Lone Ranger Remake is an Anti-American Hit Piece

It’s a strange thing when an entire culture begins to destroy itself through utter self-loathing, and yet that is exactly what is happening now in Hollywood.

I made the mistake this weekend of attending a late-night showing of Disney’s remake of “The Lone Ranger,” which was, without a doubt, the most anti-American, anti-Christian, secular progressive, liberal extremist movie I have ever had the displeasure of watching.

From fundamentally misrepresenting the Christian faith, to trashing any institution associated with the United States, this box office bomb was disappointing even by Disney’s standards. Disney has, for over a decade now, drifted into the left-wing ward of Hollywood, but this latest production turned the once-prominent entertainment company into a propaganda mill.

The opening scene of “The Lone Ranger” sets the stage, with an immediate harpooning of Christians as fundamentalist “flat earthers.” The man who will become the “Loan Ranger” is on a train bound for Texas with a group of Presbyterians who are singing old-fashioned hymns off-key, accompanied by horrifically played instrumental music, which is all performed by a band better suited for a scene from “Deliverance” not “The Lone Ranger.” During this awful misrepresentation of music, not to mention the Christian faith, one of the Presbyterian Church ladies asks the urban, ivy-league educated lone-ranger-to-be lawyer if he’d like to pray with them. His response is “much obliged, but this is my Bible,” while holding up a copy of John Locke’s Second Treatise on Government. The not-so-subtle implication is that the Bible believers are simple and unenlightened, while the ivy league educated (and presumably liberal) lawyer is the reasonable, well-educated individual amidst a train load of simpletons. In addition to implying that Christians are idiots, the message is that the American Republic is founded on Enlightenment ideas inspired by humanism, not by Judeo-Christian Values.

The problem with this portrayal of Christianity as the great obstacle to justice in America is that it is absolutely wrong from a historical standpoint. It reminds me of one of my favorite Reagan quips “it’s not that our liberal friends are ignorant, it’s just that they know so much that isn’t so.” The University of Texas did a survey of the Founders’ writings only to discover that their most frequently referenced and cited source, while forming our “Charters of Freedom” the Declaration of Independence and Constitution, was the Bible. Additionally, if the writers of “The Lone Ranger” thought that throwing-up a copy of John Locke’s work would automatically imply a secular founding for the American Republic, and that Christianity was something that got in the way of the nation’s original design, they should’ve taken note that Locke quoted and / or referenced the Bible over 1,500 times in his own writings! So, historical ignorance is the least of these producers’ problems.

Finally, the attempted portrayal of Christianity as the driving force behind racism, imperialism and oppression is slanderous and defamatory. The abolition movement in America, and the Civil Rights movement that followed it, were both motivated by the Christian faith. It was a true adherence to Christian precepts that put an end to slavery, racial subjugation and slavery in America’s history. Yet, in “The Lone Ranger” the slaughter of innocent Native Americans is carried-out by the U.S. Army under the command of a pious Christian commander who prays for God’s help and protection before opening fire on lightly armed armies of native warriors. This is nothing less than a liberal attempt to portray America’s westward expansion as a racially motivated hate-crime driven by Christian zeal.

Disney’s remake of “The Lone Ranger” is best summed-up by movie critic Steven D. Greydanus who writes “It isn’t just the masked hero himself the filmmakers don’t love. Verbinski (the director) and company flip the bird, just about literally, to everyone and everything in sight: Tonto (wearing the bird on his head); the Western genre and the heroic ideal as such; the United States and just about everything associated with it, from its military and industry to its rule of law and religious heritage.” Greydanus is absolutely right; I think this Disney production was American liberalism’s national self-loathing taken to an extreme. For such a movie to have been released by an American company, which has achieved such success in our free-market economy, on the week of the 4^th of July is not only the height of hypocrisy, but hateful and offensive to the core.

I’d encourage all freedom-loving Americans who believe in faith, values and the free market to avoid this horrendous hit-piece against patriotism wrapped-up in the guise of entertainment.

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