[HPforGrownups] Re: Politics (OT)

[Caius Marcius]

No: HPFGUIDX 5540


----- Original Message -----
From: "Penny & Bryce Linsenmayer" <pennylin at swbell.net>
To: <HPforGrownups at egroups.com>
Sent: Thursday, November 09, 2000 9:23 AM
Subject: [HPforGrownups] Re: Politics (OT)


> Hi --
>
> I agree that Bush is not evil incarnate.  He does not appear to be an
> unreasonably intolerant individual.  But, his *individual* views won't
> really count for much.  I am, and will remain, very very concerned about
> the composition of the Supreme Court.  I think it's safe to say that any
> appointments made by Dubya will be individuals with a conservative
> jurist background (whether he employs an abortion rights "litmus test"
> or not).  It would not take very many arch-conservative appointees in
> the ilk of Scalia and Thomas to tilt the Court to the far right of
> overall American opinion.  Supreme Court appointees have a knack of
> sometimes surprising their appointers (I believe Brennan or Marshall or
> both were appointed by Eisenhower for example).  IMO, we can only hope
> that this will prove true of any Dubya appointees

Perhaps those interested in debating the merits of Bush and  Gore - who,
last time I checked, do not appear as characters in any of JKR's writings -
could repair themselves to one of the many fine newsgroups expressly
designated as forums for political discussions (e.g.,
alt.elections.politics), and reserve this forum for the discussion of Harry
Potter.

You may interested in reading what a prominent conservative columnist
recently wrote concerning HP might check out this link (the views expressed
may differ from the boggart-like caricature of conservatism that so many of
our regular posters on this network seem to rejoice in)

    - CMC

Better to encourage imagination

By Charley Reese
Commentary

Published in The Orlando Sentinel on October 29, 2000

I finally did it. I read a Harry Potter book, Harry Potter and the Goblet of
Fire. If my children were still young, I'd encourage them to read those
books.

Some people have objected because the characters are wizards and witches.
Well?

The characters in Winnie the Pooh are stuffed animals that move and talk.
The characters in Treasure Island are pirates.

R.K. Rowling is not the writer that C.S. Lewis and his friend J.R.R. Tolkien
were, but then few writers are. Nevertheless she has created an interesting
set of characters and spins a good adventure yarn. I can understand why kids
enjoy her books.

Harry is, in many respects, an ordinary boy, but when the crisis comes, he
displays bravery and loyalty to his friends. There is a clear line between
good and evil, and the author attaches no religious overtones to anything in
her story.

The fact that Harry is attending a school for wizards in a world hidden from
the eyes of humans, or Muggles, as they are called, just adds to the fun.
Rowling is creating a separate world for her characters, just as Lewis did
in his Narnia stories.

When the children in Lewis's Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe pass through
the magic portal, they find themselves in a world where an evil witch has
created perpetual winter, turned her enemies into stone, and where animals
talk.

Imaginative literature is important for a child, in my opinion, especially
these days when so much written for children is dreary pseudo-realism and
nihilistic. Heroic characters teach children that there are some things more
important than creature comforts and that some things are more important
than life itself.

It especially surprises me that Christians would object to the Potter books.
Christianity itself is full of what an atheist would call magic -- walking
on water, healing terminal illnesses with the touch of a hand, resurrecting
the dead, feeding the multitude with only 12 fish, dying and coming back to
life.

I would offer this advice: If you hope your child's faith will survive the
continuous battering from the secular world, then you had better encourage
the imagination of your children, and there is no better way to do that than
by encouraging them to read good literature. Imagination seems to me a
crucial component of faith. If we cannot visualize what is invisible to our
eyes, then we will have a harder time sustaining our belief, especially in
these bleak times.

Television, movies and computer games kill the imagination. (Some argue that
they can kill the soul.) Everything is supplied, and all the viewer does is
turn down his brain to the passive level.

Reading, on the other hand, requires an active brain. The reader becomes the
casting director, supplies the set, the costumes and the props, as well as
the scenery. A good fantasy or science-fiction story can take you out of
your ordinary world so that when you return, you will see it in a slightly
different way. And if they can't see their world in a slightly different way
than the secularists see it, Christians will lose their faith.

The Harry Potter books ought to encourage children to read Lewis's wonderful
Chronicles of Narnia, and when they are older, Tolkien's The Hobbit and the
magnificent trilogy Lord of the Rings.

Literature can teach either vices or virtue. There's no question that
parents should supervise their younger children's reading. Unfortunately you
can no longer trust either the judgment or tastes of government schools and
certainly not that of the entertainment industry.

Better for children to read about wizards fighting evil than to grow up
believing that nothing is worth fighting for.

CMC