Every movement needs a movie. Liberals have TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD, conservatives have PATTON. What about the Tea Party? They have numbers, anger, but no leaders or plans aside from keeping their money and 'values.' I've found their movie.

ALLEGHENY UPRISING (1939) is one of John Wayne's films that doesn't make the canon. It teams him again with Claire Trevor (from STAGECOACH), and is based on a real incident, Jim Smith's uprising in the Conococheague valley in western Pennsylvania just after the French and Indian War. Wayne plays Smith, a newly-released POW. He and the Professor, an older frontiersman and Gabby Hayes with some schooling, make it back to the valley. Wayne and Trevor have an on-again, off-again relationship. He wants to go to Tennessee.

The romantic sparks end when the Indians are on the warpath. Wayne leads men to recapture children taken, and they wipe out the war party. They march to Philadelphia to appeal for troops and inform the governor (in a wonderful visual where the frontiersmen march between dancers) that trade goods were used by the Indians against settlers. The governor agrees to ban such trade.

Callender (a cocky Brian Donleavy) leads the traders, who worry about a loss in profits. Callender proposes their trade goods continue under army protection. "The purpose of the army," he says in a corporate mode, "is to protect business."

A fort is built in the valley, commanded by Captain Swanson (George Saunders at his arrogant best). He and Wayne were on bad terms before, but
when a settler calls Saunders an 'uppish gamecock' for insulting the settlers as a rabble and Saunders tries to arrest him, Wayne stops him. These are civilians and not under military law, and can say what they please.
Saunders clearly wants to change that.

Callender sneaks in trade goods under a military convoy. Wayne and his men stop it, take the trade goods and burn them, letting the military goods go on. Callender has the military goods burned as well. Saunders is out for blood and arrests settlers.

The settlers are like America in the sixties. When overwhelmed by a drug problem, more police powers were handed out. Then we had a cop problem. Same with 9/11.

Wayne calls the valley to arms. They surround the fort. The professor speaks to Saunders. 'We built your fort and we'll not have it used against us.' Wayne and the local magistrate demand to insepect the fort for illegal goods. Saunders refuses. A siege begins. Wayne tells the men not to shoot to kill. just keep the soldiers pinned down. Saunders surrenders and leaves. The
illegal goods are burned, and Callender and his men get a good whipping.

Saunders returns with more troops. He arrests dozens of settlers. Wayne leads a night raid, captures the troops and frees the settlers. Then Callender frames Wayne for murder. At the jail, Wayne tells the mob not to free him. The Professor speaks: 'in defending one law, we've come to despise all laws.'

At the trial, the magistrate proves Wayne's innocence, but Saunders tries to manipulate the court. General Gage enters, having received evidence of illegal trade, frees Wayne, and he goes off to Tennessee with Trevor, but it's assumed he'll return. The Conococheague is, after all, home.

It's a fast paced eighty minutes with lots of action, good performances, and comic relief provided by Wilfred Lawson as mcDougal, Trevor's father and drinker who shouts 'Cooeeoh' at any endeavor. The Cooeeoh actually was a mixed drink served in eighteenth-century New England.

Why is this a Tea Party movie? It's a good study how a community reacts against oppression, with sound strategy:

1. Wayne doesn't want a war, but he does back the rights of the settlers. The attacks on the fort is not meant to kill, but force a surrender.
2. Tactics succeed because they are local. The people of the valley are united in one locale, not suburbanized. Like a future northwest republic might be. You need a homeland to defend one.
3. In the film, the media (press) are in the hands of the traders. They print pamphlets showing the settlers as drunks and rowdies. A fellow trader thinks Callender is going overboard. 'You gotta make it plain,' he replies, 'these people are thickheaded.' A true Rupert Murdoch.
4. When Wayne leads the second attack on the fort, he only has nine men, but the British are relaxed, arms stacked, and AT THAT MOMENT Wayne has
overwhelming force and uses it. Again, to achieve a clear tactical and political
objective.
5. The magistrate is a local and firmly on the side of the settlers. When he's called to Philadelphia and is bribed, his imediate reaction is to gallop back to the valley and warn the settlers and Wayne. ayne is always one step ahead of Saunders and Callender. He never strikes directly, more like Sun-Tzu than a tough-fisted tough guy. Every act has a direct political end. Wayne always has the magistrate with him. He isn't taking the law into his own hands. He's upholding the law.

6. Swanson isn't really cruel, just full of tunnel vision. Wayne tells him 'you never will understand us.' Saunders reminds me of a lot of Amurrican generals bombing whomever they're told to bomb, to round whomever the NWO deems 'terrorists.'
8. Wayne is careful with the British, but with a real enemy...the Indians, he and the settlers are ruthless. No quarter asked or taken.

The film didn't do so well in 1939. Hollywood was getting pumped up for WWII, and as Gore Vidal noted, there were few films about the American Revolution, but a great many about the British Empire. He also noted how in the late thirties, dozens of British agents entered the country, especially in Hollywood, and began a propaganda war convincing America it was time to fight Hitler.

ALLEGHENY UPRISING is a like the classic western, a study in law and democracy, and the need for individuals to fight outside domination. It's interesting to compare this film to the only other revolutionary war era movie, DRUMS ALONG THE MOHAWK, which was more multicultural, showing Indians and blacks joining the whites in a new country. Here, it's our country.

Whether the tea Party wants to admit it or not (and they don't), they are the white people's party and the party of traditional values. The sooner they realise this the better they'll be. ALLEGHENY UPRISING is their movie, not some pro-war bomb-the-terrorists-at-all costs film. ALLGHENY UPRISING gets
four 'Cooeeohs.'