Soul of a surfer: Heart of a hero

My daughter asked me to take her and a friend to the movies as part of her 15^th birthday celebration, so naturally I said “Sure, what do you want to see?”

She said, “A movie about this surfer girl,” and I wondered what I had gotten myself into! Of course this wasn’t just any surfer girl and Soul Surfer is one of the finest films I’ve been fortunate enough to see!

To me a film needs three things to be great; the first is a great story.

Soul Surfer is the story of Bethany Hamilton, and hers is a truly great story. Ms Hamilton is the young surfer who at the age of thirteen lost an arm in a shark attack while training in Hawaii. Her injuries were severe and although she nearly died as a result, they kept her out of the water for only a few weeks. Soon she was surfing again, was able to compete and eventually fulfill her dream of turning pro. (And she is doing well as a pro). Ms Hamilton’s triumph is inspiring on par with the career of “Dummy” Hoy, the deaf baseball star of the early era of the game, Tom Dempsey’s record breaking 63 yard despite having only half of one of his feet, or Jim Abbott’s no hitter despite having just one hand.  While all of these athletes had distinguished achievements, Hoy should be a hall of famer, and all are inspiring what separates Ms Hamilton is the fact she was not born with her “disability” but was presented with the challenge of relearning how to do everything with one arm, not just how to compete at the highest level of a challenging sport. To me the most inspiring aspect of Bethany Hamilton’s story is summed up in the words of Christ in John: 10:10The thief cometh not, but for to steal, and to kill, and to destroy: I am come that they might have life, and that they might have [it] more abundantly.  If any one can testify of having something stolen and destroyed it would be Ms Hamilton moreover if any one is a testimony of what the abundant life of Christ really means it is this remarkable young woman! The wonderful peculiarity of Soul Surfer is that this part of the story comes through loud and clear. Hollywood is usually comfortable only with faith as it relates to a vague and unspecified deity, but the Hamilton family is Christian, their faith is in Jesus Christ, and the director and performers in the movie do a wonderful job of showing and modeling this faith. A home schooled girl who never gives her testimony without specifying that she gave her life to Jesus Christ at the age of five, in a family that goes to church and leans on the support of a youth minister who quotes from the Bible, in fact the Dad reads from the Bible (Phil. 4:13 from the NIV I can do everything through him who gives me strength.)  These people are shown as normal folk achieving extraordinary things?  And you thought Brokeback Mountain was revolutionary!

The second thing that makes a great movie is believability.

Realism and believability are not necessarily the same thing for example the 1933 version of King Kong is incredibly believable but not all that realistic, Soul Surfer is a true life story so realism does play heavily into the believability. The effects removing Annasophia Robb’s arm are flawless, the surfing, much of which is done by the real Ms Hamilton, is great and to my limited knowledge of the sport, the surfing competition seems realistic. Equally important is the scripting, if this story was told in platitude and cheesy dialogue with a few alligator tears thrown in it would hardly do justice to Ms Hamilton’s amazing story, but the script is tight, conversional, edgy and a little uncomfortable at times. You believe real people would talk this way. Finally you need to believe that the actors are the characters they portray and this movie has a heavy weight cast, in addition to Annasophia Robb as Bethany, Mr. and Mrs. Hamilton are played by Dennis Quaid and Helen Hunt, certainly pedigreed actors, Kevin Sorbo puts in a good turn as Bethany’s coach Holt Blanchard, and Carrie Underwood does a great job in her acting debut as Bethany’s youth leader Sarah Hill. The supporting roles are also all well done.

Finally a great film makes the audience care, it forms a connection, and does Soul Surfer ever do this.

One thing that impressed me with Soul Surfer was the directing. Going in most of us know that Bethany will be attacked by a shark so Sean McNamara does a fabulous job of setting up the incident so that when it does happen it’s a shock to the viewer. Also Bethany has setbacks and discouragements, though she never looses her faith, we are able to identify with her struggles. A few of the films more touching scenes involve Bethany’s attempts to put others at ease about her injury. As a father I can identify most with Bethany’s parents. All of us with teenagers struggle with the conflict between trying to help our kids and teaching them independence, letting them fall and helping them back up if you will. I can’t imagine if my daughter lost her arm!

 In the end what Bethany Hamilton teaches us and what Soul Surfer conveys is that God does not know the meaning of the word limit, and that when we are weak His power is perfected in us.

My advice, don’t miss this one!

for more information check the official movie site.  

http://www.soulsurferthemovie.com/

 

Boehner’s Big Bleepin’ Deal

Famously, when President Barack Obama signed the health care reform bill Vice President Biden remarked behind an open mike, “this is a big bleepin’ deal” (comment edited for content). It isn’t often I agree with the VP but in this case I do. Pres. Obama’s agenda may be unconstitutional, it may be dishonest, it may bring this mighty nation to its very knees, but it is not small. I wish Speaker Boehner understood this.

Last Friday I wrote to my representative Shelley Moore Capito and expressed my disappointment with the 2011 budget deal, you see I thought to come down to 38 billion and surrender all the policy riders was too much.  Sill I thought we were headed in the right direction until I learned that by the time previous cuts are factored in and accounting tricks are removed we actually cut  $352,000,000 from the 2011 budget. Awesome job Mr. Speaker you promise a 100 billion and deliver less than ½ of 1 billion. Way to think big!

Mr. Boehner will say “is this a perfect bill, no, I’ll be first to admit that”

Wrong, it was the perfect compromise, for the Democrats. They got to pretend to support “reasonable cuts” without really compromising on one darned thing. If this is how you negotiate sir, you are not shrewd enough to be speaker

Mr. Boehner will say the troops wouldn’t have been paid,

I’ll give him this, except to say, why you didn’t see that coming, why didn’t you get way out ahead of it and propose a bill before or as part of the first CR to make sure the military was funded. Did you think the President was too honorable to hold the sword of Damocles over our brave men and women’s heads for his own political goals? If you believe that sir, you are to naïve to be Speaker.

Mr. Boehner will say, “Welcome to divided government.”

Our government is divided?  Sen. Reid and Pres Obama don’t think so. They seem content to do as the please while we boast of leaning a 6’ ladder against an Everest of debt and proclaim; “now we’re climbing!” this is the definition of thinking small.

Mr. Boehner will say “we are only ½ of 1/3 of the government”

Ah but sir, you are the chamber where all spending and taxation legislation must originate. You have tremendous power Mr. Speaker, not to do every thing, but to do great good, PLEASE USE IT!

The fight is not over, the Ryan budget and the debt ceilings are the issues upcoming, we need a bigger plan, a bigger fight. It was said at the last election that if Republicans failed to govern according to the principles of the voters they would loose the people’s trust forever, this deal isn’t that but it’s a huge step in that direction. We pesky tea party folks are not going away sir and we do not buy the conventional wisdom that the people want republicans and democrats to get along, we aren’t in favor of gong along to get along  with those who steal our liberty and bankrupt our children. You can be replaced Mr. Speaker, our liberty cannot. As of now I will accept that Speaker Boehner is a good man who got his political butt handed to him by a powerful, though not overly popular president, who is not afraid of the big issues.

Please Mr. Speaker get on the firing line.   

To pick a fight

        non·es·sen·tial

    [non-uh-sen-shuhl] –adjective 1. not essential;  not necessary: 

This is the word of the day. We are facing a shutdown of nonessential government functions if the Republicans in the house insist on anything other than purely superficial cuts in spending,  In other words if the Republicans do what we sent them there to do. Now the reason we are here is that the Democratic house never even proposed a budget for the Democratic senate to vote on or the Democratic President to sign. Yet according to conventional wisdom the Republicans are to blame if nonessential government functions shut down. In the liberal mind, this makes sense. Still the Republicans have agreed to a number of temporary spending measures and have approved even another, this one cuts 12 billion instead of a measly two. If passed by the senate, which is likely, the President has threatened a veto, so if a government shutdown happens it will rest squarely on the shoulders of our historic President.

I am reminded of the scene in Braveheart before the battle of Sterling where the Scottish nobles (a.k.a. the establishment republicans) ride out to negotiate with the English nobles (a. k. a. the liberal Democrats). You see the Scottish people are suffering mightily and these nobles have sworn to defend them, but upon seeing the massive English army (a.k.a. the liberal media) the nobles get weak kneed and start to talk of the importance of cooperation and reaching across the aisle in friendship. Of course the oppression of Edward Longshanks would continue with this compromise (a.k.a. Obama care, EPA overregulation et al.)  And Scotland would still be bankrupted by Longshanks’ oppressive taxes, but it would be a little better and the nobles would be safe. But in rides William Wallace (a.k.a. the tea party patriots), and rallies the troops. It is better to fight for freedom, and maybe loose it all then to fear the battle (a.k.a. a government shutdown) and live as slaves “THEY MAY TAKE OUR LIVES BUT THEY’LL NEVER TAKE OUR FREEDOM!” then when one of his aids asks where he is going Wallace responds “to pick a fight.” While I am not suggesting telling the President to “stick his head between his legs and….” You get it, but we must say this far no farther we must have this fight. The Scotts win the battle of Sterling and would eventually win their independence.

Mr. Boehner, stand strong. This is not 1995; the country is not in the same place. Many Republicans fear a backlash from a shutdown, but I think the opposite is true, and the polls back me up. America itself will be lost if spending is not reigned in. (Actually spending is really a symptom of the out of control size of Government but that is a blog for another day) besides if you want to see a backlash, go against the teaparty on this one.

So often our friends in the GOP have let us down, Pres Bush did nothing to control spending and it cost the Republicans dearly, now Obama has surpassed Bush’s highest one year deficit in one month. The country is at stake, let’s pick a fight.

The President and the Democrats along with the propagandists in the media will say that any spending cuts will kill children, starve old people and hurt women’s health. Heck, faced with literal default, Harry Reid says it would be a catastrophe if we lost the cowboy poetry festival. Yes friends better to bankrupt your children’s future then to stop government subsidies for a cowboy poetry festival. Just who are the extremists anyway? The president won’t agree to pay the military during a shutdown but he will take a stand for Planned Parenthood, if that does not define extremist I don’t know what does.

 As important as the spending cuts in the remainder of fiscal year ’11 are, and lets be honest 61 billion dollars is not enough to make a real difference, yes friends $61,000,000,000.00 is not nearly enough to make a real difference, it is where these cuts are that really matters. Planned parenthood, NEA, limiting the EPA the tiny beginning of defunding Obamacare these are the victories that will frame the debate for the 2012 budget. Yes, the Republican house has a budget proposal which is an essential function of government according to the constitution. Rule of thumb: If it is a constitutional duty of government like national defense or securing the border the Democrats oppose it, if it is not an essential duty i.e. cowboy poetry, it is indispensable and people will literally cease to exist without it.

I have hope. In spite of the media and in spite of their own leadership the Republicans are framing the debate and driving the issues, thank God for Paul Ryan, and the people are with them. Perhaps at last the era of McCain has passed and we have Republicans wiling to fight for our countries future. If your congressman or woman is taking a stand call them up and say a big fat thank you. To our representative the honorable Shelly Moore Capito I say “keep on the firing line”

Why the tea parties will win.

The tea party movement is not a political party. I don’t even see it as a political movement. There is no single uniting policy, no candidate or spokesman calling the shots. Do we love Sarah Palin? Yes, we do. Do we tend to agree with most if not all of the Republican national platform? Read it, it’s great. However this is not a repeat of the Reagan Revolution, we do not have a single charismatic leader, and instead of one big “Reagan” we have a million little “Ron’s”. Sarah Palin’s prominence is a result of our movement, not its cause. If a Republican is willing to campaign, and govern according to the conservative principles in that marvelous platform of theirs, great, if not we can find someone else.

            Don’t be mistaken, the tea parties are united but not on the minutia of policy. We are drawn together by core principles. We believe in a great America. We see Reagan’s shining city on a hill, and we do not apologize for this country. America is the best hope of freedom, the torchbearer of liberty, and the single greatest source of charity for the world. Our military is the greatest force for good in the world. When we hear a President go to countries where rape victims are flogged, or women have been forced to have abortions and bemoan the treatment of women in our country, it rubs us the wrong way. When our soldiers saving countless lives in Haiti are told not to fly our flag it enrages us.

            We believe in a free America. Liberty, freedom, and independence are not just words to us, they are a faith. Since the 1930’s and even before, we have had a strong move by some to find the government solution to every problem. The new deal, the war on poverty, and Medicaid were all supposed to free us from social injustice. I hate to point this out to the liberals, but poverty is kicking your butt. We think its time to try something different. Let every American work as best as he can, and keep what he earns. How about limiting governments involvement to as few rules as regulations as absolutely necessary. Reagan tried it and it worked fine. Take health care, the real solution is as plain as the nose on Karl Malden’s face. If costs are higher than the market can bear, remove the extra market forces. Every problem the government fixes for us necessarily means they have to take freedom from us. If Obamacare is allowed to stand we will not be a free country with certain restrictions, we will be a restricted country with certain freedoms. What about the poor? Free and prosperous Americans will do a far better job of helping them, then all the government entitlements in history. Entitlements enslave one segment of the population by robbing the wealth of another. Private and religious charities help people stand on their own two feet. Remember the story about teaching the man to fish?

            We believe in a secure America. We do not oppose legal immigration, but support clamping down on illegal immigration. We don’t want to reward people for breaking the law, so we don’t support amnesty, rather purposed by Republican or Democrat. We love and support our military and want them to have everything they need to win, yes win, with as few casualties as possible. We don’t believe terrorists have the same rights as captured enemy soldiers, let alone US citizens

            We believe in limited government. Of all the core principles this is key. It unites social and fiscal conservatives and contrasts the tea party America from the liberal America. Even before Obamacare, the principles of limited government were under siege. The growing deficit, in spite of record revenues, was a symptom that was not treated in the last Republican administration and helped lead to the election of a number of “blue dog” democrats. If the Republicans disappointed us, the blue dogs have absolutely betrayed us. If the Bush deficits were unacceptable, there are no words short of profanity to describe what has transpired under the Obama reign. We understand that drastic real spending cuts are needed and that the old principle of votes for pork must be abandoned.  Loss of these “goodies” may cause short term pain but will inspire long term gain.

            Most of all, we believe in the constitution. Our founders established a stringent system of check and balance meant to shackle the beast of federal power. So serious were they that a leading argument against the bill of rights was the fear that if certain rights were listed future government might deem that only those specific rights were protected.

In reality, the rights of the people are unlimited, barring of course criminal activity, and the powers of government severely restricted to those specifically granted. To quote Roland Burriss D-Ill “most of the stuff we do around here has nothing to do with the constitution anyway”. In the end the only guarantee we have of any rights, of any freedom is in the constitution and if it is circumvented in the name of the common good, than all liberty can be circumvented in the same way. Case in point, the filibuster in the Senate so passionately defended by Democrats in the years of the Bush administration was designed as a break to help slow the populist issue of the moment. Major transformative change like healthcare reform should be hard and should require broad based support. By using parliamentary tricks the government can now reshape the entire structure of the nation with a fifty-one vote tyranny. This does not even account for the imperialistic use of executive orders now prevalent in Obama’s white house.

            These are the challenges, but why will the tea party movement prevail? Whenever liberty has been threatened Americans have risen to defend it. Unlike in our recent past when a small percentage of the people have taken up arms across the foam to win its continuation, this battle fall to us, the everyday American. Why will we win? Because if we loose our children will grow up impoverished and oppressed. We will win because we must!                

            Samuel Adams said “it does not take a majority to win, rather an irate tireless minority, keen set to brush fires in people’s minds.” That is the tea party movement in one sentence.

            Until next time, keep on the firing line.

            Oh for a man of the mushy middle! How my heart yearns for one who can lay aside such divisive concepts as principle and constitutionality and just be civil. What hope is there but for a man willing to smile and compromise as the liberals erode freedom? Where is the leader who will extend a hand to the president and ignore the knives thrust into his, or her, back?

            Are not these the ones who have inspired us throughout history? Was Scotland not unified behind William Wallace’s message of moderate civility?  Was Samuel Adams not famous for his lack of extremist rhetoric? Didn’t Thomas Payne inspire a nation by seeking common ground with the British? Was not the purpose of the first tea party an attempt to compromise with the British on tax policy?  Surely no one like Patrick Henry would have used the inciting words liberty and death in the same sentence. Certainly Abraham Lincoln saved the republic by embracing the slave owners with the stirring refrain “why can’t we all just get along”. Didn’t Reagan inspire the nation by…? I think you get my point. To quote Braveheart’s Wallace “men do not follow titles [or moderates] they follow courage.”   

            I believe Webster’s should define a moderate politician as “one who surrenders by the pound the freedoms liberals seek to devour by the ton” moderate voters however are in a different category all together. If indeed the Republicans wish to win over moderate Democrats perhaps they should simply remember what the popular non deplume for them is: Reagan Democrats. Most Democrats while they may not be willing to go as far as agreeing with the nasty old Republicans do not prescribe to the High taxation and radical Government controls promoted by the far left. Further, moderate Democrats love this country. I submit they are more likely to vote for a conservative with an uncompromising “love America” message than for a catering candidate endeavoring to say what they think the voter wants to hear, especially one who does not contrast himself to an administration left of Mao. To prove the point, I have yet to hear a moderate Democrat called a McCain democrat.

            Independents are another sticky wicket. With Republicans and Democrats nearly even in the country this small percent of voters not identifying with either the major parties or a third party become a sort of Holy Grail to those seeking high office. Conventional wisdom says to “go moderate” and both parties have tried this to some extent. Liberals are better at hiding who they are so they have had success promising to govern from the middle with a “wink, wink, nod, nod” to the far left. Believing in integrity, we conservatives can’t copy this strategy so we send out real moderates and watch the Dole’s and McCain’s of the world get chewed up and spit out by alienating their own base and failing to attract independents.

            Shall we go back to what works? First of all there are three main groups of independents. First you have those who do not identify with the Democrat party because they believe the party not liberal enough. Unless we are willing to drop the Republican national platform and run on the Communist Manifesto we are not likely to win these voters. Second are those who do not wish to identify with the Republican Party because it is not conservative enough or because it has failed to stand up for conservative values in the past. Good luck bringing them on board by moving to the left to the infamous middle ground. Finally the largest group of independents does not associate with either party because they agree with some basic ideas of each party. These voters will tend to vote for the best candidate rather then for the ideological views of the candidate. This is where men of the mushy middle fall short. To win these voters a clear reasoned message is required, a strong stand may be more important than what the stand is, and common ground is likely again to be American exceptionalism. “I may not be pro-life” says this independent, “but I will vote for the pro-life guy because he wants to do away with Obamacare and give us back our freedom to choose our own healthcare.”

            Strength, freedom, and leadership are the winning issues that will draw moderate and independent voters back to the Republican Party. We also should keep in mind we are not running against centrist Democrats. Even a voter who leans slightly left will does not likely support the radical transformation of America as proposed by Obama, Reid, and Pelosi. Independents are fleeing the sinking ship “Obama” in droves and it is up to us to give them a starkly contrasted boat to swim to.

            If we take our example from Adams, Henry, Lincoln, and Reagan we won’t go too far wrong.

            Until next time, keep on the firing line.