Oh, great. Jacobs, in decrying misreadings of Tolkien, inflicts on us his own subtle but definite misreadings. LOTR isn't about doubting "whether you have the courage and fortitude to do the right thing," but about taking a deep breath and doing it anyway. Jacobs seems, like so many others, to have confused Tolkien's Aragorn with Peter Jackson's. It's Movie-gorn who doubts "his own fitness to lead." Tolkien's Aragorn has doubts about his own wisdom, and definitely about whether his cause will succeed, but he is in absolute rock surety that it is his personal and unalterable destiny to undertake this task, and his absolute duty to pursue it to the utmost of his ability. Whether he's fit to do so is not his concern. The task itself will demonstrate that, one way or the other.

Claims that certain consonants are designated as evil in LOTR predate Nick Otty and go at least as far back as Mary Ellmann in 1968.

I stopped reading Andrew Sullivan a year or two ago when a change in his blog display format made reading it into a nuisance. There's enough other good writers to read that I'm not interested in putting up with this.