Ben Barton of the University of Tennessee Law School and author of ‘Harry Potter and the Half-Crazed Bureaucracy’ and Jack Gierzynski, PoliSci professor at the University of Vermont and author of Harry Potter and the Millennials (Georgetown University Press, 2014) join MuggleNet’s Keith Hawk and the Hogwarts Professor to talk politics.
Love the show… something for all parts of the political spectrum. And I’m glad to here there will be a podcast from Chestnut Hill…. I will be there, too!
Thought this article was interesting from John C. Wright, a Nebula Award–nominated science fiction author whose work has received acclaim: Awake in the Night Land and The Judge of Ages (Count to a Trillion)
http://www.intercollegiatereview.com/index.php/2014/09/15/the-superversive-world-of-harry-potter/
Wright challenges the notion that Gierzynski makes. Of interest where these points:
-The families in Potter consist of mothers and fathers, not various partners of various genders
-The government in Harry Potter’s world, as in ours, in inept, corrupt, and regarded as an obstacle rather than the source of salvation. Each boy relies on his own wit and courage and friendships to save himself and to save the world.
-The press in Harry Potter’s world, as in ours, is inept, corrupt, and a source of outrageous falsehoods. The main reporter-witch can assume the form of a mosquito.
-The moral universe in Harry’s world rejects any form of relativism. There are no shades of gray here, or examples of a thing being right for one group and wrong for another.
-They keep score in Quidditch.
– There is no victimology. Anyone who gets ahead, even the Chosen One, is because he works hard. The Twins open a joke shop when they graduate; they do not go on the dole.
-“The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death.” Harry conquers death by submitting to it at Voldemort’s hand, and destroys the Dark Lord by being reborn. He sees the Dark Lord’s soul as the shriveled and pathetic thing it is, not glorious.
-Salvation requires sacrifice.