Clint Eastwood on justice & the cross

Dirty Harry & Gran Torino

So my friends at Law & Liberty have published some of my thoughts on Clint, the most famous conservative artist in cinema in his time—I started from Dirty Harry (1971), indeed, from the fact that we didn’t celebrate its 50th an. last year, yet America is busy reenacting the horrible urban crime problems that made Don Siegel & Clint make this movie in the first place. In a fit of manly anger, they asked liberal elites, what about the rights of victims? What about the families who have to bury the victims of liberal tolerance?

We don’t much ask that nowadays. Clint knows it, as per his return to this theme or urban decay in Gran Torino (2008), moving from San Francisco to Detroit, from the hippie ideal of liberalism to the comparatively banal, even ugly, but much more solid world of business, technology, working class aspirations to become middle class & to live up therefore to the American idea of dignity. This time, he’s not looking at debased elite institutions, but at the debased character of the people. It’s a heartbreaker…

If you’re looking for more essays on Clint, I reviewed his latest, Cry Macho, which shows as wonderfully serene a vision of Clint as Gran Torino is grim. You’ll like that movie if you like Clint; it’s tender.

More generally, I call for honoring Clint. Conservatives should do it if the gov’t won’t!