John C. Wright's Blog, page 200

Separation of Church and State, but mostly of Church

It is often asked what harm, if any, it would do to heterosexual marriage if gay marriage were legitimized?

I suppose if we lived in a strictly Libertarian Commonwealth, where marriage was nothing more than a contract enacted for the services (sexual, child-rearing, companionship, and so on) of a willing and fertile young wageearner-ess needing a steady income and a place to stay, the presence or absence of a member of the opposite sex would not matter to the work contract. Libertarians hold ...

The Crazy Years and their Empty Moral Vocabulary

In Robert Heinlein’s famed ‘Future History’ he constructed an elaborate timeline of thing to come, to provide a structure for his short stories.

Looking forward from the year 1940, when the timeline was first formed, it was reasonable, even conservative guesswork to predict the moonlanding by the 1980’s, since the first powered flight by the Wright Brothers had been forty years earlier. Heinlein’s Luna City founded in 1990 a decade or so later, with colonies on Mars and Venus by 2000. Compare...

Manifesto of the Cornucopians -- a coda about Space Colonization

Robert Mitchell remarks, in re a conversation about the Malthusian limits on human population growth:

You don't have to see the worlds wilderness converted to farm land. There is lots of room in the oceans, and if we get enough surplus, L-5 colonies, the Moon, Venus, Mars, and more. All of this is possible with current technology. If you are worried about things going wrong, then we definitely need more people. More people = more surplus = spaceflight = terraforming. There will always be...

Top Ten Bioethics Stories of the Naughts

The topic of bioethics is of some interest to me because my latest science fiction book examines some of the implications of Transhumanism, which were touched on only tangentially in my earlier book THE GOLDEN AGE. In that book I simply assumed the men of the far future to be all of morally upright and perfect sanity, human weaknesses having been long ago bred and trained out of the race: ergo none of the particular moral quandaries pertinent to men with the power to remake mankind would aris...

The Manifesto of the Cornucopians

sophistibation asks:

"I'm curious what your suggestion, if any, is for a long-run solution to the problem of overpopulation, given your seeming distaste for contraception, one-child policy, etc. I'm not suggesting that there is a current global overpopulation crisis, but only that eventually the population must be limited either by "self-regulation" (abortion, contraception in the case of the West today) or by war, famine, etc. Interested to hear your thoughts."

Let me make a startling suggesti...

Multiculturalism, China, Child, and the Severed Vocal Cords.

In a recent discussion in this space, a commenter offered the opinion that I must be a supporter of multiculturalism, on the grounds that I recently adopted a daughter from Canton. Perhaps his point was that I ought to be a supporter, or that I was a supporter without realizing it, or somesuch. In my imagination, I heard the gentleman's remark in that 'Gotcha!' tone of voice which is the sum and summit of what passes for reasoned discourse among the Left. (I admit the gentleman bears no respo...

Brit Hume and NRO

Here is an article from National Review about the all-too-revealing reaction of the Damned to Brit Hume's rather mild on air comment asking Tiger Wood, who betrayed his wife and family, to seek redemption in Christ. I reprint the whole thing without further comment.

http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=M2EyZDc1ODc4ZmEzNTk2YzM1NzI0OTJlOTFkZGViZGQ=

Hume’s Gentle Witness
We should welcome honest talk about faith.

By Peter Wehner

Brit Hume’s comments on Fox News Sunday — “I don’t think that [Buddhism...

A Speculation on the Goals and Strategy of the Foe

wmtingley writes: "[1:] Al Qaeda launched the 9/11 attacks as part of an escalating terror campaign against the United States. They expected a capitulation by us, not the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq."

My comment:

Interesting. I had been assuming that Al Qaeda's main purpose was to shore up support among their base, to awe and impress their Sunni allies and to awe and terrify their Shiite enemies. It was a symbolic, a religious act, not a military one: it was a holocaust of human victims t...

Christian Conservatism as Myth

This is a reprint of a previous article I wrote some years ago, but I post it again today, because there has been some discussion of the composition of the factions among the political parties in America in my comments-boxes, and I thought to weigh in my opinion.

* * *

There are six political parties in America, not two.

These six align themselves into the two major political parties for convenience, but the grouping is not harmonious or even.

The elite o...

More on my favorite topic: ME!

Each time I make progress at being humble, something comes along to inflate my self-opinion.

Yesterday I visited a gaming store with my rollicking children, and fell into a conversation with a nice young clerk named Dave. Shamelessly, I tried to interest him in my wife's book PROSPERO LOST, but with true matronly modesty, the wife insisted I tell the youth my name, and that I also wrote books. I wrote her name and book info on a napkin for him, and also added my name. He stared at it a moment...