Paul Croshaw's independent film, "Baseball, Dennis & The French," certainly must be judged as the best political biography to appear since David Horowitz's Radical Son. Additionally, it must be praised for its particular courage in putting onto celluloid the Grand themes that have been judged "radioactive" to the ethos of an increasingly secular film Industry. What begins as a young boy's desire for acceptance (and a flirtation with divine providence) soon opens up as a robust inquiry into the roots of: our American Founding, our Cultural and Political Exceptionalism, and a reasoned apologetic into the existential Crisis of the West- which in the process of losing its Judeo-Christian values, risks the diminution of its distinctive joy and unique character as a benevolent force in a darkening world.
Using the root theme of baseball as its Archimedean point, Paul takes us on an odyssey wherein the subterranean lessons of the workaday world etch an incremental and inexorable metamorphosis on the author. There is no "Damascus Moment" here, just a slow awakening from the dream of unchallenged opinion through knowledge to a slow epiphany of wisdom. Guided on his pilgrimage by media figure Dennis Prager, Croshaw's constant muse, (or should it be Siren?) Prager launches his powerful rhetorical skills in drawing Paul to a return to our soul's and civilization's First Principles.
Indeed, Mr. Prager's inspiring and honest persuasiveness anchors the film's expansive world view and primal thesis: That American greatness is intrinsically linked to its goodness, and that its goodness is inextricable bound to America's apprehension of Judeo-Christian ethical monotheism. While other cultures have grasped only parts of the whole, The Bible, the West's moral load stone, both imparts and has sustained the Judeo-Christian epistemological foundation of: a knowable rational nature, an enlightened and transcendent justice, and of a personal God that takes a loving interest in both the moral cultivation and the tragic sufferings of his creation. It is within this backdrop that Croshaw demonstrates how a disenchanting secularism has opened a rift between the European and American ethos, and that we follow the Continental Post-Modern philosophies to our own moral peril.
In his transformation from Liberal Doctrines to the Deep Mystery of the Cross, Mr. Croshaw has rounded the metaphorical bases of life into his mature world view, and as such, his self-discovery is the vindication and ultimate fulfillment of a young boy from Rowland Heights' dream of a single home run. Through his nuanced craft, Croshaw has squared the proverbial circle by melding an incredibly persuasive and substantive message with the hallowed memories of Childhood that we each treasure within us. The author has given religious Americans a poetic and convincing vehicle to transmit the rationality and gravity of our values to both the secular and to our youth: who are increasingly becoming ethical blank slates. If you are fortunate enough to catch Mr. Croshaw's film, I think you will agree that he has achieved an emotional and philosophical tour DE force--the equivalent of a Conservative Grand Slam.
