Some say that if your hair line touches the bridge of your nose, you are
"low brow,"  i.e., stupid, incapable of culture. "High brows" are meant to
rule art, science, rocketry and politics--says that myth.  Therefore, Al
Gore should be President for life!  John Wayne? Never!

Forty years ago, someone added a third level combining intelligence and
cultural appreciation. The new pigeonhole was "middle brow." Others then
argued that the Roman Empire fell because there were no middle brows
making  the elite culture of snobs like Ausonius and Symmachus appeal to
peasants and taxpayers in Gaul and Africa. In America there is fear, that
if egghead and low brow culture drift too far apart, our end is nigh.

John Seel made this point in PARENTING WITHOUT PERFECTION. Assuming parent culture is higher than teen culture, then parents had better climb down into the trenches of hip hop, gangsta rap and other teenage fads if they want to lift their offspring to "apprenticeship to Christ." Parents must go down culturally to lift their young upwards morally.

Professor Garry Wills, not himself an original thinker, does read and apply
works of high brows about low brow loves and ambitions. He did this in
PAPAL SIN and more impressively in 1997 in JOHN WAYNE'S AMERICA.

Marion Morrison lived only from 1907-1979. The actor who Morrison became, John Wayne, will be around as long as high brows create middle brow culture. A poll asked 1,000 Americans, "Who is your favorite star?" In 1993 and 1994 Wayne ranked second. By 1995 he was number one, receiving twice the votes of Mel Gibson and six times those of Paul Newman (p. 11). Douglas MacArthur called John Wayne the model of an American soldier. Congress gave Wayne- Morrison a gold medal. "The way to be an American was to be Wayne" (p. 13) He was a top star continuously from age 40 to 72.

John Wayne filled a huge public need. He and his directors (notably John
Ford) tapped into an American dimension first noted by Jefferson and
Emerson. It is an aspect of Americans which today's politicians scorn at
their peril.  For Americans are displaced persons, always clawing our way
into a contested present from a rejected past. We are ever on the brink of
a glorious future. We fear one another and the rest of the world fears us.
We are killers, but only of what needs killing. We are loving but do not
let love hold us back. We have no fixed and social hearth, no sacred place
(p. 302).

We go off alone to cleansing solitudes and come  back to convince our old
communities that we are now saved (p. 305). Our cities are traps. We need
air to breathe, land to roam. To be free means to "shake off the weight of
institutions--not only of laws and government, but of schools and
libraries." It is our destiny to GET OUT!

John Wayne the actor embodies one kind of alpha male. His walk, talk and
gestures radiate manliness and authority based only on himself. Wayne
reincarnates the ideal Roman orator. "It sounds as if Cicero had just been
watching Wayne films...The Roman Empire dreamed constantly of John Wayne." (p. 23) For Imperial America, like Rome needed intelligently led legions. When WW II and the Cold War came and American needed "a discipline of protracted struggle," John Wayne taught us how to lead.

American heroes must be untrammeled, free to roam. John Wayne of the cinema is an American national hero because he is himself, different, exceptional, in touch with nature, distrusting government, finding dignity in work and skeptical "towards the claims of experts" (p. 311). America's meaning is in America's  motion. "Do we really believe that we have escaped the myth of the frontier, the mystique of the gun, the resistance to institutions?"

If you were you Al Gore, would you run for President against John Wayne? In Wayne's  words from the 1956 western masterpiece, "THE SEARCHERS," "That'll be the day!"

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for INDEPENDENT TORCH