Lee Duigon

From May 12, 2013

Which movie is a more telling metaphor for the secular humanist enterprise–Jurassic Park or Laurel and Hardy in The Music Box?

In Jurassic Park we see what happens when very smart people with unlimited money behind them think that if they spend enough money, and employ powerful technology, they can do anything, no matter how impossible it seems. Says the park’s owner, John Hammond (played by Richard Attenborough), “Creation is an act of will!”

Well, yeah–if you’re God. Otherwise it’s just a bunch of idiots playing God and getting into trouble. Hammond’s motto is, “We spared no expense.” As if you could buy omnipotence.

In The Music Box–released in 1932, and going on to win an Oscar–Laurel and Hardy have to transport a piano to a house located atop a very long and very steep flight of concrete steps. Actually, this could have been done fairly easily. But Stan and Ollie continually create their own problems, defeating themselves at every turn. It’s only 30 minutes long, and if you haven’t seen it, you’ve missed one of the funniest half-hours ever filmed.

But the lesson is that problems that could be solved don’t get solved–not when the people handling those problems are nitwits. With God all things are possible. With the current leaders of the Western world, no things are possible.  Laurel and Hardy’s piano-moving business has expanded to branch offices in Washington, Brussels, Peking, and every other world capital. What they did to Billy Gilbert‘s living room, their descendants in Congress are doing to our national economy.

Every so often, the wheels fall off the humanist go-kart, and we get a world war or a depression. Sorta like the dinosaurs getting loose in Jurassic Park and eating everybody. And what do we hear from our leaders? The same as we hear from John Hammond: “Next time it’ll be perfect!”

And if that doesn’t work, they can always fall back on, “Well, here’s another nice mess you’ve gotten me into!”