The $53 Trillion Asteroid

By Glenn Beck, CNN (Glenn Beck is on Headline News nightly at 7 and 9 p.m. ET.)

NEW YORK (CNN) -- Let's say a giant asteroid was headed toward Earth right now and experts say it has a good chance of ending civilization as we know it. Let's also say that we've known about this asteroid for years but even as it gets closer and closer our leaders do nothing.

"Don't worry," they tell us, "The next administration will figure something out."

With the future of our country at stake, would Americans really sit back and tolerate that kind of inaction? Of course not -- we'd be sharpening our pitchforks and demanding answers.

Well there may not be a space asteroid heading toward us, but there is an economic one -- and the threat to our future is just as severe.

You might think that I'm talking about the recession (sorry: potential recession) or credit crisis, but I'm thinking bigger. Much, much bigger.

Let me give you three numbers that will put this economic asteroid into perspective: $200 billion, $14.1 trillion, and $53 trillion.

Ø$200 billion is the approximate total amount of write-downs announced so far as a result of the current credit crisis.

Ø$14.1 trillion is the size of the entire economy.

ØAnd $53 trillion is (drum roll please) the approximate size of this country's bill for the Social Security and Medicare promises we've made.

While no one will ever mistake me for Alan Greenspan, it seems to me that the third number is quite a bit larger than the other two. It also seems very few people care.

According to the latest Social Security and Medicare Trustees report (and I use that term loosely since it has the word "trust" in it) released earlier this week, the economic asteroid will first make impact in the year 2019 when Medicaid becomes insolvent.

Only an immediate 122 percent increase in Medicare taxes and a 26 percent increase in Social Security taxes can prevent (or delay) its impact.

Realizing that Americans have become pretty much numb to these kinds of ridiculous sounding proposals, U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson tried to up the ante this week. "Without change," he said, "rising costs will drive government spending to unprecedented levels, consume nearly all projected federal revenues, and threaten America's future prosperity."

Now, I know we're all worried about important sounding things that none of us understand, like CDO's, SIV's, and Credit Default Swaps, but our Treasury Secretary just said? "Rising costs will ... consume nearly all projected federal revenues ..."

Translation: Every single tax dollar that is sent to Washington will be used to pay for just these two programs.

That means no money is left for anything else. Nothing! No Department of Defense or Homeland Security, no Department of Energy, no Department of Justice, no Environmental Protection Agency, no Internal Revenue Service. Actually, knowing our government, they'd probably keep the IRS going.

Of course, none of this is exactly breaking news. Our leaders have known about this rapidly approaching asteroid for years now and they've done nothing but debate it. At the same time, I'm a realist. I understand that this stuff is "the third rail of politics," but our leaders' negligence on this issue is damn near criminal. No, correction, it is criminal.

But part of the problem with this issue is that numbers followed by 12 zeroes aren't relatable to the average American. Try this on for size.

A million seconds is 12 days. A billion seconds is 32 years. A trillion seconds is 32,000 years. And 53-trillion seconds? 1.7 million years.

In an article that will appear in an upcoming issue of my magazine Fusion (www.glennbeck.com) former Comptroller General of the United States David Walker tries a different tactic. He writes that our unfunded promises translate into "an IOU of around $455,000 per American household."

(In my new book How to Prosper During the Coming Bad Years in the 21st Century, I have devoted Chapter 2 to David Walker’s forecast of 52-trillion in unfunded liabilities. HJR)

Wow. Does the size of our debt hit home now?

The America that I know doesn't sit around waiting for someone to rescue it from disaster. Besides, who do we expect to swoop in and save the day? Congress? The president? Please -- they're not only the ones who put the asteroid into space; they've also been making it bigger with irresponsible spending on everything from prescription drugs to billions in rebate checks and bailouts.

Bruce Willis and Tommy Lee Jones? They're more likely to be on Social Security than to save it.

And that leaves only us: We the People. Like every other crisis we face, we must save ourselves. But how?

Be honest, no matter what side of the political aisle you're on, it's obvious that our financial deficit is dwarfed only by the deficit of trust in our leaders.

I'm willing to sacrifice, but not when I believe that our leaders will do nothing but make the asteroid even larger.

Bush Claims More Powers Than King George III

Tuesday, 27 May 2008, 1:58 pm
Press Release: Massachusetts School Of Law

MASSACHUSETTS SCHOOL OF LAW AT ANDOVER

Bush Claims More Powers Than King George III,
Constitutional Scholar David Adler Contends

The Bush administration has arrogated powers to itself that the British people even refused to grant King George III at the time of the Revolutionary War, an eminent political scientist says.

“No executive in the history of the Anglo-American world since the Civil War in England in the 17th century has laid claim to such broad power,” said David Adler, a prolific author of articles on the U.S. Constitution. “George Bush has exceeded the claims of Oliver Cromwell who anointed himself Lord Protector of England.”

Adler, a professor of political science at Idaho State University at Pocatello, is the author of “The Constitution and the Termination of Treaties”(Taylor & Francis), among other books, and some 100 scholarly articles in his field. Adler made his comments comparing the powers of President Bush and King George III at a conference on “Presidential Power in America” at the Massachusetts School of Law, Andover, April 26th.

Adler said, Bush has “claimed the authority to suspend the Geneva Convention, to terminate treaties, to seize American citizens from the streets to detain them indefinitely without benefit of legal counseling, without benefit of judicial review. He has ordered a domestic surveillance program which violates the statutory law of the United States as well as the Fourth Amendment.”

Adler said the authors of the U.S. Constitution wrote that the president “shall take care to faithfully execute the laws of the land” because “the king of England possessed a suspending power” to set aside laws with which he disagreed, “the very same kind of power that the Bush Administration has claimed.”

Former Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez, Adler said, repeatedly referred to the President’s “override” authority, “which effectively meant that the Bush Administration was claiming on behalf of President Bush a power that the English people themselves had rejected by the time of the framing of the Constitution.”

Adler said the Framers sought an “Administrator in Chief” that would execute the will of Congress and the Framers understood that the President, as Commander-in-Chief “was subordinate to Congress.” The very C-in-C concept, the historian said, derived from the British, who conferred it on one of their battlefield commanders in a war on Scotland in 1639 and it “did not carry with it the power over war and peace” or “authority to conduct foreign policy or to formulate foreign policy.”

That the C-in-C was subordinate to the will of Congress was demonstrated in the Revolutionary War when George Washington, granted that title by Congress, “was ordered punctually to respond to instructions and directions by Congress and the dutiful Washington did that,” Adler said.

Adler said that John Yoo, formerly of the Office of Legal Counsel, wrote in 2003 that the President as C-in-C could authorize the CIA or other intelligence agencies to resort to torture to extract information from suspects based on his authority. However, Adler said, the U.S. Supreme Court in 1804 in Little vs. Barreme affirmed the President is duty-bound to obey statutory instructions and reaffirmed opinion two years later in United States vs. Smith.

“In these last eight years,” Adler said, “we have seen presidential powers soar beyond the confines of the Constitution. We have understood that his presidency bears no resemblance to the Office created by the Framers… This is the time for us to demand a return to the constitutional presidency. If we don’t, we will have only ourselves to blame as we go marching into the next war as we witness even greater claims of presidential power.”

The Massachusetts School of Law is a non-profit educational institution purposefully dedicated to providing an affordable, quality legal education to minorities, immigrants, and students from economic backgrounds that would not otherwise be able to afford to attend law school and enter the legal profession.

On Conscription

Say No to Conscription

Mr. PAUL. Mr. Speaker, I hope my colleagues who believe that the current war on terrorism justifies violating the liberty of millions of young men by reinstating a military draft will consider the eloquent argument against conscription in the attached speech by Daniel Webster. Then-representative Webster delivered his remarks on the floor of the House in opposition to a proposal to institute a draft during the War of 1812. Webster's speech remains one of the best statements of the Constitutional and moral case against conscription.

Despite the threat posed to the very existence of the young republic by the invading British Empire, Congress ultimately rejected the proposal to institute a draft. If the new nation of America could defeat what was then the most powerful military empire in the world without a draft, there is no reason why we cannot address our current military needs with a voluntary military.

Webster was among the first of a long line of prominent Americans, including former President Ronald Reagan and Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, to recognize that a draft violates the fundamental principles of liberty this country was founded upon.

In order to reaffirm support for individual liberty and an effective military, I have introduced H. Con. Res. 368, which expresses the sense of Congress against reinstating a military draft. I urge my colleagues to read Daniel Webster's explanation of why the draft is incompatible with liberty government and cosponsor H. Con. Res. 368.

ON CONSCRIPTION (By Daniel Webster)

During America's first great war, waged against Great Britain, the Madison Administration tried to introduce a conscription bill into Congress. This bill called forth one of Daniel Webster's most eloquent efforts, in a powerful opposition to conscription. The speech was delivered in the House of Representatives on December 9, 1814; the following is a condensation:

This bill indeed is less undisguised in its object, and less direct in its means, than some of the measures proposed. It is an attempt to exercise the power of forcing the free men of this country into the ranks of an army, for the general purposes of war, under color of a military service. It is a distinct system, introduced for new purposes, and not connected with any power, which the Constitution has conferred on Congress.

But, Sir, there is another consideration. The services of the men to be raised under this act are not limited to those cases in which alone this Government is entitled to the aid of the militia of the States. These cases are particularly stated in the Constitution--``to repel invasion, suppress insurrection, or execute the laws.''

The question is nothing less, than whether the most essential rights of personal liberty shall be surrendered, and despotism embraced in its worst form. When the present generation of men shall be swept away, and that this Government ever existed shall be a matter of history only, I desire that it may then be known, that you have not proceeded in your course unadmonished and unforewarned. Let it then be known, that there were those, who would have stopped you, in the career of your measures, and held you back, as by the skirts of your garments, from the precipice, over which you are plunging, and drawing after you the Government of your Country.

Conscription is chosen as the most promising instrument, both of overcoming reluctance to the Service, and of subduing the difficulties which arise from the deficiencies of the Exchequer. The administration asserts the right to fill the ranks of the regular army by compulsion. It contends that it may now take one out of every twenty-five men, and any part or the whole of the rest, whenever its occasions require. Persons thus taken by force, and put into an army, may be compelled to serve there, during the war, or for life. They may be put on any service, at home or abroad, for defense or for invasion, according to the will and pleasure of Government. This power does not grow out of any invasion of the country, or even out of a state of war. It belongs to Government at all times, in peace as well as in war, and is to be exercised under all circumstances, according to its mere discretion. This, Sir, is the amount of the principle contended for by the Secretary of War (James Monroe).

Is this, Sir, consistent with the character of a free Government? Is this civil liberty? Is this the real character of our Constitution? No, Sir, indeed it is not. The Constitution is libeled, foully libeled. The people of this country have not established for themselves such a fabric of despotism. They have not purchased at a vast expense of their own treasure and their own blood a Magna Carta to be slaves. Where is it written in the Constitution, in what article or section is it contained, that you may take children from their parents, and parents from their children, and compel them to fight the battles of any war, in which the folly or the wickedness of Government may engage it? Under what concealment has this power lain hidden, which now for the first time comes forth, with a tremendous and baleful aspect, to trample down and destroy the dearest rights of personal liberty? Sir, I almost disdain to go to quotations and references to prove that such an abominable doctrine has no foundation in the Constitution of the country. It is enough to know that that instrument was intended as the basis of a free Government, and that the power contended for is incompatible with any notion of personal liberty. An attempt to maintain this doctrine upon the provisions of the Constitution is an exercise of perverse ingenuity to extract slavery from the substance of a free Government. It is an attempt to show, by proof and argument, that we ourselves are subjects of despotism, and that we have a right to chains and bondage, firmly secured to us and our children, by the provisions of our Government.

The supporters of the measures before us act on the principle that it is their task to raise arbitrary powers, by construction, out of a plain written charter of National Liberty. It is their pleasing duty to free us of the delusion, which we have fondly cherished, that we are the subjects of a mild, free and limited Government, and to demonstrate by a regular chain of premises and conclusions, that Government possesses over us a power more tyrannical, more arbitrary, more dangerous, more allied to blood and murder, more full of every form of mischief, more productive of every sort and degree of misery, than has been exercised by any civilized Government in modern times.

But it is said, that it might happen that any army would not be raised by voluntary enlistment, in which case the power to raise armies would be granted in vain, unless they might be raised by compulsion. If this reasoning could prove any thing, it would equally show, that whenever the legitimate powers of the Constitution should be so badly administered as to cease to answer the great ends intended by them, such new powers may be assumed or usurped, as any existing administration may deem expedient. This is a result of his own reasoning, to which the Secretary does not profess to go. But it is a true result. For if it is to be assumed, that all powers were granted, which might by possibility become necessary, and that Government itself is the judge of this possible necessity, then the powers of Government are precisely what it chooses they should be.

The tyranny of Arbitrary Government consists as much in its means as in its end; and it would be a ridiculous and absurd constitution which should be less cautious to guard against abuses in the one case than in the other. All the means and instruments which a free Government exercises, as well as the ends and objects which it pursues, are to partake of its own essential character, and to be conformed to its genuine spirit. A free Government with arbitrary means to administer it is a contradiction; a free Government without adequate provision for personal security is an absurdity; a free Government, with an uncontrolled power of military conscription, is a solecism, at once the most ridiculous and abominable that ever entered into the head of man.

Into the paradise of domestic life you enter, not indeed by temptations and sorceries, but by open force and violence.

Nor is it, Sir, for the defense of his own house and home, that he who is the subject of military draft is to perform the task allotted to him. You will put him upon a service equally foreign to his interests and abhorrent to his feelings. With his aid you are to push your purposes of conquest. The battles which he is to fight are the battles of invasion; battles which he detests perhaps and abhors, less from the danger and the death that gather over them, and the blood with which they drench the plain, than from the principles in which they have their origin. If, Sir, in this strife he fall--if, while ready to obey every rightful command of Government, he is forced from home against right, not to contend for the defense of his country, but to prosecute a miserable and detestable project of invasion, and in that strife he fall, 'tis murder. It may stalk above the cognizance of human law, but in the sight of Heaven it is murder; and though millions of years may roll away, while his ashes and yours lie mingled together in the earth, the day will yet come, when his spirit and the spirits of his children must be met at the bar of omnipotent justice. May God, in his compassion, shield me from any participation in the enormity of this guilt.

A military force cannot be raised, in this manner, but by the means of a military force. If administration has found that it can not form an army without conscription, it will find, if it venture on these experiments, that it can not enforce conscription without an army. The Government was not constituted for such purposes. Framed in the spirit of liberty, and in the love of peace, it has no powers which render it able to enforce such laws. The attempt, if we rashly make it, will fail; and having already thrown away our peace, we may thereby throw away our Government.

I express these sentiments here, Sir, because I shall express them to my constituents. Both they and myself live under a Constitution which teaches us, that ``the doctrine of non-resistance against arbitrary power and oppression, is absurd, slavish, and destructive of the good and happiness of mankind.'' With the same earnestness with which I now exhort you to forbear from these measures, I shall exhort them to exercise their unquestionable right of providing for the security of their own liberties.

Congressman Ron Paul
U.S. House of Representatives
May 9, 2002

Quotes on Foreign Relations

I'm currently reading a compilation of essays by Ezra T. Benson, former Secretary of Agriculture in the Eisenhower administration, and also former president of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. Among the essays, one entitled United States Foreign Policy includes many quotes from former presidents and other leaders that I don't want to lose or forget.

The Virginia Bill of Rights (Article 15, drafted by George Mason and adopted by the Virginia Convention on June 12, 1776):
No free government, or the blessings of liberty, can be preserved to any people, but by a firm adherence to justice, moderation, temperance, frugality and virtue, and by frequent recurrence to fundamental principles.

Senator Robert A. Taft:
We cannot clean up the mess in Washington, balance the budget, reduce taxes, check creeping Socialism, tell what is muscle or fat in our sprawling rearmament programs, purge subversives from our State Department, unless we come to grips with our foreign policy, upon which all other policies depend.

George Washington:
I have always given it as my decided opinion that no nation has a right to intermeddle in the internal concerns of another; that every one had a right to form and adopt whatever government they liked best to live under themselves; and that, if this country could, consistently with its engagements, maintain a strict neutrality and thereby preserve peace, it was bound to do so by motives of policy, interest, and every other consideration.

Thomas Jefferson [in his First Inaugural Address]:
Equal and exact justice to all men, of whatever state or persuasion, religious or political; peace, commerce, and honest friendship, with all nations -- entangling alliances with none....

James Madison:
Of all the enemies to public liberty war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded, because it compromises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes; and armies, and debts, and taxes are the known instruments for brining the many under the domination of the few. In war, too, the discretionary power of the Executive is extended; its influence in dealing out offices, honors, and emoluments is multiplied; and all the means of seducing the minds, are added to those of subduing the force, of the people. The same malignant aspect in republicanism may be traced in the inequality of fortunes, and the opportunites of fraud, growing out of a state of war, and in the degeneracy of manners and morals, engendered by both. No national could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.

James Madison:
The management of foreign relations appears to be the most susceptible of abuse of all the trusts committed to a Goverment because they can be concealed or disclosed, or disclosed in such parts and at such times as will best suit particular views; and because the body of the people are less capable of judging, and are more under the influence of prejudices, on that branch of their afairs, than of any other. Perhaps it is a universal truth that the loss of liberty at home is to be charged to provisions against danger, real or pretended, from abroad.

Herbert Hoover:
We must realize the vitality of the great spiritual force which we call nationalism. The fuzzy-minded intellectuals have sought to brand nationalism as a sin against mankind. They seem to think that infamy is attached to the word "nationalist". But that force cannot be obscured by denunciation of its greed or selfishness -- as it sometimes is. The spirit of nationalism springs from the deepest of human emotions. It rises from the yearning of men to be free of foreign domination, to govern themselves. It springs from a thousand rills of race, of history, of sacrifice and pride in national achievement.

Senator Robert A Taft. [in his book, Foreign Policy for Americans]:
No one can think intelligently on the many complicated problems of American foreign policy unless he decides first what he considers the real purpose and object of that policy.... There has been no consistent purpose in our foreign policy for a good many years past.... Fundamentally, I believe the ultimate purpose of our foreign policy must be to protect the liberty of the people of the United States.

J. Reuben Clark [on the United Nations Charter]:
There seems no reason to doubt that such real approval as the Charter has among the people is based upon the belief that if the Charter is put into effect, wars will end.... The Charter will not certainly end war. Some will ask -- why not? In the first placce, there is no provision in ther Charter itself that contemplates ending war. It is true the charter provides for force to bring peace, but such use of force is itself war.... It is true the Charter is built to prepare for war, not to promote peace.... The Charter is a war document, not a peace document.

Not only does the Charter Organization not prevent future wars, but it make it practically certain that we will have future wars, and as to such wars it takes from us the power to declare them, to choose the side on which we shall fight, to determine what forces and military equipment we shall use in the war, and to control and command our sons who do the fighting.

General Thomas S. Power [with regard to maintaining a defensive force of sufficient magnitude to deter aggressors]:
Deterrence is more than bombs and missles and tanks and armies. Deterrence is a sound economy and prosperous industry. Deterrence is scientific progress and good schools. Deterrence is effective civil defence and the maintenance of laws and order. Detterence is the practice of religion and respect for the rights and convictions of others. Deterrence is a high standard of morals and wholesome family life. Deterrence is honesty in public office and freedom of the press. Deterrence is all these things and many more, for only a nation that is healthy and strong in every respect has the power and will to deter the forces from within and without that threatens its survival.

Senator Robert Taft:
I do not believe it is a selfish goal for us to insist that the over-riding purpose of all American foreign policy should be the maintenance of liberty and the peace of the people of the United States, so that they may achieve that intellectual and material improvement which is their genius and in which they can set an example for all peoples. By that example we can do an even greater service to mankind than we can by billions of material assistance -- and more than we can ever do by war.

Allow Intelligence! A Movie Review by James Perloff

Traditionally minded Americans don’t often cheer Hollywood products. We gladly report an exception: Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed (rated PG).

As many NEW AMERICAN readers know, Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution transformed Western culture. The Bible taught that life forms are creations of God, with man the centerpiece, made in God’s image. Darwin introduced a new doctrine: random interactions of chemicals had created life, and man was just an animal, evolved from lower life forms through survival of the fittest. Sold to the public as scientific fact, “Social Darwinism,” with its view of man as beast, helped spawn unprecedented cruelties under communism and Naziism.

Now, however, science has evolution on the retreat. For example:

• A single cell, which Darwin thought “simple,” is encoded with information that would fill thousands of books, and is far too complex to have formed by chance.
• In his book Darwin’s Black Box, Lehigh University biochemist Michael Behe demonstrates that certain biochemical systems, such as blood clotting and the immune system, are “irreducibly complex” — that is, they consist of interdependent parts that cannot function in lesser stages, and thus cannot have evolved step-by-step.
• In Not by Chance, Dr. Lee Spetner, who taught information theory at Johns Hopkins University, documents that random mutations — evolution’s alleged building blocks — cause losses of genetic information, not gains.
• In Evolution: A Theory in Crisis, molecular biologist Michael Denton shows that, on a cellular level, there is no evidence for the proclaimed evolutionary sequence “fish to amphibian to reptile to mammal.”

As the new data has emerged, evolutionists have fought to prevent classrooms from openly discussing the weaknesses in Darwin’s theory. Freedom of speech has been suppressed in academia, and educators persecuted for daring to address intelligent design (ID). It was this trend that prompted the documentary Expelled.

According to the film’s website, the project “began with an observation made by [co-producer Walt] Ruloff, a successful computer software entrepreneur who comes from a high-tech world in which innovation is constant and eagerly sought. In stark contrast, he noticed, the scientific and academic communities were deeply resistant to innovation, in this case innovation that might revise Darwin’s theory that random mutation and natural selection drive all variation in life forms.”

The film’s host and narrator is Ben Stein, economist, law professor, speech writer for Presidents Nixon and Ford, and author of over 20 books, but probably best known as a comedy actor, with his trademark monotone voice. He is also a pro-life creationist, making him a maverick in Hollywood.

Liberty and Justice — for All?

“Scientists are supposed to be allowed to follow the evidence wherever it may lead, no matter what the implications are,” says Stein. “Freedom of inquiry has been greatly compromised, and this is not only anti-science, it’s anti-American.” The film underscores America’s tradition of personal freedom with visits to landmarks such as the Jefferson Memorial and Washington Monument, and contrasts these with images of the Berlin Wall, symbol of tyranny. That wall is gone, but another, we learn, has been erected in American universities.

Stein interviews double Ph.D. biologist Richard Sternberg, a research fellow at the Smithsonian Institution. In 2004, as editor of Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington, Sternberg allowed publication of a peer-reviewed article suggesting there is evidence for intelligent design in nature. This resulted in a vicious, smear-tainted campaign of abuse against Dr. Sternberg, driven by certain Smithsonian officials and by the National Center for Science Education (self-described as a “clearinghouse for information and advice to keep evolution in the science classroom and ‘scientific creationism’ out”). The attack on Sternberg was so outrageous that it led to a congressional investigation and an ensuing report, Intolerance and the Politicization of Science at the Smithsonian.

Among others, Stein also visits:

• astrophysicist Guillermo Gonzalez, who, despite publishing over 60 articles in peer-reviewed science journals and being credited with helping discover new planets, was refused tenure at Iowa State University after he advocated teaching intelligent design;
• molecular biologist Caroline Crocker, compelled to leave George Mason University after including several slides about intelligent design in one of her lectures;
• NASA-honored engineering professor Robert J. Marks II, forced by Baylor to remove an ID-friendly website from the university’s servers.

But Stein doesn’t just meet intelligent design’s defenders, he also takes on some of its most adamant critics, including Eugenie Scott, executive director of the National Center for Science Education; Michael Shermer, founder of the Skeptics Society; Cornell professor William Provine; and atheist blogger P.Z. Myers. Ultimately he travels to England to confront Richard Dawkins, author of The God Delusion and probably the most vocal critic of ID and creation.

Producer Ruloff warns: “People will be stunned to actually find out what elitist scientists proclaim, which is that a large majority of Americans are simpletons who believe in a fairy tale.”

During his interview, Dawkins dismisses religion as “primitive superstition,” and those who reject evolution for it “ignorant or insane.” Logically questioned by Stein, Dawkins admits that life could have come from “a higher intelligence” that “seeded” it on this planet — i.e., he could accept aliens as our creator, but not God. But this begs for an answer to the question: how did life get started on the aliens’ planet?

Ideas Have Consequences

Creation-evolution is a vital issue. It is far more than a science discussion. Most Americans believe, as Thomas Jefferson said, that “men are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights.” If, as Darwinism says, there was no Creator, then there is no basis for rights, no moral absolutes, nor any God to whom we are accountable for our actions.

Small wonder, then, that Darwinism has always found a comfortable home in totalitarian states. Stein visits the former mental institution at Hadamar, Germany, where over 14,000 mentally ill were once executed by the Nazis. As Stein notes, Charles Darwin advocated eugenics, writing that “the weak members of civilized societies propagate their kind. No one who has attended to the breeding of domestic animals will doubt that this must be highly injurious to the race of man.... Excepting in the case of man himself, hardly anyone is so ignorant as to allow his worst animals to breed.” Stein explores the link between Darwin and Nazi eugenics, interviewing California State University professor Richard Weikart, author of From Darwin to Hitler. And he notes that eugenics was espoused in America by Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger.

The film also exposes media bias. Intelligent-design advocates tell Stein how the politically correct press has distorted their positions. Journalist Pamela Winnick recounts the abuse she received after trying to report on the evolution-design controversy in a balanced manner. A discomforting moment for Americans comes in the film when Polish scientist Maciej Giertych tells Stein that there is less censorship on this issue in Poland today than in the United States.

A Model of Communication

Expelled strikes a blow for free speech, and is drawing much-needed attention to the creation-evolution battle. It has been effectively marketed by Motive Entertainment, which also took on The Passion of The Christ and The Chronicles of Narnia. Motive’s appealing website for the film, www.expelledthemovie.com, along with grass-roots promotion from advocates of creation and intelligent design, has spurred a groundswell of demand.

Atheists have been bitterly denouncing the film. Atheist P.Z. Myers declared: “It’s going to appeal strongly to the religious, the paranoid, the conspiracy theorists, and the ignorant — which means they’re going to draw in about 90% of the American market.” Such attacks have unintentionally served as further promotion. On April 18, Expelled opened in 1,052 theaters, breaking the record for documentaries (Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11 opened in 868).

Expelled is not your grandfather’s documentary. A fast pace, rocking soundtrack, and Stein’s deadpan humor all defy that word’s connotations. The interviews never drag — they are interspersed with clips from old films to underscore points being made. There are two superb animation sequences, one demonstrating the cell’s complexity, the other a satirical “casino of life” in which hundreds of slot machines must simultaneously hit jackpots in order for life to commence by chance. This movie will leave you entertained and informed (we know plenty these days that do neither).

Near the film’s end, shots of the Berlin Wall coming down remind us that the walls of academic censorship must fall also. Stein’s final words exhort audience members to get involved.

Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed is a model of communication that all can learn something from.