John C. Wright's Blog, page 115
October 13, 2012
Voting Yourself Out of Work
What is the crucial issue of the current election?
Hint: it is not about borrowing money from the Red Chinese to fund roughly five percent of the nonprofit yet multimillion dollar Children’s Television Workshop.
Originally published at John C. Wright's Journal. Please leave any comments there.
Paterson’s Field Guide to the Left
I have written many posts about how to recognize a Leftist in the wild or whom I mean by the word ‘Leftist’, but I will give a brief summation here. Because it is a brief summation, it is sadly inaccurate.
The Left is a coalition rather than an organization, by which I mean, there is no one center, no single guiding principle except their opposition God, to reason, to reality, most particularly to the realities of economics.
No one Leftist believes all parts of the Leftist doctrine because no one can or would. They pick and choose. What they are picking and choosing is which part of reality they want to deny.
Originally published at John C. Wright's Journal. Please leave any comments there.
October 12, 2012
Science Hatred in Science Fiction
Time for an anecdote:
When I was young, in the days before STAR WARS when only a small and happy band of what are now called geeks read science fiction, I actually believed the propaganda recited by such figures as Robert Heinlein and Isaac Asimov that the science fiction readership was smarter, more interested in ideas, more insightful than the general public.
Several things diminished my faith in that bit of flatter over the years. Once was a science fiction convention where I served on a panel with some gray haired member of the old guard, a fan from the days of John W Campbell Jr.
The topic of abortion came up. I asked him only about the scientific facts of the question without inquiring into his moral stance. I asked him, for example, if the “fetus” (his terminology, not mine. He did not know that the word refers to a stage of development, not to a species of organism) were alive. He said no. The fetus is potentially alive, not actually alive.
He did not know the scientific definition of life every High School student knows. I forbore from asking him how the allegedly nonliving organism managed to grow, etc.
I asked him if the fetus had an XX or XY chromosome pair? In other words, was the fetus definitely male or female?
He said no. A fetus with XX chromosomes was only potentially female. Biologically and scientifically speaking, the organism in question was as sexless as an amoeba.
I asked him if a organism is halfway out of the womb, let us say the lower half is out, but the upper half is still lodged in the birth canal, is the lower half sexual but the upper half sexless? Would the cells composing her sexual organs, for example, define her sex? But the brain cells in its brain did not?
At the moment when the organism was exactly halfway out of the womb, was the organism a nonliving fetus from the middle up, but a living human being from the middle down?
The conversation moved to another topic, and I did not get an answer to this question.
I also did not get a chance to ask him if he had flunked High School biology.
Originally published at John C. Wright's Journal. Please leave any comments there.
Well Said
Today seems to be my day for coming across men saying what I think more clearly than could I.
This time it is Princeton professor of politics Robert P. George:
Scientific premise: The life of a human being begins at conception, when the union of gametes brings into being a new organism–the embryo–that is both functionally and genetically complete and distinct. The embryo is a living member of the species Homo sapiens–a human being in the earliest stage of his or her natural development. The adult human being whom we know as Joe Biden, for example, is the same human being who, at earlier stages of his development, was a young adult, an adolescent, a child, an infant, a fetus, and an embryo. He developed by a gradual, gapless, and internally-directed process from the embryonic stage into and through the fetal, infant, child, and adolescent stages, and finally into adulthood, with his determinateness, unity, and identity intact. The living member of the human species that is the adult Joe Biden is the same living member of the species who many years ago was the embryonic Joe Biden. For confirmation of these biological facts, the place to look is not the Bible or the Catechism, but rather any modern work of human embryology or developmental biology. The Church holds that the embryo from the beginning is a distinct living member of the human species for the simple reason that it is an established matter of scientific fact.
Moral premise: Every human being possesses inherent dignity, and is equal in fundamental rights; all have an inalienable right to life and to the protection of the laws. No one is superior or inferior to others on account of age, size, location, stage of development or condition of dependency, just as no one is superior or inferior to others on account of race, sex, ethnicity, and the like. Just law, therefore, protects the rights of all, and anyone who supports the withdrawal of legal protection from some bears personal guilt for the grave injustice against them.
The Church has no special revelation pertaining to the scientific premise.
It holds that the moral premise is accessible to human reason on the basis of philosophical reflection, but also finds it confirmed in Scripture (especially Genesis 1:27) and the firm and constant tradition of the Church.
Joe Biden’s idea that the Church teaches that we are required merely “personally” to accept the teaching of the Church against unjust killing of the unborn and observe it in our private lives is absurd. The teaching of the Church is that we are required under strict obligations of justice to support the equal right to life of all. Otherwise, we ourselves stand condemned for injustice towards those whom we would expose to unjust killing. Any way you look at it, Biden is in violation of the teaching of the Church (as he would be if he were to say, “I personally would never kill a Hungarian, since the Church teaches that Hungarians are human beings with an equal right to life; but I favor laws that permit the killing of Hungarians”).
Ryan hit the nail on the head when he said that his position on abortion is based on science and philosophy as well as faith. It is. Biden, by contrast, ignored (or simply doesn’t understand) the science, got the philosophy all wrong, and misrepresented the teaching of the faith he claims as his own.
Originally published at John C. Wright's Journal. Please leave any comments there.
Saint Ambrose of Milan, Pray for Us
In the life of every writer and journalist comes that moment where someone else says just perfectly the thing you wanted to say. Fortunately, in the Information Age, you can just link to him, and ask your readers to read his post. In this case, it is Dr Marshall at Canterbury Tales:
http://cantuar.blogspot.com/2012/10/pontius-pilate-and-pro-abortion.html
In last night’s US Vice-Presidential debate, our Vice-President said that he was a faithful Catholic and that he personally believed that life begins at conception. However, he is pro-choice because he doesn’t want to impose his belief on other people.
What if Pontius Pilate said: “Me, personally, I believe you are the Messicanic Son of God. But I don’t want to impose that belief on the angry mobs outside. Sorry. You’re going to die.”
Or what if he said, “Me, personally, I believe Americans enslaving Africans is morally evil. But I don’t want to impose that belief on America. It’s a very emotional topic. Let’s allow each plantation owner decide for himself.”
Well said, sir. Well said.
Originally published at John C. Wright's Journal. Please leave any comments there.
October 11, 2012
The Triumph of the Trivial
Are you seriously taking about Big Bird? Talk ab0ut this, instead, thou mewling epitome of shallowness:
http://ordinary-gentlemen.com/blog/2012/10/kill-list-democracy/
Barack Obama has a kill list.
Its legal justification is a secret. Its contents are secret, too. You don’t get to see who’s on it. Nor do any members of Congress. Nor any federal judges. Basically no one does.
How does someone end up on it? Obama decides. He decides with a small group of people, all of whom hold their jobs at his pleasure.
Whatever methods they use, they’re secret, too. The evidence — you guessed it — is secret. If there even is any.
We don’t know much about the kill list, but we do know a few things. We know it can include American citizens. That’s already happened. We know it can include American citizens who are minors. That’s already happened, too.
My comment: I hope no one can possibly doubt my credentials as a warhawk only a hair’s breadth shy from being a blood-crazed berserker when it comes to advocating, in the strongest possible terms, a full, robust, wrathful world-wide war against the Jihad, and all who support it, tacitly or openly, foreign or domestic. I am in favor of a Crusade, for Christ’s sake!
So it is safe to say that I am far, far beyond the norm of what polite society is willing to contemplate when it comes to aggressive use of ugly, brutal force; nor have I any romantic illusions about the horrors and costs of war.
But assassinating American citizens, including a minor, without any legal process, death warrant, or writ of a magistrate?
That is a cost of war even I deem too high to pay. What profits it a nation to win a war and lose her soul?
This abrogates not only the Constitution, but the medieval Magna Carta, and all notion of the Rights of Man or Rule of Law. Even the victims of the Star Chamber, or the Terror of the French Revolution enjoyed the mockery of a mass trial: that was more legal process than this.
Both political parties support this practice, namely, assassination by fiat of American citizens deemed dangerous.
Neither political party would not dare support this practice unless you, the public, either tacitly supported it, or by your lack of public outcry, permitted it.
No doubt I would cast my vote for Mr Romney anyway, merely because the only alternative, a second term for Mr Obama, is tantamount to national suicide; but I solemnly assure you that I would cast such a vote with far fewer misgivings if Mr Romney publicly repudiated this abominable and unlawful practice, and vowed a return to what are ironically called the Laws of War.
Originally published at John C. Wright's Journal. Please leave any comments there.
National Suicide
Alan Silverman asks why Mr Obama getting a second term is tantamount to national suicide.
By good fortune, I happen to have written a short essay answering that exact question earlier this fortnight:
http://www.scifiwright.com/2012/09/what-is-this-election-about/
Now, keep in mind, that I could not in good conscience cast a ballot for Mr Obama even if I were convinced that his opponent would be the death of the Republic rather than he, for reasons I list here http://www.scifiwright.com/2012/09/for-the-undecided-catholic-voter/
But in this case, we need not reach the question of what the loyal partisan of conservatism thinks might be the wiser choice of political policy, nor reach the question of what the faithful Christian is and is not allowed to do according to the authentic moral teachings of the Magisterium. We need only deal with the question of survival.
American shall not go the way of Greece when she spends herself into oblivion. The economy of Greece I assume is less significant than the economy of Vermont. We shall not go the way of Spain. Spain I assume is economically equal to Washington State.
America shall fall as Rome fell, if there were no Byzantium to preserve our civilization, taking all the currencies of the world with us, and all the debts we owe the Chinese become worthless as a Continental.
We take the whole world with us when we go.
Originally published at John C. Wright's Journal. Please leave any comments there.
Superversive on Tolkienian Diction
By all means, if you have not read it already, read the latest offering by Tom Simon the Superversive, on the careful and brilliant use J.R.R. Tolkien made of diction, vocabulary, and style of speech both in dialog and description. I shall certainly have to reread the Trilogy again, keeping an eye out for the nuances mentioned.
http://superversive.livejournal.com/142478.html
As ever, the critics badly underestimated the craft and art which Tolkien’s generous genius lent to him.
Who else in our beloved genre has such a command of high voices and low? All Robert Heinlein characters talk like Heinlein, and all Jack Vance characters talk like phantasmagorical apparitions. Bradbury and LeGuin have real accomplishments in their poetic diction, but even they do not, I deem, command the same wide diapason of voice as Professor Tolkien.
Until the professional critics learn to read Tolkien without preconceptions and without the goad of their political agenda pricking them, until, in other words, they learn to read as little children, they will not enter into an understanding of why his is the best and rightfully best beloved novel of the Twentieth Century, and the novel most adroitly capturing the mood, motifs, melancholy and the dark concerns of the Twentieth Century.
Originally published at John C. Wright's Journal. Please leave any comments there.
October 9, 2012
Voyage to Venus by CS Lewis
I had the opportunity to reread PERELANDRA, the second in CS Lewis’ Space Trilogy. As I mentioned in my previous column on OUT OF THE SILENT PLANET, Lewis’ first in that trilogy, it is interesting to note the difference reading it as a youth compared to as a greybeard. I will report that the change is entirely favorable. As I grew, the book got bigger.
As with the previous article, I write for readers who have read the Space Trilogy, so spoilers abound. Wise readers will read the book before reading this essay. You are warned.
Originally published at John C. Wright's Journal. Please leave any comments there.
Good News for Geeks
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt announced on Sunday that it had acquired the United States rights to publish a previously unknown work by J. R. R. Tolkien, “The Fall of Arthur.” The book, set for publication in May, chronicles the last days of King Arthur and will be edited by Tolkien’s son Christopher, who will also provide commentary and notes. Tolkien, the author of “The Lord of the Rings,” died in 1973. This is the first new work by him to be unearthed since “The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrun” was released in 2009.
Originally published at John C. Wright's Journal. Please leave any comments there.
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