Protectors

    While looking over Amazon I happened across a listing for the movie 'Billy Jack'.  It's been a good number of years since I've seen it so my memory of all the details of the movies  might be kind of hazy but it struck me while reading the reviews that the movie might have been a bit more insightful than I first gave it credit. While for many years I have been pretty scornful of the movie I think that I've come around to a bit more of an appreciation of it.  Probably not in the way that most lovers of it do though.

The movie, for those who haven't seen it, involves a Peace and Love Commune based on an Indian Reservation and the hostile attitudes of the locals in a nearby town.  The folks in the commune preach and for the most part practice nonviolence.  However they are only able to live out this nonviolent lifestyle because of their self declared protector Billy Jack.  Without Billy's willingness to put himself between the pacifists from the commune and the people who would hurt them then the whole hippy dippy "We've got to be nice to everybody" airheads would find themselves in a world of hurt.

So the message of Billy Jack is not the one espoused by the lady who runs the commune.  In the real world her philosophy is an abject failure.  It is only because of a hard man, a defender willing to sacrifice himself and stand up for the weak that the weak are able to survive.

"If you would have peace, then prepare for war," goes the old saying.  It doesn't necessarily have to be the majority that are prepared for war.  Indeed if the ones prepared for war are sufficiently capable then a goodly sized chunk of the population don't have to be exposed to war at all.  The problem though is that if they aren't aware of how they are being protectedthen eventually the disarmed, the weak and helpless start to think that they don't need the hard ones, the armed ones, the strong ones around to keep them safe.  Instead the protectors are pushed away, they are deprived of the tools they need to keep the rest safe and then surprise, surprise once they are gone then the walls come down and the takers, the haters, the evil onescome in and no one is there to stop them.