“Sons of Liberty”: ‘Assassin’s Creed III’ and the winds of REVOLUTION

For those who are curious as to what it looks like inside my mind—this preview to the new game Assassin’s Creed III is an accurate representation of my core beliefs.

At the end of my driveway next to my mailbox I have two poles sticking up about four feet tall prompting a couple of young people to ask me as they walked by, “what are those poles for?” I told them that those poles were pikes intended to proudly display the cut off heads of my enemies as I take their bodies into my garage and make belts from their hides. The two teenagers gave me an odd look and promptly headed down the road without looking back. In reality the poles are for displaying the battle flags that the owners of The Tampa Bay Buccaneers gave me a few years ago that I fly on game days. But since its Halloween, I thought a good story would fit the mood of the falling leaves and the cool air so I told the kids something to fill their imaginations. But to be honest, I do think such things and would behave as such if all of society crumbled and I no longer believed that The Constitution in America had any power. Such haunted house rumblings are fun in peace time, but during war, they would become standard practice, and those poles may be easily used for just such a function.

To the timid minds of America in the 21st Century, watered down with years of progressivism, let me establish that my ideas about The Revolutionary War are very dear to me. All through my life, I have flown battle flags from my hand-made forts as a youth, worn patches of American flags on my T-shirt sleeves, and I have been involved in violence in defense of the ideas I hold true, on more than one occasion. I am not a particularly sentimental man. I seldom visit the graves of deceased family members for the simple reason of keeping my mind focused on today and tomorrow and staying out of the past. But there is one monument to the past that gives me great, sentimental reverence, and stirs my emotions greatly when I see it. That monument is the Liberty Tree displayed in Walt Disney World standing proudly across from Tom Sawyer Island. The reason I love that tree is because it’s from the film that gave me my first impression of the American Revolution, the 1957 movie, Johnny Tremain. Listen carefully to this song, it is one of my favorites, and I hum it to myself often. It is the principles of that film, and that song that I think of when I pledge allegiance to the flag of The United States of America. And when Walt Disney dedicated the film Johnny Tremain to the youth of America, my four-year old persona swore an oath that I would live by those ideas for my entire life, and that I would defend personal liberty at whatever cost. That cost now is simply name-calling, but if things denigrate any further, I can see a future where those poles at the end of my driveway will host my former statement instead of the later.

I love violence, I won’t misrepresent myself. I have engaged in it in years past, and I will engage in it in the future. But I have learned over the years to use my mind first to avoid the unneeded spilling of blood. Ideas are far more powerful than guns or swords. But let me just say that right now I am salivating and I mean literally drooling over the upcoming video game release of Assassins Creed III set to be released on Halloween 2012, that features a version of my old favorite movie Johnny Tremain that is much more akin to the sentiments of today.

When my wife and I were at a screening of Atlas Shrugged this past weekend, we were easily the youngest in the audience, and we are grandparents now. The youth of today has been programmed through progressive institutions to be slack-minded and physically weak by just about every sector of the global economy, except for video games. They were not at the screening of Atlas Shrugged learning about capitalism from a book written in 1957 and they have no interest in a slow-paced story from 1957 made by the long deceased Walt Disney also in 1957. To reach the youth with the important messages of today it has to be done through movies, books, and especially video games. So it is a great relief to me, that UbiSoft has designated for their newest Assassin’s Creed game a story about The American Revolution, because it will have an even more powerful effect on today’s youth, than the old movie Johnny Tremain did on me as a child.

The game will teach game players—adults alike—about the period of The American Revolution, and the politics that led to creating the freest country on earth. It takes fictional liberty by creating the Assassin character that will interact with famous revolutionary generals, like George Washington, and will paint the picture of what it was like in 1773 on through 1776 in Boston, Massachusetts where the American Revolution was born. Progressives have tried to paint those of us in the Tea Party movement with the derogatory name of “Tea Baggers” and finally there is a story that will show that the European influence that pushed the colonists in America toward more and more imperial control used much the same methods to ridicule the original Tea Partiers, of which the modern Tea Party gets their name.

If a simple story like Johnny Tremain from Walt Disney can create a resonance that gives me goose bumps to this very day whenever I hear the song, “Sons of Liberty,” and provoke me to visit the Liberty Tree every time I visit Walt Disney World like I’d visit the tomb stone of a long-lost family member, I can only imagine what effect a game like Assassin’s Creed will have on a society of youth purposely depleted by their educations to be restrained, progressive, and lack-luster, to learn suddenly that they have an obligation to fight for their independence, and to do whatever they must do to keep it.

As the teenagers walked away from my house I thought of them playing Assassin’s Creed in the weeks to come and finally putting together in their minds that the Tea Party they keep hearing about in the news, and on the tongues of their parents is from the same Tea Party that was shown in the game Assassin’s Creed, and that when the government decides to exercise an Executive Order of martial law, or utilizes the NDAA Act on the suburb streets of America that those same youth will be coming back to my house and asking me, “mister, can you teach us how to put our enemies heads on those poles at the end of your driveway?” I will respond, “Sure kids, step right up, I’ll teach you all you want to know and more,” and I’ll enjoy doing it.

This is where my gray-haired friends in the Tea Party and I differ. I know it makes them wonder about me why I don’t go to the phone bank meetings, and the various seminars about various political activities. I do keep my distance, it’s not that I’m rooting against them to succeed, but there is a part of me that hopes they fail to bring about a peaceful resolution. Because I do spend my time sharpening my swords, cleaning my guns, and staying sharp for the day when the word “RISE” will be more than a marketing campaign for a new video game. It will be the call of the land, and in that time, the plot of Assassin’s Creed will no longer be a fantasy. Because we are all “Sons of Liberty,” and that liberty cannot be maintained in the face of evil that lives and thrives through the phantom menace of collectivism.

Until that day, I will be playing Assassin’s Creed III and enjoying the fantasy of putting something other than flags on the poles at the end of my driveway.

Rich Hoffman

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