Director Andrew Niccol’s “In Time” opens with  a lot of promise and no small amount of tension, thanks to a terrific premise. Unfortunately, the narrative sputters and misfires in the second-half, but as a political allegory, by design or accident, we are treated to a damning look at what our culture and country might look like should Obama and his fellow leftists continue to prevail.

The year is 2161 and some years ago, due to fear of over-population, scientists not only discovered a genetic cure for aging, they implanted a clock in the forearm of every newborn that counts down the years, hours, minutes, and seconds you have left before you die. No one ages a day after they turn twenty-five, but once that birthday hits, you’re given a year to live. That is, unless you’re able to earn more time. Where Will Salas (Justin Timberlake) lives, a working class ghetto called Dayton,  your choices are limited to manual labor, begging, and crime.

Will’s not alone, either. In Dayton, the average person won’t survive the day unless they can earn more time. Here, a cup of coffee costs you four minutes, a bus ride two hours, and the rent a couple of weeks. Time is this nation’s currency, and with the cost of living always going up, it’s a hand-to-mouth existence for the half-million or so residents who live with their mortality constantly hanging over them and in the knowledge that something as mundane as missing a bus can mean you count down to zero and die on the spot.

The whole world isn’t like this; in New Greenwich, for instance, life is good. The average citizen has 347 years banked (some have millions) and most live in the kind of opulence we see today in Beverly Hills. This power and wealth is something these very few hang onto through control and manipulation. For instance, it costs years to cross the roadblocks that separate Dayton from Greenwich, and with the use of storm trooper-like police officers called Timekeepers (and the criminals they let run wild), no one in the ghetto is allowed to improve their station in life or to bank any real time.

As the saying goes, for one to be immortal, many must die.

Through a truly selfless act, a humane act in a place where humanity is in short supply, Will ends up with  a century and change from a man who tells him the truth about how the system is rigged to ensure the population growth is kept under control. It’s not that coffee and bus fare is more expensive today than it was yesterday due to the laws of supply and demand, it’s that those prices are manipulated in order to create invisible ripple effects that that keep the right number of people dying.

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Driven by this knowledge, his newfound century, and a personal tragedy, Will can afford to make his way into New Greenwich, which he does with the intention of blowing the lid off the whole thing. It’s among the profanely rich that Will meets a Time Baron’s daughter, Sylvia (Amanda Seyfried), and it’s also here that what had been a tense, fascinating and smart plot goes completely off the rails.

A disappointing plot, though, does not change the fact that “In Time” is a shockingly conservative film. The filmmakers might have thought they were making some kind of statement about the top 1%, and I suppose some could argue that “In Time” is an indictment of capitalism, but there is no capitalism in this world — just a godless society, genetically manufactured to control a population-growth problem (something only the left sees as a virtue) that doesn’t appear to exist. In fact, for a story that takes place in an urban environment, the lack of people is a noticeable part of the barren landscape.

What we are presented with is a two-tiered society where the ultra-elite live like kings while the rest are given no opportunity to better themselves. That’s not capitalism; that’s socialism. It’s the monstrous vision of Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger’s eugenics institutionalized. In other words, this is big government, left-wing social-engineering personified, where oppressive equality is enforced by an elite few who don’t hold themselves to the rules they create.

Moreover, the dignity of the individual means nothing here, and God has been scientifically engineered out of the equation. Good heavens, the super rich even quote Darwin to justify their depraved indifference and the story presents immortality as something unnatural. In fact, the only sign of God that exists is in the form of a squalid mission in Dayton that selflessly gives LIFE to others.

“In Time” might not be a very good film, but if you want a peek into the mind’s eye of Barack Obama and his army of secular leftists who worship at the feet of oppressive equality but see themselves enforcing this “virtue” from the Hollywood Hills, this is about as close as you’ll ever come.

“In Time” is available at Amazon.

Early feminists fought against the centuries-old image of a “woman on a pedestal.” Gloria Steinem (she of the “a woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle” who in later years ended up getting married anyway) once said, “A pedestal is as much a prison as any small, confined space.” I suppose a bra is also a small, confined space, which might explain the bra burnings of the 1960s. But the early feminists had a point – to a point. If a woman wants to be put on a pedestal and admired and adored, fine. But if she doesn’t, she should have the right to do with her life as she chooses. She should be free to pursue any vocation for which she is qualified, either as a single or married woman, children or no children.

But one of the problems with the new feminism was the annoying little fact that children could get in the way of this brave new world. Having to either stay at home with the little tykes or find daycare for them – not to mention all of the discomfort and disfiguration that comes with pregnancy itself – sure put a damper on Gloria Steinem’s idea of a “liberated woman” being “one who has sex before marriage and a job after.” Unbridled sex does, after all, have consequences. And so, according to historian Elaine Tyler May, birth control was “an important tool to gain control over their lives.”

May touts the contributions of Margaret Sanger, whose group eventually became known as Planned Parenthood, conveniently ignoring – as many do – Sanger’s devotion to eugenics. Sanger spoke of sterilizing those “unfit” to contribute to the gene pool, a group which included not only blacks and other ethnic minorities but, according to  Sanger associate Dr. Harry Laughlin, the “shiftless, ignorant, and worthless class of antisocial whites of the South.” What a classy group of people.

Margaret Sanger: eugenicist and racist.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not against safe, legitimate birth control methods. But when tooting the horn of the likes of Margaret Sanger, we need to be honest about what really drove her pursuit of birth control for women, just as we should be honest about what drives the abortion mills of Planned Parenthood – profit. And quelle surprise – Planned Parenthood as we know it really came into its own in the 1960s.

In a nutshell: True feminists of the time felt that you could only be a feminist if you rebelled against the natural workings of your body and eschewed marriage and motherhood  for a “higher cause.” There are still many of the old guard around today. But the times, they are a changin’.

Fast forward to 2010. Many would say the fight for equal rights has pretty much been won. Girls can dream of going to college and becoming airline pilots, electrical and biological engineers, teachers, doctors – the list is almost endless. In fact, more women graduate with college degrees than men – perhaps due in part to more focus being put on girls than boys in school to “make up for” previous inequality and also what is being called the feminization of society (what Rush Limbaugh calls “chickification”).

And for years, the entertainment industry has done its part for the last 20 or 30 years by portraying men as bumbling but lovable fools who wouldn’t be where they are if it weren’t for the very attractive, smart-as-a-whip women they somehow managed to marry. Television’s Home Improvement and King of Queens are two of the more recent examples. And, of course, commercials like this one. So even if the woman did commit the sin of marrying, she always had the redeeming quality of having the upper hand in just about any situation.

Dopey husband, brilliant wife.

Earlier, I said that unbridled sex without birth control or easy access to abortion has the consequence of pregnancy and childbirth. Today, unbridled sex with birth control and easy access to abortion combined with an increasingly “anything goes” attitude in society and pop culture gets girls who have as their role models the like of Paris Hilton, the Kardashian sisters, Snooki from MTV’s Jersey Shore and various other “celebrities.” Their claim to fame is not similar to being the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean or receiving the Nobel Prize for pioneering work in radiation, but for on-camera antics like tanning, catfights, and puking after binge drinking, and having their “sex tapes” released to the press for quick and easy profit. Too many are the next target of the creator of the Girls Gone Wild video series, which shows images of drunken girls taking off their tops and making out with one another.

We also have the likes of Lady Gaga, who makes Madonna look like a choir girl – almost. And those who begin their careers as wholesome young things (Britney and Jamie Lynn Spears, Christina Aguilera, Lindsey Lohan, Miley Cyrus) often decide that “growing up” must mean “giving out” – figuratively speaking in some cases, not so figuratively in others.

As the mother of two girls, one just starting college this year and the other starting high school, I find these so-called role models severely lacking.

Writing for Macleans, Anne Kingston also notes this disturbing trend. As those she interviews see it, the fight for women’s equality is not over but has taken a giant step backward because of something called “enlightened sexism”: where women are not only “empowered” by overtly flaunting their sexuality, but are also obsessed with getting married.

Certainly this new trend in the entertainment media, which exploits this so-called sexual empowerment for fun and profit, is partially to blame. But what about the parents? Where are they?

Sure there are the mothers quoted in Anne Kingston’s article who are upset about this trashy turn of events. Unfortunately, there are plenty of others who are pushing the trend. I was in TJ Maxx some time ago and heard two women talking, excited because the store was finally carrying the tacky Juicy Couture clothing line. Yet I had to wonder – were they excited because they could buy it for their children or were they excited for themselves? Just a couple of weeks ago, I saw an older, heavyset woman at the mall who was with a boy who looked like he might be her grandson. She was wearing a tight t-shirt with the word Juicy across the front and it was painfully obvious that she wasn’t wearing a bra. Nothing like mutton dressed like lamb a la Absolutely Fabulous.

Blech.

What’s funny on TV is scary in real life.

Then there’s the recent story about skinny jeans for toddlers. Why anyone would put their two- or three-year-old in an item of clothing usually connected with sexuality is beyond me. But then we have shows like TLC’s Toddlers & Tiaras, where some think “beauty pageant stage parents make Jon and Kate Gosselin look like Ward and June Cleaver.” There are notorious stage parents like Dina Lohan, who has done her best to launch her own career on the back of her daughter, nearly sucking her dry.

Double blech.

My take? The left tried its hand at social engineering in the name of equality – but rather than focusing on equal rights in education and the workplace,  ended up giving women the same “rights” as men in the arena of sex with no consequences. Religion and morality were for squares, no matter what Huey Lewis might have said. Yet it has backfired. Girls still like to look pretty and still like to attract boys. However, now they don’t have to worry about public stigma for public misbehavior. A girl who would once be labeled a skank for certain behavior is now celebrated. Be famous for being a no-talent party girl with an expanding rap sheet! No need to “settle with a man just to have that child.” Go back to the creep who used your face for a punching bag. Turn yourself into a literal caricature through plastic surgery. You deserve it.

You’ve come a long way, baby. Here’s hoping you can find your way home again.

Lorraine Hansberry

Recently the Secretary of State appeared before the House Foreign Affairs Committee and confirmed it is the Administration’s goal of including abortion as an integral element of “reproductive health care” provided by the United States. In this context, I had the opportunity to raise concerns about her words of praise for Margaret Sanger, the notorious American racist who founded Planned Parenthood and advocated tirelessly for eugenic policies to eliminate persons she deemed inferior and unworthy to live.

Today, when twice as many Black children are eliminated through abortion than are born, Lena Younger’s stern words to her son, “We a people who give children life, not who destroys them,” evoke the strength, pride, and hope that characterized the soaring spirit of the civil rights movement. Her words should be lifted on billboards and sung through every corner of the world, but little mention is made of her stirring affirmation of life.

Instead, we continue to hear repugnant assaults on the dignity of minority populations reminiscent of Margaret Sanger, most recently from none other than Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.  I was shocked to learn that in a recent interview with the New York Times, Justice Ginsburg commented that: “Frankly I had thought that at the time Roe was decided, there was concern about population growth and particularly growth in populations that we don’t want to have too many of.  So that Roe was going to be then set up for Medicaid funding for abortion.”

Reflect for a minute on that: “populations that we don’t want to have too many of.”

Incredibly, it appears eugenics is alive and well in our nation’s highest court.

This reprehensible statement deserves a strong public rebuke. It is unfathomable to me that today, a Justice of the United States Supreme Court would hold and admit to such a patently genocidal sentiment.  Perhaps it is a sign of the times, a reflection of a society desperate for meaning.

Read A Raisin in the Sun. I think anyone can find that meaning in the words of Lena Younger, the great literary champion of the human spirit. We was going backwards ’stead of forwards–talking ’bout killing babies and wishing each other was dead…When it gets like that in life–you just got to do something different, push on out and do something bigger….” The “something bigger,” Lena’s great selfless gift of hope and love to her family, saved her grandchild. We, too, must aspire to something bigger. And I believe that we are big enough, and loving enough, as a nation to embrace the mother and her unborn child and truly care for life. It’s what Lena Younger would have done.