Posted on 05/15/2005 3:23:55 PM PDT by CHARLITE
Shuffling out of the movie theater last weekend, I emitted a silent scream, frustrated by yet another example of Christianity under assault, the tumescent epic, Kingdom of Heaven, a film so utterly contemptuous of Christians and adoring of Muslims that a leading authority on the Crusades branded it Osama Bin Laden's version of history.
What insane times we live in, one film critic notes. Here we are in the midst of the War on Terror, and all Hollywood can do is continually bash Christianity.
In an industry historically known for coddling communists (the blacklist, Jane Fonda, Stone, Spielberg and others traipsing off to Cuba to glorify Castro) one tends to surrender to the unregenerate status quo. Only through the fortitude of pioneers like Jason Apuzzo and Govindini Murty, whose Liberty Film Festival departs from the script by promoting works of an emerging class of conservative filmmakers, can truthful depictions of history get told.
The opiate of Hollywood fare disguised as high-minded popular culture further dulls the minds of a culture already narcotized by a steady supply of anti-Christian rhetoric. The mainstream media remains complicit, as evidenced by Harpers May issue, exposing Americas Most Powerful Megachurch, and the hate of national religious broadcasters.
America, said Joseph Stalin, is like a healthy body and its resistance is threefold: its patriotism, its morality, and its spiritual life. If we can undermine these three areas, America will collapse from within.
Hollywood and the media certainly play major roles in the subtle campaign to subvert Judeo-Christian traditions, but they pose a lesser threat than the judiciary and activist organizations such as the American Civil Liberties Union and the LAMBDA Legal Defense and Education Fund, who represent its driving force.
In Southern California especially, these activists have targeted the Christian cross with glorious success. Examples abound:
Government Seal Cases: The ACLU Foundation of Southern California threatened to sue the County of Los Angeles and the City of Redlands unless depictions of the cross were removed from their official seals.
War Memorial Cases: The ACLU Foundation of San Diego and Imperial Counties succeeded in its legal effort to dismantle the 43-foot tall Mount Soledad Veterans Memorial Cross, a landmark for more than 50 years in La Jolla. The ACLU Foundation of Southern California was equally successful in obtaining an order dismantling a cross that has been a World War I memorial fixture on Sunrise Rock in the Mojave Desert since 1932.
Though battles have been lost, the war rages on:
In Los Angeles, two lawsuits were filed against the County. The Thomas More Law Center, of which I am affiliated counsel but not in their action, sued the County under an Establishment Clause theory. U.S. District Judge S. James Otero sustained the ACLUs demurrer. The case is now on appeal to the Ninth Circuit.
The Claremont Institute, the Individual Rights Foundation, the Orange County firm of Wagner Lautsch and I sued in Superior Court under state and federal constitutional theories as well as under a taxpayer waste theory pursuant to Code of Civil Procedure 526a. This action has been stayed pending the outcome of the federal appeal. I am also vice-chair of the Committee to Save the Seal Ordinance petition drive, the purpose of which is to place a measure on a June 6, 2006, ballot putting the question whether the cross should remain on the seal to voters.
In Redlands, a similar measure will appear on a November ballot.
In San Diego, the City Council will hear argument on May 17 over whether to consider a transfer of the Mount Soledad property to private owners.
And on April 8, 2005, after an unsuccessful appeal to the Ninth Circuit, and without media fanfare, U.S. District Judge Robert J. Timlin signed an order requiring the immediate dismantling of the Sunrise Rock cross. That case, Buono v. Norton, has drawn the wrath of the American Legion, which is approaching the defeat with a novel solution.
The Legion passed a resolution calling on Congress to amend 42 U.S.C. Section 1988, to bar recovery of attorney fees to the prevailing party in cases filed for the purpose of removing and destroying religious symbols located on public property.
Rees Lloyd, a past commander of a Legion post in Banning, California, and himself a former ACLU attorney, drafted the resolution. This week, U.S. Representative John Hostettler (R-Indiana) is expected to introduce the Public Expression of Religion Act. Its goal is to drive out one incentive to file lawsuits where no one is complaining and no one is actually injured. The ACLU pockets the change even when delegating work to pro bono attorneys.
In a recent Daily Journal news item (5-6-05), attention was drawn to the measure, but in publicizing it, those attorneys who are expected to oppose the measure were classified as civil rights lawyers while those of us who would support it were not.
The report led by stating that supporters hope it will have a chilling effect on civil rights attorneys. Later in the piece, the reporter noted that civil liberties lawyers warn the measure, if successful, would bode ill for anyone tackling an issue unpopular with a member of Congress.
Identified as an advocate for keeping the cross on the [County] seal, I somehow failed to rate the civil rights lawyer tag.
But if I am not a civil rights lawyer, defending the rights of people whose traditions and heritage are under attack, then what? Who really believes that a cross in the desert, on a hilltop or on a seal establishes a government-endorsed religion? Who honestly believes their tax money is working to do any more than to honor war veterans or the communitys heritage?
Communicating the message of religious liberty certainly presents challenges, not the least of which is convincing the media, or Hollywood for that matter, that defending the cross is beneficial to our society and in fact crucial to preserving our civil rights and liberties.
When the ACLU cleverly named itself a civil liberties union in 1920, its idea of civil liberty was hardly consistent with what the U.S. Constitutions framers had in mind.
I am for socialism, wrote ACLU founder Roger Baldwin in 1936. I seek the social ownership of property, the abolition of the propertied class and sole control of those who produce wealth. Communism is the goal.
Communism, a political theory favoring collectivism in a classless society, remains the goal. Imagine a world without religion, the utopian song asks without imagining the tyranny of a classless society.
When U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice Henry Matson Waite composed his analysis of the Establishment Clause in Reynolds v. United States, a Free Exercise case, he relied on Thomas Jeffersons letter to the Danbury (Connecticut) Baptist Association and Jeffersons wall of separation between church and State.
Strange that he would examine the Establishment Clause at all since it was not in issue. Stranger still was his reliance on Jeffersons letter and his attraction to the wall of separation phrase, parroted by judges and liberal activists ever since.
As Justice Waite even observed, Jefferson was in France when the language of the First Amendment was finalized and adopted. It was James Madisons version that we venerate today. It met the views of the advocates of religious freedom, and was adopted, Waite wrote. Jeffersons letter was a peevish response.
When Justice Hugo Black lifted the Reynolds analysis in Everson v. Board of Education (1945), he resisted the urge to compare what other founding fathers thought about the matter. The wall of separation was thus enshrined in our national consciousness and divides us still.
If the ACLU were to support the Hostettler bill, it would go a long way toward proving that they arent profiteers at the expense of people of faith and believers in the sanctity of tradition. But I suspect they will commit all their resources toward winning another tiny battle in their classless and unholy crusade. As Memorial Day approaches, keep it in mind.
[editor's note: normally, we do not reprint articles which appear elsewhere. However, we are making an exception for this one by our contributor William Becker, Jr. It is available only via subscription to readers of the Los Angeles and San Francisco Daily Journals. published for the legal community. We think our readers deserve a chance to see it. The article is copyrighted 2005 by the Daily Journal Corporation.]
But haven't you heard? It's the "right-wing Christians" who are trying to impose THEIR views on everyone. You must not have gotten the memo.
Steven Spielberg is a Communist? Please. No major filmmaker entertains conservative notions more often.
"Use technical decisions of the courts to weaken basic American institutions, by claiming their activities violate civil rights.
Get control of the schools. Use them as transmission belts for socialism and current communist propaganda. Soften the curriculum. Get control of teachers associations. Put the party line in textbooks.
Continue discrediting American culture by degrading all form of artistic expression. An American communist cell was told to "eliminate all good sculpture from parks and buildings," substituting shapeless, awkward and meaningless forms.
Control art critics and directors of art museums. "Our plan is to promote ugliness, repulsive, meaningless art."
Eliminate all laws governing obscenity by calling them "censorship" and a violation of free speech and free press.
Break down cultural standards of morality by promoting pornography and obscenity in books, magazines, motion pictures, radio and television.
Present homosexuality, degeneracy and promiscuity as "normal, natural and healthy."
Infiltrate the churches and replace revealed religion with "social" religion. Discredit the Bible and emphasize the need for intellectual maturity, which does not need a "religious crutch."
Eliminate prayer or any phase of religious expression in the schools on the grounds that it violates the principle of "separation of church and state."
Belittle all forms of American culture and discourage the teaching of American history on the ground that it was only a minor part of "the big picture." Give more emphasis to Russian history since the communists took over. Obliterating the American past, with its antecedents in principles of freedom, liberty and private ownership is a major goal of the communists then and now.
Support any socialist movement to give centralized control over any part of the culture education, social agencies, welfare programs, mental health clinics, etc."
Discredit the family as an institution. Encourage promiscuity and easy divorce.
How many of these are the ACLU fighting for every day? How easy is it to see the destruction of our society and what is at it's root? How many politicians with a (D) next to their name spout similar ideals?
ping!
The ACLU needs to be more widely shown to be the Communist front that it is. It needs to be outlawed before it does more harm to the United States.
on April 8, 2005, after an unsuccessful appeal to the Ninth Circuit, and without media fanfare, U.S. District Judge Robert J. Timlin signed an order requiring the immediate dismantling of the Sunrise Rock cross. That case, Buono v. Norton, has drawn the wrath of the American Legion, which is approaching the defeat with a novel solution.
The Legion passed a resolution calling on Congress to amend 42 U.S.C. Section 1988, to bar recovery of attorney fees to the prevailing party in cases filed for the purpose of removing and destroying religious symbols located on public property.
Rees Lloyd, a past commander of a Legion post in Banning, California, and himself a former ACLU attorney, drafted the resolution.
BUMP
Why did you go to that movie? All the critics called it crap . If you didnt like this movie go to see the one starring jane Fonda, Its crap too.
Pray, tell. Seriously.
FMCDH(BITS)
He may be a social liberal, but Speilberg is a capitalist wunderkind.
Bump for later read
Where does the article describe Spielberg as a Communist?
Yeah. In the pantheon of 'capitalist wunderkinds' like Armand Hammer, and George Soros.
Bingo. That's the point he's making. It's sarcastic.
Char :)
Why? He made his fortune in the free enterprise system but has consistently supported its polar opposite, the socialist/liberal agenda. Spielberg's in good company with the four you named.
America, said Joseph Stalin, is like a healthy body and its resistance is threefold: its patriotism, its morality, and its spiritual life. If we can undermine these three areas, America will collapse from within.
I agree with you what you say against the ACLU, but did Stalin really say this? Where is the source for this quote?
Steven Spirlberg never met a German he didn't want to kill or a Christian value he didn't want to destroy. He is an evil human being. The fact that his films have tanked is another indication of how out of touch this cretin is with mainstream American values.
I don't think Speilberg is to be lumped with Soros et al. He is liberal, but not a hateful: "I know better than you ignorant peons, so you better do as I say" type. He is more of an: "I was once a little person, and in my heart empathize with the little people. I will depict to the world the misery of all the little people (while I live in my five different mansions and a yacht)" type.
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