George Clooney in 2005’s  Syriana

Meanwhile the national discussion has segued to our own collective insanity, political correctness, which we are now discovering paved the very way for the massacre. It is this cultural and mental straightjacket that forced a U.S. Army general to say diversity is more important than losing American lives; that compelled our Homeland Security Secretary to reassure the Arab world that we’re doing everything we can to protect against a mythical Muslim backlash; that prevented people from speaking out about red flags that could have saved the lives of everyone murdered at Ft. Hood; and that prevents our officials from even naming the enemy. No such ailment afflicts the jihadists, however, who are celebrating Hasan as a hero, who have no problem acknowledging his ideological intent, and who recognize our political correctness as a self-inflicted fatal wound. Unlike our leaders and media elites, they don’t sap their wartime focus with hand-wringing and navel-gazing.

Also unlike us, they have no problem asserting their values in the war’s crucial cultural front, either, a theater of operations where we are weakest. A burgeoning Arab film industry, for example, in partnership with Hollywood, is set to make unapologetic and positive cinematic portrayals of Islam as important an export as oil. Abu Dhabi is investing $1 billion in movie productions over the next few years. Crash and In the Valley of Elah screenwriter Paul Haggis recently taught a screenwriting master class in Dubai to fifty promising and “socially and politically astute” writers. A Qatari media company is pairing with Lord of the Rings producer Barrie Osborne on a $150 million biopic of the Muslim prophet Mohammed – “a profound genius,” says Osborne, ”who founded a religion whose name in Islam signifies peace and reconciliation. This is what our film will aspire to do.”

Yusuf Al-Qaradawi

Very high-minded, if misinformed. But what’s wrong, you ask, with such multicultural bridge-building in this time of conflict between Islam and the West? Well, here’s an eyebrow-raiser for you about the Mohammed biopic: its “technical consultant” is Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the vastly influential spiritual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, a Sunni movement whose aim is the imposition of Sharia worldwide and “the destruction of Western civilization from within.” Al-Qaradawi has issued fatwas in support of suicide bombings in Israel, attacks on coalition soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the execution of Jews and gays. With him guiding the project, it’s starting to sound less like an effort to promote ”peace and reconciliation” and more like a propagandistic Trojan horse. Certainly not every film in the forthcoming cinematic wave out of the Middle East will have a dark design; but do not doubt that the Islamists recognize the cultural impact of cinema, or that the seemingly benign partnership is useful to their agenda.

And does the cultural exchange run both ways? Is Hollywood equally as eager to export Western values and a positive portrayal of America? I think we all know the answer to that. And why should we expect otherwise? For decades Americans have been conditioned and intimidated by political correctness, and indoctrinated by its handmaiden multiculturalism, to believe that all cultural values and practices are equally valid – except Western culture, which we’re taught is the domain of white male imperialists, racists, and slavers. And Hollywood continues to be at the forefront of the dissemination of that world view, too often denigrating America and whitewashing radical Islam.

 Hollywood may be out of touch with the “flyover” Americans between L.A. and New York, resulting in war-on-terror box office flops like Rendition and Lions for Lambs, but don’t underestimate the influence of its persistently blame-America-first propaganda on young audiences, on coastal elites, and on those countries that hungrily absorb the culture we export. Every time Hollywood makes a Syriana, which has been used as a recruitment tool to radicalize young Muslims; or a Redacted, which has also been used to inflame Muslim opinion against the raping, murdering American occupiers; or a Body of Lies, whose opening quote – “Those to whom evil is done do evil in return” – asserts that Islamic terrorism is just America’s chickens coming home to roost; or a Flightplan, in which you are manipulated into suspecting that the Muslims aboard an airplane are terrorists (Hitchcockian twist: they’re not!); every time Hollywood makes such thinly-veiled agitprop, the PC message is reinforced here and abroad that we are the bad guys, that America’s geopolitical meddling, not global jihad, is the genesis of Islamic terrorism. And therefore we can only end the Big Overseas Misunderstanding, or however President Obama is euphemizing the war on terror these days, by groveling and making amends – which is indeed his strategy for resolving it (resolving, not winning – remember, he’s not comfortable with the word victory).

Our President, who considers it his duty to combat “negative stereotypes of Islam wherever they appear,” is openly pursuing a globalist future in which America abdicates as a superpower. Leftist Hollywood marches in lockstep with that post-American agenda (“It’s an Obama world,” said the director of GI Joe: The Rise of Cobra, a movie scrupulously scrubbed of pro-American symbolism and real-world enemies – like jihadists). This subversive alliance is a prescription for cultural implosion, and an ascendant Islam is positioning itself to fill the void.

One-way multiculturalism in England

Think this is all alarmist, Islamophobic nonsense? It could never happen here, you say? Well it won’t if we do something about it. But if you want to see what a country looks like that has been gutted by multiculturalism, political correctness, and tolerance of the intolerant, and yet which continues to think “it can’t happen here,” see what has become of England. A hundred years ago the sun did not set on its empire; more recently it still stood tall under Churchill and then Thatcher. Now, harboring radical imams and embracing Sharia, it is teetering on the brink of cultural – and even literal – civil war with an unassimilated, radicalized Muslim population that is aggressively uni-cultural. Who could have imagined that this would be England’s future? Only the Islamists could. Back on our shores, Pamela Geller of Atlas Shrugs believes that the maddeningly tentative official response to the Ft. Hood assault is indicative not just of political correctness, but of de facto Sharia, and that we are already ”witnessing an Islamized America.”

The PC multiculturalist agenda, which Hollywood has often taken the lead in pushing, is a cancer that kills people and corrodes countries. It is the insidious source of all our misplaced “Why do they hate us?” agonizing. Not only is it undermining us in this clash of civilization versus barbarism, but it could prove to be the single most critical factor that will result in America’s defeat. But a Hollywood that unashamedly celebrates the American values that this country and the world hunger for can also take the lead in reversing that agenda’s damage; indeed, I believe such a cinematic wave is coming – but that’s a topic for another day.

* The media report thirteen dead, but one of his victims was three months pregnant, which in my book raises the count to fourteen.

God-kings are not new on the stage of human history, nor do they exclusively occupy the dusty corners of the distant past. One need only look to the Japanese worship of Emperor Hirohito during World War II to see that an industrialized, modern country can still vest in its leaders supernatural authority. And there are far more subtle ways of making divinity out of men as well.

The Apostle Paul was warned two-thousand years ago that, “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” Certainly his intention was to illuminate to the self-righteous that they do not live up to an actual standard of perfection, but perhaps there is more. For as surely as a man might be blind to his own failings, there seems to be some propensity in man to be selectively blind to the failings of others as well. This selective blindness may have many causes and find many expressions.  Some in our society carry cultural guilt and fear of accusations of bigotry that cause them to hold entire social, racial, and religious groups to different standards of judgment than others.  Still, it is the elevation of individuals above common scrutiny that creates idols of men. Whether it is a rock-star or actor, sportsman or elected leader, holding any man above reproach is folly, for in ceding to anyone our power to critique them, we grant them power man was not meant to have.

Now, to some, this double standard of generosity may seem harmless enough.  After all it might be argued that most people are far too judgmental as it is.  However it is no less sinister to apply a positive double-standard than it is a negative one. Both of these biases have the same result on the individual making the unfair judgment – by limiting the individual’s ability to accurately see the humanity of the judged, they falsely color that individual’s understanding of the human condition in general. Just as the thoughtless demonization of any person renders them sub-human to the person making the judgment, and therefore their choices, actions, and motives are no longer subject to the same thoughtful consideration as those of others, Hero-Worship creates a blindness in which it is not necessary to consider the fundamental humanity of the so-called hero, nor is it necessary to emulate their actual virtues or accomplishments. After all, if Hitler is simply the most evil creature to ever live, why question the motives, politics, or persuasions by which his actual, human evil was allowed to thrive? Similarly, if a Martin Luther King, Jr. was simply better than everyone else by design, what point is there in attempting to follow his virtuous lead?

This power that hero-worship imbues in its champions is also a narcotic that dulls the mind of the worshiper, and allows and even promotes abuses by the worshiped.

Clearly, this is the case with the current President of the United States. With so many people seeing President Obama as a super-human, almost religious figure, and placing so many of their hopes on his shoulders, they blind themselves to the reality of the man, both his better qualities as well as his more troubling ones. Any accusation of wrong-doing or hubris is instantly and angrily rejected by the faithful as an attack on a man who is simply above petty criticism. He can do no wrong, and further, no one else can do the good that he might. He is, as Evan Thomas so aptly and honestly put it, “standing above the country, above the world, he’s sort of a God.” There is nothing more dangerous than this kind of isolation of a man from the restraining power of common criticism, especially one who by his office already has so much power over so many and so much. After all, if criticism is suppressed and virtues are seen as intrinsic and not attained or attainable, an elected leader doesn’t actually answer to the will of the people at all, rather, the people exist to validate his will.

For man to truly be free, he must reject elevating any human to super-human stations, reserving such worship exclusively for the truly divine. Christ may be perfect, but President Obama is only a man. A compelling case can be made that George Washington was one of the best men who has ever lived. The Indispensable Man, he twice surrendered his sword, and almost absolute power, to the new country he had bled to create when frankly most people would have preferred he kept it. But this same great man had great failings, not least of which were his somewhat nuanced views on human slavery.

If even a man with the moral fortitude of Washington did not escape the human condition, then what man could? I can say without shame that there is no public figure alive who I hold in higher esteem than I hold George W. Bush. I realize the cultural-correctness barons who have demonized him for the last eight years will recoil at the fact, but I would rather have some BBQ or sit on a fishing boat with 43 than meet a Beatle. He was true to his convictions, and he exuded a grace and good-will to his enemies even when beset on all sides by a recklessly hostile, slandering, hate-filled media and opposition.  President Bush is as close as I have to a hero. But I am not fooled by my affection into believing he was superior to his mold. Despite the public claims of exuding calm, I have little doubt what was going through the president’s mind during those excruciating seven minutes in the school-house in Florida in 2001. Fear. We’re being attacked? Confusion. If we’re being attacked, why aren’t they pulling me out of here? Uncertainty. Am I supposed to be doing something or did I misunderstand? The sort of very human things any of us might have felt in that sort of situation. Would I have preferred that he sprung to his feet, strode to his jet, and took command of the war we did not yet know we were in? Sure. I would rather he hadn’t passed TARP, articulated conservative principles like Reagan, and defended himself against his hate-drunk critics too, but I don’t look for God-like perfection in human beings. Even Presidents. Especially Presidents. I have an actual God for that, so my admiration for Mr. Bush can survive exposure to his actual humanity expressly because it isn’t built on the false premise that he has none. It is respect, not worship, and it is a deep respect.

Because in application, worship is all a man requires to reign as a God. Hold one man to a more generous standard, bind him by a less restrictive set of rules than you do other men, and you give to him transcendent powers no matter what secular name you might call him by. If you make that man-God the leader of a country, then he is a God-King as surely as any who has gone before, and making a God-King of a man only makes slaves of the rest, no matter how he uses his authority or for what. This is what the idea of separation of Church and State was actually meant to protect us from, un-checked executives consolidating personal-religious powers. Let us direct our prayers elsewhere that we might have eyes to see this man as man.

Now I haven’t opened an issue of Newsweek in years, although I have to admit that Evan Thomas is a valuable – actually, essential – addition to society. He forgets to speak his true mind only among his friends, you see, and that gives us a little insight into what these media elites actually believe. He recently said that Barack Obama looked to him like a god, a man above petty things like “America.” 

Click to play

It was Evan Thomas who in 2004 admitted that liberal media bias was good for fifteen points at the polls. (That was for John Kerry. If you take away Obama’s 15 points of bias – I suspect is was much more — he would have won Vermont and the District of Columbia and that’s all he would have won – but I digress.) 

Anyway, the Newsweek cover showed the outline of the Enterprise – without the nacelle caps. Whoever made the model for the cover forgot to put them on. It was obvious to me from across the room, but then, that’s the kind of accuracy I have come to expect from Newsweek. And I digress yet again. 

Inside was a “Star Trek” / Obama administration comparison chart, written by Maureen Dowd. Obama was Spock. Rush Limbaugh was a Klingon commander. Rahm Immanuel – RAHM IMMANUEL! – was Captain Kirk. The Un-American. Bastards. 

This got me angry enough to do some poking around. All around the web, we are seeing comparisons of Barack Obama to Mr. Spock. Maureen Dowd, who is without question the dimmest bulb in the burned-out chandelier of the once-glorious New York Times, wrote a piece in the Times comparing Spock to Obama and ended the piece with the line, “Kirk out.” 

When I regained consciousness I was in the ambulance. 

So here is the result. It examines the terrible danger of putting intellectuals in charge. Not that I think Barack Obama is an intellectual. He, like Larry Fine, simply looks like one standing next to Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid and Joe Biden. But I granted the premise and tried to show why intellectuals are so dangerous and so spectacularly and consistently wrong when they try their hand at politics. 

Not my deepest work ever, but it was a blast to make. Two desires in life hold monumental power over me: 

1) to wear a custom-fitted gold velour jersey.

2) to work with my friend Maurice LaMarche. He was the voice of The Brain in Pinky and the Brain, plays Morbo, Calculon and Kip on Futurama, and who is the go-to guy for William Shatner impressions. As a matter of fact, he can teach you – yes, YOU! – to Talk Like William Shatner by going here.  

So without further ado, here’s “The Dowd Conundrum.” I hope you like watching it as much as I enjoyed making it.