All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing. – Edmund Burke
It’s not often we witness a jarring cultural phenomenon in our country. The new documentary thriller, Sound of Freedom, is just that.
Actor Jim Caviezel—who first pricked our conscience with his graphic and riveting portrayal of Christ’s suffering in The Passion of the Christ—plays the lead role and was part of the team that pushed through many obstacles to produce the film five years ago, and ultimately to distribute it to theatres.
“Sound of Freedom” is based on the true story of Tim Ballard and his mission to save children from the underground sex slave trade. After working as a special agent for years at the Department of Homeland Security, Ballard quit his job and embarked on a mission to save child-trafficking victims. Today, he runs the organization Operation Underground Railroad working with law enforcement to rescue children from some of the darkest recesses of our world.
The story involves the account of two young children—a brother and a sister—whose trusting father allows them to participate in a supposed “modeling” and “acting” opportunity during which the children are kidnapped and sold into child sex slavery.
The production marks the first dramatic crime story for Angel Studios which up till now has generally sponsored only Bible-based stories.
Sadly, Ballard has stated that the United States has the number-one demand for child exploitation material and is the number one consumer of child sex in the world. As such, “we’re thrilled that we have an opportunity to shine a light on what is the fastest-growing criminal enterprise in the world,” he said. $150 billion is made every year off the backs of slaves, including millions of children who are enslaved. We’ve ranked in the top three for destination countries,” he added. “It’s the economy of pedophilia.” (Fox News, Katie Pavlich on Jesse Watters Primetime, July 9, 2023).
It must sting for the major studios to realize that—none of them would agree to produce it—the film posted an impressive $40 million after six days of release and has now soared to over $100 million.
But it wasn’t just rejected by Hollywood and the Left, it’s been smeared by it as a “dangerous conspiracy theory.” In response to this, Ballard states, “pedophiles are salivating’ at media outlets ripping ‘Sound of Freedom’.”
The fact that Disney will release a movie about a girl getting pregnant by the devil in a one-night stand but Disney, Amazon, Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon Prime all have refused to stream Sound of Freedom, should tell us everything we need to know.
Actor Dean Cain has asked “why is the movie being suppressed.” He reasoned that the movie is receiving pushback from the mainstream press because “it’s ugly. People don’t want to talk about something that’s really ugly. The idea that there are children who are sex slaves is crazy — and that are trafficked, that’s insane. The idea that you know people just want to bury that, ‘I don’t want to see that, it doesn’t exist.’ Well, it’s here. It’s all over the United States. It’s all over worldwide. It’s a multi-billion-dollar business.” (Newsmax, July 19, 2023).
Referencing America’s porous southern border as a major part of the problem, Caviezel stated that “when you don’t have a south border you don’t have a county; … a sovereign country has to have borders.” Even the New York Times has reported that 85,000 unaccompanied minors have crossed our wide-open southern border and are now lost and unaccounted for somewhere in America.
How is this trafficking done?
Social media is the wide-open frontier for pedophiles.
For example, Instagram, a hugely popular platform, uses algorithms that connect and promote the pedophile network. How so? Because “the platform and its system of fostering communities with sets of narrow interests has helped guide users to illegal child sex content.” (Wall Street Journal, 6/8/2023).
This is not a Republican or Democrat issue; it’s not a liberal or conservative position and it’s much more than simply a matter of perversion and immorality. This is a matter of good and evil.
I encourage you to see the movie which concludes with the powerful admonition that “God’s children are not for sale.”
We all have an obligation to stand up and speak out about this heinous reality of American culture.
Royal Alexander is a Shreveport attorney.
