Archive for September, 2014

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When Christianity Recedes, Slavery Returns

Posted September 30, 2014 By John C Wright

Robert Oscar Lopez has an article over at The American Thinker everyone should read:

Children have an inalienable right to a mother and father, cannot be bought or sold, and are entitled to know their origins. Whether it is straight people or gay people using divorce, surrogacy, trafficking, or any other means to deny people these rights, I oppose it.

This is a teachable moment because it reveals a great deal about what makes the Human Rights Campaign tick. They’re after your kids, plain and simple; all their other issues are mere window dressing.

They have convinced themselves that gays are a tribe unto themselves, so their consuming goal is to populate the tribe so they don’t disappear.

Parenthood is their great white whale. They want to have children to love them and call them Mom and Dad. They need to get those children from you because biology prevents them from siring them naturally. Gentlemen readers, these folks are trying to find a way to get the sperm out of your testicles and into their laboratories; lady readers, these folks need to find a way to implant an embryo of their sperm in your womb, keep you obedient during the gestation, and take your baby away forever.

The main item on the gay lobby’s agenda is patently insane. People don’t generally want to let lesbians milk sperm out of their testicles. People don’t usually like the idea of gay men gestating babies in their wombs and then taking them away. (And no, “visitation” plans where these gamete donors get to see their progeny a few times a month are not a good arrangement; that stuff’s really creepy.)

And at least with me, these HRC lackeys cannot pull the old “are you saying my children are worth any less?” routine. Just because you control a human being doesn’t mean that’s your child. Even if someone is your child, criticizing you is not the same as insulting your child. This is basic, but somehow the HRC manages to whitewash the complexities. Despite all the choreographed photographs of happy gay couples with children, people generally do not like growing up and knowing that half of them was sold to a gay couple.

In America, a large segment of the population has been lulled into accepting same-sex parenting. Virtually everywhere else, there are roadblocks, as there should be. The European Court of Human Rights recently ruled that gay marriage is not a human right. The U.N. Human Rights Council recently voted to affirm the centrality of the family in international law, citing the Declaration of the Rights of the Child, whose seventh and ninth articles would seem to nullify any legal basis for same-sex parenting.
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SciPhi Journal #1! On Sale Now!

Posted September 29, 2014 By John C Wright

Buy yourself a copy now, and two or three for friends and family, of the journal devoted to science fiction and philosophy, two great elements that combine into wonder!

Issue #1 of the Sci Phi Journal is now available at: http://www.amazon.com/Sci-Phi-Journal-October-Philosophy-ebook/dp/B00NYWSP7Q/ and http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/480176

It includes an original Novellete from John C. Wright, The Ideal Machine, a tale of aliens from a distant star come to visit an old country church and offer our world a chance for the future.

The Goodreads page for Sci Phi Journal: Issue #1 is at https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/23277329-sci-phi-journal?ac=1

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SUPERVERSIVE: Storming the Moral High Ground

Posted September 29, 2014 By John C Wright

Sarah Hoyt hosts a significant announcement by my lovely and talented wife:

“Why can’t we have more stories that don’t involve poop?

“You know, good stories? No anti-heroes. No dour nihilism. No descriptions of gross stuff for no particular reason except to produce a mood we didn’t want to read anyway. Just…action, adventure, heroism, even perhaps a few…I realize this is going way out on a limb and no one else wants to read this but me but…good Christians, or something really outrageous like that.

“But not pious stories mind you. I’ve never found those entertaining. No stories where good guys are squeaky clean, and only very, very obviously evil people who cackle and have warts are allowed to use magic.

“Why can’t we have good stories and good messages. The dreary, depressed literary crowd have held the moral high ground for far too long, I think some people have forgotten that good stories can get there, too.”

“So you want good stories? Heroism? Christian values? What we need is a literary movement.”

There was a pause in the moving car.

“Why don’t we start one. Let’s storm the moral high ground!”
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What a Man!

Posted September 27, 2014 By John C Wright

S020847

I came across this article from about a year past:

I was at first baffled at this selection of what to me seems a rather handsome bit of advertising art portraying a rather cute and frankly desirable situation: a man with a loving wife and daughter.  He adorns the wife with jewels. She shows a becoming modesty upon being discovered by the daughter.

This picture, dear reader, is meant as scorn. This picture is an attempt to depict a nightmare of neanderthalish and hateful agape, unconditional love of man for woman, Christlike and self-forgetful love.

The hit piece is here: http://www.addictinginfo.org/2014/07/24/john-c-wright-sexism/

The original article of mine which the dwarf-hearted toad is too pusillanimous to link to is here: http://www.everyjoe.com/2014/07/16/politics/secret-to-the-most-mind-blowing-sex-ever/

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  • Foxfier posted on October 6, 2014
    The 1200 is way too late for what I'm talking about. More like: http://www.basictraining.org/print.php?nid=216 http://www.catholic.com/magazine/articles/do-not-break-a-bruised-reed Not enough time to look…
  • Carbonel posted on October 6, 2014
    Ahhh.... Not quite. From the OED Of an animal: tame, domesticated, docile; not fierce. (In early use esp. common in…
  • Tom Simon posted on October 1, 2014
    I believe it was hot choco the pajama wearing fool was drinking. If so, it gave sufficient justification for Chesterton’s…
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A Note on Book Pedigree

Posted September 27, 2014 By John C Wright

Do you remember the first book you read that opened the door to one of the major interests in your life?

For me, it was hearing a young blonde lawyer on the telly call the Europeans a race of cowards which the fathers of the American risked life and limb by sea storm, by starvation, and by Red savages to flee, that first made me believe that politics in the abstract had an interesting real world application. Her name was Anne Coulter. Thanks to her, I started listening to G. Gordon Liddy read the news on the radio.

It was Ayn Rand who first got me interested in politics in the abstract, since it was she who first argued to my satisfaction that morality and economics and politics were interrelated manifestations of the same thing. Her novels interested me, at that time, less than her nonfiction essays.

It was Ludwig von Mises, not Adam Smith, who first got me interested in economics, since it was he who first convinced me that economics was a legitimate branch of philosophy, and a science that could be studied rigorously, not a mere mass of bafflegab and opinion, as, for example, Keynesian so called economics is.

A.E. van Vogt, in his novel WORLD OF NULL A first persuaded me to study philosophy, by making it seem like a superpower: the use of reason to learn not only the truths of the universe but the Truth about mankind, and about oneself!

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Teddy Roosevelt’s Lion and Bear. Obama’s Bike Helmet.

Posted September 26, 2014 By John C Wright

Someone posted a link to this in the comments, and I wanted to emphasize and applaud this clear and even wonderful article. Hear, hear.

http://takimag.com/article/never_trust_anyone_who_hasnt_been_punched_in_the_face/

It begins thus:

Conservatives like to talk about the causes of Western Civilization’s downfall: feminism, loose morality, drug abuse, Christianity’s decline, reality TV. Blaming civilization’s downfall on lardy hagfish such as Andrea Dworkin is like a doctor diagnosing senility by an old person’s wrinkles. The fact that anyone listened to such a numskull is a symptom, not the cause, of a culture in decline. The cause of civilizational decline is dirt-simple: lack of contact with objective reality. The great banker-journalist (and founder of the original National Review) Walter Bagehot said it well almost 150 years ago:

History is strewn with the wrecks of nations which have gained a little progressiveness at the cost of a great deal of hard manliness, and have thus prepared themselves for destruction as soon as the movements of the world gave a chance for it.

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Judging the Judge of Ages

Posted September 26, 2014 By John C Wright

A review by Joseph Moore over at Yardsale of the Mind:

http://yardsaleofthemind.wordpress.com/2014/09/25/book-review-judge-of-ages/
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Vaunting

Posted September 25, 2014 By John C Wright

I read this comment by one Joshua over at Vox Day’s blog:

 http://voxday.blogspot.com/2014/09/the-ignorance-of-irreligious.html#c7569555299514107814

When I was young they told me to be reasonable and negotiate and not resort to violence. I stupidly believed them, and was instantly beset upon by bullies who would push me around and torment me. I tried reason and truth, but that doesn’t work at all.

Eventually I decided to rebel against authority and decided to lift weights, become strong and meet force with even greater force. Unsurprisingly, this worked immediately, as the beaten bullies helpless retreated bloodied and humiliated from my iron fists.

These Leftists have never had to fight. They come from soft comfortable environments run by nannies and other overprotective womenfolk, who frown on masculinity and teach their boys to be sissies who act like women.

It was written on a topic unrelated to this, but by an odd process of association, I was inspired to write the following:

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Unnatural and Perverse

Posted September 24, 2014 By John C Wright

This same thing happened to my stepmother. My stepbrother and sister were ages seven and four when the Dad up and left. She did not have her children taken from her, however.

 

Breaking the Silence: Redefining Marriage Hurts Women Like Me – and Our Children

http://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2014/09/13692/

Every time a new state redefines marriage, the news is full of happy stories of gay and lesbian couples and their new families. But behind those big smiles and sunny photographs are other, more painful stories. These are left to secret, dark places. They are suppressed, and those who would tell them are silenced in the name of “marriage equality.”

But I refuse to be silent.

I represent one of those real life stories that are kept in the shadows. I have personally felt the pain and devastation wrought by the propaganda that destroys natural families.

The Divorce

In the fall of 2007, my husband of almost ten years told me that he was gay and that he wanted a divorce. In an instant, the world that I had known and loved—the life we had built together—was shattered.

I tried to convince him to stay, to stick it out and fight to save our marriage. But my voice, my desires, my needs—and those of our two young children—no longer mattered to him. We had become disposable, because he had embraced one tiny word that had become his entire identity. Being gay trumped commitment, vows, responsibility, faith, fatherhood, marriage, friendships, and community. All of this was thrown away for the sake of his new identity.

Try as I might to save our marriage, there was no stopping my husband. Our divorce was not settled in mediation or with lawyers. No, it went all the way to trial. My husband wanted primary custody of our children. His entire case can be summed up in one sentence: “I am gay, and I deserve my rights.” It worked: the judge gave him practically everything he wanted. At one point, he even told my husband, “If you had asked for more, I would have given it to you.”

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Ayn Rand as Author

Posted September 24, 2014 By John C Wright

Let it be said at the outset that I have never been an Objectivist nor am I now a Libertarian, albeit, obviously, I share many of their aims. There is much in Ayn Rand’s philosophy I admire, and much I despise. She has the odd ability to write pages and pages of very insightful wisdom argued with almost Thomistic rigor and logic, and then to stagger like a screaming drunk into page after page of vituperation and nonsense based on an apparently inability to distinguish radically unalike concepts, such as selfishness versus self-interest, or altruism versus communism.

But this is neither here nor there when it comes to judging her as an artist. I am continually flabbergasted by those who say they either admire, or at least do not find offense with, her philosophy, but who think her novel writing trite or cardboard or boring or hectoring.

With all such condemnations, I disagree in the strongest terms. Ayn Rand is — and I say this without qualification — among the best novelists of the Twentieth Century. Those who surpass her in skill and craftsmanship perhaps can be counted on the fingers of one hand.

Ayn Rand was a better novelist than she was a philosopher, and she was the only philosopher worthy of that name since Kant, the only one to my knowledge who used logic to deduce moral truths, logic which she carried out with remorseless precision.

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Who is John Galt?

Posted September 23, 2014 By John C Wright

Mr. Obama will not speak to you tonight. His time is up. I have taken it over. You were to hear a report on the world crisis. That is what you are going to hear.

For twelve years, you have been asking: Who is John Wright? This is John Wright speaking. I am the man who loves his soul. I am the man who does not sacrifice his love or his values. I am the man who has deprived you of excuses and thus has destroyed your world, and if you wish to know why you are perishing — you, who dread knowledge — I am the man who will now tell you.

You have heard it said that this is an age of moral crisis. You have said it yourself, half in fear, half in hope that the words had no meaning. You have cried that man’s sins are destroying the world and you have cursed human nature for its unwillingness to practice the virtues you demanded. Since virtue, to you, consists of unreason, you have demanded more unreason at every successive disaster.

I just saw the final of the ATLAS SHRUGGED film trilogy, and my reaction to the movie is mixed. I give them high grades for their effort, for their loyalty to the original book. This film was made by fans of the book who understood its point. That is rare enough to be worth trumpeting.

I give them below average grades, however, for their execution. This was like a cheap, made-for-TV movie.

No one not a fan of the book is likely to go seen this film, or even know it is in theaters. Hollywood and the media seem to be in full blown ignore-the-pariah mode when it comes to ATLAS SHRUGGED.

The plot concerns the downfall of a corrupt and socialist future America which results when the capitalists, inventors, entrepreneurs and men of ambition all go on strike, leaving the people who call them exploiters free to be no longer exploited, which means, no longer employed.

The idea, to borrow a phrase from Margaret Thatcher, is to see what happens to socialists, of both the economic and the spiritual kind, when other peoples’ money runs out, as when these other people stop running the motor of the world.

The plot revolves around the love triangle between a beautiful female railroad executive named Dagny Taggart, and unhappily married steel magnate named Hank Reardon, and a superhuman philosopher-scientist and adventurer named Doc Savage.

Savage has been persuading the virtuous industrialists and self-made men to retreat his Fortress of Solitude hidden under a holographic forcefield in the Rocky Mountains; Dagny enters by mistake, her plane engine knocked out by the forcefield, and crashlands, is bruised, and while she recovers in Doc Savage’s house, gets a job as his housekeeper, and finds she must decide between this secret small world of those who think like her, and the outside world which is degenerating rapidly into socialist hellhole.

Let me discuss the good, the bad, and the ugly.

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How to Decipher a Book Review

Posted September 22, 2014 By John C Wright

 

Over at the Vox Day website, one Bextor Fenwick asks a really good question:

I was looking to get my hands on a physical book of Wright’s. The only book they do carry is “Count to a Trillion”. But, the average review rating for that book on amazon is not all that great. So, because of that I’ve been holding off on buying it. However, you made some very favorable comments about that book. Why do you think it didn’t fare so well with the reviews on amazon??

Here is my theory, which should surprise no one. The book fared well with those whose tastes, preconceptions, worldview and attitudes it pleased, and fared poorly with those it displeased. That raises a deeper question of how to discover the tastes of the reviewer, what he is looking for in a book.

Please look at what the reviewers, positive and negative, found good and bad in the book, and try to guess whether their tastes and predispositions match yours.
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A Cover Update

Posted September 22, 2014 By John C Wright

An announcement from my publisher:

A cover update

We had a bit more trouble getting John C. Wright’s latest masterpiece out the door than usual due to the cover artist being temporarily knocked out of commission. Since the book was already late, JartStar stepped in and colorized the low-res greyscale comp that we had, which was why the initial cover was not quite up to our usual standard. Fortunately, the artist is back up to speed and last week he sent us the final image, which has now been incorporated into the ebooks on both the Castalia store and Amazon. If you wish to update your ebook accordingly, I believe Amazon does it automatically if your Kindle is set to permit it, while if you have purchased ONE BRIGHT STAR TO GUIDE THEM from the Castalia store, you already have the ability to download it again via the original download link provided. If, for some reason, it doesn’t work, email me from the same email you used to purchase it and I’ll send it to you.

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Praise for ONE BRIGHT STAR TO GUIDE THEM

Posted September 20, 2014 By John C Wright

Forgive me for repeating a reader’s praise of my work, but if you recall my theory which I recently posted that the proper motive for writing is not fame nor money nor the applause of crowds, but merely to touch the heart of that one reader one might never know who knows what your work really means.

Here is a reader for whom I am happy to have done my work.

You may keep the applause of worlds for more popular books. I am writing for this one, and for anyone willing and able to be for me the one, the only one, for whom I write:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/review/R1OVH7X9F93LMV/ref=cm_cr_pr_rvw_ttl?ASIN=B00N9760GO

Bright Star,” indeed

 

It was very difficult for me to sort through my feelings in reading One Bright Star to Guide Them, for it is a complex book wrapped in a simple premise.

Many of us have read Narnia, watched Star Wars, or heard some other adventure story where the average joe hero is plucked from his simple and boring life to be taken on A Quest, usually taken out of his world (as was the case with Narnia) and thrust into an unknown environment to fight some evil or right some wrong. It’s a tale as old as the first heroic myths.

Ah, but what happens when the Quest ends? Lewis touched on it – very briefly – in The Last Battle. 3 of the 4 children from The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe return to Narnia, but one sister got too wrapped up in the trappings of being “an adult.” She chose to forget. It quite probably was the greatest tragedy of that series. But that’s all we get about the Pevensies’ time after Narnia.

Mr. Wright takes us on the most bizarre of hero’s quests: the one that takes place AFTER the quest, and that takes place in the “real world.” In so doing, he brings back a bit of the magic of Narnia and – much like Lewis’ Chronicles were a parable to point the young reader to Jesus – One Bright Star reminds us that there is hope when youth has faded, innocence lost, and the black-and-white morality of a child seems but a memory. There is hope that a man can find “childlike faith” and find again the magic and joy of belief. That restoration of faith and hope is why I marked the book 5 stars; because it took me back to my First Love and reminded me of that otherworldly joy I felt when reading Lewis’ timeless novels.

ADDED LATER: I seem to have a second ‘one reader’. Here is shining praise indeed from another reviewer:

‘Fairy tales do not tell children the dragons exist. Children already know
that dragons exist. Fairy tales tell children the dragons can be killed.’ G.K. Chesterton

I will admit to being a John C. Wright fanboy, and that I regard him as the finest prose stylist writing in SF/Fantasy today. With those biases admitted out front, I must say that this is Wright’s best piece of work I’ve yet read. John C. Wright is either taking dictation directly from Elfland, acting as Oberon and Titania’s personal scribe, being visited by the ghosts of Lewis, Tolkien and T. H. White, who whisper stories to him when the moon is full, or he has mastered the children’s fantasy story like no one since Madeline L’Engle, I don’t know which. Instead of his usual baroque filigreed prose, the writing in this story is stripped down, simpler, and yet retains the ability to imply depths and heights without directly glimpsing them. Wright weaves a tale of what happens after the quest is over, that is just as good as a story of the quest itself. For anyone who loves Fantasy, this is a must read. It will transport you to that far green country of your youth, where there was nothing more important on a Saturday afternoon than whether or not Frodo destroyed the ring, or if the Witch was defeated, or the rightful King Crowned.

Mr. Wright is the best in the field and fully deserving of the honorific of grandmaster. Mr Wright, I do not know how you do it, but you have brought us a story from the uttermost West, bathed in the light of the Two Trees.

Thank you.

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Nachtritter

Posted September 20, 2014 By John C Wright

I am trying to concoct a German sounding name for a group in my next novel.

Nachtnebeldunkelritterbruderchaft.

It is supposed to mean the Brotherhood of the Knights of the Night-dark Mist.

Does it? Anyone here speak German?

Their shorter form is Nachtritter, which I am hoping means Night-rider (or, literally Night-knight)

Anyone? Bueller? Anyone?

 

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