Voice in the Wilderness

Driving home from an after work run at Town Lake, I heard the press conference with President Bush and Supreme Court nominee John Roberts.

I was shocked at the fawning coverage I heard on the usually liberal ABC News Radio, both during the newsbreak and in the talking head chatter after the press conference. “Well liked”, “intelligent”, “Senate Democrats….had warm things to say”. I don't know a whole lot about Judge Roberts yet, but Hugh Hewitt and various RedState.org posts say he's pretty bright, well known and liked in the DC legal establishment, has friends on both sides of the aisle and probably deserving of the nice things being said about him.

This is odd. Why are the Dems and the press being so nice? I can understand that they might not want to appear as harsh or unhinged as usual when lots of people are paying attention. But I expected at least some rhetorical seeds planted hinting at Judge Roberts’ alleged extremism, out-of-the-mainstream values, or other nastiness.

I wonder if some type of backroom deal was struck similar to the public compromise by the “Gang of 7” last May, where the Dems won a “filibuster-at-will” pass in exchange for allowing three of the President’s judicial nominees to get an up-or-down vote. That is, Senate Democrats may have said, ‘you can have this one, but the next Supreme Court nominee had better be a liberal (sometimes referred to in the press as “moderate”) or we’ll filibuster’.

Another possible explanation is that the D’s were fooled by the media buzz surrounding other potential nominees or were caught off-guard by the relatively late announcement of a televised, prime time press conference. Thus, they did not have their talking points ready to blast fax or spam to key, media allies.

Maybe I’m reading too much into one press outlet's reaction, but all this joining hands to sing kumbuya doesn’t quite sit right with me. Keep watching……

Alien Annihilation and Judicial Jackboots;
Two Paths to Control

“Neither do men live or die in vain,” intones Morgan Freeman at the end of Steve Spielberg’s latest offering, War of the Worlds. It is comforting to know that the producers of WotW think there is some type of meaning to life, but it is not clear what that meaning is after 116 minutes of frenetic desperation and close quarters cinematography.

Spielberg’s camerawork borrows heavily from Saving Private Ryan, putting the audience at the ground level with the actors, ebbing and flowing with them on the tides of great events. Spielberg’s storytelling craft is sure, but the story being told is a bit unclear.

What is WotW about? Spielberg’s other space alien projects, Close Encounters of the 3^rd Kind and ET: The Extra-Terrestrial, were full of beneficent, interplanetary messiahs, bestowing frail humanity with healing, companionship and visions of significance. Now, aliens alternately zap, capture, or despoil hapless humans. What happened? As Kevin Miller at HollywoodJesus.com postulates, it may be a reflection of the times, with faceless, nihilistic aliens threatening us for real in the War on Islamic fascism.

Or maybe Mr. Spielberg is subtly commenting on red state voters exercising electoral power over blue states. When first alien tripod appears, it happens right in front of a church building, seemingly springing forth from the House of Christian Worship. The ungainly tripods then go on to wreak havoc in New Jersey, New York, and Massachusetts, three big time Democrat states. Whatever the big questions are, they are left unexplored in favor of the flight of the Ferriers.

Though I still have trouble visualizing him as a New Jersey dockworker, Tom Cruise adroitly plays Ray Ferrier. He is the everyman protagonist, relying on his wits and the unseen hand of Providence to ferry his children, the rays of light in his drab life, to safety.

Spielberg masterfully envelops the audience in the story line by interweaving familiar antagonisms, novel peril, and frantic, hand-held camera work. Through quick thinking, Ray commandeers what seems to be the Holy Grail for the harried populace: a minivan that works. Alas, it is lost to the hopeless avarice of the masses and the Ferriers are left with just the clothes on their back and each other.

Presented with what looks like a blessing in Harlan Ogilvy, played by Tim Robbins, Ray and Rachel soon find the unstable Ogilvy just another chimera of hope (Ironically “Harlan Ogilvy” is an anagram for “Holy Grail Van”). Borrowing thematic and cinematic elements from Jurassic Park and Night of the Living Dead, the cellar sequence is taut and engrossing.

The emotional center of the story is the protective nature in Ray that emerges along with the tripods. Befallen by strife, both family and civil, and mechanized terrors, Ray steadfastly strives to save his children’s’ lives and innocence. It is interesting that Ray always tries to protect the cherubic Rachel, played by Dakota Fanning, not only from bodily harm, but harmful images. Real life dads should be so vigilant in protecting their daughters’ bodies and souls.

Spielberg unintentionally shows the true face of secular humanism in the alien invaders. The three-legged marauders show complete disregard for the value of human life, reducing people to ray-gun target practice or fertilizer for their fiendish garden plots. So, too, do abortionists and the embryonic stem cell cabal see unborn children as a field for exploitation. So, too, does the euthanasia crowd see the old and weak, and their vulnerable family members, as an opportunity for profit and fashionable service to the humanist cause. But give the aliens credit: at least they do not dress up their destruction in politically correct propaganda.

Speaking of politically correct propaganda, surely more will be heard in the near future emanating from Washington DC, and bouncing around the mainstream media and leftist blogosphere. I am speaking, of course, of the next war of the worldviews over the Supreme Imperial Court.

Since the Imperial Court decided to get into the business of legislating, these confirmation hearings have become a much more pitched battle than they should be. If judges would just interpret the law instead of dreaming up fanciful “penumbras” arguments and citing foreign case law as precedents, this confirmation business would be a scholarly, but little noticed affair. Instead, judges are now subjected to the worst character assassination and media manipulation the Beltway echo chamber can dish out. (Well, at least conservative judicial nominees are. Liberal judges have gotten off easy by comparison.)

As with the Terri Schiavo debacle, the upcoming Supreme Court nominee hearings will bring into sharp relief the conflicting worldviews fighting for dominance in our institutions and culture. On one side is the Judeo-Christian worldview, the dominant thought system of the Founding Fathers and the fount of our freedoms. On the other is the secular humanist worldview, with its various handmaidens like “progressivism” or “post-modernism”. Secular humanists believe:

• God is not real
• Humankind is the final arbiter of right and wrong
• There is no right or wrong except what is defined at the moment by the people with the most authority, influence, or power
• Nominally in “moral relativism”, but really believe that their set of absolutes are better than any others
• Self-actualization is the purpose of life. There is no transcendent meaning in life; only what people think they can define for themselves (as in, Adolf Hitler defined his meaning in life by killing millions of Jewish people).

This lovely set of ideas is the seedbed of communism, fascism, Nazism, and other man-made utopias, fertilized by the blood of millions. Naturally, policies derived from the principles above (like abortion and same-sex marriage), tend not to fare too well at the ballot box. So, the last redoubt of secular humanists is the courts. They will never willingly relinquish this power.

While the US Armed forces fight to protect our freedom abroad, the country is now faced with the battle for our freedom at home. Will we restore the judiciary to its true, interpretive role? Or will we sink further into the abyss of unaccountable, robe-clad elitism?

Postscript:
Follow the confirmation battles with these resources:

• ConfirmThem
• SCOTUS blog
• National Review’s BenchMemos