OPINION:
Television. Movies. Music. Non-stop information. Rarely do any of these cultural persuasions allude to our Republican form of government. Founding principles and constitutional appreciation are simply not hip and cool. It is out of fashion to be patriotic.
Relentless liberalism radiates from television sets, movie screens and iPods, penetrating every nuance of the mainstream American psyche. T.S. Eliot understood the paradoxical phenomenon, “Genuine poetry can communicate before it is understood.” Hollywood does churn out genuine poetry — great movies, television shows and songs. The problem is that their anti-conservative messaging is communicated before it can be understood.
And no one absorbs it more than the American youth. With influences greater than mother and father, rising generations are cradled, cuddled and coerced by the arts. Entertainment, emanating from phone or pad, computer or screen, has become the nation’s “big babysitter.”
Keenly aware of this power, the progressive movement deftly works it for their political agenda. Efforts to infiltrate an alternative point of view falls on deaf ears and defiant times.
There is hope, however. There is a silent current of young, bright, constitutionally conscious kids who are rising to the surface. Slow and steady is their course. They are mesmerizing and they have persuasion — they are artists. They are so talented that the national mainstream media will have to air their works. These kids’ peers will demand it. A momentum is building. A subtle awareness is promulgating. Founding principles are finding legs again.
This Constitution Day, the momentum is due to the nurturing of Constituting America. For the past five years, the foundation’s, “We the Future,” annual student contest has shone a light on today’s cultural patriots and tomorrow’s heroic leaders by blending their constitutional awareness and wisdom with the arts. This year, the best public service announcement, best short film, best song, best speech and best essay winners traveled to Hollywood to meet mentor Gary Sinise, to Washington, D.C., to meet mentors Brit Hume and Bret Baier, and to Nashville to meet mentor Vince Gill. Over the years, the winners’ works have been distributed to regional television networks, film festivals and radio stations. They have been aired, accepted and played.
Best High School PSA winner of 2014 Laura Leigh Hicks, from Mississippi, wrote these words:
If you had something
Something that you were given.
Something you loved.
Something that others wanted so badly but were denied it.
Something that you used and relied on every single day
If you had something special, something beautiful, something powerful
If you had something absolutely essential to securing your health, happiness and safety.
If you treasured something so much that you were willing to die for that something
If you knew others already had
And if someone had given you a document that protected that something
Wouldn’t you take the time to read it?
Protect your freedom
Know your Constitution.
Frank Boudon, from Michigan, also won Best High School PSA. This is his script:
Josh/Rosh exchange greetings in the car. Josh puts on his seat belt, looking at his phone, he doesn’t look at Rosh.
Josh: Dude, I cannot wait to see this movie.
Rosh: Yeah Dude, I heard it was awesome.
Rosh is about to start backing out of the driveway.
Josh: Yeah, man (He looks at Rosh and does a double take) Wait! Are you about to drive with a blindfold on?
Rosh: Yeah . So What?
Josh: So what? Do you know how dangerous and irresponsible that it?
Rosh: (Taking off his blindfold) Well, if millions of Americans can vote blindly in every single election, I don’t really see how it’s different.
Josh: OK, that’s totally different though.
Rosh: Is it? Less than 1 percent of Americans know what the First Amendment says, and these are the people making choices that affect us all.
Josh: You know what? You’re right . Library instead of movies?
Rosh: Oh Yeah.
Domingo and Esteban Hiracheta from Texas won Best College Song. Here is an excerpt:
Growing up I never thought
I’d take it for granted
That I could live
And I could pray
And I could believe what I wanted
And in this country there’s freedom of religion
But in other countries you could die for just being Christian.
So believe what you believe
And never forget what they said:
“In God We Trust”
For this they fought
For this they bled
Our founding Fathers meant for this country to be great
And before anything else
It all started with faith.
Alexander Pope wrote, “Hope springs eternal in the human breast.” William Butler Yeats sums up how it’s done: “Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.” Stand back and watch these kids. They are lighting the flame of a counterculture revolution.
• Janine Turner is an actress, author, and founder and co-chair of Constituting America.
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