Disney: Vulgar, Blasphemous

Blasphemy in Narnia

What C.S. Lewis thought of filming "Narnia":

The Kilns,
Headington Quarry,
Oxford 18 Dec. 1959


Dear Sieveking

(Why do you ‘Dr’ me? Had we not dropped the honorifics?) As things worked out, I wasn’t free to hear a single instalment of our serial [The Magician’s Nephew] except the first. What I did hear, I approved. I shd. be glad for the series to be given abroad. But I am absolutely opposed – adamant isn’t in it! – to a TV version. Anthropomorphic animals, when taken out of narrative into actual visibility, always turn into buffoonery or nightmare. At least, with photography. Cartoons (if only Disney did not combine so much vulgarity with his genius!) wld. be another matter. A human, pantomime, Aslan wld. be to me blasphemy.

All the best,
yours

C. S. Lewis

[Letter to BBC producer Lance Sieveking (1896-1972), who has written at the top: ‘The Magician’s Nephew’ and, after the address, the phone number “62963”.]

From NTHPOSITION

Mark Twain: Self-Centered, Hopeless

"On August 25, six students, along with their school, Calvary Chapel Christian School in Murrieta, California and the Association of Christian Schools International filed a federal lawsuit against the University of California where, according to the LA Times (August 27), admissions officials have been accused of discriminating against high schools that teach creationism and other conservative Christian viewpoints."



The current New York Times sheds a bit of light on the subject. The following are statements made in certain of the texts used by the schools:

From "United States History for Christian Schools," written by Timothy Keesee and Mark Sidwell (Bob Jones University, 2001) per Thomas Vinciguerra in the New York Times of November 27, 2005:

On Thomas Jefferson:

American believers can appreciate Jefferson's rich contribution to the development of their nation, but they must beware of his view of Christ as a good teacher but not the incarnate son of God. As the Apostle John said, "Who is a liar but he that denieth that Jesus is the Christ? He is antichrist, that denieth the Father and the Son" (I John 2:22).

On Theodore Roosevelt and the Progressives:

On the whole, they believed that man is basically good and that human nature might be improved. ... Such a belief, of course, ignored the biblical teaching that man is sinful by nature (Ephesians 2:1-3). Progressives therefore also ignored the fact that the fallible men who built the corrupt institutions that they attacked were the same in nature as those who filled the political offices and staffed the regulatory agencies that were supposed to control the corruption.

from "Elements of Literature for Christian Schools," by Ronald Horton, Donalynn Hess and Steven Skeggs (Bob Jones University, 2001):

Mark Twain:

Twain's outlook was both self-centered and ultimately hopeless. Denying that he was created in the image of God, Twain was able to rid himself of feeling any responsibility to his Creator. At the same time, however, he defiantly cut himself off from God's love. Twain's skepticism was clearly not the honest questioning of a seeker of truth but the deliberate defiance of a confessed rebel.

Emily Dickinson:

Dickinson's year at Mount Holyoke Female Seminary further shaped her "religious" views. During her stay at the school, she learned of Christ but wrote of her inability to make a decision for Him. She could not settle "the one thing needful." A thorough study of Dickinson's works indicates that she never did make that needful decision. Several of her poems show a presumptuous attitude concerning her eternal destiny and a veiled disrespect for authority in general. Throughout her life she viewed salvation as a gamble, not a certainty. Although she did view the Bible as a source of poetic inspiration, she never accepted it as an inerrant guide to life.

From "Physics for Christian Schools," by R. Terrance Egolf and Linda Shumate (Bob Jones University, 2004):

Some people have developed the idea that higher mathematics and science have little to do with the Bible or Christian life. They think that because physics deals with scientific facts, or because it is not pervaded with evolutionary ideas, there is no need to study it from a Christian perspective. This kind of thinking ignores a number of important facts to the Christian: First, all secular science is pervaded by mechanistic, naturalistic and evolutionistic philosophy. Learning that the laws of mechanics as they pertain to a baseball in flight are just the natural consequences of the way matter came together denies the wisdom and power of our Creator God. ... Second, physics as taught in the schools of the world contradicts the processes that shaped the world we see today. Trying to believe both secular physics and the Bible leaves you in a state of confusion that will weaken your faith in God's Word.

Notes from a Catechumate

Just for giggles, read the preceeding extract from Baghdad Burning... and then follow up with this:

"Whatever is opposed to life itself, such as any type of murder, genocide, abortion, euthanasia, or wilful self-destruction, whatever violates the integrity of the human person, such as mutilation, torments inflicted on body or mind, attempts to coerce the will itself; whatever insults human dignity, such as subhuman living conditions, arbitrary imprisonment, deportation, slavery, prostitution, the selling of women and children; as well as disgraceful working conditions, where people are treated as mere instruments of gain rather than as free and responsible persons; all these things and others like them are infamies indeed. They poison human society, and they do more harm to those who practise them than to those who suffer from the injury. Moreover, they are a supreme dishonour to the Creator".

- Evangelium vitae

Read this document. It applies as much to poverty or Iraq, in their way, as to abortion. (Although I don't buy the statement that "they do more harm to those who practise them than to those who suffer from the injury..." See preceeding note on how to make a terrorist.)

How to Create a Terrorist

Who amongst us would not consider picking up the gun? From the essential "Baghdad Burning" blog by the amazing Riverbend:

I hate suicide bombers. I hate the way my heart beats chaotically every time I pass by a suspicious-looking car- and every car looks suspicious these days. I hate the way Sunni mosques and Shia mosques are being targeted right and left. I hate seeing the bodies pile up in hospitals, teeth clenched in pain, wailing men and women…

But I completely understand how people get there.

One victim was holding his daughter. "The gunmen told the girl to move then shot the father," said a relative.

Would anyone be surprised if the abovementioned daughter grew up with a hate so vicious and a need for revenge so large, it dominated everything else in her life?

Or three days ago when American and Iraqi troops fired at a family traveling from one city to another, killing five members of the family.

"They are all children. They are not terrorists," shouted one relative. "Look at the children," he said as a morgue official carried a small dead child into a refrigeration room.

Who needs Al-Qaeda to recruit 'terrorists' when you have Da’awa, SCIRI and an American occupation?

Melee in Congress over Iraq

Uproar in US Congress over Iraq withdrawal vote

The fury was triggered by a remark from Ohio Republican Representative Jean Schmidt—the most junior member of the House—who declared that one of her constituents, a Marine, had told her “to send Congressman Murtha a message: that cowards cut and run, Marines never do.”
The insult to one of the most senior members of the House, a Vietnam veteran, was a violation of the body’s customary decorum as well as its rules, which bar members from directly addressing each other.

In response, Rep. Harold Ford of Tennessee and other Democrats shouted and lunged toward the Republican side of the chamber. Newsweek commented, “The melee was so intense that it brought the soothing presence of Rep. Tom DeLay from his secure undisclosed location, and Schmidt eventually apologized.”

Courtesy of the World Socialist Web Site

In the meantime, kids keep dying...

Franco Still Dead

The celebration of the 30th anniversary of the death of this proto-Milosovic reptile is apparently causing some disturbance in Spain. Perhaps its the 10,000 leftists and others that were murdered by Franco's thugs. (The current prime minister's grandfather was one....victim...not thug.)

The Valle de los Caidos, (Valley of the Fallen), that serves as Franco's tomb, was built by slave labor provided by the vanquished Republicans. It is still funded by the State. There is now a move afoot to return the justifiably rotted remains of the ghoul to his family, and retain the garish monstrosity as a monument to the fallen of BOTH sides.

This probably won't happen, if only because Spain, like most of the West, still retains a more than a whiff of fascism within the confines of the military and commercial, (not to mention religious and aristocratic), elites.


On the other hand there is this...


"Thoroughly documented, these facts also spell out Franco's effort on behalf of Jews, an effort that saved perhaps as many as 60,000 from the Nazi concentration camps. In 1940 he refused to submit to Hitler's demand to institute anti-Jewish legislation in Spain. Instead, several months after meeting Hitler on the Spanish border of occupied France, Franco facilitated the founding of Instituto Arias Montano, a scholarly organization devoted to the study of Hebrew, Sephardic and near-Eastern cultures in Madrid, as well as the establishment of the scholarly journal Sefarad (Hebrew for Spain and the Iberian Peninsula), one of the world's finest Jewish publications. He opened the Spanish border to Jews fleeing Nazi persecution, ordering Spanish embassies and consulates to provide asylum and Spanish passports.

Furthermore, beginning in 1945, Franco helped the Jewish Agency smuggle the survivors of concentration camps to Palestine, against the wishes of the British. Starting in 1956, he opened the way for Moroccan Jews to travel en masse to Israel via the Spanish Sahara. He signed the document of abrogation of the 1492 Edict of Expulsion of Spanish Jews. During all the wars that Arabs states waged against Israel, Franco personally intervened with Arab governments to save Jews from persecution..."

So the animal is responsible for the death of at least 10,000 Leftists, regional Nationalists and the like. He persecuted Protestants, free-thinkers, Socialists, and so forth. Yet he is also responsible for saving the lives 60,000 non-combatant civilians from a regime exponentially more evil than his. He authored the terror bombing of Guernica... But he stood against Auschwitz.

I suppose that it's something to do with his Marrano background - a fact certain to make the standard Falangist uncomfortable. Still its heartwarming that the fascist who could unleash a firestorm in a town filled with women and children could feel an odd tug on the heartstrings. Its like enjoying something pleasantly homey with Hannibal Lector.

What is dark energy?

The bad news is: Nobody knows. The good news is that grant-hungry physicists can instantly boost their chances of success by inserting "dark energy" into the title of a proposal.

The term "dark energy" is one that cosmologists dreamed up to explain a strange, repulsive type of gravity that is blowing up the universe, causing it to grow faster as it ages. Since the 1930s, astronomers have known that the universe is expanding, but they believed that gravity was slowing down that growth because galaxies tug on each other.

In 1998, however, studies of distant stellar explosions, called supernova, indicated that they were farther away than they should be. Something, it seemed, was causing the cosmic expansion to speed up.

"It’s as if you threw a ball up in the air and, just when you would expect to see it turn and fall back, it starts moving upward further and faster..."

Full article here...

Reichstag Fire Redux

The physics of 9/11 — including how fast and symmetrically one of the World Trade Center buildings fell — prove that official explanations of the collapses are wrong, says a Brigham Young University physics professor. In fact, it's likely that there were "pre-positioned explosives" in all three buildings at ground zero, says Steven E. Jones.

Here's the science.

Republic of San Francisco

That consumate creep Bill O'Reilly on San Francisco:

"Hey, you know, if you want to ban military recruiting, fine, but I'm not going to give you another nickel of federal money. You know, if I'm the president of the United States, I walk right into Union Square, I set up my little presidential podium, and I say, 'Listen, citizens of San Francisco, if you vote against military recruiting, you're not going to get another nickel in federal funds. Fine. You want to be your own country? Go right ahead. And if al-Qaida comes in here and blows you up, we're not going to do anything about it. We're going to say, look, every other place in America is off limits to you, except San Francisco. You want to blow up the Coit Tower? Go ahead.'"


and Right Thinking From today's LewRockwell Blog (except for that bit about Socialism...) regarding that consumate creep Bill O'Reilly:


[D]id O'Reilly just tacitly endorse secession? Because I'd be all for San Francisco becoming its own little city state. The gun ban is dumb, and too many in the city are too attached to socialism. But I really miss the place, and I'd gladly fight, in an instant, to defend its independence from Islamist revolutionaries or their neoconservative bretheren in Washington.

So, when can we raise the flag of free and independent San Francisco?"

Two Americas

Cuba survived Hurricane Ivan (Category 5) with no loss of life. They evacuated 1.5 million people to higher ground. They were cited as a model for hurricane preparation by the United Nations International Secretariat for Disaster Reduction.

- Two Americas