Jonathan Metzger recently posted this parody of a number of Hillsdale-related blogs. Below is his parody of mine.


"3) So, how about the environment then? I�ve been thinking about it, and I think we should just start clubbing baby seals over the head as quickly as we can. First off, they�re cute. This is a seductive danger of the world, which leads us away from our calling to communion with God and our brethren. While their big, soulful eyes may look innocent, we must remember that they don�t actually have souls, and the seeming innocence and love in their eyes distracts us from the maintenance of our immortal souls. Puppies do this too; we should start killing them as soon as we can as well.

Secondly, we should kill the baby seals because they and other wild-life are blocking the pipeline paths to precious oil in Alaska which we�ll need for the two weeks or so that Iraqi oil will be unavailable to us while we�re conquering them. If a baby seal were to wander into one of the pipelines while they�re being constructed, it might die in there unnoticed and its corpse could block desperately needed oil at exactly the wrong moment.

I realize that this may not be a popular position, but I�ve reasoned it out very carefully, and I think this is what we have to do."

Quite humorous, Metzger--but you give me reason to pause and consider. I seem to have managed to paint myself as quite the extremist over the past month. Which is quite a feat, considering the infrequency of my posts over that period--especially considering the fact that I don't really think myself very extreme at all.

Hence (in pursuit of a more civilized moderation) a brief explanation of my basic motivations for what I've had to say. First: the movies issue. My objection is based purely in my personal experience. Entertainment, with its central place in our culture, tickles our fancies but gives no fulfillment. Something is awfully wrong with human life as we see it lived and live it ourselves in this world and age. This is not how men were meant to live. Myself, I have at least some idea what the good life looks like. Movies still threaten to keep me from that life. So I try to avoid them, and try to explain why. If that makes me an extremist, then so be it.

Second, the war thing. That's not so defensible, I suppose. I rather regret writing it at all.Nonetheless, I don't really see much hope for the world down the road if the powers that be in this world do not act decisively in whatever fashion is most effective (and moral) to end the proliferation of those all-too-cliched weapons of mass destruction. My argument below is a primarily a musing (that is, a thinking aloud) on how that might be accomplished--an optimistic musing, hoping that the current American president has in mind this end and has a comprehensive game plan for its accomplishment. This because I am an optimist--I'd like to think that the relative freedom, security and what I honestly think is a concern for the rest of the world and a charity towards it that is unique in human history might endure and spread. Or, for a much less ambitious optimism, I'd like to think that the nations of the world can somehow forestall the sorts of holocausts that such weapons can create. But then, optimism is generally foolish and blind. And pessimism is usually overrated. Perhaps it will all pan out. I really don't know.

With that, I'm going to leave politics alone. It's a generally annoying and imponderable subject that fosters a lot of anger and excessive rhetoric (not least in myself) with little profit. Pretty much, what happens happens politically. We're left mainly with living with whatever may come as best as we can. Which, incidentally, brings us back to movies. Funny how that happens. ;)

So that's where I've been coming from. Now, I'm off to go bash some seals. Nasty, smelly, anti-capitalist buzzards. And they make those gosh-awful noises too. Sure as heck a species worth exterminating.