Quote Originally Posted by gbaji View Post
I didn't get that aspect of things at all from the comic. Rorschach may have started out with some ideological aspects to him, but by the end he was highly disillusioned with just about all of it. He was certainly not some flag waving patriot, nor was he motivated by such things. He had become a kind of bitter psychopath, obsessed with the corruption of moral society, and fought against basically street level thugs and scum as a result (kinda of a really really pathetic and dark/disturbed Batman). The idea of him at all being political/patriotic/ideolistic was an unfortunate invention/recreation of the character used in the Watchmen series to make his followers into something else entirely.
I haven't seen the series, honestly, and I still see it. The Truman essay (even if that was Walter, not a full-grown Rorschach) and Veidt's reasoning are just all too similar, and the subtle hints keep surfacing throughout, the biggest being the "only people he can trust" (as stated right before setting out to Antarctica, and to whom he sends his journal, the one big proof of Veidt's terrorist trickery) turning out to be… The New Frontiersman people, whose extremely Red Scare stuff he is established as a regular reader of earlier.

He was motivated, in his own somewhat warped way, by "doing the right thing". Always. To a fault. Even if it caused him great harm and suffering, and pretty much regardless of where they fell in the sense of any specific ideological viewpoint. Someone harming someone else? Wrong. Must be punished. Someone selling drugs on a street corner. Wrong. Must be punished. Someone pimping women? Wrong. Must be punished. Someone beating their spouse? Wrong. Must be punished. Those were the kinds of things he obsessed over. To suggest that there was any sort of thought in terms of commonality of "ends justify the means" in terms of nuclear weapons used to end WW2, and "giant alien squid attack" used to end/prevent WW3 exissts only in the minds of people projecting a heck of a lot of their own ideas into the character.
So… Yeah, I respectfully disagree. Rorschach is mostly that, and he envisions himself that way – which is why the realisation that he's being hypocritical about it, even in some small way, stings all the more.

He was opposed to what was going on for one and only one reason: It was wrong. Innocent people were being harmed, and other people were trying to cover it up. It had nothing to do with which city was attacked, or which "side" of anything he was on personally, but entirely about the fact that Veidt killed tens of thousands of people, and was going to get away with it, if he didn't try to stop him. He didn't care if the effect of Veidt's actions did actually prevent WW3 and save billions of lives for the cost of those lives in NYC. That was "not the point" for Rorschach.

Which, of course, was why he had to die to protect the secret. We can debate the morality of Manhattan killing Rorschach (and it's kinda the point of the comic), but Rorschach's motivation for wanting to tell the world what really happened, was not at all out of some kind of misguided patriotism or "us versus them" mentality. He lived by an absurdly rigid moral code. That's what drove him. Watering that down by suggesting that he only cared about it because it was Americans who were killed and not some other nations citizens, totally steps on the message and weight of the scene (and its shock value). He was the moral absolutionist in the comic. That was the point. What was done was morally wrong by his rules (and arguably intended to be viewed that way by the readers). The rest of the heroes reluctantly accepting the result, is "wrong" as well. Rorschach is supposed to be viewed as the "one true hero" in the bunch (well, for heroes in this setting, of course), actually wiling to "do the right thing" regardless of the cost. And... well... he pays that cost.

The interesting (and arguably heroic... or psychopathic, take your pck) thing about Rorschach is that, even if you told him ahead of time exactly what would happen if he refused to go along with the cover up, he would have still done what he did.
Also, that would make his tearful "DO IT!" very baffling. If his issue was merely Veidt being morally wrong, I'd expect he would have just marched on or fought (as he went to Antarctica to fight Veidt, even though he expected he and Dan will both die and fail).

Dunno. I always found that aspect of the character very interesting. Which yes, made the treatment of his "followers" in the HBO series just sad. So many interesting things that could have been done, and they went... there.
Again, I didn't know that, and I'm inclined to agree that reducing him to that component (whether chiefly or alone) is strictly a downgrade that makes tings less interesting. Him having a personal little undercurrent of twistedly human political opinion that colours his absolutist stance is not that, at least for me.