Loss of the Moral Hero In American Culture
I have cut this down a little in size. Its based partly on something I wrote in 1987, called The Great Rebellion Bulletin: Heroes Are Called to Oppose Evil and Rescue Victims of Villains.
Hero is from the Greek word heros, meaning protector or defender. If you
do something that protects a few people, or a whole community from harm
or defend them from harmful people and you take a risk in doing so and do
it without any certainty you yourself will gain from the action, then you
fit the definition of a hero. In taking action to protect or defend others,
you are out on the playing field, and not just sitting in the grandstands
watching what is taking place.
If someone or a group is being bullied and has been hurt physically or
otherwise, or has been threatened with physical or other types of harm,
when someone or some group comes to defend or protect them he or she is a
hero.
The hero needs to have the ability to discern when others are being hurt,
bullied or threatened, and is not deceived by what the bullies are saying
to justify their actions against the people. And the hero should have the
discernment needed to know what action needs to be taken to defend or
protect the harmed others, and the ability to restrain himself or herself
from harmful actions against people which are not justified by the
situation.
And behind the desire of the hero to defend and protect others from
villains is the strong belief in a morality which is absolute and not
subject to compromise by situations or by what others say.
Usually when a person or group is attacked by a villain or groups of
villains the villains violate some right of the victims, such as the right
to life, the right not to be physically injured by the behavior of others,
the right to be free, freedom of speech, or property rights.
"How long will ye judge unjustly, and accept the persons of the wicked?
Selah. Defend the poor and fatherless: do justice to the afflicted and
needy. Deliver the poor and needy: rid them out of the hand of the
wicked." Psalm 82: 2-4
"Open thy mouth, judge righteously, and plead the cause of the poor
and needy." Proverbs 31: 9
Isaiah 10: 1-2 says "Woe unto them that decree unrighteous decrees,
and that write grievousness which they have prescribed. To turn aside
the needy from judgment, and to take away the right from the poor of
my people, that widows may be their prey, and that they may rob the
fatherless." Isaiah 10:1-2
"If thou faint in the day of adversity, thy strength is small. If thou
forbear to deliver them that are drawn unto death, and those that are
ready to be slain;" Proverbs 24: 10-11
Then Psalm 94: 16 asks "Who will rise up for me against the evildoers?
or who will stand up for me against the workers of iniquity?"
"The wicked people band together against righteous individuals and
condemn innocents to death," says Psalm 94: 21.
The harmful actions of evil people, the villains, call out the heroes
to oppose villainy, to weaken the influence of evil in society, and to
rescue victims of villainous individuals or groups. Heroes also serve
as examples to others.
Often evil individuals or groups will try to deceive others into
believing the they, the villains are not evil, but are a benefit to
others and to society. In our culture of political correctness
political and corporate leaders who are actually villains often pose
as respectable members of society.
So, an ability to spot that which is evil behind a cloak of good image
and respectability is a requirement of the hero.
Outstanding individuals who defeat evil villains and protect or rescue
innocent victims serve as examples to others. Moral heroes become
role models, especially for young people. The Old Testament records
many moral heroes who defeated evil villains, stood up for the rights
of others, and protected the innocent.
But in a totalitarian society, or one moving toward totalitarian
control by a small ruling elite the moral hero is not welcome and may
become the enemy of that small ruling elite. The moral hero is then
politically incorrect, and can be seen as a "domestic terrorist."
There were also moral heroes in the history of Christianity. Foxe's
Book of Martyrs, written in 1563, went through four editions in Fox's
lifetime. The English martyr-moral heroes provided many living
examples of people who risked death to stand up for the truth against
the false prophets and their followers. They were moral heroes in
being faithful to Christ, and having his testimony (Revelation 12:17)
- until the end which was often a painful death by burning.
Fox says of one of those English martyrs - William Tyndale - that
"These books of Tyndale's compiled, published and sent over into
England, it cannot be spoken what a door of light they opened to the
eyes of the whole nation, which before were many years shut up in
darkness (page 123)."
Tyndale's books were his 1526 translation of the New Testament, The
Wicked Mammon, and The Obedience of a Christian Man. Tyndale was
strangled at the stake in Europe by the Catholics for translating the
Textus Receptus into English, at a time when the Latin Bible was the
only scripture allowed to the people. Tyndale had also corrected the
problem in John Wyclife's 1382 translation of the Latin Vulgage of
Jerome in which Wyclife used chirche (in old English spelling) for
ecclesiam, or ekklesia in the Greek texts. Ekklesia means a meeting,
assembly or congregation of any kind of group, and is a common noun.
So any English translation of ekklesia should be a common noun also
and have the same meaning as ekklesia. The way church has come to be
understood implies it is the Capital C Church, a proper noun, and that
the Church is a people of God like Israel.
William Tyndale in his 1526 New Testament translated ekklesia
consistently as congregation, except for Acts 14: 13 and Acts 19: 37
where he used churche, meaning a pagan place of worship. Tyndale broke
with Catholic tradition and used congregation for ekklesia, something
which might have contributed to his being strangled at the stake.
William Tyndale was an example of a real person in history who stood
up for the truth of scripture, in part, to help others after him have
that truth. He was a moral hero of the highest type because his
heroism, courage and belief in the absolute truth of God's word was
about that which is spiritual. The right of the people to know the
truth of Christ's Gospel and to be given spiritual life from Christ
and not have his Gospel turned in fables is more subtle than the
situation in which people are being physically harmed by evil people
and the hero appears to protect them. Tyndale was an example of the
remnant used by God to re-establish his kingdom at a time when the
dominant religion had gone off into false doctrines and practices.
But it is important to understand that as the real moral heroes - and
heroines - were no longer used so much as examples or role models in
American society, then the heroes and heroines of fiction took their
place to some extent.
James Monaco who was a film critic said that "Not only does drama now
occupy a significantly greater area of the spectrum of cultural
experience." Monaco was saying that fiction became a powerful
determinant of culture and as he said it has "...a powerful control
over the national mythos.(Media Culture, 1978, page 13). Fiction had
to a great extent replaced folk culture and myth in American popular
culture.
Then, Daniel J. Boorstin in his book, The Image, 1961, said "In these
middle decades of the twentieth century the hero has almost
disappeared from our fiction." he said "We still try to make our
celebrities stand in for the heroes we no longer have."
Celebrities are people who present images to the popular audience,
images that are often not real. So celebrities are poor substitutes
for moral heroes.
The mantle of the Arthurian moral hero of chivalry was cast on that
bow-legged man with the big hat and boots, and wearing that mantle
this eccentric guy of reality and legend cast a long shadow upon
American culture of the late 19th century and on until the mid 20th
century. Some cowboys wrote historical accounts of the cowboy life,
such as The Log of a Cowboy, 1903, by Andy Adams. or Reed Anthony,
Cowman 1907. Reed Anthony has, as a character in this book, John T.
Lytle, Secretary of the Texas Cattle Raisers Association. Lytle was a
Texas Trail Driver who like some others took the smaller herds of
cowmen and put them together into larger herds to go up the trail to
Kansas to sell. The town of Lytle, Texas is named for him, since he
had operated out of that area. Lytle is eight miles west of where I
was born and raised, and I was the butcher in Lytle during the summer
of 1954. My older brother moved to
Lytle soon after 1954 and ran his small chain of grocery stores out of Lytle.
His widow and descendants still live there.
The American formula detective story - in novels and also in films - featured the detective who sometimes acted as a hero who removed villains from society and in this way protected the community. The hero role slot is, however, not as important to the science fiction novel or movie.
The cowboy was made into a moral hero in the formula Western novel. Peter Homans wrote about the cowboy hero in his essay "Puritianism Revisited, in Jack Nachbar, Focus On the Western, pp.84-92. Homans said that "The will dominates rather than participates in the feelings and imagination...Here is the real meaning of the Western: a Puritan morality tale in which the savior-hero redeems the community from the temptation of the devil..."
Michael T. Marsden wrote that "...in dealing with the nature of the Western hero, it seems fruitful to view him as a coming together of certain elements from the Old testament and to see through him the creation of a Sagebrush Testament with its own ethos...." This is from "Savior In the Saddle: The sagebrush Testament, In Jack Nachbar, Ed, Focus on the Western, 1974, p. 87.
John Wiley Nelson says that "...the dominant belief system in American life has found a normative ritual form of expression in the Western...In the Western...the story ends when the villain is destroyed; we do not feel that more evil is lurking in the shadows. Evil has been annihilated." See: John Wiley Nelson, Your God Is Alive and Well and Appearing in Popular Culture, 1976, Westminister Press, p. 17.
Since the Western story formula reflects a memory of the American culture west of the 98th meridian of the 19th century, it also retains some memory of the basic doctrines of Protestant Christianity - in Calvinism. Five point Calvinism or amillennialism is not necessarily the foundation of the cowboy hero's morality - but Calvinism also taught that morality is rooted in an unchanging, all-sovereign and holy God, and that the righteousness of God as expressed in the morality he taught us is absolute and cannot be compromised. The Cowboy moral hero stands on that absolute morality.
The 98th meridian runs through Meridian, Texas and so the West can be defined as beginning there. A line straight south from Meridian would run maybe 30 or 40 miles east of San Antonio.
The cowboy of real life spent most of his time alone or in small groups in the wilderness where they was little control over him from the government, corporate business , the church or even the family. The historical cowboy of about 1870 to 1920 was said to have "unshaken courage in danger." Most of them were thought to be honest and trustworthy. They tended to be self-sufficient and resourceful. They were loyal to one another. Some of them were eccentric. Cowboys were also thought to have been wild and exuberant. But they were loners and some of this can be seen in their music and stories. Waylan Jennings in "Mammas Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up To be Cowboys," sings of this cowboy loneliness "Cos they'll never stay home and they're always alone. Even with someone they love."
One of the more interesting formulas of the larger Western story formula was the Range War Western.
There were several real range wars in Texas and in some of the states of the Great Planes during the late 19th and very early 20th century. The Horrell-Higgins range war of 1873 near Lampasas, Texas is one of these. There was a larger Mason County Range War in the Texas hill country in 1875. Sometime before he was shot dead in San Antonio in 1884, King Fisher was in a range war between the Doniphan and Porter families near Eagle Pass, Texas. John Wesley Hardin took part in the Sutton-Taylor Range War in 1872 which took place in the area of Gonzales County, Texas.
A famous range war in Arizona in the late 1880's was between the Grahams and the Tewksburys below the Mogollon Rim, known as he Pleasant Valley War.
The more general schematic story structure of the Western novel involves settings and characters, transgressive behavior by a villain, a fight of some kind between the villain and the hero, and finally the defeat of the villain. The Range War Western developed its own more specific characterization and action formula slots from this general formula.
In an early Range War Western, Deadwood Dick of Deadwood (1880), by Edward L. Wheeler, Wheeler's hero topples a corrupt businessman's empire. Wheeler calls the evil businessman a "purse-proud aristocrat." However, Deadwood Dick is sentenced to death by the local judge for bringing down the evil businessman. Calamity Jane rescues him from jail in time. Deadwood Dick is an outsider in the community, while the criminal businessmen he opposes are respected insiders. The characterization of the Range War Western villain as a respected insider in the local community is a major trait of the Range War Western formula story.
Ryan of Roger Pocock's Curley, A Tale of the American Desert, 1905, is another early version of the respected villain insider with a good image. The hero, McCalmont, has been driven off his land by the big cattle company which also killed his son. When the case comes to trail, the judge, a shareholder in the crooked cattle company, rules in favor of the cattle company. McCalmont's lawyers charge him huge amounts of money, and when the case is brought to the Supreme Court, the cattle company burns McCalmont's house and kills his wife. With a group of mavericks, McCalmont stands up for morality and justice, while the respected insider villains hide behind the law.
From its beginning in the stories of Wheeler and Pocock, the Range War Western was a fictional vehicle for exposure and criticism of the materialism, loss of common morals, success-motivation and image-obsession which even in the late 19th century had just begun to overcome Christian absolute morality. The hero of the Range War Western rescues the local community from the harmful actions of an insider respected villain with good image. In doing so the Range War Western hero shows his keen perception and discernment of people, and situations. He sees through the surface deceptions enacted by the respected insider villain. Yet this villain has some cognitive ability which he uses for his evil purposes. He can see to some extent beneath the surface appearance of things, more so than most of the townspeople.
By 1912, in Zane Grey's Riders of the Purple Sage, the insider respected villain is a Mormon Bishop who tries to take possession of Jane's ranch and force her to become a Mormon wife. Another of Zane Grey's Range War Westerns was his Man of the Forest of 1920, and his To the Last Man of 1921 which is a literary takeoff from the real Graham-Tweskbury range war in Arizona.
It was Ernest Haycox who perfected the Range War Western story formula. The following nine event slots are from Haycox's Chaffee of Roaring Horse. 1930, and are typical of many Range War Westerns:
l. Initial transgressive behavior by the insider respected villain takes place.
2. Some form of deception is worked by the insider respected villain. In Chaffee of Roaring Horse, William Wells Woolfridge, the chief insider respected villain, is an upper class, well educated man from the East who owns large shares in a local company and hides his evil behind this cloak. The locals, for the most part, do not have enough discernment to know that Woolfridge is evil and hides his evil behind the deception of having good image and respectability.
3. There is a second round of transgressive behavior brought on by the insider villain. Woolfridge wants the ranch that belonged to the murdered Dad Datterlee and the yahoo-type outlaws who secretly work for Woolfridge stampede the Stirrup S herd over the canyon to their deaths.
4. The cowboy hero is framed on a false charge. Jim Chaffee had been one of Dad Satterlee's cowboys, and he trails the yahoo-outlaw gang who killed the Stirrup S cattle. In the process Chaffee kills one of the yahoo-outlaws in self defense. Since Woolfridge controls the local sheriff, Chaffee is framed on a charge of murder.
5. The cowboy hero becomes socially isolated and the townspeople are unfriendly to him. Many locals think that Chaffee is guilty of murder.
6. The cowboy hero begins to work to defeat the chief insider respected villain. Chaffee begins to gather evidence to tie the yahoo-outlaw gang to the murder of Dad Satterlee.
7. The villains engage in a third round of transgressive behavior. The yahoo-outlaws murder Jim Chaffee's friend.
8. The cowboy hero gains allies in his fight against the chief villain. In this story, a woman shows up who is then allied with the hero and becomes a heroine. She is an assistant to the territorial governor and investigates the villain Woolfridge. The lie of Woolfridge to the local people was exposed that a dam was going to be built which would make the land he sold them more valuable. The settlers began to oppose Woolfridge and his yahoo outlaws.
9. The insider villain and his yahoo outlaws are defeated in a decisive way by the work of the cowboy. In this story the heroine helps bring the local people to the side of the cowboy hero.
These nine event slots and the characterization of the insider respected villain with good image can be seen easily as being metaphoric for real life scenarios at the local, national and even international level.
A strong belief that the morality given by a righteous God is the necessary prerequisite for being able to see these nine action slots as being metaphoric for real life situations. Without absolute morality the behavior of the insider respected villain with good image is not seen to be evil. And this refusal to see the insider villain as evil is both because the "townspeople," which are the majority of the people, cannot discern that people with good images, with a lot of money and power, can be evil, and the people do not see that some of the ways those with money and power manipulate and control people lead to harm to the people.
Marxism is not the only kind of humanism which can lead to a rejection of the absolute morality taught in scripture. But Transformational Marxism gained influence in American society during the second half of the 20th century. Transformational Marxism mixes psychology with Marxist theory and understands that taking over a culture and society like that of the U.S. takes time. This is not the Bolshevism of Lenin and Stalin.
"In the eyes of the dialectical philosophy, nothing is established for
all time, nothing is absolute or sacred." (Karl Marx)
But how could the generations who fought World War II and the Korean War produce children - the Baby Boomers - and grand children who were changed in their beliefs in absolute morality? The World War II Generation, for the most part, believed in the moral hero. And in part many of them were moral heroes who stormed enemy beaches to free people they would never know. And many who fought in Korea, alongside some of the World War II vets, were little brothers of the World War II men. The Korean War generation had much the same belief in the moral hero as did the World War II people. How could the Baby Boomers, their children, born from 1946 to about 1964, have lost a belief in unchanging morality and no longer believe in the moral hero?
The answer is public school education.
Benjamin Bloom, who wrote the two volume book on the Taxonomy
of Educational Goal Objectives, by which all teachers must be
certified, said "“We recognize the point of view that
truth and knowledge are only relative and that there are no hard and
fast truths which exist for all time and places.” (Benjamin Bloom, et
al., Taxonomy of Educational Objectives, Book 1, Cognitive Domain)
Dean Gotcher found a footnote in Bloom's Taxonomy of Educational
Objectives Book 2, Affective Domain, on the "Weltanschaaung" or world
view Bloom was following. On
page 166 of this volume Bloom acknowledges the influence of Theodore W. Adorno
and Eric Fromm on the psychological theory, philosophy or ideology
contained in his two volumes, Educational Goal taxonomies. Book II
Affective Domain p. 166. Bloom used the German word Weltanschaaung on this
page of his book to refer to the philosophy underlying Bloom's educational goals.
“1. Cf. Erich Fromm, 1941; T. W. Adorno et al., 1950” Benjamin Bloom,
Book II Affective Domain p. 166. This is Bloom's footnote
acknowledging the influence on his thinking from Erich Fromm and
Theodore W. Adorno.
Adorno was an original Frankfurter Marxist who
posed as a personality and social psychologist in writing his 1950
book, The Authoritarian Personality, in which he claimed that the
authoritarian personality and fascism are caused by the family and
Christianity. Erich Fromm was a Transformational Marxist psychologist
and close associate of the Frankfurters.
I have cut this down a little in size. Its based partly on something I wrote in 1987, called The Great Rebellion Bulletin: Heroes Are Called to Oppose Evil and Rescue Victims of Villains.
Hero is from the Greek word heros, meaning protector or defender. If you
do something that protects a few people, or a whole community from harm
or defend them from harmful people and you take a risk in doing so and do
it without any certainty you yourself will gain from the action, then you
fit the definition of a hero. In taking action to protect or defend others,
you are out on the playing field, and not just sitting in the grandstands
watching what is taking place.
If someone or a group is being bullied and has been hurt physically or
otherwise, or has been threatened with physical or other types of harm,
when someone or some group comes to defend or protect them he or she is a
hero.
The hero needs to have the ability to discern when others are being hurt,
bullied or threatened, and is not deceived by what the bullies are saying
to justify their actions against the people. And the hero should have the
discernment needed to know what action needs to be taken to defend or
protect the harmed others, and the ability to restrain himself or herself
from harmful actions against people which are not justified by the
situation.
And behind the desire of the hero to defend and protect others from
villains is the strong belief in a morality which is absolute and not
subject to compromise by situations or by what others say.
Usually when a person or group is attacked by a villain or groups of
villains the villains violate some right of the victims, such as the right
to life, the right not to be physically injured by the behavior of others,
the right to be free, freedom of speech, or property rights.
"How long will ye judge unjustly, and accept the persons of the wicked?
Selah. Defend the poor and fatherless: do justice to the afflicted and
needy. Deliver the poor and needy: rid them out of the hand of the
wicked." Psalm 82: 2-4
"Open thy mouth, judge righteously, and plead the cause of the poor
and needy." Proverbs 31: 9
Isaiah 10: 1-2 says "Woe unto them that decree unrighteous decrees,
and that write grievousness which they have prescribed. To turn aside
the needy from judgment, and to take away the right from the poor of
my people, that widows may be their prey, and that they may rob the
fatherless." Isaiah 10:1-2
"If thou faint in the day of adversity, thy strength is small. If thou
forbear to deliver them that are drawn unto death, and those that are
ready to be slain;" Proverbs 24: 10-11
Then Psalm 94: 16 asks "Who will rise up for me against the evildoers?
or who will stand up for me against the workers of iniquity?"
"The wicked people band together against righteous individuals and
condemn innocents to death," says Psalm 94: 21.
The harmful actions of evil people, the villains, call out the heroes
to oppose villainy, to weaken the influence of evil in society, and to
rescue victims of villainous individuals or groups. Heroes also serve
as examples to others.
Often evil individuals or groups will try to deceive others into
believing the they, the villains are not evil, but are a benefit to
others and to society. In our culture of political correctness
political and corporate leaders who are actually villains often pose
as respectable members of society.
So, an ability to spot that which is evil behind a cloak of good image
and respectability is a requirement of the hero.
Outstanding individuals who defeat evil villains and protect or rescue
innocent victims serve as examples to others. Moral heroes become
role models, especially for young people. The Old Testament records
many moral heroes who defeated evil villains, stood up for the rights
of others, and protected the innocent.
But in a totalitarian society, or one moving toward totalitarian
control by a small ruling elite the moral hero is not welcome and may
become the enemy of that small ruling elite. The moral hero is then
politically incorrect, and can be seen as a "domestic terrorist."
There were also moral heroes in the history of Christianity. Foxe's
Book of Martyrs, written in 1563, went through four editions in Fox's
lifetime. The English martyr-moral heroes provided many living
examples of people who risked death to stand up for the truth against
the false prophets and their followers. They were moral heroes in
being faithful to Christ, and having his testimony (Revelation 12:17)
- until the end which was often a painful death by burning.
Fox says of one of those English martyrs - William Tyndale - that
"These books of Tyndale's compiled, published and sent over into
England, it cannot be spoken what a door of light they opened to the
eyes of the whole nation, which before were many years shut up in
darkness (page 123)."
Tyndale's books were his 1526 translation of the New Testament, The
Wicked Mammon, and The Obedience of a Christian Man. Tyndale was
strangled at the stake in Europe by the Catholics for translating the
Textus Receptus into English, at a time when the Latin Bible was the
only scripture allowed to the people. Tyndale had also corrected the
problem in John Wyclife's 1382 translation of the Latin Vulgage of
Jerome in which Wyclife used chirche (in old English spelling) for
ecclesiam, or ekklesia in the Greek texts. Ekklesia means a meeting,
assembly or congregation of any kind of group, and is a common noun.
So any English translation of ekklesia should be a common noun also
and have the same meaning as ekklesia. The way church has come to be
understood implies it is the Capital C Church, a proper noun, and that
the Church is a people of God like Israel.
William Tyndale in his 1526 New Testament translated ekklesia
consistently as congregation, except for Acts 14: 13 and Acts 19: 37
where he used churche, meaning a pagan place of worship. Tyndale broke
with Catholic tradition and used congregation for ekklesia, something
which might have contributed to his being strangled at the stake.
William Tyndale was an example of a real person in history who stood
up for the truth of scripture, in part, to help others after him have
that truth. He was a moral hero of the highest type because his
heroism, courage and belief in the absolute truth of God's word was
about that which is spiritual. The right of the people to know the
truth of Christ's Gospel and to be given spiritual life from Christ
and not have his Gospel turned in fables is more subtle than the
situation in which people are being physically harmed by evil people
and the hero appears to protect them. Tyndale was an example of the
remnant used by God to re-establish his kingdom at a time when the
dominant religion had gone off into false doctrines and practices.
But it is important to understand that as the real moral heroes - and
heroines - were no longer used so much as examples or role models in
American society, then the heroes and heroines of fiction took their
place to some extent.
James Monaco who was a film critic said that "Not only does drama now
occupy a significantly greater area of the spectrum of cultural
experience." Monaco was saying that fiction became a powerful
determinant of culture and as he said it has "...a powerful control
over the national mythos.(Media Culture, 1978, page 13). Fiction had
to a great extent replaced folk culture and myth in American popular
culture.
Then, Daniel J. Boorstin in his book, The Image, 1961, said "In these
middle decades of the twentieth century the hero has almost
disappeared from our fiction." he said "We still try to make our
celebrities stand in for the heroes we no longer have."
Celebrities are people who present images to the popular audience,
images that are often not real. So celebrities are poor substitutes
for moral heroes.
The mantle of the Arthurian moral hero of chivalry was cast on that
bow-legged man with the big hat and boots, and wearing that mantle
this eccentric guy of reality and legend cast a long shadow upon
American culture of the late 19th century and on until the mid 20th
century. Some cowboys wrote historical accounts of the cowboy life,
such as The Log of a Cowboy, 1903, by Andy Adams. or Reed Anthony,
Cowman 1907. Reed Anthony has, as a character in this book, John T.
Lytle, Secretary of the Texas Cattle Raisers Association. Lytle was a
Texas Trail Driver who like some others took the smaller herds of
cowmen and put them together into larger herds to go up the trail to
Kansas to sell. The town of Lytle, Texas is named for him, since he
had operated out of that area. Lytle is eight miles west of where I
was born and raised, and I was the butcher in Lytle during the summer
of 1954. My older brother moved to
Lytle soon after 1954 and ran his small chain of grocery stores out of Lytle.
His widow and descendants still live there.
The American formula detective story - in novels and also in films - featured the detective who sometimes acted as a hero who removed villains from society and in this way protected the community. The hero role slot is, however, not as important to the science fiction novel or movie.
The cowboy was made into a moral hero in the formula Western novel. Peter Homans wrote about the cowboy hero in his essay "Puritianism Revisited, in Jack Nachbar, Focus On the Western, pp.84-92. Homans said that "The will dominates rather than participates in the feelings and imagination...Here is the real meaning of the Western: a Puritan morality tale in which the savior-hero redeems the community from the temptation of the devil..."
Michael T. Marsden wrote that "...in dealing with the nature of the Western hero, it seems fruitful to view him as a coming together of certain elements from the Old testament and to see through him the creation of a Sagebrush Testament with its own ethos...." This is from "Savior In the Saddle: The sagebrush Testament, In Jack Nachbar, Ed, Focus on the Western, 1974, p. 87.
John Wiley Nelson says that "...the dominant belief system in American life has found a normative ritual form of expression in the Western...In the Western...the story ends when the villain is destroyed; we do not feel that more evil is lurking in the shadows. Evil has been annihilated." See: John Wiley Nelson, Your God Is Alive and Well and Appearing in Popular Culture, 1976, Westminister Press, p. 17.
Since the Western story formula reflects a memory of the American culture west of the 98th meridian of the 19th century, it also retains some memory of the basic doctrines of Protestant Christianity - in Calvinism. Five point Calvinism or amillennialism is not necessarily the foundation of the cowboy hero's morality - but Calvinism also taught that morality is rooted in an unchanging, all-sovereign and holy God, and that the righteousness of God as expressed in the morality he taught us is absolute and cannot be compromised. The Cowboy moral hero stands on that absolute morality.
The 98th meridian runs through Meridian, Texas and so the West can be defined as beginning there. A line straight south from Meridian would run maybe 30 or 40 miles east of San Antonio.
The cowboy of real life spent most of his time alone or in small groups in the wilderness where they was little control over him from the government, corporate business , the church or even the family. The historical cowboy of about 1870 to 1920 was said to have "unshaken courage in danger." Most of them were thought to be honest and trustworthy. They tended to be self-sufficient and resourceful. They were loyal to one another. Some of them were eccentric. Cowboys were also thought to have been wild and exuberant. But they were loners and some of this can be seen in their music and stories. Waylan Jennings in "Mammas Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up To be Cowboys," sings of this cowboy loneliness "Cos they'll never stay home and they're always alone. Even with someone they love."
One of the more interesting formulas of the larger Western story formula was the Range War Western.
There were several real range wars in Texas and in some of the states of the Great Planes during the late 19th and very early 20th century. The Horrell-Higgins range war of 1873 near Lampasas, Texas is one of these. There was a larger Mason County Range War in the Texas hill country in 1875. Sometime before he was shot dead in San Antonio in 1884, King Fisher was in a range war between the Doniphan and Porter families near Eagle Pass, Texas. John Wesley Hardin took part in the Sutton-Taylor Range War in 1872 which took place in the area of Gonzales County, Texas.
A famous range war in Arizona in the late 1880's was between the Grahams and the Tewksburys below the Mogollon Rim, known as he Pleasant Valley War.
The more general schematic story structure of the Western novel involves settings and characters, transgressive behavior by a villain, a fight of some kind between the villain and the hero, and finally the defeat of the villain. The Range War Western developed its own more specific characterization and action formula slots from this general formula.
In an early Range War Western, Deadwood Dick of Deadwood (1880), by Edward L. Wheeler, Wheeler's hero topples a corrupt businessman's empire. Wheeler calls the evil businessman a "purse-proud aristocrat." However, Deadwood Dick is sentenced to death by the local judge for bringing down the evil businessman. Calamity Jane rescues him from jail in time. Deadwood Dick is an outsider in the community, while the criminal businessmen he opposes are respected insiders. The characterization of the Range War Western villain as a respected insider in the local community is a major trait of the Range War Western formula story.
Ryan of Roger Pocock's Curley, A Tale of the American Desert, 1905, is another early version of the respected villain insider with a good image. The hero, McCalmont, has been driven off his land by the big cattle company which also killed his son. When the case comes to trail, the judge, a shareholder in the crooked cattle company, rules in favor of the cattle company. McCalmont's lawyers charge him huge amounts of money, and when the case is brought to the Supreme Court, the cattle company burns McCalmont's house and kills his wife. With a group of mavericks, McCalmont stands up for morality and justice, while the respected insider villains hide behind the law.
From its beginning in the stories of Wheeler and Pocock, the Range War Western was a fictional vehicle for exposure and criticism of the materialism, loss of common morals, success-motivation and image-obsession which even in the late 19th century had just begun to overcome Christian absolute morality. The hero of the Range War Western rescues the local community from the harmful actions of an insider respected villain with good image. In doing so the Range War Western hero shows his keen perception and discernment of people, and situations. He sees through the surface deceptions enacted by the respected insider villain. Yet this villain has some cognitive ability which he uses for his evil purposes. He can see to some extent beneath the surface appearance of things, more so than most of the townspeople.
By 1912, in Zane Grey's Riders of the Purple Sage, the insider respected villain is a Mormon Bishop who tries to take possession of Jane's ranch and force her to become a Mormon wife. Another of Zane Grey's Range War Westerns was his Man of the Forest of 1920, and his To the Last Man of 1921 which is a literary takeoff from the real Graham-Tweskbury range war in Arizona.
It was Ernest Haycox who perfected the Range War Western story formula. The following nine event slots are from Haycox's Chaffee of Roaring Horse. 1930, and are typical of many Range War Westerns:
l. Initial transgressive behavior by the insider respected villain takes place.
2. Some form of deception is worked by the insider respected villain. In Chaffee of Roaring Horse, William Wells Woolfridge, the chief insider respected villain, is an upper class, well educated man from the East who owns large shares in a local company and hides his evil behind this cloak. The locals, for the most part, do not have enough discernment to know that Woolfridge is evil and hides his evil behind the deception of having good image and respectability.
3. There is a second round of transgressive behavior brought on by the insider villain. Woolfridge wants the ranch that belonged to the murdered Dad Datterlee and the yahoo-type outlaws who secretly work for Woolfridge stampede the Stirrup S herd over the canyon to their deaths.
4. The cowboy hero is framed on a false charge. Jim Chaffee had been one of Dad Satterlee's cowboys, and he trails the yahoo-outlaw gang who killed the Stirrup S cattle. In the process Chaffee kills one of the yahoo-outlaws in self defense. Since Woolfridge controls the local sheriff, Chaffee is framed on a charge of murder.
5. The cowboy hero becomes socially isolated and the townspeople are unfriendly to him. Many locals think that Chaffee is guilty of murder.
6. The cowboy hero begins to work to defeat the chief insider respected villain. Chaffee begins to gather evidence to tie the yahoo-outlaw gang to the murder of Dad Satterlee.
7. The villains engage in a third round of transgressive behavior. The yahoo-outlaws murder Jim Chaffee's friend.
8. The cowboy hero gains allies in his fight against the chief villain. In this story, a woman shows up who is then allied with the hero and becomes a heroine. She is an assistant to the territorial governor and investigates the villain Woolfridge. The lie of Woolfridge to the local people was exposed that a dam was going to be built which would make the land he sold them more valuable. The settlers began to oppose Woolfridge and his yahoo outlaws.
9. The insider villain and his yahoo outlaws are defeated in a decisive way by the work of the cowboy. In this story the heroine helps bring the local people to the side of the cowboy hero.
These nine event slots and the characterization of the insider respected villain with good image can be seen easily as being metaphoric for real life scenarios at the local, national and even international level.
A strong belief that the morality given by a righteous God is the necessary prerequisite for being able to see these nine action slots as being metaphoric for real life situations. Without absolute morality the behavior of the insider respected villain with good image is not seen to be evil. And this refusal to see the insider villain as evil is both because the "townspeople," which are the majority of the people, cannot discern that people with good images, with a lot of money and power, can be evil, and the people do not see that some of the ways those with money and power manipulate and control people lead to harm to the people.
Marxism is not the only kind of humanism which can lead to a rejection of the absolute morality taught in scripture. But Transformational Marxism gained influence in American society during the second half of the 20th century. Transformational Marxism mixes psychology with Marxist theory and understands that taking over a culture and society like that of the U.S. takes time. This is not the Bolshevism of Lenin and Stalin.
"In the eyes of the dialectical philosophy, nothing is established for
all time, nothing is absolute or sacred." (Karl Marx)
But how could the generations who fought World War II and the Korean War produce children - the Baby Boomers - and grand children who were changed in their beliefs in absolute morality? The World War II Generation, for the most part, believed in the moral hero. And in part many of them were moral heroes who stormed enemy beaches to free people they would never know. And many who fought in Korea, alongside some of the World War II vets, were little brothers of the World War II men. The Korean War generation had much the same belief in the moral hero as did the World War II people. How could the Baby Boomers, their children, born from 1946 to about 1964, have lost a belief in unchanging morality and no longer believe in the moral hero?
The answer is public school education.
Benjamin Bloom, who wrote the two volume book on the Taxonomy
of Educational Goal Objectives, by which all teachers must be
certified, said "“We recognize the point of view that
truth and knowledge are only relative and that there are no hard and
fast truths which exist for all time and places.” (Benjamin Bloom, et
al., Taxonomy of Educational Objectives, Book 1, Cognitive Domain)
Dean Gotcher found a footnote in Bloom's Taxonomy of Educational
Objectives Book 2, Affective Domain, on the "Weltanschaaung" or world
view Bloom was following. On
page 166 of this volume Bloom acknowledges the influence of Theodore W. Adorno
and Eric Fromm on the psychological theory, philosophy or ideology
contained in his two volumes, Educational Goal taxonomies. Book II
Affective Domain p. 166. Bloom used the German word Weltanschaaung on this
page of his book to refer to the philosophy underlying Bloom's educational goals.
“1. Cf. Erich Fromm, 1941; T. W. Adorno et al., 1950” Benjamin Bloom,
Book II Affective Domain p. 166. This is Bloom's footnote
acknowledging the influence on his thinking from Erich Fromm and
Theodore W. Adorno.
Adorno was an original Frankfurter Marxist who
posed as a personality and social psychologist in writing his 1950
book, The Authoritarian Personality, in which he claimed that the
authoritarian personality and fascism are caused by the family and
Christianity. Erich Fromm was a Transformational Marxist psychologist
and close associate of the Frankfurters.
There is a Bonanza episode with Ossie Davis guest staring as a former slave that dealt with racism. This was very uncommon for 1960's television.