Red Dawn with foreign friends...

[billc]

An interesting look at the movie Red Dawn by someone who took two friends, one from China, the other from Thailand to see it.

http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Hollywood/2012/11/24/My-Tea-Party-with-Red-Dawn

My girlfriend's mother is hosting two foreign exchange students this year. One is from China and the other is from Thailand. For the sake of anonymity, we will refer to them as E and F. As I was searching for a film to kick off Thanksgiving weekend, I kept running into the mainstream reviews of the "Red Dawn" remake. To mention them specifically would be a disservice to my intelligence and yours. Anyway, I decided in protest of this lame and lazy smearing of the new "patriotic" film that I would go see it. But, I took E and F on the offhanded chance the film would capture the same American patriotism that the original practically defined for a generation of Americans.

After the film I was incredibly interested in how this plain endorsement of patriotism and Americanism had affected my guests. When we got back to my truck, I began to grill them for details. E's first question was, "does everyone in America own a gun?" I laughed, explained our Second Amendment and said that in our country we had fought tyranny and now preferred for the power to be in the people's hands rather than with the government. I asked F what his favorite part of the film was and he responded, "I liked that they fight."
I noticed they wouldn't look at me while I questioned them. They both stared out the truck windows in deep thought. It was as if their eyes were searching for something. Maybe searching the America outside the vehicle for what exactly it was that made those small town heroes pick up arms and fight back for a freedom they "inherited." Soon E looked my way and asked me about a specific part in the movie that he could not understand.

As we sat and discussed the fact that people could own guns without the government knowing and the very idea of freedom that made the Wolverines fight even in the dourest of odds, I could see them smiling and soaking it all in. They clearly enjoyed the film and were feeling enlightened by this discussion of America and freedom. I concluded by telling them that Americans are "headstrong." They didn't understand, so I explained a bit more. I told them Americans always want more freedom and we push ourselves to make things bigger and better. We would always fight because the idea of losing makes no sense to us. They laughed and shook their heads.
As we began to drive off and the boys returned to their looks out the windows, I heard E say to himself or perhaps to all of us, "I like America ... because I have more freedom." I smiled and thought, "Wolverines, baby."