Robert Bridge – Strategic Review Aug 5, 2023

A new American film that reveals the brutal reality of child sex-trafficking has been greeted with muted enthusiasm from the political left, which begs the question: does the silence equal complicity in the unspeakable crime?

Tim Ballard is an American anti-human trafficking activist, author and founder of the non-profit organization Operation Underground Railroad, an anti-sex trafficking organization. A former special agent at the Department of Homeland Security who now works independently, Ballard’s life’s work is being immortalized in a Hollywood film, entitled Sound of Freedom.

The film, which stars Jim Caviezel in the role of Ballard, leads audiences through the harrowing twists and turns of Ballard’s true life experiences where he works to rescue children from the nightmare of sex slavery. Despite receiving mixed reviews from critics, the film has grossed over $140 million in the United States against a $14.5 million budget, while audience reception has been highly positive, scoring 99% on the Rotten Tomatoes film review site, and for apparently good reason.

According to estimates by the International Labour Organization, there were 24.9 million victims of human trafficking around the world in 2016. Yet for reasons known only to them, the left-leaning media and other institutions appear to be strangely anxious to draw the curtain on the Angel Studios production.

Writing in Variety magazine, Owen Gleiberman observed, “Let’s assume that, like me, you’re not a right-wing fundamentalist conspiracy theorist looking for a dark, faith-based suspense film to see over the holiday weekend. Even then, you needn’t hold extreme beliefs to experience ‘Sound of Freedom’ as a compelling movie that shines an authentic light on one of the crucial criminal horrors of our time, one that Hollywood has mostly shied away from.”

At a time when the question of sexual misconduct inside of the entertainment industry continues to grab headlines, as witnessed by the #MeToo movement, Hollywood’s indifference and even aversion to the subject of pedophilia and child sex-trafficking is strange to say the least. After all, as this cinematic biopsy rightly reveals, there are more people enslaved now, by sex trafficking, than there were when slavery was legal. And while allegations of sexual abuse committed by Hollywood bigwigs (amongst consenting adults) is highly disturbing, even the hint that America’s leading industry could be defending or even participating in child sex-trafficking seriously challenges the limits of moral acceptability.

It goes without saying that there is practically no limit to the number of conspiracy theories involving the inner sanctum of Hollywood – from Kubrick-style Illuminati control to unbridled sexual misconduct – the industry has witnessed every sordid accusation under the California sun. Adding to its stained reputation, an increasing number of people, many of them employed by the movie industry, are speaking out about pedophilia within the Hollywood ranks, and the fact that their efforts are not being taken seriously by the overlords of media and entertainment only adds to the aura of suspicion.

So why the silence from the progressive left on the Sound of Freedom, which Netflix, Hulu and Amazon streaming services have avoided like the plague? First, the villain here is ‘human nature’ itself, an admission that flies in the face of liberal philosophy, which takes it for granted that all human behavior, and not least of all that of a sexual nature, deserves a fair hearing, complete with a court loaded with progressive activists. In fact, there have even been calls to legitimize pedophilia and pardon those who are guilty of it.

Dr. Stephen Kershnar, a philosophy professor at SUNY Fredonia, is just one of many left-wing academics – are there any other? – who argues on behalf of sexual relationships between children and adults. “Imagine that an adult male wants to have sex with a 12-year-old girl. Imagine that she’s a willing participant,” Kershnar argued. “A very standard, very widely held view is that there’s something deeply wrong about this. It’s wrong independent of it being criminalized,” he said. “It’s not obvious to me that it’s in fact wrong. I think this is a mistake. And I think exploring that why it’s a mistake will tell us not only things about adult/child sex and statutory rape and also fundamental principles of morality.”
Kershnar went so far as to suggest that there might be “evolutionary advantages” to adult/child sex, while concluding with this shocking remark: “The notion that it’s wrong even with a one-year-old is not quite obvious to me.”

Not to be outdone in academia’s woke Olympiad, Allyn Walker, an Assistant Professor at Old Dominion University, has coined the term “minor-attracted person” in order to destigmatize the word ‘pedophile.’ Walker does not consider an adult’s physical attraction to a young child, even a toddler, to be a form of mental derangement, but rather a case of individuals not being able to control who they love, which is a very sick way of justifying child rape.

With such utter insanity in the air is it any surprise that California Governor Gavin Newsom signed Senate Bill 145, which lowers the penalties for adults who have sex with same-sex minors?

TWEET: Well what a shock. Newsom signed SB145, the bill that allows a 24 year old to have sex with a 14 year old and escape a felony conviction and requirement to be a registered sex offender. Absolutely disgusting.

— Senator Melissa Melendez (@senatormelendez) September 12, 2020

Finally, we must not forget the radical cultural milieu that the film Sound of Freedom is attempting to crash: LGBTQ parades, Drag Queen Story Hour and discussions at the elementary school level about transgender and alternative sexual lifestyles have all come to dominate the national conversation in the United States, and this makes a film that takes aim at child predators actually seem like a menacing thing to a large part of the population. It’s hard to imagine things getting any more upside down in the land of the free, but it looks like that the madness has only just begun.

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