Harry the Good

Overnight, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince went on sale. This morning, every television news channel showed scads and scads of young people, many costumed, excited and happy, clutching their own copies of the book to their chests.

Ladies and Gentlemen of America and the World, we should all be kissing the hem and the rings of authoress J. K. Rowling and carrying her via sedan chair to Stockholm for the biggest, fattest, and most prestigious Nobel Prize possible. If there isn't one worthy of her, then the Swedes ought to create one.

Whatever monies the authoress makes cannot possibly compensate for what she has done for civilization. That she is the richest woman in the U. K. is simply delicious to contemplate. Someone said on one of the television morning programs that she is a billionaire. I hope so. She EARNED EVERY DAMNED PENNY AND FARTHING OF IT.

Her contribution to America is much more familiar to me since I am American, and I can speak to what I know. Maybe the same applies internationally.

J. K. Rowling, single-handedly, taught an entire nation of young people to READ, and to LOVE IT.

Over many decades, I have been watching the degradation of America, caused by public (i.e., government) education, taking our youngsters and converting their minds into "skulls full of mush." My own kids, who are in their 30s now, came from a family where mother and father have been life-long avid readers and "book-a-holics." Yet, one kid, visually reliant, as she grew up read only what was required. Even now, she seldom reads for pleasure. The other kid somewhat pulled out of this nose-dive, in part because her husband, a product of the better sort of British influenced education, is an avid reader. Both daughters can read and read well. "Public" (a.ka., governmental) education had stamped out their interest, despite our best efforts to counter this influence.

I think this is a familiar story in many homes in America. We have jillions of offspring who "learn" from television and movie stories, by-passing the great world opened to them by books. They so frequently say how bored they are because their minds are adrift on "idle," but they are also terminally lazy, thus view reading books as "work."

Yes, indeed, times have changed since my youth, and a lot of that change has not been bad at all. The hooks of the past, when television was black-and-white and not-very-good, and when movies were good but not places where one could spend endless hours, came from books. The old hooks ceased catching generation after generation of youth. Thus, we grew a world of adults whose ignorance is surpassed only by their inability to spell and use proper grammar and syntax. As for content, far too many of today's adults are ignoramuses. Just watching them flail about trying to understand something as simple as Islam causes almost unendurable pain. Will they read almost anything to erase so much ignorance? Hell, no!

I had feared we were lost as a nation, at least for the duration of my lifetime and that of my own children.

Enter Harry Potter. Harry Potter reached out through that barrier of boredom, ennui, and utter indolence to grab kids by their frontal lobes and turn the juice up to high. Suddenly Harry Potter swept the youth of the nation. They could not wait for any movies about Harry Potter. They had to read the books as they rolled off the presses. They sequestered themselves in quiet places to devour many hundreds of pages. Then they shared the excitement of having their brains turned on with others. Reading Harry Potter became a contagion.

I really believe that for many children and young adults, this was the first time they had ever experienced the joy of their brains and minds being fully alive, doing that "human thing." Nancy Drew, the Hardy Boys, and the like no longer grabbed our youth and had not for decades. Harry Potter grabbed them, and would not let go.

I hear the opposition to Harry Potter coming from pro-religion sources, and I think it is as absurd as our kids do. But, then, there are always those with sticks in hand trying to chase away all pleasure from life. If their ideas can't grab the youth, maybe their ideas suck, but they would rather burn stacks of Harry Potter books than examine whether their ideas are suited to a modern world.

There are many other values to abstract from the success of Harry Potter, far too many to deal with at present. I will say one thing, however: J. K. Rowling's success is a monument to capitalism. If you recognize what goes into making capitalism happen, the crucial ideas and principles, then you can take great hope about the future of the world. Those of us getting long in tooth may not live long enough to see it, but that better day is coming, and Harry Potter is helping to bring it.