Lee Duigon

Imagine my horror this morning when I turned on the radio and heard adults–people who have actually been issued drivers’ licenses; who are authorized to open bank accounts; who even (Heaven help us!) vote–arguing for universal college education, paid for by the government, of course. “By the government,” for those unfamiliar with the not entirely honest use of language customary among those who try to shape public policy, means “by you, you suckers.”

“Universal” means everybody goes. Well, almost everybody already goes to college. As long as you’re willing to pay for it, there’s a college, somewhere, that will admit you.

In the same broadcast I learned that the total amount of outstanding student loan debt has just topped one trillion dollars. So what we’re talking about here is the American taxpayer getting gored for another trillion bucks (that’s a thousand billion, folks) and then adding onto it from there. Hey, the money just rains down out of the skies–right? It’s not like we have to work for it.

Once we get universal college paid for by the American people, it doesn’t take much of an imagination to envision the next two steps. 1) Make it compulsory, because that’s the only way to make it “fair,” and government is really into fairness. 2) Once everybody (literally) has a college degree, the degree will mean absolutely nothing, so we’ll have to go on to… universal grad school!

Forsooth–how many people do we need with master’s degrees in women’s studies, queer studies, victimology, self-esteem, white hispanic studies, black hispanic studies, scab-picking, and head-butting? Meanwhile, you keep all these individuals in college for 10, 15, or 20 years, and there are that many people not out in the marketplace working themselves to death, paying for it all.

This is a much, much, much dafter fantasy than anything that any fantasy writer has ever come up with.

In the spirit of Earth Day, I would like to revisit a news story published in The London Times in March, 2009: “UK population must fall to 30m[illion], says [sic]Porritt Jonathan Leake and Brendan Montague.” The article is posted on Free Republic at http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2212052/posts .

“Jonathan Porritt, one of [Prime Minister] Gordon Brown’s leading green advisers, is to warn that Britain must drastically reduce its population if it is to build a sustainable society,” the Times reported.

According to the 2010 census, the UK’s population as 62.3 million. The Times did not report by what means the scientific advisers proposed to get rid of 32.3 million Britons, nor how quickly they proposed to do it.

The secular road to Utopia always leads to a mountain of emaciated corpses. Think in terms of Mao’s “Great Leap Forward,” in which at least 40 million human beings (and probably many more) were done to death by starvation, violence, torture, exposure, and disease–and all in a mere four years (1958-1962)!

Behind the facade of “sustainability” and “environmental justice” and “smart growth” and “social justice” lurks a cruel ruthlessless that sane people will not find easy to imagine.

Let us hope God hears our prayers, and for His own great name’s sake, delivers us out of the hands of these murderers and tyrants.

An inspiring news story from New Jersey!

Newark Mayor Corey Booker was awakened early this morning by the noise of the house next door to his being on fire.

The mayor rushed into the burning building and carried out a woman who would have died if he’d waited for the firemen. A city detective tried to hold him back, but when he couldn’t, he followed Booker into the house. Booker suffered minor injuries, for which he was treated at the hospital and released this afternoon.

“I’m no hero,” Booker said, adding that he didn’t feel at all heroic during his action, but instead experienced intense fear.

But of course he is a hero–and if there were more like him, the world would be a better place. Hats off to Mayor Corey Booker!

Not for the first time, and I hope not for the last, I’ve begun to watch the old BBC-TV production of C.S. Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia.

So far I’ve seen and reviewed all the new Narnia movies–and this old production from the 1980s runs rings around them. Yes, some of the costumes and special effects are primitive, even a bit silly–no fancy computer graphics, back then. But it doesn’t matter! These old shows captured the spirit of Narnia; and the new movies, for all their expensive and up-to-date production values, do not.

There’s plenty of good acting in the movies, and wonderful camera-work; but the writing is strictly third-rate. The movie-makers made any number of ridiculous decisions. It would be hard to say which was worst. Trying to turn Prince Caspian into a smouldering hunk? Turning Susan and Lucy into warrior princesses? Presenting Reepacheep as a kind of furry Bart Simpson? Or rewriting the whole doggone story, as they did with Voyage of the Dawn Treader? I find the effect of the beautiful cinematography of these films soon wears off, but my distaste for the multitude of follies still lingers.

Watching the old BBC version of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, I was struck by how Peter (Richard Dempsey) starts out as a high-handed little prig who never loses an opportunity to lord it over his younger brother, Edmund (Jonathan Scott); and by Edmund as a nasty little piece of goods, sly and smarmy and totally self-centered. Their experiences in Narnia–most importantly, their coming to know Aslan, the Great Lion, Lewis’ fantasy avatar for Our Lord Jesus Christ–change them to the core. The real Peter emerges as a merry, brave, and great-hearted boy on his way to manhood, while the real Edmund shows sober, wise, and courageous: he, too, will grow up into a great man.

But what stirred me most, as it always does, was Aslan himself. When Peter is knighted and blessed by Aslan, I could almost imagine what bliss it would be for me, if I could kneel before Christ, and lay my eyes on Him, and receive His blessing in person. It stirs me just to write about it.

And that most of all, I think, is what C.S. Lewis had in mind.

PS–You can get these old Chronicles via amazon.com.

OK, I’m ready to write Book #6 of the Bell Mountain series, as soon as I clear away this mountain of work in front of me.

No, I don’t have a title, not yet. What I do have is the first and last chapters and some new characters. That’s all I need to get the show on the road. My Lord will give me the rest as needed.

A minute or two after I sat down to supper a few nights ago, I received those two chapters as an instantaneous burst to my imagination. Call it inspiration. I can’t begin to explain how it works.

Thank you, Father.