The Obsolete Man

I just watched my favorite Twilight Zone episode, "The Obsolete Man" which starred Burgess Meredith. Rod Serling opened the episode thus:

"You walk into this room at your own risk, because it leads to the future, not a future that will be but one that might be. This is not a new world, it is simply an extension of what began in the old one. It has patterned itself after every dictator who has ever planted the ripping imprint of a boot on the pages of history since the beginning of time. It has refinements, technological advancements, and a more sophisticated approach to the destruction of human freedom. But like every one of the super states that preceded it, it has one iron rule: logic is an enemy and truth is a menace. This is Mr. Romney Wordsworth, in his last forty-eight hours on Earth. He's a citizen of the State but will soon have to be eliminated, because he's built out of flesh and because he has a mind. Mr. Romney Wordsworth, who will draw his last breaths—in the Twilight Zone."

Meredith played Romney Wordsworth. The room that Serling referred to was a long hall where the Chancellor of the almighty State sat and pontificated over the fates of the Politically Incorrect. Wordsworth boldly pronounces his profession as that of Librarian. The Chancellor is appalled that he would make such a declaration, why a librarian was obsolete, because there were no more books, just as a Minister was obsolete as the State had proven there was no God. Wordsworth made no defense of himself, but when the Chancellor said there was no God, he stood upright and said, "There IS a God!" After an exchange the elderly Librarian said, "You can't erase God with an edict!"

The mighty State gives Wordsworth his choice of manner and time to die, as long as it is accomplished within 48 hours. He elects to have an assassin come to him and only he and the assassin know the manner of death. Wordsworth also asks to have his death televised. The representative of the State agrees and comes to visit him at the appointed time. He tells him how Hitler and Stalin had made good beginings but hadn't gone nearly far enough.

It turns out that the method of death chosen was for a bomb to go off and when the Chancellor came into Wordsworth's quarters, the door locked behind him. Wordsworth calmly took out his Bible and began to read from the Psalms- "The Lord is my Shepherd"...."A Fool has said in his Heart there is no God." In the end, the Chancellor breaks down and says, "In the Name of God, let me out" and Wordsworth responds, "In the Name of God, yes" and hands him the key. The Chancellor escapes just before the big blast. And the next day the Mighty State declares him obsolete. He asks for the mercy he never showed and is refused. The visciousness of the totalitarian State ground on.

I thought of this episode, a long favorite of mine, when I saw a Facebook group with many thousand members that said that Government plus religion equalled disaster. The saying goes that those who do not know their history will repeat it. It is obvious that the secularist of modern America knows no 20th century history. The states which try to erase God from their midst also have a way of becoming the most totalitarian of all. Hitler and Stalin sought to remove Christ from Russia and Germany. Let us also remember Mao and Pol Pot.

I see in the modern ardent secularist the same type of person on the old Twilight Zone episode, or in Stalin's Russia. Someone who is not content to not worship God themself. They have to forbid you to do it also. So often do the ACLU types get away with implying that their "Separation of Church and State," a concept nowhere in the US Constitution is something for the benefit of freedom. But how is silencing voluntary prayer, a violation of free speech and freedom of religion, freedom. "Freedom is slavery" Orwell described that best, how the Leftist of the '30s, '40s or today thinks. If a hundred people in room say a prayer that no one is forced to participate in (and no one ever was in this country, from 1776 until the judicial travesty known as Engel v Vitale which declared that the law of the USSR, not America dictated) where on Atheist is, there is no imposition on the Atheist. You have a hundred people using their free speech and freedom of religion and one person may not like it. But there is no Amendment guaranteeing you will like what someone else has to say. But if that one Atheist gets and ACLU lawyer to silence the one hundred people in the name of the mythical "Separation of Church and State," well then there is an imposition.

Someone who believes in the Soviet model of "Separation of Church and State," as does the ACLU and the agressive secularist is no friend to freedom. The Totalitarian State in "The Obsolete Man" was probably unimaginable to most of the viewing public on June 2, 1961 when it first aired. And yet with each freedom that the Secular Left takes away, a similar nightmare state draws near. It is truly frightening that the Left has convinced so many millions of people that it is the only bulwark of freedom, when in fact it is the only serious threat to the freedom of the Free World. Do we not remember Gdansk in 1981, where the Polish Christians stood their ground against the Atheist tyrants, and brought freedom to 1/3 of the world within a decade? How soon we forget. So many Americans today would consider Brezhnev and Jaruselski to be standup guys and Lech Walesa to be a "Religious Right" extremist. Oh how soon we forget!

America, we had better wake up and remember soon.