Cagle World

I come from a long line of anti-fascists.

My cousin Adolph Pace was a member of the 101st Airborne Division that parachuted onto the Normandy beaches on D-Day.

His parachute was later used to make the wedding dress of my cousin Helen. The blood and dirt stains of battle were covered up with love and care by her mother Jennie’s crocheted lace hearts and flowers.

Before my father went down South to fight for the civil rights of what were then called “negro voters,” he spent almost two years in the frigid climate of Thule, Greenland, where he worked at a NORAD post during the Cold War.

Although the enemy was officially “communism,” he considered it a battle against the forces of oppression and the labels didn’t matter.

He felt the same way about the racists in Mississippi who, while they did not overtly adopt Hitler or Stalin as their role models, engaged in the same tactics of hatred and intimidation.

In my immigration practice, I have had contact with many courageous individuals who have fought against fascism, including clients who openly opposed dictators, the Taliban, and repressive Central American gangs.

I know what fascism looks like, smells like, sounds like.

I also know the people who call themselves anti-fascists or “antifa” in this country are frauds. I say that from personal experience.

Today, if you are looking for fascism, you will find it.

That does not mean that it actually exists, only that you are capable of turning innocent straw into racist gold, like a social justice Rumpelstiltskin.

I’ve written about many of these instances where, for example, a random comment has been turned into a federal case, resulting in the loss of jobs and reputation.

Nikki Haley dealt with that a month ago when she was accused of being a bigot for suggesting that it’s not a good thing to vote for Biden because that means we will end up getting Kamala Harris.

A factual statement becomes an indictment of women of color. Fascism!

And then we have the strange idea that calling a man a man and a woman a woman is bigotry and oppression, and that using the wrong pronouns will lead someone to commit suicide.

It’s a twisted version of “The Emperor’s New Clothes,” wherein we are forced to pretend that gender is not only fluid, it’s not even “real.”

We also cannot overlook the crusade to defund the police, which has been a pet project of the Antifa left (because there is no Antifa right) since well before one rogue police officer killed George Floyd.

The irony is that the very people who want us to strip money and resources from law enforcement end up being the ones who scream the loudest when they themselves are victims of crime.

I’m sure you’ve heard of the Democratic party official in Minnesota who had vowed to defund the police in 2020 and was recently a victim of a violent carjacking.

They say that a conservative is a liberal who was just mugged. Perhaps we should change that to “a liberal who was just carjacked” since Shivanthi Sathanandan is now whining for tougher penalties for criminals.

And my favorite is when they tell us that books that are readily available in libraries and on Amazon have somehow been “banned.”

There is this sense that unless children can have access to graphic novels about how Johnny became Janie and then engaged in sodomy during school recess, we are being Orwellian censors, destroying the creativity of our youth.

These are all First World problems.

Fascism exists today, only not in this country. At the very least, it is not ingrained in our legal system, in our government agencies, and in our religious organizations.

Those things happen in other countries, the ones that people are fleeing to seek shelter in the United States.

You can argue that there are hate groups, and you can throw around the term “white nationalism,” but these are aberrations, and do not occupy positions of authority in our institutions.

I understand there are politicians who say things we don’t like, and sue Disney, and pass laws that try and stop women from having abortions and do things that generally make liberals and squishy moderates angry, but these are all a part of the political process.

These are not the actions of fascist dictators, and the self-styled Antifa of today are simply children, looking for relevance in a world that is on to their game.

Now let me go look for my parachute.

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Copyright 2023 Christine Flowers, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Christine Flowers is an attorney and a columnist for the Delaware County Daily Times, and can be reached at [email protected].

The last time that I wrote anything about the Proud Boys, I got into some hot water.

There was a young man from the Bon Air Fire Department in Delaware County who had attended one or two Proud Boys meetings, and decided that it wasn’t for him. However, the mere fact that he had dared attend a meeting was considered sufficient grounds to treat him as a Nazi, which is what many people called him.

When the YouTube video of me defending this young man’s First Amendment rights was made public, several Antifa sympathizers started trolling me on social media, and I responded in kind. That was a big no-no for a news organization that thought I needed to be “nice” to people who hated me, and eventually they decided I was too much of a liability to keep.

Score two (the firefighter and the columnist) for Orwell.

I haven’t paid much attention to the Proud Boys since that incident. Nothing in their platform seems remotely legitimate, and their involvement in the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol make them repellent, repulsive and stupid. And, they have too many tattoos.

That being said, their members also happen to be U.S. citizens entitled to all of the protections of the laws including the First Amendment.

They deserved to be convicted, and sentenced, commensurate with the gravity of their crimes.

But in order for us to have some sense of confidence in our legal system, we need to believe that the laws are applied fairly, and consistently.

We need, for example, to believe that someone who is rioting in the streets of Philadelphia, smashing store windows and stealing flat-screen TVs under the guise of social justice, is going to be charged with a crime.

We are not asking that they receive 17-year prison sentences. We are not asking that they be kept in solitary confinement. We are not calling them traitors to the state.

We just want them to, at the very least, have a criminal record that can later be expunged if they stop acting like vandals.

We also want the Justice Department to stop targeting pro-life fathers who protest outside of Planned Parenthood clinics, get into tussles with obnoxious old men who lie about being injured, and have the audacity to preach about the sanctity of unborn human life.

We would have no problem whatsoever if one particular pro-life father was charged with simple assault, assuming that the victim of the assault really did suffer some injury.

We would be fine with this father being ticketed and forced to stay beyond a 25-foot radius of the clinic.

What we have a big problem with is when federal agents, in a SWAT team maneuver, wage a pre-dawn raid upon his home, in front of his terrified wife and young children, and charge him with felonies under a statute, which was essentially designed to protect clinics from annoying (but legal) protesters.

Although the FACE — Freedom of Access to Clinics — Act was purportedly enacted to address the wave of violence against clinics, it has been used as a way for pro-abortion advocates to silence dissent, including the peaceful dissent of rosary-carrying grandmothers.

That’s because if you think there is even the slimmest possibility that you will be charged with felonious trespass, you might just stay home. End of protest.

You might be saying to yourself, what does any of this have to do with the Proud Boys and their involvement in Jan. 6?

And the answer is simple: the laws should be applied to everyone on an equal basis, without fear or favor depending upon your race, class, gender or political persuasion.

If the women who defaced churches after the Dobbs decision, beheading statues and writing obscenities on walls were hunted down and prosecuted the way that the Jan. 6 protestors have been, I would have no issue with the execution of American justice.

If, again, the vandals who set our cities on fire after George Floyd was killed had been charged with actual crimes, instead of receiving apologies and payments for the “violation of their civil rights,” I’d be celebrating the glory of the legal system.

If women who lied about being raped were actually prosecuted for filing false reports at the same rate that men are being falsely accused of being rapists, I’d throw away all of my books about the horrific Kavanaugh hearings, and write a column praising Gloria Allred.

But that is not the case.

The Proud Boys have no reason to be proud. They are repugnant. But so are the George Floyd protestors who, in their own way, tried to destroy the foundations of our society with their hatred. Or in other words, your terrorists are no better than mine.

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Copyright 2023 Christine Flowers, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Christine Flowers is an attorney and a columnist for the Delaware County Daily Times, and can be reached at [email protected].

Sometimes when I write about my father’s civil rights work in Mississippi, I get emails telling me that I should be proud of his fight against racism at a time when it was neither easy nor accepted, particularly in a young white man.

Other times I get comments about how bizarre it is that such a wonderful father sired such a backward daughter, someone who voted for the wrong president and holds bigoted beliefs.

But the comments that anger me the most are the ones that demean and diminish the efforts of people like my father. There is now a movement to label the civil rights work of people in the majority, usually white men but also women who are considered “privileged,” of being a part of the toxic “white savior syndrome.”

I had occasion to revisit that anger this past month when I heard about the controversy pitting Michael Oher, the former Baltimore Ravens football player, against the white family who took him in after he was abandoned and neglected by his drug-addicted biological mother.

I don’t need to rehash the story here, because most of us have seen the movie “The Blind Side” where a Tennessee family “adopts” a homeless Black teen, gives him a place to stay, mentors him through school and helps him get into an elite football program.

This was a fairytale, and while we all knew to take it with a grain of Hollywood salt the size of Mount Rushmore, the basic story was incredibly inspiring. Until, that is, Michael Oher decided to shatter what he now calls a lie.

He is accusing that family, the Touheys, of never actually adopting him but of instead putting him under a legal conservatorship. He recently filed a lawsuit charging them with exploitation, alleging that they only wanted to control his money, and that he had no idea he wasn’t ever adopted.

Unfortunately for Oher, he wrote a memoir about a decade ago where he actually admits that he knew about the conservatorship, so in terms of lies he is already one up on the Touheys. Additionally, there is ample evidence in the record that Oher received the exact same share of proceeds from the movie as the Touheys’ biological children, who always considered him a brother.

What should have been just another sad example of money corrupting family ties was taken to a new and disturbing level when people started bringing race into the mix. Articles began showing up with titles like Vox’s “Was ‘The Blind Side’s’ White Savior Narrative Built on a Lie?” and NPR’s ‘The Blind Side’s’ Drama Just Proves the Cheap, Meaningless Hope of White Savior Films”

When “To Kill A Mockingbird” was being prepared for its Broadway staging a few seasons ago, producer Aaron Sorkin was quoted as saying he wanted to minimize the “white savior” aspects of Harper Lee’s original narrative.

At the time he observed that “I realized something about my favorite scene in the movie and in the book … at the end of the trial, Atticus is putting his stuff back in his briefcase. The courtroom has cleared out except for the people in what they call ‘the colored section.’ Everyone has stood up silently. Rev. Sykes says to Scout: Miss Jean Louise, stand up, your father’s passin’. That really is a white savior moment. And it’s a liberal fantasy that marginalized people will recognize me, that I’m one of the good ones.”

That iconic scene is probably my favorite, not just in that movie but in any movie. I admit that I think of my own father when I look at Gregory Peck’s stoic figure, saddened but not entirely defeated, because I imagine Daddy felt the same way when he lost his own cases down in Mississippi in 1967.

To now have someone take what was a tribute to the resilience of the human spirit, which has no color, creed or gender, and completely twist
it around angers me.

Yes, I am a white woman and I can’t exactly empathize with a homeless Black teen who was essentially abandoned by his drug-addicted birth mother.

But I am someone who doesn’t think that the color of the person who is throwing me a lifeline matters all that much.

Do you think that the parents who were desperate to save their children’s lives cared that renowned pediatric neurosurgeon Ben Carson was not a white man? I don’t.

So while I’m sure Michael Oher feels he was wronged, race has nothing to do with it. Only race baiters would see it that way.

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Copyright 2023 Christine Flowers, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Christine Flowers is an attorney and a columnist for the Delaware County Daily Times, and can be reached at [email protected].

I hate to be cliché, but I’m going to tell you a proverb you’ve probably already heard a hundred or so times.

There was a frog, and he saw this pot of boiling water and said to himself, “I’m not going there. I’m not crazy.”

A few days later, he saw another pot of water, and it looked rather lukewarm. Since the frog wanted to take a quick dip, and he was far from his lily pad, he jumped in and started doing the backstroke.

It felt good and he thought, “this isn’t so bad after all.” As he was splashing around, he didn’t notice the water was getting warmer and warmer, until bubbles started popping around him. He was slowly becoming used to the heat, and ended up on somebody’s plate with a stalk of asparagus on his belly.

The moral of the story is that what seems shocking at the beginning becomes less and less shocking the longer we are exposed to it.

I felt a bit like that frog the other day, watching the news out of Georgia. The immediate past president was just charged with election interference by a grand jury.

The district attorney stood at the podium and, looking like a deer in headlights, announced that 19 ham sandwiches had been indicted. One of them was Donald Trump.

The first time the once-and-he-hopes-future-president was charged with paying hush money to a porn star by Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg, I was horrified. Then it happened again, when a federal grand jury issued a 37-count indictment against that same ex-president of hoarding, and concealing, classified documents.

By this point, I was disturbed but not as shocked and offended as I’d been a couple of months before.

The water was getting warmer, so to speak.

But it was only June.

Then, at the beginning of this month, a federal grand jury in Washington indicted the former president on charges of election interference in connection with the Jan. 6 riots.

Special Counsel Jack Smith comes out and makes a compelling statement about how Trump incited mayhem, forgetting to mention the part where the former president had asked his followers to “protest peacefully.”

The water, by this point, was scalding.

I didn’t see the bubbles, but that might have been because I was looking at Mika Brezinski’s face and trying to figure out how many more surgeries it would take before she ended up looking like a hammerhead shark.

Finally, last week, the world stopped and waited, and waited, and waited, until a grand jury in Georgia issued its own indictments on election interference.

And there I was, with third-degree burns and not even caring because I was used to the heat.

I can say that the Alvin Bragg and classified document cases are by far the weakest, because if we prosecuted every man who ever had a fling with a happy time girl and then tried to hide it to keep Mother from finding out, we would run out of court stenographers.

As for the classified documents, until I see Mike Pence and Joe Biden in horizontal stripes, I’m not worrying about the likelihood of any conviction on that front.

What I am interested in is the way that Americans seem inured to the very real dangers of piling on prosecutions of men who may have been unethical, amoral and annoying, but whose conduct does not justify the onslaught of what now looks like political prosecutions.

It is possible that the ex-president engaged in actual election interference, although you have to prove intent. To me, the guy seems like he actually believed he’d won the election.

He is likely wrong, dead wrong.

But that subjective belief is not out of line when you consider that many other Americans agree with him.

They are not all Stepford voters.

I do not agree with the folks who are saying that this is the end of democracy and that our country is sinking into the same despotism that gave rise to Putin, Mao and Manuel Trujillo — look him up, he was a better-dressed Castro.

What I am saying is that it’s very dangerous when people start treating multiple, serial indictments of a former president as just another headline, or the story of the moment on cable.

This is serious stuff, something that has never before happened in this country, and as Arthur Miller wrote in “Death of a Salesman,” attention must be paid.

And unless these prosecutors really do have the evidence, and aren’t trying to engage in their own form of election interference, we, my nonamphibious friends, are cooked.

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Copyright 2023 Christine Flowers, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Christine Flowers is an attorney and a columnist for the Delaware County Daily Times, and can be reached at [email protected].

Over the weekend, I was looking for free movies to watch. Fortunately, some of the best films — black and white classics — show up on the budget channels.

One of my favorite B movies, the original “Invasion of the Body Snatchers,” was available on demand. So I popped the popcorn, made some tea and settled in.

When I first saw this movie I must have been about 10. It scared the beejeezus out of me, and triggered a lifelong fear of whatever was growing under my bed. To this day, I jump onto the mattress out of an irrational but robust fear that either a pod person or Barnabas Collins is living there.

Of course you remember the plot.

Kevin McCarthy — the actor, not the House Majority leader — is a doctor who sees his friends turning into empty shells, perfectly modeled after actual human beings but stripped of their souls and their personalities. They look normal, they mimic the voices and mannerisms of their hosts, but they are zombie-like entities with neither emotion nor compassion.

When the host falls asleep, the creature swallows it whole, obliterating it’s identity and unique humanity. It’s the bio-monster version of first-degree murder.

One particularly chilling scene depicts the creation of the pods, blooming from foam and becoming human facsimiles before our eyes. It is a silent, stealthy consumption of identity.

As I got older and read the historical context of the film, I realized that it was in some ways a commentary on the paranoia of the Cold War, the idea that evil lurked in our backyards and we needed to remain vigilant to communist influence. We needed to stay awake.

In an interview given before his death, Kevin McCarthy offered an alternate interpretation of the movie.

He said that he believed it was a commentary on the corporate takeover of society, where individuals became subservient to the collective. No dissent, no crooked edges, no difference. Just one well-oiled societal machine with no room for second opinions. If you disagree, you will be hunted down, and destroyed.

This movie terrified me as a child. Today it seems prophetic.

We have come to a point where people who speak out against the obvious madness that is being forced down throats and into school curriculum are shunned.

For example, if you speak the heresy of gender, insisting that there are only two of them, you are canceled.

You might have written the most beloved series of children’s books in a century, but you will be excised, like a cancerous tumor, from your own literary library.

You might be the greatest female tennis player of your generation, a proud defender of gay rights, but you will be ridiculed for failing to accept men in women’s sports.

You might have triumphed in your field, a surgeon who operated on the vulnerable bodies of sick infants, a Black man who served in the wrong president’s administration, and they will describe you with racist tropes.

There is a way to escape the cancellation. You simply accept what they tell you, and make public penance.

You agree that you’re a racist, or a transphobe, or a Trump supporter, or pro abortion, you mock religion, you attack mothers who challenge school boards, you go on the cable stations like a former New Jersey governor and grovel for crumbs of affection from the sneering anchors, the ones who ridicule you behind your back.

If you do this, the collective will consider forgiving your heresy. But they will demand small concessions, like pronouns in your email.

When Alabama Sen. Tommy Tuberville questioned the existence of white supremacy, a fluid term that is a useful weapon in the hands of progressives, he was, predictably, called a white supremacist in the cybersphere. To deny is to confess, in this environment.

But there are bright spots.

When Jason Aldean wrote a song about hitting back against thugs who hurt elderly women, he was called a racist. Ironically, his song became No. 1.

When Bud Light mocked women by handing a can to a person with a penis who just happened to wear makeup, they lost millions in revenue.

Some of us are watching, and haven’t yet fallen into pod slumber.

At the end of “Invasion of the Body Snatchers,” Kevin McCarthy loses his love interest to sleep, and then a reawakening as a soulless member of the collective.

Some of us have also lost friends and family to the madness, cut off because they cannot deal with our dissenting views. They fell asleep, and when they woke up and saw that we were still defiantly human, they felt betrayed.

The movie ends on a note of cautious hope, amidst the maelstrom of paranoia.

One man insists on fighting back. We should pay attention.

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Copyright 2023 Christine Flowers, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Christine Flowers is an attorney and a columnist for the Delaware County Daily Times, and can be reached at [email protected].

Conservatives are often hesitant to criticize other conservatives.

Florida issued its guidelines for teaching history last month, including a set of standards that covered the issue of slavery in grades 6 through 8.

It’s likely that what happened next would have been a big yawn for most folks, until Kamala Harris pointed it out in one of the few speeches she’s ever given in coherent English.

The vice president referenced a section of the new guidelines which read as follows:

“Examine the various duties and trades performed by slaves (e.g. agricultural work, painting, carpentry, tailoring, domestic service, blacksmithing, transportation).”

So far, so good.

But then the standards make the unnecessary leap to this controversial point:

“Instruction [will] include how slaves developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit.”

Kamala being Kamala, she managed to turn this into an opportunity to rant about racism, saying to a receptive crowd that “Just yesterday, in the state of Florida, they decided middle school students will be taught that enslaved people benefited from slavery. They insult us in an attempt to gaslight us, and we will not stand for it. We who share a collective experience in knowing we must honor history and our duty in the context of legacy.”

I rarely agree with the vice president on anything. Her voice scares me. Her past treatment of Brett Kavanaugh, lie after lie from the Senate floor, repels me and makes her a figure of immense disdain.

She was picked as Joe Biden’s running mate because she checked off the right boxes, including the one that says “make friends with the candidate who called you a racist, you know, that little girl, senator, on the bus, that was her.”

But she has a point. It really never ends well when you try and find a positive spin about slavery.

After Kamala made her statements about Florida trying to point out how some slaves actually “benefited” from slavery, a number of progressives picked up the chant and it became a thing on social media.

The problem is, it should have been a thing. It should have been brought to the attention of the public, moaned about by the grifter hosts on MSNBC for a few days, and then put to rest with a clear acknowledgement from us — from conservatives — that this was a mistake, and that the sentence needed to be removed from the curriculum.

Instead what happened was the typical circling of the wagons, with some ridiculous narrative twisting from people like Twitter darling Allie Beth Stuckey, a podcast host who continued to argue that slavery taught slaves resilience.

This is an actual tweet from this prolific pundit:

“What’s more offensive? Saying some slaves benefitted from skills they learned while enslaved, or using slavery to cover for your anti-DeSantis grift?”

I replied:

“I’m pretty sure, blondie, it’s saying slavery had an upside. My God, I never realized the conservative movement had such mediocre shills.”

Imagine, for a course on the Holocaust, that you suggest that skills Jews and other prisoners of the Nazi regime developed might have benefited them if they were eventually liberated.

Imagine saying that Anne Frank honed some amazing journaling skills while in hiding from the SS. Imagine suggesting that the experiences Primo Levi and Eli Weisel lived through in their respective captivity taught them resilience, and that what they learned became the basis of some of the greatestliterature of all time.

Imagine doing that.

On second thought, imagine screaming back that this is madness, cruel and utterly repulsive.

That’s what I would do. That’s what we should all do.

When my father went to Mississippi in 1967, he met some men and women who maintained an amazing sense of dignity even under the oppression of Jim Crow.

It never occurred to him to think that Jim Crow benefited them in some ways by helping them become “resilient.”

I’m very sad that some conservatives doubled down when they were told how wrong they were. I’m angry that they tried to gaslight us into believing we were the crazy folk.

And I am again reminded that if you tolerate mediocrity from your friends, you cannot then criticize it in your enemies.

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Copyright 2023 Christine Flowers, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Christine Flowers is an attorney and a columnist for the Delaware County Daily Times, and can be reached at [email protected].

After my column about not being able to find a theater that screened “Sound of Freedom” appeared last week, I was on the receiving end of a lot of generous offers of rides, tickets and they even set up a GoFund me to pay for my taxi fare.

I did finally bite the bullet and take an Uber out to the AMC Marple 10 this past Sunday, which was the closest place I could find in suburban Philadelphia that didn’t involve dodging bullets during the previews.

I was very happy to see that the theater was about three-quarters full, and many of the people looked like couples out on a date, very different from the older crowd that attended “Oppenheimer,” which I’d seen the day before.

That should give you an idea of how “Sound of Freedom” is the little movie that could, making its way into our consciousness despite the mean-spirited and grossly inaccurate attacks from critics.

As someone who has dealt with the back end of trafficking, namely the people who make it to the United States and are able to somehow find a lawyer to help them seek asylum and protection, I can confirm that many of the scenes depicted in “Sound of Freedom” echo what people have told me in the past about how they made their way to the U.S.

So many of these people, both old clients and acquaintances, have talked about the subterfuge used to lure people into the sex trades, the random violence and brutality of the human traffickers, and the absolute desperation of the victims.

This movie provides a necessary public service, in bringing this incredibly important issue to the eyes and ears of people who are otherwise ignorant.

When we talk about immigration, including what many on the right like to call an “invasion” and others refer to simply as the flow of “illegals,” the focus is on the motivation of the human cargo.

Many of those who don’t work in this field write off the desperation of a mother with no means of support for her children, or a father who is afraid his son will be recruited by gang members, as not “our problem.”

When people are in the asylum system, they have already been victims of violence and are seeking to have the broken pieces glued back again. I can help with the gluing together, but I cannot stop the breaking.

My anger arose from the lies that I have heard told about this film by so many in the mainstream media, and a large number on the left.

I initially gave some of them the benefit of the doubt, thinking that perhaps the film took aim at Democrats, or sacred liberal cows like marginalized groups.

I had some thought that the idea of sex trafficking became linked to the LGBTQ community and therefore the critics were angry because they thought it smeared, by association, vulnerable constituencies.

I was wrong. The only thing that I could see that would trigger the left was the underlying theme of faith, of the importance of God, a God that was not owned by Christians, Jews or Muslims.

The only reason I could find, other than a bitterness toward leading man Jim Caviezel was a hostility toward any film that had as its tagline: “God’s children are not for sale.”

I looked for technical inaccuracies. I looked for outright lies about our government and its inaction. I looked for some hook that would justify the rejection of this film by the intellectuals on the left, and all I came up with was that tagline and its significance.

If that is the only reason a film this powerful and this important is being marginalized by the kind of person who thinks Barbie is a feminist prophet, we’re in more trouble as a society than I ever thought.

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Copyright 2023 Christine Flowers, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Christine Flowers is an attorney and a columnist for the Delaware County Daily Times, and can be reached at [email protected].

This is not a movie review.

You cannot, after all, review a movie you haven’t seen.

My problem is that I want to see a movie, and I’ve been stymied at almost every attempt.

This independent movie is exactly the sort of film our art houses in Philadelphia like to showcase, but have let it off their schedule.

The film is only playing on the outskirts of the city. I don’t drive, so I’d have to take a bus, another bus and then walk a half mile to get there. Other options involve an even more circuitous route.

I reached out to a local film institute to see if they were screening the film. I was invited to the “pink carpet” premiere of the Barbie movie, but no, they aren’t going to show the film I want to see.

This film has become a phenomenon in conservative circles, which is another reason why a lot of the art houses and chains are resistant to appearing supportive of its message.

The movie is “Sound of Freedom,” and it is based, somewhat loosely, on the life story of Tim Ballard.

Ballard was a former agent with the Department of Homeland Security who left his job to try and rescue trafficked children, founding Operation Underground Railroad.

I will admit that there may be some inconsistencies between what is represented onscreen and the actual events. But that’s not uncommon when Hollywood gets its hands on a story: characters are combined, incidents altered for dramatic effect and timelines condensed.

“Based on a true story” does not mean “This is a documentary.”

Just ask Baz Luhrmann how accurate his biopic of Elvis was, or do a fact check on Madame Curie. Odds are she didn’t have a British accent like the film’s lead, Greer Garson. Generally, though, films get the basic parts correct.

But the critics of “Sound of Freedom” seem to think that these Hollywood exaggerations in the film undermine its reliability.

They question whether Tim Ballard’s Operation Underground Railroad has been effective. They argue that it’s focus on children as opposed to teen victims of trafficking gives a false view of the crisis. More insidiously, they’ve attacked the actors and producers in the film for espousing QAnon conspiracies.

In the first place, the individuals accused of supporting these conspiracies have disavowed them, which of course doesn’t satisfy the critics. More importantly, the politics of an actor should have no impact on the legitimacy of a film’s message.

For example, Tom Cruise is a Scientologist. He believes in some very bizarre and dangerous theories. And yet the movie “Top Gun: Maverick” was a resounding success last year, and rightly so.

But because “Sound of Freedom” has some faith-based overtones and is financed by a company called Angel Studios, the mainstream media critics are attacking it.

In one particularly ironic and surprising bit of chutzpah, the disgraced publication “Rolling Stone” has run a series of articles attacking the film’s accuracy.

That’s rich, coming from a publication that blatantly lied about the University of Virginia rape scandal. They allowed a biased and incompetent reporter named Sabrina Erdely to present a fictional story about a rape that never occurred.

And these people have the gall to challenge the accuracy of a movie? The mind reels and the stomach churns.

Other critics say that the movie sensationalizes child trafficking.

Not having seen it, I can’t say for sure if the story is sensational or simply melodramatic.

I can tell you, as someone who has practiced immigration law for nearly 30 years and has met victims of trafficking that sensationalizing the epidemic isn’t the worst thing you can do. Ignoring it is much worse.

If this film, perhaps flawed and perhaps incomplete, focuses our attention on a tragedy that Hollywood has basically ignored for decades, I’m willing to excuse a few overly-dramatic moments.

I’m more than happy to watch imperfect actors portray exceptional humans. I’m thrilled to pay money to amplify a message that will, I hope, encourage others to become involved in ending the human carnage.

Now I just have to get to a theater.

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Copyright 2023 Christine Flowers, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Christine Flowers is an attorney and a columnist for the Delaware County Daily Times, and can be reached at [email protected].

When Democratic wunderkind Josh Shapiro campaigned to become the next governor of Pennsylvania, he tried to assume a centrist, bipartisan tone on “helping kids.” That included supporting Lifeline Scholarships for children in disadvantaged areas, which would allow their parents to put them in better schools with some limited government assistance.

This was a rather courageous and tactically savvy move by the governor, given the stranglehold that the public teachers’ unions have on education in Pennsylvania and beyond.

Then he did a complete 180 on school vouchers, stabbed those children in the back, and tried to blame Republicans for the blood flow.

Given the billions of dollars sunk into public schools over the years, and given the mediocre level of “scholars” that are being turned out, what harm is done by giving a small portion of our tax dollars to schools that perform well above average?

Why are we ignoring the fact that most of the kids in need of assistance are minority children, kids with parents who support vouchers and choice?

And why did Josh Shapiro fold?

Of all the answers we’re not getting, that one is the easiest to figure out.

The reason the so-called centrist, bipartisan governor decided to betray the most vulnerable schoolchildren is that he did not have the courage or the political conviction to actually do what was right, as opposed to doing what would please his caucus.

Contrary to what even some conservatives were saying during the election season, Josh Shapiro is a political animal, and not an entirely savvy one at that, who places expediency over doing the right thing.

It would have helped thousands upon thousands of Pennsylvania children if he had actually challenged the public school monopolists to demonstrate why they deserved a half billion dollars to essentially maintain a mediocre status quo where high school students are reading at elementary school levels and have more expertise with birth control than with self-control.

It would have been a Kennedyesque profile in courage if he had tried to convince the nihilists in his own party, people like his friend and leader of the Pennsylvania House Democratic Caucus Matt Bradford to release a paltry $100 million to provide a lifeline for struggling children.

But he didn’t, because he isn’t wired that way.

He has been a political animal since his earliest days at Akiba Hebrew Academy, a private school.

I remember when I was a student at Merion Mercy that a few of the kids on my school bus — the one provided for me with Pennsylvania tax dollars — were dropped off at Akiba.

In those days, there were the naysayers who were resentful that “privileged” kids were getting any public benefits, but there was an overall understanding that the welfare of children is much more important than the posturing of adults who don’t like their monopolies diluted.

Now, though, Shapiro has forgotten about that interplay between public and private and believes that there should be a wall erected between the two, even if that leaves struggling children in the breach.

And that toxic philosophy has seeped back down to the school districts, where places like Radnor and Haverford are trying to strip even transportation services from children in private schools.

It’s an all-out assault from failing public institutions on those who are trying to do the right thing by children, regardless of political labels.

The advocates for Shapiro, the House Democrats and public school zealots will continue to blather on about how we haven’t done enough, how the Commonwealth Court decreed that the funding systems were unfair, that children who choose to seek a decent education elsewhere need to bear the consequences of their choices.

They’re basically saying, “Let them eat chalk.”

But as someone who taught in private schools for years, at a salary that is less than half of what teachers with my experience would have gotten in a public setting, I know that kids don’t care about votes and caucuses and donors and making unions happy.

They only have one brief span of childhood, one fleeting moment in which to obtain that most precious of birthrights: a good education.

I hope they look at Josh Shapiro, and his enablers in Harrisburg and across the country, and realize just why they are on their own.

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Copyright 2023 Christine Flowers, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Christine Flowers is an attorney and a columnist for the Delaware County Daily Times, and can be reached at [email protected].

Hannah Arendt, who observed the trial of Holocaust architect Adolf Eichmann many decades ago in Israel, coined the phrase “the banality of evil” to describe crimes that were anything but banal. She was actually referring to what kind of person was capable of committing these horrific acts, not the acts themselves.

Sadly, while evil clearly exists, it is not so easy to figure out who is likely to be its architect. Eichmann, as Arendt wrote, could be considered an evil person because of his ability to simply ignore the humanity of the victims he condemned to death.

Conversely, there is nothing “banal” about the virtue that we find in unexpected places. The kernels of kindness strewn among our normal social interactions are becoming more and more uncommon these days, and when we happen on them, it is like water in a desert.

I was able to observe both forms of humanity or lack thereof, last week as I watched the reaction in my native Philadelphia to the arrival of the Moms for Liberty.

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you know that this is a group of women, most but not all of them actual mothers, who have banded together to fight for more parental control and involvement in public schools. They oppose what many see as the inclusion of sexually inappropriate materials in school curricula and libraries, support what was once called American values but are now labeled “white privilege” or even “white supremacy,” and have been very effective in getting their messages across.

There have been no incidents, as far as I know, of Moms for Liberty members vandalizing buildings, stalking children or committing any crimes. It is possible that there are members who have sent angry emails, screamed at school board members and gotten overly zealous in their defense of their position, but I’ll see your Moms for Liberty and raise you a Black Lives Matter riot any day.

So, then, while there are many who might object to their goals, they should have the right to express those views without being labeled a hate group, and thereby exposed to all sorts of threats and intimidation. This is, even more, the case when they come to the city — my city — where the whole concept of freedom of expression was codified in the Constitution.

The Southern Poverty Law Center disagrees. The organization used to be a respected organization that fought against fascism, bigotry and discrimination. It was instrumental in helping to dismantle the Ku Klux Klan and was one of the organizations that my father, a fledgling civil rights worker, appreciated when he went down to Mississippi in 1967.

But that Southern Poverty Law Center no longer exists. It has been transformed into an AK-47 of alt-left progressive fascists who have decided that they, and only they, get to determine what is culturally acceptable and legitimate.

It is therefore no surprise that it listed Moms for Liberty as a hate group, giving the go-ahead to violent activists who verbally abused the participants at this year’s national convention in downtown Philadelphia

Despite grudging comments from Mayor Jim Kenney about wanting to protect the safety of everyone in the city, including the “problematic” Moms, there was very little action taken against the mobs that came for them.

Then, there was the vandalism of the Museum of the American Revolution, which hosted one of the convention events. There was little to no outrage from the city council, the Mayor’s office, public officials or the local media. I suppose this evil was too “banal” for comment.

But even with these junior league terrorists, there was some grace. Marriott hosted the event, and even in the face of vituperative, vicious people daily spitting out their hatred in the faces of our city guests, the staff and administration at the hotel were kind, considerate, accommodating and courageous. It takes courage to do your job when people scream obscenities in your direction for even daring to pour coffee for a mom. It takes courage to live out the principle that everyone deserves respect when they are a guest in your home, even as the tempest rages outside the door.

That is not banal. That sort of virtue is immense, commensurate with the fierce courage that is present in those who believe in democracy. And that was much more powerful than the common, mundane, shallow and pitiful displays of common, mundane and pitiful protesters this week.

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Copyright 2023 Christine Flowers, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Christine Flowers is an attorney and a columnist for the Delaware County Daily Times, and can be reached at [email protected].