LETTER: Kirk was a real-life version of ‘Lord of the Rings’ hero Frodo

To Ozaukee Press:

JRR Tolkien’s “Lord of the Rings” was the most popular story written during the 20th century. Peter Jackson’s masterful video recreations have propelled it into the 21st century. The story lasts because it is more than just an inventive fantasy.

It is the story of supernatural evil in the form of Sauron, the power-mad ruler of  Mordor, who has built an army of a savage, humanoid Orcs, designed to obliterate all that is good in the middle earth—green forests, immortal elves, noble kings and warriors and cheerful little hobbits ,who just want to be left alone in their shire to enjoy neighborly festivals and birthday parties with their children.

The unlikely hero is a hobbit, Frodo, who must find a way into the heart of Mordor to destroy the power of Sarum by throwing the key to evil, the Ring of Power, into the Crack of Doom.

Written at a time when England, a small nation of shop keepers living in peaceful shires, was preparing to stand against Hitler’s mighty military machine, the allusion is obvious. But it is a story true for every age.

Today many of our own universities, once dedicated to preserving the wisdom of people like JRR Tolkien, now preach the old Marxist gospel of oppression in the name of the oppressed. They serve as boot camps for orc armies to the tune of, “Ho, ho, Western civ has got to go.”

Whenever, Charlie Kirk would pitch his small tent in the middle of a large university quad, we would see our Frodo entering the heart of Mordor to introduce “the lost young men of the West” to the values of the shire—its joys of marriage, family, community and hard work in the green earth. Whenever he urged them to find a church to explore a world that lasts beyond today, he was dropping that old addictive Ring of Power into the Crack of Doom. 

Historians tell us that 11 of Jesus’s 12 intrepid disciples were martyred for their message of temporal and eternal freedom.  That story was no dead fantasy. It is a living epic that lasts beyond time.   

Art DeJong

Sheboygan