key to “interfaith” relations. It might be worth noting that liberal historians have focused in on figures such as Saladin with such intensity because there are relatively so few Muslim military commanders who could claim the same reputation (and it might also be worth observing that Saladin, like all his contemporary Muslims, learned chivalry from the Europeans).

More problems abound in Dr. Trask’s review. He thinks that Scott has made a commentary piece on modern Western policy in the Near East:

Ridley Scott has chosen to make a different kind of film, one that hints at U.S. provocations in the Middle East, rather than reinforces the American tropes of outraged innocence and righteous retribution; one that suggests the Bush policy of imposing democracy by war in the Middle East is a product of the same kind of zealotry and self-serving idealism that once drove the Crusades…

No one could dislike Mr. Bush and his policies more than I, but the Bush-as-Crusader-like zealot trope is not only old but false and insulting to the Crusaders. When a king had to be selected for the new polity in Jerusalem after the First Crusade, the candidate, Baldwin of Flanders, was horrified at the prospect of usurping the place of the only true King Who should ever reign in Jerusalem–the difference between this attitude and George “God made me do it” Bush is almost immeasurable. Many more contrasts between true Christian warriors and quasi-Christian warmongers exist, but I think that captures it pretty well.

I would refer Dr. Trask to the work of Thomas Madden for a better interpretation of the Crusades and Crusaders. If the Crusades had been an episode of “self-serving idealism,” one would think that the great kings of Europe would have led the way and not been virtually the last to get in on the act. The numerous small lords and knights who constituted the bulk of all Crusading forces had nothing to gain from the dangerous, exhausting journey, even less to gain from the great risk of death and usually nothing to show for it in any tangible, earthly sense. If they were self-serving, they were unusually incompetent.

A problem I have here is that Dr. Trask seems to think that it is appropriate for an historical film to make such overt nods to contemporary politics. Perhaps Dr. Trask prefers “mercy, moderation, understanding, reason, compromise” to what he calls “purifying violence,” but in setting up this opposition he reveals how little he understands the spiritual askesis that motivated the Crusaders and the entire spirituality of penance and pilgrimage that gave the enterprise its religious significance. A properly historical movie would have taken those things seriously, not vilified or caricatured them, much less simply ignored them.

Indeed, it was not the violence that was supposed to be purifying of sins (which is, if anything, a belief of the mujahideen), but the self-sacrifice, discipline and devotion to Christ in penance and pilgrimage that did, at their best, characterise Crusading knights. They did take up the Cross and follow Him, after a fashion, even if it is in a way that most modern Christians or, indeed, most Orthodox Christians from any time will never be able to understand. But these men are, broadly speaking, part of our heritage and it is incumbent upon us to try to understand them and recognise their virtues and vices, and not simply make equivocal dramas that show most of them to be villains.

Then there are mistakes like this: “Kingdom of Heaven is set in 1184 A.D., in the interval between the First and Second Crusades.” Maybe Dr. Trask is relying on Scott’s movie for this information, in which case the movie is worse than I or Dr. Trifkovic have claimed. The Second Crusade was in response to the fall of Edessa in 1144, and the main, ill-fated campaign the Western emperor, Conrad III, began in 1147 and the main stages of the Crusade concluded in 1149. Perhaps Dr. Trask meant to write Third Crusade (1189-1192).

Dr. Trask clearly likes what Scott has to say about religion and the competing claims of different religions. If Dr. Trask finds the sort of chummy ecumenism put in Balian’s mouth convincing and worthwhile, there’s nothing I can do about that, but what any student of history should find preposterous is the idea that this is the sort of thing a Crusader would say on the eve of battle. This is, first of all, horrible history. I think I can safely bet that any sane man in the middle ages caught up in a war, no matter how zealous or indifferent he was generally, invoked the protection of his God and prayed for forgiveness, deliverance and victory, and did not declare “let’s fight for complete strangers!”

Practically the only reason why the Crusaders continued fighting at all was for the places, the Holy Places. There was some general sense of helping fellow Christians, yes, but the focus remained on Jerusalem because of its significance as a place–this is one reason why, I suspect, that the strategically smarter, but much more difficult Crusades aimed at Egypt came so late and never had sufficient resources. But this speech isn’t even very convincing military psychology. It would be like saying this: “Fear not, men, we aren’t particularly justified in being here, and these shrines you thought you were protecting from the infidel aren’t so important (and infidel is such a subjective term, isn’t it?), but we may as well look out for the people in the city while we’re here.”