Author: Jimmy Akin

Jimmy was born in Texas, grew up nominally Protestant, but at age 20 experienced a profound conversion to Christ. Planning on becoming a Protestant seminary professor, he started an intensive study of the Bible. But the more he immersed himself in Scripture the more he found to support the Catholic faith, and in 1992 he entered the Catholic Church. His conversion story, "A Triumph and a Tragedy," is published in Surprised by Truth. Besides being an author, Jimmy is the Senior Apologist at Catholic Answers, a contributing editor to Catholic Answers Magazine, and a weekly guest on "Catholic Answers Live."

Where Are the Anti-Communist Movies?

Abortions, pornography and contraceptives will be banned in the new Florida town of Ave Maria, which has begun to take shape on former vegetable farms 90 miles northwest of Miami.
Tom Monaghan, the founder of the Domino’s Pizza chain, has stirred protests from civil rights activists by declaring that Ave Maria’s pharmacies will not be allowed to sell condoms or birth control pills. The town’s cable television network will carry no X-rated channels.
The town will be centred around a 100-foot tall oratory and the first Catholic university to be built in America for 40 years. The university’s president, Nicholas J Healy, has said future students should “help rebuild the city of God” in a country suffering from “catastrophic cultural collapse.”

That’s the question being asked by David Boaz over at TCS Daily.

He notes that there have, actually, been some anti-Communist movies, but not nearly as many as there have been anti-Nazi movies, and the Communists killed far more people than the Nazis, thus creating innumerable dramatic human situations that could be illuminated through film.

I’ve got two thoughts on why there haven’t been as many anti-Communist movies:

1) Hollywood tends to the left of the political spectrum. It’s cultural/political ethos is socialistic to begin with, and there is less of a desire on filmmakers’ parts to go after Communists than people (like Nazis) that they perceive to be on the opposite end of the political spectrum (though, in actuality, the Nazi party was the National Socialist party).

2) The Cold War never got hot. What made Naziism so riveting and enduring an evil in film is the fact that a whole generation of Americans went off to fight it. Communism was a looming menace, but since we and the Russians (or the Chinese) never squared off in an actual world war, that looming menace never turned into the generation-defining experience that World War II was. If Stalin massacred more civilians than Hitler did (let’s suppose; I haven’t checked the numbers), we never had to fight Stalin, and that kept him from becoming an archtypal villain equivalent to Hitler in cultural stature. (Though he has clearly been the first runner-up in that category.)

So those are my theories.

What’re yours?

Pipes on Fascism Old and New

Yes, I know Daniel Pipes is a reliable apologist for Israeli policy, and likely biased in his assessments, but I have been surprised myself at the extent of the connections – not just ideological, but historical, political and structural – between the Islamofascists (for want of a better term) of the last half-century and Hitler’s Third Reich.

Guys like Yasser Arafat and Saddam Hussein could trace their political lineage directly to card-carrying Nazis. Fellas like Grand Mufti Mohammad Amin al-Husayni were their heroes and mentors.

Makes you wonder if Arab countries labeling Israel as the aggressor in the Middle East isn’t more brazenly twisted than O.J. Simpson and his search for the "real killers".

PIPES’ LATEST on CATHOLIC EXCHANGE.

The X Party Vs. The Y Party

It’s not uncommon to hear people refer to the Democratic Party as the "Mommy" party and the Republican Party as the "Daddy" party, but Michael Medved has a different way of characterizing the two.

In this column, he contrasts the "Senator" party with the "Governor" party, assigning the former role to the Democrats and the latter to the Republicans.

He bases this on a look at both where their recent presidential nominees have come from (legislative or executive backgrounds) and where their current crops of presidential hopefuls come from.

He also suggest that the tendency of Democrats to nominate senators for president and Republicans to nominate governors has to do with their (or at least their parties’ nominating core’s) view of government and the proper role of the presidency.

It’s an interesting hypothesis.

It’s also interesting to contemplate how it matches up with conventional political wisdom that it’s easier to get elected president if you’re a governor than if you’re a senator. One theory proposed to explain this is that governors have less of a paper trail than long-time senators do, meaning it’s harder to paint them as politically undesirable based on their past voting record.

But that’s just one theory, and there are several other possible ones here.

Whether any of them will help either party in ’08 (should either nominate a governor for president) is a whole different matter.

March Of The Burn Victim Towel Animals–Parte Deux

A time or two when I was on the Catholic Answers cruise, I found a mysterious line of animals appearing in my room after dinner that appeared to be burn victims made out of towels.

It wasn’t always clear what the animals were meant to be, but I BLOGGED ABOUT IT, and folks had fun guessing what some animals were.

I’d completely forgotten about this, but tonight this little critter showed up in my bedroom . . .

Mystery_critter_1

What is it?

I actually know what it’s supposed to be. (The cabin steward told me.)

I’ll answer tomorrow (assuming I’m able to log in tomorrow).

Till then, have fun guessing!