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Friday night movie: Cyrano de Bergerac (1950)

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Here’s tonight’s movie:

IMDB rating: [7.4/10]

Description:

Cyrano de Bergerac is a Parisian poet and swashbuckler with a large nose of which he is self-conscious, but pretends to be proud of. He is madly in love with his “friendly cousin” (they were not actually related as cousins), the beautiful Roxane; however, he does not believe she will requite his love because he considers himself physically unattractive. Soon, he finds that Roxane has become infatuated with Christian de Neuvillette, a dashing new recruit to the Cadets de Gascogne, the military unit of which Cyrano is the captain. Christian however, despite his good looks, is tongue-tied when speaking with women. Seeing an opportunity to vicariously declare his love for Roxane, he decides to aid Christian, who does not know how to court a woman and gain her love.

Gascony (Gasgogne in French) is the south-west of France, and Normandy is in the north of France. Cyrano and the other cadets are from Gascony, but Christian is from Normandy.

This movie is very special to me, because I share many of the character traits and experiences of Cyrano. In fact, whenever I want to explain myself to a woman, I show her this movie and highlight certain parts. Like me, Cyrano has a distant relationship with his mother, and no sisters. Like me, his favorite color is white. For him, it symbolizes independence. For me, it symbolizes independence and also chastity, fidelity and secrecy . He wears a white plume in his hat, symbolizing his independence.

At one point in the movie, Cyrano is shown to be fond of making enemies rather than friends, because he resents the way that people are constantly trying to make friends and trying to make people like them. I have that same view. I get very annoyed with Christians who hide their convictions about truth and morality in public in order to be liked by others. In fact, I think that the two biggest challenges to being a Christian are the expectation that if God is real, then he will make you happy and the expectation that following Jesus will make people like you. It’s much better if Christians expect to not be happy and to not be liked – that’s the normal Christian life. Many Christians fall away from their faith because they feel that God should make them happy and that people should like them.

I wish that everyone watching the movie could understand French, because Cyrano always speaks in rhymes in the French.

Here is one of my favorite parts:

Annoying person:
Quoi, pas un grand seigneur pour couvrir de son nom?…

Cyrano, angry:
Non, ai-je dit deux fois. Faut-il donc que je trisse?
Non, pas de protecteur…
(la main son epee)
Mais une protectrice!

He is asked by someone how he expects to survive after he has offended some fool who is protected by a powerful nobleman. Does Cyrano have a powerful protector? His reply: “No, I have no patron… but a patroness” while putting his hand on his sword. In other productions of the play, like this one, he draws his sword.

Cyrano is also very lonely, and finds women very mysterious, and therefore very desirable.

CYRANO:
Regarde-moi, mon cher, et dis quelle esperance
Pourrait bien me laisser cette protuberance !
Oh ! je ne me fais pas d’illusion !–Parbleu,
Oui, quelquefois, je m’attendris, dans le soir bleu;
J’entre en quelque jardin oa¹ l’heure se parfume;
Avec mon pauvre grand diable de nez je hume
L’avril,–je suis des yeux, sous un rayon d’argent,
Au bras d’un cavalier, quelque femme, en songeant
Que pour marcher, a petits pas, dans de la lune,
Aussi moi j’aimerais au bras en avoir une,
Je m’exalte, j’oublie. . . et j’apercois soudain
L’ombre de mon profil sur le mur du jardin !

Translation:

CYRANO:
Look well at me–then tell me, with what hope
This vile protuberance can inspire my heart!
I do not lull me with illusions–yet
At times I’m weak: in evening hours dim
I enter some fair pleasance, perfumed sweet;
With my poor ugly devil of a nose
I scent spring’s essence–in the silver rays
I see some knight–a lady on his arm,
And think ‘To saunter thus ‘neath the moonshine,
I were fain to have my lady, too, beside!’
Thought soars to ecstasy. . . O sudden fall!
–The shadow of my profile on the wall!

It’s a bit sad to me that you guys are not getting the original French, but if you watch the 1990 version of the movie with subtitles, you can at least hear the rhymes. Here’s the play in French and in English for those who prefer to read rather than watch. If you read the play, you get more details but you lose the swordfights. Cyrano is the best swordsman in Paris, and not afraid to use his sword to make a point.

Happy Friday!

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Obama makes fifth attempt to reduce tax deduction for charity

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From the Heritage Foundation.

Excerpt:

Once again, President Barack Obama has proposed lowering the income tax deduction for charitable giving. In his proposed budget for fiscal year 2013, the President calls for reducing the charitable deduction rate from 35 percent to 28 percent for those in the top tax bracket (individuals making $200,000 or more or families making $250,000 or more). By decreasing the value of itemized tax deductions for higher-income taxpayers, Obama’s proposal would weaken the incentive for the wealthy to give to organizations that help the poor.

President Obama has tried this before. Not once, not twice, not three times, but on four previous occasions, he has put forward a plan to lower the deduction rate for wealthy donors (twice in previous budget proposals and twice in funding proposals for other priorities, including Obamacare).

As The Heritage Foundation has previously noted, the President’s plan would likely dampen charitable giving at a time when nonprofits have been forced to do more with less. The greatest impact would probably hit organizations like hospitals and educational institutions that depend on large gifts from wealthy donors. While these donors make up only a small percentage of total American households, they contribute almost half of the donations claimed each year as charitable deductions.

How far would Obama’s proposal cause total itemized contributions to fall? Experts predict up to $5.6 billion each year.

Why would a socialist like Obama want to discourage people from giving to charity? Well, socialists want to increase the amount of dependency that people in need have on the government, so that the government can control them. When people in need have options, they don’t have to care as much about the opinions of the people who help them. But when the government squeezes charities out by cutting off their donations, then the people in need have to choose government. And what do you suppose happens at election time? A whole bunch of people in need vote for their savior – big government. This is not good.

People in need should be able to get help from their families, neighbors and charities, in that order. We don’t want this becoming political – i.e. “vote for me or you don’t eat”. It should also be noted that when government takes over the task of helping the poor, the Christian church loses its influence. Do we really want Christians to lose influence at a time when millions of unborn children are being murdered and the family is being redefined by liberal social engineers?

News

Why social conservatives should support free market capitalism

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The free enterprise system should not be adopted simply because it is the best system for creating wealth. The best reason to support free market capitalism is a moral reason. Arthur Brooks, President of the American Enterprise Institute, and a Christian, describes the moral argument for free market capitalism.

Excerpt:

It might seem that the best case for free enterprise is the material one. Free enterprise lets people make more money, buy more and nicer stuff, and have a greater degree of comfort. The freer our economy is, the more competitive the US economy is vis-à-vis the rest of the world. And so on.

But these aren’t our best arguments. There is another reason, a transcendent reason, for which free enterprise matters most—and this is the case we all must be able to make today.

We all learned early on in school that the Declaration of Independence claimed for each of us the unalienable right to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” Note that the founders didn’t assert a right to be happy; such is the domain of tinpots and crackpots, of 1984’s “Ministry of Plenty” and Josef Stalin’s aggrandizing self-description as the Soviet Union’s “Constructor of Happiness.” So what, in practice, does this right to pursue happiness mean?

It means the right to define and earn our happiness through our ideas, hard work, and gumption, to earn our success by creating value honestly, in our own lives and in the lives of others. It doesn’t mean the pursuit of a big lottery win or an inheritance. Those bring money, but not happiness. And a mountain of evidence shows that after a fairly low threshold, more money doesn’t make us happier. The best case for free enterprise has nothing at all to do with money or material goods or wealth. Those are just icing on the cake. We must stop talking about free enterprise as just an engine of wealth creation. It’s much more than that.

In short, the secret to the pursuit of happiness is earning our own success; creating value with our lives and in the lives of others. This earned success is the fruit of hard work and just rewards in a system built on merit. Only in a free enterprise system is effort and innovation rewarded over connections and predation. (And this means that we have to draw a distinction between free enterprise, which is based on opportunity and competition between ideas, and corporate cronyism, which is just another form of statism masquerading as free enterprise.)

Here are 3 reasons why I think that social conservatives should support free market capitalism.

1) Right to work

It’s very important for Christians to have an economic system in place that allows them to work without having to promote anti-Christians ideas. But when government gets too big, what happens is that Christians are no longer free to take any job they want, and still keep a clear conscience. In some states, you have to join a union which uses your union dues to elect Democrats, who very often are liberal on social issues. Or, you have big government forcing Christians to perform abortions against their consciences. Or, you have big government forcing Christian organizations to provide health insurance plans that cover abortions and contraceptives. That’s why Christians need to vote against big government regulations on employment – we need the freedom to work at a job that does not violate our consciences.

2) Right to earn

It’s very important for Christians to keep what they earn so that they have the maximum amount of money to make decisions that make sense for them, according to their consciences. Take the example of day care and education. The big government statist is constantly trying to to create more and more government-run day care and public schools. Why? They want to take money away from families so that they cannot afford individualized private and parochial schools, and lump them all into government run schools that are more “equal”. The problem is that this is bad for Christians who want more oversight into what their children learn. For example, what sense does it make for a Christian man to pay for day care and public schools when he marries a teacher who becomes a stay at home homeschooling mother for his children? He has to pay for day care and public schools he will never use, and it eats into the money he has to afford a stay-at-home homeschooling mom. Christians should oppose a day care and education system run by a secular leftist government. They will never reflect the values of Christian parents.

3) Right to spend

It’s very important for Christians to have the freedom to purchase products and services that make sense in their worldview. Take the example of health care. Secular leftists would love to force private medical insurance companies to cover things like abortion and contraception as health care. In some states, these things are specified as mandatory for every health care plan. That means that Christians who purchase health care are being forced to pay for services like abortion which they will never use themselves. This is nothing more than the redistribution of wealth in order to lower the cost of abortions for people, in order to encourage them to be sexually active before they are able to accommodate children. Christians need to oppose this – we do not want to have to pay for things that go against our consciences.

So, in addition to the reasons that Brooks mentioned (the happiness of earning your own way and serving others), it’s important for Christians to understand how free market capitalism fits into their plans. We do not want to support big government, especially when big government so often is not compatible with Judeo-Christian values. In the free market, it is much harder for ALL the businesses to conspire together to block Christians from working, earning and spending according to their consciences. We must resist top-down control of the free market so that we have the liberty to do what we ought to do in order to be virtuous.