Les Misérables and Hope

One of the other movies we went to during the holidays was the new film version of Les Misérables. I love when art is moving and beautiful, even when the visual image itself is not beautiful. Victor Hugo’s story is one of the most enlightening in literature.

The music, according to my copy, was written in 1987 (I think the musical is actually older than that). I don’t remember becoming aware of it that early. I read the book in the 1990s, a paperback version that was only about 700 pages, because hundreds of pages of French revolutionary history were left out. That made it a relatively easy read (compared to what it could have been). But it wasn’t a light read. It was thought provoking, and full of dilemmas. When I heard that it was going to become a musical, I thought, “How can they turn that heavy work, with a fitting name like Les Misérables, into singing and dancing?” Even though Phantom of the Opera was around, and it wasn’t exactly cheery Debbie Reynolds and Donald O’Connor stuff either, I just couldn’t picture it.

But it turned out to be beautiful as a stage musical/opera. Mr. Spherical Model got to see it on stage in London, but I had settled for concert versions on television and a local high school production—along with listening to a Broadway recording and singing all the alto pieces at the piano. (I do a fair rendition of Fantine’s “I Dreamed a Dream,” but I can’t get the youth in my voice for Eponine’s songs. I sing them all anyway.)

I was concerned about a movie version, that it might not reach expectations, but I was pleased at the cast. A difference between the stage and a movie is the intimacy of the view. Subtle acting is more necessary than on the stage. But there is a difference of opinion about the need for vocal ability. My personal belief is that it would be better to do such a movie by finding great singers who can act. Vocal training is harder to accomplish without years of disciplined practice. Nevertheless, I loved this version. Anne Hathaway became Fantine—better than I had been able to envision her. The situation and the motivations became clear to me, and I felt her personal misery. Her song and then her death scene were the first times I cried. (OK, except for the bishop’s gift of a second chance to Jean Valjean; that got me too.) Anne Hathaway has a voice that handled the intimacy of the close-ups well, and sometimes rang with real beauty.

I’ve heard better Jean Valjeans, but Hugh Jackman made me see the character better than I had before. His voice was not stunning but adequate. Russell Crowe’s voice was only occasionally adequate, but I did like him in the role of Javert.

Mr. Spherical Model pointed out that the vocal range on stage is greater. Without the surround sound of the movie theater, you hear the differences in dynamics better, so the vocal range actually tells the story better. He’s probably right. And the stage singers who were in the movie were probably the best voices: Marius, Enjolras, and Eponine. I also need to praise Helena Bonham Carter and Sacha Baron Cohen as Madame and Mr. Thernardier, the comic relief. Carter actually seemed a little restrained, compared to her over-the-top portrayal of Beatrix Lestrange in Harry Potter. I’ve always liked her and enjoyed her in this. I have never liked Cohen or anything he has been in, most of which has been tasteless and offensive and not what I find funny. But here he was brilliant. So many moments where he added a detail beyond the script that fit the character. He was despicable, but he was good at it.

The young Cosette looked like the model for the original play poster, and did the “Castle on the Cloud” song almost to perfection. Amanda Seyfried may have looked the part well enough for the older Cosette, but vocally she was a disappointment. I have to say, though, that I haven’t heard a recording of Cosette that sounded the way I wanted. It needs a very high, lyric soprano, with control so it isn’t too heavy or too much of a birdlike trill. A young Kathleen Battle sound, I suggest. But, then, if it had been perfect, what would there be to talk about?

Even so, why talk about this movie here at the Spherical Model blog? Partly because it interests me, and partly because it connected some dots I’ve been thinking about.

This movie portrayed real misery. It starts 25 years after the French Revolution. Except for the War of 1812, there wasn’t such misery in the United States generally following our revolution. The two were different in a number of ways (I wrote about the comparison here), but the main way was that the United States is founded on protecting unalienable rights granted by God, that government cannot be allowed to encroach upon. France took God out of the equation and listed its Rights of Man, protected by government—and therefore subject to change by government. So the pitiful little revolution of the young band of students in Les Mis is just one of many along the way where people saw things they thought were wrong and tried to insist on change only to have a tyrannical force quell them.

My concern, particularly since the November election, is that those who are choosing the “French” way, the tyranny of the majority, if you will, do not understand when things have become unacceptable. I’m concerned that, until the misery is what we see in so many portrayals, both historic and commonly in fictional young adult novels (The Hunger Games series and the Matched series are two post-apocalyptic portrayals I’ve read recently), then people will keep believing we’re fine.

I can see clearly that society only thrives in the northern hemisphere of the Spherical Model. But the choice has been to sink well below the equator, with an assumption that floating up near the equator is good enough, and that there will be no inexorable force southward into tyranny. But that belief is folly, because whenever people accept minor tyrannies, they get major tyrannies and the misery that comes with them.

In the movie, the theme wasn’t, however, that all was hopeless; it was that, despite the miserable lives of the common people, choosing to love and to be generous and decent transcended the misery: “To love another person is to see the face of God.” Despite the “death of God” in the French Revolution, the people in this story talk of God openly and devoutly. He is there with them in their misery. And that is why there is hope that, beyond the story, a better life will come.

I’m always grateful when a work of art helps us connect love of God with hope, because that is the way back up out of the misery of tyranny, up to freedom, prosperity, and thriving civilization.

Santorum on the Constitution

Back in September I talked about the philosophical differences between the American and French revolutions. Exciting stuff, I know. So it caught my interest this week when Rick Santorum talked about the comparison as well.

Santorum was answering a voter’s question about his understanding of the Constitution, since Ron Paul is often framed as the Constitution expert candidate, and they often disagree. Santorum started by pulling out his pocket Constitution (which shows I’m not the only one carrying one around at all times, just in case). Then he followed up (without notes or speechwriter) with a serious philosophical answer:

Ron Paul has a libertarian view of the Constitution. I do not. The Constitution has to be read in the context of another founding document, and that’s the Declaration of Independence. Our country never was a libertarian idea of radical individualism. We have certain values and principles that are embodied in our country. We have God-given rights.

The Constitution is not the “why” of America; it’s the “how” of America. It’s the operator’s manual. It’s the rules we have to play by to ensure something. And what do we ensure? God-given rights. And so to read the Constitution as the end-all, be-all is, in a sense, what happened in France. You see, during the time of our revolution, we had a Declaration of Independence that said, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, [that they are] endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”

So we were founded as a country that had God-given rights that the government had to respect. And with those rights come responsibilities, right? God did not just give us rights. He gave us a moral code by which to exercise them.

See, that’s what Ron Paul sort of leaves out. He leaves out rights and responsibilities that we have from God that this Constitution is to protect. And he says, “No, we just have rights, and then that’s it.” No, we don’t. America is a moral enterprise….

My understanding of our founding documents and the purpose of this country is different. I would argue that [Paul’s] understanding of the Constitution was similar to the French Revolution and the French understanding of the Constitution. The French had 21, I think, constitutions, but their constitutions were initially patterned after the American Constitution. Gave radical freedom, like ours does. But their founding document was not the Declaration of Independence. Their founding watchwords were the words, “liberty” and “fraternity.” Fraternity. Brotherhood. But no fatherhood. No God. It was a completely secular revolution. An anti-clerical revolution. And the root of it was, whoever’s in power rules. 

Rick Santorum is right. I don’t mean to say that Ron Paul personally is atheist; I don’t believe he is. (Actually, neither was Woodrow Wilson, the father of American Progressivism—i.e., movement toward Marxist socialism.) The question is, what is the philosophy underlying libertarianism?

The Spherical Model, by giving a three-dimensional view of philosophies, rather than the usual right/left paradigm, allows us to see where libertarianism fits. Instead of right/left, what we want to know about a philosophy is, does it civilize? The north/south orientation is between freedom (north) and tyranny (south). The west/east orientation answers the question of whose interests: individual and family, local community on the west, on over to state, nation, region, world in the east.

Libertarianism is always western oriented (western on the sphere, not related to western on our world map), toward local and individual. A principle of freedom is to limit government so that the most local level possible takes care of a problem. So, very often libertarians are right, because government has overreached. The west/east exception is when the state, nation, or region (our allies, so often beyond our vicinity) is in fact the best level, such as with international defense and trade policies.

The main problem with libertarianism is that it tends to occupy the entire western hemisphere of our model, including north (freedom) and south (tyranny). Santorum is right that following God’s law is essential for maintaining freedom. As soon as the libertarians start claiming we have a “right” to addictive mind-altering drugs, pornography, prostitution, and other vices. Even though they argue that those behaviors only affect the individual, those behaviors are savage; savagery overlays tyranny on the sphere. The only way libertarianism can avoid the chaotic tyranny of anarchy is if the people involved are so personally righteous that they never choose savage behaviors.

But what we saw with the French Revolution was that, when you have a people who take God out of the philosophical movement, you get savagery, not matter how much you talk about the rights of man. If the rights don’t come from God, along with the responsibilities He requires of us in His law, then they are just an invention of man, subject to whoever is in power. And that is a definition of tyranny.

I do believe we’d be better off if the political debate were entirely between Constitutional Republicans and Constitutional Libertarians—a northern west/east debate. The debate we actually have (once the primaries, with Ron Paul involved are over) is between northern freedom lovers and southern tyrannical power seekers.

But one thing we can thank Ron Paul for is shifting the debate, so it isn’t just about the degree of southeast-ness (statist tyranny quadrant). I working on a piece about that shift, coming soon.

Two Revolutions

Back in the late 1700s there were two revolutions that continue to affect world history: the American Revolution (1776+) and the French Revolution (1789+).  

The American Revolution was amazing in a number of ways: the philosophy was civilizing. Rights come not from the state or ruler, but from God—to all human beings, who are naturally born free. These God-given rights can be summarized simply as related to life, liberty, and property. American Revolutionaries believed in the rule of law, as they believed in God’s law, which required personal accountability. The founding document outlining the philosophy is the Declaration of Independence, which was later codified into basic law in our Constitution, with the Bill of Rights. 

The war came about after all avenues of appealing to law had been rejected. Separation from the ruling power became necessary only after every other course was explored. The reasons—the abuses of power—are laid out in the Declaration. 

The French Revolution, only a few years later, also had a revolutionary document: The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen. This document also claimed the natural, inborn rights of man to life, liberty, and property. But there was one all-important difference. The French version did not claim the rights came from God—rights just were. (But they applied only to free men, not slaves or women, for some reason.) The French Revolution coincided with a philosophical atheism totally opposite of the American Revolution. The French declared that God was dead and held a funeral, burying an empty casket with a wreath on top that read “reason.” 

How do Godless people compare to God-fearing people in a revolution?  The Americans held a tea party: revolutionaries dressed up as natives in a haphazard disguise, and then took the tea they were being unjustly taxed for and threw the cases into the bay. They had a liberty tree where they met and discussed plans. They fought a war against the invading British forces. Following Shay’s Rebellion—the slightest wind of chaos—the early Americans sent representatives to the Constitutional Convention and drew up the Constitution. The Constitution has undergone only a few changes and still stands. When we celebrated 200 years, we flew the flag, and got souvenir copies of the Declaration of Independence and little replicas of the Statue of Liberty.  

The French stormed the Bastille, beheaded men, women, and children of the ruling class. They killed, maimed, dismembered dead bodies, playing with the body parts, put heads on poles, and even degenerated into cannibalism. They are on their fourth iteration since the revolution. After 200 years, the souvenirs were tiny guillotines. They tried to do away with the family, considering it a conflicting loyalty, and assigned people to groups of ten, as a substitute. 

But when the world looks to those historical examples, revolutionaries tend to miss the American example and instead pattern their fight after the French Revolution. 

There is a cycle of tyranny: The tyranny becomes intolerable, and leads to anarchy (mob rule), which leads competing groups, which get weeded out to a new tyranny.  

In the Spherical Model, we have a way to look at this. The tyranny cycle is all southern hemisphere. State control is on the eastern side; anarchy is on the western side. Both are intolerable, but people who can’t envision the northern direction see no alternative but to switch between these two lower quarter spheres.  

It is a practice of would-be dictators to foment revolutionary anarchy and then gather supporters by promising to quell the chaos, and then work their way to the power position of next tyrant. It is the Marxist plan. Lenin used it; Stalin used it. It has been used repeatedly in South American revolutions. It is the Saul Alinsky pattern from the 1960s. It is the pattern of the Cambodian Killing Fields of the 1980s. 

It is the pattern followed by power seekers everywhere. 

Freedom seekers don’t stay down in the southern hemisphere. Freedom seekers move northward—a civilizing direction. Government has a specific and limited purpose. Rights are granted by God to every human being. Those rights must be protected by government, but must go hand-in-hand with personal responsibility. The behavior required is spelled out in the Ten Commandments. And the family, as the basic unit of society, is the vehicle for passing on the social, political, and economic truths from one generation to the next. 

We are extraordinarily fortunate that our founders moved northward, instead of the almost universal practice of framing power and rights only in the southern hemisphere paradigm of chaos and control. 

The contrast between the American and French revolutions continues today. We need to remember what it takes to stay in that rare northern freedom zone (or get back up to it): trust in God who gave us our rights, obey God’s law, and stand up against the enemies of freedom, using peaceful, lawful means as long as the law exists. 

My thanks to Charles Krauthammer for reminding me of that contrast in his speech last week, which I referenced recently. He said this: 

Compare the American Revolution and its prudential institution building, with the near contemporaneous French Revolution, which was the apotheosis of political romanticism, with its worship of reason and abstraction. It is no accident that France is on its fifth republic, and we are on our first. 

That reminded me of the class I attended in August, on the culture wars, taught by Brett Latimer (referenced here, with many more details than I have managed to present so far), in which he contrasted these two revolutions.