Scary Ultra Right-Wing Governments

I recently saw "V for Vendetta." I didn't really like the movie. The first previews I saw for the movie looked pretty good (I was out of the country when i saw the previews), the premise of the movie seemed sound (Bad Government needs to be overthrown - "In the course of human events..."), and it starred Natalie Portman. (In the words of one of my friends, "she's quite a looker").

However, after reading Focus on the Family's review, I knew that it wasn't a good movie for enjoyment. So why did I still go watch it? National Review, among other newspapers/magazines, ran a critique of the movie because the hero (of sorts) was a terrorist. I wanted to see what kind of government the hero was to take on. Why would we make a hero out of a terrorist? What is the difference between a terrorist and a revolutionary?

The way I see it, a terrorist can never be a suitable hero. A terrorist is one who uses violence on civilians for political gain. A revolutionay uses violence on the established government for political gain. Clearly, George Washington and the other Founding Fathers used violence for political gain. However they did not target civilians - hence not being terrorists.

I disagree with Mr. Suderman that "V" is a terrorist. He does not explicitly target civillians, rather he goes after government leaders and buildings. Yet at the same time, I do not see him as a revolutionary, because he did not fight a defensive battle, but one of offense. This may be too fine of a line to destinguish, so, as always, I welcome debate on the issue. My initial position is that "V" is not a suitable hero but also not a terrorist.

The primary reason for my seeing the movie was to see what type of government was portrayed as evil. While I shall save my theory on the political spectrum to another time (I don't like the idea of a spectrum, but rather a wheel), the evil English government was a like the Westboro Baptists Church members became in charge. (See my blog entitled "Disgusting Choice for Utilizing Free Speech") Yet, in the movie, it appears that the movie makers made them equivalent with ALL Christians.

I find this to be a not-so-veiled attack on Christianity. The logical pattern being a form of a straw man fallacy:

This (very extreme right wing) is what a country would look like if we let the Christians be in charge. We don't want this to happen. Therefore we don't want any of them in charge.

I find the only way to refute this is to deal with the Big problem. The problem is that we have too many Christians walking around preaching ideas and not enough Christ-followers showing the love of God.