The Best Years of Our Lives: A Different Take

The Best Years of Our Lives (1946) won seven Academy Awards and deservedly so. It remains a classic, the story of three men returning home after World War II. But I want to look at this movie from a political and economic viewpoint. There exists a sub theme here, or perhaps it is a subconscious one (is there a difference?). That is the idea of the welfare state and the government safety net.


The story presents us with three returning veterans: Homer, Fred, and Al. They are coming home to Boone City, your average medium sized town. All they have in common is their home and the fact that they are veterans. Homer served in the machine shop on a carrier in the Pacific, Al in the infantry also in the Pacific, while Fred was a bombardier with the 8th Air Force. Before the war they were the school football hero, banker, and soda jerk. But their lives have been forever changed.


Homer lost both his arms and has, instead, metal hooks. Al returns to the bank as officer in charge of small loans. Fred returns to the soda fountain.


No one would begrudge Homer his right to compensation. Yet no indication is given that he will ever do more than get his "fifty dollars every month from Mr. Whiskers."


Al is back at the local bank and even receives a promotion. He is now in charge of small loans. He deals with veterans applying for loans under the G. I. Bill. Again, more government money. Another way to view it is taxpayers money being redistributed.

Finally, there is Fred. Back behind the counter at the soda fountain. The pharmacy has been bought by a chain. Again consolidation. He can't hold this job. His wife leaves him, probably for Scully, who's making a killing on the black market, a market created by government rationing. Fred eventually finds a job with the junk men, stripping B-17s for prefabricated housing being built with federal money.

To borrow a term from the Deconstructionists, the subtext of this movie should be disturbing to Libertarians: we can't get by without Uncle Sam.

The NBA Finals

So, the Dallas Mavericks are in the NBA Finals. They will be playing the Miami Heat which brings back memories of the nightmare of five years ago. Up 2-0, and leading in Game 3, the parade was already in the planning stages. Then Dwayne Wade caught on fire and Dirk disappeared and the Mavericks lost. Of course it helped that Wade went to the charity stripe nearly 100 times in the last four games.
Now comes the rematch. According to ESPN, it is all about LeBron James. In fact, ESPN acts as if it is a foregone conclusion. All this should do is make the Mavericks mad. We will see come Tuesday what wins championships, hype or heart.

Woodrow Wilson

The history of liberty is a history of the limitation of governmental power, not the increase of it.
-quoted in Read. The Love of Liberty (88)

James Thurber

Let us not look back in anger, nor forward in fear, but around in awareness.
-quoted in Read. The Love of Liberty. (127)

Dallas Sports

In the last sixteen months the Metroplex has hosted the NBA All-Star game, the World Series, three college bowl games, the Super Bowl and now the NBA finals. Add to that, two of our universities went to bowl games (one of which was the Rose Bowl) and our MLS team was in the finals last season. Not shabby at all.

George Santayana on Love

Love, in English, is a very wide term. What poets and philosophers, at least of the classical school, talk about is the passion of love, the madness, divine madness, of Plato. But attraction, confidence, mutual delight, and complete devotion to a chosen mate is not madness at all, it is a phase, a settlement of the sane affections of one human being to another, where all sane possible bonds, physical, domestic, social, intellectual, and religious bind the two together for life- common material interests and children being strong material buttresses to to such a complete union in after years. More than once, at friends' houses in England, or in hotels, I have found myself divided only by a frail closed door from the bed in which an elderly pair were exchanging confidential judgments and ideas; and I have been impressed by the perfection of friendship and sympathy in such a union. -Letters. (386) quoted in Singer. George Santayana: Literary Philosopher. (126)

Technology

With the onslaught of technological innovation that we are now enduring it is well to remember the words of the Agrarians:

Advertising means to persuade the consumers to want exactly what the applied sciences are able to furnish them....It is the great effort of a false economy of life to approve itself.
(Quoted in Montgomery. Fathers. (163)

As for the iPad, iPod, and iPhone, my choice is iPass.

George Santayana on Teaching

Teaching is a delightful paternal art, and especially teaching intelligent and warm-hearted youngsters, as most American collegians are; but it is an art like acting, where the performance, often rehearsed, must be adapted to an audience hearing it only once. The speaker must make concessions to their impatience, their taste, their capacity, their prejudices, their ultimate good; he must neither bore nor perplex, nor demoralise them. His thoughts must be such as can flow daily, and be set down in notes; they must come when the bell rings and stop appropriately when the bell rings a second time.
-George Santayana. Character and Opinion in the United States. (42)

Deconstructionist History

Howard Zinn argues that the telling of America in terms of heroes and their victims, which entails " the quiet acceptance of conquest and murder in the name of progress," functions as "only one aspect of a certain approach to history, in which the past is told from the point of view of governments, conquerors, diplomats, leaders." If On the Road is about defining America, it is also about staging an intervention into official definitions of history and nationhood.


-Penny Vlagopoulos. "Rewriting America." in Jack Kerouac. On the Road: The Original Scroll. (60-61)

The grizzled, gray head of Howard Zinn once again raises its angry countenance. Zinn had a point in that there is not one history but histories. A German's view of World War II would certainly be different than a Frenchman's. But Vlagopoulos takes the Zinn perspective to an extreme, a malady not uncommon to literature professors in this era. Before staging her intervention perhaps she should give the "official definitions of history and nationhood" so we have some idea of what she means.

A View on Government circa 1900

The misgovernment of the American people is misgovernment by the American people.
-Lincoln Steffens. The Shame of the Cities (2)

A Teaching Theory

The Southerner knows he can do more justice to reality by telling a story than he can by discussing problems or proposing abstractions. -Flannery O'Connor quoted in Marion Montgomery. The Men I Have Chosen for Fathers. (151)

Still Holds True after 35 Years

Just as mankind once became aware of the intolerable and mistaken deviation of the late Middle Ages, so too must we take account of the disastrous deviation of the late Enlightenment. We have become hopelessly enmeshed in our slavish worship of all that is pleasant, all that is comfortable, all that is material--we worship things, we worship products. Will we ever succeed in shaking off this burden, in giving free reign to the spirit that was breathed into us at birth, that spirit which distinguishes us from the animal world?- Alexander Solzhenitsyn. Warning to the West. (145-146)

The State of Education

The Bridge Program in Math and Science at __________ is a three-week residential experience for 20 rising high school seniors. Selection of students is based on their academic performance and potential to contribute to and enrich campus diversity. This year the program runs from June 19 through July 9.

My alma mater, a liberal arts college of longstanding has established a bridge program. I am very familiar with such programs in the community college system where they have to accept everybody. But when a school that prides itself on its selectivity has to do so, something is not right.

Church Growth from a Sociologist

The basis for successful conversionist movements is growth through social networks, through a structure of direct and intimate interpersonal attachments.
Rodney Stark. The Rise of Christianity. (20)

Attributed to G. K. Chesterton

The difference between Chaucer's world and ours: up to a certain point in the West, life is understood as a dance, after which we decide it is a race.

From The Men I Have Chosen for Fathers. By Marion Montgomery. (16)

Driving and Traffic

Driving in Dallas, as in any major metropolitan area, can be very trying at times, but it can also be a time for reflection. In my many years of experience I have noticed certain types.
First, there is the right lane hugger. This driver stays in the right lane of the freeway come hell or high water. He drives at ten miles below the road speed. He is fiercely defensive of his position, and appears to travel in groups. Crossing this flock, whether entering or exiting the highway is akin to crossing the Berlin Wall.
Next we have the driver who lacks commitment. No wonder the divorce rate is so high! How can one be expected to commit to a relationship when you are not able to stay in your lane for more than five seconds? These types believe the grass is greener in the next lane. If you are on a date and he is a frequent lane-changer, don't send out the wedding invitations just yet. The irony is, that in doing this, they slow down the lane they move into, and speed up the one they have vacated.
Finally, we have the berserker. Berserkers were warriors in ancient times who, in the heat of battle, would, for lack of a better word, go berserk. They would fling away their clothing and dive into the middle of the fight. The modern berserker is similar. The driver will be proceeding smoothly in traffic and then...IT happens. They make the lack of commitment driver seem to be a wimp. The berserker will change multiple lanes at once, rapidly accelerating and decelerating as needed. No reports as to whether they shed their clothes.

You Heard It Hear First

On February 27 of this year I posted an entry on the Dallas Mavericks, calling them "the Stealth Team" in the NBA this season. After sweeping the Lakers, the two-time defending champions, I do not believe they are a stealth team any longer. Go Mavs!

The Machiavellians

The Marxists concluded that the elimination of economic inequalities, through the building of an economically classless society in which no one should have special rights of ownership over the means of production, was a prerequisite for the attainment of genuine democracy.
-James Burnham. The Machiavellians: Defenders of Freedom. (151).

Is There Hell?

I have started reading Love Wins by Rob Bell, which has stirred up the Evangelical World by the author's proposition that there is no Hell. Instead of waiting until I finish, I thought I would try a different track and give my impressions as I progress through this work.
The first question that strikes me is if there is no Hell where does that leave Osama Bin Laden?
Next, how is Bell's theology different from that of a John Shelby Spong? Certainly his writing style is different. Reading this book feels like watching an over elaborated PowerPoint presentation without pictures. Another difference from Spong is the complete lack of references to other sources. His biblical exegesis appears to be entirely his own impression without any foundation. In his theology those verses that apply to Israel specifically are implied to mean the whole world.
Bell 's theology is ultimately of the Arminian stripe: eventually everybody will be saved. Is that truly what God wants? According to Bell, God will continue to try and save us even after we are dead. No sheep left behind. Is eternity waiting for the last person to be saved? The implication is that it really doesn't matter at all what you do in this world because God will give you an infinite amount of chances. This takes the idea of last minute baptism before death to have all your sins forgiven to a new level.
If everybody is saved eventually, what is justice? Is justice tied in to forgiveness?