Robin Hood Was A Thug?

Apropos of absolutely everything, there’s news that Robin Hood was not quite the hero that he’s been heralded. In fact, a medieval monastic document suggests that in his day he was considered a downright thug.

From the BBC:

The story of how Robin and his men stole from the rich to give to the poor has long been part of English folklore.

However, Julian Luxford of St. Andrews University found a dissenting voice in a Latin inscription from about 1460 in a manuscript owned by Eton College.

The previously unknown chronicle entry says Robin “infested” parts of England with “continuous robberies”.

Dr. Luxford, an expert in medieval manuscript studies, said: “Rather than depicting the traditionally well-liked hero, the article suggests that Robin Hood and his merry men may not actually have been ‘loved by the good’. The new find contains a uniquely negative assessment of the outlaw.”

Naturally, this discovery is unlikely to make news in the American mainstream – precisely where it is most apt, and most necessary.

Come October, little boys will, in donned hoods and borne arrows, again pretend to be that quintessential superhero about which they’ve learned as political proxy – politically correct political proxy.

Halloween’s a long way off, but the emulation endures. Apparently Washington, D.C. is populated by every kid who ever wore a Robin Hood costume.

Politicians, it seems, are stuck in some Freudian stage of childhood regression, viewing themselves as wealth-redistributing saviors of the plighted.

It’s all role-playing and fantasy, reality having long ago been discarded as elitism.

And classism is indeed the point, because there’s some truth in Robin Hood’s methods: The rich don’t too much miss the wealth that’s been redistributed, fractional like it is to the wealth that remains.

The poor, though, are ruined by it. Which is why it’s a monk – a man of the people if ever there was one – who disparaged Robin Hood in the recently discovered manuscript.

Robin Hood – and his legion of Washington emulators – missed the point about charity. Charity is about humanity: It’s for the benefit of humanity, and so should be carried out with humanity.

In the style of their favorite superhero, politicians have shamed the poor by precipitating a feud between beneficiary and benefactor. It’s a civil war and nobody even knows it.

How easy it would be to equate Barack Obama with Robin Hood – to declare Obama the new Hood and be done with it.

That parallel is tempting in its straightforward simplicity, but a one-man distillation would ignore the rest of Robin Hood’s story – his “merry men.”

The modern situation is a lot more insidious: Obama’s got his own “merry men,” but they predate him. And they’ll surely postdate him. It’s an appropriately collectivist approach to collectivism – which is, to be sure, both the means and the end.

The answer to all these modern-day Robin Hoods lies, appropriately, in another popular legend.

There’s only one way to protest wealth distribution, and that’s the Lady Godiva way. Besides, it’s all kind of American – nudity and tax protestation, on horseback.

It’d be nice if Ms. Godiva could rematerialize before April 15 – or before the Robin Hoods propose another bailout.

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