Archive for June, 2014

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God, Constitution, Sanity wins over Caesardolatry

Posted June 30, 2014 By John C Wright

Perhaps on another day I will read the opinion and give a balanced, professional, and lawyerly analysis of the ramifications. That is not for today. For today, we have a small jubilee, and shove a hemisphere of grapefruit painfully into the whimpering face of Caesar and the catamites of Caesar called the Press Corps.

The Hobby Lobby case was decided today with the only decision a sane Angloamerican Court ruling on American Constitutional principles could or should decide. What is astonishing and shameful is that this open-and-shut “Should Catholics Pay for the Abomination of Desolation?” case was decided both on narrow grounds and by a narrow margin. There are four Justices on the Supreme Court who are tone-deaf to the meaning of the First Amendment and the entire history of the English-speaking nation on this continent.

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Book Bomb! Boost the sales of Schlichter’s Conservative Insurgency

Posted June 30, 2014 By John C Wright

Join in the bombing! Today only! The Evil League of Evil needs your help!

http://monsterhunternation.com/2014/06/30/book-bomb-kurt-schlichters-conservative-insurgency/

Think of this as World War Z (the book, not the movie) only for libprogs instead of zombies.

I will ask the wife if I can afford to buy a copy. Read the remainder of this entry »

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Humor

Posted June 28, 2014 By John C Wright

Or prophecy. You decide.

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Christian Meets World: Interview with John C Wright

Posted June 28, 2014 By John C Wright

Yet another interview from your tireless author! This time on a Christian program about my conversion.

http://christianmeetsworld.com/how-john-c-wright-came-to-christ-cmw219/

 

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A Comment on Political Activism in Fairy Stories

Posted June 26, 2014 By John C Wright

A reader with the rural yet ovine name of Pastor asks:
‘

Cannot politics and religion and philosophy be elements of a story without that story being reduced to propaganda?

My comment:

I can speak for no other writer. In my stories political matters can crop up as elements of the plot or character development or mood or theme or background without there being an ulterior desire on my part to persuade my readers to join my political party.

I believe that in THE HERMETIC MILLENNIA your humble author describes quite a number of political and social arrangements quite unlike the free-market federalist Constitutional democratic-republicanism I personally favor, but with no purpose on my part to urge the reader to become a federalist rather than a warrior-aristocrat of the Emergency Eugenic Command, witch, iatrocrat, Simplifier, or drugged subject of the Conscript Mothers of the Natural Order of Man. I dismiss any critic who believes I portrayed these polities unsympathetically. Each was clearly shown to have advantages and drawbacks.

But I am a Christian, hence I regard God as the ultimate floor of reality, the one necessary being from which all contingent beings flow. If I am a faithful Christian, this one ultimate reality influences all lesser realities, and there is no neutral ground. Even something as lighthearted as a fight scene, I must decide if the characters act like pagan warriors or chivalrous knights, that is, with the romance of Christendom. Even a love scene must show love to be romantic, as a Christian sees love, or as situation of shameful weakness, erotic madness, or mutual exploitation, as various pagan and secular worldviews see love.

The Leftist for whom politics is the ultimate floor of being is an idolater, and makes power arrangements his personal little crappy god. It influences everything in his thought and life, and if left unchecked will eventually ruin his writing.

The Leftist who is a faithful Leftist only on their sabbath days, and otherwise ignores the business (and that would be the majority of Leftists) can write a perfectly passable story about space pirates kidnapping space princesses without any hint of politics, to the satisfaction of all involved. He will write his love scenes with romance and his fight scenes with chivalry without noticing or caring about the origin of these Christian cultural artifacts. He will not think of them as particularly Christian, merely as part of the moral atmosphere and cultural background of his society. He will not notice the incongruity between his art and his philosophy.

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The Wright Perspective: On Virtue

Posted June 26, 2014 By John C Wright

My latest is up at EveryJoe’s. Because I complained, there are now fewer ads for porn stars on my page there.

http://www.everyjoe.com/2014/06/25/politics/lefts-twisted-perspective-virtue/

In two senses of the word it is absurd for Leftists to spread the idea, or Conservatives to entertain the idea, that the Left somehow occupy the moral high ground rather than, say, a moral sewage sump. It is absurd in the sense of being logically incoherent; and absurd in the sense of being sufficiently risible to provoke the grim mouth of Hell itself to laughter.

Because of their rejection of the idea of truth, even Leftists who might otherwise admire virtue must oppose it and promote vice. Allow me to explain.

A conservative will assume men are imperfect, or, to use the correct term, Fallen. He says that the guilt we feel when we sin is because we fall short of the standard virtue sets, and therefore we must try ever harder, with the help of good laws and good customs, to achieve virtue. Some conservatives say this is the point of civilization.

A progressive will assume men are always growing more perfect. He says the guilt we feel is a hindrance to happiness, if not a psychological disease. Therefore we must try ever harder to abolish taboos and guilt complexes and hang up, that is, to eliminate modesty, decency, shame, and lower the standards of virtue. The progressive dismisses traditional standards of virtues as being meaningless (hence the word “taboo”) or unhealthy (“guilt complexes”) or irrational (“hang up”). The elimination of virtue is to be done with the help of social engineering by ever more intrusive experts granted ever more intrusive powers over our lives, eliminating law and custom and replacing it with experts armed with arbitrary powers. Some progressives say this is the point of progress.

In sum, the conservative think we should avoid guilt by adhering to a standard of acting virtuously; the progressive thinks we should eliminate the guilt by eliminating the standards, and then acting in any way we damned well please, and the consequences are someone else’s worry.

Now, I have made an outrageous assertion: not that Leftists are indifferent to virtue, but are openly hostile to virtue.

Outrageous, perhaps, but there is no difficulty in proving the point…

Read, as they say, the rest

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The Evil Queen and Catholic Communion

Posted June 26, 2014 By John C Wright

I have been wondering about this topic myself a great deal recently. I am more than delighted to hear this anecdote:

Over at Larry Correia’s Monster Hunter Nation (http://monsterhunternation.com/2014/06/24/gary-oldman-likes-the-double-standard-word-police-about-as-much-as-i-do/#comment-68911) a commenter named KHorn writes:

 

True story: my daughter was in school with Pelosi’s grandson from K-8th grade at a Catholic school. The Tuesday before Thanksgiving was grandparents’ day and when my daughter was in 3rd grade Pelosi was in for that day. Because of the increased attendance at the mass, they brought in Father Charlie who was retired and only slightly younger than Methuselah (he was always there for the Christmas Eve vigil as well). When it came time for communion she was in the line where Father Charlie was providing the host. When she came up, he refused to give it to her because of her stand on abortion and told her she was not within the teachings of the Church. One of the younger priests ultimately provided her communion, but I still cherish the look on her face as Father Charlie admonished her.

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Political Activism in Fairy Stories

Posted June 25, 2014 By John C Wright

A reprint of an article from 2007. I post it again because while the specifics of the discussion between Mr VanderMeer and Mr Baker may or may not be any longer of interest, the general point eternally recurs:

*   *   *

The well-regarded Jeff VanderMeer writes, with honest insight, that his youthful theory about writing, namely, that it should be free from reference to current events, free from political activism, was not bourn out in his growth as a writer.
http://www.emcit.com/emcit125.php#Politics
He says that on a subconscious level, his fiction did not become vivid unless he wrote about the effects of dictatorship, war, colonialism, the erosion of personal liberty; all topics touching on politics. To eliminate politics entirely from his stories would have the effect of making them too stylized, mannered and artificial.
He concludes that politics has a place in fiction, including fantasy, but he stops short of saying a relevance to current politics is necessary for fiction. Art can still be done for art’s sake.
… I haven’t yet answered the question I posed before: Is it important for fantasy, or fiction generally, to be relevant in this way? The answer is a resounding, No, it isn’t. The instinctual idea I had as a teen and young adult about Art for Art’s sake, the idea that character and situation are paramount, that some truths transcend politics — that’s all valid.
R. Scott Bakker writes a rebuttal of this last sentence of Mr. VanderMeer, and says that an absence of politics shows a lack of curiosity, or perhaps a lack of insight.
http://www.emcit.com/emcit127.php#Politics

I say perhaps because I cannot interpret him with certainty.

His means of expressing himself are droll, and so I here quote him at length. Make of this what you will:

… If every aspect of our lives is political in some way, and “truths” are one of those aspects, doesn’t that mean, contrary to VanderMeer’s resounding assertion, that no truths transcend politics? Isn’t VanderMeer trying to eat his cake and have it too?

Sure he is. The important question to ask is why.

When you teach something like Popular Culture, as I did not so very long ago, the first thing you need to overcome is the common intuition that most commercial cultural products are examples of a magical thing called “Entertainment Pure and Simple” — what is essentially the mass market version of “Art for Art’s Sake.” For instance, how could Professional Wrestling or Andromeda or Hockey or American Idol 5 possess a complicated political subtext? Surely these harmless pastimes are “simple,” unblemished by the political mire we see on the nightly News.

Well, if you think anything is simple, you’re the victim of an out and out illusion… Everything is more complicated than it seems, trust me. The only thing that makes anything seem “simple” is the limitations of our particular perspective…That’s why we once thought the Earth was the motionless centre of the universe.
He goes on in like vein for a while, ending with
So why did VanderMeer pull his horse up short so close to the finish line? Why does a part of him remain stuck in his teenage perspective believing that some truths do transcend politics, that something, anything, can be for its own sake?
He ran out of questions.
The esteemed Mr. VanderMeer, showing more courtesy and craft than I possess, met this criticism by penning an amusing bit of dialog with an Evil Monkey, who makes sufficient ridicule of the dumb pomposity of “He ran out of questions” that it would be painting the rose for me to add anything further.

But I cannot resist pointing out the logic: Mr. Bakker’s position contradicts itself in two ways.

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Progress Report

Posted June 25, 2014 By John C Wright

Over at Vox Day’s website, a reader named Brad Andrews posted a question for me:


“It would be nice to have some indication of the status of future efforts in your series, especially the Count to a Trillion one. I could not find anything specific when I looked around earlier.”

As of the time of this writing, the first three books are in print: COUNT TO A TRILLION, THE HERMETIC MILLENNIA, JUDGE OF AGES.

The next volume, ARCHITECT OF AEONS, is sitting on the editor’s desk, awaiting his corrections, revisions, advice. He will send it back to me after the copy editor redpencils it. Months will pass. The publisher will send me galley proofs. Months will pass. I am not sure when the schedule for publication is.

The next volume THE VINDICATION OF MAN, currently is on my desk, and has been stalled at chapter four for roughly seven months while I worked on other projects or stared idly at drifting clouds, or skipped nude on tiptoe through floral meadows, flabby belly bobbing energetically albeit uncouthly, plucking the scented blooms, chasing the errant butterfly, and singing arias, to spend the evening in the drunk tank at the local constabulary.

The final volume COUNT TO INFINITY exist only as an outline and a phantom bubble of daydreams, images, hints and notes.

The publisher, despite all entreaties, obdurately refuses to print the words TO BE CONTINUED at the end of each volume, leading the unwary bookbuyer to believe the apparent sudden death of my unkillable hero in the midst of his misery is, in fact, the postmodern ending of the story. Imagine what the readers of FELLOWSHIP OF THE RING would have thought if the orc attack that scatters the fellowship were presented as the end of the story, or, better, the attack by the giant spider, apparent death, and capture by the enemy of Frodo at the end of THE TWO TOWERS.

“Though see if you can keep them from raising the price of the next book even more. Each book in that series is about $4 more than the one before. I guess they figure they will hook you….”

As a Christian I am forbidden to indulge in the dark and dread arts by which one might summon up Moloch or great Dragon from the infernal night older than all worlds. Lacking such impressive yet unlawful necromantic powers, I have no influence whatsoever on the publisher’s pricing decisions.

You should not be asking me, but the reverse. Prices are set by the buying decisions of the public: I should be asking you to lower my asking price by buying more of my wares.

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Now at Number 2 in Hard SF

Posted June 24, 2014 By John C Wright

This is pretty good for the first day of publication, eh?

AAAAND, I was mentioned in Instapundit! http://pjmedia.com/instapundit/190645/

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Stillbrave Charity and CITY BEYOND TIME

Posted June 23, 2014 By John C Wright

Metachronopolis is the golden city beyond time. Ruled by the Masters of Time, who can travel freely throughout the multitudinous time lines of Man’s history, the city is a shining society of heroes and horrors. For the arrogant Masters, who steal famous men and women out of the past and bring them to the eternal city for their amusement, are not only beyond time, but beyond remorse and retribution too. 

CITY BEYOND TIME: Tales of the Fall of Metachronopolis is John C. Wright’s mind-bending and astonishingly brilliant take on time travel. In making use of a centuries-spanning perspective similar to his highly-regarded  AWAKE IN THE NIGHT LAND, Wright expertly weaves a larger tale out of a series of smaller ones. Part anthology and part novel, CITY BEYOND TIME is fascinating, melancholy, frightening, and a true masterpiece of story-telling.

As you can probably imagine, we are very pleased to be able to announce that John C. Wright’s latest book is available today on Amazon in Kindle format and at Castalia House in EPUB format. Featuring a cover by the inimitable Kirk DouPonce, the book consists of six of the aforementioned tales, which, in a manner more convoluted than I can possibly hope to summarize here, collectively tell of the fate of the shining city of Metachronopolis. At 167 pages, it is a relatively short book, but one that you will almost surely find yourself reading more than once as Wright expertly explores the paradoxes inherent in the logic of time travel.

As Wright’s fans have come to expect,  CITY BEYOND TIME is more than just an intelligently entertaining story. It is also a thoughtful musing on the nature of power and its corrupting temptations. But no matter how deep the darkness runs, it can never do more than obscure the light.

And this is more than a book announcement, it is also a charity drive. About a month ago, Mr. Wright contacted me about the possibility of bringing some attention to a charity he wished to support. The charity, called Stillbrave, was started by a Christian man who lost his daughter to cancer. Mr. Wright and his wife requested that half his royalties for the first month’s sales be donated to Stillbrave, which we agreed to do. Castalia House also agreed to match his donation.

So, if you buy CITY BEYOND TIME between now and July 23rd, about half the money Castalia receives will go to Stillbrave, in the name of Mr. and Mrs. John C. Wright. Obviously, you can simply donate directly to the charity, but if you also wish to honor Mr. Wright’s efforts, the most efficient means of doing so will be to purchase the book through Castalia House. If you have not yet read Mr. Wright’s work, you may be interested to know that we are giving away his AWAKE IN THE NIGHT today and tomorrow on Amazon.

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On the Sexual Nature of Man

Posted June 20, 2014 By John C Wright

Here below is a republication of a long essay I wrote back in 2009 under the general title Apologia Pro Opere Sui.  At the request of more than one reader, I have stripped out the specific comments related only to the event that provoked it, in order to frame the argument in more general terms.

*   *   *

As a faithful Roman Catholic who was an atheist for all his adult life (and most of his childhood) I occupy an interesting position in the ongoing debates concerning the social turmoil caused by sexual unchastity, particularly that unchaste practice which issues forth from what is delicately called same-sex attraction.

One is tempted automatically to assume that atheists should support or ought to support the sexually liberated position that declares all sexual acts licit between two or more consenting adult partners in their right wits. One is tempted to assume that no rational grounds to condemn sexual libertinism exist, aside from the dogmas and supernatural reasoning of Christian theology.

This temptation must be resisted at all costs, since not only is it untrue, it is foolish, for the drives the conversation out of the realm of natural and logical reasons to avoid sexual immorality and into the realm of the supernatural and theological. Once the issue is falsely labeled as a theological one, it is falsely libeled as an issue where all discussion is offlimits for being a personal matter of irrational faith, then the topic is ejected forthwith from the public forum.

Allow me, then, to give a personal account of how it was that I, resting only on my human reason and with no particle of loyalty to or faith in any theological speculations (which, at the time, I frankly dismissed as egregious and base superstition), was drawn step by step against my will and very much against my inclinations away from the comfortable libertine and libertarian opinions of my youth to the conclusion that the sex act is licit only within marriage, that unchastity is illicit, and that unnatural sexual acts are illicit as well as unnatural.

There are perfectly natural and worldly reasons for a rational atheist to support the Christian position on sexual morality. The following argument shows that the Christian position is the only logical position to hold, given the realities of human nature.

One a personal level, I did not change my conclusions about sexual morality because I became a Christian. The cause and effect was the other way. After cold logic lead me to the conclusions that the only logical position to hold just so happened to be the one held by my (at that time) hated enemies the Christians, I began to look at their egregious and base superstition with a less hostile gaze.

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Attracting Flies with Dung

Posted June 19, 2014 By John C Wright

A reader with the addictive name of Concept Junkie poses a difficult question concerning my articles over at EveryJoe:

Your language, Mr. Wright, in this series of articles is very blunt, as your rhetoric usually is. Now, I’m the last person to want to be seen as promoting anything in the same hemisphere as PC, and I’m usually pretty blunt myself, but while the content of these columns is excellent and I’m enjoying them thoroughly, given that the intended and actual audience is not the same as for your books or your blog, what are your thoughts, if I may ask, on the idea of how to “gather more flies”?

The purpose of the current series of articles was stated in the opening paragraph of last week’s article: to convince Conservatives that the continual accusation that they are stupid, foolish, or uneducated is not merely false but the opposite of the truth. These are intended as a pep talk for our team. It is not intended as persuasive speech to convince a Leftist to question his faith.

However, your question was more general than that: you are asking in general how to evangelize.

My answer is twofold. My first answer is that gentlemen do not concern themselves with the opinions of the world, since the world is filled with folly. The Christian is even less interested in worldly opinion than the gentleman. Once he realizes that he lives in the environs of the City of Destruction, a Christian pilgrim sticks his fingers in his ears and runs toward the Promised Land, crying out “Life! Life! Eternal life!” Read the remainder of this entry »

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The Leftward Death-Spiral

Posted June 19, 2014 By John C Wright

The Evil League of Evil smites again. I am too delicate of constitution to repeat the details, since the writer involved, Mr. John Scalzi, is one who has treated me with respect in the past, and I would wish to return the favor if I could.

Despite this, my loyalty to the Evil League of Evil requires me to draw attention to the odd phenomenon of leftwing thinkers of reacting to public humiliation by redoubling their efforts to humiliate themselves.

There is a normal psychological mechanism, something like an inner ear, which allows someone to correct himself when his words and thoughts become imbalanced. The social cues, or the whisper of conscience or reason, tells a man he has said something too extreme or too absurd, and that his thought no longer reflect reality, and so he reverses course, modifies his position, admits of some exception, apologizes and puts himself right.

This mechanism, in those poor souls afflicted by the political neurosis of Leftwingnuttery is jammed or, worse, is set in reverse. When they discover themselves to be in an unbalanced position, instead of shifting their center of mass and returning to true, their psychological inner ear tells them their fault is that they are not tipping far enough, and so they throw themselves headlong.

You may learn the details in the words of my esteemed colleague, Sarah Hoyt. I here quote only a modicum of her superb wisdom:

I have, some years ago, identified the process by which left-leaning institutions die. Someone had asked me why an sf editor I will not name, having killed three magazines, got given yet another to kill, and why each magazine was successively more leftist. This was compared to the process by which news magazines and media when in trouble because too leftist for the general public, go hard left just before they die. (Also known as the left-leaning-death-roll.)

Because I was in a field where this (then)worked, I had to explain to the people I was talking to that this happens because in fields that are 90% or more left, this works. See, if your magazine/newspaper/tv station goes under because you’re incompetent, no one is going to give you another job. But if your magazine/newspaper/tv station goes under because you’re “too far left” then the left – aka the rest of your field. Aka those who give awards and jobs – perceive you as a hero, suffering for your convictions, and promptly give you another job. So, if you’re an incompetent idiot, and your business is failing, your best way to cover it up and assure your survival in the field, is to run as far left as fast as you can. This has been trained in at the back of the brain of most people in the media and entertainment by DECADES of this strategy working just fine.

So now that businesses (solo and corporate) in those fields are failing at record levels, everyone is racing to the left as fast as they can, oblivious to the fact that they’re all failing together and no one will be able to give them jobs. (Though frankly to be fair, they can still give them awards.)

What did you expect of Marxists? Contact with reality? If they had that, they wouldn’t be Marxists, a theory that requires you to be a blind fool who believes in wishcasting.

Read the whole thing here: http://accordingtohoyt.com/2014/06/19/the-roll-and-flail/

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The Mistake of Believing in Americans

Posted June 18, 2014 By John C Wright

Today’s quote is from Mark Steyn: http://www.steynonline.com/6417/harmless-as-an-enemy-treacherous-as-a-friend The words below are his, quoting Prince Sirik:

* * *

Forty years ago, as another American client regime crumbled, the US Ambassador sportingly offered asylum to a former Cambodian prime minister, Prince Sirik Matak. His response is worth quoting:

I thank you very sincerely for your letter and for your offer to transport me towards freedom. I cannot, alas, leave in such a cowardly fashion. As for you and in particular for your great country, I never believed for a moment that you would have this sentiment of abandoning a people which has chosen liberty. You have refused us your protection and we can do nothing about it. You leave us and it is my wish that you and your country will find happiness under the sky. But mark it well that, if I shall die here on the spot and in my country that I love, it is too bad because we are all born and must die one day. I have only committed the mistake of believing in you, the Americans.

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