Silverwolf’s mind spontaneously remarked, only the other day (it was either Thursday or Friday), on the striking congruities between Tony Richardson’s 1962 British cinematic masterpiece, The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner, starring Tom Courteney and Michael Redgrave, and the Presidential campaign of Rep. Ron Paul.
The film follows the life of Colin Smith, a young penniless tearaway living in the north of England, circa 1957. Following the death of his father, Colin and a friend decide to rob a bakery to finance a weekend away in “Skeggy” (Skegness) with their new girlfriends, whom they recently picked up after stealing a car just for the joy ride. Finally caught, Colin finds himself transported to a Borstal prison for young offenders, where he soon catches the eye of the prison Governor (Redgrave) who is mad about running and sports. Colin turns out to have a real knack for legwork, and after seeing him outsprint his current favorite in a cross-country run, the Governor gives Colin the unheard of freedom of leaving the prison grounds on his good behaviour and running through the countryside in preparation for a sporting match with a posh boy’s private school. This recognition by a private institution seems to be an obsession with the Governor, as is his desire to win the “Challenge Cup” from Ranley School for good old Ruxton Towers. His orders as to physical training are carried out by his mind-less minion, the athletics head, the appropriately-named Roach. In a fitting climax to the film, which Silverwolf won’t give away because it’s so good, Colin makes a powerful statement of Libertarian rebellion to the whole Collectivist World that has surrounded him constantly in the film, except for his time spent running alone in the forests. (And fading the sound down to silence at the zenith of epiphany was a stroke of genius by Richardson).
“Now, what does a British film of 45 years ago, about a young hooligan, have to do with the campaign of Dr. Ron Paul?”, a wolf may well ask. The answer is Collectivism.
“Loneliness” was published in 1958 by the very brilliant British novelist, Alan Sillitoe, whose works have greatly pleased Silverwolf. He also wrote the screenplay for the film. His writings reflect the grimy, penurious life of the English worker a decade after the defeat of Hitler, in an England that was growing socialist before the war and completed its growth after it. Now, Silverwolf cannot fail to note the publication in Britain of F A Hayek’s “The Road to Serfdom” in the mid-forties, documenting the moral decline inherent in any socialist system because of its trashing of the Rights of Man, a work published just ten years before the arrival of the Colin Smith generation of Angry Young Men. And a work showing how collectivism’s pernicious influences extend into every facet of man’s life, even those far removed from economics. How is it that this work so closely describes the very England we see ten years later in “Loneliness”? After ten more years of collectivist planning, the post-war English worker was just as tied down in his poverty as he had been before all that planning. Even more so, because now there was not even the remotest possibility of ever getting out of poverty. Get lucky on the football pools, and the Inland Revenue would fleece you. When one character in the film asks Colin what would be the first thing he’d do if he won 75,000 pounds, he shoots back, “Count it”. It’s clear he has little trust for the powers that be.
Now the proximity in time of that work’s publication to those conditions dealt with in Loneliness, a proximity of about 10 years, is notable. The massive Leviathan state, once set up in the name of Humanitarianism in England, quickly quashed any individual manifestations of Liberty, and left open only two avenues to follow, conformity or defiance. The conformers went to the factory for forty years, retired and read the News of the World and drank tea and complained about the derth of their pensions, and expired. The rebs nicked cars, picked up birds, defied the collectivist law that says it’s OK for the state to rob you through taxes, but you cannot rob anyone because it would be immoral. Not only is the government immoral, it also gets to decide what is moral or not. They ended up humorously describing themselves as insects (Beatles), rocks (Rolling Stones) and beasts (The Animals). They helped spark a world upheaval.
This beautiful quality of cynicism that characterized the Angry Young Men of England is further cleverly illustrated by Richardson when he shows Colin and his mate sitting in front of the telly, watching the vainglorious rodomontade of a British politician (undoubtedly Tory from his distinguished grey hair and Saville Row suit). At one point, they turn off the sound and watch the politician’s meaningless gestures and facial grimaces in silence. Then, the whole absurdity of the pompous politicians, who run the lives of most of us, breaks through, and the boys start to go into laughter, rising to uncontrollable hysterics. The camera switches back and forth between the politician and the boys riotous contempt, building the viewer’s own mirth. Then Richardson speeds the action by undercranking, so we see the politician’s absurdity in fast motion, making him seem all the more inane. Richardson was criticised by some for using this technique, pretty much lifted directly from Truffaut, as a cheap trick, but Silverwolf thinks it was very effective.
However, early on in the film, the first act of Libertarian defiance against the Collectivist State is seen coming, not from Colin and his mate, but from his terminally-ill father. The doctors are trying to get him to go into hospital “for his own good”, but he refuses. He yells out, to one and all, “You won’t get me to go to no hospital. I’m no bleatin’ Guinea Pig for anybody!”. He also won’t take the pain pills he “should”. Colin’s father’s refusal to go along with what Collectivist Society tells him to do “for his own good” is the first act of defiance in the film, the first act of non-violent resistence to being used as a “Guinea Pig” by the Leviathan state.
Now the striking congruities we began our essay by mentioning be these: Ron Paul has been running a very long race indeed in his fight against Collectivism and what he correctly perceives as the great danger to human freedom that government represents. He knows, like Jefferson, that government is an evil. He feels, like Silverwolf, that it is a necessary one, and, like a big-rig truck, it can bring benefits far outweighing its dangers if, and only if, it is kept in check by a constitution. And Dr. Paul, like Silverwolf, thinks Jefferson’s beautifully-worded Declaration is one of the greatest, if not the greatest, of all expressions of the Rights of Man that have ever come to rule over vast swathes of humankind. And that, in spite of the case that after spending two years reading all the political theorists he could obtain the books of, and having spend far longer pondering on political matters, Jefferson had to sit quietly by the side of Dr. Franklin, and hear the conservatives and compromisers, who didn’t want to say boo to the British, emasculate and gut his document down to what we have today. How bitter must have been the gall for the Radical, Thomas Jefferson, as he had to listen to the Pelosis and McConnells, Reid’s and Huckabees, of his day, pleach and plait his document of Revolution with the spittle of fawning safety and security. All the current candidates save one fall into that catagory of bootlickers, who care not about principle and the constititution one whit. They are the personification of the great Collectivist State that Colin Smith and his mates and girlfriends were bound down by at birth. But now, 45 years after this film, the Spitfire of Liberty is rising again in the candidacy of Ron Paul.
There is also the literal congruity that Dr. Paul, so Silverwolf reads, is an avid long-distance biker, walker and jogger. Perhaps there is something about those long periods of solitude, when one is away from every manifestation of this putrid plastic human culture that is being foisted on one and all in the name of efficiency, that leads to the freedom of the mind. When the mind is not bound by the thinking of the past, in an innocent state, that is the only state that so-called “new thought” can take place. But there is not really any such thing as “new thought”. There are only “insights”, that take place spontaneously when the mind is unconditioned, and are the movement of Intelligence. These moments of great insight quickly become codified into “thoughts”. When you have a whole nexus of such thoughts, you have a “philosophy”.
Course, it’s probably all down to a matter of increased blood flow to the brain, due to vigorous activity, the clinicians will tell us.
Dr. Paul’s long run against the Collectivists will go on. Like Dr. Roger Bannister before him, Ron Paul is taking on the challenge that the self-proclaimed experts and pundits, who said no one could ever run the 4-minute mile (and who are fast losing credibility in America due to the fact that any citizen can now check and re-check the veracity of their claims), threw down. Like Dr. Bannister, he has started at the back of the pack, steadily gaining strength, patiently tacking and improving his position in the crowd, husbanding the energy that is well in reserve for the final push that will careen him, and the American people, first across the finish line. The iron discipline that the responsible study of medicine imposes on one will serve him well in the campaign. Silverwolf has listened and watched and watched and listened to Dr. Paul and his conclusion is that, apart from his agreeing with about 93% of his positions, and virtually 100% with his philosophy of government, Dr. Paul is an incredibly astute politician, whose very weaknesses play into his hands because they only reinforce the perception amongst the People that he is 100% honest. He is exactly what America wants right now.
Silverwolf howls to his, and all Libertarian’s, coming victory over the Collectivist Mind.
Hooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooowwwwwwwwwwwwwwww. — Silverwolf
Tags: "Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner", Alan Sillitoe, collectivism, F A Hayek, Ron Paul, Tom Courteney, Tony Richardson
