John C. Wright's Blog, page 149

Reviewer Praise for COUNT TO A TRILLION

An unexpectedly good review here

http://www.graspingforthewind.com/2011/11/01/book-review-count-to-a-trillion-by-john-c-wright/

The free market, which no doubt promotes many good and peaceful human virtues, as diligence and thrift, also unfortunately discourages humility among hucksters. My financial interests make me unwilling to contradict a reviewer when he has overpraised me. (It is possible that I judge my own work with a jaundiced eye, albeit I doubt it.)

Wright's writing is clear and crisp. He wastes no effort on excessive introspection. This is a novel of mankind's reaching for the stars, of political upheaval, of a man in search of something outside himself. Though the narrative follows Menelaus, it is told from a third-person limited perspective, so that we only know what Menelaus knows. It is this choice, I think, that keeps the novel so entertaining, as each and every chapter is revelatory, just as it is for the character.

Count to a Trillion mostly concerns itself with internecine strife on one-world government Earth and between Menelaus and those he trusts. Yet it is an external threat that causes this strife in the first place. The ending is left open-ended about the ultimate fate of humanity, and I for one am eager to discover which of the two fates the narrative presents will be humanity's ultimate destiny. There are lots of ways it could go, especially in light of the ending. This is the genius of the writing. John C. Wright takes the reader on an epic ride, but leaves you hanging just enough that you cannot help but crave more.

I have not been surprised by nor enjoyed a science fiction novel this much in years. Wright grabs you by the intellect and shakes some classic scifi entertainment into it. Count to a Trillion is highly recommended reading.

Clear and crisp? My writing? The words orotund and Miltonesque are one which spring to mind with more pellucid accuracy — but, no matter. Any praise due the work will be passed with joy along to the heavenly muses who inspired it, and the craftsman who but wrought it will say no more. I take credit only for the flaws.

I confess I grin in glee at this part:

Those more scientific than me will need to asses the validity of the theorems and logical decision making Wright voices through Menelaus and let me know if these are real or created only for the purpose of the novel. Wright's logical mind and clear writing make it seem real for the uninitiated, but I cannot attest to how truly "hard" his science is.

Ah, dear reader, if my homework is good enough and my technoblab patter is convincing enough that you cannot see the seam where I depart from real science fact and lure you by slow unnoticed steps into science fantasy, my art as a stage magician of words has worked its trick. I did do my homework for this book: like Dan Brown, I hereby assert that, while the work if fiction, the groups, rituals, and locations are all real, including the dwarf star V886 Centauri, with its core of degenerate diamond, and the globular cluster at M3, with its curious orbit around the galactic core.

Here is a snippet from the Kirkus Review, who were apparently less enchanted by the stagecraft, but, still not without a kind word:

Spectacularly clever, sometimes, in weaving together cutting edge speculation along the outer fringes of known science, but more often grindingly didactic, with no narrative flow and three genius protagonists all unpleasantly cold and unsympathetic: a case of everybody knowing everything but nobody knowing anything. Highly impressive but indigestible: something like a vastly promising first draft that needed a lot more work.

Grindingly didactic, I will with stone-faced honesty admit, even admire, as an apt description to any work of mine. But unpleasantly cold and unsympathetic? My roguish and charming Del Azarchel, my outrageous over-the-top Meany of Greater Texas, my elfin and wickedly sly Rania?

Ouch, and alack! Where are the stern angels of my stoicism to bring their iron shields to my aid, and ward my wounded pride! Where, now, the philosophical temper all disciples of that Socrates who drank hemlock dry-eyed and with no ill word to the Athenians of blame?

It is sometimes dismaying to see how far short of the author's hope the seed of his imagination planted by his words thus unfolds so sickly and with such dun leaves in the soil of the imagination of a reader. I am tempted to blame the soil, but since that is outside my province, I can only blame the seed.

But, looking on the bright side, he does call it spectacularly clever and highly impressive. These are not easy words to wring from the august lips of Kirkus Reviews.

Finally, this is from Library Journal:

An elegant stylist and a true visionary, Wright will delight hard sf fans with his exuberance, while his characters and plot keep the action fast and furious.

I think this is overpraise, but I will quell modesty with a gruff and manly nod of gratitude for the compliment.

So Kirkus read a book with no narrative flow while Library Journal read one with fast and furious plot action.

I have no opinion on that point myself: I am like the actor on the stage cannot see the play because he is in the play. I can see the wings and the stage machinery, and from up here all the props look flat, and all the clothing looks like costuming, and all the lines sound like lines. The actor therefore sees illusion, because his eyes are in the wrong place. What the audience sees is the truth.

Let me say that these poor reviewers, by the nature of the publication business, and the size of the manuscripts which can be published and shelved in bookstores, are required to review what is basically the first fourth or fifth fragment of the story  I am telling.

This is like asking an art critic to examine to top one quarter of the Mona Lisa, or the left one fifth of Davinci's Last Supper. ("Well, I think the portrayal of Saint Bartholomew reaching for the butter with his knife is well executed, not to mention symbolically expressive of his martyrdom. I am curious to see in the next installment whose head is connected to the shoulder of the Beloved Disciple. The hair on the left side is somewhat flat in execution.")

No matter how good or poor my plotting was, neither the one who praised it nor the the one who dispraised it sees where it is leading or can really tell if the pacing is sound, but neither can they reserve judgment, or else they will not serve their readers — who read reviews to find out about the execution of the book, the theme, the characters, the plot.

And science fiction readers, of course, have even higher standards, for not only all these elements must be well executed, but the science must be sound, and the infodumps explaining the science must be entertaining and incorporated into the work with seeming, er, grindingly didactic. Haughty academics who dismiss our genre writing as juvenile will be forgotten, and the Coleopterous race which shall supplant mankind 14000 years hence will be studying our fantastic fiction with awe, well aware of how difficult it is to craft well.

If you want to see someone who did an infodump really well, reread the scene in HAVE SPACE SUIT WILL TRAVEL where Kip describes the features of his space suit. The lecture slides into the adventure so easily that you have to pinch yourself and take yourself out of the story to notice how it does not take you out of the story.

View or comment on this post at John C. Wright's Journal.

Bruce Charlton on Pagan Missionaries

From the pen of Bruce Charlton, a man whose work I must surely read more of. He is a fisherman who has captured a thought which I am sure once or twice has nuzzled my hook as it swam in the mysterious waters of the mind, but which I was never able to carry away in my net:

I sometimes think we need pagan missionaries, almost as much as we need Christian missionaries. …

The jump between secular hedonism is too great – between believing whatever you like to believing a complex set of interlocking propositions (which perhaps don't make any better sense than secular hedonism unless they are all present and correct).

But maybe, simple paganism could be restored – and later on the person might be amenable to Christianity?

*

Intellectuals ought to be able to follow the logic of Plato or Aristotle to discover that there must be a god (or gods) for the universe to cohere at a very basic explanatory level… At any rate, if modern intellectuals can be got as far as the intelligent pagans of the Greek and Roman era, that would be an enormous advance in Truth.

*

And if the mass of ordinary people could be got as far as paganism (even if they denied Christian revelation) – then there is something-to-work on, and a perspective from which Christian conversion might happen in the blink of an eye.

But so long as the modern Western populations are distracted 24/7 by media and gossip and drugs and busyness and the deliberate derangements imposed by the Left… well, for so long no reasoning at all is possible, apparently, no illogic too extreme; and from this unrepentant state where even the need for repentance and the fact that there is anything even in principle to repent seems unclear – Christianity seems almost impossibly remote.

Read more at

http://charltonteaching.blogspot.com/2011/11/pagan-missionaries.html

View or comment on this post at John C. Wright's Journal.

Two Links to the Modern World

The correlation between these two may not at first be apparent, but indulge me. The first is straight editorial comment:

From http://sellanraa.com/longer-essays/the-elephant-in-the-bedroom-observations-on-sex/

I never fail to be amused by how sex transforms liberals from hard-headed sociobiologists into velvet-minded romantics. From a strictly biological perspective, the ultimate purpose of sex is procreation alone, and the pleasure we derive from it is simply nature's little stick and carrot. Why, then, this irrational and adamant defense of non-procreation and anti-natalism from people who otherwise jump at any opportunity to smugly wax prosaic about man being just another animal or the Darwinian origins of everything from organized religion to the nuclear family?

The reason, I believe, is duplicitous. To liberals, sexual hedonism is not valuable because it brings pleasure, but because it serves, Rousseau-style, to tear down the deleterious influence of civilized society. Had liberals really been friends of sexual joy and pleasure, they would have realized that sex is more valuable when it is limited or mystified by things such as pre-marital chastity or modest clothing. These things turn sex into the best it can be — a sacred ritual — rather than simply a biological act no different than defecation or sleep.

And this is a news article from http://plainsdaily.com/entry/spirit-lake-sioux-tribe-announces-lawsuit-against-ncaa-alleging-civil-rights-violations-and-copyright-infringement/

FORT TOTTEN, ND – [...] The Sioux tribe supports the University of North Dakota's "Fighting Sioux" nickname and logo, but the NCAA has deemed them to be "hostile and abusive."

"Today, the Spirit Lake Tribe of Indians, by and through its Committee of Understanding and Respect, and Archie Fool Bear, individually, and as Representative of more than 1004 Petitioners of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, filed a lawsuit against the National Collegiate Athletic Association in direct response to their attempt to take away and prevent the North Dakota Sioux Indians from giving their name forever to the University of North Dakota," said Soderstrom in prepared remarks.

[...] "Though the NCAA has decided 'Fighting Sioux' is derogatory …  Inexplicably, the NCAA fails to accept the tribal vote and the sacred religious ceremony as endorsements of the name 'Fighting Sioux' by the North Dakota Sioux Nation."

The religious ceremony referred to was performed in the 60′s by the Indian tribe to grant the University the name and spirit of the Sioux. The tribal vote is from the 00′s. This particular article does not dwell on the penalties the NCAA is eager to inflict on the University for its failure to comply with the political correctness police, but it threatens boycotts and fines and so on.

In regard to the first quote, I recall a conversation with a Catholic couple who regaled me with the tale of their time they spoke with a 'sexologist', that is, a neighbor lady who claimed to have scientific credentials in the study of how to make sexual behavior more pleasant and enriching to persons attenuated with ennui of copulation. The advice of the sexologist, or so I was given to understand, was to embrace various perversions or outre practices to liven up the sexual adventure with the thrill of the illicit and disgusting. The Catholic couple reported that they knew the secret to the most delightful, thrilling, adventurous and romantic sex possible: namely, when a married couple deeply in love is trying to have a baby. Their experience was that sex performed without a penis-balloon or diaphragm or chemicals artificially suppressing a  woman's feminine fertility, but with the psychological and spiritual commitment to fecundity and fertility, and, yes, to the godlike adventure of the creation of new life in one's own image,  made every surrounding nuance of the love-play redolent with erotic charge and wild romance. The total commitment to something that was both totally natural and totally human increased human sensuousness, as well as the lack of inhibition and the lack of any need for reservation or distrust.

The Catholic couple reported that the sexologist, far from being delighted at discovering from them the secret of wonderful sex, reacted with coldness and scorn, perhaps even a tinge of jealousy. It seemed the sexologist had no man totally devoted to her, in love with her, bound by unbreakable vow to her, enraptured with her as with a goddess of love. The commonplace miracle every happy marriage enjoys was closed to this person who claimed to have modern and scientific knowledge of it. And her science was not so advanced as to detect a link between the act of sexual reproduction and the act of reproducing by means of sexual reproduction. For her, those were two alien and mutually antagonistic categories, reproduction being a cost of copulation to be minimized or escaped, not the point and culmination of the joy.

So my Catholic friends came to the same conclusion as the writer of the first quote above: love and pleasure are not the purpose nor the point of political correct thinking about sex. The point of political correctness is to use sex as a convenient tool to disparage and destroy the institutions of the nuclear family and the habits of virtue that surround it, chastity and modesty and so on.

The second quote shows, as if any further proof were needed, that political correctness is not about niceness, nor politeness, nor protecting the weak and weakminded from being insulted or offended by the cruel and powerful. Power is the point, nor courtesy, nor even support for the weak and downtrodden. The point once again is to disparage and destroy institutions such as popular images, symbols, and language, or, in other words, the point is thought control.

Nothing more quickly deadens the love of truth in the mind of man than to force him to repeat a falsehood he knows is false in public to an audience who knows it false, but who, due to the deadening conformity of the herdthink, or fear of the public scorn or legal sanctions the political correctors can bring to bear, must bear the lie in silence, and pretend to agree.

No one in his right mind thinks naming an athletic team after some group famed for their courage and manliness, Spartans or Sioux, is an insult rather than a compliment. (If it were an insult, surely at least one athletic team during the National Socialist Workers Party reign in Germany would have been called 'The Fighting Maccabees' would it not?)

Why, then, would the lumbering and solemn machinery of the organized establishment and doctors of the law groan slowly into action to suppress a compliment?  Why would, in this case and many others, the real wishes of the allegedly oppressed and insulted party not be considered?

Because the point is the accusation, not the reality of the accusation. An unjust or subjective accusation that one is 'insensitive' is better than an accusation of some real discourtesy as measured by non-arbitrary standards of courtesy, because an arbitrary accusation is like being accused of witchcraft: there is no admissible defense.

The point is to create an atmosphere of eternal accusation, because institutions of all kinds rest on the imponderable called moral authority, and because moral authority, trust, faith, civic pride, and love, all are undermined by accusation.

One constant refrain one hears from conservatives is surprise at the triviality and frivolousness of the accusations of the political correctobots. When the next crusade is ginned up allegedly to defend, say, sodomites or sadomasochists or suicides or suicide-bombers from even implied criticism public or private, usually by some means not logically related to the alleged problem, such as by rendering the use of the pronoun 'he' verboten or by revising the calendar nomenclature from A.D. to C.E., no matter how outrageous the last enormity was, nor how illogical the demands, nor how vile the mascot now being defended, we conservatives shake our heads in wonder, and we wonder 'Are they serious about that? Are they really serious? How can they be?'

Of course they are serious: deadly serious. It is a crusade. Or, to be precise, it is a jihad.

The faithful of the cult of Political Correctness seek the overthrow of institutions. It does not matter what the institutions are or what they do. History does not matter. Efficiency does not matter. Morality does not matter. Law does not matter. Only the overthrow matters. The cultists are rebels without a cause: mere anarchists.

I call it a cult not as an insult nor as an exaggeration, but from a nicety of precision. Conservatives lamely and haltingly think of the Political Correction as a political movement; or we think liberals want liberty, or progressives want progress, or socialists want a the means of production to be governed by the society at large, or communists want communes, or fascists want unity and strength. And, to be sure, listening to any one of their demands or plans for revolution and radical change, one would think they do want what they say they want. In the same way, one might think that they want sexual liberation to increase sexual pleasure, or want censorship of racial stereotypes to decrease the tension between the races. But this assumes an honesty and integrity on the part of Political Correctness that history does not confirm. (Even the name itself "Political Correctness" denotes a contempt for factual correctness, that is, a contempt for reality.) But it is not a political movement, since political movements seek to change or restore the laws and customs of man for the sake of achieving justice and peace in civil society. It is a metaphysical or theological belief system which holds that (1) all established institutions are manmade and have no innate authority (2) Original sin is caused by established institutions and all evil proceeds from them (3) rebellion against the established institutions is holy war, to which all the faithful are called.

Their forefathers rebelled against the universal and Catholic church in order to establish national churches controlled by princes and kings, or local congregations answerable to no authority save the state; and then their fathers rebelled against the authority of the state in order to establish a religious liberty which made the church a private and individual matter rather than national, and made the authority of the state rest on popular authority rather than royal authority; the next generation rebelled against the liberal institutions of popular authority and private religion by exalting totalitarian schemes based on pseudo-Darwinian theories of irreconcilable war between races or economic "classes"; and the current generation is in rebellion against the various aspects of the human condition, including a rebellion against human dignity, against sexual norms, against economic liberty, against freedom of speech and thought, against modern industry, against babies in the womb, against patients on life support, against logic and reason and objective fact, and against the meaning of life and the soul in man.

The rebellion is an eternal rebellion, without claim aim or clear goals.

Currently a tumult of protesters are 'occupying' Wall Street, and are careful not to name any goal. This allows the unwary to attribute to the otherwise meaningless noise and fury their own discontent and their own notions of solution, so that the unwary voice support for the movement irrelevant or even antithetical to their interests. If the Occupiers utter slogans that carry no cognitive meaning (as "hope and change") the unwary will assume the Occupiers are allies. It is speech used as a Rorschach blot. It is mere emotion or mere anoesis, and the role of reason is to invent an excuse or rationalization after the fact to justify it.

This is no accident, no aberration. The Occupiers indeed are a living example of what the materialists, who do not believe in free will, or the nihilists, who do not believe in meaning, use as their model of human psychology: the reason is the self-deluded slave of the passions, taking credit falsely for decisions made at murky emotion-drive and unconscious levels of the mind.

Rebellion is the goal, not pleasure, not courtesy, not a revision of political institutions to secure human happiness and prosperity.

The degree of duplicity involved in the everlasting rebellion is open to debate: some rebel, no doubt, enlarge  the already titanic human capacity for self deception to new and astronomical magnitudes; others perhaps deceive others without themselves believing their own propaganda. But for a philosophy that holds words to have no innate meaning, and holds that moral laws are to be used at need when temporary utilitarian opportunism make convenient, I doubt even they can discriminate between deception and self-deception. For they are foes of discrimination, are they not?

They say what they say for the sake of the movement, and they think or fail to think as the movement commands them: all the nonconformists in unison and in uniform chanting the same nonconformists orthodoxy.

The rebellion is against all authority, so that even the concept that an authority has the right to demand obedience, any authority, is obliterated from thought and speech and custom and law.

To the degree that a sentence speaking of a "right" to command falls oddly on your ear, dear reader, to that degree the abolition of the concept of authority has succeeded.

If you can no longer imagine an authority with the moral stature to command dutiful obedience; if your imagination can only picture authority in terms of arbitrary tyrannical power; if you cannot distinguish between Caligula and Marcus Aurelius (or if your education has been so ill wrought that you don't know to whom those names refer); then the cult of everlasting rebellion has refashioned you and stamped your character with its likeness, whether you are aware of it or not.

 

View or comment on this post at John C. Wright's Journal.

The Eve of All Saints' Day

The Eve of All Saints' Day
By John C. Wright

Naturally, I selected Halloween as the time for an experiment of such daring. Legend said that the boundaries between this world and other worlds beyond achieved their finest frailty on such a day, and it was my thought that separating the barriers between cosmos and consciousness, and flaying away the neurological matrix that hinders perception, required exactly such a season.

The place in which I found myself, my grandfather's long-deserted mansion, baroque and Victorian with its folly tower and rose window and ornamental eves, on the bald hill overlooking the town certainly was as atmospheric as the stage setting for some haunted house story, but in this case my motives were more pragmatic: I wanted a location far from the noise and traffic of the town. The old growth forest besieging the town covered many a hill too steep for logging, but not one tree was to be found on the barren hill here, bald as a witch without her wig. This I preferred, for the rustling of the leaves would be too severe should my experiment prove successful. There had never been modern plumbing nor electrical wires run to grandfather's mansion, so even minor interference from electrical motions or traces of odor would be below the detectable threshold.

I sent Froward downstairs, to man the door in case any children would brave the lone and lonely trail that winds up the hill to the house. I gave him instructions to be as silent as possible, and to drive away anyone who insisted on seeing me.

And through the huge round window, inscribed at the edges with such peculiar theosophic symbols, which loomed like the eye of a Cyclops in the folly tower, opened into a bare white upper room  where Froward, my manservant,  had placed a single couch. The rest of the house was boarded up, unswept, unfilled. The walls were as blank as the inner lid of a sensory deprivation chamber. Here in the circle of moonlight cast by the rose window was a small table holding my drugs and potions and phylacteries and neuroelectrical equipment, recording cylinders, amplifiers, and so on. I did not need to light the lamp when mixing the first dose—I am sure I made no mistake.

The moon shone bright and clear, and the stars were like eyes of diamond.

I took the first injection, and followed this with a drink of the forbidden mixture. The liquid was meant to hinder the jerking or random motion of the limbs the investigator Lovecraft reports in his findings, or Smith or Long. The injection would suppress the inhibition centers in the medulla oblongata, allowing a full potential of neuroelectric current to flow freely in my system.

The theory, first explicated by a Boston savant named Tillinghast, but having roots in the teachings Tibetan loremasters and Egyptian mystagogues, is that our perceptions have far more range and fineness than we consciously can know. In the same way that it is said that subconsciously we never forget the slightest detail of any perception, even prenatal influences, the theory held that was are presently aware of far more than reaches our awareness.

A region in the thalamus and hypothalamus screens out ninety percent of the signals reaching us from the outer cosmos, allowing our cortex only to see and hear those perceptions useful, as blind evolution measures use, to the survival of the species. Darwinism cares nothing for truth value, only for use value. I often wonder why our eyes allow us to see the stars, since I can imagine no chain of circumstances where seeing these tiny lights would mark the difference between life and death.

The breathing exercises help to calm the initial nightmarish sensations as I grew aware of the speed of the globe of the earth turning beneath me, its dizzying dance around the sun and I fought back the vertigo caused by seeing the true distance to the stars, the vastness of the black abyss between.

I will not bother repeating here what previous investigators, such as Annesley, Delapore, Crawford and Tillinghast obtained. Their results have been suppressed, but a curious investigator can still uncover them.

I began to hear the scurrying of the rats in the walls, and with my ear could trace their labyrinth of tunnels down past the foundation of the house, past topsoil and bedrock, past the curious discontinuity Delapore described, and into the ulterior dimensions. I saw at once the ruins on the Lunar surface, the pillars made of unearthly green metal, the thin, tall shapes of doors leading into windowless towers. They were so well hidden among the craters, and so far from the Apollo landing sites, small wonder they had been overlooked. I could smell the richness of the soil beneath the roots of trees hold sacred to the Mound Building civilization of the smaller, darker-skinned peoples that roamed these hills before the ancestors of the Iroquois obliterated them, and saw them buried, head-downward, in three groups of three.

As you might expect, the first voices I heard, considering the day and hour, where the voice of children. The drug made it impossible to ignore some voices to concentrate on others–that was the exact brain function the injection had paralyzed–but I could use artificial means to block out unwanted signals: the brass knob of the neuroelectric interference resonator was beneath my fingers. I turned to the middle of the spectrum, well within the normal human range.

"What masks shall you wear tonight, children?"

"Oh, mother, I want to be a ghoul for tonight!" and "I am a ghost! I'll scare Mister Brown!" this and other lively chatter I heard.

Next, I heard the voice of some pundit being interviewed on the radio, a professor of at the local university slightly known to me by reputation. Oddly enough, I could hear both his voice from several points around the town, and where he spoke in the microphone at the radio station at Grover's Mill. I could also hear the wheezing in his lungs where cigarette ash had wrought ruin. He was speaking of the pagan roots of the Halloween holiday, and he spoke much of Samhain and Celtic lore, and belittled those who adopted such customs into a Christian holiday. The whole matter was unscientific rubbish, or so his tone of voice, the drawling sneers, implied.

"Things are what they seem to be," he said positively. "Teaching children that masks and deception are fun – well, it may lead to problematical developmental difficulties later in life. Children are programmed by their experiences, you know, like robots. Empiricism is about realism."

Of course, he could not hear, as I heard, the cheers and carrying-on of children of all ages, or the whispers of a toddler dressed as a bunny, but petrified by stagefright, being urged by mother to say the magic phrase of trick or treat.

At the same time, on another station, I heard a preacher with a thick Southern drawl urging parents not to let their little ones participate in the mischief of the night. "Why teach the young 'uns to look like evil critters, I ask ye that, brethren? Why give evil honor?" There was not corresponding living voice. This had been tape recorded, perhaps decades ago.

I increased the gain on my equipment, and began slowly inching my way down the dial. Soon my senses were filled with the sounds and smells of opium dens, flophouses, jails, gutters, and I heard such crimes planned, such screams, such gasps of whispered hate as will not soon leave me, or the murmur of suicides composing their farewell notes, and curses, and harsh, thudding, dark music.

Down I went again, and soon only the snarls of beasts was in my ears, but not of friendly or domesticated animals. This part of the spectrum was only occupied by those moments of terror and rage and desperation which come when an animals fights for its life, and rips with its jaws and takes the life of another.

Further down the dial was the zone of silence Tillinghast describes. My equipment was finer than his. he was working in his day with crude vacuum tubes it is a wonder he received any signals at all.

At the very bottom, I heard a voice speaking in a language never spoken on Earth. With my neural matrix paralyzed, the methods we use to block the understanding of the meanings of foreign tongues was not available to me. The pain of those words was more than I can say: I bit down on the capsule I had been carrying under my tongue just for such an eventuality, and a spreading numbness shielded me from the worst of it.

"What masks shall you wear tonight, O ye thrones, virtues, powers and potentates of this my realm?"

"I shall appear as a learned man, O Dark Prince, and lead those ensnared in intellectual pride astray." "I shall appear as a man of the cloth, solemn and wise, and lead those who trust in him down your dark paths by easy and unnoticed turnings, and make the love of money or the concern for the conditions of the world appear more holy than holiness itself." "And I shall appear as an angel of light, so that even the Elect, if it may be, might be deceived."

Up the dial I went. Soon I was hearing only the voices, or catching odd visionary glimpses, of men of unparalleled genius, or soldiers or firemen in the midst of some act of superhuman bravery, or hearing nuns at prayer.

Above this were elfin sounds, and I heard crystalline voices amid the waves, or the sound of dance on grassy lawns beneath the moon, the carouse of kings and queens not of mortal kindred.

Hours passed, and I listened with delight, amazed at what hidden things exist right before our eyes, unseen, unseeable. I offer no explanation: but the thought burning in my then was one of giddy joy. I was thinking of van Stroom's theory of an offshoot race of man that had discovered the art of perceptual interference at about the same time we Homo Sapiens had mastered the art of making fire. We produced tools and smelted gold and put the animal world beneath our feet. They opened doorways we cannot see, and gathered kingdoms to themselves, and ruled the worlds of dreaming as we rule the day.

I was at the edge of the range of my equipment, and, perhaps due to some quirk in the upper ionosphere I heard quite clearly the music sung by orbital resonances, and the electromagnetic choirs of the stars as they perturb the galactic magnetosphere in their huge and ancient orbits.

Another voice spoke. "My Son, in whom I am well pleased, what mask shall you wear this night?"

A voice so stern and yet so lovely I would give anything to hear it again answered him: "I will walk among my brothers, as fully human as are they, in the shape of the hungry, the ill-used, the orphaned, the worthless, the weak, the prisoner in the jail."

A third voice, neither male nor female, but singing as if a metal string made of gold was plucked to give it voice, or a thread of white hot fire answered: "I will make note of who opened their hand to you, and who turns their face away."

The rheostat blew out of my main amplifier then, and I jumped from the couch to my feet, tearing the headset from my head, blinking in confusion, trying to bring my senses back to the room.

For I head heard the voice of my servant Froward at the front door, angrily turning a beggar away, telling him the treats were only for children, not for the hungry.

I ran down stairs, stumbling, hoping I would be in time.

 

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copyright 2011 (All rights reserved)

View or comment on this post at John C. Wright's Journal.

Leftists to Orphans: Drop Dead

http://www.pjstar.com/news/x2075437708/Catholic-Charities-of-Peoria-withdrawing-from-state-foster-care-contracts

h/t Mark Shea

The Peoria-based Catholic Charities is the largest of four Catholic Charities agencies that sued the state after civil unions were legalized in June. Catholic Charities in Springfield, Belleville and Joliet are appealing the latest judicial decision regarding state contracts.

DCFS did not renew their contracts after the agencies, based on religious convictions, refused to recognize the new civil unions law. The state said their refusal discriminated against same-sex couples.

Catholic Charities in Peoria, Springfield, Belleville and Joliet filed suit, maintaining they had property rights and a religious exemption. They argued they should have the contracts and be allowed to continue their long-standing practice of referring unmarried couples, including same-sex couples, to other agencies.

Catholic Charities of Peoria first signaled the possibility of withdrawing from the lawsuit last week after a Sangamon County Circuit judge ruled, for a second time, that the faith-based agencies do not have an automatic legal right to a state contract.

Attorneys for the Thomas More Society, a Catholic legal advocacy group that is arguing the cases pro bono, vowed an appeal on behalf of the four agencies. But Patricia Gibson, chancellor and general counsel for the Catholic Diocese of Peoria hesitated to say flat out that the Peoria diocese would appeal.

The news article does not estimate how many orphaned children will be denied homes or foster homes due to this debacle.

There is, of course, no benefit to the homosexuals to have the foster care agency that will not service them, but which was willing to transfer their cases to agencies without reservations about placing children among sexual deviants, shut down: it is retaliation, and nothing more, for the dishonor and humiliation the Catholic faith offered them by not being willing to join them in their attempt at doublethink and make-believe in which they would like the public to join them.

The Left feels it is a civil right, akin to allowing Blacks to vote or drink from public fountains, for the public to be required to think that a civil union meant to celebrate a psychologically unhealthy and morally abhorrent sexual deviation is one and the same as sacred matrimony.

Toleration is not enough. Neutrality is not enough.

If I say, "Your sins are less than my own, I will not judge you, go your way in peace." That is not enough. Ask the personal columns who wanted not to carry gay ads, or the photographers who did not want to photograph gay weddings, or the clerk who wished someone else to issue the gay marriage license, and now ask the Catholic foster home charity who wished not to assist gay couples. We have to help them do something we think is immoral, and if we balk, we are reviled or punished at law. If I say, "I shall not stop you, but I shall not help you." they answer, "Oh, yes you WILL!"

And this is why I can no longer count myself among the Libertarians, fine men that they are. Their philosophy of mutual toleration and total governmental neutrality on all matters of faith and morals overlooks a fundamental non-negotiable reality: there is no middle ground between good and evil, because the evil, knowing itself evil and loathing itself, must destroy the good to maintain its self esteem, or to sate its malice.

The Left rarely talks about what is really as issue here. Perhaps they are hiding their motive or perhaps they simply are crippled by not having the moral vocabulary to express the thought.

What is at issue is honor. Nothing more, nothing less.

It is not about law. It is not about justice, or rights, or civil rights, or atmospheres of hostility or social acceptance. Those are either euphemisms for honor or side effects. Because honor is imponderable, and because, unlike an innate legal right, honor must be earned by honorable conduct, the Left do not ever call it by its right name.

Now, you may ask, why should I, or any man, pay honors to a behavior which logic finds either unnecessary and experience proves deleterious for any greater good? Why would anyone demand that I applaud a behavior that shatters homes and ruins lives and is an abomination in the sight of all normal men of every continent and era? Should not we honor acts of fortitude, prudence, temperance, and justice, rather than unseemly and grotesque self indulgence in a sexual appetite which is misaligned?

Why can I not ignore them, and they ignore me? Why can we not, as the Libertarian solution would have it, allow us to agree to disagree, and have the law neither forbid our side from forming private groups as we see fit, and exclude whom we see fit, and them likewise?

The Libertarian solution does not take into account that there is no neutral ground.

Like passing a law making pi equal to thee, merely by having the law degree that abnormality is normal does not change the psychology of abnormality. At some level, they know they are unhealthy and perverted, and they resent those who are not.

To soothe the uneasiness of this resentment, they require first toleration, and then tokenism, and then mainstreaming, then admiration, and then adoration, and then condemnation of those they resent, and after what they can do to shame, diminish, deter, punish, wound and obliterate those they resent, they do.

The cost in human suffering is not reckoned. They don't care what orphans go unplaced.

There is no middle ground, and no compromise with and no stopping place for their demands, because their demands are not based in reality.

A Libertarian would say that a society where gay marriage and Catholic charities can coexists is the only moral solution, and the state does not take sides. The problem is that gay marriage and Catholic charities are mutually exclusive, given the reality of the nature of man, and the nature of guilt and sin, and the nature of what sin makes men do.

You see, you, dear reader, have been sold a lie. You have been told from every television show and comedy routine and political cartoon since you were a child that tolerant and easy-going do-your-own thing vices are willing to live and let live, and that blue-nosed intolerant angry and judgmental virtues, motivated only by hate, are seeking out vice in order to destroy harmless pleasures, and will not leave well enough alone.

The opposite is true. Vice is intolerant of virtue and cannot stand to share the same world with it. Saints know all men are sinners and forgive all. Sinners go mad trying to pretend sin is good and goodness is sin, and condemn all.

View or comment on this post at John C. Wright's Journal.

Wright's Writing Corner: Beta Readers

A post praising and discussing Beta Readers!

Excerpt:

Writers write. We also read. In particular, we read stuff written by other writers, and we ask them to read our stuff. This is an invaluable process without which the flow of good literature might stop.

Some writers I know do not bother with a Beta Reader. Personally, I do not think I could get by without one.or several. I just seem to take a lot of things for granted when I write. Only when someone else reads it and goes "what the heck did you mean here?", and I correct it, does my prose take on a quality worth reading by others.

I wish this were not so. I wish I could write on my own and get it right.

But I am so VERY, VERY grateful for those who help me out by reading the mess that is my early versions!

http://arhyalon.livejournal.com/213686.html

View or comment on this post at John C. Wright's Journal.

Prolegomena to Any Future Metapsychics

I remember one conversation in particular during a college bull session, when I voiced the opinion that temperance in the appetites being necessary for happiness in life, abstinence from strong drink and sexual excess would therefore likewise be necessary, I was harangued with a five-minute stemwinder by a young zealot, who, foaming at the mouth and red in the face, thundered at me that disbelief in God was the only rational position a soul could take on the issue. Eventually, through his clamor, I was able to impart to him that I was an atheist of absolutely pure conviction, and an evangelist of godlessness. The passionate partisan of disinterested rationality was dumbfounded, for he equated the idea of government of the passions by the reason with an irrational belief in God, and he equated the idea of degrading self-indulgence in sensual pleasures with the idea of dispassionate reason.

Yet was it unreasonable of him to assume that any man who supported temperance and chastity was a Christian? Perhaps not.

Consider the following quote:

The Right-Left axis aligns an astonishing collection of beliefs that at first glance seem to have nothing in common… Why on earth should people's beliefs about sex predict their beliefs about the size of the military? What does religion have to do with taxes? Whence the linkage between strict construction of the Constitution and disdain for shocking art?

This quote (or so I am told) comes from Steven Pinker's book The Blank Slate. Mr Pinker's argument (or so I am told) is that there may be a genetic predisposition toward one political leaning or the other. I have not read the book and voice no opinion on it.

Without reading this particular author's answer, let me confess that I find the topic of exploring the originals of ideas a fascinating one. As far as I know, it has never been made the subject of a rigorous study. Nor do I propose to make such a study now. I do however propose to coin a neologism to describe such a study: Let it be called metapyschics, since it looks at the root causes of ideas in the psyche or mind of man, that is, the rules or logic or hidden ideas behind the ideas we know. This essay is no more than a prologue suggesting a profitable line of research for those investigating this new discipline.

On the proposition in general that one's political and cultural beliefs are genetic, I must confess I am genetically programmed to reject this idea with umbrage and disdain, and therefore there is no point in debating it with me, nor offering evidence.

I am also, sadly, programmed to suffer the illusion that I have free will and that I came by my beliefs honestly.

A word about my history is needed here:

My wife was born and raised as a hippy Christian by a Buddhist Jew, and I was raised in a military family as an atheist libertarian Houyhnhnm of the Stoic philosophical school by an agnostic Vulcan. She and I spent our college years debating matters economic and esoteric, and, agreeing on nothing except our love for each other, fell blissfully into courtship and wedlock and an endless round of role playing games and novel writing marathons. The match was made in the heaven in which I, at that time, did not believe.

Since neither she, a devout leftwing Christian, nor I, a semi-anarchist Stoic atheist, fit anywhere on the normal Left-Right spectrum of the Culture War, we were constantly mistaken for followers of schools of thought we either did not follow or soundly rejected.

And, even from a young age, she wondered why the particular ideas of Left and Right tend to be clustered together. As quoted above, why on earth should people's beliefs about sex predict their beliefs about the size of the military?

Myself, I never wondered, being told since youth up what the reason must be.

And the reason is not genetic disposition any more than it is the jar of malign planets shedding influences from sovereign natal constellations.

Moderns believe in genetics only because it is not fashionable to believe in astrology.

If the same men who lived now had been raised during the Renaissance, they would be solemnly assuring us that a weakness for Guelph politics or for the practices of Ganymede were due to a retrograde planet in Virgo, or an unlucky opposition to Gemini.

After becoming a father, and after 9/11 and realizing to my shock that my fellow libertarians had no interest in joining forces with me to protect my children from either prenatal infanticide or sexual perversion or drug pushers or suicide bombers, the limitations of the principle of 'Do As Thou Wilt be the Whole of the Law' became shockingly clear to me. It is a peacetime philosophy only, and only among men who adhere to certain basic ideals springing from the Western cultural tradition, i.e. men who adhere to Christian cultural norms even if not Christian men.

So it is not by indoctrination or upbringing or any other early influence which persuades me to become an arch-conservative and ardent Constitutionalist, but, rather, the logical deductions from identifiable axioms which form the skeletal principles, and the lessons of history and niceties of judgment which flesh out how those principles are to be applied.

Unlike a cradle conservative, my conservatism is creedal.

You may, dear reader, disagree with the axioms, or, more likely, regard the judgment calls as disproportionate, that I regard trivial dangers as grave and grave dangers as trivial. Reasonable men in a jury can disagree on whether the law applies to the facts they are given, and reasonable judges can disagree on interpretations of the law: only a child takes honest disagreement to be a sign of mental derangement or moral corruption.

My point here is not that my answers are correct. My point is only that I have them. If I am wrong, I am wrong for a reason I can articulate.

If I am wrong, one can blame my judgment, but not my genes. I had the same genes before and after my conversion to conservative thinking.

Because my conversion was deliberate, step by step, each adoption of each conservative value was, to me, for a known reason springing from a known principle. There is no mystery to it, and I need neither the mystical stars of astrology nor mystical molecules of genetics to explain it.

So let us examine, not what conservative principles are, but why certain ideas tend to be clustered as they are. The answer, I think, will surprise no honest man:

A man's several beliefs about art and culture and politics and sex and war and taxes are based on his underlying view of man. Of necessity his view of man must influence his view of the basics of the human condition.

I offer the thoughts following to investigate and explain and perhaps to support this theme.

The first part of the answer is, unsurprisingly, the most basic. It is also the hardest for the skeptic to accept, and one which the mood and atmosphere of our modern age is dead set against.

You see, unlike what everyone from Sesame Street muppets to tenured professors to professional pundits has told you, and unlike what every tale from earliest comic book to haughtiest progressive film has told you and taught you and urged you to believe, you are at the core a rational being.

Now, let us be most careful, since this is a most easy principle to mistake. You are not Spock. You are not a rational being in the sense that you make all your decisions (or any of them) with the dispassionate detachment of a judge on the bench or a scientist at a workbench. I am not claiming you think logically and unemotionally. That privilege is reserved for Houyhnhnms and other fictional creatures.

When I say "you are a rational being" I mean not that you control the faculty of reason. Perhaps you do to some degree, perhaps not. I mean you are controlled by the logic of your philosophy.

You might object that you have no philosophy. This is impossible. You may have one that you have never questioned, never articulated, one whose reason shapes your conclusions without your awareness, but you don't have none.

For the purpose of clarity, let us use the word 'worldview' or 'world' to describe both the articulate and the inarticulate system of ideas and judgments and perceptions and conclusions you and I and all other rational beings use to observe, assess, react, and decide how we live our lives.

Your worldview operates by its own internal logic. Once you accept the axioms, you tacitly accept the conclusions. Certain conclusions you can fight, or resist, or bend aside from their natural course, but this comes at a cost, both in expense of mental effort and in loss of mental integrity; and therefore it is correspondingly unusual.

To restate: The reason why ideas tend to be clustered together is because ideas have a nature of their own which cannot be wished away or set aside by an act of will. Ideas have a certain logic to them, a natural 'fit' which allows some clusters of ideas easily to fall into place. The outliers occur when that logic or natural fit is defied or denied on a case-by-case basis. The thinker has to go to the trouble to carve out an exception: if he fails to do so, the ideas, of their own innate power, will tend to draw together.

In other words, reason is supreme. Even those who deny reason are subject to it. If one idea logically implies another, it is costly or tedious or difficult or even impossible to hold to the one and reject its conclusion.  It can be done, but only by taking the effort to invent or adopt a special pleading or special exception to apply to that case: and this effort is by its nature inefficient.

Let us call this the principle of Natural Logic of Worlds.

We can state the principle thus: Worldviews are holographic and organic. Holographic, because from one part the rest can be deduced; organic, because once you accept one basic belief about the world, you are under a strong inclination or influence to accept the logically related beliefs; this is because these logically related beliefs grow one out of the other like the members of an organism. The relation of these beliefs one to the other is not a matter of human decision or willpower. Thoughts have a life of their own, a logic of their own.

Now surely you are thinking, "But, wait! No one has ever taught me the opposite of this belief that you call the Principle of Natural Logic of Worlds. Neither any muppet nor any tenured professor has told me anything of the kind."

I beg to differ. The lesson is there, continually repeated and continually emphasized, but always tacitly. It is the essential belief and foundational axiom of modern philosophy and modern worldviews, and it dates back to Kant.

The opposite belief in the Natural Logic of Worlds is the belief that Man Makes His Own World.

When you are told 'Believe in Yourself' this is a slogan that can only be uttered by someone who tacitly rejects the notion of the Natural Logic of Worlds. The slogan 'Believe in Yourself' is not merely asking you to avoid a crippling lack of self-esteem which may make you unsuccessful in business and in mate-seeking. It is asking you to accept that life is what you make of it; that you create your own reality.

When you are told, 'Don't Stereotype' and 'Don't be bigoted' and 'Judge Not, Lest ye be Judged' these slogans are not merely asking you to be as careful and dispassionate and objective as a scientist or juror when coming to assessment of the character of others, and not merely asking you to leave vengeance to the Hand of the Almighty who can read the hearts of men. These slogans are also telling you to be ashamed if you notice that certain ideas in the thoughts of men and certain behaviors in their actions are clustered together with certain professions, philosophies, backgrounds, cultures, cults, and races. These are NOT calls for objectivity. These are calls to join the general mutually shared game of pretense which pretends that life is malleable and human nature is fluid and that life is what you make it and that you make your own reality.

When you are told, 'that idea is old-fashioned' or 'everything is relative' or 'this belief is Eurocentric' or 'all points of view are valid' these slogans are not merely cautioning you to read up on the latest findings in your field nor merely asking you to listen to all witnesses with evidence to give to the court of your conscience. These slogans are not telling you Einstein's theory of physics. You are being told that the place from which you stand to make the observation, or the person who makes the observation, determines what the observation shall be: him, the observer, and not the thing observed. You are being told human nature, including yours, is malleable, and that your reality is of your own making.

Let us call idea that Reality is of Your Own Making the Gnostic Principle, or Gnosticism. (The terminology is inexact, but indulge me.)

If it is difficult or impossible to believe that state censorship of speech and thought is wrong without also believing that private ownership of firearms is right, then this is because there is a natural connection in logic between those two ideas, an organic connection between them perhaps not obvious at first. The Principle of Natural Logic says you do not get a vote on whether this connection exists or not: if you believe in the First Amendment, sooner or later you either abandon integrity or abandon opposition to the Second Amendment.

Nothing could be a graver insult or a more ridiculous absurdity to someone who believes in the Gnostic Principle. To tell a man who makes his own world that there is something in his world he cannot make or cannot unmake is effrontery. It may even be oppression.

"Surely a rational creature" (so argues that Gnostic) "can select what beliefs he wishes based on what judgments he makes? There are many a Leftwing who believe most strongly on your right to free speech, but who also believe strongly that the danger of gun crime outweighs the benefit of a provision meant only for State Militia to arm themselves against possible insurrection and tyranny, never meant for personal protection! The one idea is unrelated to the other! Each idea is judged on its own basis, without prejudice!"

The Gnostic worldview is parallel to the worldview of the modern materialist, who says the mind is nothing but matter in motion, in that both downplay the reality and the tenacity of ideas. The modern so-called scientific thinker tends to overestimate the solidity and persistence of the material worlds.

For example, I have heard some materialists claiming, despite astronomical evidence to the contrary, that the universe is infinitely old, and must continue to exist forever: the materialist metaphysical principle of the eternity of matter in this case trumps the best model based on current physical evidence of a Big Bang and an eventual entropic Heat Death.

Likewise, the modern so-called scientific thinker tends to dismiss evidence of consistent laws operating in realms of the purely mental, such as formal logic, geometry, economics, ethics, and so on, because the metaphysical principle of materialism relegates to thought a role only as a side effect of matter or an illusion. Only matter has substance: thought has no substance. The rules of logic or geometry or economics are no more real to a materialist than the rules of chess.

Again, I have heard materialist, with no sense of shame or pause for thought, arguing that the rules of geometry are either contingent on sense impressions or arbitrary conventions.

Psychologically, the freedom of all thought to be utterly arbitrary and fully arbitrary flatters the craving for godlike power in the souls of the Gnostic and the materialist and the modern so-called scientific thinker. He cannot tolerate to be told there are matters where he had no vote. While he might be willing to accept brute material facts exist independent of his veto, because he respects matter as real, he cannot accept the idea of brute ideal facts. The fact that his thoughts must perish when his body perishes (so argues the materialist) proves that thoughts are not facts. For him, only the harp is real; the music perishes when the strings are still.

I say that the roots go back to Kant, because it was Kant who posited a noumenal reality beyond the reach of our sense impressions, which neither empirical evidence nor rational deductions of pure reason could reach. Once reality is separate from the perception or model of reality, and reality is unreachable, it is short step to conclude, as Nietzsche does, that reality is only whatever flatters the willpower, and that a man makes his own meaning in an innately meaningless universe. It is equally short a step to conclude, as Sartre does, that man cannot make any meaning in the meaningless universe, therefore man must find meaning in himself. At a blow, such doctrines shatter the epistemological basis of moral reason, and open the Pandora's box of self-indulgence. If there is no God, and all things are permitted, then the modern philosopher is free to copulate with his mistresses and catamites and carriage  horses without fear of reproach from his own conscience.

Reading the biography of modern intellectuals from Rousseau onward, it is easy enough to believe that their true motive for all their apologetics was nothing more than excuse making for their sexual malfeasance and abominations. But, whether that is the intent or not, that is the outcome: modern epistemology says we cannot know reality. Where there is no knowledge, there can be no judgment, and no condemnation.

By coincidence, the two dominant worldviews of the modern political scene, socialism and capitalism, both lend themselves to the Principle of Gnosticism.

The Socialist wishes to remake man and to revise society into utopia. This cannot be done unless man is malleable. New standards cannot be written unless the old standards are not standards are all, but merely opinions relative to their age and place, an unevolved form that is destined to change to new forms.

The Capitalist wishes that the customer is always right, and he wishes no disputes over metaphysics to mar the smooth and peaceful workings of the marketplace: the destruction of the Reformation and Counterreformation convince the Capitalist not only not to have an Established Church, but not to have an established set of moral values, aside from the minimal values of honesty in business and diligence in labor and sanctity in property ownership and fairness in hiring needed to allow the market to operate efficiently.

Hugh Hefner and Bill Clinton, who would have been scourged as a pornographer  or hanged as an adulterer in a Christian civilization, are feted and applauded for being sexual revolutionaries in a postchristian postcivilization which Capitalism foments.

The pornographer wins the admiration of Homo OEconomicus because he has turned his magazine empire and gambling dens into a financial treasure, and he lives in a mansion. Like the friends of Job in the Book of Job, the Capitalist has the unfortunately tendency to regard mere material wealth as a sign of favor. It is the reward from the only god he adores, the marketplace, for the only virtues he regards, industriousness, productiveness, popularity, shrewdness, sharp dealing, dumb luck, and the ability to please one's customers and to break down their sales-resistance.

The adulterer is praised as a martyr because of his suffering at the hands of evil Grand Inquisitors of a new 'Sexual McCarthyism' —  because the Capitalist mentality holds any matter not effecting job performance to be private, therefore of no concern to the buyer/voter. (I coin the awkward term "buyer/voter" because Capitalism regards democracy as merely another market place, with votes instead of dollars that one wins using modern marketing techniques.)

The idea that a man who cheats his wife lacks character, and therefore will cheat his constituencies is an idea that says, in effect, a Natural Logic of Worldviews connects ideas and principles and actions. The idea that adulterers are corrupt and cannot serve as Commander-in-Chief flies in the face of the Gnostic Principle.

In other words, the Gnostic Principle is the principle that all ideas are atomized. Just because you believe one thing, or take one action, does not necessarily mean you will believe or do another. To say otherwise is an affront to the godlike sovereignty of the all-powerful self-will in the realm of ephemeral ideas.

The Principle of Natural Logic is the principle that to will the end is to will the means to that end. You are free to stand or fall, but not free to set your own standard; free to see or to close your eyes, but not free to hallucinate; and you have a right to your own opinion, but not to your own facts.

So much for the abstract; let us look at the particulars.

We will use the examples taken from the quote above: those who favor fornication over chastity have a strong incentive, that is, a reason of internal logic, to disfavor the military and prefer it kept small; likewise those who favor chastity over fornication have a strong inclination to favor the military and prefer it large. Christians tend to favor low taxes and small, unintrusive government; whereas Antichristians tend to favor high taxes and all-intrusive government. Strict Constructionists tend to prefer classical themes and models in the fine arts; Activists tend to prefer horrific rubbish that insults and shocks the aesthetic sense.

These various ideas seem to have no relation on the surface. Why cannot a small-government low-tax fellow like John Galt not also admire shockingly revolutionary new forms in art? Why cannot a Spartan fellow both favor harshly militaristic government and sexual perversion?

What is the natural logic of these ideas?

To repeat, ideas are either assonant or dissonant. Any of these ideas that are normally not found together can be found together in statistically odd or outlier populations, provided the thinker has thought of a justification or philosophy or matrix to enable him to reconcile dissonant ideas. All an assonance of ideas does is make it easier or create an incentive for certain ideas to fit with each other. A dissonance of ideas raises the price by demanding an extra mental effort from the thinker who wishes to hold both.

The six ideas in our example are sex and war, wisdom and lucre, law and art. These ideas are so basic to the human psyche that one finds them imagined as archetypes or pagan gods in the racial psychology: Venus and Mars, Saturn and Pluto, Jupiter and Apollo. I submit that one's basic view of human nature, the one basic idea of man's role in the cosmos, informs or influences these other six fundamental ideas.

Christianity introduced to the world an idea implicit in Jewish theology that man is responsible for himself and his ultimate fate after death. This is antithetical to the Eastern idea of Karma, or the classical idea of Fate and Necessity, or the modern ideas of Marxism or Freudianism or 'Selfish Gene' Pseudo-Darwinism, all of which give one reason or another to say that man is the passive patient of forces that decide his fate, either because of past lives, or because of ancestral genetics. The Christians say that if you go to Hell, you have none to blame but yourself. (Calvinists say those created for damnation never stood a chance to escape to begin with, but are still to blame, a paradox which lies outside the scope of this essay to explore, but which does not form a true exception to the general rule.)

Christianity also introduced the idea implicit in Jewish thought the God is no respecter of persons, and married this to the Classical Athenian notion of each man being equal before the law (isonomia). This idea is antithetical to pagan and oriental notions of caste and priest-kingship which sets particular divine individuals, demigods or favored races, on a higher spiritual footing than others. Christianity is uniquely individualistic in its approach. The thinking of the Enlightenment was truly revolutionary, but in one sense was profoundly conservative, since it draw out the liberal political implications of Christian metaphysical belief. Since the day when St Ambrose humbled Theodosius, or St Gregory humbled Henry IV, no Christian sincerely believed that kings and emperors were specially or particularly favored of God, or granted the spiritual superiority of a Brahmin or Pharaoh.

Not even the Anglicans, who were so extraordinary that they decreed Henry VIII to be the Pope of England, and Queen Elizabeth Popess, were so unchristian as to think these secular rulers possessed spiritual sanctity above the normal run of mortals: rather, it was that the thought the Pope in Rome to be overweening, not the King in London undervalued.

The other crucial and particular revolutions in the Christian worldview which sets it strikingly apart from its pagan and Jewish roots is the role of women.

The subject is difficult to discuss since the shrieking madness of modernism has bent its every effort to spreading lies and jabberwocky on the topic, and it would require volumes to answer every bogus argument and baseless accusation laid against the Church. We moderns have been told that divorce liberates the modern woman, and chastity chains her, and that motherhood is only sacred when the mother (usually a single mother) enjoys the privilege to kill the helpless child in the womb at her pleasure. We have been told that to come virgin to the marriage bed is not just unusual, but appalling, and to expect children to wait until eighteen to rid themselves of hated virginity is absurd and naïve.

In other words, we have been told nonsense so appalling that the sheer effrontery of the illogic and the falsehood protects it from criticism. You can debate with a man who says dawn is when the sun first appears at the horizon; you cannot debate with a man who says noon is midnight.

One can but stare, as if at a train wreck, at the modern spectacle of so much human misery, broken families and broken hearts and wasted lives, sacrificed on the altar of sexual liberation. Yes, modern sex has been liberated from logic, from self-control, from medical prudence, and from life itself. And we think ourselves enlightened because we lack all prudence in matters of sex, and infect our underage daughters in countless numbers with venereal diseases.

The imps in Hell crook their beaks in mirthless smiles and dance leaping jigs with knees akimbo about the fires, laughing cold laughter, at the signal success of this victory. To make man miserable with sin is would be the delight of the fallen angels, if those sad creations could know delight; to make man boast of his sin as if it were virtue would be their delight far greater.

Time forces me to be cursory where I should be expansive: I will say only that the pagans were cruel to their womenfolk, as they were cruel to all weak things, and indulged in polygamy and divorce and abortion and other practices whose purpose and effect is to desecrate virginity and motherhood alike. The Christian respect for life and rejection of divorce and insistence on fidelity and chastity, monogamy within marriage and abstinence without, is unique. The Protestant acceptance, first of divorce, then of contraception, now of homosexual marriages between female priests, has weakened and mocked what was once universal Christian teaching and practice, but this does not change the uniqueness of the teaching nor its fundamental nobility.

So, the view of man that emerged during the Imperial Roman period, and was developed through the Middle Ages, Renaissance, Reformation, and ages of Discovery and Enlightenment and Industrialization that followed was a Christian view. Man (male and female both) was regarded as an individual, and Woman was regarded as sacred, either as maiden or matron, virgin or mother, not something merely to be used for a human end.

The Christian view of man is profoundly mature, and, based on two thousand years or more of experience and wisdom, is balanced and proportionate, nuanced and pragmatic, idealistic where it needs to be even to the point of extravagance, silent where no consensus has emerged nor revelation revealed, and proven again and again to work.

The modern view, springing from Nietzsche and Darwin, Freud and Marx, put an end to the common acceptance of man as sacred or unique, much as Copernicus had put an end to the heliocentric theory. Man was no longer the center and cynosure of the cosmos.  God was dead; man was a naked ape; virtue was unhealthy self-repression; philosophy was the ideological superstructure of selfish class interests. There was no cosmos, no order, merely an abyss filled with the particles of Lucretius falling like snow, without divinity nor humanity nor virtue nor thought. And all poems died, and all sculpture became merely screams of horror or Rorschach blots, which mean nothing but what you say they mean.

The modern view of man is Antichristian. That is all there is to it.

It is profoundly shallow. It is the philosophy of children who have never studied philosophy, combination of simplistic ideas, rank nonsense, hatred and arrogance, mentally unbalanced, crude and unformed, and its highest ideal aims at the destruction of idealism. It is extravagant where it should be cautious, craven where it should be bold, incoherent in theory and impractical in practice, leading nowhere but to misery, self-indulgence, violence, and death. And it prides itself on being the stark opposite of all these things.

Again, a volumes could be written about the difference between medieval political theory, which supported sacral kingship and universal imperium, and modern republicanism, which rejects monarchy with passionate zeal. It would be a long and difficult process even to sketch the evolution from medievalism, which was perhaps the most organically sound and well-structured polis man could devise, to the creeping totalitarianism of oligarchic England and absolutist France in the early modern period, to the modern reaction against those impositions on ancient rights and liberties, which found its flower in the American Revolution and the French Revolution.

I cannot now dwell on the point, and, again, must be cursory: the American Revolution was a rebellion of conservative Christian landowners eager to preserve their ancient rights and liberties as Englishmen, which spring out of a cultural tradition and common law and canon law reaching back to Medieval and Roman Imperial models, or to the free elections of burghers and bishops, or to the civic militarism of Athens in the classical world. The French Revolution was an anticlerical revolt meant to uproot all ancient institutions in the name of reason and modern science, and redesign and sculpt mankind to be fit for utopia, with the machine of the guillotine as its instrument of sculpture.

All modern political thought springs from these two revolutions in theory. The American theory was that all men are created equal and are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights, and that governments are instituted among men to secure these rights. The French theory was that all intellectuals are superior to the rich and powerful, whom they must torture and kill in countless multitudes in retaliation for the unfairness of life on earth.

The Russian Revolution followed in spirit and in method the French, and the rise to power of Fascists in Italy and Germany followed the Russian Revolution in rhetoric, means, methods, and aims, differing only in how rapidly and to what extent the revolution to create utopia was to be carried out, or which groups were to be slain by machines descended from the guillotine, but more modern.

The American Revolution was profoundly influenced by Christian thought, and the institutions developed from it have proven so far to be unable to take root in any culture outside of a Christian one. The French Revolution was anticlerical and antichristian, the Russian moreso, and the Fascist only somewhat: all three proposed to remake human society on more scientific and rational lines, the Russian and Fascist theory explicitly embracing Darwinism as the exemplar and excuse for aiding the natural cosmic process, in Russia, of evolution of society to a higher economic plane, in Germany, of eugenics.

In Christian theology, there is basically one and only one decision to be made, either by man or angels: to serve or to disobey. The Virgin says, 'be it done to me according to they word' and so is elevated to the post of the queen of angels. The Devil says, 'I will not serve' and so is cast down from being the prince of angels to being the prince of darkness. The choice is simple and binary: yes or no. God elevates the humble, and casts down the proud.

The modern view of the world, and the view of man's place in the world, is divided between these two.

On the one hand is the American Revolutionary view, which is the mature view, and the Christian view.

It says man is responsible for himself, and invested with sacred rights that no man can rightly take away. Man is fallen from a high estate, fallen so profoundly that no human power can restore him.

On the other hand is the French Revolutionary view, which is the immature view, profoundly Antichristian — albeit, of course, taking most of its axioms from Christian thought nonetheless, merely twisting or ignoring what happens to be inconvenient.

It says that man is not responsible for himself, and that something else, genetics or environment or economic conditions or social rank, produce undesirable outcomes, and that technical competence in manipulating these factors which control man, genetics or environment or economic conditions or social rank, will produce desirable outcomes. Man is an evolved ape who will rise naturally to a higher estate, and human power, used with technical cleverness, will shorten the time of this rise.

The American Revolutionary view says that the state belongs as a servant to the people. The French Revolutionary view says the people are cogs in the machinery of the state, and the people therefore belong as property to the state.

So then: the natural join between the idea of chastity, which is a form of self control, and the idea that since Caesar cannot be trusted with power over the lives of men therefore each man must do for himself as best he may and left to enjoy the fruits of his own labor, which is a form of self control, is the idea of maturity. Mature men uphold both self control and self reliance.

Immature men seek to submit to all powerful passions and to escape consequences and condemnation; they furthermore seek to magnify the power of Caesar in the hope that the State will act as nanny and nursemaid to solve immediate ills and usher in the eventual utopia. Immature men condemn self control as oppression and regard the concept of self reliance as impossible or unrealistic.

High taxes goes hand in hand with a powerful and all meddlesome Caesar; low taxes ensure that the government will be kept small, modest, and no threat to the public.

Part of self reliance is self protection. Mature men know that war is inevitable, and that if you want peace, you must prepare for war. They see a large military as an inevitable if evil necessity. For the immature man, nothing is inevitable and nothing is necessary, on the grounds that a sufficiently clever technical competence in social engineering can solve social problems, including war. The immature man is also a coward, and is envious of heroism, and suspicious of the institutions on which military values and virtues and institutions rest. Being immature, he can see only the surface phenomena, and thinks that only the surface is real. A shallow and superficial solution to the problem of war is to disarm. If there are no soldiers, the idea runs, there is no war.

More profoundly than this, however, runs the idea which is the true source of the divide. The American Revolutionary idea, being profoundly Christian, cherishes obedience. The French, being antichristian, rejects obedience, and cherishes revolt for the sake of revolt.

The military is both built on the concept of obedience as its paramount concept, and serves as an instrument to crush insurrection and revolt. Those who romanticize revolt cannot concentrate on the idea of an external enemy. No external enemy is real to them in their imaginations. The enemy, the only enemy, is the established order: the state, the king, the father figure. To admit that external enemies were a credible threat would be tantamount to the admission that the established order has a legitimate purpose and a legitimate role. Admitting this cuts against the fundamental glamor of revolt against the established order.

The mature view of the world and man's place in it says that there are many enemies and evildoers, including the evil inside one's own heart, and one must be watchful against foes foreign and domestic, and to watch without ceasing.

The immature view says that there is only one enemy. He has a different name for every different flavor of the immature view, but all evils in the world are laid at his doorstep, whoever he might be: The Man. The Establishment. The Jew. Wall Street. The Phallocracy. The Father Figure. The Authority. God. Merely do away with him, and all peace and justice and wealth will fall into our laps from smiling rainbow clouds where flying ponies play.

It is the conspiracy theory theory of history: one bad guy is responsible for all ills in life. The bad guy must be in charge of life, since the ills are ubiquitous. Overthrow this bad guy, and, like the sacrifice of a scapegoat, will carry all live's woes away. The bad guy is always The Man, never oneself.

Obviously a large military is not needed as proof against The Man, since the military is The Man.

It is the most simplistic, the most stupid, and the most shallow approach to the problem of evil in life and how to deal with it imaginable.

In America, the chief check on the growth of the power of Caesar is the Constitution. The mature man, being mature, trusting to experience and to practical wisdom, rarely will repair a watch that keeps time: if it ain't broke, don't fix it. He sees the Constitution as the chief bulwark against the seeping flood of tyranny.

The immature man, who wants the government to run his life for him, sees the Constitution as the chief barrier to social progress. He is in favor of the seeping tyranny, because, being immature, he has no experience to tell him that tyranny is a bad idea, that Fallen Man cannot be trusted with power, nor will the immature man heed the wisdom of experience.

The chief weapon to dismantle the Constitution is the indirect erosion of pretending it says something other than what it says: this method allows activists to see in the Constitutions umbras from which new rights emanate, and once a new right is established, this can ride roughshod over all other institutional checks and balances.

The chief defense against this form of attack is Strict Construction, that is, to read in the Constitution what it actually says, not to invent new meanings out of one's own proud imagination.

Aesthetics is once again a topic so profound and various that volumes would be needed to explore it. Here again I can only be cursory. Art is the concrete and particular emotional representation of one's abstract view of life.

Christian art followed classical models and introduced Gothic extravagance and perfected naturalistic representation and profound romanticism to produce works of fine art in all fields markedly superior and in far greater number and fineness than any work of antiquity or the East. The art was disciplined yet creative, and sought to express beauty both natural and supernatural. It requires a maturity to work such art, to go from novice to journeyman to master, and an education to appreciate such art.

If an artist makes a reference to a classical Roman poet, for example, one needs must know the poet to catch the reference, and this requires work.

Modern art is deeply immature and ugly, although it proceeds allegedly by breaking forms and disobeying disciplined rules or techniques, allowing art forms to produce umbras in which emanations can be found, wherein can be seen whatever the viewer wishes to see, but nothing pretty. In reality, the idea is based on Communist theories of agitprop: the artist's political mission is to create nausea and disgust and disquiet, and to subvert the established norms, so that fair seems foul and foul seems fair.

To pretend to appreciate such chaotic trash requires a studied hatred of all that is good and fair in life, and a marked absence of talent or patience. That what hangs in modern art galleries could be fingerpainted by a retarded child is not seriously disputed. The viewer must take on faith that what he is seeing is profound with some meaning beyond his ken, and must pretend he sees the deep meaning, lest he scorned and cast out among the hoi polloi, where there is wailing and the gnashing to teeth. It is the visual representation of the jarring ugliness and meaninglessness of the godless world, a cosmos without order, the abyss of Lucretius in which mindless snowflakes of eternal matter pointlessly falls or causelessly swerves.

Modern art is an expression of the same temper of immaturity and rebellion as all these other modern ideas: it is taking a guillotine to the muses.

The Modern mind, obsessed with foolish Hegelian notions of evolution and eternal upward progress, regards the destruction of old forms as always beneficial: hence the legal theory is to rewrite law from  a meaningful form to whatever is most destructive of the law, or respect for law, and the aesthetic theory is to remove order, form, symmetry and discipline in all arts and to adopt formless nonsense whatever is most destructive of man's sense of beauty.

It is most important for the modern mind to call beauty merely an expression of the all-conquering all-subjective will, so that a sonnet may have thirteen stanzas if I say so, and a jagged question mark be a nude descending a staircase. Anything else might hint that something beyond man exists and greater than he.

Beauty is also of God and leads back to him by stirring man out of his narcissism and self-absorption, and the modern man is therefore under a strong strategic necessity to abolish and diminish beauty, or to make it subjective, or meaningless. The thought that beauty, particularly natural beauty, by definition cannot be random and therefore must be sign of a deliberate design is to be avoided at all costs.

Again, the nexus between the seemingly unrelated ideas is clear enough once one examines the root idea.

The root idea is maturity versus immaturity, self-discipline versus self-indulgence, complexity versus simplicity, order versus revolt, Christ versus Nothing.

View or comment on this post at John C. Wright's Journal.

Tetris Theme on Laserharp

As it says above. The artist is Greig Stewart aka ThereminHero. He is playing Korobeiniki, the theme from the game Tetris.

And he ROCKS! Laser On, Dude!

I love theremin music. Sorry, but as a SF fan, I do.

When I joined the Science Fiction Writers of America, as part of the initiation rite, I was exposed to the Krell Machine by Doctor Morbeus, and my brain was reconfigured to be loyal to the music of the Theremin, which figures so prominently in such classics as DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL and FORBIDDEN PLANET.

Naturally, exposure to the Krell Machine overloaded by puny mortal brain and killed me in short order, but Gort resurrected me using the Pyramid of Ra. (But see Theological Note below.)

Reduced-cost resurrection is one of the perquisites of joining the SWFA. That, and you are allowed to have Harlan Elison, in person, come by your house and throw a brick inscribed with a humorous racial epithet of your choice through your window once a year. Offer not valid in any state of the Union once loyal to the Confederacy or formerly owned by Russia.

Frankly, I'd rather see the talented youth make music by interrupting laser beams than be hit by a brick, even one hefted by the editor of AGAIN DANGEROUS VISIONS.

——————————-

THEOLOGICAL NOTE! Whenever referring to Gort style resurrection from the dead, we member of SWFA are required by the guild by-laws to mention that Gort does not have the power of life and death. That power is reserved to the Almighty Spirit. This technique, in some cases, can restore life for a limited period. How long? That no one can say.

Except that in this case: the period is nine hundred centuries, which seems a tad longer than normal human life, I know. But rest assured, I will really be dead after that.

Unless I am exposed to the radiation of the Genesis Torpedo, in which case, tack on another half a zillion years or so. After that, kaput.

And then I will live on only as a download in the brain of Earth Astronaut John Crichton.

And, of course, as a sixth order energy field, along with 'Blackie' DuQuesne, among the Pure Intellectuals and the Rakasha of vanished Urath.

But assuming the energy field can be disrupted by a zone of force, ZWAP! that is it for me.

So until I, and everyone else, is reincarnated by the Ethicals of Planet Riverworld, just rest assured that the resurrection performed by Gort has no theological implications at all.

It is just a medical process, perfectly natural, just like starting a stopped heart with a electric shock called down from heaven from the clear blue sky by the Prophet of the Almighty Spirit.

Robots do not do miracles, all right? It is against Isaac the Patriarch's Second Law of Robotheology. Unlike when Obi-Wan Kenobi or Superman or Jon Osterman or Sam the Binder or Gandalf or Aslan or Archimage Sparrowhawk or Tinkerbell came back from the dead by drinking unicorn blood or whatever: that is kosher and properly miraculous.

But Robots? PFffftthh! They are not allowed to raise the dead. Attempts by robots to resurrect the dead or to cure the sick by lying on of gauntlets or to perform Critical Black Mass is defined as Necrotechnology, as is strictly forbidden by the Robopope Peter 2.0!

Robots are allowed to play laserharp, however. Only they have metal hands refractory enough to withstand the scalding death-ray energy involved.

View or comment on this post at John C. Wright's Journal.

Nooooooooooooooo!

Here is an article about a documentary I think I appear in, called The People vs. George Lucas

At least, I was filmed for it, and I don't know if my footage made the final cut, since I haven't had the pleasure yet of seeing it. The man being interviewed here Alexandre O Phillip, interviewed me during a spare moment of my Worldcon visit to Montreal.

http://bighollywood.breitbart.com/cftoto/2011/10/27/new-documentary-lets-star-wars-fans-put-george-lucas-on-trial/

The just-released Blu-ray edition of 'Star Wars: Episode VI – Return of the Jedi' adds an awkward "noooo!" to Darth Vader's dialogue during the climactic battle between Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill) and the Emperor (Ian McDiarmid). It's one of several tiny tweaks found in the Blu-ray editions that have fans hopping mad.

My comment:

Nooooooooooooooo!!!

Man, I loved those films. Man, I hate Lucas. He IS the Dark Side. We all miss you Leigh Brackett !

Note to readers: I am NOT rewriting NULL-A CONTINUUM to add a completely gratuitous tweaks of yelling Noooooo!! to the scene where Gilbert Gosseyn finds out that his false memories cover his true identity, discovering that he is actually his own son produced by an awkward time-travel sex-switching accident.

The scene, if you recall, takes place when Gilbert, wounded, is clinging by one hand to the nadir hull of the floating cloud city of Venus, addressing Lavoisier, now revealed to be Gilbert Gosseyn version Two!

Gilbert Gosseyn One (weeping):  I'll never serve you!

Gilbert Gosseyn Two (sternly): "Search your FEELINGS, Gilbert! Use the Null-A Cortical-Thalamic Pause! I am your FATHER! And, well, I am you also! Sort of!

Gilbert Gosseyn One (anguished):  Nooo! That can't be true!

Gilbert Gosseyn Two (triumphantly): You know it to be true! We can rule the Greatest Empire together as FATHER AND, um, VERSION!"

Gilbert Gosseyn One (aside): Version Three! Why didn't you tell me! Why—

Gilbert Gosseyn Three (voice from offstage): because I erased your memory when I created you, remember?

Gilbert Gosseyn One (muttering): Jerk.

Gilbert Gosseyn Two (embarrassed): And I am your mother also. You see, being trapped in a time loop gets kind of lonely, and there was all that genetic restructuring equipment there, and no one was looking but Enro, darn that Peeping Tom, and so I just created a small Moebius paradox, and, uh— you see, my middle name is Patrick, and my mother's maiden name was Hardie, so naturally I—"

Gilbert Gosseyn One: As a man with a Null-A trained double brain, let me just say EWWW! You committed incest! With yourself!

Gilbert Gosseyn Two (defensively): It is not that different from masturbation, if you think about it. It is very nearly close to a sexual practice that is almost perfectly normal. Anyway, rule the Greatest Empire together, as Clone and Other Clone! Join me! And we can end this ruinous conflict!

Gilbert Gosseyn One: I'll never join you!

(He then drops down the spine of the Cloud City of Venus, knowing that if this body dies his memories will be transferred to a prepared duplicate. But, before his hits bottom, there is a moment of distorter discontinuity, and he is standing next to Gilbert Gosseyn Two, who has used his 20 decimal point similarity technique to teleport his falling body safely to the platform next to him.)

Leej the Predictress: Boy, I saw that one coming.

(Added Tweak) Gilbert Gosseyn One: Nooooooooooooooo!!!

Fanboy: Wait. If Gilbert Gosseyn can teleport to any memorized location, why was he hanging by one hand from the bottom of a Cloud City thingie? Couldn't he just memorize a spot and bampf to it, or, better yet, memorize and energy socket and pour a zillion volts into evil version Two? The whole scene makes no sense.

Author: Nooooooooooooooo!!!

 

 

 

 

View or comment on this post at John C. Wright's Journal.

Jihad and Crusade

Sean Michael writes and asks about the best way to prosecute the Crusade. Let me answer his questions  seriatim:

 What do we DO if we see the rise of "no go" areas in the US as in some parts of Europe? That is, large parts of cities where "infidels, whether civilians, police, EMTs, or even firemen are afraid to go due to facing attacks from jihadists. To tacitly abandon these areas to de facto foreign and jihadist rule would mark a huge advance in the program of subversion followed by the Muslim Brotherhood.

Assuming the police do nothing, and assuming all peaceful means have been tried and have failed, the answer would be to assemble all young men are arms bearing age, that is, the militia, and have them march into the area and restore law and order, and if encountering armed resistance, to expel or kill the scofflaws.

In other words, the citizens of a republic are responsible for the defense thereof, and the establishment of an enclave in their midst of an alien peoples hostile to the republic is a threat to the public safety and security just as much as an insurrection or invasion.

I am currently reading IMPEACHED by David O. Stewart, which deals with the Reconstruction during the administration of J0hnson, immediately following the Lincoln assassination.  The problem there was parallel: large areas of the nation were occupied by federal troops, and various Southern factions and Northern 'Copperheads' had not yet truly laid down their arms. I do not see the problem as fundamentally different from what nations must do when sections of the nation are in rebellion.

If my answer seems outrageous or impossible or 'beyond the pale' — ask yourself why. Why and by what means have we reached the point when using arms to protect the integrity of soil for which our fathers died seems outrageous?

Is it because the enemy in this case is religious rather than secular? Not in uniform? Hiding behind civilians? Barbaric rather than civilized? Uses Communist cell-warfare and Cold War techniques of agitprop and anarchy rather than honorable tactics?

Allow me to suggest that categorizing the Jihadists as a denomination protected by the First Amendment is a category error. Categorizing a pro-theocracy Sharia Law movement as a private religious opinion rather than as an armed political revolution springing from a war between Christendom and the Dal al-Islam bent on her destruction, a war between civilization and barbarism going back to the birth of Mohammedanism in the Seventh Century, leads to endless paradoxes and difficulties.

Another problem is how Saudi Arabia uses oil money to train and export Whahabi imams and mullahs sympathetic to the Muslim Brotherhood's aims to staff many mosques in the US. Should we any longer tolerate this?

No, we should not tolerate it.

Should such imams and mullahs be expelled?

Hanging would be better than exile, since modern telecommunications would allow them to continue to preach and recruit even without face-to-face meetings (see, for example the Fort Hood shooter).

As you said, our Constitutional guarantees on freedom of religion did not have an irreversibly theocratic religion like Islam in mind. Or should it be called, rather, a political party?

I cordially dislike renaming things merely because the implications of the name provoke an emotional reaction. It would be better to call it a religion, which it is, and a heresy, which it is, and better to realize that it is a religion which is antithetical to Christendom and the West, and to all civilization.

It would be better to call them Paynims, which they are, and Jihadists, which they are, and to declare a Crusade according to the proper and legally recognized forms for the declaration of the Crusade, and to gather Christian peoples and republics and all men of good will who might be our allies and make war against them wherever situate, and decimate their numbers until they sue for a peace they can convince us they mean to keep.

This is a religious war. You cannot fight a religious war with a secular philosophy. The secular philosophy is helpless, and is blind to the true dimensions and purpose of the war. See, for example, the risible and provocative willingness of the West to build a victory mosque on the unburied graves of the 9/11 massacre, as if to welcome our conquerors — the meaning of the act is spiritual and symbolic, and therefor the secular philosophy is required by its own logic to grant the victory not only unopposed, but by aiding the abetting the outrages of the enemy.

I see no way out of the dilemma you so starkly outlined: doing nothing about jihadist aggression undermines us; but "suspending" the First Amendment clauses on religious freedom would give aggressive secularists even more room for attacking Christians. To say nothing of how suspending the First Amendment risks lowering us to the same vile level as the jihadists.

All the same, I can't believe passivity is all we can do. Through out the long history of the co existence of Christianity with Islam, many leaders did arise who fought Mohammedan aggression. Charles Martel, Leo III the Isaurian, Dmitry of the Don, Don John of Austria, and King John Sobieski, to name a few. I strongly hope and pray that if wars like these come again, we have the spirit to raise up such leaders.

Passivity is not all we can do, but it might well be all the secularists can do. Their philosophy strictly forbids them from fighting a religious war, or using public funds to spread Christian ideas or to discourage Muslim ideas. This is a war of ideas: they are not allowed to take sides.

The structural logic of the secularist philosophy requires them to treat Muslims as if they are Mormons or Methodists. The modern world is more afraid of Protestant Fundamentalists and Catholics than it is of Muslims, almost as if the Christians were regarded as theocrats bent on establishing a political hegemony and reducing the non-Christians to dhimmi.

Let me emphasize that I am speaking of the modern secularists, i.e. those who think the First Amendment guarantees freedom from religion but not freedom of religion.  This interpretation is a very recent cultural product of a postchristian and antichristian culture.

In law, the First Amendment does not protect Aztecs or Satanists wishing to commit human sacrifice, nor Shaman wishing to chew peyote, nor any other act which is illegal in and of itself. Surely recruiting for Jihad falls into this category.

If Jihad had been waged against the West in the times of our grandfathers and fathers, they would have treated the fascist Mohammedans the same way they treated the fascist Germans and Imperial Japanese both at home and abroad. The laws would not have been read in a technical and over-broad fashion to give the enemy protective coloration or cover, and the police would have expected cooperation from peaceful Muslims who would be actively and eagerly attempting to expel the Jihadists from their midst, and who would be denouncing them publicly, and granting them no tolerance, and no soapbox and no rest and no comfort.

The difference is that the political and social Left fears the Christians and sympathizes with the Jihadists; and why not? They are allies in spirit. The Jihadists use the same rhetoric and the same techniques as the fascists and communists and other totalitarians so near and dear to the heart of the Left.

The Left are the source of the problem.

Absent them, the Jihadists would be as trifling and minor a foe as a band of robbers from the hills. Absent them, every civilized nation would rally behind Israel, and every suicide-murder or rocket attack into Israel would launch another round of wars in the Middle East and another regime change. Muslims would be terrified of provoking the righteous anger of the West.

The West has overwhelming resources and military superiority. France alone has sufficient nuclear arsenal to destroy every major city in every nation where Islam is the state religion. Such weapons will never be used. (Nor am I particularly recommending them, except to stop Iran from obtaining a nuke.) My point here is that this is not a battle to be fought on the physical level, not a military action.

It is a psychological warfare war, or, if you prefer, a spiritual war.

What do we do if we ever have "no go" areas in the US controlled by jihadists? Should we refuse to tolerate this and treat them like rebellious regions, wresting back control by military force?

What has become of us that this question is seriously to be asked? I do not fault you for asking, but I note that the unwillingness of the modern mind to use force of arms to defend civilization from its avowed and open enemies makes the question pertinent.

Frankly, I do not see why it is a question at all. If Irishmen, Frenchmen, or Chinamen, or Eskimos, or Men from Mars in tripodal fighting machines landed in England, would not the Englishmen have a right and duty to resort to force of arms to expel or kill the invaders?

Ah, but I suppose the matter is different if the invaders are invited in to do manual labor, and then maintained by public welfare, and the difference is one of cult and culture, but not of politics. We of the West cannot, because of our innate chivalry, bring ourselves to attack a foe who does not march under a flag, or behind a crowned king or imperial Caesar. It is somewhat undemocratic of us to hold it to be impossible for a grassroots movement to be a foe.

Will we need to amend the Constitution to declare the First Amendment religious freedom clauses applies only to faith which does not believe in theocracy or the merging of mosque and state, as Islam does?

I am not sure an amendment is necessary. Even under a generous reading of the Constitution, a church cannot preach, advocate, and recruit members to engage in a conspiracy for the armed overthrow of the government.

The Ummah of Islam can coexist with Christendom if Islam repudiates Jihad. If Islam cannot repudiate Jihad and remain Islam, it will remain forever in a state of war.

The expulsion of the practice of that religion from all civilized nations, and the reconquest of the traditionally Christian lands of North Africa and the Middle East would seem to be the minimum necessity for a moderate policy. If the conquest of the Middle East by imperial colonial powers was the only time in history when Christendom and the Ummah were at peace, then that is the price of peace. If we cannot or will not pay the price, then war.

Should Mohammedanism be declared not a religion, but a political party, and thus subject to the laws punishing rebellion, sedition, and treason?

That is certainly possible and may be wise, but allow me to suggest a milder course: Sharia Law should be declared not a religion but a legal system, that is, a political party, and thus subject to the laws punishing rebellion, sedition, and treason.

To soothe the conscience of our secular friends, we do not even need to say we are seeking a Crusade against the Paynim. We can say we are enemies of 'Shariaists' i.e. the advocates of Sharia as opposed to cannon law or civic law or common law. Any Muslim who is not an advocate of Sharia Law would not necessarily be a threat, or be part of the fight.

Another problem, what do we do about NON fanatical Muslims? That is, Muslims who are not jihadists. Problem is, the jihadist "fish" uses the "sea" of non fanatical Mohammedans they swim in to hide from their enemies. Or at least get protective coloration.

Bush uttered the only reasonable policy: anyone who is not actively aiding us, is against us. Anyone who aids, comforts, supports, or abets a Jihadists is a Jihadist.

You see, the biggest illusion of the War against the Terror Masters is the idea that there are not state actors behind the terrorists. That is not true. There are nations who are supporting and funding this effort as well as large international movements or brotherhoods.

The peaceful Muslims must expel the Jihadists from their midst, and be unwilling to provide protective coloration, no, not even offer a word of encouragement, or else the peaceful Muslims will be counted as enemies. I dislike the logic of this, but see no other option.

There are many frustrating and difficult questions like these which needs to be frankly addressed if the Western tradition of ordered freedom is to be defended. Denying or looking away from these problems will not help.

My problem, as you can see from the above, is the opposite. I believe that a war fought explicitly to protect and promote the Christian religion, that is, a Crusade or holy war, is both rightful and expedient in a case where peace is impossible. Peace with Muslims is impossible until and unless they unambiguously and irreproachably repudiate Jihad and Sharia Law.

It is my belief that the Western experiment with government built on atheist liberal principles, where the conduct of religion is both private and strictly excluded from the public agora, fails when it encounters a confident and warlike theocracy, even if the theocracy is disorganized and poor and cannot maintain a credible military threat.

The random murder of civilians has no military value whatsoever. It is only an instrument of terror. When combined with other 'Cold War' style communists tactics for revolution and the overthrow of the old order, such political terror can be effective, but, again, the value is primarily psychological, and the method is one of psychological warfare or spiritual warfare.

An atheist liberal society lacks any cult or culture to oppose such psychological warfare: you cannot defeat a Jihadist with a narcissist.

 

View or comment on this post at John C. Wright's Journal.