Archive for August, 2012

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Resisting the Big Brother

Posted August 10, 2012 By John C Wright

A letter from a reader on the topic of current government encroachment on our religious and civil liberties. I thought it worth reprinting in this space in full.

Look, folks, it’s really quite simple. Just say “no”. Whenever they tell you to do something you cannot do just look them in the eye and say “no”.

Example: we are Catholic business owners. Although we are exempt from the HHS mandate due to our low number of employees, my wife and I decided before we knew we were exempt that we would simply not cooperate with the law. The secret is that you have to be ready to take whatever punishment Caesar decrees for those who flout the Imperial Will. Let Caesar put us out of business; we’ll start another. Let Caesar fine us; we will simply ignore the fine. Let Caesar imprison us; better a life in jail than an eternity in Hell.

Let Caesar kill us. Martyrs bypass Purgatory and go straight to Heaven.

It’s called the Power of No. Render unto Caesar what belongs to Caesar, until he asks for something that does not belong. Then politely say “no” and accept whatever comes.

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Morningstar

Posted August 10, 2012 By John C Wright

Clint Cearley is a freelance illustrator (who is open to commission work!) wrote me a thank you for my LAST GUARDIAN OF EVERNESS book, and included a copy of this illustration of Morningstar. (Click on the picture to see the enormous version.)

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Free Exercise of Religion Officially Outlawed

Posted August 9, 2012 By John C Wright

Congress shall make no law regarding the establishment of religion or the free exercise thereof, except in regard to appointing an unelected Bureaucrat to arbitrarily misdirect private medical insurance funds for non-medical use, such as providing free condoms, free sterilization, and free abortion-enduing drugs to kill unborn children, in which case, Congress shall have no limits on its total power to whatever the hell it damned well pleases. Whereupon the Stamp Act, the Tea Act and the Townshend Acts and the Intolerable Acts will look quite tolerable in comparison.

Next up: reading the Bible declared a hate crime, and Menino, Emanuel and Lee announce this “hatebook” is not welcome in Boston, or San Francisco, and Biblical values are part of Chicago values.

What is offering just a small pinch of incense to divine Caesar worth?

Please read this article, register, and leave a comment in support:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/religious-right-now/post/hhs-mandate-is-officially-violating-our-religious-liberty/2012/08/07/af2c0568-e0e8-11e1-8fc5-a7dcf1fc161d_blog.html

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My Geek Streetcred Rises!

Posted August 9, 2012 By John C Wright

I was mentioned honorably in a slashdot poll: http://ask.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3035653&cid=40926711

I got two votes for being the most under-recognized SF author. Or maybe it is one guy voting twice. Or a dog with a keyboard. On the Internet, one never knows.

I am impressed with myself for being well recognized enough to be under-recognized.

Anonymous wrote: Each paragraph of The Golden Age has enough ideas packed in for a complete book by somebody else.

Thanks, Mom!

And now for a completely gratuitous picture of the Catwoman. I would not be the most under-appreciated SF author of the season if I mentioned her in my stories.

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Frank Miller and Herodotus, Sperthias and Bulis, and Pocahontas

Posted August 7, 2012 By John C Wright

A reader with the ursine name of bear545 writes:

What part of [Frank Miller’s] 300 was ‘real’? According to historical accounts, there was a unit of 300 Spartans at Thermopylae, and they did hold out for three days, so it is real in that respect. However, Miller turned them, the Spartans, into the bearers of light and rationality for the free world, who were to free the world from superstition and darkness. I repeat, the Spartans. That is about so unreal as to be delusional.

My comment: Well, to be fair to Mr Miller, Herodotus also credits the Spartans with the preservation of the liberty of the Hellenes from Persian dominion; and from the Hellenes come our institutions of democracy and the academy.

Allow me to quote from book VII the HISTORIES of Herodotus:

Nor is the courage which these men [the Lacedaemonians] hereby displayed alone worthy of wonder; but likewise the sayings made by them.

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  • geomass posted on January 4, 2013
    That is true…Persian prostitutes are “traded” everyday, especially in Dubai’s new malls, I hear they are heavily discounted during the…
  • Nostreculsus posted on August 16, 2012
    By Zeus, you're right! The remark, "αριστάτε ως εν άιδου δειπνήσομεν", is actually from Plutarch's "Apophthegmata Laconica", attributed to Leonidas.…
  • Mrmandias posted on August 14, 2012
    Could you give me a link to the "Spartans, eat hearty!" part? I'm not finding that in a couple of…
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My Baby, My Baby

Posted August 6, 2012 By John C Wright

I ran across this note on the National Review Online website from Jay Nordlinger. I here reprint it in toto. No comment by me is needed:

In my Impromptus of Thursday, I had a note on Fort Hood, saying that the killer there had managed to gun down 13. Several readers have written me to say that the number should really be 14. One of the soldiers, Francheska Velez, was pregnant. Her dying words were, “My baby, my baby.” For an Associated Press report on the matter, go here.

When I was coming of age, the phrase “meaningless blob of protoplasm” was in the air. At some point, President Clinton’s surgeon general said we needed to “get over this love affair with the fetus.” It seems very clear to me that pregnant mothers, when dying, don’t cry, “My meaningless blob of protoplasm, my meaningless blob of protoplasm.”

Is that too rough for you? So’s the subject.

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Symptoms of Cynicism and Decay

Posted August 5, 2012 By John C Wright

This remark GK Chesterton made in his insightful Appreciations and Criticisms of the Works of Charles Dickens:

All romances consist of three characters … For the sake of argument they may be called St. George and the Dragon and the Princess. In every romance there must be the twin elements of loving and fighting. In every romance there must be the three characters: there must be the Princess, who is a thing to be loved; there must be the Dragon, who is a thing to be fought; and there must be St. George, who is a thing that both loves and fights. There have been many symptoms of cynicism and decay in our modern civilization. But of all the signs of modern feebleness, of lack of grasp on morals as they actually must be, there has been none quite so silly or so dangerous as this: that the philosophers of today have started to divide loving from fighting and to put them into opposite camps. [But] the two things imply each other; they implied each other in the old romance and in the old religion, which were the two permanent things of humanity. You cannot love a thing without wanting to fight for it. You cannot fight without something to fight for. To love a thing without wishing to fight for it is not love at all; it is lust. It may be an airy, philosophical, and disinterested lust… but it is lust, because it is wholly self-indulgent and invites no attack. On the other hand, fighting for a thing without loving it is not even fighting; it can only be called a kind of horse-play that is occasionally fatal. Wherever human nature is human and unspoilt by any special sophistry, there exists this natural kinship between war and wooing, and that natural kinship is called romance. It comes upon a man especially in the great hour of youth; and every man who has ever been young at all has felt, if only for a moment, this ultimate and poetic paradox. He knows that loving the world is the same thing as fighting the world.

Usage note: “Romance” here means the older sense of the word, a story of mystery and wonder, heroic adventures, chivalry and strange beauty typical of the Roman tradition, not just a love story.

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On Neobarbarism

Posted August 3, 2012 By John C Wright

I heard about this on the radio on my drive into work.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MUk-5R14jE0

Adam M Smith, CFO of Vante, Tuscon AZ, harangues Chick-Fil-A girl, who maintains a professional demeanor throughout. He filmed this himself, and posted it, that he might spread his fame throughout the world of his proud accomplishment.

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My Friends, the Witches

Posted August 2, 2012 By John C Wright

Since at least one witch who (to judge from the comment) knows less about witchcraft than I do had the temerity to question my qualifications to report what it is that neopagans believe, it behooves me to produce my credentials, such as they are.

Because of the diversity of pagan belief and neopagan belief, the writer (me) was careful to mention and to emphasize that I was only speaking of the Witches I know personally, namely: a friend from lawschool I used to live with, whose coven and family I visit, at whose pagan marriage ceremony I was one of the grooms; another friend from lawschool; yet another school friend, a pretty young witch who used to share a house with my family; and a sickly Lesbian neighbor who was cruelly thrown out of her house onto the street. After the Commonwealth of Virginia took her children away, and I invited her and her nonboyfriend and her cat to live in my basement rent-free for several months.

The claim that I don’t know what I am talking about is hard to support. At one point in my life, I knew more witches and more intimately than I knew Christians, and I mean we lived under one roof, saw each other daily.

(I am happy to report that the pretty young witch has since broken her charming wand and drowned her books, married a fine upstanding young man, and been baptized into the Catholic Church. She left behind her cat, which I assume was a familiar, to spend the rest of its days with us. And at least one of the witches to whom we extended charity came to church service with us to express thanks. Her cat, which I also assume is a familiar, is also still with us.)

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Wednesday is Chik-Fil-A Day

Posted August 1, 2012 By John C Wright

Unfortunately, I spent my lunch money for this week going to Chik-Fil-A yesterday. So if you want me to go to eat anti-bullying-thug chicken sandwich today, you will have to put seven dollars into my my tip jar (see the tip button to the right).

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