John C. Wright's Journal

Courtesy of surrealseraphim :

"Don’t try and frighten us with Sorceror’s ways, Your Holiness. Your sad devotion to that ancient religion has not helped you conjure up the stolen data tapes, or given you clairvoyance enough to find the Rebel’s hidden fortr… kkckk! Ak!"

I find your lack of faith disturbing, my son!

http://blog.beliefnet.com/crunchycon/2008/10/the-kindness-of-a-stranger.html
This is from the pen of Rod Dreher:

Here is Anne Rice (yes, THAT Anne Rice) talking about her return to Catholicism, and the influences on her writing. Short version: her vampire novels were her lament over her loss of faith.

The link is to an audio file:
http://www2.nationalreview.com/dest/2008/10/28/1a30bfee729efe48f1cfc909b13fd7a1.mp3

The web page is here.

Interviewers frequently ask me how my conversion to Catholicism has influenced my writing. I tell them that writing the books is still pretty much the same, but that, now the I am Catholic, I am not allowed to interpret my own books, nor read them in English, but must have my books interpreted by the magisterium, based on the findings of a general council.

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The article reprinted below raises a question in my mind. What makes, not just one idealistic (or fanatic, take your pick) individual decide to sacrifice his honor and his career for an unknown and  unimpressive machine politico like Obama, but, instead, a whole large-scale news organization?

Was there no one in the whole news organization willing or able to say, "Why are we sacrificing our integrity as newsmen? Is our role to report the news, or is our role to indoctrinate the workers into Goodthink?"

http://www.cultureandmediainstitute.org/specialreports/2008/SarahPalinChar/SaraPalinExec_Sum.htm

Why have so many Americans turned against Palin, who made such a strong impression on the public when John McCain introduced her as his running mate at the Republican convention in September?  Most likely, it’s because the few good reports they’ve heard about the Alaska governor have been overwhelmed by a blizzard of bad reports. ABC, NBC and CBS news shows are covering Palin intensively, and they are running 18 negative stories for every positive one.

Network coverage of Palin has moved beyond criticism to outright ridicule.  Strikingly, all three networks have repeatedly aired clips of Palin being parodied by a comedy show, NBC’s Saturday Night Live, leading to concerns that many Americans are confusing the real Palin with SNL’s figure of fun.  When have comic impressions of a political figure ever qualified as hard news?

CMI reviewed network news coverage of Palin for the two weeks beginning September 29 and ending October 12, the period before and after the October 2 vice-presidential debate.  We found that ABC, NBC and CBS have been stridently critical of Palin.  Before the debate, the networks characterized her as a dunce whose shortcomings were dividing the GOP.  After Palin laid to rest concerns about her competence by performing well in the debate, the network narrative changed: Palin became a demon, victimizing Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama with unfair criticism  

Major findings:

• Major network news shows ran 69 stories about Sarah Palin between September 29 and October 12.  37 stories were negative, just 2 were positive, and 30 were neutral.  Not a single evening news show ran a positive story about Palin.
• Overall, 21 network stories portrayed Palin as unintelligent and unqualified.  8 of these stories played a total of 11 clips of Saturday Night Live ridiculing Palin. 14 segments featured the most embarrassing clips from Palin’s interview with Katie Couric. 
• 9 stories emphasized attacks on Palin by conservative columnists.
• 14 stories demonized Palin as little more than John McCain’s attack dog.
• ABC was hardest on Palin, with 9 negative stories (60%), 6 neutral (40%) and no positive stories.  NBC ran 15 negative stories (54%), 13 neutral (46%) and no positive stories. CBS ran 14 negative stories (54%), 10 neutral (38%) and 2 positive (8%).

Conclusion

Network coverage of Sarah Palin has been so distorted and out of balance that the public cannot trust what they’re hearing from ABC, NBC and CBS about the GOP vice-presidential nominee.  The networks have been so intent on assassinating Palin’s character that they have turned for added ammunition to sources they normally ignore – conservative columnists and comedians.

Sarah Palin’s nomination changed the presidential race, creating a real threat to the media’s preferred candidate, Illinois Sen. Barack Obama.  ABC, NBC and CBS have rallied to Obama’s defense by working hard to bring Palin down.

http://www.sfsignal.com/archives/007350.html

The fine fellows at SF Signal asked my considered opinion on the comment made by Buzz Aldrin, that TV shows where people beam here and there around the galaxy in the twinkling of an eye, or fight cosmic wars with laser swords, decrease the public interest in mundane space exploration.

Oh, I loved typing the words ‘mundane space exploration.’

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yvc0tYG_YpA
Tell it like it is, Zo.

Unfortunately for either side in this argument, what constitutes evidence of intelligent design cannot be scientifically determined. On a day to day basis, we can tell that a watch was made by a watchmaker, but when we see a leaf or a star we do not know if there is a leafmaker or a starmaker.

The problem becomes much worse when one is talking, not about a mortal leafmaker or starmaker, someone like us who takes raw materials and refashions them, but about a being whose capacities cannot be defined, and whose actions cannot be seen. If God intended a random accident to smite  Ahab despite this king’s disguise when he fought the Syrian, how is this different from Shakespeare intending Hamlet’s mother to die by accident? No examination performed by Hamlet on the fatal cup she quaffed or the poisoned pearl would have Shakespeare’s fingerprints on it. Shakespeare is back of the play, not a character in it.

Also, the actions of a divine being cannot be identified by natural men. When Hera* [see footnote] promises Paris the most beautiful woman in the world, it is Paris, not Hera*, who kidnaps Helen. So which one caused the act, the prince or the goddess? When David slays Goliath, who gets the credit, God or David? The answer is that Hera* "caused" the rape of Helen in a different way than Paris caused it. God caused the downfall of the giant in the same way that Tolkien caused the downfall of Sauron. But to someone inside the story, David is the one who slung the stone in the valley of Elah, and Frodo the one who carried the ring to Orodruin in the Dark Land.

No examination of physical evidence can either prove or disprove Intelligent Design.

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Drudge report has been doing the mainstream media work for them. Here is the clip.

Barack Obama, in 2001:

You know, if you look at the victories and failures of the civil-rights movement, and its litigation strategy in the court, I think where it succeeded was to vest formal rights in previously dispossessed peoples. So that I would now have the right to vote, I would now be able to sit at a lunch counter and order and as long as I could pay for it, I’d be okay, but the Supreme Court never entered into the issues of redistribution of wealth, and sort of more basic issues of political and economic justice in this society.

And uh, to that extent, as radical as I think people tried to characterize the Warren Court, it wasn’t that radical. It didn’t break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the Founding Fathers in the Constitution — at least as it’s been interpreted, and Warren Court interpreted it in the same way, that generally the Constitution is a charter of negative liberties: [It] says what the states can’t do to you, says what the federal government can’t do to you, but it doesn’t say what the federal government or the state government must do on your behalf.

And that hasn’t shifted, and one of the, I think, the tragedies of the civil-rights movement was because the civil-rights movement became so court-focused, uh, I think that there was a tendency to lose track of the political and community organizing and activities on the ground that are able to put together the actual coalitions of power through which you bring about redistributive change. And in some ways we still suffer from that.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/3255972/Harry-Potter-fails-to-cast-spell-over-Professor-Richard-Dawkins.html

Hrm. I seem to recall (rather to the chagrin of mainstream Christians) some Christian activities (read: yammerheads) denouncing Harry Potter on the grounds that it is unhealthy to glamorize wizardry and witchcraft.

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Some quotes from and links to articles on the matters of the day. See if you can detect a pattern of behavior Read the remainder of this entry »

Here is the homepage of that guy who made the funny ‘Vote Reaper’ vid, where Darth Barack is trying to jedi mind-trick Our Hero into voting Dem. Politics, humor, a light-saber duel, all with a kung-fu action grip. Who could ask for anything more?

http://zo.black-and-right.com/

And here is his latest. I love the part about White Devils.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J6UZaGan0CI
Given a choice between the disarmament kook, and the eleven-year-old girl who knows how to field strip & reassemble a rifle in 52 seconds, I’d rather have the 11-year-old girl as Commander-in-Chief.

http://johncwright.livejournal.com/183732.html?nc=16

Please see The 213 things Skippy is no longer allowed to do in the U.S. Army

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