“If liberty means anything at all, it means the right
to tell people what they do not want to hear.”

- George Orwell

Today's the birthday of the great writer, teacher and Christian apologist C. S. Lewis, born in Belfast, Ireland in 1898. Coincidentally, it is also the day nineteen years later that he arrived at a trench in the front lines of World War I.

I noticed both of these details at the bottom of the page this morning as I did my daily read from A Year With C.S. Lewis: Daily Readings From His Classic Works. I gave the book to myself about this time last year and started the schedule on January 1. It's almost a sad feeling to realize that I'm nearly finished.

The book consists of daily, one page (often only a paragraph or two) excerpts from Lewis's impressive body of work, mainly from Mere Christianity, The Great Divorce, The Problem of Pain, A Grief Observed, The Weight of Glory and The Screwtape Letters and others. Often several days in a row would center around a common theme. It's been a fascinating and thought-provoking experience as I've come to see new things in works that I already thought I "knew." Some of the excerpts from A Grief Observed and The Problem of Pain have been especially timely and comforting over the past several months as my father's health worsened (funny how I "just happened" to get this book when I did). Little biographical details related to each day are also featured, and it's been kind of a Tarantino-like experience to track the events in Lewis's life in this manner when the days are in sequence but the years are not.

This book would be a great gift for the reader and thinker in your family who is often pressed for time. I will echo one of Lewis's warnings, however:

"A young man who wishes to remain a sound atheist cannot be too careful of his reading."

We all piled into the car last week for the long drive to grandmother's house for the holiday. Along the way we listened to a lot of the Mall Diva's CD collection and a couple of my "oldies". On one of the old CDs was a family favorite we'd almost forgotten, a parody of Sinatra's "My Way" song, set in academia and entitled, "Their Way" (the Diva really likes Sinatra, by the way).

The song was done by a group called Bright Morning Star and is very funny, perhaps because it's so close to reality (which makes it scary, too). Here are the lyrics; again, to the tune of "My Way":

I came, I bought the books, lived in the dorms, followed directions.
I worked, I studied hard, made lots of friends who had connections.
I crammed, they gave me grades — and may I say not in a fair way.
But more, much more than this, I did it Their Way.

I learned so many things even though I'll never use them.
The courses that I took were all required — I didn't choose them.
You'll find that to survive it's best to play the doctrinaire way
And so I knuckled down and did it Their Way.

Yes, there were times I wondered why I had to cringe when I could fly.
I had my doubts, but after all I clipped my wings and learned to crawl.
I learned to bend, and in the end I did it Their Way.

And now, my fine young friends, now that I am a full professor,
Where once I was oppressed, now I become the cruel oppressor.
With me you'll learn to cope, you'll learn to climb life's golden stairway.
But like me, you'll see the light and do it Their Way.

For what is a man? What can I do? Open your books — read chapter two!
And if it seems a bit routine, don't talk to me — go see the Dean.
They get their way, I get my pay... We do it Their Way!

Today's the birthday of one of my favorite writers, P.J. O'Rourke (1947). I've been reading him ever since I graduated from Mad Magazine to The National Lampoon, and followed his work in books with hard covers such as Republican Party Reptile, All the Trouble in the World: The Lighter Side of Famine, Pestilence, Destruction and Death, and Eat the Rich. He's the kind of writer I'd like to be when I grow up, even though there's little evidence that he's done so.

Whenever I've found a particularly funny or trenchant sentence or two I've thrown it into a file for future reference. In honor of P.J.'s birthday, here are a few of them:

• When a thing defies physical law, there’s usually politics involved.



• Everybody wants to save the earth; nobody wants to help Mom do the dishes.



• The forces of safety are afoot in the land. I, for one, believe it is a conspiracy - a conspiracy of Safety Nazis shouting “Sieg Health” and seeking to trammel freedom, liberty, and large noisy parties. The Safety Nazis advocate gun control, vigorous exercise, and health foods. The result can only be a disarmed, exhausted, and half-starved population ready to acquiesce to dictatorship of some kind.



• Sloths move at the speed of congressional debate but with greater deliberation and less noise.



• If you think healthcare is expensive now, just wait until it’s free.



• Bureaucrats want bigger bureaus. Special interests are interested in whatever’s special to them. These two groups bring great pressure to bear upon politicians who have another agenda yet: to cater to the temporary whims and fads of the public and the press.



• Neither conservatives nor humorists believe man is good. But left-wingers do.



• A little Government and a little luck are necessary in life; but only a fool trusts either of them.



• Something is happening to America, not something dangerous but something all too safe. I see it in my lifelong friends. I am a child of the "baby boom", a generation not known for its sane or cautious approach to things. Yet suddenly my peers are giving up drinking, giving up smoking, cutting down on coffee, sugar, and salt. They will not eat red meat and go now to restaurants whose menus have caused me to stand on a chair yelling, "Flopsy, Mopsy, Cottontail, dinner is served!" This from the generation of LSD, Weather Underground, and Altamont Rock Festival! And all in the name of safety! Our nation has withstood many divisions - North and South, black and white, labor and management - but I do not know if the country can survive division into smoking and non-smoking sections.



• Earnestness is just stupidity sent to college.



• To grasp the true meaning of socialism, imagine a world where everything is designed by the post office, even the sleaze.



• The Republicans are the party that says government doesn't work and then gets elected and proves it.



• Politics is the business of getting power and privilege without possessing merit. A politician is anyone who asks individuals to surrender part of their liberty - their power and privilege - to State, Masses, Mankind, Planet Earth, or whatever. This state, those masses, that mankind, and the planet will then be run by ... politicians.



• People with a mission to save the earth want the earth to seem worse than it is so their mission will look more important.



• When a private entity does not produce the desired results, it is (certain body parts excepted) done away with. But a public entity gets bigger.

My friend Leo at Psycmeistr's Ice Palace is often as pointed as an icicle in defending his religious and political convictions on his blog, especially when those convictions come together on a particular issue. He doesn't mince his words but will make mince of stories or arguments in favor of limiting our freedoms.

Leo recently used an advisory from American Family Associations — about a HUD-owned senior citizens building in Florida banning an 85-year-old tenant from displaying religious Christmas decorations on her door (a policy that has now been rescinded) — as the starting point for a post raking evermore ambitious nanny state restrictions on our freedoms and our society's general willingness to put up with this.

Ladies and gentlemen, the State, when held up as god, is a jealous god, and it shall have no other gods before it.

Not even the Real One.

I find it all the more oxymoronic that people on the left who call themselves Christians are so willing to sell their religious freedom to embrace the false promises and sour milk that flow from the golden calf that is the government teat.

In the absence of the acceptance of God, man himself attempts to fill the void to become that which he rejects.

With predictably disastrous consequences, I might add.

And unfortunately, those who choose to ignore history are bound and determined to drag the rest of us along on their path toward its insidious repetition.

Read the whole thing, including the links. But be careful you don't poke your eye out!