The Insider

I just finished watching The Insider with Russel Crowe and Al Pocino. It is a movie about a former executive at a big tobacco company who reveils that the company is enhancing Nicotine so that people become more addicted to it. Crowe plays the exec. and Pocino plays the "60 Minutes" reporter trying to get Crowe in for an interview. Crowe has signed an agreement of confidentiality and is pressured not to talk, but risks everything to tell the world that there are health risks to cigarettes. He gets bashed and threatened but Pocino is always there to protect him. Crowe loses his house, job, wife, kids, and reputation just for this, but Pocino sticks with him. Then, CBS is afraid to air the interview that Crowe went out on a limb to tape. Crowe fights against his superiors because he knows how much Crowe has gone through to "blow the whistle" on big tobacco. Finally, the interview airs.

This shows me an aspect of society that I don't see very often today. Sticking up for what you know is the morally right thing to do. Politicians are swayed by campaign donations, money, and the promise of political support. They no longer look at what is the best thing to do for the people that they are supposed to represent. Americans are giving up their rights for so called security. Benjamin Franklin once said, "They who would give up an essential liberty for temporary security, deserve neither liberty or security." We need to look back at the fathers of our country to remind ourselves why America was created in the first place. Learn from people like Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Franklin, Monroe, Madison, and all the others about what it really means to be a "servant of the people."