The sales have been exceptional. The reviews have been excellent, by which I don’t mean that they said the book is great, although they mostly do, but in their attention to detail and their substance. Sadly, some observers are just not taking it well.
Phil Sandifer @PhilSandifer
Man, Vox Day must be spending an awful lot of his daddy’s money to drive up his new book’s Amazon ranking this high.
To which there can really only be one response.
Otherwise, the usual SJWs have been stunned into silence; the observable fact that I not only have considerably more support than they do, but actually happen to be in harmony with the popular zeitgeist at the moment is rather more than they are equipped to rationally process. The success of SJWs Always Lie was bad enough, as far as they were concerned, but to follow it up with an even bigger success of broader appeal is simply beyond imagining.
There has been only one real criticism aimed at the book to date, namely, the absence of footnotes. It’s a legitimate point, and I will address it, first as if I were Red Eagle, and second in my own inimitable fashion.
Cuckservative makes a strong rhetorical appeal to defend historic America, but its weak point is that you have to read it as an appeal addressed to you, the reader. It’s not factual ammunition for you, the already-convinced reader, to use in a debate with the unconvinced, because the authors have omitted footnotes. Cuckservative uses a lot of facts, and Vox Day has said on his blog that he’s got solid sources for everything, and that omitting references gives critics less to attack. That’s fine if you believe he’s not bluffing, and I do; but “one of the authors says he has a source for that, but he won’t say what it is” doesn’t fly in a serious argument.
Ann Coulter’s Adios America will supply facts by the ton when it comes out on Kindle. Meanwhile Cuckservative is the best current statement of the militant right-wing case against mass immigration and against ineffective “respectable” conservative politics regarding it.
Imagine, if you will, that you are a married man. You’ve worked a long day. You’re tired and you’re not in the mood for explaining yourself or getting into an argument with your wife, so when she asks you if you want Chinese for dinner, you have two choices. Either A) you simply say no, or B) you tell her no and you explain why.
If you say no, that ends the debate. Perhaps she suggests something else, perhaps you do, either way, there is no need for discussion. But if you go with option B), you have given her the opening to take issue with why your position is incorrect and to attempt to convince you that you really do want Chinese. Whether she manages to convince you or not, you’re in for an argument, and most likely, you’ll end up eating Chinese even though you didn’t want to.
Now, in case the analogy has escaped you, the reasons for not wanting Chinese food are the footnotes and the wife is the critics. Here endeth the lesson.
From my perspective, books are discourse. I expect and anticipate criticism both fair and foul. I remember when Ann Coulter was absolutely pilloried for having endnotes rather than footnotes. I also know that not having footnotes allows me, or the Cuckservative reader, to call out the critic who attempts to cast doubt on them.
The correct response to the critic who claims that something in Cuckservative is wrong is to ask him what the correct answer is. If he wishes to deny that the Danish army’s measured average IQ has fallen by 1.5 points, ask him for the correct delta. Ask him if it has risen, fallen, or stayed the same. He will not be able to do so, thereby discrediting himself and revealing that he is not an honest interlocutor.
The only people who actually need the footnotes are those who are attempting to undermine the arguments presented in the book by disqualifying the source data. Red Eagle and I simply made their task more difficult by denying it to them. If you want to cite a source, then cite our book. That is sufficient.
But perhaps my chief reason for not providing my sources, which are, of course, impeccable, is my experience with TIA. Simply because I cited my source, many people who read the book took my original arguments and credited them to the source, who, ironically enough, made precisely the opposite argument in the face of the data they had collected.
For much of the world before the 17th century, these “reasons” for war were explained, and justified, at least for the participants, by religion.
– The Encyclopedia of Wars, p. xxii
No, they really weren’t. I make mistakes, but I seldom make the same mistake twice.
UPDATE: My co-author speaks for himself:
This isn’t an academic treatise, it isn’t a book report we’re submitting for approval and critique by authority, and it isn’t a defensive, plaintive rearguard work in the cuckservative style.
We’re on the attack. Let the lefties and cuckservatives be on the defense. Let them impotently quibble and whine about us failing to cite our sources. Let them do their own homework if they want to argue or nitpick, and let them be the ones who try to qualify themselves.
Preach, preacher!