A post at FreeExchange, like this one of mine, except smarter, less nerdy, and better written.

J. R. R. Tolkien once wrote in The Hobbitt, "Now it is a strange thing, but things that are good to have and days that are good to spend are soon told about, and not much to listen to; while things that are uncomfortable, palpitating, and even gruesome, may make a good tale, and take a deal of telling anyway." Which is why this post shall be short.

This is a really good film. Even a paranoid and overly-political delusional, like myself, who can even rant and rave about movies that he enjoyed, like Becoming Jane, can have no complaints. There was one brief point, where the story makes a specific point of putting the spoiled, rich, and neglected child in a Christian private school (that struck just too close to home), but then again, it also makes a point, later on, of depicting an identical family as agnostic ("Are you trying to convert my child!"), which I appreciated. It is necessary, when "characterizing" a character, to provide specific details and I'd venture to guess that the screenwriters made a point, in these divided times, of deliberately being all-inclusive. I appreciated that. And, it generally stayed away from political affiliation; I was all set for the wealthy businessman to be depicted as Republican and was all set to say to myself, "I didn't think they made Republicans in Manhattan!" and yet I had no chance to deliver it. I suppose I could say that, these days, only a story in Manhattan, so overwhelmingly Democratic, can be so apolitical, but even I know that's jumping the shark.

What's left is a really poignant story of love, giving love unexpectedly and needing love unexpectedly. I really had a good time, some good laughs, and a lot of good truth.

There was one sexual encounter, but without even what Tracy Hickman calls a "boots scene", the scene where Captain Kirk pulls on his boots at the bedside of a beautiful alien woman, presumably after a night with more clothing absent than his footwear.

It's a good movie to challenge young adults, but with adult not a movie that younger kids can see and not know they missed the point. The adult themes are too central to the film for younger kids to appreciate.

*Spoiler Alert*
I have to admit, to begin, that I have a fearful crush on Ms. Hathaway. I frequently joke with my friends that there are only four reasons to see a movie today, and she is one of those ladies. So, it's a little curious that I so frequently don't like the movies she's in. The Devil Wears Prada, for instance, left me in a bad mood for days and inspired me to shave daily for several weeks to be as unlike one particular male character as possible. One gets the impression that she conscientiously chooses films with an eye towards responsible messages, which is commendable even if the "responsible messages" she chooses are often poorly chosen, which is frustrating.


I found parts of this movie just as frustrating. Accepting that this is not a biography, but a fictionalized, speculative "biography", which has its own problems but which I'm willing to accept because, frankly, she's so purty, there are pieces that I feel are not well connected with the times. Her hopes of love and marriage are thwarted by a letter to a judge whom is her lover's patron. This judge is enamored with property rights, and several jokes are made at this expense. What seems to go unrecognized is that this advocation of property rights, in that day and age, would make him a follower of Pitt the Younger, the young prime minister that was the first implement the reforms recommended by Adam Smith in favor of capitalism over mercantilism. It's not accident that Pitt the Younger was such a friend of William Wilberforce, the great advocate for the elimination of the slave trade. In fact, I don't know if Pitt the Younger was the one to do this, but it was in the tradition of the reforms affected by these two that the greatest naval force in the world, the British Navy, set up a blockade of the African continent to stop the slave trade, not only the Americas, but to the Middle East and beyond. The British government used its influence in trade and colonies to stop the slave trade throughout most of the planet by the end of that century. And it's no accident; slavery was opposed as a violation the primal element of any human's property: their own body.

But we can accept such a man, advocating such liberal ideas publicly while despising them privately. However, it's not as if the hero and heroine were doomed if they married and yet had the uncle's blessing; the hero could certainly have completed his training as a lawyer and made the same living that he had been planning to make before. There should not have been in conflict. No, we are to believe that "property rights" are the stuff of duffers and close-minded people. And yet this galling fact remains: their love was not defeated by the uncle, nor by the letter written to the uncle, nor discrimination against her as a woman. Indeed, she was proposed to a number of times and, while her family's pressure on her was for the sake of material prosperity, every man who proposed to her loved her, for her mind and accomplishments and never for any pretensions of her wealth. No, she and her great love were defeated, in the end, by their dependence on the uncle, without which they could have told him to jump off a bridge, gotten married, and lived happily ever after. But the hero was, truly, dreaming and impossible dream when he proposed that he could rise without his uncle. His uncle was of a class of people that became judges, where the hero was of a class of people that could only become lawyers. He couldn't rise, because the class barriers were too great and the need for connections too important and merit counted for so little.


This, I imagine, is frustrating to one who desires passion, like the young Ms. Hathaway. There is little to get excited about in the study of property rights, the progressive vs. regressive income tax, and capital gains. But that's the rub: why should it be? Passion belongs to the people, passion belongs to young lovers, defying the world in order to take a flyer on each other. Discussions of politics, which ideally consists of discussions of policies, should be dull, because the government is not entitled to the great glory and honor of courage and love; that belongs to the people themselves. Only then can greatness rise in its best, unadulterated form.

This may all be unfair; my passions seem to have run away with me. I actually did like the movie as a whole. I was wary throughout of Hollywood, but it never once confused love with lust. There were a number of discussions of how restraint was an important part of wealth, which I enjoyed, actually, because that's true. In the end, it showed that restraint was also an important part of love, too, which is also true. I'm not scholar enough to know how faithful this was to her life, but I know that I'm a great fan of Ms. Austen's work, and it was quite faithful to me.

I just listened to Ward Connerly's speech to the Young America's Foundation from August the first, and I disagree with a major point of his. He maintains that liberals believe ill of man kind and that the government is the solution to protect man from himself, but that conservatives believe well of man and that he doesn't need government to choose good. I believe that is exactly backwards.

Liberals believe badly of everyone else, but they know they have good intentions and that makes them righteous. They never seem to understand that everyone else believes they are righteous, as well. Liberals believe that Stalin did so much evil because he was a Bad Man, but they know they are good and, if only they had his power, they could do better.

But governments, like businesses and churches, are just arrangements of people. There is no reason that a government should be more righteous than any of these, distrusted, organizations. A conservative knows that, because all human beings, from FDR to Reagan, are flawed people, sinful and capable of causing great suffering. Whether this is caused by malevolence or ignorance makes little difference to the sufferer.

The differences between governments and social organizations, like businesses, is then how the different processes and institutions make people behave. The basic units of construction, people, are the same; what matters is the arrangement. And here's the difference: as Mr. Connerly said, you can't choose your government, but you can choose your employer. Accepting a lower wage to work in a place that makes you happier is a choice and it's a choice that many people make every day. There are many well-paying, stressful jobs that go unfilled because no amount of mere money is worth the aggravation, and that's perfectly compatible with capitalism. When people have choices, you must be kind or they will trade with others. This may be a machiavellian goodness, but when the choice is compulsory kindness or government tyranny, the choice seems obvious to me. If you are waiting for spontaneous goodness, I understand heaven will be quite pleasant.

Which brings us to the topic of Mr. Connerly's speech: race and minorities. There is one great flaw in a democracy: it must always serve the majority. It has no choice but to be Majoritarianism. Thomas Sowell documents in his book Applied Economics that government hiring practices changed radically in the '60's, from blatant discrimination to quota-based hiring and he points out that it is unlikely that the entire bureaucracy became enlightened at the same time. The mood had merely changed from the majority desiring supremacy to the majority desiring self-righteousness. But, what the minority wants can't be given, a democracy can only give to a minority what the majority wants to give it.

But the market does otherwise. The market can provide whatever there is enough demand to make the trade profitable. It doesn't require the majority the decide that the minority in question is worth serving. In the south, we've tried the majority desiring to subjugate the minorities; in the northern ghettos like Cabrini Green, we've tried the majority desiring to help the minorities against their will. Perhaps more effort should be directed towards allowing any individual whatever to establish their own destiny, which can never be through the government, as the government is full of people, I'm not sure I trust them folk.