Do you have to love violence to love America?

Kyle Smith, a film critic for the New York Post, had an intriguing essay in Friday's Opinion Journal that, for all its merit, left me wondering why so many of us reflexively assume that to oppose violence is to be anti-American. Smith wanders about, first reviewing what sounds like an absolutely dreadful new Jodie Foster film, and then taking a few jabs at liberals, before settling down to his thesis, which is that liberals like movies that question the use of violence. Such movies, Smith implies, are anti-American. To substantiate his point, Smith points to two recent films, "The Bourne Ultimatum," and "A History of Violence," which he says capture the liberal ethos regarding violence, to wit, that it is bad and somehow caused by nefarious forces -- in the former movie, a shady government, and in the latter, a violent American culture.

It's a bad habit for conservatives to adopt this reflex of defending whatever liberals critique. Eric Breindel, a New York Post journalist from a more thoughtful era, once wrote that "some things are true even though Richard Nixon and Joseph McCarthy said they were." The same can be said of Michael Moore and Noam Chomsky. The fact that liberals approve of a storyline in which Jason Bourne, the haunted ex-assassin from the Bourne trilogy of movies, was trained by the U.S. government, shouldn't lead conservatives to suggest that the only pro-American stance is to be in favor of CIA-trained assassins. If conservatism is about, in part, a rightful distrust of large, unaccountable government bureaucracies, then shouldn't conservatives applaud films that pick on the CIA?

More disturbing, however, is the notion that to oppose violence is somehow anti-American. A conservative understands that in a fallen world, violence may sometimes be necessary. But a conservative, and especially a Christian, also mourns the destruction of life. Smith notes that left-wing Hollywood filmmakers must be disappointed "that audiences remain more interested in crisp revenge than messy guilt." It seems to me that genuine conservatives, and Christians above all, ought to be disappointed as well. That doesn't mean that every movie which attempts to portray the true ugliness of violence should be applauded (Smith mentions some real stinkers). But it does mean that we ought to admit that violence is an ugly, terrible thing, even if Oliver Stone says so.