An Example of Why Big Government Is Bad

My favorite pair of glasses has a scratched lens (despite the much vaunted “no-scratch” coating).  So, I went to Lenscrafters to get the lens replaced.  They asked me when I got the prescription.  It turns out it was a little over a year ago.  ”I’m sorry,” the woman at Lenscrafters tells me, “but we cannot replace the lens because your prescription has expired.”

Let’s review the situation.  I have a scratched lens in a pair of glasses which are working very well for me.  I can see perfectly clearly with the current prescription which is now just a little over a year old.  State law prohibits Lenscrafters from replacing the lens.  It is apparently ILLEGAL to replace a lens with a prescription older than 12 months.

Now, who benefits from a law of this type?  Is it the consumer?  No.  Is it Lenscrafters?  Not necessarily.  They lost the opportunity to charge me for a replacement lens, though they may do better from me having to buy new glasses.  But the biggest beneficiary is optometrists.  Thanks to the law causing prescriptions to LEGALLY expire, I MUST go to an optometrist to solve my problem.  Through legal (and therefore coercive) means, the optometrists have made themselves necessary gatekeepers to me resolving my personal vision issues even though I already have a prescription that works well.

Law is supposed to be made for the common good.  But what we miss is that the government is an excellent instrument for profit seeking through regulation.  If you make the government too big and too important, a variety of interests will go to the government to find a way to make their money instead of making it through customer service, innovation, etc.

The Mega-Selling Conservative and Christian Novelist

This has nothing to do with the Left Behind books by Jerry Jenkins and Tim LaHaye.

Nor am I referring to writers behind recent surprise hits like Facing the Giants or Fireproof.

In fact, the individual I mean to talk about isn’t considered part of the Christian subculture at all.

He has sold over 400,000, 000 books.  According to his website, the number is growing by about 17 million a year globally.  He has made a reputation writing about evil, but his most popular character is one of the finest fictional human beings you can imagine.

Who am I talking about?  Who has those kinds of sales figures and yet sets forth a philosophy which embraces the Christian faith, tradition, and a generally conservative philosophical viewpoint?

The answer is Dean Koontz and he’s been dominating the supermarkets, airports, and bookstores for a few decades now.  His career has successfully spanned a book business that was once about names like Crown and B. Dalton and then moved to Barnes & Noble and Amazon.com.  He has little need to worry about the transition to ereaders.  He’ll sell just as well there.

Year after year of market success gains freedom for an author to do what he wants.  In the last decade, Koontz has added something to his plotting and characterization.  He has become a more intentional moral teacher.  Koontz’s Odd Thomas novels featuring a character by that name lay open Koontz’s philosophy wide for all to see,  not in the Ayn Rand style where suddenly the main character is giving a big speech, but rather by taking advantage of the opportunities that arise in the natural rhythm of the story.

Odd Thomas (his parents claim they meant to name him “Todd” but never addressed the error on the birth certificate) is a young man who is bright, handsome, and athletic.  He comes from a family with money.  Despite all this, he has lived on his own since he was 16 and works as a fry cook at a local diner.  His wardrobe is limited to a few pairs of t-shirts and blue jeans with a sweater or two for cold weather.  Odd intentionally keeps his life as simple as he can.  His choices are partially the result of a horrific upbringing and also a response to other significant complications in his life.  (I won’t get into those as this is a ZERO spoiler post.)

The character demonstrates Koontz’s worldview.  Odd looks like something out of an Annette Funicello movie (a point he self-deprecatingly makes from time to time).  He is a Catholic (one book centers around events that occur at a monastery where he has gone to get away from the world).  He affirms the value of hard work and achieves excellence at everything he does.  Though his trade is short-order cooking (the fluffiest pancakes, the crispiest hashbrowns), he sometimes dreams about selling shoes or working at a tire store.

Part of the reason he favors these jobs with discrete tasks and highly measurable outcomes is because he has certain gifts which  frequently put him in danger.  Despite his weariness of adventure, danger, and human tragedy, he unfailingly answers the call of duty.  Odd offers his life to save others and though he is fully aware of his own mortality, always considers the lives of innocents more valuable than his own.  Beneath all of this is Odd’s deep understanding of right and wrong.  He understands these concepts as immutable and not merely the products of a particular age.  Odd also believes God has given him his gift for a reason and he must answer for its use.

In the telling of the stories, Koontz makes headway against the relativistic and nihilistic spirit of the age.  He also demonstrates substantial dissent from the liberal consensus on a variety of issues.  If you like strong plots, memorable characters, turning pages irresistibly late into the night, and a philosophy that sustains life instead of undercutting its foundations, Dean Koontz is your man.

The books in the series so far are:

Odd Thomas

Forever Odd

Brother Odd

Odd Hours

Truly, I can scarcely recommend these highly enough in terms of their value as edifying reading for entertainment.  I very rarely re-read books, but I am now on my second reading of the series and am enjoying them all over again.

The Killer App for Academics

I have been thinking a lot about ereaders and the iPad and waiting for just the right combination of features.  My previous thought was that we needed to be able to see a true image of the book pages and then have the ability to write on the image of the page.

I still want that, but I can think of something better.  When I was reading for my oral exams as a doctoral student, I used a pen to bracket text in every book and article I read.  My next step was to input the text word for word or in the form of a note into a big document, making sure to label each quote with the proper page number for purposes of annotation.

My need for a .pdf image of a book page would go away if each time I highlighted a quote, the ereader software would store the quote with information about the true page number of the quote (not some electronic “location”).  I don’t think it would be hard to get this feature done.  The manufacturer who does it will own the academic market for books, which is sizeable  (you ever been in a prof’s office?).

The Midnight Diner

Several weeks ago, I received a copy of a literary magazine calledThe Midnight Diner.  Over a period of days it sat on my nightstand waiting to be read.  I knew little about it or its creators.  Having now made my way through the issue, I think it deserves attention.  I believe it was actually referred to me by my friend and wonderful writer of fiction, the great Lars Walker (if you’ve not read his books, order now, right now, you won’t be sorry).

How to describe this publication?  Well, imagine if The Twilight Zone had been written by Christians.  No, that’s not quite on target.  Better still to reference The Outer Limits (you know, “We control the horizontal.  We control the vertical . . .), the version of the series which aired much to my entertainment in the late 1990′s.

The stories are unpredictable and relate back to the Christian faith in strange, but interesting ways.  Though I began perusing with low expectations, I found myself excited to get to my evening reading ritual so I could discover the next tale.

At some point, the magazine’s editors will need to collect their best stories into book.  In any case, The Midnight Diner would be perfect for the Kindle or other e-readers.

Regrettably, their web presence is pretty limited.  It looks like interested parties will need to use the web contact form or the contact email address to purchase copies.  Visit and ask how you can get the magazine.

The Ugliness of Seventies-Style Feminism

In a recent “Review” section containing a variety of lifestyle content, the Wall Street Journal chose to give front page real estate to a short essay by Erica Jong, the author and pioneer of a certain feminist sexual frankness.  The piece in question was an attack on attachment parenting (which has features such as babies sleeping in the bed with mother and father) and environmentalism (of the type which would urge the use of cloth diapers).  Jong’s critique is broad and encompasses more than advertised.  For example, at one point she expresses her frustration with Gisele Bundchen’s  declaration that all women should breastfeed.

Of course Jong is upset.  She is from a generation that eagerly embraced things like bottle-feeding and formula so as to gain a degree of freedom from the immediate needs of the infant.  The important thing, from the ideological perspective, was that the child not get in the way of the aspirations of the mother.

Her attitude is summed up nicely here:

Women feel not only that they must be ever-present for their children but also that they must breast-feed, make their own baby food, and eschew disposable diapers.  It’s a prison for mothers, and it represents as much of a backlash against women’s freedom as the right-to-life movement (italics mine).

Jong repeats the tired old libel that the REAL reason for the existence of the right-to-life movement is that SOME people want to keep women down, keep them penned up in a kitchen or chained to a vacuum cleaner.  It could never be that such people have some greater concern for, I don’t know, the right of an unborn child not to be arbitrarily killed.  Nah.

The type of feminism on display is one which believes completely in doing what comes naturally when it comes to sex, but not with regard to reproduction or the nurture of children.  To the extent that people such as Angelina Jolie or Gisele Bundchen (both singled out for criticism by Jong) represent a backlash against such callous attitudes, I say rage on.