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Comment by bigtex88 | Hacker News Reader

That's because it is illogical.

“There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old’s life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs."

Libertarians are stuck in a pubescent state-of-mind and are wholly incapable of viewing the real world as it is. Hence their absolutely insane "political leanings".

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Who's that quote from? It's funny you should use that one, I happen to be an avid Tolkien nerd, starting around that age :D

Bit of a tangent, but it continues to amaze how relevant Tolkien continues to be to this day considering he started developing his legendarium almost a century ago now. Gender issues, sexism, addiction, free will, the allure of power and wealth, all explored in an amazingly prescient way that still stands up to scrutiny today.

It hasn't aged well in some other ways. I was a die-hard Tolkien fan from an early age -- I think I read LotR at around age 10 or so. But ... it's kind of hard to read to your beautiful brown daughter when you constantly have to stop and do teaching moments because Tolkien goes on and on about how fair and beautiful all the good guys are, and how swarthy etc. the nasty Southrons are.

True, it hasn't held up in that sense.

Although diving deeper into the legendarium, there is the fact that the southrons and easterlings were corrupted by Sauron to worship him as a god. So you could choose to view those descriptions as consequences of that rather than perceived racial or cultural inferiority. And indeed the "fair and beautiful" Numenoreans were at one point corrupted by Sauron in very much the same way.

But yeah, you definitely have to give Tolkien a lot of help on this one, and it's not terribly helpful in the context of reading to your children :/

Or you could just explain that fair and beautiful refer to the content of their character and swarthy is a synonym for smarmy, or evil and has nothing to do with skin color at all.

But that's not what he meant and we both know it.

Oh look I found one of the "Rings of Power" writers.

Pretty much every letter Tolkien wrote that touches on racial issues was quite anti-racist. He condemned the nazis, and yet also condemned racist anti-german propaganda in England during the war. He also expressed sympathy with the treatment of black people in South Africa in a letter to his son Christopher.

Since when does anyone these days care about the author’s intent?

It's not, unless you're pointedly telling your daughter she's a "dirty" Southron and should be ashamed because her skin color matches the descriptors in LOTR.

I wouldn't be surprised though because this does seem to be the modern leftist agenda, to turn every brown person into a victim incapable of helping themselves.

Maybe explain to your daughter it's based on Nordic mythology and turn it into a positive history lesson. OH! And you could tell her that her skin color really isn't the most important thing about her. Just a thought.

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