Ben Stein Smart Bombs Darwinian Bunker

By Jack Cashill

A rousing preview on Tuesday, March 4th of the new Ben Stein documentary, Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, brought a Kansas City audience to its feet. And with good cause. Stein’s often funny, always engaging frontal assault on the oppressive neo-Darwinist establishment is arguably the smartest and most sophisticated documentary ever produced on the right side of the cultural divide, on any subject, ever. As such, Expelled represents still another blow to the progressive orthodoxy of government-issued science.

Into this breach, armed with his trademark tennies and bemused grin, marches Ben Stein, America’s only economist/ presidential speechwriter turned comic actor. The producers at Premise Media could not have recruited a better on-screen presence.

Although the role Stein plays has been compared to the one Michael Moore plays in his film, the Stein persona is conspicuously brighter and more benign. Nor do Stein and his producers resort to the kind of editing that make Moore movies something other than documentaries. Stein resorts to no such tricks. He gives certain interview subjects all the time and all the rope they need to hang themselves, unedited.

One highlight among many is Stein’s one-on-one interview with Richard Dawkins, the dashing Brit who has made a small fortune as the world’s most visible neo-Darwinist.

To Dawkins’ credit, and to the utter discomfort of the public education establishment, Dawkins does not shy from discussing the atheistic implications of Darwinism. Indeed, Dawkins’ anti-deity call to arms, The God Delusion, has sold more than a million copies worldwide. Where Dawkins wanders into a black hole of his own making is in his discussion of the origins of life on earth. To Stein’s astonishment, Dawkins concedes that life might indeed have a designer but that designer almost assuredly was a more highly evolved being from another planet, not “God.”

Stein does not respond. He does not need to. For the past hour of the film, the audience has met one scientist after another whose academic careers have been derailed for daring to suggest the possibility of intelligent design. If only they had thought to put the designer on another planet!

The choice of Stein as narrator is inspired for another reason. That reason becomes most apparent when he and two creationist allies, mathematician David Berlinski and nuclear physicist Gerald Schroeder, visit a remnant of the Berlin Wall, the central metaphor of the film. At the wall, the three discuss the value of freedom, the central idea of the film, and the need for the same in science. The audience has already met Berlinski, an amusingly sophisticated American living in Paris. The audience has seen less of Schroeder, but he is wearing a yarmulke. All three are Jewish. Indeed, it would be hard to imagine any three individuals on the planet who less resemble the Inherit the Wind stereotype that Darwinists have been scaring soccer moms with for the last half century.

Expelled opens nationwide on April 18th. The neo-Darwinists and their allies in the major media will do their best to kill it.

Co-producer Mark Mathis tells me that two network news producers have already chosen not to cover the film because it was “biased,” unlike, say, the much-covered Fahrenheit 911.

The producers have contracted with the same firm that marketed Mel Gibson’s The Passion to get the word out. They will use much the same strategy. Central to this strategy is the creation of a powerful buzz and a strong enough opening weekend to catch Hollywood’s attention and hold it.

Put April 18 on your calendars. Bring the kids. You won’t be disappointed.

Jack Cashill is an independent writer and producer and, on a contractual basis, the Executive Editor of Ingram’s Magazine, Kansas City’s premier business magazine. For other articles by Cashill, visit www.cashill.com. For more information regarding EXPELLED: No Intelligence Allowed visit www.expelledthemovie.com.