Dear Right Wing: Why the hatred for Robin Hood?

[Sean Renaud]

Seriously. I don't get it but I'm one of those people who misses the point all the time.

 

[dolf]

man. in tights. prob'ly gay.

 

[KRCummings]

Robin Hood is one of those stories that never caught my fancy. The books and movies always bored me.

 

[Sean Renaud]

man. in tights. prob'ly gay.

That at least makes sense.

 

[Sean Renaud]

Robin Hood is one of those stories that never caught my fancy. The books and movies always bored me.

I only enjoyed the Disney Cartoon and Men in Tights myself, neither of which have I seen in more than a decade.

 

[KRCummings]

It might be the nearly universal hatred of all things Costner.

 

[KingOrfeo]

Probably because Ayn Rand denounced him by name in Atlas Shrugged.

In the oldest lays and legends, BTW, Robin Hood was not any kind of redistributor, just an ordinary bandit -- but still a popular folk hero. Well, so were Jesse James and John Dillinger and many pirates and highwaymen; there's a kind of romance to outlawry that appeals to the juvenile side in many of us.

 

[NeverEndingMe]

Seriously. I don't get it but I'm one of those people who misses the point all the time.

are you saying that obama is wearing tights and dancing in the street?

 

[Sean Renaud]

Probably because Ayn Rand denounced him by name in Atlas Shrugged.
In the oldest lays and legends, BTW, Robin Hood was not any kind of redistributor, just an ordinary bandit -- but still a popular folk hero. Well, so were Jesse James and John Dillinger and many pirates and highwaymen; there's a kind of romance to outlawry that appeals to the juvenile side in many of us.

Did she read the story or just hate on him for the same reason I hate on Justin Beiber?

 

[KRCummings]

Did she read the story or just hate on him for the same reason I hate on Justin Beiber?

The Robin Hood we know today is a form a welfare and wealth redistribution. An evil man to many. And really, he is. He stole from one person to give to someone else. That's not right now matter who it is. However we view him as just even though he was a bit of a scumbag.

 

[bronzeage]

Seriously. I don't get it but I'm one of those people who misses the point all the time.

One would think there would be Robin Hood Societies, sort of like the John Birch Society, or the American Family Association(modern day Moral Majority), because Robin Hood fought an oppressive government which taxed the people into poverty.

Then, someone comes along years later and writes that silly song with the line, "steals from the rich, gives to the poor..."

No way around that.

 

[KingOrfeo]

Did she read the story or just hate on him for the same reason I hate on Justin Beiber?

What she said is:

Ragnar Danneskjold: "But I’ve chosen a special mission of my own. I’m after a man whom I want to destroy. He died many centuries ago, but until the last trace of him is wiped out of men’s minds, we will not have a decent world to live in."

Hank Rearden: "What man?"

Ragnar: "Robin Hood."

And:

It is said that [Robin Hood] fought against the looting rulers and returned the loot to those who had been robbed, but that is not the meaning of the legend which has survived. He is remembered, not as a champion of property, but as a champion of need, not as a defender of the robbed, but as a provider of the poor. He is held to be the first man who assumed a halo of virtue by practicing charity with wealth which he did not own, by giving away goods which he had not produced, by making others pay for the luxury of his pity. He is the man who became the symbol of the idea that need, not achievement, is the source of rights, that we don't have to produce, only to want, that the earned does not belong to us, but the unearned does. He became a justification for every mediocrity who, unable to make his own living, had demanded the power to dispose of the property of his betters, by proclaiming his willingness to devote his life to his inferiors at the price of robbing his superiors.

 

[Sean Renaud]

The Robin Hood we know today is a form a welfare and wealth redistribution. An evil man to many. And really, he is. He stole from one person to give to someone else. That's not right now matter who it is. However we view him as just even though he was a bit of a scumbag.

How did that message become the official message you think? It's not in any of the stories that I've read. Since you're smart maybe you can tell me exactly what I'm missing cus here's how I remember Robin Hood.

Prince John taxed the shit out of the population and everybody was poor not because some greedy businessman had robbed the common man and left them destitute. It was government over taxation being used to support a very small group of people with government connections. Then along comes Robin and he screams you been Taxed Enough Already and rebelled against the government eventually being present when a good government was restored.

Maybe I'm watching the wrong movies and in the ones that everybody else watched the rich were rich because they were smart and sucessful and not leeches and the poor were poor because they were stupid and lazy and not over taxed.

 

[IndieSnob]

Anyone who takes Any Rand seriously needs a fucking lobotomy.

 

[Sean Renaud]

Anyone who takes Any Rand seriously needs a fucking lobotomy.

Even Rand Paul?

 

[KingOrfeo]

How did that message become the official message you think? It's not in any of the stories that I've read. Since you're smart maybe you can tell me exactly what I'm missing cus here's how I remember Robin Hood.

Prince John taxed the shit out of the population and everybody was poor not because some greedy businessman had robbed the common man and left them destitute. It was government over taxation being used to support a very small group of people with government connections. Then along comes Robin and he screams you been Taxed Enough Already and rebelled against the government eventually being present when a good government was restored.

Maybe I'm watching the wrong movies and in the ones that everybody else watched the rich were rich because they were smart and sucessful and not leeches and the poor were poor because they were stupid and lazy and not over taxed.

Again, the association of Robin Hood with Prince John and King Richard I the Lionhearted is a late addition; in the oldest legends he was associated with a "King Edward," number unspecified -- the earliest* English king by that name was Edward I Longshanks (the one so slanderously misrepresented in Braveheart), who reigned 1272-1307 -- long after Richard I, who died in 1199.


*Earliest post-Norman-Conquest, that is; the Anglo-Saxon King Edward the Confessor reigned 1042-1066. For some reason, they don't count pre-Conquest kings in English/British regnal-name numbering.

 

[IndieSnob]

Even Rand Paul?

I see what you did there with my typo, heh.

 

[Sean Renaud]

I see what you did there with my typo, heh.

You don't have to dodge the question!

 

[KRCummings]

How the fuck does someone read Atlas Shrugged and think "Wow, that was a great book and I want to base my entire life on it?"

Worse yet, how does someone watch the movie and think "I can't wait until Part 2!"

 

[RoryN]

How the fuck does someone read Atlas Shrugged and think "Wow, that was a great book and I want to base my entire life on it?"

The last person I spoke to who praised it had never even read it.

 

[IndieSnob]

How the fuck does someone read Atlas Shrugged and think "Wow, that was a great book and I want to base my entire life on it?"

Worse yet, how does someone watch the movie and think "I can't wait until Part 2!"

I'll never forget when one of my philosophy instructors was asked his opinion on the philosophy of Ayn Rand.

He had to contain his anger that anyone would consider her to even be in the realm of a real philosophical thinker, hatred of her shit thinking aside.

 

[Saint Peter]

Take from the rich and give it up the ass!

 

[KRCummings]

I'll never forget when one of my philosophy instructors was asked his opinion on the philosophy of Ayn Rand.

He had to contain his anger that anyone would consider her to even be in the realm of a real philosophical thinker, hatred of her shit thinking aside.

She's always big on campus because kids think they're smart for loving or hating her. More often than not the kids are just as dumb as she was.

 

[KingOrfeo]

I'll never forget when one of my philosophy instructors was asked his opinion on the philosophy of Ayn Rand.

He had to contain his anger that anyone would consider her to even be in the realm of a real philosophical thinker, hatred of her shit thinking aside.

Oh, she was a real philosophical thinker -- but rather an ignorant one, who did not realize that some of her concepts were not original with her and already had names. And naming her system "Objectivism" was nothing sort of hubristic. Likewise, believing that hard-libertarian ethics/politics can logically be derived from "A = A."