Just as the anti-war artists of the 60’s expressed their political views through music, so too are an increasing number of artists of the TEA Party movement who refuse to keep silent about the destruction of this great nation by many who ironically subscribed to those radical, anti-government views of the 60’s counterculture movement.

James Kole - American Folk Blues Artist

One such patriot artist, whose musical style is reminiscent of the folk music of the 60’s, but with a contemporary blues/rock twist, is American Folk Blues artist James Kole.

We have been fans of James Kole’s for over two years since first stumbling upon his YouTube channel, impressed not only by his positive, pro-America lyrics, but also by his professionally produced videos, unique musical and vocal style, and his captivating delivery.

James is no newcomer to patriotic-infused songwriting promoting individual liberty and love of country.  His 1998 full-length release, Liberty, offered listeners a glimpse of what was to come over the years and culminate into his 7th full-length album (released July 4th, 2010):  Songs For Freedom in which he sings about the American Revolution, Frederick Douglass, the Constitution, U.S. Sovereignty, current uncertain times, and much more.

“Rockin’ the stage with a force like thunder”, James Kole’s musical talent is mesmerizing and his energetic aura commanding.  A singer/songwriter from Scottsdale, Arizona, Kole has impressed audiences with his unique blend of blues, rock, and American folk, earning him the title “Local Legend” in the 2008 edition of Perfectify Magazine.

Outside the local scene, his music has a long list of film and television credits, including projects for Miramax, HBO, Washington Square Films, MTV, PBS, and even Red Bull energy drinks.

In 2003, Kole was awarded the Best Original Song at the Saguaro Film Festival for his hit, Big Orange Sun.  James has shared stages with The Doobie Brothers, Nashville country artist Pat Green, SNL star Victoria Jackson, and many more.

Despite many flaws common to the superhero genre, First Class is quite possibly the best film in the series, not because it’s chock full of impressive special effects and action, but because broiling beneath its main characters’ performances are ideas–not just any ideas, but the central political and philosophical questions of the film’s time period whose minutiae our modern pundits still grapple over. This is not so much a review as a jumping-off point for discussion, so beware of spoilers ahead.

First Class focuses on young Magneto (Michael Fassbender) and Professor X (James McAvoy), at this point known as Erik Lehnshnerr and Charles Xavier, framing their worldviews through their respective experiences of World War II. Magneto is a Holocaust survivor forced to watch his own mother gunned down by Sebastian Shaw (a scenery-chewing Kevin Bacon), while X, though British, lives untouched by the war in New York, comfortable and affluent. As such, Magneto manifests the deep cynicism of Europeans, who decades before the first world war prophesied that civilization would make war a thing of the past, and X embodies the optimism of his young, victorious, prosperous nation.

If the film has one fatal flaw, it’s that McAvoy’s Professor X is a monstrously one-dimensional good guy–perfectly empathetic, perfectly charismatic, perfectly humble. He’s given a few humanizing moments of triviality in the first act, but once the central conflict kicks in, he merely serves as the angelic foil to the deeply tormented, deeply human, and deeply moving Magneto. Michael Fassbender, best known for his brief turn in Inglourious Basterds, deserves an Oscar nomination for his work here. He takes charge of the role with intimidating physicality, harnessing intense emotions into subtle shifts in Magneto’s inevitable path to top-hat-and-cape-wearing, mustache-tweaking evil. Yes, though we know exactly where he’s going, Fassbender injects suspense into the actual mechanics of the transformation; we care about him, sitting mortified but silently cheering when he gets his moment of revenge.

And that is the central drama of First Class: it’s not the Cuban Missile Crisis, stopping the madman Sebastian Shaw, or the shoehorned attempts at modern political salience (one a lame Patriot Act dig, the other a tired “Baby, you were born this way!” after-school special monologue)–it’s that the protagonist, for a reason we completely sympathize with, is making a horrendous, morally bankrupt choice. And this is where the politics kick in: Despite the film’s attempt to morally equate the U.S. and the U.S.S.R., Magneto’s arc shows the fundamental difference between the political philosophies behind the Soviet Union and America.

Young Erik Lehnshnerr suffers at the hands of Nazis, those who used superficial traits as justification for declaring certain human beings ontologically inferior to themselves, while Charles Xavier flourishes in the wealth of Americans, whose nation was founded on the idea that God creates common men no differently than kings. I hesitate to continue referring to it as American vs. Soviet ideology; it really is served best by the terms of Mark Levin’s bestselling book: Liberty and Tyranny. This contrast screams at the audience in a central dialogue scene wherein X and Magneto discuss their betrayal by the mutant-phobic CIA. Trying his best to dissuade revenge, X remarks, “We have it in us to be the better men.” Magneto coldly retorts, “We already are the better men.”

The heart of tyranny is the belief that one knows better than another how he should live his life (or whether he should live at all) because somehow the one is superior over the other. Of course, Magneto is a lot more powerful than the average human–able to control metal with his mind, pull a submarine into the air and all that–but power does not equal righteousness, which X was telling him in the first place. In the film’s climactic action scene, Magneto decides that it would be best to start a nuclear war between America and the Soviets, wholly embracing the eugenicist ideology that killed his mother. That kernel of tyranny, the belief in his own ascendancy, becomes the justification for genocide.

But the heart of liberty is the belief that each person, though they may sometimes get it wrong, ultimately has their best interests at heart, and that self-interest should be respected. Charles Xavier realizes that his self-interest–meeting, grooming, and uniting mutants around the world–is not inherently at odds with the interests of humans, so his progress does not have to come at others’ expense, as Magneto has decided. The parallels between our metal-tossing protagonist and the real world are sadly spot-on. The authors of the Frankfurt School, thankful as they were for the shelter and freedom America provided as they fled Nazi Germany, soon propagated the same insidious ideology that brought about Nazism: that some humans are more equal than others, and those more equal should revolt and take away the way of life enjoyed by those who are less equal.

These philosophical undercurrents give X-Men: First Class the heft that its predecessors strained for but never reached. Whether director Matthew Vaughn intended them as subtext or not, the clashing ideas of Magneto and Professor X constitute the primary political conflict of the 20th century stripped to its basic arguments.  Coupled with Fassbender’s can’t-miss performance, this is one summer blockbuster that’s gonna stick with me for a little while.

Chris Ross is a great American, an amazingly gifted musician/singer-songwriter, and a superb conservative voice in the fight to save this great country.  Upon hearing the first few bars of his song Freedom, I knew I was going to really dig his music.  I was right.  I was instantly hooked.  His songs and vocal style remind me of the music of the band America  which I loved back in the day (and still do).  How very apropos.  When he recently posted one of his newest songs, Restoring Honor, featured on the WatchGlennBeck.com site, I just knew this song would resonate with so many Americans.  And it is doing just that.

After I contacted Chris and told him I wanted to do a BigDawg Spotlight piece on him and asked him for his bio, what he sent me turned out to be so much more that I decided to let him answer the opening question himself.

I grew up listening to music.  My father, a rabid music fan, introduced me to the sounds of the 60s and 70s and I’ve had a passion for music ever since.  Today, it is easy to hear these influences in my music.   My sound is a combination of modern acoustic pop and country with some classic 70’s rock mixed in.

In June of 2004 I released my debut CD entitled American Dream featuring heart-filled originals as well as classic covers.  This labor of love proved to be a success and spent 10 straight weeks on the top 10 list at www.cdfreedom.com. That site now is www.Nimbit.com.  The title track of the album American Dream was inspired by the events of 9-11 and the start of my political awakening.  Basically, I was sick of hearing Hollywood types complain about how bad America was and was deeply affected by the events of 9-11 losing a high school friend who was a flight attendant on the 2^nd flight that hit the tower. That Song American Dream was the first moments of me waking up politically.

In 2007 and 2008 I began writing more political-themed songs. As the Presidential race of 2008 started to heat up I wrote my first song that reached national attention. My song Freedom was featured on both the Glenn Beck Radio show and the Alex Jones radio show in the Spring of 2010. It was also named by the Huffington Post as one of the top 10 Tea Party themed songs of 2010. It currently has close to 20k views on YouTube and has been a successful single on iTunes. The song has also been featured on NewZeal.Blogspot (now TrevorLouden.com), Watchglennbeck.com and many other patriotic websites across the country.  This song has been an absolute God-send to me.  I have deep faith and this song was one of those instances where I truly felt the Holy Spirit influence me while writing this. I believe we are all here for a reason at this point in time and we all have our jobs to do. I think this is one of my callings — to help get the message of Freedom out.

I care so much about my country and I can’t even fathom that there are people out there who would rather live in Tyranny instead of Freedom. One of the things Glenn Beck really has nailed is that this is truly all about Individual Freedom and Liberty vs. Collective Liberty.  Collective Liberty is much easier to control because it is Liberty for the good of all.  Well, who decides what is good for all?  That is the most important question.  By the way, our forefathers fought for Individual Freedom and Liberty over a tyrannical King.  The French fought for Collective Liberty.  So it is easy to see why America is who she is and France is who she is.  How could we have fallen so far so fast?  That is what I am aiming to do is to help wake people up and inspire them to relearn the values that our forefathers taught us

Recently, I have joined an amazing group of fellow conservative artists at Big Dawg Music Mafia.  This was an idea I have had for a long time.  Back two or three years ago I was amazed at how little of a forum conservative voices really had.  Particularly with all of us musicians out there.  However, having a full time job, a family, plus my own gig schedule with music, it was impossible to find time to do it.  But it was amazing the amount of musicians I was meeting from just my song Freedom across the country that I knew it was only a matter of time before something like this popped up.  I was very encouraged by the amount of people I started to see who were speaking out for their country.  I really commend the job Lisa Mei and BigDawg do in promoting all of us. It really is like a conservative record label. We are all helping each other out and promoting songs and videos on social media forums like Facebook. We are also collaborating with each other.  For instance, I wrote a song called 1776 that Toots Sweet, another Big Dawg’er, is in the studio recording right now.  I wrote that song with him in mind. So we are all trying to help each other out but, more importantly, help our country out in winning the culture war.  I think we are producing a bunch of conservative Bob Dylan’s and Crosby Stills and Nash’s from the 60’s but in a modern and conservative way.  We desperately need to get young people engaged in this movement.  We need young people to realize that living in a free country is way cooler than living in a country where the government tells you what to eat, where to go and watches what you say because it may offend someone. How is turning into a robot from a movie like Minority Report cool?  But nonetheless I feel like at least right now the left is winning the battle for young people.  Through music and multimedia I think we can turn that around though.

Make no mistake, this is a battle.  We all hope as conservative musicians that this remains a peaceful battle fought on the battlefield of ideas, debate and ballot boxes.  We hope to win the culture war and hope to wake America up!  We are a true grassroots organization.  We are not Astroturf like these Union thugs that recently tried to interrupt the Boston Tea Party Rally and other Rally’s across the country.  Check out this video of them trying to yell over me with a bullhorn while I was playing my song Freedom.

Then these same goons had the gall to boo and yell over the opening prayer at this event.

It is no wonder why these organizations are forcing their members to go out and disrupt these events. Their very livelihood is at stake. To our fault, we have allowed our society to go on too long with entitlements and so many rely on Mommy and Daddy or better yet Uncle Sammy to solve all of their problems and take care of us. We have been conditioned not to question anything that is being decided for us because it is for our benefit.  However Thomas Jefferson once said:

Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blind-folded fear.

I intend to live this way.  I intend to proclaim the values of Freedom and the values in which this country was formed.  I will continue to do so unashamed and with a loud but hopefully pleasantly sounding musical voice.

Thanks, Chris…I couldn’t have said it better.

I got a chill (the good kind) when Chris said about his song Freedom:

I have deep faith and this song was one of those instances where I truly felt the Holy Spirit influence me while writing this.

It is never a surprise to me when I learn great patriots like Chris trust in God, use their faith as their moral compass, and always remember to give Him the glory.  It is the very thing that I know in my heart is grossly lacking from the hate-filled leftists depicted in his videos above (and some others I’ve come across from the recent Tax Day TEA Parties that are beyond vile).

I’m stoked to have Chris join our BigDawg Brigade (our site volunteers) as our New Media Coordinator as he clearly understands and appreciates the value of using social networking sites to grow our movement.  I look forward to the privilege of  finally meeting in person and performing with Chris at the National TEA Party Convention in Memphis in September.

Please do yourself a favor and “friend” this great culture warrior and musician on FaceBook, subscribe to his YouTube channel, and show him some love by purchasing and sharing his amazing “freedom music“.

That, of course, was just their public face; in reality, it soon became clear, they are ugly and reptilian under their human skins and have an agenda to exploit humanity in some way, either as slaves or as food or both, or perhaps some even worse and more horrible fashion. And a small group of people have divined this agenda and set up a small, loose, but dedicated resistance organization.

Central to the narrative is the resistance against an intrusive government that claims to be for nothing but the good of humanity but is in fact pursuing sinister, elitist, and exploitative hidden agendas. As such, the show makes a strong commentary on contemporary political issues and constitutes one of the most frankly libertarian TV series seen in many years. In addition, it suggests strong approval of religion, specifically Christianity, in a way that makes the resistance group a spot-on analogue to the current-day Tea Party movement.

In episode 5, “Welcome to the War,” for example, the “visitors” clearly display the trappings of an oppressive government: claims of exclusively benevolent intentions; a large, complex organization devoted to the will of a single leader and small cadre of elite satraps; exercise of raw power against opposition whenever it can be accomplished in secret; use of sympathetic media mouthpieces and propaganda techniques; highly advanced military power and surveillance capabilities; vastly greater power than the people over whom they want to rule; use of deception and scapegoating  in order to undermine resistance; and the like.

A member of the Christian clergy, Father Jack Landry (characterized excellently by Joel Gretsch), remains central to the resistance effort, along with FBI agent Erica Evans (likewise well played by Elizabeth Mitchell). Both are determined, kindly, and fundamentally decent and unselfish. Father Jack continually wears the traditional turned-around collar identifying him as a clergyman.

Leading the visitors, by contrast, is Anna, an extremely charismatic woman whose appearance includes both Caucasian and African characteristics. Anna claims to be for treating all people as equals and helping those who haven’t been successful in life, stopping just short of directly quoting President Obama and other progressive politicians. As the show progressed through its first season, however, she was increasingly revealed as a cold-hearted monster whose words of benevolence are entirely phony.

In episode 8, “We Can’t Win,”, for example, one of the V leaders describes flooding caused by a monsoon, which has possibly killed thousands of people, as a “tragedy.” “No,” says Anna, smiling triumphantly, “an opportunity,” echoing the words of former Obama aide Rahm Emanuel. Later, Anna tells a sympathetic journalist, “There’s tragedy every day all over your world. So many opportunities to help.”

In that same episode, Anna and the visitors continually refer to their takeover plans as “progress,” an apparent allusion to contemporary statists’ self-description as progressives.

As noted, the religious orientation of the show is strongly Christian. The leaders of the resistance use a church as their base of operations, and the climactic scene of “Welcome to the War” takes place in the church’s sanctuary. The church thus serves as a source of sound, eternal values and gives emotional strength to the resistance. The resistance members are clearly shown to be in the movement to protect their families, faith, freedom, and personal integrity.

In another positive allusion to Christianity, resistance member Georgie sacrifices his life to ensure that he won’t give away the identities of the other resisters, an evident allusion to Christ and to subsequent Christian martyrs. The show doesn’t avoid difficult moral quandaries, either: in “We Can’t Win,” Father Jack shoots a human agent of the Visitors.

The Visitors, too, recognize the power of religion, but they use it to their own ends. Erica’s teenage son, Tyler, becomes interested in “The Church of V” concocted by the Visitors as another means of distracting people from their real intentions.

In addition to the human resistance, among the aliens are some good individuals who sympathize with the humans. In fact, “John May,” the first V to turn against Anna, actually started the resistance. His name is of course reminiscent of John Galt, the hero of Ayn Rand’s novel Atlas Shrugged. Two prominent aliens working against their government are given biblical names, Joshua and Samuel.

Episode 9, “Heretic’s Fork,” includes allusions to Nazi eugenics programs, with V doctors performing experiments on live human subjects. These events also resonate with contemporary issues such as elective abortion and embryonic stem cell research, however, as when Anna refers to an unborn V-human hybrid baby as a “mongrel” and insists it should be put to death in the womb. In “We Can’t Win” she kills an unborn Visitor just to make a point in a personal conversation.

The media’s role in pushing for big government is also prominent in the show. Newsman Chad Decker (Scott Wolf), for example, offers to do a story about the Fifth Column, the small group of humans who distrust the visitors. “Just point me in the right direction,” he tells Anna. Later, he meets Father Jack in the latter’s rectory and asks him for information about the Fifth Column. Jack says he doesn’t know anything, and this and a subsequent scene leave it ambiguous as to whether Chad is really cooperating with the visitors or acting as a double agent.

As the season progresses we find that the resistance, have been falsely branded as terrorists, and FBI agent Erica is assigned to head task force to find fifth columnists, Visitors who oppose their leaders’ plan to exploit humanity.

All of that leads to “Red Sky,” the finale of season one. The Vs are about to attack the earth openly and take over. A fifth columnist willingly gives up his own life to save all of mankind and his fellow Fifth Columnists, in a Christlike sacrifice. Tellingly, the Fifth Columnist is named Joshua, the Old Testament translation of the Jewish name translated as Jesus in the New Testament. Later in the episode, Joshua is resurrected, literally brought back to life.

After Joshua’s killing, Father Jack preaches a sermon in which he tells his congregation, “You are going to have to choose who you’re going to follow: the V’s or God. Because you can’t serve two masters. . . . There is a war upon us: a war for our souls.”

The war resumes tonight.

From this we got the hippies, the yippies, underground comics, groups like the SLA and the Black Panthers, all sorts of pressure groups and social movements. These were mostly influenced and orchestrated by the left. In fact, leftists had a big hand in shaping a lot of those communities and they infiltrated academia, education, government, media. Over the years they effected a lot of change to our society.

You can judge for yourself how well that worked out. But you can’t deny they managed to get a lot of what they wanted. Except what resulted is a typical example of human irony.

The counter-culture wanted to be free of what they considered a constricting, conformist society. Yet what did they turn it into when they got old and assumed power? They created a society more restrictive and conformist than that “evil” repressive 50s culture they love to vilify. They have become the new scolds. They have ushered in an “Age of Unreason” where you have to do what they say or else. They tell us what we can eat, what we can say, what kind of car to drive, what kind of light bulbs to use, on and on. They lecture us about our “carbon footprint” and “sustainable lifestyle”. They claim that the government, which they have spent the last eight years railing against, can solve all our problems if we abdicate what’s left of our personal freedoms, without question.

The “establishment” these days is left wing. Look around, from the administration to most of the entertainers on TV, the message is left leaning despite the fact that the country is more right leaning. “The Man” is a leftie tyrant. You don’t dare speak against the system or be scorned by the media and all the yapping chihuahuas of the echo chamber.

The comics of late night and cable are a perfect example of this. They’ve become nothing more than palace eunuchs, simpering at the thought of offending the hive mind. They do not serve the same function of comics past. Johnny Carson at least lobbed mild jokes at presidents, Democrat and Republican, all in good fun. Now, today’s comics don’t find this administration something to laugh at, even though it is one of the richest targets for sarcasm in recent memory. You have a pompous, egoist of a president with almost no accomplishments to show for all his hubris. It’s funny enough on its own. Then you throw in the collection of crazies from Nancy Pelosi to the wacky czars. It’s low hanging fruit to anyone with two brain cells to rub together. Can you count all their collective brain cells on one hand?

If the alleged comics of late night and cable have no imagination or guts, that’s where we come in. The new Counter Culture.

We, the artists who reject the politics of “the man,” the propaganda of the state. We artists, writers and creative people who are tired of being pushed around and told what to do. Those of us who think everything is going wrong and it’s got to stop. We are using our art, our work, to show the folly of the ways of the “establishment”. We’re finding plenty to mock and criticize. And we don’t need the approval of the “cool kids” who really aren’t. Not even remotely.

It’s not a conservative vs lefty argument. It’s freedom lovers verses the statists. It’s liberty vs tyranny.

The people have been sold out by those who never sought to give us freedom. They want to entrap the people in greater dependency on the state. They want to tax every person and business into the stone age. They want to regulate every aspect of people’s lives.

We say no. We reject that. “We” are those who are willing to speak out and ridicule the corrupt bureaucrats and their enablers, just as the counter-culturalists of the 60s mocked the “older generation,” we’re launching our own counter offensive to their propaganda. Our own critiques to their rhetoric.

The Age of Aquarius is over. We’re entering the Age of Libra. The age of Balance. No more tilting to the left!

Unlike the old guard entertainers who continue to shuck and jive for the state, we’re here to expose, reveal and satirize the endless tyranny being rammed down our throats. The real “change” is going to come from those us who have the guts to say NO.

We’re loud and we’re proud. We’re the new counter-culture!

Get ready, We’re coming.

There is a right not specifically spelled out in the Bill of Rights but implicit in every restriction on the federal government: the right to be left alone.  Our nation was founded by individuals seeking relief from overbearing governments and religions.  Rugged individualism isn’t merely a conceit of John Wayne movies.  It has been and will continue to be a way of life for Americans who believe this nation was founded on the rights of the individual.  Not the rights of government.

Yet today we are saddled with the most overbearing, intrusive government in American history, a gang of socialist ideologues who seek to exercise control over every facet of human existence including our food, the education of our children, and our exercise habits.  People may argue where this urge to control the lives of others originates, but there can be no doubt that the present administration does not see individual liberties when they look at the constitution.  They see the governments’ rights and the subjects’ obligations.  They have turned the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights on its ear.

They see individuals only in terms of how much money they can squeeze from each citizen.  This government reminds me of Zieffer Meird, the intergalactic slaver from my science fiction comic Nexus.  Zieffer captured people, decapitated them, and found a way to keep the heads alive to use as batteries.  Obama would like to be Zeiffer Meird.  He seeks to silence the individual.  Shut up and pay your taxes.  The only voices to whom he will listen are groups: the trial lawyers, SEIU, UAW, ACORN, the usual suspects.

Never the individual.  Always the group.

Bad news for Pharoah.  Most Americans see themselves as individuals, save for those benighted creatures who traded their souls for lifelong government employment.  (I except my hard-working sister who has been a devoted climatologist since 1973.  We disagree about “climate change.”)  Government is the only area with jobs growth and most of those jobs are to facilitate either the collection of taxes or the doling out of pork to special groups under the guise of “stimulus.”

What “progressives” fail to understand is that the reason the United States is the greatest nation on earth is because of individual effort in the private sector.  All our wealth, our ability to field armies, deliver disaster relief, build schools and highways comes from money earned in the private sector.  Yet these fools continue to grow the public sector like a giant cancer on the shoulders of every American left out of the government gravy train.

So I’m positing a very old party: the Leave Me Alone party.  I’m happy to pay taxes if they are reasonable and they go toward legitimate government functions as spelled out in the Constitution and limited in the Bill of Rights.  But I’ll be damned if I’m going to be forced to pony up to provide some government drone a luxurious retirement.

The Republicans could become the Leave Me Alone party, but that would require some deep soul-searching on their part.  In the meantime, millions of Americans will vote like me, searching for a ray of light in the shit storm of government growth, bureaucracy and parasitism.

And yet… [emphasis added]

The California Film Commission on Monday announced that 25 productions had been awarded tax credits, which refund 20% or 25% of all spending in the state on so-called below-the-line employees, Hollywood parlance for behind-the-scenes crew. …

The state is awarding $67.5 million in tax credits for the 25 productions. Amy Lemisch, director of the CFC, said those movies and TV shows will spend $347 million on below-the-line employees. Lemisch said she was confident the vast majority of that money would otherwise not have been spent in California.

Productions using the credits include CBS Films, DreamWorks, Sony, Comedy Central, and Disney.  

Whether you want to stay competitive in California or America, tax cuts work, tax cuts create jobs, tax cuts trickle down … and Alec Baldwin, Sean Penn, Robert Redford, Matt Damon and Barbra Streisand all know this. Which is why there’s no celebrity-outrage decrying this $67.5 million tax cut as “corporate welfare” for “the top 1%” — and if you don’t think “Big Studio” isn’t just as fat as any oil, drug or tobacco company…

And “Big Studio” chases these tax cuts for their rich selves all over the country with nary a peep from Hollywood Leftists about how this money could be better spent on the homeless or condom machines in elementary schools.

Hollywood demands Reaganomics. Why? Because they know it works. For the rest of us, they want higher taxes, more regulation and an increase in government intervention. Why? Because they see themselves as individual Hugo Chavezs over-seeing “the great unwashed” as government strips us of our liberties.

We’re in an ideological war and appearing as hypocrites when it comes to taxes is a small price to pay if it moves the ball towards a government that saves trees and kills babies, legalizes drugs but outlaws tobacco and trans-fat, and rescues death-row inmates with one hand while unplugging the elderly with the other.

Yesterday morning, on one of the news shows, some lefty Congressman was pimping a bill to end advertising tax deductions for “Big Pharma.” Specifically those commercials that end with a litany of warnings designed to make trial lawyers drool. Think about this: While drug companies perform near-miracles improving quality of life here and around the world, they’re singled out for a historic Congressional attack disallowing advertising as a business expense. But on the same day, an industry that sexualizes our children and undermines an America at war is singled out for a big, fat, sweet tax break.

Hey, it’s good someone got a Reagan-like tax cut in this economy. More power to all the below-the-line folks who will be employed thanks to the trickle down from fat cats like Spielberg. The problem is that those same Spielbergs don’t give a damn about any “below-the-line” folks who work in industries that don’t produce their propaganda.

Her name was Neda. In Farsi, it means “the voice.” True to her name, she loved music; sought freedom; and she’s dead – shot down in the streets by the Iranian regime’s state sanctioned murderers. She must not have died in vain.

Today, Iranians and Americans face a generational chance for freedom – one that ensures a rogue regime’s implosion prevents a nuclear confrontation.

Regrettably, our president’s “post-American” foreign policy presumes talk can thaw the murderous mullahs’ hearts and attain a “grand bargain” for peace in our time; consequently, while Iranians demanded their freedom from a barbarous regime, the president vapidly opined: “It is up to Iranians to make decisions about who Iran’s leaders will be… We respect Iranian sovereignty.”

Then, as the crisis escalated, the president optimistically noted:

“You’ve seen in Iran some initial reaction from the supreme leader that indicates he understands the Iranian people have deep concerns about the election… And my hope is – is that the Iranian people will make the right steps in order for them to be able to express their voices, to express their aspirations.”

Tragically, the supreme leader’s deep concern drove him to step on the throats of pro-democracy demonstrators, like Neda.

Next, on June 20th, the president stated, “The universal rights to assembly and free speech must be respected, and the United States stands with all who seek to exercise those rights.” It was painfully evident just how far behind them he stood: “The last thing that I want to do is to have the United States be a foil for those forces inside Iran who would love nothing better than to make this an argument about the United States.”

With these contradictory statements of support and appeasement, the president returned to square one: “The Iranian people will ultimately judge the actions of their own government. If the Iranian government seeks the respect of the international community, it must respect the dignity of its own people and govern through consent, not coercion.”

In truth, the Iranian people have already judged the regime and found it wonting. The supreme leader, his cleric cronies and their puppet government have never respected the dignity of the Iranian people or governed through consent. This is why the regime stole the election and shoots peaceful, pro-democracy demonstrators. Implying otherwise mocks the Iranians risking and losing their lives for liberty.

As for the claim that American “meddling” in support of the demonstrators plays into the mullahs’ hands, the Iranian regime will claim this regardless, for as our president noted, “That’s what they do.”

Yet, what matters is not what the regime says about America, but what the demonstrators think about America. Presently, brave Iranians watch as our president still holds an open hand to the regime that opened fire on them…that opened fire on Neda. This is the passive, disastrous policy of Jimmy Carter that led to the rise of this rogue regime; not the courageous policy of Ronald Reagan that led to the demise of an evil empire.

The surest, safest termination of Iran’s nuclear weapons program and support of terrorism is to hasten this fanatical tyranny’s collapse by supporting its people’s liberty. Taking its rightful place amongst the community of free nations, a democratic Iran will necessarily realize and reverse the insanity of this terrorist regime’s homicidal obsession with nuclear weapons. Thus, for their liberty and our security, the United States and the world must do everything in our power to further the Iranian demonstrators’ sacred claim to freedom. We know Neda did.

Further, in the grand strategy of our War for Freedom over terrorism, how we aid pro-democracy Iranians’ will remind the world who we are – we are Americans: the revolutionary children of freedom who have lived and died defending our liberty and extending it to the enslaved and oppressed. We will do no less today in support of our Iranian brothers and sisters.

Today, Neda’s voice calls to our consciences and warns that the fate of Iranians’ liberty is entwined with the fate of Americans’ security. We must not miss this generational chance for freedom – again one that ensures a rogue regime’s implosion prevents a nuclear confrontation; and that Neda and all liberty’s martyrs shall not have died in vain. As Americans, we must seize this moment and help Iranians seize their freedom.

That’s what we do.

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Click here “Tehran Scream” video of Neda’s murder. Viewer discretion is advised.