There’s a new movie coming out, from the documentarian who brought us the classic This Is Spinal Tap. Like that film, this new Rob Reiner movie is a ludicrous parody of the subject matter it covers. Unlike Spinal Tap, God & Country is intended to be serious, an “important” film that warns us about the rise of violent theocrats who wish to seize our freedoms. (No, they don’t mean sharia Muslims. They mean conservative Christians.)

The film is still in its hype phase, not yet available for review. But the trailer tells us everything we need to know.

Oops, sorry, that was a clip from Spinal Tap, which is one of my favorite films. (Doesn’t this website have editors who check these columns?) This is the trailer from God & Country:

Dang it, that wasn’t quite right either. That was a clip from an eerily similar movie, The Birth of a Nation (1915). Before we dive into the hissy fit that is God & Country, let’s explore those two films’ parallels, shall we?

The First Movie Warning Against the Dangers of Letting People Vote

D.W. Griffith’s silent epic The Birth of a Nation was based on a winsome little novel entitled The Klansman, which was all about how brave and heroic the white-hooded riders of the Ku Klux Klan were, for saving the South from the barbarism and chaos brought on by … letting black ex-slaves vote. You see, the former slaveowners who’d championed secession and still dominated the South after the Civil War thought it outrageous that the Union insisted on granting the franchise to the large black populations newly freed.

The Birth of a Nation depicts the brief window during Reconstruction, enforced by local Union troops, when black Americans got the rights of citizenship, even electing some black men to Congress and as governors of states. That outraged the sensibilities of the elites who’d formerly owned them as slaves. Newspapers, clergymen, and university professors united to warn that black empowerment would lead to barbarism, massacres such as were seen during the Haitian slave revolt, and worst of all … miscegenation. That is, the mixing of the races, as sexually insatiable black men violated the “honor of Southern womanhood.”

These elites organized the Klan to terrorize black voters, steal and stuff ballot boxes, and even arrange violent coups (for instance in New Orleans) to depose duly elected officials whom blacks supported. In response to this upsurge of lawlessness, a GOP-dominated Congress passed the 14^th Amendment and made it the condition for conquered states’ representatives being re-admitted to Congress. But that Amendment only stayed in effect as long as Union troops patrolled Southern cities as conquered territory — not a situation likely to endure, especially on the dime of Northern taxpayers who didn’t want black neighbors and voters either.

The moment Union troops marched out, white elites marched in. They passed Jim Crow laws that segregated everything, and especially the ballot box. Blacks wouldn’t gain their rights for another 100 years. The Birth of a Nation shows the “horrors” of Reconstruction, including black enfranchisement, social chaos, and even … race-mixing — and the courage of “noble” Klansmen arising to put the blacks back in “their place.” Its release in 1915 was directly responsible for the rebirth of the Klan all across the U.S., and its rise to massive political power as the street militia of the Democratic party (see ANTIFA today). The film was screened at the White House by Democrat President Woodrow Wilson. Expect God & Country to receive a similar screening from Joe Biden. 

Get Back on the Plantation. No Votes for You!

God & Country is the same kind of movie as The Birth of a Nation. It’s a warning by a political elite that a certain kind of citizen is too dangerous to be allowed to vote his conscience and his interests. That chaos, tyranny, and the violation of basic human decency will result, unless “those people” are kept in “their place.” But for Reiner, the threat’s not black ex-slaves, but Christians who escaped the plantations run by the Democratic party and the Republican establishment — designed to keep them silent, obedient, and powerless as their country turns against them. 

What are the outrages which this new tribe of primitives threatens against good, upstanding people? The publicity materials for this film make it clear: If believing, faithful Christians are permitted to vote their beliefs, they will threaten the sacred right of abortion. Indeed, the overturning of Roe v. Wade was one of the catalysts for this film. Also, those mud-daubing Bible thumpers oppose the chemical and surgical castration of children recruited by school counselors or social contagion to the ranks of the “trans” community. No more than elites would tolerate race-mixing in 1873 will they allow such assaults on basic decency in 2023.

Okay, now here’s the correct trailer at last:

One difference between these two elitist films: There were zero black leaders involved in or supportive of The Birth of a Nation. Key black roles were played by whites in blackface. But prominent squish Christians eager to cling to some influence and prestige among elites who wish to persecute us did help make God & Country, as the truth-telling Megan Basham points out:

Not only is this not true (this was Reiner’s project from the beginning), in May 2022, Reiner said that the evidence that Christian nationalism is a danger to the US was the overturning of Roe. So French, Moore, Tisby, Du Mez, Whitehead, are all helping him spread his view that… https://t.co/VCbD9vtNHO

— Megan Basham (@megbasham) December 9, 2023

I’m not sure what the black equivalent of Russell Moore’s Christianity Today was when The Birth of a Nation came out. (Maybe The Chicago Defender?) But if its editor had played a part in making that movie (as Moore and David French did, among several others), he wouldn’t have kept his job very long. Maybe our elites today are more effective at recruiting Quislings than racist elites in 1880 or 1915.

Or maybe faithful Christians are succumbing to learned helplessness: We expect our leaders to betray us, and like beagles in a lab whom Dr. Fauci has been torturing too long, we just turn over and stare out the bars of our cage.

John Zmirak is a senior editor at The Stream and author or co-author of ten books, including The Politically Incorrect Guide to Immigration and The Politically Incorrect Guide to Catholicism. He is co-author with Jason Jones of “God, Guns, & the Government.”