I don’t
voluntarily go to documentaries; although when I see one, I’m
usually stunned by the information presented by the filmmaker. Further,
Michael Moore poisoned the waters with Fahrenheit 9/11, which gave
way to Shut Up and Sing (the story of the Dixie Chicks’ struggle
to regain their footing after insulting the President at an overseas
concert) and then An Inconvenient Truth. President bashing conspiracy
theorists were ruling the roost. At least, for the first time, people
were able to say they could name a film being nominated for Best
Documentary at the Oscars.
I recently re-read Michael Crichton’s State of Fear, a thriller
about the agenda of the proponents of Global Warming. This book
shot down the myths about our “ecological crisis” two
and a half years before Al Gore tried to warn us about it. The timing
of reading this book, and seeing Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed
with Ben Stein was great. The overall theme of Expelled and Crichton’s
novel is the same. If you question consensus science, you are laughed
at, ridiculed and in some extreme cases, ruined. Let’s remember
that at one point, it was the consensus of the smartest people in
the room that the Earth was flat. Stein explores a random, disconnected
group of professors, physicists, astronomers and scientists who
have posed the question… what if Darwin was wrong?
If you don’t know him, Ben Stein is a comic book figure of
a man. If his name sounds at all familiar, it’s because he
had a cheesy game show called Win Ben Stein’s Money on Comedy
Central. He is a contributor to CBS Sunday Morning, a news “magazine”
styled program. He is a graduate of Yale Law School and was formerly
a speech writer for Presidents Nixon and Ford. If you recognize
him as being the deadpan pitchman for the watery, itchy eye reliever,
Clear Eyes, then you will immediately know him as the scene stealing
economics teacher. Can anyone name the movie in which Mr. Stein
stole the scene? Anyone? Anyone?
My parent’s generation, while in their enlightened college
experience in the 1960’s, was the “question authority”
crowd. They taught me, “never to trust anyone over 30.”
Have you ever noticed how indignant these folks become when you
now question their authority? With Darwinists (as well as the Global
Warming gang), it seems like there is, “our side of the debate,”
and everyone else who is, “ignorant, ill-informed, bible thumping,
stupid, wrong and worst of all conservative, right-wing republicans!”
Both Stein and Crichton arrive at the same eerie precaution. In
the early 1900’s there was a global scientific based movement
known as Eugenics. Leading U.S. scientists argued in favor of two
things. Removing the mentally handicapped and the infirmed from
our population, and breeding only our healthiest humans will create
a “better” human being. The rest, as they say, is History.
My God, I hope we have learned to raise our voices in question.
Go see Expelled; find out which side of the argument you are on.
