Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2

I went to see this film last night and it struck me that Harry Potter vs. Voldemort was a mythical replay of the Battle for Britain in World War II. Voldemort was a Nazi, and Harry Potter and his friends were Churchill & Co.

Voldemort believes he is superior because he is a Nazi.

And he thinks he has the right to crush and kill everyone who will not recognize that fact.

Harry Potter is always a touch elitist (he's a powerful magician by birth) but he throws away power in order to share in the ordinary life of raising children, the most beautiful life he can imagine.

Abe Lincoln wrote in the Gettysburg Address that America is "dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal."

This means all men worldwide.

Jefferson wrote in the Declaration that all men "are created equal and endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights."

This is now enshrined as a leading concept worldwide. Therefore, the horror of Voldemort who has decided that power alone makes him greater than others is understood by the entire audience worldwide, so that as we watch the film, the moral language is universal.

This language probably ultimately derives from St. Paul's notion that even non-Jews can understand and be accepted by God.

What happens to excellence in this equality-driven climate? We do still have sports. Basketball, football, soccer, baseball: these are all driven by excellence. American Idol and America's Next Top Model are driven by excellence. We watch these, too, and sense their legitimacy from within the Greek model of excellence, even though there's something a tad snotty about it.

How do we square the drive for excellence with the drive for equality? Some claim that we can do it through "equality of opportunity not equality of outcome." And yet we still have redistributionists among us who want communism to prevail. Underneath the neo-cortex is a powerful reptilian brain that is territorial and unthinkingly triumphalist.

The business climate for now is still built on the reptilian brain but it is papered over with service to others. Microsoft is a meritocracy, but has also been sued for attempts at monopolies.

We even still have Nazis: those who believe the white race is superior. These want a monopoly on power. In addition we have the leftist Nazis. Justice Sonia Sotomayor believes that she is superior to white men because she is Latina. At least some homosexuals believe that they are superior to the other gender. Many believe they are superior because they are not having children like the "breeders," which reduces others to the status of cattle.

In academia, we still have the grading system, and students vie for grades. Some profs used to openly favor white males, and now many Sonia Sotomayor types secretly favor their own kind, seeing themselves as superior, much as communists under Stalin and others saw themselves as morally superior, and thus entitled to being "more equal" in the phrase of Orwell's, giving them the right to cleanse the earth of the bourgeoisie.

Multiculturalism is the belief that all cultures are equal, but just underneath the surface almost all cultures feel superior to others. The Japanese felt they were the world's best. The Chinese feel this. Denominations feel superior to other denominations. Businesses feel superior to other businesses. Perhaps there is no role for this in the Bible, and perhaps it's a sin. Perhaps it's Satanic to think like this.

In the Harry Potter series, Voldemort is a moral idiot, who believes he is superior, which paradoxically allows us to feel morally superior. He's a mental dumbkopf, like Hitler, and we're not.

The Taliban in Afghanistan openly lord their superiority over women, as do the imams of Iran. In the OT one sees this tendency a lot. The Jews were morally superior to the Canaanites so had the right to genocide. Many communists feel this way with regard to the rich. Some feminists feel this way with regard to men. Some black rights folks feel this way with regard to white folks. Some gays feel this way with regard to "straights."

The equality and the greater than symbol constantly vie with one another. Nietzsche's ubermensch vies with the rights of the citizen announced by Lockean liberalism.

As groups line up and gear up for the next election, questions of equality and superiority are everywhere. It's all that we're really talking about. The side that can make its points universally valid in this debate will get the legitimacy that leads to the most votes.

In the last election Obama came out of nowhere. Now he has a track record of failure, and poor judgment. His one great success (killing OBL) is significant. But he is also an excellent speaker and is very goodlooking. We need someone equally goodlooking and equally good at getting out the arguments for competitive excellence or else America is going to collapse even further into communist redistribution as the leftists and their myriad scrums seize assets and close down centers of excellence. The left believes it is Harry Potter and the right are Voldemort and his minions. Their point is Marxist, and has been sent through by every young person who's been to college. Marxists are everywhere in academia. The reverse is true, too, that for those who still attend church, there is the notion that each person has a talent, and must use it to help others. We also still have the Greek notions of excellence. Can they be legitimated and sustained against the Marxist onslaught that threatens to turn America into a revolutionary Kampuchea?