By Newt Gingrich ——— Posted by r. a. —————-Tues., April, 20, 2021
Our streets are now so unsafe that it might be helpful to re-watch Clint Eastwood’s “Dirty Harry” films. They can remind us of an earlier period in the 1960s and 1970s when crime was widespread, liberal judges were putting criminals back on the streets, and the entire system was anti-cop and pro-criminal.
In the middle of a wave of violence that left everyday Americans feeling both threatened and vulnerable, along came a series of movies which captured the desire for law and order.
The first and most famous of these was the 1971 “Dirty Harry” starring Eastwood as Inspector Harry Callahan of San Francisco.
The film was so powerful and so well received that it was selected for preservation in the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress for being “culturally, historically, and aesthetically significant.”
At the end of the film, the American people watched the violent but effective Inspector Callahan throw away his badge in disgust at the pro-criminal, anti-law culture of San Francisco. (Now the city is even more radically leftwing – there were no human feces maps in “Dirty Harry’s” time.)
There were four sequels to “Dirty Harry,” and they were not the popular culture’s only response to crime and an anti-police legal system.
The most famous vigilante movie of the time was “Death Wish” released three years later (1974) starring Charles Bronson. Like “Dirty Harry” it was incredibly profitable (the domestic gross was more than five times its initial budget). It also led to four sequels.
The popular response to these cinematic attacks against criminals, which depicted utter contempt for the liberal, anti-cop, pro-criminal system, was reflective of the American people’s genuine fears about a society which was spinning out of control.
Ultimately, the violence and collapse of order would lead to the 1993 election of Rudy Giuliani as mayor of New York City. He ushered in bold, no-nonsense, practical steps which made New York amazingly safe and orderly.
My Source: https://www.rumormillnews.com/cgi-bin/forum.cgi?read=170501
Gingrich Source: https://www.gingrich360.com/2021/04/16/clint-eastwood-we-need-you/
