FEATURE FRIDAY, AUGUST 12th EDITION

     Once upon a time in the Western countries, men were presumed to be valuable assets to Civilization and Society. In the era before Cultural Marxism and the Game Cult came to define manhood, men actually were expected to contribute something more to society than sex and reproduction. Our postmodernist era has rather lost sight of the fact that reducing men to their sexual capacity is the morality of apes, but not of mankind.

       But this was not always the case. As the narrator states in the opening scene of this week's entertainment review:

        "Throughout time there have always been men to whom justice has been more important than life itself. From these ranks come four men; prepared to fight valiantly for justice, wherever the need may be. Joined together in this cause, they are The Four Justice Men."

       The Four Just Men was produced by British television syndicator, Sapphire Productions and aired on independent stations in the US in 1959-1960. It was based on a popular British novel series of the early 20th Century. Rarely, the series was sometimes titled in the US The Secret Four.

      The updated television version originated in WW2 Italy when a joint British-American commando unit and Italian partisans survived a dangerous mission and bound themselves together in a lifelong brotherhood. In the late 50s, their former commander, a wealthy British aristocrat, died. He left a substantial fortune to his four surviving comrades---on the condition that the money would be mutually shared in fighting for justice. Hence, The Four Just Men were born.

      The series was somewhat unique in that the four main characters rarely appeared together in each episode, and each story revolved around one character's individual fight for justice. The four were men of distinction in their postwar professions: Tim Collier, American foreign press correspondent stationed in Paris; Jeff Ryder, an American jurist; Ben Manfred, UKIP parliamentarian; and Ricardo Poccari, Italian owner of a luxury hotel chain. This format gave the writers a wide scope for illustrating what a fight for justice meant. It was everything from saving a single innocent life to destroying international crime syndicates.

        A storyline premised like this is obviously could succeed only in a culture where people believed that Right and Wrong were more than a matter of personal opinion. We live an decadent age where winning at all costs and looking out for Number One are the defining attitudes---which also happened to be the prevailing attitudes of the series' villains. One of the interesting aspects of The Four Just Men was that it aptly depicted, through a series of well-written drama, the ways in which the pursuit of right or wrong effected both society and the individual. 

           One of the principle cultural differences between 2016 and 1959 is that, then, a human life was valued for its own sake, whereas today it is valued for only for its temporal utility. This explains the seeming contemporary cultural paradox that is defined both by aggressive personal narcissism and a shallow, platitudinous concern for the 'community'. The Cultural Marxists and the Game Cultists both promote this type of selfishness. This because they have deprived our culture of another moral tenet: empathy.

          The Game Cultists elevate selfishness to a virtue, and despise empathy as weakness. They sneeringly refer to Social Justice Warriors, another blanket-term they've concocted to smear their opponents; as if social justice were some undesirable thing. Yet, it is patently obvious that justice cannot really be served anywhere---by any man---without a belief that we are all equal before God, and that human feelings and human faults are common to us all. Christian Doctrine is the source of our traditional belief in Justice; and why it stresses correcting injustice against annihilating all opposition. 

          The Cultural Marxists do the same, though they often camouflage their selfishness and lack of empathy by claiming their crimes are in the interests of Social Justice. Instead of exposing their hypocrisy, the Gamers embrace it; and silence any discussion of social justice as an ideal.  It doesn't fit into the Game paradigm that men behave unselfishly in the cause of others. Their ideal is the so-called Alpha Male, to whom all the non-Alphas must bow in submission. One becomes an Alpha by instilling fear and employing manipulative cunning, so empathy has no place in their system.

        Because when we're talking about real men---like those "to whom Justice is more important than life itself"--- we are talking about men willing to risk life and everything associated with it to better the lives of others. Basically, that is what Justice is all about: not some Manly Alpha Leader of the Dark Triad simply proclaiming that Justice is whatever he claims to be. Nor obviously it the pronouncements of Cultural Marxists who redefine Justice to suit their own selfish purposes. Justice is an absolute and only those whose men whose ultimate strength rests in recognizing Justice as Divine Attribute can fulfill it in its truest form.

             Admittedly, there is a certain poignancy in The Four Just Men, viewing it from the standpoint of 2016. Culturally, it gives us a depiction of an era when good men did good things and were actually respected for doing them. Today, the smart boys teach that such men as Collier, Ryder, Manfred, and Poccari are chumps. But it's men like those four who make the world a better place; while those smart boys have given us the dog-eat-dog dystopia we live in today.   

               All episodes of The Four Just Men are available for free viewing on Youtube, and a DVD set is also available. The series is remarkable for its well-written drama, and not infrequently, its unexpected conclusions. These are men who fight hard, think deeply; and live well because they do what's right. The world as it once was, and should still be.