Five days to Harry Potter 7, part 2

Before our grandchildren could read, they listened to Harry Potter books. Their parents read to them. We read to them. Stephen Fry, narrator of the British audiobooks, read to them over and over.

Monday evening our now-16-year-old granddaughter arrives for a four-day visit. At one minute past midnight this coming Thursday, she will be with us at the grand opening of the final Harry Potter film.

As the preview says, "Every moment he's lived has led to this."

Fellow and sister Harry Potter fans - especially those of you who, like me, would rather read the books than analyze them - here are two intelligent articles about the books you might surprise yourself by enjoying:

• Episcopal priest, theologian, life coach, and scuba diver Danielle Tumminio, author of God and Harry Potter at Yale, offers an unusual but persuasive interpretation of God- and Christ-figures in "Harry Potter and Christian Theology"  (The Huffington Post)

• Former Marine, former Latin teacher, current Hogwarts Professor, and  "dean of Harry Potter scholars" John Granger (no relation to Hermione), author of a whole pile of books about Harry Potter, explores the series' classic literary structure in "Harry Is Here to Stay" (Christianity Today)

On my other blog, The Neff Review, I just reviewed Peggy Orenstein's Cinderella Ate My Daughter. Parents, give thanks: there are no princesses in Harry Potter.

The exceptional state of the union

Perhaps the President has been stung by Republican accusations that he does not believe in American exceptionalism: the belief that America is unlike, and superior to, every other nation on earth. Perhaps he was simply using good communication skills to keep his audience cheering at the nation's annual pep rally. Whatever his motivation, American exceptionalism was a recurring theme in last night's State-of-the-Union speech.

What helps to set us apart as a nation, according to Mr. Obama? Well, there's our remarkable diversity, and our willingness to fight for our beliefs, and our successful businesses and world-renowned universities, and our creativeness and eagerness to do big things. We are inspired by the American Dream: our belief that each of us deserves the chance to shape our own destiny, that anything is possible no matter who we are or where we come from. And because we're so outstanding, we are a light to the world: we provide a moral example of freedom, justice, and dignity, and we influence other nations to move toward peace and prosperity. That's why, the President said, "there isn't a person here who would trade places with any other nation on Earth."

Not, of course, that we don't have problems. As Mr. Obama pointed out, our educational system continues to lag: many schools have low expectations and low performance, a quarter of our students drop out of high school; other nations surpass us in math and science and have a higher percentage of young people earning a college degree. Our infrastructure is crumbling: South Korea has better internet access than we do; Russia and many European countries invest more in roads and railways; China has faster trains and newer airports. Our finances are in trouble: we have a mountain of debt along with one of the highest corporate tax rates in the world.

But we can get past these problems and stay Number One! We can, in Mr. Obama's words, "out-innovate, out-educate, and out-build the rest of the world"! We did it 50 years ago when we thought the Russians might surpass us in space exploration. Let's do it again, this time by improving education, government, business, the infrastructure! (Oh, and by the way, sustaining the American Dream has always demanded sacrifice and struggle. We're going to have to take responsibility for the deficit. We'll need to make painful cuts to decrease debt. But enough with the gloom ... ) If we can dream it, we can do it!

I appreciate the President's faith in our country's traditional ideals. I am grateful that he appealed to Democrats and Republicans to work together to achieve them. I agree that the government needs to encourage innovation, reform education, and rebuild the infrastructure. I understand why he invoked American exceptionalism - national self-esteem - to motivate us.

But I am sorry he did not say more about the sacrifice and struggle we will all soon be facing.

By freezing spending, he told us, we can reduce the deficit by more than $400 billion over the next decade. Good start, Mr. President, but our national debt is over $14 trillion - that's nearly $130,000 per taxpayer - and growing larger every second. Our exceptional country has already mismanaged its finances so badly that, no matter what the government does now, most of us are going to have to seriously trim our lifestyles in the coming years. Some of us will face real poverty. At nearly 10 percent, our unemployment rate already surpasses that of most European Union countries. Housing prices appear to be falling yet again. State governments are deeply in debt. Our largest generation is starting to apply for Medicare. Yet Mr. Obama spoke only passingly of  sacrifice, and his two Republican responders mentioned it not at all.

American exceptionalism is good when it increases our love for our country, when it reminds us of our founders' vision, when it drives us to increase opportunity and respect human dignity. It is dangerous when it allows us to ignore reality and hope for magical solutions where only sacrifice and hard work will do the job. Our world has seen many proud nations and empires; today most of them lie in ruins. In "Four Preludes on Playthings of the Wind," American poet Carl Sandburg paints a bleak picture of those forgotten places, now overrun by rats, lizards, and crows. Once, like us, they were powerful and rich. Once, like us, they sang:

We are the greatest city,

the greatest nation,

nothing like us ever was.

California tax cuts - a cautionary tale

I'm a California girl and proud of it. My cell phone's ring tone is "California Dreamin'," and when winter comes to Chicago I start humming "Maid of Constant Sorrow" ("I'm goin' back to California, place where I was partly raised"). So I was interested in David Brooks's commentary yesterday about why the state that once "enjoyed the highest living standards in the country" - during most of the years I lived there, in fact - now "has all the dysfunctions that mark national government, but at a more advanced stage."

Brooks says the blame comes from both sides of the ideological spectrum. In the 70s, labor lobbied for better salaries and pensions, and governors shorted infrastructure in order to meet their demands. Environmental regulations discouraged small businesses (Brooks says, but does not give examples). Tax policy cut off badly needed revenue.

The result? California is one of two U.S. states on the international list of 10 states most likely to default (the other one being my current home state, Illinois, whose woes you can read about here).

Who's to blame?
Brooks does not say exactly when California's fortunes began to turn around, but he implies that problems began in the late 60s or early 70s. The last of the pro-market, pro-business, but progressive governors he lists is Edmund "Pat" Brown, who finished his term in January 1967. Brooks does not mention that Ronald Reagan was governor of California from 1967 through 1974, and I don't know if he thinks the decline began with Reagan (who, by the way, actually raised taxes) or with his successor, Jerry Brown (Pat's son).

He does, however, mention a seminal event in California's troubled financial history: the 1978 passage of Proposition 13, the property tax-cutting brainchild of Republican lobbyist Howard Jarvis. "With Proposition 13 and other measures that cut taxes," Brooks writes, "they cut off revenue and pushed through structural reforms, making it hard for future administrations to raise funds."

For 30 years, wrote Kevin O'Leary in Time magazine last year, California's leaders tried to "live with Proposition 13 while continuing to provide the state services Californians expect — freeways, higher education, prisons, assistance to needy families and, very important, essential funding to local government and school districts that vanished after the antitax measure passed." Eventually their efforts collapsed. California, the state that has led the way in education, technology, pop culture, and wine growing, is now leading the way in financial ruin.

Predictably, the conservative Cato Institute thinks Proposition 13 was just fine, inexplicably linking it to the economic surge beginning in the 1980s (remember Silicon Valley and the dot com bubble?) Their description of its influence, however, is right on:

Proposition 13 was a political earthquake whose jolt was felt not just in Sacramento but all across the nation, including Washington, D.C. Jarvis's initiative to cut California's notoriously high property taxes by 30 percent and then cap the rate of increase in the future was the prelude to the Reagan income tax cuts in 1981. It also incited a nationwide tax revolt at the state and local levels. Within five years of Proposition 13's passage, nearly half the states strapped a similar straitjacket on politicians' tax-raising capabilities. Almost all of those tax limitation measures remain the law of the land today.

Taxing and spending
Hey, if you try to take care of your maxed-out credit cards by lowering your income, you should love the results of our state and national tax revolts. Prosperity all around, right? No wonder politicians are calling for still more tax reductions.

Ah, but they are also calling for massive spending cuts. Well, yes, it would be great if the government would reduce spending (unless, of course, it reduces spending on something that affects me). Oddly, every president in the last 40 years has increased spending, including Ronald Reagan and both Presidents Bush.

Beginning in the early 80s and continuing to the present (except for a few years under President Clinton), the gap between federal revenue and federal spending has also increased. The only thing trickling - and now flooding - down is massive debt. How long can we keep this up?

I don't much like to pay taxes - federal, state, or local. I would rather live in a world where interstate highways, health care, education, old-age pensions, prisons, city transportation systems, fire departments, police departments, bridges, food safety inspections, and libraries appeared by magic. I would much rather live in a world without war and therefore with no need for a military. I just don't know where that magical world might be.

Alas, even California's Governor Jerry "Moonbeam" Brown had no fairy dust at his disposal when Howard Jarvis pulled the plug on a major source of California's funding.

It's said that "as California goes, so goes the nation." Nation, watch out. Cut taxes, raise debt, cut services, lose credit ... what's next?

Health care magic

 While talking with George Stephanopolous on Good Morning America this morning, Republican National Committee chair Michael Steele neatly summarized the prevailing American attitude:

"Remember, 82% of the American people like their health-care plan. 

They just want us to address their costs."

Mr Steele got it in one. We want what we have. We want it to cost less. And, as other commentators this morning pointed out, we certainly don't want to raise taxes to pay for it. (Scroll down to see previous posts about magical thinking.)

But in spite of wanting to pay less for health care, an increasing number of us are strenuously opposed to any of the approaches used by other developed countries who actually do spend less per capita--generally between 40 and 60% less--and yet have health outcomes that equal or surpass our own.

• We don't want to keep insurers' prices low by launching a competing public option, even though the Veterans Administration and Medicare are public programs with a lot of satisfied customers.
• We don't want to require insurers to cover basic health care with not-for-profit policies, even though insurers' administrative costs have risen from less than 5% to nearly 20% since 1995.
• We don't want to require everyone to have health-care insurance, even though only a broad pool can keep prices low for the insured.
• We don't want to put caps on prescription drug costs or allow medications to be imported from other countries, even though U.S. drugs often cost several times more than the same drugs bought elsewhere.
• We don't want to put caps on physicians' fees, even though our doctors--particularly the increasing percentage of specialists--are by far the best-paid physicians in the world. Nor do we want to discuss two huge expenses that all doctors face and that must be reduced if we expect them to charge reasonable fees: the high cost of a U.S. medical education and the expenses associated with the ever-lurking threat of malpractice suits.
• And we certainly do not want any experts reviewing the literature and concluding that certain tests aren't necessary (mammograms!), or that some end-of-life care is wasteful (death panels!), or that a highly advertised designer drug is actually no more effective than a cheap generic. We want top-of-the-line medical care, as seen on TV, even when it is not medically necessary or even advisable.

The insurance, pharmaceutical, medical, and financial industries are simply delighted that a majority of Americans are now unwilling to do what it takes in order to have a fair, compassionate, and reasonably priced health-care system.

We like the health-care we currently have, even though our insurance premiums and copayments increase every year as our coverage decreases and our claims are denied. We don't want to change our system in any way. Except, of course, to make it better. And cheaper. Without actually changing anything.

We believe in magic.

Santa, Aslan, Harry Potter, and God

It's C-day minus 6. Are the decorations up? Presents bought and wrapped? Meals planned? Cookies baked? Sugar-high children restrained?

In all the rush, has Christ gone missing again?

You might want to make a pot of spicy tea, settle down in an overstuffed chair, and read a fairy tale.

That approach would make sense to Tony Woodlief, a management consultant and writer who, in his wonderful op-ed piece in yesterday's Wall Street Journal (thanks, Molly, for the tip), pits Chesterton, Lewis, MacDonald, Rowling, and St. Paul against "puritans and atheists" who prefer their truth straight up.

St. Paul?

There's "a seeming paradox in St. Paul's letter to Roman Christians," Woodlief writes:

"For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made. . . ." How does one see "invisible attributes"? Only people raised on fairy tales can make sense of that. It belongs in a terrain where magic glasses can illumine what was heretofore hidden, where rabbit holes open into wonderlands. No wonder some atheists like Mr. Dawkins want to kill Harry Potter.

Many years ago my daughter Heidi was walking home from school when she overheard this earnest exchange between two first-graders walking a few paces behind her:

First Child: Did you know that there are people who don't believe in God?
Second Child: That's nothing. I know people who don't believe in Santa Claus!

That child would be in her thirties now. I hope she still believes in magic.