John C. Wright's Blog, page 122
August 1, 2012
Wednesday is Chik-Fil-A Day
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).
Originally published at John C. Wright's Journal. Please leave any comments there.
July 31, 2012
Neopaganism and No Starch
This article is another reason why I must remember to send my dues to the Mark-Shea-John-Wright Mutual Admiration Society, aside from the fact that I am one of two members and founders.
What puzzles me about neo-paganism is why it wastes all this time inventing a fake synthetic paganism based on some suburbanites’ supposings about what esoteric sects did centuries ago, when there are lots of real pagans running around in Asia and the global south they could just go join without all this laborious re-inventing of an almost entirely fictional wheel. The focus of the neo-pagans is on pretend recreations of ancient euro-paganism, based on fictionalized history , coupled with modern notions of relativism and libertinism that would have often baffled and horrified many ancient pagans (who were by no means a monolith). So when you consult an actual pagan rooted in an actual historic pagan tradition like, say, the Dalai Lama on things like sexual mores, he sounds disappointingly more like Pope Benedict than like some sexually liberated votress of a goddess from a Joss Whedon fantasy universe dressed like a Frank Frazetta heroine.
Mr Shea agrees with Mr Chesterton and Mr Lewis about paganism, and about how what is called “Paganism” in these days is a sacramentalized liberalism. I have an example as well. Let me quote from Chesterton and Lewis before offering my example.
Originally published at John C. Wright's Journal. Please leave any comments there.
July 27, 2012
Superheroines and Sex Objects
This is not the article I sat down to write.
Laura Hudson of Comics Alliance wrote an article in 2011 called “The Big Sexy Problem with Superheroines and Their ‘Liberated Sexuality’” http://www.comicsalliance.com/2011/09/22/starfire-catwoman-sex-superheroine/#ixzz21lIdypBQ denouncing the tasteless, fetishistic, and loveless way superheroines are portrayed in comics these days.
At first I thought the irony of an avowed feminist objecting to the objectification of women was ironic, if not funny in a pathetic way, and I felt that emotion so horrible that only the Germans have a word for it: Schadenfreude —pleasure derived from the misfortunes of others.
In this case, since I am not as horrible as a German, the pleasure was in seeing the justice of seeing the feminist chickens coming home to roost.
My first reaction was, simply, that a woman whose philosophy is to celebrate vice in women as strength, and to celebrate the degradation of women as equality, deserves to see what a horrid thing she wishes for, once her wish comes true. My reaction, on behalf of all conservatives everywhere, was to say I told you so.
I thought: you cannot say you did not see this coming. We warned you and you ignored us and laughed at us. Who is laughing now?
But upon reflection my Germanic laughter choked and my heart melted, for I pondered the magnitude of what she was talking about, the grievous insult done her, and I join her in her righteous anger.
These comic writers repaid her lifelong loyalty with the back of their collective hand. They betrayed her. If this is cosmic justice, it is too Draconian for me.
So I am writing not to argue with her position (well, not just to argue) but also to salute her and tell you, my dear readers, to go read her article from last year. Because she is right.
I thought about reposting the pictures she uses as examples here so that you would see that she is not exaggerating in her claim, but even I, who delights in cheesecake images of toon women, particularly of the Catwoman, even I who am famed for my philistine tastes, even I am repelled by them.
Originally published at John C. Wright's Journal. Please leave any comments there.
The War on Women
The woman in this case is the Holy Mother Church.
William, Paul and James Newland and their sister, Christine Ketterhagen, who together own Hercules Industries, have no right to conduct their family business in a manner that comports with their Catholic faith.
The federal government can and will compel them to either surrender their business or to engage in activities the Catholic faith teaches are intrinsically immoral.
This is exactly what President Barack Obama’s Justice Department told a U.S. district court in a formal filing last week.
Never before has an administration taken such a bold step to strip Americans of the freedom of conscience — a right for which, over the centuries, many Christian martyrs have laid down their lives, and which our Founding Fathers took great care to protect in a First Amendment that expressly guarantees the free exercise of religion.
Read the whole thing here:
http://townhall.com/columnists/terryjeffrey/2012/07/25/doj_family_cant_run_their_business_as_catholics
Originally published at John C. Wright's Journal. Please leave any comments there.
July 26, 2012
On Honesty
A reader whom I respect has hurled his gauntlet at me. Allow me to show that respect by answering at length, and answer every point seriatem:
In reference to my post here Joetxxx says
I understand, and, indeed, even respect your position, but I cannot back down from mine. Your entire argument pivots on giving the word “propaganda” the most invidious possible connotation.
This is a misstatement of the argument. Even if the word “propaganda” is taken in its less deceptive connotation, to mean merely the propagation of a partisan point of view, disguising propaganda as journalism, which by its nature professes to be objective, is a deception.
Hence, opinion journalism on the opinion page can be honest propaganda, but when placed on the news pages, the same omissions and slants when directed to the purpose not of informing the readers but of propagating to them without their conscious knowledge a doctrine become a species of deception.
My argument does not pivot on this point.
Originally published at John C. Wright's Journal. Please leave any comments there.
Upward, Not Northward
A reader overhearing our conversation about FLATLAND asks: “What are you guys talking about? Is this some fantasy series I have overlooked?”
It is a rare pleasure to be able to introduce a literary treasure to one unaware of it! We are talking about the grandfather of all fantasy, or, at least, of mathematical fantasies. It is a classic, and I would urge every science fiction writer to add it once to his reading list.
FLATLAND A Romance of Many Dimensions by A Square is a very slim volume from 1884, the days before the readership was constrained by the categories of fantasy and mainstream, and so it is hard to categorize. Some call it a satire, but I would call it fantastical, both in its speculations and in its flights of fancy.
Originally published at John C. Wright's Journal. Please leave any comments there.
July 25, 2012
Against the Proposition that all Propositions are Propaganda
An another blog lost in the bogs of the Internet, we read these words:
“There isn’t a form of media on this earth that isn’t biased. As George Orwell said, all art is propaganda. And good journalism is art in the same manner of Ulysses and the statue of David. It exists to reveal truths about the world and influence people to think, believe and/or feel certain things.”
There was a longer argument attached, some typical PC blather about Fox News, which is, for some reason unclear to me, a PC croquemitaine. I did not read past the paragraph above quoted.
Need I interpret this for anyone? This is the voice of Nihilism, the blatant denial that truth exists or that loyalty to truth is commendable. It is a flat-out and naked statement that all communication is sociopathic lies meant only to manipulate the listener like a Pavlovian dog.
At that point, there is no reason to read another word. The witness has impeached himself. He has said everyone lies. If true, then he is a liar because he is one of everyone. If false, then he is a liar because he says what is false.
Originally published at John C. Wright's Journal. Please leave any comments there.
Quote of the Day
Edward Feser from THE LAST SUPERSTITION:
“The mainstream Western religious tradition itself very firmly rests on and embraces reason and science.
“That tradition also insists that religious conviction and moral virtue must be adopted of one’s own free will, not imposed by force; and while it holds that some of the things people choose to do are morally unacceptable, secularists who also profess to believe that there is a difference between right and wrong, hold the same thing. The Protestant John Locke and the Catholic Second Vatican Council (to take just two examples) endorsed religious toleration and democracy, and on theological grounds at that, while secularists are none too happy with democracy when, say, it results in school boards that mandate the teaching of ‘Intelligent Design’ theory alongside evolution.
“So what, pray tell, is distinctively ‘secularist’ about reason, science, free choice, toleration, democracy, and the like? Nothing at all, as it happens. The fact is that secularists are ‘for’ reason and science only to the extent that they don’t lead to religious conclusions; they celebrate free choice only insofar as one chooses against traditional or religiously oriented morality; and they are for democracy and tolerance only to the extent that these might lead to a less religiously oriented social and political order. Again, the animus against religion is not merely a feature of the secularist mindset; it is the only feature.”
David Bentley Hart from ATHEIST DELUSIONS:
“I suspect that our contemporary ‘age of reason’ is in many ways an age of almost perfect unreason, one always precariously poised upon the edge of – and occasionally slipping over into – the purest barbarism.
“I suspect that, to a far greater degree than we typically might imagine, we have forsaken reason for magic: whether the magic of occult fantasy or the magic of an amoral idolatry of our own power over material reality. Reason, in the classical and Christian sense, is a whole way of life, not the simple and narrow mastery of certain techniques of material manipulation, and certainly not the childish certitude that such mastery proves that only material realities exist.
“A rational life is one that integrates knowledge into a larger choreography of virtue, imagination, patience, prudence, humility, and restraint. Reason is not only knowledge, but knowledge perfected in wisdom. In Christian tradition, reason was praised as a high and precious thing, primarily because it belonged intrinsically to the dignity of beings created in the divine image; and, this being so, it was assumed that reason is also always morality, and that charity is required for any mind to be fully rational.
“Even if one does not believe any of this, however, a rational life involves at least the ability to grasp what it is one does not know, and to recognize that what one does know may not be the only kind of genuine knowledge there is.”
Originally published at John C. Wright's Journal. Please leave any comments there.
Breitbart Is Right
As might you, I remember exactly where I was, and what I was doing when I heard about the Aurora massacre.
I was driving to work, like many a man who has not suffered an unimaginable tragedy. On the radio there came a brief mention — the true magnitude of how many had died was not yet known — of the massacre.
It was only two sentences. The second sentence was a denial that any “overseas” (that was the euphemism used) terrorists groups were involved.
That immediately tickled my suspicions. I used to work for a newspaper, as a writer and as an editor. It takes time to do policework, to check credit card records, to check if a suspect had been overseas, to get warrants, to read his old mail, to talk to neighbors. There is no way, no possible way, any responsible police agency could have investigated between midnight (when the crime occurred) and morning (when I heard the news) when all the businesses were closed and announced that it had ruled out anything.
The newsman was not reporting an official announcement: he was merely making the literally true but deliberately deceptive statement that no evidence had yet emerged of any link to overseas terror. There was also no evidence to a link to Ethiopia, to Elocutionists, to Eggplants, or to Ecumenism, because six hours is too soon for any confirmed evidence of any kind. So why single out terrorists for exculpation?
Parking my car a few minutes later, I walked into my work. I have a dayjob, working for a military subcontractor. As all military facilities in which I have ever worked, there is a television tuned 24/7 to the mainstream news channels in the break room. Why US Military ordains that Orwellian viewscreens should be tuned constantly to channels that disseminate anti-Military agitprop, I cannot guess. As I walked past the break room door, I heard the massacre being discussed by the news entertainment heads.
I only heard two sentences yet again. The first mentioned the location and time of the shooting. The second sentence was speculation that the shooter was a rightwing extremist or a neo-Nazi.
The next thing I heard about it was not the numbers of the victims, nor the heroism of those who threw themselves in harm’s way to save sisters and girlfriends, and not the little twelve year old girl who tried to give CPR to a six year old who died under her hands.
No. The next thing I heard about was Brian Ross, who had announced on ABC news that the shooter was a member of the Tea Party.
I did not see or hear civilized and sane voices calling for prayer, for silence, or for dignity until much later in the week, or, as we measure time now, much later in the newscycle.
That was not where the emphasis was. We live in a Dark Age, where civility, piety, decency and honesty are not praised nor prized.
No, instead, the headlines of the radio and television news, the first thing I heard before I heard any details, was those two assertions being hammered home: the attacker was not a Muslim terrorist. The Right was to blame.
Originally published at John C. Wright's Journal. Please leave any comments there.
July 24, 2012
The Last Free Election
Presented here as a public service, because the Crisismagazine website is on the blink, at least at the moment. As soon as they come back online, I’ll remove this article by Rev Rutler, and link to it.
The money quote is this:
Unless there is a dramatic reversal in the present course of our nation, those who measured their Catholicism by the Catholic schools they attended, will soon find most of those institutions officially pinching incense to the ephemeral genius of their secular leaders, and universities once called Catholic will be no more Catholic than Brown is Baptist or Princeton is Presbyterian. [...]
Catholic businessmen with more than fifty employees will be in the same bind. Catholic institutions and small businesses owned by those with religious and moral reservations about government-imposed policies, will wither within a very short time, unable to bear the burden of confiscatory tax penalties. …
Add to that the approaching discrimination against Catholics seeking positions in commerce and public life. Catholics will not be suitable for public charities, medicine, education, journalism, or in the legal profession, especially judgeships and law enforcement.
Originally published at John C. Wright's Journal. Please leave any comments there.
John C. Wright's Blog
- John C. Wright's profile
- 449 followers
