Visiting Fellow Fred Thompson

Editor's note: Click here to listen to the original radio commentary this transcript is based on.

The comic-book movie 300 about the Spartans and the Persians in 480 B.C. is still breaking box-office records. Now it seems the rulers of modern-day Persia--Iran--are not amused.

300 shows a small band of Spartans saving the lives of their countrymen and the seeds of modern democracy by kicking the much larger Persians forces effectively in the backside at Thermopylae until the shear numbers overwhelmed them. If I remember my history, that’s exactly what happened.

But the Iranians have filed a flurry of complaints with the United Nations, claiming 300 is “cultural and psychological warfare.”

Who are these guys who are getting all flushed over our cultural insensitivity?

People who want to blow Jews off the face of the earth. The regime that stormed our embassy in 1979 and kept Americans captive for 444 days. Iran’s Hezbollah puppets have killed more Americans, than any other terrorist group except al Qaeda. Explosive devices from Iran are being used right now against our soldiers in Iraq. They’re clearly more skittish about cultural warfare than the sort that actually kills people--like the one against Israel that Iran financed just a few months ago.

I must say that I’m impressed that Hollywood took on a politically incorrect villain. Must have run out of neo-Nazis. So now these sensitive souls in Iran think that Hollywood is part of a U.S. government conspiracy to humiliate them into submission. I can only wish we were that effective.

Fred Thompson is a visiting fellow at AEI.