A movie called “Sound of Freedom” premiered on July 4th and powerfully portrays the efforts of Tim Ballard to rescue children from human trafficking and pedophilia rings.
Surprisingly, it outperformed the new Indiana Jones movie on its opening day, especially on a per-screen basis. It has both shocked and moved people to take notice of this incredible evil that permeates our society. Sadly, the United States is the number one consumer of pedophilia and its related perversions.
While the movie has received mainly positive reviews from critics and fans, there are some voices finding fault with the film for stoking a “moral hazard” and generating QAnon-like hysteria about a problem which, they claim, isn’t as serious as the movie portrays.
These folks, who write for left-wing outlets like Rolling Stone and The Guardian, claim the movie has a political agenda because it appeals to conservative Christians who, for some strange reason, become outraged when they see children being abducted, sexually abused, and exploited for their organs.
It reminds me of the cabal of left-leaning journalists, scientists and politicians who protected the Chinese communists by claiming any suggestion that Covid-19 came from China was paranoid, racist conspiracy-mongering.
These same types also claim any criticism of the flood of illegal immigrants is racist and therefore off-limits for polite society. Ironic that one of the main factors driving a recent increase in human trafficking is our de facto open border, so perhaps it’s no coincidence that the same type of leftist critic would want to minimize the seriousness of the problem as portrayed in “Sound of Freedom.”
At best, this is a typical case of the left covering its backside for the tragedy and suffering created by their agenda and demented policies. Whether dismissing a serious film about the evils of child exploitation, or giving cover to the CCP, or excusing illegal immigration as just compensation for white supremacy, the left shows that it is always willing to permit and even encourage human suffering to achieve its goals.
At worst, this kind of gas-lighting is a deliberate attempt to foster the very evils that the left claims don’t really exist. Whatever their motivations, when your political program requires the constant suppression of inconvenient truths, lies about your political and cultural opposites, and results—intentionally or not—in the abuse and death of children, then you have to take a good, hard look at what you believe.
I am against human trafficking, pedophilia, covering up for evil regimes, or allowing criminal syndicates to exploit our open border for all sorts of illegal activity.
The other side, by dismissing these things as “QAnon adjacent” or racist conspiracy-mongering may believe they are on the right side of history and morality, but in fact they are useful idiots doing the bidding of Satan himself.
As Christ said, “you can judge a tree by its fruits,” and I can’t imagine a more insidious harvest than the ruined and lost lives of thousands and millions (through abortion) of children.
Trey Hoffman
Peachtree City, Ga.
Spot on Steve and NoSoupForYou. The partisan issue here is the wave of denial and deflection from some leftists, in my view to take attention away from why we are in this situation.
This is a huge issue, whether you care about details of a movie or not. It is reality.
I will give Suz credit for agreeing with Steve that the root of this tragedy is our open border, allowing free flow of millions of illegals into our country each year. Sadly, many of those arriving are being trafficked for a life in the sex trade.
We cannot accept the complete abandonment of our border security by Biden and “Border Czar” Kamala. If you care at all about children being sold as prostitutes, the 70,000-100,000 who will die from fentanyl overdoses and the national security threat from thousands of military age males from China and other hostile nations coming into our country, we must act to close the border.
This IS one issue we should all come together to get action out of DC now.
MyCatBill—Please don’t credit me for “agreeing with Steve that the root of this tragedy is our open border…”.
First of all, who is Steve?
And what I agreed with was discouraging CRIMINALS at our borders promoting illegal activities (my paraphrase of Trey’s assertion). At the same time, i support helping refugees and asylum seekers by easing restrictions and reducing the “red tape”. They desperately need our help; not our baseless assumptions about them.
That was my entire point–we may hold diverse opinions and goals, but we are still neighbors. I was suggesting that Trey act like it.
Suz – we discourage criminal activity at the border only by actually controlling the border and removing illegals who should not be here, which Biden and Harris have absolutely failed in their duty to do.
A study from the Coalition Against Trafficking In Women estimated that 60% of unaccompanied alien children, or UACs, are caught by cartels and exploited through child pornography and drug trafficking. (Washington Times, 3/2023)
The huge increase in human trafficking of children, more fentanyl deaths this year than those who died in all of the Vietnam War, and serious threats to national security are all due to an open border.
You disagree? What do you propose to do to stem the massive flow of people (as of 10/2022 over 5,500,000 since Biden took office) and drugs that is impacting so many communities and taxpayers?
Not sure why I credited “Steve”. Hat Tip to Trey.
Bill would you have a link to the actual study from Coalition Against Trafficking in Women? You say:
“A study from the Coalition Against Trafficking In Women estimated that 60% of unaccompanied alien children, or UACs, are caught by cartels and exploited through child pornography and drug trafficking. (Washington Times, 3/2023)”
I tried to find the study on the CATW website, and there is nothing similar. I found the phrase you use, almost exactly, in the piece from the Washington Times and also in a piece from The Heritage Foundation. It’s worth noting that the Washington Times is notoriously right-wing and is owned by Rev Moon of the Unification Church cult. It is not considered mainstream or unbiased in the least. The Heritage Foundation is also a right-wing think tank. Of course, either of those would grab onto a statistic like the one you allege, but I cannot find any other source for it. Did you?
(It’s also telling that the study “estimated 60%” — if this study is real, and recent, why did they estimate? Did they not have actual numbers. I would like to know about this study.)
Without any actual documentation for that “estimate,” I am afraid we cannot take it at face value … or give it any value at all. That said, of course human trafficking is wrong, and of course trafficking of women and children does happen, and it is wrong, but “closing the borders” won’t stop it.
You say:
“The huge increase in human trafficking of children, more fentanyl deaths this year than those who died in all of the Vietnam War, and serious threats to national security are all due to an open border.”
Do you have any verification/documentation for any of the assertions above?
• that there’s been a huge increase in trafficking,
• that there have been more fentanyl deaths this year than all who died in the Vietnam war,
• and that if those things are true, the cause is an open border,
• and that there is an “open border”?
You can say these things and scare people, but if there is no documentation of them, we can’t take them as true.
I see the Washington Post (again, hard-right-leaning and owned by Moon) said in 2022 more people had died from synthetic opioid overdoses in the previous 2 years than in Vietnam — and actually, it’s true that in 2021 drug overdose deaths numbered about 100K with about 76K of those from opioids (71K from synthetic opioids), which is more than U.S. deaths in the Vietnam War.
But … that is not all fentanyl and that is not all “those who died in the Vietnam War.” And, a cursory google search will show you that overdose deaths from synthetic opioids skyrocketed during the Trump administration — from about 10K in 2015 to the 71K noted in 2021.
(In fact in the last year Pres Trump was in office, there was a 55% increase in opioid overdose deaths, and in Pres Biden’s first year in office, a 25% increase which is bad — but not as bad as what happened from 2016-202.)
And it’s possible that Pres Trump’s decision to shut down border crossings starting in March, 2020 (pandemic precaution) may have encouraged drug traffickers to switch to fentanyl as it is more potent than heroin and makes them higher profit margins.
Framing Pres Biden as the “open borders” guy is nonsense, and claiming tighter border control alá Pres Trump is some kind of answer is also nonsense. Unless you have some proof to offer? I’ll wait.
MyCatBill–Thankfully, I don’t make border policy. I vote for those who are more informed and experienced than I, and agree with my views. Yes, for me that is the Biden administration.
May I add, NO ONE should be alright with a policy that includes coils of razor wire floating in the Rio Grande to entangle men, women, and children. We are so much better than that. Or so claims the declaration on Lady Liberty.
MyCatBill–Thankfully, I don’t make border policy. I vote for those who are more informed and experienced than I, and agree with my views. Yes, for me that is the Biden administration.
May I add, NO ONE should be alright with a policy that includes coils of razor wire floating in the Rio Grande to entangle men, women, and children. We are so much better than that. Or so claims the declaration on Lady Liberty.
https://youtube.com/shorts/5t-2JuLirWs?feature=share3
This is a bizarre letter even by Hoffman’s partisan standards. Decent people (read the vast majority) across the political spectrum condemn sexual abuse in general and child abuse in particular as abhorrent. Whether the perpetrators are Catholic priests, Southern Baptist clergy, or Jeffry Epstein and company – all well-documented abusers – the practice is anathema. No point on the political spectrum can claim to have all of its members with clean hands, and despite Trey’s attempt to frame this as a partisan issue, it clearly is not.
I agree with the 1st century Galilean that Trey quotes, “Wherefore, by their fruits ye shall know them,” and it’s plain to see that Hoffman can’t help picking cherries.
My first thought on seeing Trey Hoffman’s name here again was: “Thank God Trey’s OK!” I was worried when his missives disappeared for months. Welcome back Trey.
My second thought was: “Dear God please don’t let anyone believe Trey’s assessment of the Sound of Freedom.”
That film says it is based on a true story, but there is no true story about its subject Tim Ballard and his organization called Operation Underground Railroad. Please check out the reporting by Anna Merlan that goes back several years in her trying to get facts/truth about Ballard and OUR. It is a frustrating exercise in the founder and the organization’s obfuscation.
A huge amount of funding for OUR, which has annual incomes in the $50 million range with a dubious not-for-profit 501c3 designation protecting the money from taxation, comes from media personality Glen Beck and LDS individuals and organizations, which is fine in itself — but OUR doesn’t seem to do anything, and when they do, it doesn’t help.
(Stories of OUR “undercover” operatives posing as pedophiles shopping for young children — creating the demand themselves and then pretending they busted traffickers or of OUR raids that claim to liberate women and children and actually drag sex workers from a job they are doing to make ends meet or of actual raids that remove women and children from trafficking but then have nowhere to take the victims for aftercare and no means of providing for them — supposedly some have even just been put out on the street where they are prey to traffickers again!)
OUR provided a list of US police departments they claimed to partner with, and most of those departments had no idea what OUR was. A couple of them had received police dogs donated by OUR, but even then, the funding for those dogs came from an LDS-based charity of the Doterra essential oil multi-level-marketing company. OUR has provided no accountability for what they do with their funding, except pay their founder a salary of nearly $1 million a year.
And Ballard himself seems to have trouble with the truth. He has often used the story of a girl he called Liliana in fund raising and in his political attempts to “build a wall.” Journalist Merlan investigated the story of the actual Liliana and found that it is a far different tale than the yarn Ballard spins. He says (sometimes, this number changes in his recounting) that Liliana was kidnapped in Mexico at the age of 11 and then trafficked to the USA through the open borders where she was forced into sex work until OUR helped her escape. He claims that she is now in a loving home, taking her GED, and on the fast track to become a citizen.
All of that is untrue except for the fact she was trafficked and she escaped. She was trafficked at the age of 13 by a 17-year-old with whom she was involved romantically; she willingly went with him and his family to the USA. She was then forced into sex work, and when she was 17 she escaped. OUR had nothing to do with her escape nor with finding her a “loving home.” Nor is she on the fast track to become a citizen. Ballard met her some years after her escape, probably when she was in her 20’s, heard her story, and began using it as his own — even going so far as to say she believed a border wall would have kept her from being trafficked, which is nonsense.
This is the kind of perfidy on which Sound of Freedom is based, and no one ought to believe any of it.
That said, I agree with Trey that “I am against human trafficking, pedophilia, covering up for evil regimes, or allowing criminal syndicates to exploit our open border for all sorts of illegal activity.”
But when it comes to trafficking, it’s not work for commandos or mercenaries as OUR pretends it is. I am sorry this is such a long rant, but there are legitimate organizations that do the real work of helping women and children escape trafficking, and it is nuanced. You can’t go in and bang the door down, grab the victims, and say “You’re free!” and forget about them. That just puts them in a worse place than they were.
There’s a whole system of identifying who is trafficked and who is simply a sex worker trying to make a living, of finding a safe space for the victims and providing them with physical and emotional care while they recover, and helping them find their way home or, in the case their family trafficked them or rejects them, providing the training to give them the means to provide for themselves so they aren’t vulnerable to traffickers again.
This is an important issue, but Sound of Freedom doesn’t address it. If you are tempted to see the film and/or believe it presents reality, please do more research on this subject. And if you want to help trafficked people, consider donating to/getting involved with Shared Hope International in the USA or Project Rescue internationally.
Thank you for coming to my TED Talk.
Of course I agree with STF.
And as always, thanks to Vjax for taking the time to research and rebut this…misinformation.
To me, the saddest part of Trey Hoffman’s letter is simply the tone of utter contempt. in the past, I rarely (if ever) agreed with his opinions; but I made an attempt to understand them. Even to excuse him.
But he has become so cloaked in fear and anger and, yes, hatred that his words are accusatory and insulting.
it is asinine that any person should feel the need to state that they agree with Trey’s proclamation–“I am against human trafficking, pedophilia, covering up for evil regimes, or allowing criminal syndicates to exploit our open border for all sorts of legal activity.” It goes without saying that any decent person would agree.
Yet that same person, such as myself, is free to disagree completely with Trey’s solution. Border policy comes to mind. Our political differences do not make either of us stupid or evil.
In spite of Trey’s assertion that I and my ilk are “…useful idiots doing the bidding of Satan himself”!
I am the first to admit I am nowhere close to Mensa status; if I am an idiot, I do my best not to act like one.
As a follower of Jesus, the Christ, I trust I am a part of His loving purposes rather than a pawn of Lucifer.
Granted, I am a liberal/progressive thinker, trying to make the world a better place for ALL people. Trey, I am not your enemy. I sit with you at mass and kneel beside you at the altar. I wave at you, from our front yards. I check out my groceries with you at Kroger. I smile at you over the books at the public library.
In short, Trey, I am your brother/sister, child of our one loving Father. And I’m worried about you.
As always, beautifully said, Suz!
Our Anglican brother CS Lewis said, to the effect, that what we are today, we will be more like tomorrow, until in the end, it’s all we are. I feel like this is happening to Trey before our eyes as we read his letters here. He was always snarky about folks on the other side of the aisle, then he got angry and biting about it, and tomorrow … what if all he is, is enraged?
Better to be a loving idiot who is growing more compassionate, until at last all we are is love. In my opinion. I feel like the Apostle Paul agrees with me …
“But now you must also put away all these: anger, wrath, malice, blasphemy, and filthy language out of your mouth. Do not lie one to another, since you have put off the old nature with its deeds, and have embraced the new nature, which is renewed in knowledge after the image of Him who created it, where there is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcision nor uncircumcision, barbarian, Scythian, slave nor free, but Christ is all and in all.”
—Colossians 3:8-11
Eventually we come to the place where Christ is all, and Christ is in all, and there’s no need for anger and wrath. I hope Trey will reverse course and move in this direction, too! ❤️
Thank you, Vjax, for this absolutely beautiful piece of writing.
I am so grateful and encouraged to find someone who speaks the same language as I. A language that springs from the heart.
Right back at you! ❤️💯😊
I think it may be a language like you occasionally hear of, from a couple of twins who never speak to anyone but each other, so no one else understands what they are saying and they appear to be mentally deficient!