Tuesday, May 27, 2008
I have nothing but admiration for the Constitution and the men who framed it, but there is this little part I wish they had left out: the Bill of Rights. "Aha, I thought so!" many will be exclaiming at this point. But cool your jets and hear me out. There was serious disagreement over adding a Bill of Rights to the Constitution but it was the only way some paranoid demagogues known as anti-Federalists would agree to support the new government. Alexander Hamilton wrote the last Federalist essay (the collection should be the Bible of our government), pleading with New Yorkers in particular to support the Constitution without it. Hamilton argued, first of all, that New York's constitution, which was held up as a better example than the federal one, contained no bill of rights. But his real reason for wishing to avoid the appendage was more profound. The new Constitution contained no justification for a government suspending the freedoms the anti-Federalists cherished and explicitly stated that any power not expressly granted to the federal government were retained by the states and the people. Hamilton feared that beginning a laundry list of rights would first lead people to believe that only the rights granted in the bill of rights were protected, leading to government abuse, but he also feared the public would abuse it. Take freedom of the press, he contended, "who can give it any definition which would not leave the utmost latitude for evasion?" The danger was that people would construe freedom of the press to mean almost anything. The Constitution did not grant the government the right to meddle with the press or with religion, therefore it did not have this right. But some kind of definition was needed.
Today we see how right Hamilton was to mistrust the rhetoric of self-proclaimed "men of the people." Freedom of the press has become freedom of expression (whatever that means) and can be used to cover anything from war protests to child pornography. No matter whose life is destroyed, a pervert can never be held responsible for their free expression. And, of course, without the second amendment, Thomas Jefferson would never have invented a wall between church and state that's only ever used to keep one religion out of public life. The Bill of Rights was intended to safeguard our most precious entity, but instead it has become exactly what Hamilton feared: a tool for chaos and ridiculous government, shielding criminals from justice and descriminating against people of one faith in favor of another. Exactly the thing it was supposed to prevent. Yeah. Good job, guys.
Today we see how right Hamilton was to mistrust the rhetoric of self-proclaimed "men of the people." Freedom of the press has become freedom of expression (whatever that means) and can be used to cover anything from war protests to child pornography. No matter whose life is destroyed, a pervert can never be held responsible for their free expression. And, of course, without the second amendment, Thomas Jefferson would never have invented a wall between church and state that's only ever used to keep one religion out of public life. The Bill of Rights was intended to safeguard our most precious entity, but instead it has become exactly what Hamilton feared: a tool for chaos and ridiculous government, shielding criminals from justice and descriminating against people of one faith in favor of another. Exactly the thing it was supposed to prevent. Yeah. Good job, guys.
Monday, May 26, 2008
What is an army? Whether you're aware of it or not, this is a fundamental debate in our society today. What is an army and what is it used for? The answer to this question, or rather each individual's answer to the question, will determine the answer to the age-old argument on whether you can support your troops while disapproving of their mission. What does the Pendragon think? Well, in one sense you certainly can support the troops while not supporting their task. The Whig-controlled Congress of the 1840s voted to fully fund the troops in Mexico while still expressing indignation over what they believed was an unjust war by a rival president. This strategy is the only way the jokers in today's Democratic Party can say they're pro-troops with a straight face, or at least that they are pro-troops before they are anti-troops, which amounts to the same thing apparently.
But we're really just arguing semantics here, which is why we never get beyond, "I'm more patriotic than you." What we need to address is the role an army is supposed to play in society. What are armies for? Well, they are for defense and sometimes, we all know, defense requires taking proactive steps. As FDR put it, you don't have to wait for the rattlesnake to bite. But then again, he believed that armies were for winning wars. Today's anti-war crowd does not. To them, the army is a glorified summer camp. It teaches survival skills, gives travel opportunities and helps young people pay for college. No wonder they sport bumper stickers that say, "Support the troops; end the war." To them, all this fighting just gets in the way of the real army business: educational advancement. The military has even tailored its advertisements to this crowd, emphasizing the career opportunities of enlisted men and women. So these protestors are very honest about what they think, but at the same time they are very wrong.
Armies have never been about education, or career advancement, or traveling the world, or even martial skills. Armies exist for a single purpose: to fight wars in defense of their homeland. Unfortunately, the very nature of armies means they are a weapon often abused: if defense means for the commander taking over other countries and colonizing them, then this is what the army will do. The perks offered were a way to offset that, to ensure that the majority of people entering our armed forces were focused on something other than war: serving their country and getting something in return. But that is not primarily what a soldier does. In the words of a noted commentator, soldiers kill people and break things. It's what they do. They're not meant to rebuild and establish infrastructure: that is a job for other people. When armies are put to this work, it goes badly. Why? Because they should not be doing it. Claiming the peace is not a job for the army; it is a job for civilians, preferably civilians of the country doing the claiming. Don't expect to hear this from the mainstream media or the leftist crowd in this country (or even the pseudo-Rightish crowd taking their cue from John McCain), but there is a common ground we could possibly agree on: if the military was allowed to do what it is meant to do, the troops would be home now, enjoying the well-earned gratitude of their countrymen and women this Memorial Day. God bless our troops!
But we're really just arguing semantics here, which is why we never get beyond, "I'm more patriotic than you." What we need to address is the role an army is supposed to play in society. What are armies for? Well, they are for defense and sometimes, we all know, defense requires taking proactive steps. As FDR put it, you don't have to wait for the rattlesnake to bite. But then again, he believed that armies were for winning wars. Today's anti-war crowd does not. To them, the army is a glorified summer camp. It teaches survival skills, gives travel opportunities and helps young people pay for college. No wonder they sport bumper stickers that say, "Support the troops; end the war." To them, all this fighting just gets in the way of the real army business: educational advancement. The military has even tailored its advertisements to this crowd, emphasizing the career opportunities of enlisted men and women. So these protestors are very honest about what they think, but at the same time they are very wrong.
Armies have never been about education, or career advancement, or traveling the world, or even martial skills. Armies exist for a single purpose: to fight wars in defense of their homeland. Unfortunately, the very nature of armies means they are a weapon often abused: if defense means for the commander taking over other countries and colonizing them, then this is what the army will do. The perks offered were a way to offset that, to ensure that the majority of people entering our armed forces were focused on something other than war: serving their country and getting something in return. But that is not primarily what a soldier does. In the words of a noted commentator, soldiers kill people and break things. It's what they do. They're not meant to rebuild and establish infrastructure: that is a job for other people. When armies are put to this work, it goes badly. Why? Because they should not be doing it. Claiming the peace is not a job for the army; it is a job for civilians, preferably civilians of the country doing the claiming. Don't expect to hear this from the mainstream media or the leftist crowd in this country (or even the pseudo-Rightish crowd taking their cue from John McCain), but there is a common ground we could possibly agree on: if the military was allowed to do what it is meant to do, the troops would be home now, enjoying the well-earned gratitude of their countrymen and women this Memorial Day. God bless our troops!
Thursday, May 22, 2008
In the interest of discussing something deeper than the continued idiocy of politics, I have decided to devote myself to what I shall fondly call "the de-feminization of society" or "Warrior-Princess Syndrome." It seems that the need for women to be better men than men has so permeated our culture that no movie is complete without a woman being more masculine than a man. The greatest irony, of course, is that the latest travesty has been the application of this psychological shortcoming to the great C.S. Lewis who suffered not a whit from it. His Queen Susan the Gentle who never fought a battle and shot a Telmarine in the real "Prince Caspian" only with a white face and trembling hands has turned into some kind of super-female calmly mowing down the enemy while her sister flees on a horse. Poor J.R.R. Tolkien had his shadowy Arwen, the fantasy his hero was striving after, turned into the only human who could keep the unstable ranger from tottering off the deep end. The real shame of these piracies is that both Tolkien and Lewis contained heroines who did fit the politically-correct profile: Eowyn from LOTR and Aravis in Lewis' "Horse and His Boy." Neither writer thought that women were inferior to men, only different. But Disney and Hollywood can't stand the idea that women possibly might excell in some other field from men. They appear to have skipped the day in school when their teachers talked about differences between the genders. Now they have effectively neutered possibly the last two thinkers who truly appreciated the glories of the two-gender system. They edited out Father Christmas' admonition that women should not fight in battles, but decided to keep Lucy's response to Peter that. "Girl's heads have something inside them." Lewis included both.
Lest anyone think I am threatened in my manhood by the phenomenon of strong, active women, I assure you all I am not. I enjoy both the literary and actual sort of strong women. One of my favorite literary characters is Hermione Granger from Harry Potter--she's strong-willed, intelligent and fiery. Yet even she, in the books anyway, is not always one-upping the stupid boys and saving them from themselves. She makes mistakes same as they do and if she saves their rears several times, they also save hers. This fun little dichotomy is missing, as usual from the movies--one scene from the latest movie has Ron assuring Hermione during a practice duel that he will "go easy on you," following which she blasts him into a wall. Needless to say, this is entirely a Hollywood fabrication. J.K. Rowling never hints that Ron is a useless lump with pride bigger than his brains, or that Hermione is some kind of super-witch (in fact, she finishes second to Harry in Defense Against the Dark Arts throughout the series).
The tragedy of this inability to celebrate the differences between men and women is there gets to be nothing particularly special about women. They have to "outman" the men in order to be seen as truly successful. Who is going to come off the best in the new Narnia movie--Lucy who successfully finds Aslan and helps to raise the sleeping forests, or Susan coolly shooting down enemies and mounting horses at a running leap? Galadriel sitting quietly at home or Arwen facing down the Dark Riders? The answer is obvious: it's exactly who the movie producers want you to admire. The only pity is that they had to pirate the work of far more intelligent and talented people in order to push this worldview.
Lest anyone think I am threatened in my manhood by the phenomenon of strong, active women, I assure you all I am not. I enjoy both the literary and actual sort of strong women. One of my favorite literary characters is Hermione Granger from Harry Potter--she's strong-willed, intelligent and fiery. Yet even she, in the books anyway, is not always one-upping the stupid boys and saving them from themselves. She makes mistakes same as they do and if she saves their rears several times, they also save hers. This fun little dichotomy is missing, as usual from the movies--one scene from the latest movie has Ron assuring Hermione during a practice duel that he will "go easy on you," following which she blasts him into a wall. Needless to say, this is entirely a Hollywood fabrication. J.K. Rowling never hints that Ron is a useless lump with pride bigger than his brains, or that Hermione is some kind of super-witch (in fact, she finishes second to Harry in Defense Against the Dark Arts throughout the series).
The tragedy of this inability to celebrate the differences between men and women is there gets to be nothing particularly special about women. They have to "outman" the men in order to be seen as truly successful. Who is going to come off the best in the new Narnia movie--Lucy who successfully finds Aslan and helps to raise the sleeping forests, or Susan coolly shooting down enemies and mounting horses at a running leap? Galadriel sitting quietly at home or Arwen facing down the Dark Riders? The answer is obvious: it's exactly who the movie producers want you to admire. The only pity is that they had to pirate the work of far more intelligent and talented people in order to push this worldview.
Tuesday, May 20, 2008
The Pendragon saw the new Narnia movie, "Prince Caspian," last night. It was very well done. Even a Lewis purist like myself can admit that. The acting was superb and the special effects stellar as I knew they would be. The battle sequences were intense and the scene where evil members of Caspian's army try to summon back the White Witch brings some much-needed darkness to an otherwise straightforward children's movie. Good and evil are firmly identified and most of the additions are well-reasoned and fitted to the original story.
Nevertheless, the movie falls even further short of its predecessor for unnecessary changes, none more obvious than the portrayal of Peter and Susan. For the entire movie, Peter is moody and belligerent, fighting people back home in England for treating him like a kid "when he wasn't always a kid." He snubs Caspian on his first arrival, and constantly derides him as an invader with no more right to rule than his evil usurper uncle. This is a far cry from Lewis' book where Peter recognizes that Aslan has summoned him to Narnia to put Caspian in his place as king, not to regain it for himself. In the movie, it is Edmund who exemplifies the mature, calm one. And what can I say about Susan? The addition of a love interest between her and Caspian is not a major part of the movie but that almost makes it worse. The producers were so desperate to get it in there, they forced it in without trying to adapt the storyline. There is no hint that Caspian and Susan are in love until the final scene in Narnia where she kisses him. In the beginning, Susan snubs a geeky boy from school who is interested in her but again, there is no reason given for it or why it needed to be added to a story that did quite well without it. Susan also betrays a "Xenia Warrior-Princess" quality that is quite missing from the "Queen Susan the Gentle" that Lewis gave us, one that did not ride to war and never fought in a battle. I recognize the political correctness of our society demands a more activist role for any female characters but there are plenty of more modern tales that can be used in this way. LOTR didn't need it, nor does Narnia.
The movie improves on the older BBC versions due to the more modern equipment and the superior acting, but falls short on the angle of faithfulness to the story. I don't know if Doug Gresham is allowing his bitterness as a younger child to cloud the childrens' relationships in the story, but if he isn't going to be more faithful to his step-father's stories than that, he may as well resign as associate producer. Rank: 6.5 out of 10.
Nevertheless, the movie falls even further short of its predecessor for unnecessary changes, none more obvious than the portrayal of Peter and Susan. For the entire movie, Peter is moody and belligerent, fighting people back home in England for treating him like a kid "when he wasn't always a kid." He snubs Caspian on his first arrival, and constantly derides him as an invader with no more right to rule than his evil usurper uncle. This is a far cry from Lewis' book where Peter recognizes that Aslan has summoned him to Narnia to put Caspian in his place as king, not to regain it for himself. In the movie, it is Edmund who exemplifies the mature, calm one. And what can I say about Susan? The addition of a love interest between her and Caspian is not a major part of the movie but that almost makes it worse. The producers were so desperate to get it in there, they forced it in without trying to adapt the storyline. There is no hint that Caspian and Susan are in love until the final scene in Narnia where she kisses him. In the beginning, Susan snubs a geeky boy from school who is interested in her but again, there is no reason given for it or why it needed to be added to a story that did quite well without it. Susan also betrays a "Xenia Warrior-Princess" quality that is quite missing from the "Queen Susan the Gentle" that Lewis gave us, one that did not ride to war and never fought in a battle. I recognize the political correctness of our society demands a more activist role for any female characters but there are plenty of more modern tales that can be used in this way. LOTR didn't need it, nor does Narnia.
The movie improves on the older BBC versions due to the more modern equipment and the superior acting, but falls short on the angle of faithfulness to the story. I don't know if Doug Gresham is allowing his bitterness as a younger child to cloud the childrens' relationships in the story, but if he isn't going to be more faithful to his step-father's stories than that, he may as well resign as associate producer. Rank: 6.5 out of 10.
Saturday, May 17, 2008
The quest for objective media is a forlorn one. CNN, CBS and ABC, as well as their trained dogs at TIME, THE NATION and other popular magazines are running adoring paeans to Barack Obama, about how wonderful he is and how much adversity he has triumphed over. FOX, on the other hand, falls down and worships McCain--they insert "former POW" into every story on him, much like CBS did with John Kerry four years ago, and run huge feature pieces on how much McCain is admired by his former bunk buddies from Vietnam. They boast headlines about how McCain got "ambushed" by uncomfortable questions about his wife. Someday perhaps we will be able to reach a state of equal treatment for both sides but in the meantime it seems that the only thing you can do is read the news you agree with and continue to blindly believe they're telling you the truth.
Tuesday, May 13, 2008
It's being said that the Feds are indicting Barry Bonds on fourteen counts of perjury. Now if the thing he was lying about was oral sex, Congress couldn't care less. But by jinks he lied about steroids (actually a charge they haven't proved yet) and he deserves to suffer. The lack of proportion in this country is absolutely insane. When we give California back to Mexico because their economy can't possibly get any worse, do you suppose they'll take DC too?
