It has been said that to not believe the Holy Scriptures is to believe nothing. But the truth is that such a person tends to believe everything, TD
Daily Stream "By now, you’ve probably seen the cringe-worthy video of various unkempt Hollywood stars singing the John Lennon song “Imagine.” They apparently intended it as a way to comfort all those people out in fly-over country who are sheltered in place, out of work, and worried about dying from the coronavirus.
"Whatever their intentions, it was not well received.
Daily Stream "By now, you’ve probably seen the cringe-worthy video of various unkempt Hollywood stars singing the John Lennon song “Imagine.” They apparently intended it as a way to comfort all those people out in fly-over country who are sheltered in place, out of work, and worried about dying from the coronavirus.
"Whatever their intentions, it was not well received.
"Watch it, and see what you think:
. . . "But these actors were just doing what the left has been doing since the song was first released in 1971. They filled it with their sentiments, while ignoring what really happens whenever anyone tries to apply Lennon’s hymn to godless atheism in the real world.
"In fact, as I describe in Money, Greed, and God, that delusional use of the song played a role in shaking out my own sympathies for socialism when I was in college.
"As a freshman, I fancied myself a sort of Christian socialist. Sure, by the time I was a sophomore, I knew about the brutalities in Russia and China. I had even read Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s grim firsthand record of Soviet labor camps, The Gulag Archipelago. But I had never heard of the Khmer Rouge, even though I was studying political science. (What little I had heard of Cambodia came from American linguist Noam Chomsky, who for years denied what happened in the country, and then, when it became undeniable, blamed the United States.)" . . .
Larry The Cable Guy shared his wisdom:
Here’s a message from people with a lot of possessions that can take a year off of work and not flinch telling everyone outa work to imagine a world with no possessions while people are living in the street a half mile away from ‘em. RT @MattWalshBlog:. . .
"Imagine … What?"
"In the film, after Pran’s escape, Schanberg comes to meet him at a Red Cross station near the Thai border with Cambodia. They embrace. In the background, a song is playing on a radio: John Lennon’s “Imagine.”"The scene was meant to be moving, and it was. But it was also dissonant, and that dissonance rattled around in my mind for some time after. Lennon’s anthem describes a sort of godless kingdom of God. He asks listeners to imagine no heaven above or hell below. No religion. No countries. A future “brotherhood of man” where “all the people” live “life in peace.”
"Who wouldn’t want that? But read the fine print. This is a world with “no possessions,” where “all the people” share “all the world.” Wait, what? Is it just me, or does that sound a lot like the dream of those communist zealots that Dith Pran only narrowly escaped? Don’t Lennon’s words express the same sentimental delusions that inspired communism in the first place? That thought haunted me, though it was years before I was ready to consider a real alternative. Still, in a weird way, Lennon’s godless hymn, stuck in a movie that masterfully showed the demonic truth about communism, helped wake me up.
"A bunch of Hollywood lefties may just have done the same thing for millions of people. For the left, the coronavirus pandemic is great excuse to vastly expand the reach of government. Let’s pray enough us are awake so that we won’t let that happen."
Jay Richards, Ph.D., is the Executive Editor of The Stream, a Research Assistant Professor in the Busch School of Business at The Catholic University of America, and a Senior Fellow at the Discovery Institute. Follow him on Twitter.
