Well I heard the hype and saw the movie. Now it’s time for me to weigh in on the “President Bush as Darth Vader” debate.

When I heard the original accusation made from an article linked to the pages of The Drudge Report, I laughed. President Bush has been compared to a whole slew of historical evildoers, especially in the past couple of years. In quite a few cases, I’ve heard and read opinion commentary from frothy-mouthed liberals claiming he was WORSE than most of those evil historical figures.

But to compare President Bush with Darth Vader? That just drives home the contention I’ve been making for some time now that the hard left really has lost its collective marbles. Either that or they’re REALLY REALLY desperate for some new material. I just have this vision in my head of a bunch of folks from Moveon.org sitting in a meeting, desperate to figure out who or what NEXT to compare the President to…
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DESPERATE RADICAL #1: “How about we compare Bush to Cain who killed his brother Abel out of jealousy?”

DESPERATE RADICAL #2: “Don’t be a dumb&%#! That’s a religious theme, and worse, a judeo-christian one! We hate judeo-christian philosophy more than we hate the President!!!”

DESPERATE RADICAL #1: “Oh yeah, right. Forgot that… Sorry!”

DESPERATE RADICAL LEADER: “The fact is, my friends, we’ve been so busy comparing the President to every reviled historical figure we can think of, we may have run out of reasonable non jude0-christian choices. We need a person or a figure that is well known on an international scale and who is seen universally as ‘the bad guy.’ We have to come up with someone new soon or Soros will cut off our funding!”

DESPERATE RADICAL #1: (Having tuned his boss and group members out out in favor of the local newspaper) “Hey, anyone want to go see the new ‘Star Wars: Revenge of The Sith’ flick this weekend? I hear that we get to see how Anakin becomes Darth Vader! ”

DESPERATE RADICAL LEADER: “What did you just say?”

And the rest, as they say, was history.
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But, seriously, this gets worse (or better, depending upon your perspective). Some have even mentioned that Lucas might have updated some of the scripts to take some potshots at President Bush and to give the movie overall more of an anti-Bush feel.

After seeing the movie, do I think it’s true? I don’t know and I’m not sure I even care.

In my mind, Lucas is doing what so many other producers, directors, and actors are doing; trying to influence the culture in what they deem to be a positive manner. Is it a bad thing to want to place democracy in a good light and offer up warnings as to what can happen to democratic institutions when they give one person or group too much power?

Absolutely not. It’s a good message in fact; and a VERY conservative message to boot!

I think any movie which makes Americans more cautious in terms of the power it grants to their government is a good movie. Our entire system was built with the assumption that government is inherently power-seeking and, therefore, dangerous.

We have a system of checks and balances in this country for a reason… To make sure that no one part of our government ever becomes too powerful. And you had better believe that any government, or any BRANCH of government, for that matter, will eventually grow too powerful if left unchecked.

In the end, it is the American people who have to serve as the ultimate check on government power. Should “we the people” serve our government, or should our government serve us? How much or little should a government do? How much or little CAN a government do?

So, what does any of this have to do with George Lucas who may or may not be comparing President Bush to Darth Vader?

Mainly that it is true that our government could potentially overreach it’s power and authority if we let it happen. At the same time, let’s be reasonable. And, while we’re at it, can we also be a bit more civil?

After all, even if Lucas did not intend to compare Vader and President Bush, many liberals have, and that is just silly to the extreme. Are you really so angry and desperate that you have to compare the President to a movie character? If so, maybe you should wait until the new movie “The Fantastic Four” comes out, then you can compare the President to the character “Dr. Doom.”

As for my take on the movie’s possible slant? As I said earlier, I’m not sure.

I will say this; if there is ONE line in the whole movie that MIGHT be a slap at the President, it would be the line uttered by Obi Wan towards the very end of the movie. He and Anakin are preparing to do battle with one another and Anakin utters this oft-quoted line: “If you’re not with me, you’re my enemy.”

For me, this wasn’t a key line. I’ve heard that same line (or something like it) uttered a thousand times in movies and on television over the years. What made me laugh was the response by Obi Wan: “Only a Sith thinks in absolutes”; at which point, Obi Wan draws his light sabre and prepares to do battle with Anakin the evil absolutist.

I laughed for two reasons. First of all, because, it seemed to me to be a very thinly veiled slap at conservatism in general, if not the President in particular. Liberals love to accuse conservatives of couching our beliefs in terms of moral absolutes, ignoring the grayish nuances of life.

Secondly, I laughed because Obi Wan’s reply was one to make any absolutist proud. As a matter of fact, Obi Wan’s reply was more absolutist in nature than Anakin’s original statment!

Think about it… Anakin makes a very simple statement, not about life in general, but to Obi Wan in particular. “If you are not with me,” he says to his master, “then you are my enemy.” Very clear declaration of intent, don’t you think? “Join me or we duke it out right here,” is Anakin’s message.

So, what does Obi Wan do? Comes back with a univeral principle of his own, but one which is even more absolute than Anakin’s. “Only a Sith thinks in absolutes,” replies Obi Wan. With one sentence, Obi Wan passes judgement, not only on all Siths every where (terribly racist thinking, don’t you agree?), but also on anyone who thinks LIKE a Sith. What Obi Wan is saying is basically, “all Siths think in absolutes and anyone who thinks in absolutes is ‘Sith-like.’”

Wow! A little heavy on the judgementalism, don’t you think? Of course, I’m used to that kind of hypocritical thinking, especially from Hollywood elites. Did it never occur to Lucas, or anyone else making this movie for that matter, to consider the fact that a judgement of any kind requires an assumption of truth?

Apparently not.

But this post has gone on long enough. Let me just end it by stating that I enjoyed “Revenge of The Sith,” but not as much as I had hoped. And it had nothing to do with supposed political messages; I’ve already told you why I have no problem with those kinds of messages. Rather, it was just an average Scifi epic. It had some very bright moments and some not-so-bright moments.

The Star Wars movies as a whole are incredible, and everyone who loves the genre should see them. But they are not epic on the scale of, say, “The Lord of The Rings.” I’ll always love the Star Wars series and I hope that Lucas changes his mind and does the last three pics (episodes 7, 8, and 9). At the same time, I remain strangely dissatified with these latest three pictures. Perhaps Lucas got just a bit too nuanced for this second trilogy? Yes, life is more gray than black and white, but that doesn’t mean that I don’t enjoy escaping it now and then.

David Flanagan
Viewpointjournal.com

No offense to Terry Turner of the Watching Washington blog, but Ron Suskind, former Wall Street Journal reporter, is full of crap! For that matter, so are others in the MSM who think there is some conspiracy theory to “silence the media.”

The problem for liberals is that the media is more democratic now than it ever has been. What was once a medium dominated by liberals has been blown wide open, first by “New Media,” and now by conservative bloggers across the country.

Before the election this past November, the MSM threw everything it had at President Bush. Dan Rather threw his entire career and the reputation of CBS News to the wind in an effort to hurt the President. And now it seems that another formerly reputable member of the MSM, Newsweek, has chosen to make it’s leap into the abyss. This time, however, the cost has been considerably higher.

The Newsweek story, originally published in the “Periscope” section of the mag on May 9, reported that a forthcoming Pentagon investigation was going to reveal that US soldiers desecrated the Quran in an effort to get prisoners to talk. Never mind that it’s SOP for a terrorist to say something like this in order to stir passions, the report itself wound up causing 15 deaths, riots in at least five seperate countries, and who knows how much damage in the form of destroyed vehicles, burned buildings, etc. All on a story that, as it turns out, is not true at all.

Why?!

I think Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit.com nailed this whole thing with a sledgehammer:

Two points: (1) If they had wrongly reported the race of a criminal and produced a lynching, they’d feel much worse — which is why they generally don’t report such things, a degree of sensitivity they don’t extend to reporting on, you know, minor topics like wars; and (2) If a blogger had made a similar mistake, with similar consequences, we’d be hearing about Big Media’s superior fact-checking and layers of editors.

People died, and U.S. military and diplomatic efforts were damaged, because — let’s be clear here — Newsweek was too anxious to get out a story that would make the Bush Administration and the military look bad.

Here’s the thing that makes this so terribly bad in my mind… PEOPLE DIED!!!!

Human beings lost their lives because of Newsweek’s rush to press on something which, they now admit, had not been properly fact-checked. And almost as bad is the fact that the Islamofascists will use this information to try and convince their followers to kill even more people, perhaps even undermining the significant strides that nations have made in that area towards democracy.

And this is precisely the point of my post… Blogs are effective today and have gained respect in such a short space of time, not necessarily because they are all that, but because liberals in the MSM are SO biased, and SO reckless, and SO dead set on turning the clock back to the days when THEY controlled what Americans heard, saw, and read, that they are making us pajama-wearing amateurs look really good.

These folks are pitiful. They are pathetic.

Worse even is the fact that the editors at Newsweek had the unmitigated gall to try and pass this whole thing off as someone else’s fault:

The spark was apparently lit at a press conference held on Friday, May 6, by Imran Khan, a Pakistani cricket legend and strident critic of Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf. Brandishing a copy of that week’s NEWSWEEK (dated May 9), Khan read a report that U.S. interrogators at Guantánamo prison had placed the Qur’an on toilet seats and even flushed one. “This is what the U.S. is doing,” exclaimed Khan, “desecrating the Qur’an.”

So, you see, it’s not the editors at Newsweek who caused this trouble, it’s the radicals who decided to use that information to foment these riots. I’m not saying that Imram Khan is blameless, clearly he used the information, and the resultant violence, to promote his own agenda, but The ACTUAL problem started with Newsweek, not with Khan.

I wonder, when the editors over at Newsweek look down, do they see blood on their hands?

They should.

David Flanagan
Viewpointjournal.com

What do recently crowned DNC leaders Howard Dean (DNC Chair) and Harry Reid (Senate Minority Leader) have in common? Apparently, they both love to “shoot from the lip.” Howard Dean was the first to earn this stylistic distinction during the Democratic Primaries way back in 2003. Senator Reid, on the other hand, began his reign of terror in December of 2004, just before ascending to the Senate Minority Leader post.

The mere fact that Reid was voted in as the new Senate Minority Leader by members of his party says everything about the DNC’s lack of vision and professionalism.

Much of the MSM continues to report — endlessly I might add — that the Republican Party is on an inexorably rightward-slide. But nothing could be farther from the truth.

The fact is, Democratic leaders are the ones on the slide, growing increasingly fringe with each passing year. Senator Reid is just one simple case in point.

Unfortunately, the MSM continues to offer favorable press coverage to DNC leaders in general and Senator Reid in particular. Are DNC leaders moving left? “No,” says the MSM, “they are simply responding to the increasingly radical right-wing GOP agenda, which, among other things, has chosen to champion issues that are central to most Americans.” “Those damned Republicans, cow-towing to the American people like that… Outrageous!”

But I digress.

We were talking about Senator Reid, so, let’s take a look at the litany of Reid gaffes, uttered since December of 2004 even as he was preparing to take the Minority Leader position for his party. Reid has, among other things:

1. Accused Justic Thomas of being an “embarrassment,” saying, among other things, that Justice Thomas cannot write well.
2. Called Fed Reserve Chairman, Alan Greenspan, a “hack” for “urging Congress to deal quickly with the financial problems facing Social Security and Medicare.”
3. Called President Bush a “loser” in front of school children and while the President was on foreign soil no less!
4. Shocked both his fellow Democrats as well as Republicans when he publicly hinted that he may have had illegal access to and was disturbed by the top secret FBI files of one of President Bush’s Appellate Court nominees, Henry Saad.
5. And, even, as reported by Robert Novak in the Chicago Sun-Times today, that he might be behind an unprecendented push to investigate the financial records of every possible Supreme Court nominee!

Never mind the fact that this is the type of leadership I might expect from, say, an Enron executive. Really, next to Reid, Newt Gingrich, [a man Democrats LOVE to hate] looks like Mother Theresa!

Is there some kind of big plan that I’m missing here? Perhaps Senator Reid is the bad cop to Senator Clinton’s good cop? Or maybe the goal is to look so desperate and clueless that people will actually begin to feel sorry for Reid and his fellow Democrats.

Whether a plan or merely a spasm, I’ve got to think that this behaviour is going to cost Democrats in Washington, and cost them big!

Every one of President Bush’s candidates has been rated “Well Qualified” by the ABA, their highest rating. In addition, these judges really have no clear record of bias in any particular direction. Senate Democrats have been filibustering these candidates, not because they are extreme, but because they suspect them of being more pro-life than other candidates; and abortion lobbies will not stand for it.

In Washington, the abortion lobbies have more than just the DNC’s ear, they have them BY the ear! And wherever lobbies like NARAL tell the DNC to go, they go!

I’m not saying that the GOP remains uninfluenced by lobbies, but the DNC has a few lobbies that, in recent decades, have gained a huge influence over their actions. One is the abortion lobby, another is the legal establishment.

Why? Because the GOP is much more moderate on issues relating to abortions and legal reforms.

But here’s the dilemma… In following so closely along with the abortion lobby, the DNC is disrespecting the ABA in a major way. How so? Because the ABA has given every one of the ten filibustered appellate judges it’s highest rating.

So, in a sense, the DNC is doing a “Bork X 10″ with the President’s appellate judge recommendations; doing everything in their power to kill the ten most likely conservative-leaning judges who could one day be recommended for the Supreme Court by President Bush. Everything that Democrats have said in the past regarding the right of the President to get an “up or down vote” on their candidates has been tossed out the window.

At the same time, Democratic leaders are telling those in the legal industry that a recommendation from one of their most respected bodies, the ABA, matters little to them. Is that REALLY a good idea?

I guess for DNC leaders, there is no past (the traditional right to an up or down vote for appellate judges nominated by the President), and there is no future (the 2006 election cycle), there is only the here and now. Democrats in Washington have been given their marching orders by groups like NARAL, “stop those candidates who might, over the next 30 or 40 years, uphold constitutional principles rather than rewrite them (i.e., impose reasonable restrictions upon the abortion industry).

A scary thing, I guess, if you are a liberal and want judges who legislate from the bench. Encouraging, however, for those of us who believe that voters and legislators make law through consensus rather than by judicial fiat.

David Flanagan
Viewpointjournal.com

I’m torn…

On one hand, I’m such a huge scifi geek that the idea of Steven Spielberg doing a remake of the scifi classic “War of The Worlds” with stars like Tom Cruise and Tim Robbins thrills me. Mr. Robbins might be a hopeless liberal, but the guy can act!

On the other hand, do I REALLY want to see another movie with the general theme being the untimely deaths of tens of millions of innocent men, women, and children? I thought the disaster movie craze of the 1970’s was bad… That was NOTHING compared to these past five or ten years! And, these days, it’s just really difficult for me to watch that kind of movie.

Five years ago, when I first became a Dad, strange things began to happen to me. First of all, I began noticing that there really was a lot of crap-ola on television. “Uh oh,” I thought, “how am I going to protect my kids from all of this?”

Part of my solution was to do the opposite of what some family groups have recommended. Where quite a few conservatives downgrade their television and confine their scope only to local channels, or get rid of the thing entirely, I UPGRADED our cable service and am actively locking out any channel I don’t like. That way, I get to keep the channels with the good content and filter out the bad. Yes, I’m paying more for less, but there really is a lot of great programming for kids on cable TV, and I want them to have access to that.

But I digress…

Another strange thing began to happen to me after becoming a Dad… I suddenly became almost hyper-aware of all the terrible things that happen to kids in the world every day. Yes, I knew about it all before, but, for some reason, all of it really began to impact me on more of an emotional level, whereas, before, it was more factual.

My wife even got upset with me recently because, when she tried to tell me something she had heard on the news regarding some children, I cut her off and asked her not to tell me. At first, she was just surprised by my reaction. Which makes sense because, in her mind, she was asking me to take note of an incident so that, ultimately, we could better protect our own children.

In that, she’s absolutely right. But, you know, I just couldn’t deal with it.

I hear almost daily a litany of these kinds of stories on the news… We all do.

We hear about children being kidnapped, raped, murdered, abused, etc., and sometimes it just gets to be too much to bear. I get to the point where I feel that if I hear just one more sad story, I’ll just lose it.

How does that relate to the remake of WOTWs?

Well, about a month or so ago, I was watching one of the early trailers and, in one scene, a bunch of families basically are wiped out by the cold, ruthless aliens. Men, women, children, instantly incinerated as if they never even existed.

And I immediately thought to myself, “if I see that movie, and they have a lot of scenes like that one, I’m going to feel terrible for a long time to come.” Either that, or I’m going to have to shrug it off and treat it like it doesn’t mean anything.

But I don’t want to just shrug it off and, if you ask me, Steven Spielberg doesn’t want me to either.

If I shrug off the violence of the movie, then I have to lessen my sensitivity to human suffering. Yes, the suffering in the movie is all make-believe, but heardening your heart to that which you see in the movie can mean that you harden your heart to REAL human suffering; of which there is much.

Spielberg does not want you to simply shrug off the violence because he WANTS the movie to have an affect. Moviemakers want you to be moved and affected by their work; it’s one of the main reasons why they make films in the first place. And in the case of movies like “Saving Private Ryan,” and “Schindler’s List,” you should be moved!

Films like “Schindler’s List” and “Saving Private Ryan” remind us how bad and how good humanity can be. From the depravity of the Nazis who tried to eradicate an entire culture, to the goodness and bravery of people like Oscar Schindler (Schindler’s List) and Captain John Miller (Saving Private Ryan), who sacrificed everything to do the right thing.

Do you remember in the movie “Schindler’s List” the scene where Oscar Schindler is sitting on his horse, having gone for a brisk and enjoyable ride through the countryside, overlooking a town where the Nazis are rounding up Jews? The Nazis were beating them up, shooting them, looting their homes, brutalizing the women.

Then, Schindler notices a small child, wearing red, walking calmly amidst the chaos. The fact that the movie was shot in black and white made this little girl stand out all the more.

There she was, walking down the street, while death and chaos reigned supreme, and innocents were being slaughtered like cattle. Then she walks out of sight and is not seen again until later in the movie, when Schindler spots a small red bundle of a girl lying dead in pile of human bodies, ready to be either burned or buried in a mass grave.

This is the kind of think Spielberg wants us to remember. And remember we must.

That is because the violence in this movie, and in “Saving Private Ryan” is not gratuitous. It has a purpose and, though devastating to watch, it actually makes us better people to watch it.

But these days, my tolerance for gratuitous violence is at historically low levels. And modern films are better than ever at delivering violent content and messages. I think of movies where the violence is senseless and ceaseless; basically a parade of human carnage. Movies like “American Psycho,” “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre,” and series like “Friday The 13th,” “Nightmare on Elm Street,” the “Alien” series, and on and on and on!

And each movie tries to be more frightening, more violent, and more offensive than the last, just to capture the hearts and minds of the increasingly hardened audience. Not that Spielberg is necessarily taking that approach with “The War of The Worlds,” but, overall, the trend is clear; how many humans can we kill in a single movie?

And I’ve found that, with each passing year, my tolerance for the mass-murder-movie experience grows less and less. Which, in my opinion, is a good thing.

With all that said, the jury’s still out on whether or not I’ll show up for “War of The Worlds.” It is scifi after all.

David Flanagan
Viewpointjournal.com