Friday, March 29, 2013

James Bond meets Ludwig von Mises

Silver Circle: An action movie about monetary policy

The first rule for writing good political fiction is that the message is secondary. The writer’s first priority should be to tell a good story. Silver Circle, the new animated thriller about out-of-control government, delivers.

The story begins with an entire neighborhood being forced out of their homes and herded onto buses. The scene reminded me of the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II. As in that dark chapter in American history, the government is the villain. In this case the evictions are orchestrated by the Federal Reserve Bank, in an ill-conceived (and perhaps disingenuous) effort to stabilize housing prices. But when eleven of the houses are subsequently blown up, the Fed sends agent Jay Nelson to investigate. Nelson is challenged by ambushes, car chases, hostile police, and some hot sex, before his inquiries lead to a group of rebels fighting against the growing power of the Fed. Jay had never been political, but as he learns that “when they control the money, they control everything,” he must confront his preconceptions about his employer and make up his mind which side he’s on.

After the screening (which was sold out, BTW. I got the third to last ticket) I joined some of the cast and crew at Tommy Doyle’s in Cambridge. I had an opportunity to tell producer/director Pasha Roberts how well-done the story was - especially one sad scene where a sympathetic character was headed to his death. Although the entire audience could see it coming, they couldn't look away - the film managed to keep it dramatic and suspenseful.

Roberts and I also talked about the film’s message; he told me that he realizes the Fed doesn’t have the sort of power today that is depicted in Silver Circle’s dystopian future, but he wanted to warn about the power that it does have – in particular the power to print money, a power which robs the savings of ordinary Americans through inflation. This message is threaded throughout the film (as you can see in the trailer, gas prices are up to $152/gallon), and indeed Silver Circle takes its name from the silver coins that the rebels mint as alternative money that holds its value.

More generally, the film is about what kind of country we want to live in: a free America, where we’re responsible for our own lives, or one where we trade our freedom for government promises of security. Silver Circle reminds us that those promises hold their value no better than a Federal Reserve note.

The only criticism I have of the movie is that the animation is just ok. One person I talked to at the party thought it looked a little like a video game. The flip side is that I’m sure the availability of low-cost computer animation tools is what made it possible for an indie filmmaker to end run the liberals in Hollywood and make a liberty action film on a shoestring budget. In any case, I don’t think the audience cared: they were too caught up in the story. The applause that accompanied the closing credits was more than just polite.

Silver Circle is playing in limited engagement. You can find venues and show times at www.silvercirclemovie.com.

Also, check out my gallery from the after party:

Silver Circle After Party

Silver Circle After Party

Kristen Alpert sets some folks straight.

Silver Circle After Party

Silver Circle After Party

Silver Circle After Party

Silver Circle After Party

Carla Mora gets another commitment for the Free State Project.

Silver Circle After Party

Pasha Roberts talks to a fan.

Silver Circle After Party

Silver Circle After Party

Michael Isenberg is the author of Full Asylum, a novel about politics, freedom, and hospital gowns. Check it out on Amazon.com

Friday, March 22, 2013

Third Annual Lights ON for Earth Hour

Earth Hour is a global movement uniting people to protect the planet. Towards the end of March every year, Earth Hour brings together communities from across the world celebrating a commitment to the planet by switching off lights for one designated hour…Earth Hour 2013 will be held on Saturday 23 March between 8.30PM and 9.30PM in your local time zone.
      - www.earthhour.org

You are cordially invited to a different celebration. At 8:30 PM on Saturday, turn on every lamp in your house to celebrate the beauty and utility of electric lighting.


Casa Isenberg lit up for Earth Hour 2010

The harnessing of electricity is a magnificent achievement and should be celebrated. The nighttime American cityscape inspired artists like Robert Hoppe, filmmakers like Woody Allen, and refugees like Ayn Rand, who wrote of her arrival in New York after years of starvation, poverty, and repression in Soviet Russia, “seeing the first lighted skyscrapers – it was snowing, very faintly, and I think I began to cry.” To plunge iconic buildings and landmarks, buildings that have had that kind of effect on people, to plunge them into darkness is shameful indeed.

But also, turn on your lights to express skepticism about the global warming theory. The Earth Hour website describes the event as “born out of a hope that we could mobilize people to take action on climate change”. But as I’ve written elsewhere, although the rise in global temperatures is well-established, there is evidence it is a natural phenomenon, unrelated to the electric light bulb. There’s good reason to question the sort of action the organizers of Earth Hour are calling for.

Finally, turn on your lights to protest the Big Government agenda. Republican gains in the 2010 elections may have killed the prospects for Cap and Trade legislation for now. But the Obama administration is persisting in its efforts to tax and regulate nearly every productive activity by executive order. In a 2011 interview with Audobon magazine, then-EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson said, “There’s clearly a need for the EPA to continue doing what it said it would do, which is to use the Clean Air Act to address carbon pollution and to recognize that progress is possible. We can make strides along with other agencies or departments on the executive side, even in the absence of legislation.” Show your opposition to this end run around the people’s representatives in Congress.

BTW, I’d like to create an album of homes lit up for Earth Hour. If you get a pic and are willing to share, please send it to me at Michael_Isenberg@MonteferroPress.com

Michael Isenberg is the author of Full Asylum, a novel about hospital gowns, freedom, and the silliness of the environmental movement. Check it out on Amazon.com

Wednesday, March 20, 2013

Obama is not Satan

Radical Times by Henry Brown
Photo source: VH-1

The hashtag #ObamaIsNotSatan exploded on Twitter this week, thanks to the accidental(?) resemblance between Barack Obama and the actor who played Satan on the History Channel series The Bible. Folks on the right side of the political divide, including me, had a great deal of fun with it. Here's what I came up with (and stole shamelessly):

Radical Times by Henry Brown
Radical Times by Henry Brown
Radical Times by Henry Brown
Radical Times by Henry Brown
Radical Times by Henry Brown
Radical Times by Henry Brown

Michael Isenberg is the author of Full Asylum, a novel about politics, freedom, and hospital gowns. Check it out on Amazon.com

Tuesday, March 19, 2013

Thoughts about evolution and religion

When someone tells you they don’t “believe” in evolution, ask them what they mean by that.

If they mean that some species evolved from other species in a process that took billions of years, but that God kicked the process off, and perhaps guided it along the way, then if you're an atheist you may disagree with them, but they’re not actually contradicting anything that science tells us. Even Darwin admitted this possibility in The Origin of the Species:

I see no good reason why the views given in this volume should shock the religious feelings of any one…A celebrated author and divine has written to me that “he has gradually learnt to see that it is just as noble a conception of the Deity to believe that He created a few original forms, capable of self-development into other and needful forms, as to believe that he required a fresh act of creation to supply the voids caused by the action of His laws.”
Indeed, since God’s role in creation is not a falsifiable hypothesis, science has nothing to say about it one way or the other. Of course, that being the case, it does not belong in the science classroom.
If, on the other hand, when they say they don’t believe in evolution, they mean that God created all species in their current forms during a one-week period some six thousand years ago, and that man and dinosaurs roamed the earth side by side, then they’re flying in the face of a large body of scientific evidence, and someone needs to sit them down and explain very gently that the Flintstones aren’t real. The Flintstones
Flintstones image used according to the Fair Use provisions of the US Copyright code.

Michael Isenberg is the author of Full Asylum, a novel about politics, freedom, and hospital gowns. Check it out on Amazon.com

Friday, March 8, 2013

In the fight for freedom, never sleep

Book Review: Henry Brown’s Radical Times

Radical Times is a short novella – only 45 pages – but it’s long on story. The story is that of Pick Garver and his return to his Arkansas home after the Civil War. The town of Tanner’s Grove had changed during his absence and he knew that, as a Southern boy who had fought for the Northern army, he could expect a chilly reception.
But not from everyone. Two people in particular are happy to have him back. Huddy and his sister Venus had been slaves – and Pick’s best friends – when the three of them were growing up on a plantation owned by Pick’s uncle. Now they were free and Pick would soon find out if that would change his friendship with Huddy – and whether his secret love affair with Venus could resume in a country that had emancipated its slaves, but still did not accept them as equals.

Indeed, many in Tanner’s Grove are determined that would never happen. The Confederate Army may have given up, but they had not. If necessary, they would use torches and pistols to guarantee that blacks remained second-class citizens.

Pick recognizes a difficult road ahead. He tells a meeting of (mostly black) Republicans:

Those who agree with me just won a war so that all Americans will be free.…But it’s not enough that we won a war with rifles and cannons. If we want freedom to last, we have to win a war with words, ideas, and ballots. I hope you don’t think it’s going to be easy.…Yes, we won this war. You can sigh; just don’t sleep.
It’s a message that is as clear and relevant in 2013 – when freedom is once again under attack - as it was in 1865.

Michael Isenberg is the author of Full Asylum, a novel about politics, freedom, and hospital gowns. Check it out on Amazon.com

Wednesday, March 6, 2013

Dr. Paul Goes to Washington

Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) stood up to the Obama administration today. He launched a filibuster opposing the nomination of John Brennan, Obama's choice for CIA chief, and demanding that the Obama Administration explain its drone policy. He says he'll sit down if the President or the Attorney General clarifies that the drone program will not be used to kill non-combatants in America.

The filibuster is continuing as I write this, but for those who haven't had the chance to listen, here are my live tweets of the highlights through 5:00 PM.

Rand Paul Filibuster Live Tweets
Rand Paul Filibuster Live Tweets
Rand Paul Filibuster Live Tweets
Rand Paul Filibuster Live Tweets
Rand Paul Filibuster Live Tweets
Rand Paul Filibuster Live Tweets
Rand Paul Filibuster Live Tweets
Rand Paul Filibuster Live Tweets
Rand Paul Filibuster Live Tweets
Rand Paul Filibuster Live Tweets

Michael Isenberg is the author of Full Asylum, a novel about politics, freedom, and hospital gowns. Check it out on Amazon.com

Tuesday, March 5, 2013

Your Tax Dollars at Work

Martin Scorsese welfare king?
Martin Scorsese by David Shankbone
Photo source: Wikipedia
The National Endowment for the Humanities announced recently that Martin Scorsese, director of such films as Taxi Driver and Hugo, would deliver the 2013 Jefferson Lecture in the Humanities at the Kennedy Center in Washington on April 1. According to the NEH press release, “The annual lecture...is the most prestigious honor the federal government bestows for distinguished intellectual achievement in the humanities.”
But what got my attention were these words near the bottom: “The lectureship carries a $10,000 honorarium, set by statute.”

TheRichest.org estimates Mr. Scorsese’s net worth at $70 million. I do not begrudge him that - in fact I voluntarily contributed to it by going to see his movies. His segment "Life Lessons" in 1989's New York Stories helped make it one of my favorite movies of all time. But with all due respect to Mr. Scorsese, I question the appropriateness of paying him thousands of dollars that were taken involuntarily from the taxpayers at a time of sequesters and budget cuts. When I asked NEH media contact Paula Wasley (who was very polite and professional, by the way) for comment, she confirmed that it is set by law. “We don’t have any control over that,” she explained.

In spite of all the whining that President Obama has been doing about the sequester, if we’re taxing the middle class to give grants to multimillionaires, then IMHO we haven’t cut enough.

Michael Isenberg is the author of Full Asylum, a novel about politics, freedom, and hospital gowns. Check it out on Amazon.com

Monday, March 4, 2013

Here we go again

John Kerry's appointment as Secretary of State has created a vacancy in the US Senate, so once again we will have a special election here in Massachusetts. I caught up with the three Republican candidates yesterday at the Boston Republican City Committee. Not the best quality video I ever shot (stupid Reggae Brunch upstairs), but a good introduction to three gentlemen who want to be the next Scott Brown (who, by a remarkable coincidence, was on the TV is the background).

Businessman Gabriel Gomez. Check out my challenge for Mr. Gomez at 4:18.

Former US Attorney Michael Sullivan

State Representative Dan Winslow

The primary is April 30 and the winner will face off against either Ed Markey or Stephen Lynch in the special election on June 25. Please check out all the candidates and support the one you think will do the most to advance the cause of freedom

Michael Isenberg is the author of Full Asylum, a novel about politics, freedom, and hospital gowns. Check it out on Amazon.com

Saturday, March 2, 2013

Celebrating Andrew Breitbart

The faithful gather at J.J. Foley's in Boston to toast the life of Andrew Breitbart (1969-2012)

Read about the time I met Mr. Breitbart here.

Celebrating Andrew Breitbart

Celebrating Andrew Breitbart

Celebrating Andrew Breitbart

Celebrating Andrew Breitbart

Celebrating Andrew Breitbart

Celebrating Andrew Breitbart

Celebrating Andrew Breitbart

Celebrating Andrew Breitbart

Celebrating Andrew Breitbart

Celebrating Andrew Breitbart

Celebrating Andrew Breitbart

Celebrating Andrew Breitbart

Celebrating Andrew Breitbart

Celebrating Andrew Breitbart

Celebrating Andrew Breitbart

Celebrating Andrew Breitbart

Celebrating Andrew Breitbart

Celebrating Andrew Breitbart

Michael Isenberg is the author of Full Asylum, a novel about politics, freedom, and hospital gowns. Check it out on Amazon.com