THE U.S. VS JOHN LENNON

hat happens when liberals make a documentary about Richard Nixon’s reaction to John Lennon protesting the Vietnam War? THE U.S. VS JOHN LENNON is a boring, one-sided presentation of protesters as heroes and Nixon and all the President’s men as paranoid buffoons.

Lennon’s talent was astounding. His classic “Give Peace a Chance” song was a precursor to modern day praise music (who needs hymnals when you can sing one line over and over?). As a member of the Beatles, he impacted popular music like few others in history, but this documentary primarily deals with his gradual shift from musician to political activist. Little is said about the early days of the Beatles. In fact, the other Beatles are conspicuously absent in this film. Yoko Ono is interviewed extensively, but Paul, George and Ringo are invisible.

The filmmakers want you to walk away with warm fuzzy feelings about Abby Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, the Black Panthers, and all the “good” protesters of the late 60s and early 70s. The rampant drug use and promotion of free sex by the same crowds protesting the war fails to get mentioned. The movie also portrays President Nixon, Nixon’s aides, Attorney General John Mitchell, and FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover as imperial storm troopers seeking to thwart Lennon from single-handedly bringing peace on earth by getting everyone to chant with him.

The movie makes the case that Nixon and his henchmen convinced the United States immigration service to try to deport Lennon when it was discovered he planned to tour the United States following the route taken by the Nixon presidential campaign. Eighteen-year-olds had just gotten the right to vote, and there was supposedly concern Lennon would get out the youth vote in opposition to Nixon.

This movie contains no foul language, violence, sex, or nudity. Even so, MOVIEGUIDE® recommends more than extreme caution because Lennon and his friends who protested the Vietnam War promoted a radical, politically correct, mostly humanist agenda, including the misguided idea that peace with evil people can be achieved by surrendering to them. There is evil in this world and when it is unopposed it spreads, whether it exists in politics, in music or in entertainment.

It also should be noted that, a few years after the United States withdrew from Vietnam and Cambodia, millions of people were murdered, starved and imprisoned by the Communist regimes running those two countries. Most of the leading peaceniks who organized the anti-war movement have yet to apologize for this (when they protested the Vietnam War, they said that fears of a Communist bloodbath in Vietnam and Cambodia were paranoid delusions, but they were terribly and fatally wrong). Furthermore, it also should be noted that, in the wake of the antiwar protest movement and its support of John Lennon’s efforts against the FBI and the U.S. Immigration Service, liberals in control of the United States Congress and the presidency (under President Jimmy Carter) gutted the country’s intelligence, espionage programs, including programs at the FBI. This mistaken action led directly to the federal government’s failure to stop Osama Bin Laden and the Muslim immigrants from the Middle East who murdered 3,000 innocent people on 9/11. Some of those same liberals are still working in the Halls of Congress today.