I just rewatched the classic historical 1966 film A Man For All Seasons, and realized it has some crucial lessons for us in the 21st Century.
The movie portrays Thomas More as a man of principles who is literally too innocent for this world. He is not a revolutionary, nor does he wish harm on anyone, he simply cannot betray what he believes to be morally correct. For this reason he cannot support the bigamous and unGodly marriage of Henry VIII to Anne Boleyn. Though Thomas does not utter a word against him or rebel in any way whatsoever, his silence enrages the king, who becomes obsessed with earning his approval by any means necessary. This point is driven home in the marriage scene; Henry is at a lovely banquet with his beautiful young bride who he will get to deflower this evening, but his thoughts are on Thomas. He hysterically pushes through the crowd shouting out Thomas’s name, only to find it was a different man who happened to be dressed similarly.
Henry had the earnest approval of all his millions of subjects, but he did not have the approval of the one honest man in all of England, and that drives him crazy. It feels worse than an assassin’s blade, which makes sense. An assassin is just someone paid to do a job and doesn’t have any other principles, but Thomas is silent because Henry’s actions are an abomination to God, which is obviously worse. It is all the more infuriating because Thomas is portrayed as someone who is literally incapable of telling a lie. His inability to give even lip service to Henry’s marriage probably feels like being tortured on the rack.
When he is charged with treason, Thomas’s core argument is that silence is consent; had not spoken against the king’s authority in any way, which the law requires for a treason charge. I find this argument interesting, and am reminded of George Orwell’s 1984 about a dystopia hundreds of years later, but not much different from Henry’s tyranny. The hapless residents of Airstrip 1 are compelled to actively show support for the regime throughout their daily lives. Rebellion against the regime even in your thoughts is not allowed, and no expense is spared to root out “thoughtcrime.” While the book is framed as an anti-Soviet screed (Orwell never forgave Stalin for putting a stop to street violence and the burning of churches in Spain), it’s a perfect description of Anglo leftism.
Consider a different movie, X-Men, released in 2000. The bad guy McCarthyist senator insists that mutants be forced to register because their powers infringe upon the rights of other people. There are an infinite array of powers, but his choice of the most egregious one was mental; that some mutants can enter other people’s minds and control their thoughts, which violates free will. So, unfortunately, if we take this movie at its most literal face value, it is an argument that Professor Xavier casually controlling people with his brain is a good thing, and attempts to stop him from doing this are bad. Xavier is the good guy who wants control people (but for good reasons), while the senator is the bad guy who wants to protect people from being controlled (but for bad reasons). Come to think of it, I don’t think there’s a better microcosm for Anglo leftist logic than this, or even just Anglo logic period, because conservatives generally don’t oppose these leftist programs. The government has a duty to enter people’s minds to root out wrongthink, and this is a good thing!
I am also reminded of this viral video of a man climbing over gay rainbow stairs, which commentators jokingly referred to as a “hate climb.”
Even centuries apart in different circumstances, this man’s rebelling is in principle the same as Thomas More’s. He doesn’t say that people don’t have the right to be gay, and does not damage the stairs, but he chooses to not touch them. This is nevertheless a crime against the regime. Why do you think these rainbows are painted on stairs, crosswalks and motorways? Why not paint them on a wall? Very simply, because putting them on the ground forces the citizens to touch them, which is a form of active consent. Same goes for demanding new pronouns that must be used in every conversation; corporations have even demanded that people include them in their email signatures.
So it is true that silence is not consent. In fact, one of the charges the real Thomas More faced was, literally, “malicious silence.” Chopping off his head for his “malicious silence” is in principle not different from firing someone for refusing to put pronouns in his online profile, or declining to walk on the gay stairs.
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