Final "Solutions"

I recently had the opportunity to visit the Holocaust Museum in Washington DC. It was a sobering experience and, combined with  Holocaust Remembrance Day earlier this week, prompted me to write something.

Two things in particular struck me about the museum. Whether these are related to each other or not, I'll let you decide. I'll simply present them.

US Holocaust Memorial Museum

First, the phrase "Final Solution," the Nazi description of their genocide, made sense in a way it never has previously. I knew it was the euphemism for the mass execution of the Jews, but it seemed a strange choice. The Museum gives the necessary background. In the literature prior to and leading up to the war, there were increasing references to the "Jewish problem" or the "Jewish question." Hitler, in particular, jumped on and perpetuated this way of thinking, emphasizing the problem. Segregation, ghettos, ostracization, deprivation of rights, concentration camps, were then all implemented with increasing severity to address this problem. It then made linguistically sense to refer to mass extermination as the "final" solution to the problem. There's a perverse logic to the whole thing. Once the premise of a "problem" was adopted, all sorts of "solutions" became viable. The euphemism was twice removed, allowing the participants to distance themselves from the horror they were committing.

I wanted to intervene in history and challenge the premise. What if Jews living among Germans isn't a "problem" that needs a "solution"? What if it is something else? The tragedy was possible because a "problem" had been misidentified.

And then I turned that on myself. What do we, do I, misidentify as a "problem" today? I can't change history, but here and now, where does a "problem" need to be challenged so as not to lead to an atrocious "solution." Where have people been labeled "problems" by their mere existence?

US Holocaust Memorial Museum

What if the immigrant without documentation is a person, not a "problem"?

What if the unborn child is a person, not a "problem"?

What if the poor family taking advantage of assistance are people, not a "problem"?

What if in calling these as "problems," the error is ours?

Each of these can cause social tensions, and dare I say social burdens for everyone. But might those not be burdens we should be willing, nay glad, to bear, instead of seeking a "final solution" so they no longer interfere with our lives? What if instead of a "problem," we instead thought of these in terms of a person who needs help? They are addressed not by a "solution," but by a friend. The Holocaust starkly demonstrates that dehumanized "problems" lead to inhumane "solutions". What "final solutions" have we been willing to entertain?

Second, the slogan seen repeatedly through the museum is "Never Again." Never again will we allow this sort of atrocity to take place. Never again will we turn a blind eye. Never again. After the war, many leaders of the Allied forces made a point to personally tour the camps. They wanted to see first hand how bad it was. A quote by General Eisenhower was displayed on one of the walls. He said that a day would come when people would try to say it wasn't as bad as the rumors reported, and he wanted to be able to personally refute that. That's why he subjected himself to seeing the camps. That's why we subject ourselves to looking at the photographs, reading the descriptions, standing in the boxcars, and walking through the room of shoes.

But possibly even more striking than anything than any single display is the moment you walk out of the museum, out of darkly lit Nazi controlled Europe, and into the sunshine of the national mall surrounded by laughing and jovial tourists. It's a shock, a combination of gratitude that you're no longer there and gravity that such cruelty can take place. One feels the need to sit and ponder, yet the world calls for gaiety.

I think something is lost in that transition. The Holocaust becomes a little more unreal, just another exhibit. For contrast, imagine walking out of the museum and be not in Washington, DC, but instead be standing in one of the camps.

This made me wonder, what if we don't think of "Never Again" quite deeply enough. We think of it in context of WWII, where we were on the right side. We intervened. When we say "Never Again," we say it from a point of strength and pride. Never again will we let that happen. We may have been late, but we still came through. We're aware of, yet still detached from, the atrocity. What if, instead, we pledged something slightly different. What if "Never Again" wasn't simply something we said to others, but something we said to ourselves? What if we saw the potential for our own involvement, and that scared us?

The Holocaust is a testament to the depravity of the human soul. That much is made perfectly clear in the Museum. This isn't the soul of some "other." Those committing the atrocities were as human as you or I. "Never Again" should be just as much a check on ourselves as it is a check to use against someone else. It is an opportunity for both resolve and self examination.

And that is why we can never forget.

Never forget that someone like me did something like that.

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Winter Soldier: Revenge of the Millennials

I know we already did a review of Captain America: The Winter Soldier, but I believe there is still another aspect that needs further exploration. Jeremiah noted in his review that this movie feels a little different than the prior ones. I felt the same way, but maybe not for the same reasons. (*Spoilers ahead*)

Captain America: The Winter Soldier is darker than the prior Marvel movies. Of course, there are the obvious political conclusions to be drawn: the danger of an all-powerful shadowy agency out to protect us, the irresponsible use of technology, the latent despotism of a surveillance state.

But I suggest there is a cultural critique, conscious or unconscious, going on that is even deeper. This movie is about the fall of the people and institutions we trusted. It's about being taken advantage of by the leaders we looked up to. It's about being used and lied to by the people we thought were friends. It's about the blurring together of the "good" institutions and the "bad" institutions. And, most importantly, it's about determining who our true friends are--that little pocket of community that we can truly trust.

This is the story of the millennials. The adrift generation, steeped in optimism yet feeling manipulated and used by the very people who they are supposed to save; held to the impossible standard of being expected to clean up an inherited mess without ruffling the feathers of those who made the mess in the first place; deemed by their elders to be entitled, narcisistic, and unable to grow up; and accused of being more wiling to shoot at their own than at the (elder declared) "enemy". But Captain America: The Winter Soldier confronts these tropes head on, and dismantles them.

At the end of Captain America: The First Avenger, Hydra was believed to be extinguished. At the end of The Avengers (review here), SHIELD had flexed its muscle and saved the world. Idealism ruled. Now, however, we learn that Hydra is SHIELD. Not only that, we learn that Nick Fury, the current initiative behind SHIELD, has known this for some time and, believing to still be in control, has taken a wait-and-see approach. He has used Steve and Natasha as his pawns in his internal struggle with Hydra's SHIELD, but never bothered to tell them the looming threat. Nick doesn't trust either of them, but he certainly expects them to fix his mess in his way. He lets them think they're heroes, when they're being pawns. "Janitor" is the term Steve uses. In this sense, Steve is no different than Bucky, which probably influences his determination to redeem Winter Soldier.

Notice the themes running through the movie. Steve is supposed to trust Nick on his missions, despite the fact that Nick is not giving him the full story. Steve is looked down upon as young and idealistic, too inexperienced to make the calls that SHIELD leadership has to make (despite the fact that he's decades older than any of them). Yet Steve is expected to repeatedly save the world for Nick. Save it from the mess Nick helped create. And do it the way Nick wants. Respect is a one-way street, and Steve is only allowed the responsibilities, and not the privileges, of growing up.

Natasha Romanova has traded her Soviet past for what she believes is a better future, only to discover that both the "good guys" and the "bad guys" treat her the same way--blackmail her with her past into doing what they want for their own ends. She's never going to be good enough to warrant anyone's trust, and she's constantly reminded of that.

We also meet Sam Wilson (Falcon), who got out of the military after his wing man was shot down and who now spends his days working at a veteran's support facility. Far from being calloused and disillusioned, though,  Sam is simply waiting for someone to follow (just not as quickly). Particularly, someone who will treat him as a friend, not only as an asset. In the meantime, he's doing his best to care for those around him. He meets Steve, not through any formal introduction via an organization or powerful person, but out jogging around DC. The friendship sticks.

SHIELD and Nick see them  as Captain America, Black Widow, and Falcon. But we see their longing to also be known as Steve, Natasha, and Sam. Not giving up their heroic identities, but to be more than icons. From the perspective of Nick, all the critiques of millennials are true of Steve, Natasha, and Sam. But as the story plays out, we see that the accusation is unjust. And not only unjust, but backwords. Of all the characters, Nick is the one most embodying the traits of entitlement, narcissism, denial of consequences, and poor judgment.

Three scenes in particular highlight these tensions. The first is when Steve, Natasha, Sam, and Nick are in the bunker planning how to take down Hydra/SHIELD. Nick begins in the position of command, attempting to deploy the other three the way he had done previously. Steve, however, pushes back, saying that taking down Hydra means taking down SHIELD. He's no longer going to try to save the institution that has betrayed him. It all has to go, and then they can start over. It's a call Nick can't make. He still thinks SHIELD is redeemable. But he is powerless on his own and so must bow to Steve's leadership. The baton has passed, but only after Steve seized it.

The second scene is on the deck of one of the carriers. Steve and Sam are charging into the fight, and Sam asks how they know who the enemy is. Steve responds simply: "If they're shooting at you, they're bad." No longer content to let others decide who the enemy is, a mistrust that has already been validated multiple times over by this point in the story, they are entering the fray in their own right. They have not decided to sit it out and watch the world burn. Quite the opposite. They're engaged to a level that they haven't been previously. It's their fight now. But their engagement comes at a cost. They're no longer content to be shot at by so-called friends. If you're shooting at them, they'll view you as an enemy.

Finally, at the end, the four are again grouped at Nick's gravesite. Nick announces he is heading to go to Europe to try to patch things back together. Although he invites the others, they all decline to join him. Nick is not an enemy, but neither is he counted among their friends. He must live in the world of assets he created, and is judged with the stranded he meted out. Instead, Steve and Sam decide to go after Bucky. They have declared their priorities: the institutions have failed, and good riddance. But a friend is still worth pursuing. He may have been shooting at them, but he his still a friend. And that is worth something.

Captain America: The Winter Soldier explores the cultural themes being experienced by today's generation of new adults. It confronts the critiques, expectations, and challenges my generation faces head-on, and exposes them for the oversimplifications that they are. If the world is to be saved, Captain America, Black Widow, and Falcon must be allowed to act as the people they were trained and expected to be. But heroes ruffle feathers. They challenge preconceived notions. If they didn't, they'd be something other than heroes and shouldn't be expected to do any saving.

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Three Books for Aspiring Lawyers

So you want to go to law school. You want to join the ranks of what Alexis De Tocqueville called the "American aristocracy."

Wonderful.

Now, go read the article "Should I Go To Law School" on Art of Manliness.

Still want to go?

Great. Congratulations.

Then let me recommend three books that will help you prepare, even though they will likely be neither assigned nor discussed directly in an of your law school classes. Two of these books I read prior to law school, and they helped me greatly. All three provide some basic foundation for the material you will be learning.

First is Lawrence Friedman's A History of American Law. This is by far the largest of the three books I'm recommending, but still very much worth adding to your library. Friedman begins with colonial law and traces how American law changed over the decades. He examines the large categories of law: public law, family law, commercial law, torts, property, and law and the economy. He also has several chapters on how the legal profession has developed. What makes this particularly valuable is that in law school you will run into all these concepts at various points in their development. However, while many courses require an understanding of history, they are not taught as history. Friedman provides a framework that you will find remarkably helpful sitting in a torts class, learning how a theory develops, and being able to place it within his timeline. Even if you do not read it in its entirety, it makes an excellent reference book. I might be overstating somewhat if I said that Friedman is today's equivalent of Blackstone, but he does provide the service today that Blackstone provided in the colonial era, namely, a history and summary of the current state of law.

Second is Roscoe Pound's An Introduction to the Philosophy of Law (also available as a free ebook).This does for legal theory what Friedman does to the American experience--provides a structural framework. In law school, I took a course on Jurisprudence (Philosophy of Law), and the first three chapters of little book has more content than that entire course. Starting with Ancient Greece, and moving through Rome and into common law and into the positivist school, Pound traces how thinking about law has changed, how it hasn't, and how each new development relates to the prior understanding, Take, for example, his observation on how the American system inverted the classical understanding of natural law: "In the United States, since the natural law of the eighteenth-century publicists had become classical, we relied largely upon an American variant of natural law. It was not that natural law expressed the nature of man. Rather it expressed the nature of government." That subtle shift of emphasis from the human soul to the purpose of government actually explains a lot of how we think about politics. The book is full of gems like that. And for beginning law students, the last three chapters turn to specific areas of law: liability (negligence), property, and contract. These will be three of your core classes, likely in your first year. Knowing a bit about them in advance, even if the material is now dated, won't hurt anything.

The first two recommendations are heavily academic. Not so the third one. Here, I recommend Agatha Christie's The Murder of Roger Ackroyd. This is at first glance the strangest one on this list, but to be honest, Agatha Christie has greatly influenced how I think about legal problems. I've been meaning to post about it for some time, and might yet expand it at a future date. Basically, though, Christie is good at showing how anyone is capable of crime, and how presuming otherwise clouds the cases. More than just clues, her detectives observe and are close students of people. And that is often the key to solving the puzzle. Never forget that each legal problem has one or more people at its heart. While I can't say more without giving away the outcome, this story, more than any other I've read, demonstrates how just a few missing facts can completely change the outcome of a case. And also that-- well, if I finished that sentence I'd give away too much. Just read the book.

Certainly there are other resources as well, and this list should not limit you. J. Budziszewski has written several excellent books on natural law theory. And the Blackstone Legal Fellowship program has a book list of its own. But these three books that I've recommended here will give you an excellent starting point.

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A Conflicted War

We Americans like our wars simple. A good side and a bad side. We win, they loose. We can see this in how we remember the American Revolution (liberty verses tyranny), the Civil War (freedom verses slavery), World War II (justice verses Nazis), and the Cold War (free capitalism verses despotic communism). And those conflicts legitimately lend themselves to such interpretations.

Of course, there are positive elements to this. We desire to ensure that we are "right" when taking such a drastic and horrible step as war. This could probably be directly tied back to the Just War Theory. And there is an idealism underlying this as well that we have been permitted to hold as a result of particular geography. We have oceans on either side, and friendly neighbors above and below. We've never faced a serious invasion by a neighboring country. We've never been truly attacked on home soil by another country since 1812 (9/11 is a category of its own, and Hawaii was a territory on December 7, 1941). So we can, to some extent, afford to hold to these ideals in a way those living in other countries may not.

There is a danger here as well. Once convinced we are "right," it is easy conclude that the ends justify the means. Even these good/bad wars, which do lend themselves to such a dichotomy view, have been whitewashed to some degree. War brings out the worst in everyone, which we would rather forget. The founders, upon establishing a country based on freedom, adopted the Alien and Sedation Acts. Sherman marched to the sea. And during WWII, the United States was still segregated and we set up concentration camps for people of Japanese descent. And lets not forget that the nation that holds itself out as the epitome of liberty and justice is also the only nation to have used nuclear weapons against another.

Each of these can be defended on military grounds, and I'm not here to debate their merits, but will say that none of these on their own, whether black marks or not, invalidate the larger purpose of the wars. They simply demonstrate that wars are awful all around.

There are other wars in our history that demonstrate this complexity even starker. These are the wars we do not highlight. The Indian wars are deliberately ignored, WWI is hardly understood, Korea was forgotten, and our small wars are largely lost to history. These types of wars are more complicated than we're comfortable with.

The largest of these uncomfortable wars, however, is the one that more than any other still overshadows our current geopolitical relations: Vietnam. Which leads me to the object of this book review: Embers of War: The Fall of an Empire and the Making of America's Vietnam. (Obtained through Goodreads First Reads program.)

In this book, which won the 2013 Pulitzer Prize in History, Fredrik Logevall examines the events leading up to the United States involvement in Vietnam. Logevall begins his account with the end of WWI, and ends with the first commitment of US troops. Along the way we learn that like WWI, the Vietnam conflict had its origins in European-esque boundary disputes. Like WWII, it erupted over unresolved issues in the wake of WWI. Like the Cold War, it ended up being treated as part of the larger ideological global conflict between capitalism and communism. But underneath all those narratives, the good guys and the bad guys were difficult to distinguish.

Along the way we learn that the communist revolutionaries had their origins in Wilsonian anti-colonialism. Vietnam (French Indochina) was a French colony prior to WWI and watched many of its neighbors obtain independence in the wake of that war. The future communist leader Ho Chi Minh was actually at the Versailles Peace Conference attempting (unsuccessfully, so far as we know) to obtain an audience with President Wilson to make a case for Vietnamese independence. But France wouldn't release the colony.

Then, during WWII, the colony was overrun by the Japanese. At the end of that war, again there was the opportunity for independence, again the opportunity passed and France reacquired its former colony. Roosevelt indicated he might be willing to push back against France and in favor of independence, but his death in office brought an end to that hope. All the while the spirit of independence was growing across the country.

Rebuffed by the Americans and occupied by the French, the Vietnamese turned to the only voice that was speaking for independence. Unfortunately, it was the voice of the communists. Rebellion happened, France threw troops into the colony for a decade and then wore out, a truce was signed dividing the country, the communists got the north but violated the treaty, the United States committed troops.

It is a story of a part of the world slipping from tragedy to tragedy. Of opportunities lost combined with a lack of clear "good" choices. Of the inability to distinguish between an independence movement and a communist revolution. In short, it is a story of  human history in all its complexity. But it's a story that we should learn from more, and maybe soapbox on less.

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Future book reviews

Recently, through visits to a variety of bookstores (and maybe an Amazon order), I have come into possession of a number of books that look fascinating. Some of these I've been wanting to read for some time, others were impulse or exploratory acquisitions. I hope to be able over the next few months (or maybe years) to review each of these here. But in the meantime, here's the list.



Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II. How does a nation surrender, submit to foreign occupation, and then become an economic powerhouse and close ally of the occupying nation? I hope to find out.








Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln. I've been wanting to read this one since even before Lincoln (which is based on this book) came out. Needless to say, the movie only strengthened my desire to read the book. Sometimes a diversity of opinion can lead to misdirection and stalemate. It takes a particular type of leader to reap the benefits of a divisive cabinet while not falling into the pitfalls associated with one. I'm hoping to learn from Lincoln how that might be done.






American Caesar: Douglas MacArthur 1880 - 1964. To be honest, it's largely that title that attracted me to this book. Some may think that there are no more great men with Caesar's ambition. But that may not be the case. What if there are, but they are kept out of politics? MacArthur might be one such example.









Mao: The Unknown Story. By the author of the excellent Wild Swans, which tells the story of Jung Chang's family living through the communist revolution, from her grandmother (concubine to Chinese warlord), mother and father (loyal revolutionaries), and finally herself (Red Guard). She tells of a nation mislead from the perspective of a former Mao worshiper who only fully realized what had happened after she left. So when I saw that she had written a biography of Mao, it was a must read. And yes, this week's quiz came from this book.






Nixon and Kissinger: Partners in Power. Impulse buy at a used bookstore. Should nicely follow my books on Vietnam (review coming next week), Japan, MacArthur, and the biography of Mao.









Scorpions: The Battles and Triumphs of FDR's Great Supreme Court Justices. Another impulse buy, and somewhat unrelated to the others in this list. It promises to give insight into how these justices interpreted law and the Constitution, and how their views transformed our legal system. The first few chapters have already made me feel like an underachiever.








Combined these make up 11 inches of reading material. I've dipped into each, but haven't committed to any single one quite yet. So, which one do you want to see reviewed most?

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Answer to Quiz: Who Believed It?

This was originally scheduled for tomorrow morning, but in light of the discussion yesterday I've decided to lift the suspense and reveal the answer early. Yesterday I posted a personal moral code that I recently came across and asked if anyone could guess who said it. As a recap, here's the quote again:

____ attitude to morality consisted of one core, the self, "I," above everything else: "I do not agree with the view that to be moral, the motive of one's actions has to be benefiting others. Morality does not have to be defined in relation to others . . . People like me want to . . . satisfy our hearts to the full, and in doing so we automatically have the most valuable moral codes. Of course there are people and objects in the world, but they are all there only for me." 

____ shunned all constraints of responsibility and duty. "People like me only have a duty to ourselves; we have no duty to other people." "I am responsible only for the reality that I know," ___ wrote, "and absolutely not responsible for anything else. I don't know about the past, I don't know about the future. They have nothing to do with the reality of my own self." ____ explicitly rejected any responsibility towards future generations. "Some say one has a responsibility for history. I don't believe it. I am only concerned about developing myself . . . I have my desire and act on it. I am responsible to no one." 

____did not believe in anything unless he could benefit from it personally. A good name after death, __ said, "cannot bring me any joy, because it belongs to the future and not to my own reality." "People like me are not building achievements to leave for future generations." __ did not care what __ left behind. 

* * * 

As conscience always implies some concern for other people, and is not a corollary of hedonism, __ was rejecting the concept. ___ view was: "I do not think these [commands like 'do not kill,' 'do not steal' and 'do not slander'] have to do with conscience. I think they are only out of self-interest for self preservation." All considerations must "be purely calculation for oneself, and absolutely not for obeying external ethical codes, or for so-called feelings of responsibility..."

The answer is not Ayn Rand (who it reminded me, and several readers, of), nor any other libertarian philosopher. It's not an American, or even a Westerner. Yet it is the sort of statement that could have come straight from the mouth of John Galt.

It was Mao Tse-Tung, the Chinese communist revolutionary and dictator. The quote is excerpted from Mao: The Unknown Story, by Jung Chang.

At Patrick Henry College I had a professor who asserted in class one day that libertarianism and Marxism were actually ideologically related--they both reduced everything to economics, which in turn reduces everything to self-interest. This quote is just another example of the insightfulness of that observation.

Quiz: Who Believed It?

I recently came across the following description of someone's personal moral belief system.

____ attitude to morality consisted of one core, the self, "I," above everything else: "I do not agree with the view that to be moral, the motive of one's actions has to be benefiting others. Morality does not have to be defined in relation to others . . . People like me want to . . . satisfy our hearts to the full, and in doing so we automatically have the most valuable moral codes. Of course there are people and objects in the world, but they are all there only for me." 

____ shunned all constraints of responsibility and duty. "People like me only have a duty to ourselves; we have no duty to other people." "I am responsible only for the reality that I know," ___ wrote, "and absolutely not responsible for anything else. I don't know about the past, I don't know about the future. They have nothing to do with the reality of my own self." ____ explicitly rejected any responsibility towards future generations. "Some say one has a responsibility for history. I don't believe it. I am only concerned about developing myself . . . I have my desire and act on it. I am responsible to no one." 

____did not believe in anything unless he could benefit from it personally. A good name after death, __ said, "cannot bring me any joy, because it belongs to the future and not to my own reality." "People like me are not building achievements to leave for future generations." __ did not care what __ left behind. 

* * * 

As conscience always implies some concern for other people, and is not a corollary of hedonism, __ was rejecting the concept. ___ view was: "I do not think these [commands like 'do not kill,' 'do not steal' and 'do not slander'] have to do with conscience. I think they are only out of self-interest for self preservation." All considerations must "be purely calculation for oneself, and absolutely not for obeying external ethical codes, or for so-called feelings of responsibility..."

I was originally going to do an examination into these ideas, but instead decided to try a quiz. I've intentionally left out the name and pronoun for this person. Can anyone guess said this? Leave a comment either here or on our Facebook page.

Click here for the answer.

Captain America: the Winter Soldier Review

Don’t get me wrong: in many ways I really enjoyed the movie. There were some great one-liners, solid character moments, and exhilarating action scenes.

In short, Captain America: the Winter Soldier was an adequate film.

What got me down is that this film confirmed my fear of recent years: the Golden Age of superhero movies has passed. Let me put it this way, if you were to set up a spectrum with Batman Begins on one end and the Green Lantern on the other, recent superhero films have fallen closer to Green Lantern.

Nolan and others in the last decade and a half wanted to make movies. That seems to have been their goal. They would then take characters and situations from comic books and put them in the movie, and the results would end up astoundingly powerful. They pulled in millions of people who never read the comic books and where not at all interested in “comic book movies” because they were making good film that happened to have comic book characters. Each of those films could be watched on it’s own (or in a short trilogy) and be enjoyed for what it was without any concern for the greater comic book world (because it took place in a world not too different from our own).

In the last few years the comic book movies seem to be more about the comic books. They are not putting those heroes in our world (or a similar one), but instead they have built worlds where the strange is normal.

In these worlds the directors don’t need to justify anything with explanation other than “that’s how it is in the comics.”

As much as I enjoyed the film, a part of me walked out of the theater resigned to the fact that I’ll still go see these movies, but I’ll be getting Green Lantern-like fantastical worlds, not a NYC that can’t decide what to do with something as strange as a guy in a spider costume who beats up baddies.

I guess this is an ode to those in the good old days who died and stayed dead: Uncle Ben, Rachel Dawes, and Ra's al Ghul. Your deaths where powerful and stayed powerful because you stayed dead.

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Darren Aronofsky's NOAH: A Conversation

It has been a long time since I have written a film review for this website. I only write reviews when films touch me in a particular way or motivate me to want to share about them, and 2013 was a bad year for me at the movies. But this weekend I saw a film that moved me to tears. And then the internet exploded. Evangelical Christians waged war against each other and against a host of ideas that are alleged to be represented by the film "Noah." As I walked out of church on Sunday, thinking about how the Facebook wars were only intensifying, I came to the understanding that simply writing a review and expressing myself in writing would only fuel the uglier parts of that fire, and not be conducive to productive dialog. I believe that the best dialog occurs face to face as people sit together and discuss as friends around the table. So rather than write a review, I asked two friends, a filmmaker and a pastor, to join me in discussing the film. The immediately agreed. One of them, the pastor, hadn't even seen the movie, but as soon as I asked him, he immediately went out and watched it so he would be prepared to discuss it. I am thankful to both of them for their willingness to serve others and make themselves available for me.

And so, I present Looking for Overland's first video blog! The first section is fairly spoiler free and good to watch whether or not you've seen the film. The remainder of the video tackles the specific issues that are in the film and while it will "spoil" the movie, if you are the kind of person that has read the reviews and articles before seeing the film, you should watch it. It's a worthwhile discussion, even if you ultimately decide to never watch Noah for yourself.



For the first thirty minutes, our panel, filmmaker Brandon Rice, seminary graduate and pastoral staff member Jake Putich, and filmmaker Daniel Noa, discuss their thoughts and takeaways from the film; the second thirty minute section addresses some of the criticisms being leveled against the film from the Christian community, while the last twenty minutes explores the nature of the reaction against Noah and why Christians are so divided over the release of this film. You can also listen to the conversation via SoundCloud.




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