Month: July 2019

Two independent Canadian theater owners received death threats ahead of screenings for the pro-life movie “Unplanned,” reports LifeSiteNews.

“Police are investigating death threats sent to two Canadian independent theatre owners because they are screening the pro-life movie Unplanned on July 12,” the outlet reported. “As a safety measure, the movie’s producers have now removed from their website the comprehensive July 12 listing of 46 Canadian theatres — independents, Cineplex and Landmark locations — that will be showing Unplanned.”

“Unplanned” tells the story of famed Planned Parenthood defector Abby Johnson, who left the organization to become a pro-life activist after witnessing an abortion while working at the Bryan, Texas, Planned Parenthood clinic in 2009. Released in March, the movie arguably became one of the most successful independent movies of 2019 thus far by raking in $18 million in the box office on a $6 million budget.

“Unplanned” producer Chuck Konzelman told LifeSiteNews that they removed theater listings from the movie’s website at the request of B.J. McKelvie, president of Fredericton-based Cinedicon, the Canadian distributor of the film.

“McKelvie confirmed to LifeSiteNews that two Canadian independent cinema owners contacted police after receiving death threats they perceived as credible, and that they are ‘fearful for their families,'” the report continued. “Another Canadian independent theatre owner ‘has been harrassed to the extreme.’ One of the two owners who contacted the police has cancelled the Unplanned screening, but all the rest ‘are holding their ground,’ McKelvie said.”

McKelvie noted that the death threats were largely targeted at independent theater chains because “they didn’t get anywhere with Cineplex, or they didn’t get anywhere with Landmark” – the two largest theater chains in the country.

“It’s unfortunate it’s come to that,” McKelvie told the outlet. “It’s just a movie. The topic is certainly a hot topic. However, it is just a movie. I find it ironic, they talk about choice, pro-choice, pro-choice, pro-choice, but they’re not giving people a choice to go see the movie.”

The death threats come shortly after “Unplanned” producers began entering into negotiations with Canadian distribution companies after they allegedly blackballed the film from screening in some of the top theater chains. After severe backlash from the Canadian pro-life community, the distributors changed their minds. Co-director Cary Solomon said in a news conference in late May that the movie would be screened in up to 10 to 20 Canadian cities and thanked the Canadian pro-life community for helping to bring the companies to the table.

“This all emanated out of the pro-lifers who came out of Canada, so I think you should be really proud of yourselves,” Solomon said at the news conference. “All of this heroic stuff that you’re doing in Canada is being seen by the rest of the world. I think in the final analysis it may be Canada that will get the credit for ending this abortion nightmare.”

After the Canadian pro-life community vowed to boycott theaters, a screening of the film in Edmonton packed in 3,000 people, which undoubtedly pushed the top distribution companies to negotiate. Over 5,000 people signed onto the boycott’s online campaign.

Students at George Washington University argued this week that America is not the greatest country on the planet.

In a series of interviews with Campus Reform, students at George Washington University said that they aren’t proud to be an American. In the video, several students say that they aren’t proud to be an American under President Donald Trump.

On the morning of the Fourth of July, former NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick, who just finished nuking the Betsy Ross sneaker produced by Nike, decided to target the Fourth of July itself, cherry-picking from a speech by the great 19^th century anti-slavery orator Frederick Douglass.

Kaepernick didn’t figure Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) was paying attention, but he was, and Cruz, a student of history, proceeded to smash Kaepernick, pointing out that not only was Douglass pro-America, he venerated the Declaration of Independence itself, which was signed on the Fourth of July.

Kaepernick initiated his descent by tweeting a quote from Douglass: “‘What have I, or those I represent, to do with your national independence? This Fourth of July is yours, not mine…There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices more shocking and bloody than are the people of these United States at this very hour.’ – Frederick Douglass.”

Cruz then launched his fusillade:

You quote a mighty and historic speech by the great abolitionist Frederick Douglass, but, without context, many modern readers will misunderstand. Two critical points: This speech was given in 1852, before the Civil War, when the abomination of slavery still existed. Thanks to Douglass and so many other heroes, we ended that grotesque evil and have made enormous strides to protecting the civil rights of everybody.

Douglass was not anti-American; he was, rightly and passionately, anti-slavery. Indeed, he concluded the speech as follows: “Allow me to say, in conclusion, notwithstanding the dark picture I have this day presented, of the state of the nation, I do not despair of this country. There are forces in operation, which must inevitably, work the downfall of slavery. ‘The arm of the Lord is not shortened,’ and the doom of slavery is certain. I, therefore, leave off where I began, with hope. While drawing encouragement from ‘the Declaration of Independence,’ the great principles it contains, and the genius of American Institutions, my spirit is also cheered by the obvious tendencies of the age.”

Cruz concluded, “Let me encourage everyone, READ THE ENTIRE SPEECH; it is powerful, inspirational, and historically important in bending the arc of history towards justice.”

Cruz was joined by Charles C.W. Cooke, the online editor for National Review, who added other quotes from Douglass’ speech:

Now, take the Constitution according to its plain reading, and I defy the presentation of a single pro-slavery clause in it. On the other hand it will be found to contain principles and purposes, entirely hostile to the existence of slavery .. Interpreted as it ought to be interpreted, the Constitution is a GLORIOUS LIBERTY DOCUMENT. Read its preamble, consider its purposes. Is slavery among them? Is it at the gateway? or is it in the temple? It is neither …

Kaepernick first started his journey into anti-American rhetoric when he refused to stand for the national anthem in the preseason NFL games of 2016, segueing to praising former Cuban dictator Fidel Castro in November 2016 and later bashing the celebration of the Fourth of July in July 2017. One month later, NFL legend Jim Brown slammed Kaepernick, stating, “I’m going to give you the real deal: I’m an American. I don’t desecrate my flag and my national anthem. I’m not gonna do anything against the flag and the national anthem. I’m going to work within those situations. But this is my country, and I’ll work out the problems, but I’ll do it in an intelligent manner.”

The leftist ingrates at Salon have decided to “celebrate” Independence Day — which is celebrated on July 4th for the sole reason that our beautiful republic’s Declaration of Independence was ratified on that day in Philadelphia in 1776 — today in a rather peculiar manner. In what can only be described as a dissemination of the most stereotypically woke of all stereotypically woke takes, the Salon dullards today tweeted: “Despite its positive impact on history, the #DeclarationOfIndependence was also a product of its time—and bears some of the shortcomings of its era, including racism, sexism and prejudice against #NativeAmericans.”

The accompanying piece, courtesy of an obscure Ph.D. named Matthew Rozsa, concludes that America’s Founding Fathers “were fallible human beings, and some of their flaws had terrible consequences for people who were not fortunate enough to be born into privileged groups.”

Suffice it to say that such a “celebration” of the Declaration of Independence is a far cry from how John Adams described his vision for future annual celebrations in a July 1776 letter to his wife Abigail: “I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated, by succeeding Generations, as the great anniversary Festival. It ought to be commemorated, as the Day of Deliverance by solemn Acts of Devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be solemnized with Pomp and Parade, with Shews, Games, Sports, Guns, Bells, Bonfires and Illuminations from one End of this Continent to the other from this Time forward forever more.”

But Matthew Rozsa and Salon are not merely profoundly ungrateful. They are not merely flipping a proverbial middle finger to the epistolary legacy of John Adams. They are also affirmatively wrong to muddle and belittle the genius that was Thomas Jefferson’s drafted Declaration of Independence, and it is important to understand why.

Chattel slavery was the original sin of the American republic, and one would be an inveterate fool to deny that obvious truth. The continuation of slavery from the colonial era through the early decades of the constitutional republic represented a brutal compromise of annunciated principle for the sake of maintaining a fragile unity of disaggregated and often self-interested states.

But what Salon misses — and what leftists routinely miss — is that America’s original sin of chattel slavery was just that: A compromise of principle. Slavery was not in any way a tenet of the American Founding; it was an institution manifestly athwart the Founding. The sagacity of the Declaration, in fact, was that it actually laid the seeds — the very codified foundation — for the eventual eradication of that most horrific of compromises of principle.

For the greatest statesman in the history of the republic, Abraham Lincoln, the Declaration was precisely the tool he needed to latch onto in order to finally bring the American republic in conformity with its Founding-era principles. For Lincoln, the Declaration was paramount to understanding America — the Constitution, in fact, was to Lincoln merely an encompassing “frame of silver” for the Declaration’s underlying “apple of gold.” Lincoln spoke eloquently of that Founding-era creed — what he called the “political revolution of ’76” — all throughout his adult life, including during his famous 1842 speech to the Springfield Washington Temperance Society: “Of our political revolution of ’76, we all are justly proud. It has given us a degree of political freedom, far exceeding that of any other nation of the earth. In it the world has found a solution of the long mooted problem, as to the capability of man to govern himself. In it was the germ which has vegetated, and still is to grow and expand into the universal liberty of mankind.”

It is thus the Declaration — the “apple of gold” — that provided the Great Emancipator with the moral and intellectual sustenance he needed to “grow and expand … the universal liberty of mankind” insofar as that growth and expansion meant the eradication of America’s original sin. And the eradication of that original sin, following the bloody horror of the Civil War, tangibly took the eventual form of modifying the Constitution — the “frame of silver” — via the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments. For Lincoln, none of this would have been possible had it not been for the “electric cord” of the Declaration — which “links … patriotic hearts as long as the love of freedom exists in the minds of men throughout the world.”

But perhaps no one said it better than President Calvin Coolidge on the 150th anniversary of the Declaration’s ratification, in 1926:

About the Declaration there is a finality that is exceedingly restful. It is often asserted that the world has made a great deal of progress since 1776, that we have had new thoughts and new experiences which have given us a great advance over the people of that day, and that we may therefore very well discard their conclusions for something more modern. But that reasoning can not be applied to this great charter. If all men are created equal, that is final. If they are endowed with inalienable rights, that is final. If governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, that is final. No advance, no progress can be made beyond these propositions. If anyone wishes to deny their truth or their soundness, the only direction in which he can proceed historically is not forward, but backward toward the time when there was no equality, no rights of the individual, no rule of the people. Those who wish to proceed in that direction can not lay claim to progress. They are reactionary. Their ideas are not more modern, but more ancient, than those of the Revolutionary fathers.

It is a great paradox of modern “progressivism” — the likes of which is embodied by Salon’s self-hating screed published today — that such insipid idiocy is, in the Coolidge formulation, not “progress” at all. It is “reactionary.”

The Democrat Party has been moving noticeably farther to the left, and President Trump’s pro-America policies and “Salute to America” celebration have driven many over the edge. There are countless examples of Hollywood figures, 2020 Democrats, media outlets, and businesses revealing their true colors.

Here is a handy list of notable entities and figures that have effectively turned on celebrating America.

Nike:

Amidst the bleak news from a poll that found only 24 percent of 18 to 29-year olds are “extremely proud to be an American” comes a literary ray of hope from the heartland.

The good news appears in the form of a new textbook, Land of Hope: An Invitation to the Great American Story, written by University of Oklahoma professor Wilfred McClay.

“We have a glut of text and trade books on American history. But what we don’t have is a compact, inexpensive, authoritative and compulsively readable book that will offer to American readers a clear, informative, and inspiring narrative of their own country,” the book jacket explains: