It was not the public’s ambivalence to the wars in Afghanistan or Iraq that caused director Nick Broomfield to portray our soldiers as adrenalized murderers in “Battle for Haditha” or cinema legend Brian De Palma to do the same in “Redacted.” Nor is it a sudden focus on capitalism, as filmmaker Peter Berg suggests in the article, that is motivating Universal Studios suddenly to produce “Lone Survivor” four years after its publication. It is politics.

Numerous books have analyzed politics in Hollywood, including Ben Shapiro’s recent Primetime Propaganda: The True Story of How the Left Took Over Your TV. So, the fact that Hollywood is an unabashedly liberal community is no revelation. But filmmakers’ covert attempts to shift public opinion to the left needs to be understood better.

Berg explains that Hollywood now “supports these men” but fails to disclose that this is because our troops have a new boss. The equation is simple: When the commander-in-chief is a Republican, Hollywood sees him as a corporate stooge and jingoistic warmonger. But when he is a Democrat, he is a visionary and a reluctant hero.

Hollywood does not make films that celebrate American values and our men and women in uniform during GOP administrations. Those films could send the wrong message and stir public sentiment in favor of a disliked president. But trade in a Right-wing saber rattler for some hope and change, and suddenly a powerful propaganda machine positively portrays the country that today’s president leads. The new message: Feel good, America. We are noble, just like our cosmopolitan president. Let’s give him four more years and keep feeling great about ourselves.

Fast forward to the upcoming film about the hunt for Osama bin Laden, which is slated for release in October 2012, just before the election. Some conservatives worry that the filmmakers — Kathryn Bigelow and Mark Boal — will spend more time praising President Obama for his “gutsy call” than they will on the heroes who tracked, found, and killed the late al-Qaeda chief. But those fears are unfounded.

Bigelow and Boal understand the firestorm that they would unleash. Instead, they are likely to create a genuinely great movie that makes our intelligence agencies and special forces look like gods among men. They may even throw George W. Bush a bone, which will make them look magnanimous and their critics seem small. It will be enough that the film will make people feel warm about the country and its leadership a few weeks before the election they vote. That’s their goal, and that’s the power that Hollywood has to influence our culture.

The real question isn’t: “Can Hollywood make a film that presents American values in a good light?” That’s not a problem. The question should be: “Would Hollywood produce it if their man wasn’t in the Oval Office?”

To answer that, just look at Boal’s own work. Far from celebrating the bravery of American soldiers, his 2007 screenplay for Paul Haggis’s “In the Valley of Elah,” portrayed American soldiers as murderous psychopaths who dismember one of their own. Back then, the cowboy from Texas was president.

As for Boal’s last collaboration with Bigelow, while “Hurt Locker” was released under Obama in June 2009 and widely applauded for portraying US GIs in an heroic light, the film was written and shot under Bush. As such it reflects — albeit subtly – Hollywood’s skepticism about Americans in uniform.

The film opens with the sentence “WAR IS A DRUG” and proceeds to show how the war in Iraq takes a toll on the main character, depriving him of love for his child, and creating in him a reckless junkie who puts his men in danger for his own sport. George Bush’s war does that to a man.

There was also the commanding officer who ordered his men to leave an Iraqi to die, and the few political statements were all decidedly in the liberal, “we make them terrorists” vein.

For those of us who love America, as well as the men and women who protect her, Hollywood’s new attitude will be refreshing, even if it is tainted by the certainty that one election can change everything for the worse.

For a more consistent way to see pro-American films made – one that is not dependent on who occupies the White House — more conservatives working need to work in the entertainment industry. We need more conservatives to learn the craft, create films, produce television, and sway the culture. For too long, conservatives have been only reactionary toward what Hollywood produces. We cannot leave America’s most powerful pulpit in the hands of the left.

At least, they are factually true. I mean, you spout off some out-and-out falsehood, like say, “I didn’t send that photo,” and no matter how passionately you repeat it, or how condescending you are to anyone who dares to question you, pretty soon some jerk with a website and his own correction alpaca is bound to come along and reveal some actual evidence of your utter lack of honesty and chest-hair.

Peter Guber with Fidel Castro

But when you lie with facts, you lie with the confidence that the rug can never be completely pulled out from under you by simple evidence. A factual lie is a lie of context. It is a nuanced lie. And context and nuance don’t make for good headlines.

This week, in an appearance on America’s Nightly Scoreboard on the Fox Business Channel, media mogul Peter Guber weighed in on Ben Shapiro’s scathing new exposé of liberal bias in Hollywood, PRIMETIME PROPAGANDA and told a whopper of a factual lie.

Watch the latest video at video.foxbusiness.com

GUBER: “…I don’t think anybody doesn’t get hired or doesn’t get, or doesn’t get their job or keep their job because they’re Republican or Tea Partier or conservative. I mean, I’m a Republican, and I’ve done pretty good in the business.”

This is pretty surprising news to the interviewer, David Asman, who replies with, “Gee, I didn’t… I never knew that about you.”

Gee, I didn’t either.

In fact, it seems virtually inconceivable that the host of Sunday Morning Shootout, a show that appeared to exist expressly so that the biggest names in Hollywood could have a weekly chance to vomit Bush hate for five years, could be a Republican, but it turns out it’s true.

Except that it’s not.

You see, as much as it may surprise the Meghan McCains of the world, being a Republican is more than just registering to vote in the GOP primaries. Being a Republican means believing what Republicans believe.

Now, I’m not talking about strict ideological conformity.  People are individuals and complete doctrinal purity is rare in any belief system.

But there are some basics.

Being Jewish, for example, means believing in Judaism – that the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob made a covenant with the people of Israel and gave them the Law of Moses and the land of promise as an everlasting possession. Sure, there are places where Jews might disagree with each other about morality and law, but if you don’t believe in God and His promise, you’re not really a Jew, no matter what you call yourself. Right?

Well, like the JINOs – Jews in Name Only – Peter Guber may call himself a Republican, he may even be registered as one, but Peter Guber is not a Republican.

See, I suspect just about any Republicans, no matter where they find themselves in the Big Tent, from militant libertarian to compassionate conservative to momma grizzly, probably think this is disqualifying:

PETER GUBER – “[Bill Clinton] was a young candidate running for President in the first term. I was the Chairman of Sony at that time, the CEO. We were really interested in him because we liked what he had to say about education.

My wife and I invited him and some of his staff when he was the Governor of Arkansas to come to California and talk about and speak with different constituencies on the West Coast about his mission, his passion in education.

The result of that was that we created a relationship. I was a more conservative person. I wasn’t, I would say, a Liberal Democrat. But I was really moved by his passion and his power and his ability to put me in the boat with him, to put me in the story with him, to make me a character in his story.

So I began to support him and began to see that he would be effective as a leader. So what really happened was somewhere in the early campaign, I think it was — and again, the power of a story is you remember the story, but the facts and figures can sometimes dim. But I don’t remember whether it was the first or the second campaign. I think he had come in second or third in New Hampshire, and they thought he was going to win, and he didn’t have the economic wherewithal to move the campaign from New Hampshire, and I think it was to Wisconsin. Again, it could have been Montana or it could have been — it was 25 years ago, or whatever it was.

But it was to move his campaign. And I got a call from one of his Chiefs of Staff and said, “Peter, we need the money. We need this money, a certain amount of money from a certain number of people to move our campaign to the next stop. We absolutely need it.”

I said, “Wow. How much?” He said, I think it was $90,000. $1,000 [sic] a person for 45 people. I said, “Okay. Well, when do you need it by?” “By 5:00 today.” I said, “By 5:00 today, are you crazy?” He said, “Yeah, we absolutely need it.”

Clinton grabbed the phone and said, “Peter, let me tell you . . .” He didn’t say let me tell you a story, he said, “Let me tell you, it’s High Noon. You know the movie ‘High Noon’?” “Yeah.” He says, “The bad guys are coming, the train’s coming, I got to get everything organized, and this is my big chance, and you gotta stand with me at high noon.”

I said, “Okay. I got it.” And I used that story forward. Everybody I called was in the movie, television, entertainment, sports business, and they understood the metaphor of “High Noon.” They understood that Clinton was stepping into the shoes of Gary Cooper. It was high noon, and we had to stand to help him.

So at 3:00 that day, or 4:00 that day, I said, “You got it. It’s high noon, you got your money. Now win.”

That’s right, Peter Guber is a Republican, he’s just a Republican who, as President of Sony, leveraged his relationships – and the power of his vaulted position – to help defeat an incumbent Republican president and war hero and elect the first Democrat to the White House since Jimmy Carter.

Go Republicans!

More recently, Howard Peter Guber of Mandalay Entertainment made a $2,300 donation to Hilary Clinton in 2007. Did “High Noon” have a sequel?

Of course, there is nothing dishonest about what Mr. Guber said, except for everything. His political party is in fact Republican, but his political philosophy is a bit more nuanced.

One wonders if his perspective on discrimination is equally vague. The question Ben Shapiro is asking in Primetime Propaganda is not does Hollywood have a problem with Republicans who work to elect Democrats, it’s do they have a problem with the rest of us?

Actually, the attendance was easily in the tens of thousands, but sometimes it’s fun to take a cue from the MSM and just understate any fact that doesn’t serve your narrative.

Still, despite the impressive numbers, the predominately white rally does differ from Glenn Beck’s recent Restore Honor rally, and the Tea Party movement in general, in one way that illuminates the core difference between left and right.

Specifically, the Tea Party tends to be a movement of individuals, each pursuing their own interests, self-organizing in defense of their own rights, whereas the One Nation Working Together rally was the product of partnerships between over 400 labor, civil-rights, and other liberal organizations, many of whom bussed in their members by the thousands to bolster their numbers.

If there is any better picture of the top-down, coercive nature of liberalism than their approach to “grass roots” organizing, I’m not sure what it is.

These organizations use intimidation and the power of law to demand workers join their ranks in order to be employed in their sectors, then confiscate money from them in the form of mandatory dues, and then use that money to promote political causes that represent the interests of the organizations themselves – not necessarily their members.

Then they encourage those members to get on the busses their dues already paid for and go spend their weekend marching around to demand that politicians give the organizations even more power over them.

For actors plying their trade in Hollywood, it is an oft-recited axiom that in order to get work, you must be union, but in order to be union, you must get work.

Being a union actor, and therefore employable in Hollywood, means belonging to either the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) or their sometimes-sister/sometimes-bitter-rival union, the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (AFTRA).

Either way, your union dues and infrastructure are being used to support One Nation Working Together – regardless of whether you personally support liberal policies or not.

Both unions sent out official emails to their members encouraging them to participate in the activities in Washington D.C. and Los Angeles this weekend.

SAG says that it supports One Nation Working Together, and that it will be marching in solidarity with its fellows.

AFTRA is an official Endorsing Organization, along with groups like Communist Party USA, MOVE ON, National Council of La Raza (National Council of The Race, for those who don’t understand bi-lingual racism), Code Pink, Rainbow Push, and the International Socialist Organization.

If you belong to SAG or AFTRA and yet happen to be one those racist, mean-spirited, divisive Tea Partiers, or are just generally opposed to bolstering the politics of race-baiters, international communists, or anti-war activists, you certainly don’t have to march in the protest, but you’re still obliged to finance your union’s promotion of it.

* For the record, AFTRA says general member dues were not used to support One Nation Working Together, but that some AFTRA Locals may help to pay for buses.  This misses the point, however, that the entire organizational structure that allows AFTRA to promote these sorts of events is the product of member dues.

Of course, you are always perfectly free to just leave the union if you disagree with its political affiliations.  The fact that might mean effectively quitting your profession and giving up your livelihood makes this exactly the kind of freedom the left loves to support.

This is just one more reason it is so difficult for conservatives in Hollywood.  When you are required to financially support liberal political organizations as a prerequisite for employment in a business where being rejected for a job without explanation is necessarily a daily occurrence, it is hard to believe your conformity to the party line is not itself a requirement.

Iraq War vets who complain of discrimination and recrimination by casting directors seem a bit more credible when their own union declares solidarity with Code Pink, and Republicans afraid to voice their beliefs on set for fear of being blacklisted seem less hyperbolic when their own union declares solidarity with LA Grassroots for Obama, SEIU, and the Democratic Socialists of America.  At the same time, writers bemoaning the witch-hunts of McCarthyism in screenplay after screenplay seem somehow less credible when both major acting unions declare solidarity with the Communist Party USA.

In matters of racial or sexual discrimination, the left is quick to point out that discrimination is not just about reality, it is about perception.  A person can be coerced into conformity by just the appearance of consequences for going their own way, even if no explicit threat is made.  So consider for yourself whether the two emails below lend credibility to the fears of conservatives in Hollywood, and ask yourself how you might feel if you were in their shoes.

SAG EMAIL:

AFTRA EMAIL:

“In the name of Christ,” says Rice, she can no longer, “belong to this quarrelsome, hostile, disputatious, and deservedly infamous group.”

Rice went on to say, “I refuse to be anti-gay. I refuse to be anti-feminist. I refuse to be anti-artificial birth control. I refuse to be anti-Democrat. I refuse to be anti-secular humanism. I refuse to be anti-science. I refuse to be anti-life.”

That her very statement itself is quarrelsome and hostile, that her list of refusals is patently disputatious, and that she herself is infamous for promoting a dark and cynical view of humanity in her early vampire novels, places these remarks so far past irony that they border wanton hypocrisy.

They bring to mind a parable about logs and eyes that one assumes Ms. Rice, “in the name of Christ,” has likely heard.

Of course, Progressive Christians like Kirsten Powers, and Christianity-haters like Perez Hilton – two groups almost universally aligned on every issue – were quick to defend and praise Ms. Rice.  According to Jonathan Merritt, author of Green Like God – Unlocking the Divine Plan for our Planet, Anne Rice feels that “Christianity has been hijacked.”

The hijackers, one presumes, are the quarrelsome, hostile, disputatious, infamous, anti-gay, anti-feminist, anti-birth control, anti-Democrat, anti-secular humanism, anti-science, anti-life religious folk that Ms. Rice takes issue with in her own statements, but of course, those people are not new to the church.  If anything, the church (in this case the Catholic Church) has only gotten more progressive in the decades since Ms. Rice originally walked away from her faith, or even in the decade since she returned.

But Progressive Christians like Mr. Merritt always feel the need to defend a person hostile to Christianity with inane clichés, regardless of context, because it affords them a place, if barely, at the cool kids’ table.

Of course, most people in America have had a bad experience at some point or another with Christianity or Christians.

As science has proven (or maybe I just made it up) half of all people are jerks, and the other half are jerks half of the time.  Add to that the fact that the vast majority of all American at least claim to be Christians, and it’s just simple math that people will have been rubbed the wrong way by one of them.

And of course the very reality of the fact that Christianity believes something, ensures it will run afoul of free people with independent beliefs from time to time.

Any ideology is divisive, regardless of how well meaning its adherents, because it defines a set of views exclusive from all others.  Even those whose ideology is decidedly inclusive are exclusive of those whose ideologies are not inclusive, as expressed so aptly in this – the best video in the history of the world:

—–

But the main reason Progressive Christians and Christ-haters are so often aligned is not because of their individual bad experiences with Christians.  They have as many or more bad experiences with each other because that’s the company they keep.

The main reason Christianity gets a bad rap is that Christianity gets a bad rap.

I’ll elucidate.

Christianity takes the blame in the culture because shapers of the culture are so openly hostile to Christianity.

Most people in the average day encounter Christians – probably a lot of them – and most of their experiences are at a minimum innocuous, and maybe even good.  They don’t know that the people they deal with are Christians, because so far, Christians don’t have to where patches on their clothes and hunker in ghettos in this country.

But when they turn on their televisions, or listen to the radio, the Christians are clearly defined, not as the good-natured majority, but as the fanatical minority.

They wear uniforms – drab clothing on the men, head scarves and no make-up for the women – and are always the characters abusing their children, hiding horrifying sexual secrets, or covering up theft and murder in the name of God.

This is a storytelling technique known in the arts as – FICTION.   But since it is the only view of Christianity ever portrayed in the arts, people over time begin to identify with it.

They begin to re-imagine their own personal bad experiences with believers, which represent the exception in almost every case to their own broader personal interactions with Christians, as the norm.

They begin noticing people who look like the Christians on TV – strange, hateful people – who certainly exist at the outer edge of the church, but don’t represent a majority of believers, and allowing their very existence to validate the falsely premised view of the glowing box in their subconscious.

Then they have the leftist narcissists like Anne Rice confirm the whole idea and suddenly the reality that almost everyone they meet is a Christian, and therefore Christianity is the very definition of normal, is lost.

But in truth, it is the culture shapers themselves who are the minority.

Anne Rice, Dick Wolf, Rosie O’Donnell, and all of the actors and writers and musicians that so malign Christians are part of a tiny sliver of people who live at the peak of human decadence.  They are utterly insulated from dissenting opinions.

They hate the church because it does not embrace their own self-gratifying lifestyles.  It is the only place left where they encounter a no.  So they rebel against it like the frightened children that they are and try to both destroy it and gain its love.

That this group of ego-driven bigots has so much influence over the perceptions of millions of people they openly despise is the real story, not whether or not one of them goes to mass.

There are problems with Christianity as an institution (however loosely threaded), make no mistake.  Like any family, it has difficult personalities, internal disagreements, and projects its own sometimes-embarrassing idiosyncrasies.  It is not above reproach.  My own list of criticisms for the state of the church is long and detailed, but this view of Christianity as the home of intolerance and selfishness just doesn’t fit the facts.

That place is progressivism, a church Ms. Rice still approves of, and that still approves of her.

Already, Zinn’s far-left sympathizers are poking holes, some more credibly than others, in the 430 pages of documents, and trying to draw focus away from Zinn’s alleged membership in the Kremlin-controlled Communist Party USA and onto the fact that a Boston University administrator turned FBI informant once plotted to have him fired in the 1970s.

To the radical left, trying to interfere with an extremist professor as he dutifully decries his country as a police state is a far more egregious crime than belonging to a political organization allied with and controlled by the sworn enemy of the United States.

It’s all about perspective…

Still, Zinn’s apologists are not incorrect in pointing out that the evidence to support the claims that the professor was a card-carrying member of the CPUSA is hardly conclusive, or as J. Edgar Hoover had requested – admissible.

Despite the breadth of documentation in the file – the interviews with Zinn, the statements made by confidential informants claiming to have attended CPUSA meetings at which Zinn taught on “Basic Marxism” and encouraged participants to adhere to the tenants of Marx and Lenin, the suggestions that these meetings often took place in Zinn’s own home – proof of the kind the right might hope for is just not to be found.

That Zinn was a leftist is clear by his own admission. That he belonged to groups infiltrated by Communists is well-established, but that he was an actual, card-carrying member of the Communist Party is just not proven.

Which is not to say there is not a compelling case made. It is just not an iron-clad one.

Of course, the right’s desire to prove Zinn’s membership in the Communist Party in the late 1940s and early 1950s is certainly understandable. After all, this was long after the idealistic 1930s when the already liberal American media churned out stories to Americans wrecked by the Great Depression of a Utopian revolution occurring in the east. It was after the subjugation of Eastern Europe, the Russian bomb, and Stalin’s gulags.

To prove that Zinn was a member of the organization during this period would go a long way toward validating the animosity and distrust the right has for Zinn’s work, both as an anti-war activist, influential author and professor, and sainted historian of the left.

But it is a mistake to focus too closely on Zinn’s status as a member of CPUSA.

Proving it is difficult, and even if it could be proven – what does it prove? Undoubtedly many people in their twenties made poor choices and joined organizations that as adults they would shun. To judge Zinn’s life and career by how he spent his youth, the Eddie Vedders and Danny Glovers of the world would argue, ignores the larger question of how he spent the rest of his life.

And it is that question – how Howard Zinn spent his life – that the right should desire.

The left undoubtedly loves dancing around such myopic questions as, “Was Zinn a member of the Communist Party,” expressly because it detracts from the larger question of, “Was Zinn a communist?”

Did Howard Zinn espouse communist philosophy? Did he openly sympathize with America’s communist enemies? Did he seek to use his influence in academia and the media to convert America’s young to the cause of communism?

These questions do not require the kind of definitive proof the left can demand of the more precise issue of Zinn’s actual political affiliation. They only require the smell test, and Howard Zinn cannot pass the communist smell test.

From his well-known early work on behalf of infiltrated, trans-national labor and civil-rights organizations, to his radical anti-war activism, his seminal and revisionist historical work, The People’s History of the United States, and his lesser known entries into literature, the theater, and television – like his play Marx in Soho, or The People Speak – Zinn continually championed a view of America, capitalism, and the west in general that was utterly sympathetic to the views of Marx and Lenin.

Where he departed from their views was only in the nuanced world of implementation, the ultimate fate of the Bolshevik Revolution, and questions regarding the scale – regional or global – of the communist cause.

That our Hollywood betters continued to promote Zinn’s work is not a testament to their naivety about his official party membership status; it is a testimony to the fact that they agree with his broader communist views – at least as far as they safely can from their positions in the upper echelon of the bourgeois elite.

Consider these words from Zinn’s forward to a compilation of Anarcho-Communist activist and philosopher Alexander Berkman’s work titled Life of an Anarchist.

“Alexander Berkman is one of those lost heros of American radicalism, a rare pure voice of rebellion against the state, against capitalism, against war. …[He] is an inspiring example of living an honest life, as well as a vision of a better society.”

It might be worth here noting that Berkman did fifteen years in prison for the attempted murder of businessman Henry Clay Frick in 1892, opposed American intervention in World War One, and was eventually deported to Russia where he was a first hand observer of the revolution. So inspiring… At least to Howard Zinn, who imported hundreds of copies of his work, The ABC of Anarchist Communism into the United States, “for my students to use” and wrote a play about him.

It is Zinn’s conclusion to the introduction that is the most illuminating though.

“[Life of an Anarchist] is a welcome introduction to the ideas of anarchism,” specifically Anarchist Communism, “which appear more and more relevant in this era of bullying governments, corporate ruthlessness, and endless war.”

Viva la Revolution!

In the end, Zinn’s own words damn him, and his Hollywood appostles, far more than anything J. Edgar Hoover ever dreamt of.

For a real case-study, however, spend a little time on the website of the nation’s foremost youth-voter organization, Rock the Vote.

Just before Christmas, when many Americans were turning their attention to faith and family, Rock the Vote, a tax-exempt 501 (c) (3), remained firmly fixed on pushing through the administration’s health-care reform legislation. According to the organization’s website, they asked (commissioned) web-comedy team Funny or Die to create a video to help cut-through voter-fatigue over the issue.  The result, which was then featured in front of the RTV homepage, is called “F the Vote,” and its concluding recommendation to young voters is that they join a pledge to “never, ever, f**k” anyone who is against health care reform.”  That’ll show ‘em.

–

According to the group’s blog, the video is a parody of the system, but of course, it does not parody the system in anyway.  At best, it is a parody of the “I Pledge” video featuring Ashton Kutcher and company, but the system?  Saying it don’t make it so.

But this isn’t the biggest lie to be found on the RTV website.  Try this assertion:

Rock the Vote is a nonpartisan organization. This means that we do not support or endorse candidates nor do we participate in any activities that could benefit one party over another. There are many laws governing our work as a nonpartisan organization and we take our non partisanship seriously.

It’s times like these I wish I had my own friends at Funny or Die.  Non-partisan? Even the organization’s mission statement makes a mockery of that assertion:

Rock the Vote’s mission is to engage and build the political power of young people in order to achieve progressive change in our country.

A quick trip to the dictionary, and you’ll be reminded that the word progressive, in a political context, means:

Advocating or implementing social reform or new, liberal ideas.

Seems a little partisan for a non-partisan 501 (c) (3).  In fact, compare this mission statement to the mission statement of another organization, a decidedly partisan 501 (c) (4) political lobbying group that happens to be housed in the same offices as the tax-exempt, “nonpartisan” Rock the Vote, the Rock the Vote Action Fund.

Rock the Vote Action Fund, founded in 2008, is dedicated to educating and engaging young progressive voters to make change in our country.

The Rock the Vote Action Fund, however, can go much further, since it is not bound by even the pretense of non-partisanship.  Their mission statement goes on to say:

…Our goal is to encourage massive turnout of young progressive voters to the polls through education on the issues and the candidates.

After the election, we will harness the power of young people to take action on key issues, from health care to Iraq, at the local and national level. 

Not to worry, though.  They close by stating quite clearly that, despite having the same name, much of the same staff, and being housed in the same offices as Rock the Vote…

Rock the Vote Action Fund is a non-profit 501(c)(4) organization and is independent of Rock the Vote, a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization.

Oh.  They say it.  It must be so…

It is readily apparent even at a glance that the non-partisan Rock the Vote is just a beard for the decidedly partisan Rock the Vote Action Fund.  Rock the Vote gives the partisans behind both organizations the cover they need to, among other things, recruit on high school and college campuses, receive large corporate partnerships from AT&T, the WWE, and Lifetime Television, and, perhaps most troubling of all, to launch a new nationwide high school civics curriculum.

The good news for those of us who don’t like the idea of left-wing partisans reaching into our public school classrooms or targeting teens with nihilistic video ‘parodies’ is that, despite the lengths the folks at Rock the Vote take to maintain the illusion of non-partisanship, they don’t do a very good job of it.  In fact, even with the sister company shield in place, Rock the Vote still violates its tax-exemption restrictions overtly and often.  Which brings us back to the “F the Vote” health care video.

According to the RTV blog, Support for Health Care Reform is Nonpartisan.  The trouble is – No it’s not, at least not if health-care reform in any way implies the specific legislation currently being considered in the Congress.  Consider this graphic from the homepage (the day I wrote this):

Is it an historic step if it does not pass?  This graphic clearly encourages young voters to get in the game to help push the current resolutions, which have passed the House (Step 1) with exactly one out of two hundred two Republicans supporting it, and which passed the Senate (step 2) with exactly zero out of forty Republicans supporting it. If only one out of two-hundred forty-two members of one party vote for something, and you are encouraging action to ensure its passage, you are clearly opposed to the position of one party (read: Partisan).

According to the IRS:

In general, no organization may qualify for section 501(c)(3) status if a substantial part of its activities is attempting to influence legislation (commonly known as lobbying).

What exactly constitutes lobbying?

An organization will be regarded as attempting to influence legislation if it contacts, or urges the public to contact, members or employees of a legislative body for the purpose of proposing, supporting, or opposing legislation, or if the organization advocates the adoption or rejection of legislation.

According to Rock the Vote’s own blog, the purpose of the “F the Vote” video was just that:

The video updates the old “call your Congressman” adage in a funny, provocative, and attention-grabbing way. The video, which seems to have done its job of getting attention, then acts as a bridge to the sections of our website where you can get serious information on what is at stake, what is in the current bills, how the process works, and how to take real action.

How does RTV suggest taking real action?   Click the link and it will take you to a page featuring this graphic:

Of course, I am no lawyer, but that seems like a pretty clear violation of the prohibition against urging the public to contact congress in favor of a bill.  The same page calls on voters to sign the “Yes we Care” pledge.  As political slogans go, “Yes we Care” sounds a bit derivative, but I can’t quite put my finger on what exactly.  I’m sure it isn’t meant in any way to favor one candidate or party over any other since the IRS states that:

… Voter education or registration activities with evidence of bias that (a) would favor one candidate over another; (b) oppose a candidate in some manner; or (c) have the effect of favoring a candidate or group of candidates, will constitute prohibited participation or intervention.

At every turn, Rock the Vote makes clear whose side they are on. Refer back to that video they asked Funny or Die to make and gave them permission to use their logo on.  Says the actress:

“Maybe some creep who thinks death panels are real is hitting on you.  He’s lying to you.  You can rock the vote by lying right back!”

Since ‘death panels’ is a term popularized by Sarah Palin, recent Republican candidate for Vice President, and since Republican legislators raised it on the floor of the United States Congress, it seems pretty clear that calling people liars who believe in them is a decidedly partisan assertion.

In the end, the entire term, “Rock the Vote,” is used by RTV as code for “Advance Liberalism.”  Take the first line of “F the Vote:”

“Good Job, young America, you Rocked the vote!”

How did young America Rock the Vote?  Again, to the RTV website:

Rock the Vote ran the largest youth voter registration drive in history in 2008. 

2.6 million people completed registrations [through RTV].

But to what end did they do this?  A nonpartisan end?  Says RTV, on a page titled 2008 Accomplishments:

The power of young voters made headlines from the Iowa caucuses to Election Day in November, as a force that propelled Barack Obama to the presidency.

There is a check mark beside this fact, clearly marking the election of Barack Obama to the presidency as an accomplishment of Rock the Vote.  Again, according to the IRS:

Under the Internal Revenue Code, all section 501(c)(3) organizations are absolutely prohibited from directly or indirectly participating in, or intervening in, any political campaign on behalf of (or in opposition to) any candidate for elective public office. 

… Violating this prohibition may result in denial or revocation of tax-exempt status and the imposition of certain excise taxes.

And yet, Rock the Vote continues to function with impunity, wantonly violating at a minimum the spirit, and apparently even the letter of US tax law.  They do so while reaching millions of young voters with their progressive message and placing their curriculum in our public schools, all the while aided by corporate donations from businesses where we all spend our money because of the tax-exempt status they flaunt.

Maybe the IRS just doesn’t speak Texan.

To Save a Life is not a simple film.

From the moment we meet Jake Taylor, high school (and soon-to-be college) basketball star, it is clear we are meeting a young man in crisis.  Jake’s world has been upended by the recent and very public suicide of his childhood friend Roger – a relationship Jake had forsaken in recent years as his own star was on the rise.  For Jake, the burden of guilt for the choices he did and did not make along the way have become a crushing rebuke.  The young man is lost.

Unfortunately for Jake, introspection is not a welcome trait among his top-of-the-food chain peers. Instead, Jake finds common ground with Chris, a local Christian youth-pastor carrying his own guilt over Roger’s death. Chris, who struggles to navigate a true course through the often false world of Christian culture, detects an authenticity in Jake’s growing and self-imposed alienation from his equally false high school aristocracy.  Jake detects in Chris an authentic faith.  As the story unfolds, the two men help one another to stand against the tides of inconsistency in both worlds.

Critics of To Save a Life will likely point to its overt Christian-ness, but attempts to reduce the film to an evangelical infomercial are unfounded.  The film is less about a young man’s experience becoming a Christian, and more an unflinching look at the struggles of youth in general, of which working out issues of faith is certainly a large and legitimate one.   The film works very hard to avoid being cliché in its evangelism, maturely passing on many opportunities to sermonize that other faith-films might have lacked the restraint to avoid.  It also never employs the cheap and insincere Come to Jesus and everything will start working out storytelling that often permeates such films. 

In fact, I believe it is fair to say that To Save a Life gives the most accurate portrayal of the youth-Christian experience in this country that I have ever seen in film.

That is not to say that the film is perfect.  While the movie sidesteps many of the pitfalls that often wreck films of this genre or budget, it does suffer to some degree from the sheer scope of what it tries to cover.  First-time feature DP, C. Clifford Jones, and director Brian Baugh, a highly accomplished cinematographer in his own right, paint a compelling visual picture that never reminds you of the film’s modest budget, and the thematic elements are handled expertly. But the film sags a little under the weight of an overly-ambitious story that starts off with Jake as the reluctant convert, but spends the second half treating him as a modern-day Job, facing over the course of the film questions on the meaning of friendship, personal responsibility, abortion, adoption, parental infidelity and divorce, hypocrisy among believers, Darwinism on campus, cutting, teen-suicide, romance, and guilt. 

The passion of the screenwriter Jim Britts (a seasoned youth worker) for the many hardships modern teenagers face is admirable, but far too many of those challenges are on display for a single film.  The result is not only a film that is a bit longer than it should be, but one that at times is forced to under-develop characters and ideas that could be much more compelling if given time.  Specifically missing is a more compelling look at the complexity of Chris, played believably and sincerely by Joshua Weigel, and his relationship with the elder-pastor of his church; and a deeper look at what promised to be a rich and relevant back-story for Jake’s girlfriend, Amy — a role which is nevertheless effective in large part due to the performance by Deja Kreutzberg.

Still, To Save a Life succeeds so well where other faith movies fail in large part because of the very issues that occasionally burden it.  Britts’ screenplay, while long, never lacks honesty. In fact, there are moments in the film that seem almost unrealistic, not because they fail to capture the reality of human experience in any way, but rather because they are so genuine that they run afoul of the overly sophisticated, overly secularized youth stereotypes we are accustomed to seeing on the screen. 

Baugh does an admirable job of getting solid performances out of a young and largely inexperienced cast, and deserves special credit for a moment between Jake and his mother, the under-utilized Laura Black, which is so artfully handled and authentic it requires no dialogue at all (Sorry for the vagueness, but no spoilers…).

Actor Randy Wayne continues to grow as a leading man giving Jake a vulnerability and sincerity that bonds him to the audience almost immediately.  Sean Michael owns his character so well that I was convinced I had actually gone to school with Johnny Boy myself, and Kim Hidalgo gives a notable and nuanced performance in what could easily have been a two-dimensional role. 

Conservative audiences will enjoy watching commentator and funnyman Steven Crowder in his engaging role as the film’s heavy, Doug Moore. (Of course, liberals might also enjoy watching Steven take a punch in the mouth in the second act, but one suspects Crowder can more than handle himself in real life.)

In the end, To Save a Life demonstrates the continuing evolution of faith-themed films from sub-par niche novelties toward full-blown, commercial art with broad cultural appeal.  The film does not preach, but it does strongly and accurately advocate for its worldview, just like any other Hollywood film, although the worldview it advances is as un-Hollywood as can be imagined. 

For that reason, To Save a Life is perhaps even more a miracle than the average feature film.  Not only did it beat the odds, it did so with its soul still firmly attached.

The video, which has already been discussed on these pages, is an assault on millions of middle-Americans who are distrustful of and frustrated with our federal government.  Frankly, I find it repellent and was disappointed with NPR for running it.  Not that I believe they, or any other organization, should whitewash political differences, but because the piece is beneath them.  It lacks any substance, or for that matter, humor.  Clearly the creator of the piece was not trying to please me with his work, but juvenile is juvenile, and NPR is, traditionally, not a home to juvenile work.   I was pleased to see that Alicia Shepard denounced the piece as NPR Omnibudsman, and found her piece on the matter to be spot on.  Good on you, ma’am. (more…)

The plan has many critics, and rightly so.  For one thing, as Zinn openly admits, his is an activist history meant not only to inform the student, but to inspire them to take up his cause.   This puts the teaching of Zinn in public schools on precarious legal grounds at best.  Others draw attention to Zinn’s radical views themselves.  Zinn says of America, with her representative government and guaranteed freedoms, that,  “The American system is the most ingenious system of control in world history,” parceling out just enough wealth and comfort to its citizens to keep them from revolting.  But to truly understand Zinn, and why his work has no place in public education, all a person needs to know is this –  Howard Zinn is not an historian at all; Howard Zinn is a religious zealot.

Now, this is not to say that Zinn or his followers believe in God.   Theirs is a secular religion, but religion none-the-less.  It is a faith in what Rousseau called the natural morality of man, an innate goodness that has only been corrupted by the oppressing evil of power, wealth and property.  It is a belief that when man is truly free, free from ‘wage slavery,’ from bankers and bosses, from states and from God, he will at last be purged of all sin.  Laziness and violence, covetousness and anger, all of these will disappear when the liberation arrives.  The religion is Marxism, Zinn’s denomination, Democratic Socialism (or possibly Anarcho-Syndicalism), but all of it, in the end, is simply Communism.

Of course, Christians actually hold similar beliefs.  Man is fundamentally flawed by something he cannot ultimately control: Sin.  This sin is dealt with by the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, through whose Spirit a man’s nature, and ultimately behavior, might be changed.  And when Christ appears again in His glory, the world will be made right and all evil will be dispelled.

Another similarity is that faith is required for both, since neither religion can be proven scientifically.  The Spirit of Jesus cannot be measured out in beakers and applied in dosage, or the results of faith in Him tracked against a control-set, since His presence in the life of a man cannot be truly ascertained. Examples of evil done in his name are not true metrics since many wield His name for gain or tribal loyalty, but do not place their faith in Him.

For Zinn and his followers, the same holds true.  True Communism cannot be judged by failed Communist experiments because true Communism must be global, democratic, and de-centralized, none of which has yet occurred.  Point to the failure of the Bolshevik Revolution, and you will hear that all power corrupts.  The failure of the Soviet Experiment?  Stalin’s misguided belief that single country communism could survive in a world of capitalist forces.

And neither religion can prove that their future Utopia will ever exist, but unlike the Christian who renders unto Caesar what is his and is not called to transform the world into his own image but to trust in God’s will and timing, Zinn ultimately believes that the glorious Communist future will, to borrow from John Hiatt, come through your hands.  This is the fundamental danger of Zinn’s world-view.  It is far beyond evangelistic.  It is a crusade.

“We’re dreamers,” writes Zinn.  “We want it all. We want a peaceful world. We want an egalitarian world. We don’t want war. We don’t want capitalism. We want a decent society.”

For the dreamer-crusader, the standard is perfection, and all have sinned and fall short.  Zinn points out that radical historians often make the mistake of judging the past by the standards of the present.  Thomas Jefferson was not deliberately excluding women from civic life when he penned that, “all men are created equal,” says Zinn.  Rather, in his time, the civil rights of women were not even a consideration.  However, this does not prevent Zinn from passing judgment.  While the past may not be judged by the present, Zinn seems fully content to hold both past and present to the standard of the coming Communist Utopia.  Jefferson’s failing was not that he was less sympathetic to select minority interests than we are.  His failing and ours is that we both support and uphold a system of power and oppression of the poor.  For Zinn, as for Marx and Engels, “The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggle.”

For this reason, man cannot look backwards to determine what forms of government are most desirable, or what evils to avoid.  There is no past wisdom to preserve.  There is only the truth that every effort so far has failed.  We must look to the future, gaining from history only those rare glimpses it affords of what might be accomplished when the oppressed stand united against their oppressors.  Moments of inspiration that evidence what could be.  “Not overwhelming evidence,” Zinn writes on his educational website, “just enough to give HOPE, because for hope we don’t need certainty, only POSSIBILITY.”

Less academic and more religious words were never spoken.

To Zinn, all of America’s wars are evil.  It is not that he supports Hitler, or King George, or slavery, or Mullah Mohammad.  It is that he views war as merely another excuse for the rich to expand their wealth while controlling the people with words like valor and justice.  Rich colonists grow richer in the name of national liberty, rich northerners in the name of ending slavery, rich businessmen in the name of defeating fascism, and on, and on.

If Zinn is occasionally more sympathetic to one oppressor than another (Mao for the as-many-as forty-million people killed in just three years in The Great Leap Forward, over, say, Columbus, who Zinn blames for the ultimate loss of a similar number of Native Americans over three-centuries) he can be excused his mild hypocrisies.  In the end, he would consistently denounce both as proof of his master thesis – That power and wealth corrupt.  Thus Zinn holds no allegiance to any man, party, or nation.  He has written that he may, from time to time, vote for one candidate over another based on the fleeting circumstances of the moment, but his support exists, “only for the minute [he is] in the voting booth.”  Beyond that, the perpetual revolution must continue.  Those in power, even those put there by Zinn’s religion, must then be opposed until all who are oppressed, children by parents, minorities by majorities (except for the minority which is the bourgeois), workers by employers, are liberated and the millennial kingdom of Communism is ushered in.

The question is whether or not this religious revolution belongs in public schools.

The Founders of this nation understood full-well that a nation of liberty could not long survive without a strong moral foundation.  If government exists to control people, then limited government naturally would control them very little.  The potential upside was tremendous.  If allowed to live free, a human being might pursue their own interests to the betterment of all of society.  Freedom means a man might strive, risk, and fail, but it also meant that he might strive, risk, and succeed.  As this process played out over time, it might well become the single greatest engine for innovation and wealth creation in all of human history. 

But it came with great risk.  To give man this freedom meant to largely leave him alone.  Government could not overly interfere in his decision making, other than to ensure that he did not, in his pursuit of his own freedom, encroach unduly on the freedom of others.  In fact, it might be said that our Founders saw government’s exclusive rightful job as providing just that much protection to its citizens — protecting their freedom from those that would rob them of it.  Of course, that meant that government’s first job was to restrain government, that great and historic robber of liberty. 

The problem with so limiting government, however, was that a government that cannot force people to conform to ideas they do not hold, cannot rob man unduly of his freedom to act on his own will, and only has a limited means by which to prevent a man from robbing the freedom of his fellow man.  In order for man to live free from outside law, he must first have a strong and predictable internal code.  It is that code which would provide him the majority of his regulation.  Government would only have to concern itself with behaviors that violated that personal norm.

Of course, the Founders did not arrive at this conclusion in a vacuum.  Free from the constraints of governmental religion, the Founders had actually read the Bible.  While many churches attempt to act as mini-governments and control men, the New Testament makes clear that, “It is for Freedom that Christ has made us Free.”  The Apostle Paul proclaimed that the “Power of sin is the law.”  That, “law came that sin would increase,” but that Christ had, “Set us free from the law of sin and death.”  What does this mean?  It means that there is a natural, inherent evil in man that causes him to rebel against any authority.  Paul says he did not even know what it was to covet, but then the command came saying “thou shalt not covet,” and sin in him, that inherent flaw, seized the opportunity afforded by the commandment and wrought in him every covetous desire. 

In other words, rules (laws, external governance) do not make man better.  On the contrary, they make him worse.  But, taught the New Testament, Christ was the author of a New Covenant in which the written code no longer had power.  Instead, God had freed man through the sacrifice of Christ and now offered man a New Life in which Christ lived in the man, writing his laws upon our hearts.  It was only in this state, free from external governance which wars with our internal flaw — but given a new, personal internal righteousness that is Christ, that man was truly living the life God desired. 

Whatever your religious belief, you can see how revolutionary this line of reasoning is, and how directly it impacted the Framers of our Nation.  If God made man free, then he should be free indeed.  It is the inner goodness that would make him good, not external law.  This was an idea so important to our Founders that they almost all spoke about it.  Washington even dedicated a portion of his Farewell Address to the idea:

“Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure, reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.  It is substantially true that virtue or morality is a necessary spring of popular government. The rule, indeed, extends with more or less force to every species of free government. Who that is a sincere friend to it can look with indifference upon attempts to shake the foundation of the fabric?”

Free men must be moral men.  Immoral men must be slaves to external regulation.

Which brings us back to the events of the last several weeks, and an examination, not of Roman Polanski’s moral choices, but of our moral health as a society.  There is good news and bad news.  The overwhelming public sentiment in the wake of Polanski’s apprehension in Switzerland seems to be in favor of his arrest and extradition.  The majority of people recognize internally that drugging and raping a child in your care while she cries, says no, and asks to be taken home, and then fleeing justice, still qualify in the hearts of most American’s as abhorrent behaviors. 

Of course, one might think that this would go without saying.  It is a common belief that in prisons, hardened criminals and even murders won’t tolerate child-rapists.  Even people whose own moral codes are tolerant of extreme violence and crime know that raping children is especially evil.  Here we find the bad news. 

Apparently many prominent people in the arts and politics are blind to such wanton acts of depravity that even convicted murderers acknowledge.  The danger here is readily apparent.  The Hollywood community that believes Roman Polanski does not deserve to be punished for raping a child, or that having sex with anyone of any age who is crying, saying no, and asking you to stop is “rape-rape,” are the very people who pride themselves in setting the trend for the rest of us.  And the politicians around the world who are coming to the aid of this predator are the same men and women who believe they have the authority to define the external laws that they would see regulate us.  That means that while we may all commonly agree that raping children is evil, the trendsetters and external morality regulators out on the leading edge of society do not think it is evil, and they are working tirelessly to bend our morality to their own through art and law.

Now, it might seem a bit far-fetched to say that a few actors in Hollywood supporting a brilliant, tortured artist could possibly lead to a culture that is so morally bankrupt that they cannot identify raping children as evil, but consider how rapidly common morality can change when the trendsetters and politicians take a strong stand.

Whatever a person’s personal feelings about homosexuality, it is beyond dispute that, with some few and specific exceptions, for most of human history homosexuality has been considered immoral by most people.  And yet, it is equally clear that our culture is moving quickly toward a position that not only sees this behavior as morally acceptable, but that sees the very belief that homosexuality might in fact be immoral as itself being immoral. 

This fundamental shift in a common moral-view has happened very rapidly.  It has only been eleven years since Ellen DeGeneres came out of the closet on primetime, an act widely associated with the death of her show.  In 1997, America just “wasn’t ready.”  Contrast that with 2008 when the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation determined that 42% of HBO’s primetime hours were dedicated to depicting the lives of homosexual people (ABC was the highest rated non-cable network at 25%).  And of course, Ellen herself is back, and one of the biggest stars on television. 

It isn’t just in the media.  There is a nationwide movement to legalize same-sex marriage and brand as hate-speech any opposition to homosexuality.  Even Bill Clinton has changed his mind on the subject.  According to a recent Gallup poll, only 48% of Americans currently see homosexuality as immoral.  The exact number who see it as being moral.  That number keeps moving, and only in one direction.

Now, again, the point is not to debate the morality of homosexuality itself, but to demonstrate just how rapidly a common moral position can shift, for better or for worse, when the media and politicians lead the way.  In the case of homosexuality, thousands of years of moral structure are reversing themselves in a window of only forty or fifty years, but for most of recorded history, the age of sexual consent was much younger than our current law would allow.  In fact, the common age of consent across numerous cultures throughout most of the last several thousand years has been the age of puberty, typically thought to occur between the ages of12 and 14 (Shakespeare’s Juliet was only 13 when she decides to marry Romeo). 

If the trendsetters have been successful in altering the common moral position on homosexuality in so short a time, even with all of human history working against them, how much more quickly might they succeed in altering the common view of sex with thirteen-year-olds with almost all of human history behind them?  And if they succeed here, what lines are left for them to cross?

To be sure, moral absolutes have always shifted with time.  When our forebears took slaves, it was certainly not morally good, but the absolute moral disparity was perhaps not clear before the signing of the Declaration of Independence.  Before that great document, many forms of slavery and servitude existed in the world, and most everyone lived at some point on that sliding scale.  The complete slavery of black men and women was only an extreme level of the general tyranny and oppression that marked all men. 

Only after the signing, when the natural rights of man were declared loudly as being from God, and violations of those rights were declared unnatural acts and acts of war, was black slavery in this nation truly singled out as a special breed of crime, and not a degree of crime.  In other words, it is only in the presence of good that evil is clearly seen.  The question is, who should a society look to for guidance in judging common morality?  God and philosophers; or government and movie stars? 

As Jefferson pointed out, God has the power and right to force his beliefs on us and yet made us free, the government has not that right, and yet seeks to wield that power over every aspect of our lives.  The media seems obliged to help.  One thing is certain, if we ignore the former, then as Washington warned, we will be slaves of the latter.  If so, we will all be sons-of-bitches for it.