Author: VD

Sugar writes: This is the usual claptrap from an apologist. Let’s consider some of the “humane” actions of the religious:

1. Thirty Years’ War (in which at least one-third of the German population was murdered in the name of religion)

2. The Inquisition

3. The witch trials (hundreds of thousands of innocent people murdered)

4. The Holocaust (Hitler was a Catholic)

5. The Soviet atrocities (Stalin was raised and trained in a Russian Orthodox school)

6. 2,000 years of hell in which billions of lives were ruined.

It’s no wonder that millions have been sent screaming to their deaths in the name of religion.

And this is yet another feeble attempt of a historically-challenged atheist to hide the responsibility of his fellow godless for the worst evils of mankind. Let’s consider the points:

1. Yes, I’ll give him the Thirty Year’s War. Numbers too high, but okay. The politics of the Habsburg empire had more than a little to do with it as well, of course. But a valid point, although he seems to want to include ancillary deaths, which is never done in the case of WWII etc.

2. Historians estimate around 6,000 people were killed in the 356 years of the Inquisition. This is half the number slain by Turks in the event which prompted Queen Isabella – the State, in other words, not the Church – to instigate the Inquisition. And this is number two on his list?

3. Witch trials – I’ll give him but not the “hundreds of thousands”. Around 65,000 in 250 years is the current consensus estimate. Rather less than the 3.3 million slain in four years by Kampuchean atheists 28 years ago.

4. Most atheists were raised in some religion or another. To what diocese did Mr. Hitler belong? Why did he write to the Nazi heirarchy that the Church had to be destroyed? Why did he describe Christianity as a pathology? Strange behavior for a Catholic, don’t you think? One wonders in what religion Sugar was raised. Shall we number him as one of them for the rest of his life?

5. This conveniently skates over the atheism written into Soviet law, as well as the inherent godlessness of Marxism itself. And, of course, it leaves out Lenin and Trotsky, who only happened to be the architects of the Soviet Union and world revolution. One marvels that Sugar does not assert that Chairman Mao was a Baptist minister. Surely he must have attended a missionary school somewhere.

6. Whatever. Read the Chronicles of the Assyrian Kings if you believe that mass slaughter has anything to do with religion. It can; it usually doesn’t.

In other words, in five examples, Sugar lists two godless atrocities and is forced to go back to 1481, 1618 and 1428 just to find three examples of atrocities he can blame on Christians, amounting to around 375,000 homicides committed over 636 years. Evil, to be sure, but no thinking individual apprised of the historical facts would consider them to be worthy of being numbered among mankind’s greatest tragedies, considering that they cumulatively represent only 75 percent of the number of American children killed every year in bicycle accidents. The total is also less than ANY of the 23 major massacres committed by legally atheist governments in the past 70 years alone. That does not even include the massive Molochian holocaust of global abortion, which can be laid at the feet of secularism if not atheism per se.

If Sugar was seriously interested in attacking religion, he would have brought up many valid Islamic examples ranging from India to the Sudan, but he is more of an anti-Christian bigot than a defender of atheism. At least he was smart enough to avoid bringing up the old atheist lunacy about all wars being caused by religion, which is very easily dismissed. So, give him that, but nothing else.

Ridgelift writes [on Slashdot] “Even though Microsoft’s recently announce they would not be issuing any new patches for the month of December, the boys at Redmond were scrambling today to figure out why some systems are being patched. The reason? They haven’t got a clue.”

It’s bad enough to turn your computer over to a third party. It’s worse to be forced to turn your computer over to a third party. It is totally reprehensible to be forced to turn your computer over to a third party without your knowledge or consent. But it is utterly insane to be forced to turn your computer over to a third party who has no idea what they are doing to it!

I seem to have misplaced an email from someone enquiring about speaking engagments a week or two ago. I’ve been filled in on the procedure by my syndicate, so if you’re still interested, shoot me an email.

[Random absurdity about impersonating Ann Coulter on Fox News deleted upon further reflection. It was funny to me and two of my best friends, but what do they know? Leave Big Chilly alone for ten minutes, and the next thing you know he’s wearing pink chiffon, rolling around onstage in front of 800 people singing Like A Virgin in a deep bass. And as for the White Buffalo, let’s just say that anyone who features a poetry reading accompanied by freeform interpretive dance at their own wedding has some seriously questionable judgment.]

Gravitas: Anywhere But Here

JG gushes: For the record currently you are my second favourite columnist after ann coulter . I will provide a list of your excellent qualities below: Funny, passionate, erudite, challenging, moral, good writing style, got-fighting-spirit, well rounded, follows the heart of the scriptures (mostly), up to the minute topical analysis, indepth analyst… must stop list, starting to sound gay….

I think we’re okay, as long as you don’t tell me I have pretty eyes. And, of course, assuming that “well-rounded” doesn’t refer to any part of my anatomy. Actually, the fan mail that is my personal favorite also mentioned Ann Coulter; the writer started off by stating that I was her favorite columnist and then proceeded to list a vast panoply of ways in which Ann’s writing was superior to mine. Most of which I agreed with. I haven’t imported my old email into Evolution yet, but if I do I’ll probably have to post it here. It was pretty funny.

I imagine that last post should have erased whatever remnants of it were left to me. Which is fine, since I wasn’t expecting to be named to the Roman Senate anyhow. I never seriously considered stopping the blog, although the point HL made was not frivolous and I think that it is always worthwhile to step back from time to time and ask yourself why you’re doing something. I don’t know if the vast majority of WND readers are unaware of the blog or are simply uninterested in it, but it’s true that only a very small percentage of the Monday readers make it over here on a daily basis. It will also be interesting to see if the column’s kickoff in the Dallas Morning News and the UT Daily Beacon next month will follow this pattern, although I won’t have very good information on how many people are reading it there.

In case anyone’s interested, of all the weekly or twice-weekly columnists, I tend to run number three on WND over the course of the week. I can’t divulge the actual numbers – that’s WND business, not mine – but it should surprise no one to learn that Ann Coulter is blonde head-and-shoulders above the rest of us. Mr. Patrick J. Buchanan and I trade off running a distant second, although Pat usually has the advantage as he hits more home runs, so to speak, than I do. I’ve learned that technology columns like yesterday’s tend to run below average, while the perfect storm would be writing about Rush Limbaugh accusing Hillary Clinton of being a gay Nazi feminist while on a college campus.

Still, as much as I appreciate people reading the column and the blog, I’m really not interested in chasing readership. That way lies boredom and burnout, so I hope you’ll just keep in mind that for every boring treatise on operating systems or economics arcana, there will surely be a scathing piece on the vagaries and idiocies of the Left following soon. Variety is the spice of life, for the writer as well as the reader. I don’t usually publish fan mail here – let’s face it, it’s a lot more fun responding to hate mail – but some of the things people wrote about the blog were interesting.

TO writes: I’m more interested in reading your blog then I am in reading your column though I do venture over to your columns once in a while. Your blogs are a lot more thought provoking because it’s more like a running conversation I get to listen into.

TS writes: I appreciate the writer whose views of you change when he gets a chance to see your less polished work, but I believe that’s actually a good thing. Getting a fuller picture of your views and stances on myriad subjects allows people to read your stuff with more understanding. For instance, if the guy that railed at you about the suicide column knew you better, he would have recognized the angst and the loss that dominated that column rather than getting lost in the Christian portion of it.

JS writes: I enjoy your writings not just because you so eloquently defend positions I agree with, but because in some cases you’ve also challenged me and have changed my mind on some things. I’ve always had some sympathy for libertarian positions, but maybe I’ll officially join the club soon. The Republicans aren’t doing much to keep me.

JU writes: About six months ago, I was delighted to discover your column. As a twenty-three year old catholic libertarian I enjoyed your, in my experience unique,ability to stylishly expound alternately on liberty, God, and Wing Commander tremendously. Your written words resonated in erie, sympathetic harmony with my own thoughts, views, and values to a degree far beyond that of any commentator I had ever come across. By the end of that first day I had devoured the entirety of your World-Net-Daily archive, and it thereafter became a weekly ritual for me to enjoy your column first thing each Monday morning. However, as much of a treat as it was for me to discover your column, the discovery, about one month ago of your weblog, was if anything more delightful by an order of magnitude.

DB writes: KEEP THE BLOG!!!! When I get up with my morning cup of brew, do I sit down to catch up on things by first heading to fox news? Heading to cnn??? EEK! Heading to MSNBC??? EEK! Do I grab the remote control and turn on the TV for the Today Show??? NEVER! What do I do???? I sit right down in front of my lap top and head over to VOX POPOLI of course!!!!! I love the blog and I don’t think it takes anything away from the weekly column in World Net Daily. I think if anything the blog reinforces the column. I’ve written you before telling of how I’m working on an M.D. and consider myself a pretty bright guy! With the blog, I can feel like a total idiot every day of the week instead of just on Monday!!

And more in that vein…. By the way, don’t be so hard on HR. In the same email, he also wrote: Let me state the obvious. You’re the writing expert here. I’m just a guy who owns a software company and enjoys reading what you write. Of course you’ll do what you think is best, and you’ll probably be right. No offense meant. I really do hope you stick around.

I certainly took no offense. HR was just pointing out that if I wanted to be a serious journalist, I should probably rethink the blog. But I’m not a journalist, much less a serious one, I’m simply a writer expressing my views, take them or leave them. If they can’t stand on their own, then they’re worthless anyhow. In any case, if we couldn’t question ourselves, we wouldn’t be libertarians and conservatives. We’d be ur-Stalinist hive-minders like the Democratic Left.

I always liked Posh best. I like her even better after seeing the video for Let Your Head Go. It’s utterly forgettable Brit dance pop, but the scene in which realizing that someone has tried on her favorite little black dress reduces her to a shaken, scarf-and-sunglass-wearing caricature of Greta Garbo made me laugh out loud. There’s also the fact that in this amoral age of celebritism, she and her husband are noteworthy by virtue of being an openly married couple with children.

In any case, it’s hard not to like a beautiful woman who isn’t afraid to laugh at herself.

An attempt by Democrats to provide an alternative to what they consider is conservative-dominated talk radio flopped after just two days when the show’s host quit. Jeff Gerbino, a comedian who hosted “High Ground” on Minneapolis’ WMNN for the first two days of the show’s existence said the former Democratic candidate who created the show was forcing him to make it a “shameless plug for the DFL,” according to the Star Tribune newspaper.

Turning the show into an “infomercial for the Democratic Party” would ring hollow for the audience and he couldn’t be funny or provocative in such a format, Gerbino told the paper.

Democratic talk radio will never work. There are plenty of funny people who are left wing, but the problem is that their humor is unrelated to their politics. Al Franken has little to work with except the personalities of his targets, whereas the right can point to the policies themselves as being incoherent, utterly illogical and risible. I’ve seldom found that young left wing activists have a sense of humor, whereas most young right wing activists do. They have to, in dealing with their college administrations.

After making some solid points about the flaws of Linux on the desktop, TS writes: You’re worried about privacy I’m sure. But too much privacy in and of itself is dangerous. The scourge of internet pornography and gambling is brought about precisely because people feel like what they are doing is, at least, mildly anonymous. How many kid touching priests would be found out rather quickly if law enforcement were allowed to monitor their electronic communications 24/7. People hide behind their precious privacy and claim they have the right to steal copyrighted works or corrupt young kids. It’s time we shined a spotlight in the dark corners and run these people out of Dodge.

I totally disagree. Freedom always comes at a price. I prefer a million homosexual pedophile priests instead of a single government with the power TS would like to give them. It will use it to do one thing: kill large numbers of people. This is ALWAYS the result, and usually within ten years of obtaining totalitarian power. Those uncorrupted young kids TS hopes to protect will be dead in prison camps because the sort of people who are seeking this unmitigated power have a very different set of values than TS. Nor will giving them this power even prevent what TS hopes to prevent, because once granted that power, they will not deign to use it for the approved ends, but their own instead. It’s pretty clear that at least one branch of our government is more likely to invent a constitutional right to touch kids at this point than to make use of totalitarian powers to stop such evil.

I’m not quite sure why you hate Microsoft either. Where does this hatred come from? They are successful because they give people what they want. You may not like that but that’s your problem not Microsoft’s. Sure, they are a monopoly but since when is that in and of itself immoral or illegal. Only when Microsoft steps over the line and hurts customers is being a monopoly a bad thing.

Microsoft is not a monopoly. However, they have chosen to use their market power to get in bed with the totalitarian and would-be totalitarian governments of the world instead of using it to further human freedom. If MS used their market share to encourage financial privacy, built PGP into Outlook and pursued a general philosophy of protecting and defending individual privacy instead of violating it, I’d be their biggest fan. Unfortunately, they’re going directly the other way. I have no doubt they will find many fans on this path. Humanity has never lacked those who lick the boots of their oppressors.

One congressman heads to jail, only a few hundred to go. Then it will be time to start on the Senate. This conviction is particularly satisfying to see, as the effrontery of Janklow in thinking that he could get away with recklessly killing another man simply because he held electoral office was disgusting.

The latest Eurobarometer to be released this week found that just 48 per cent of EU citizens viewed membership as a “good thing”, down from 54 per cent last spring. Britain was by far the most negative state, with positive feelings tumbling to 28 per cent, but even the French were below half for the first time after months of battles with Brussels over tax cuts and illegal aid to ailing firms.

Next to the UN, the European Union is the most dangerous ur-governmental entity on the planet. I’m glad that the people of Europe are finally beginning to wake up to the neo-fascist monster that is devouring them. Better late than never.



When the sole East European member dared to raise a dissenting voice he was told his vote “didn’t count”.

That’s what you get when you deal with intellectual heirs of Jacobins and Nazis, who dream of reviving the Carolingian empire. He was probably surprised. I’m not.