Extreme Inheritance

"But all you have to do is knock on any door and say, 'If you let me in, I'll live the way you want me to live, and I'll think the way you want me to think,' and all the blinds'll go up and all the windows will open, and you'll never be lonely, ever again."
--Henry Drummond (Inherit the Wind)

Last night I finally had the opportunity to view the 1960 movie Inherit the Wind. The film recreates 1920s legal battles over teaching evolution in public schools.

The movie is billed as featuring a religious right conservative lawyer played by Frederic March against a liberal lawyer played by Spencer Tracy. That billing seems correct only if the 19th century connotation of 'liberal' is employed. Tracy's character argues for individuals' rights to think for themselves and to study what interests them. Our power to reason, he suggests, is what separates us from the rest of world creation.

Essentially, Tracy's character is battling to ensure that the market for ideas, open mindedness, and reason is preserved.

While such a stance is wholly consistent with the classical notion of liberalism, it does not reflect the MO of the modern day liberal. Like their biased conservative foils, today's liberals promote a particular view of the world and bash those who don't side with them.

The newspaper guy who hires Tracy's character, played by (of all people) Gene Kelly, turns out to be a good reflection of today's liberal profile. Thruout the movie Kelly's character animosity against the right extremists escalates. At the end of the movie, Kelly's character explodes in a tirade against the conservatives, paradoxically mirroring the anger and condemnation expressed by the religious zealots thruout the process.

Quite reflective, it seems, of today's circumstance.