Be of Good Cheer, Conservatives

2012 had more than its share of disappointments for conservatives. The twisted logic of the Supreme Court's Obamacare decision—a law forcing people to purchase health insurance isn't constitutional, so we'll make the it constitutional by calling it a tax—was unfathomable. The growth of food stamps and federal welfare payments (to $1.03 trillion annually) was staggering. The U.S.'s precipitous drop out of the top 10 in the world's Prosperity Index was disheartening. The reelection of a liberal-progressive president—whose policies had utterly failed the nation by every economic measure—was shocking.

The country has weathered dark liberal-progressive storms in the past, and it will again. As Amity Shlaes makes clear in her book, The Forgotten Man, Franklin D. Roosevelt (the current president's hero) prolonged the Great Depression in the U.S. long after other industrialized nations were back on their feet. He, too, waged class warfare, persecuted and vindictively taxed business people, regulated the private sector into paralysis, and showered political favors on groups and business cronies that cozied up to him. Many of FDR's failed economic policies left with him, however; and America's economy rebounded, enjoying more than a half-century of innovation, growth and prosperity. The FDR experience serves as a reminder that the present circumstances may be disheartening, but the future still holds promise.

One example of that promise is domestic energy. Today while the White House pursues the fool's gold of green energy policies, trillions of dollars of black gold sit waiting beneath America's feet and just off her shores. Try hard as he may, this president can neither un-invent the technology that is making America's black gold rush possible nor un-discover the vast fields of natural resources available to the nation. He can only succeed in delaying their full potential. (Read more about the amazing energy boom.)

So be of good cheer. America's natural and human resources are her strength, and they still offer a bright future. 

Shouldn't Matt Damon be a Little Embarrassed?

There's a little surprise behind Matt Damon's latest flick, "Promised Land." No, the surprise isn't that the movie, according to Phelim McAleer, "attacks fracking—a new way to get oil and gas out of the ground, which has become the latest villain of the environmental movement." It's that the film "is being financed by New Image Abu Dahbi—a company fully owned by the government of the United Ara Emirates."

The UAE is a small Arab kingdom with a spotty record on freedom-of-speech issues and whose economy is completely dependent on selling oil and gas. The UAE stands to lose trillions of dollars if fracking leads to increasing energy independent for the United States and Europe, as many analysts predict.

Media outlets don't seem bothered by this revelation, certainly not to the extent they were bothered by another recent movie release.

“Won’t Back Down,” a film just released at the weekend, casts a cold eye on the union-dominated public-school system. Starring Oscar winner Viola Davis and Maggie Gyllenhaal, it is an emotional, heartwarming tale of parents succeeding against the odds.

But many reviewers have focused on attacking the funding for the film.

The NPR reviewer called it a “propaganda piece . . . from a conservative mogul.” Slate.com’s critic called it an “agenda-driven piece of crap . . . financed by conservative Christian billionaire Phil Anschutz.”

Strange, next to the utter lack of curiosity about funding for “Promised Land.”

Until the media start applying consistent standards and asking difficult questions about that film’s funding, we’ll never know if Matt Damon has gone from producing works of art to a new, more sinister type of film — a very different “movie on demand."

Incidentally, McAleer, a documentary film producer is currently working on "FrackNation," a new documentary telling the truth about fracking. Watch for it.