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They also serve

It was suggested that they also serve, who inadvertently and unknowingly do the bidding of the Evil Legion of Evil through their ludicrously predictable reactions. And lo, a badge for this brigade of Unwitting Minions was created. Evil Legion of Evil minions are free to award it to those whose behavior is so egregiously stupid or shortsighted or self-destructive that they could not possibly serve your Supreme Dark Lord better if they were consciously doing His Evil Bidding.

Given that they are, without exception, unique and special snowflakes, they naturally all bear the title “Minion #1”.

On a not entirely unrelated note, RI explains why he is now reading this blog and Larry Correia’s books:

I’ve been a spectator to this conflict for several months now. To be honest, I didn’t even know who any of the participants were when I first started following. Now, because of the outcry against you, Mr. Correia, and Mr. Torgersen I have become a daily reader of your blog and am rapidly burning through Mr. Corriea’s books. I’d like to think I stand somewhere in the between you and Corriea. I’ve noticed you’ve been calling attention to some of the unethical book reviewing practices of the SJWs and I found one I thought you would like to point out on your blog.

This person openly admits to downgrading her review after finding out about Correia’s politics.

If I am any evidence of a growing trend, then the SJWs are basically screaming themselves into irrelevance. I am glad you have decided to wade into this and stand up for your beliefs and stand against the terrorism of the left. God bless you, sir.

This is the perspective that is so often ignored. What people are assumed to perceive, and what they will actually perceive, are often two different things. Larry once said that the benefit of telling the truth is that you have no need to worry about keeping your stories straight, and another one is that people tend to recognize those who tell the truth, whether they accept the truth on that particular subject or not.

Who needs that pesky “civilization” anyhow?

Apparently we need to readjust our vocabularies again. It’s no longer white/yellow/red/brown separatism, it’s just militant-shaming.

As a nation, we fail to comprehend Black political strategy in much the same way we fail to recognize the value of Black life.

We
see ghettos and crime and absent parents where we should see
communities actively struggling against mental health crises and
premeditated economic exploitation. And when we see police cars being
smashed and corporate property being destroyed, we should see reasonable
responses to generations of extreme state violence, and logical
decisions about what kind of actions yield the desired political
results.

I’m overwhelmed by the pervasive slandering of protesters in Baltimore this weekend for not remaining peaceful….We need to clarify what we mean by terms like “violence” and
“peaceful.” Because, to be clear, violence is beating, harassing,
tazing, assaulting and shooting Black, trans, immigrant, women, and
queer people, and that is the reality many of us are dealing with daily.
Telling someone to be peaceful and shaming their militance not only
lacks a nuanced and historical political understanding, it is literally a
deadly and irresponsible demand.

The political goals of rioters in Baltimore are not unclear—just as they were not unclear when poor, Black people rioted in Ferguson last fall. When the free market, real estate, the elected government, the legal system have all shown you they are not going to protect you—in fact, that they are the sources of the greatest violence you face—then political action becomes about stopping the machine that is trying to kill you, even if only for a moment, getting the boot off your neck, even if it only allows you a second of air. This is exactly what blocking off streets, disrupting white consumerism, and destroying state property are designed to do.

Black people know this, and have
employed these tactics for a very, very long time. Calling them
uncivilized, and encouraging them to mind the Constitution is racist,
and as an argument fails to ground itself not only in the violent
political reality in which Black people find themselves, but also in our
centuries-long tradition of resistance, one that has taught effective
strategies for militance and direct action to virtually every other
current movement for justice.

There is your choice, white America. Racism, aka “civilization and the Constitution” or living amongst an entitled and vibrant population that feels entirely justified in burning down the city around itself. I think it’s long past time for forced integration. But not for schoolchildren, for those who claim to oppose separatism. Let’s bus every self-professed “anti-racist” to Baltimore and make them live and work there.

They seem to think all of White America would rather die than be called racist. And they’re probably not wrong about the SJWs. But what the advocates of multiculturalism forgot is that Mexicans and Asians despise blacks in a way that few whites ever have, and they feel absolutely no guilt for the so-called “legacy of slavery”.

And if you’re going to try to make American Indians feel guilty about racial separatism, well, good luck with that.

THEY are in retreat

I told you that George RR Martin has lost the plot. After publicly declining the very debate for which he called, he actually repeated his call for what he already rejected:

Here’s an idea — debate the issue without epithets. Namecalling, whether with old epithets or new ones, is no substitute for actual discussion.

Oh, come on, you cowardly sad sack of an SJW. I gave you the opportunity to debate the issue. Honestly. Civilly. Rationally. You declined. So, guess what that leaves? And while we’re at it, just get it over with and hand the books over to Brandon Sanderson or Joe Abercrombie to finish already.

As Martin’s befuddled post demonstrates, it is readily apparent that science fiction’s CHORFs aren’t entirely confident they are winning anymore. Jim Hines steals yet another page from John Scalzi’s playbook, this time playing the classic “hey, forget my past attacks on you, we’re all just friends who happen to disagree” card:

I am so damn tired of the insistence on shoving everyone and everything into an artificial “Us vs. Them” framework. The Puppies thing is just the latest example. The only clearly defined “side” in this mess is the puppies themselves, and even that’s a slippery argument. Is Theodore Beale of the Rabid Puppies on the same side as Brad Torgersen and Larry Correia? Correia suggests they are: “Look at it like this. I’m Churchill. Brad is FDR. We wound up on the same side as Stalin.” But what about the commenters? Can people support some of what the puppies said they wanted — say, greater awareness of tie-in work in Hugo nominations — without having to swear allegiance to all things rabid?

There is nothing artificial about it. The main reason SJWs were successful in infiltrating the science fiction establishment and imposing their ideology on it was due to their Fabian strategy of denying any conflict was taking place. Their entryism depended entirely upon stealth and plausible deniability. That’s why the single most important aspect of both #GamerGate and #SadPuppies was the way in which it was made perfectly clear to everyone that there are, in fact, two sides.

There are those who want to be able to define what is permissible to read, write, design, develop, play, think, and say, (SJWs) and those who wish to read, write, design, develop, play, think, and say whatever the hell they happen to please. (Everybody else)

Jim Hines isn’t “so damn tired” of “an artificial Us vs. Them framework”. He is simply alarmed that their most effective tactic has been exposed and rendered impotent.

 I keep coming across commentary and arguments that assume you have to be either pro-puppy or anti-puppy. In broader discussions, you’re either us or you’re the enemy. Left or Right. Puppy or CHORF. Lately, I’m seeing more accusations of blacklists and gatekeepers and people’s careers being hurt because of their politics or beliefs or whatever, because some publishers are for Us and some are for Them, and you can’t succeed in this business without swearing allegiance to the Evil Gun Nuts of Baen or the Evil Tree-hugging Lib’ruls of Tor. To be honest, that last bit is funny as hell.

His point might be more convincing if we didn’t have Charles “15 Hugo Nominations” Stross on record warning me about the danger to my career if I didn’t stop writing my op/ed column and start sucking up to the then-Toad of Tor and Tor Senior Editor PNH. Or testimony from everyone from Larry Correia to Sarah Hoyt. You certainly can succeed in this business by fighting the establishment, but that doesn’t mean the establishment doesn’t exist or that it won’t attack you. It’s not like everyone doesn’t know that opinions deemed badthink can not only ruin your chances of getting published by an SJW-dominated publishing house, but get them to conspire to have the SFWA Board vote to “expel” you.

I know some of the Sad Puppies desperately want there to be some kind of
Social Justice Warrior Conspiracy that’s been manipulating the Hugos
and persecuting them for years, because that creates a simple narrative
with them as the feisty rebels striking a blow against the Evil Empire.
But there’s been zero evidence for it. Correia himself said he’d audited
the Hugos a few years back and found no sign of anything suspect.

The lesson, as always, SJWs ALWAYS lie. Correia found no sign of anything suspect in the ballot-counting by the WorldCons. He did not admit there was no SJW conspiracy. A very dishonest switcheroo by McCreepy.

Part of my anger at Torgersen and Correia is because I feel like they deliberately encouraged this Us vs. Them mentality in order to win support and votes. They invented an evil cabal of “Them,” then rallied people to join their side against this fictitious enemy. Which only increases the abuse and the hatred. And please note: I’m angry at them as individuals, not because they’re conservative, or because of their views on gun control, or because they might have a different religious belief than I do. I’m angry because whatever problems were out there, these two individuals actively made them worse, and they hurt a great many people in the process. Themselves included.

Fandom is not two distinct sides. It’s a bunch of people who like things in a really big genre, a genre that has guns and spaceships and dinosaurs and dragons and magic and manly men and genderfluid protagonists and grittiness and erotica and humor and hard-core feminism and sexism and racism and hope and stereotypes and anger and messages and politics and fluff and were-jaguars and superheroes and so much more.

Criticism is not war. Choosing not to read or support things you don’t like isn’t censorship. Liking something problematic doesn’t make you a bad person.

He shouldn’t be angry at Brad and Larry, who both seriously attempted to fix the Hugo system. He should be angry at me, because I have successfully exposed that which Hines and the other SJWs desperately wanted to keep hidden, for the same reason they hid their history of embracing child molesters like Breen, MzB, and Kramer, to name a few. But we didn’t make anything worse, any more than Deidre Saoirse Moen raped any children when she helped bring MzB’s behavior to light.

Criticism isn’t war. But taking over the SF establishment for ideological purposes is war. Of course they don’t like the fact that an opposition has arisen and is fighting back. That’s why they tried to discredit and disqualify and defenestrate me 10 years ago. They correctly sensed a potentially dangerous enemy and attempted to marginalize me. But I’m still here, and more importantly, I am not alone.

That’s why they are suddenly declaring there is no war. But it’s too late. The mask has been ripped off and too many have seen the true face of the SJWs…. as Dave Freer of the Mad Genius Club notes their recent behavior:

But seriously, what have the AP [Anti-Puppies] tried so far, and what success has it brought them?  They’ve brought out media attacks accusing the Puppies and nominees of being sexists, racists, misogynist, homophobes – the usual made-up get out of jail cards rubbish with no substance and some funny twists – we’re all white Mormon men. Especially Sarah Hoyt. And a twenty year bi-racial marriage makes Brad Torgersen a racist. Then the voters weren’t real fans but slaves who voted to order (which was a true PR disaster, angering a huge circle of people).

Then there were the ‘you’ll never work in this town’ again threats to careers and reputations – with the Nielsen-Haydens and David Gerrold shrieking ‘who will rid us of these troublesome puppies?’ and providing precise instructions of what to do. Not a ‘blacklist’ of course (slither). Just things that people would do, like exclude them from publications, cons and reviews. Unlike the puppies, who actively said that their people shouldn’t, for example, boycott Tor, no such criticism came out of the AP. We’ve had people inform us we’re mad (at great length. It was funny, and very revealing – about the bat-sh!t loony writer), and bad, and just downright unfeeling to poor David’s tender sensibilities. Some AP camp-follower called Jane Carnall of Edinburgh, who has written a few opinion pieces in ‘The Guardian, went off and followed the instruction issued on ‘Making Light’ and started issuing fake 1 star reviews on Amazon on John Wright’s stories.

Oh and the cheering announcement that they will ‘No Award’ the Pups nominees out of existence, and we’ll never ever win Hugos. The latest (from a chorus, including Scalzi) has been that if the puppies and nominees do not immediately and forthwith viciously denounce Vox Day they will declare us stupid dupes and one with him. Deserving of his fate too. I’ve kind of lost track of the ‘if you do’ offer. Maybe we’ll be allowed to live out our short miserable lives like penitent whores in a nunnery, being kindly permitted to clean their chamber-pots with our tongues. Think for yourselves what you’d do given that choice: live free and maybe win or die, or surrender and live as a second – or third or fifth class citizen, continually used as a kicking boy?

And if the AP told me otherwise, I wouldn’t believe a word, given their track record. The AP really have credibility issues they need to work on.

Never believe an opponent who tries to tell you the game hasn’t even started yet. And never believe an enemy who tells you that because there is no war, you should stop shooting at him and lay down your arms. Remember, rabbits only win when wolves refuse to fight.

Interestingly enough, after an amount of his usual meandering, R. Scott Bakker reaches much the same conclusion:

 The fact that Beale managed to pull this little coup is proof positive that science fiction and fantasy matter, that we dwell in a rare corner of culture where the battle of ideas is for… fucking… real.

Only it’s not a rare corner. The battle of ideas is ongoing and everywhere throughout the culture. It’s in Games, it’s in Science Fiction, it’s in Comics, and it’s in TV and Movies. And for the first time in decades, those who favor liberty are on the offensive.

THERE WILL BE WAR: The ten best stories

This is just my personal list of favorites from Volume I and Volume II. I’m only considering the fiction here, not the essays, articles, or poems.

  1. “Cincinnatus”, Joel Rosenberg, Volume II. This story about a retired, possibly traitorous general brought back for one last command is probably my favorite-ever mil-sf story. As excellent in conception as execution, it has had a distinct influence on the world of Quantum Mortis.
  2. “On the Shadow of a Phosphor Screen”, William F. Wu, Volume II. The series features several stories from this world where wars are settled by professional gamers. It reads like a prophecy of Sega’s Total War series, but has a haunting edge to it that gives it a timeless feel.
  3. “Superiority”, Arthur C. Clarke, Volume II. A clever and amusing exercise in explaining how technological superiority can be a weakness. Particularly interesting if you’ve read van Creveld’s Technology and War. It’s more relevant than the average general would like to think.
  4. “Ender’s Game”, Orson Scott Card, Volume I. “Ender’s Game”. The original novella. Enough said.
  5. “In the Name of the Father”, Edward P. Hughes, Volume II. This is possibly the most light-hearted post-apocalyptic tale ever told. I like the stories of Barley’s Crossing.
  6. “Time Lag”, Poul Anderson, Volume II. A tribute to the significance of female steadfastness in times of war, as well as an illustration of how time and distance factor into the martial equation.
  7. “His Truth Goes Marching On”, Jerry Pournelle, Volume I. As Tom Kratman once called it, “the Spanish civil war in space”. Philosophically deeper than you might think at first.
  8.  “‘Caster” by Eric Vinicoff, Volume II. A little longer than it needs to be, not quite as artfully written as the others, but an inspirational and optimistic war story.
  9. “Ranks of Bronze” by David Drake, Volume I. Drake does Roman legions playing mercenary for aliens. A little short, but it’s a good battle scene.
  10. “Call Him Lord” by Gorden R. Dickson, Volume I. Less about war than the price of leadership. A bit artificial, but it comes to an emotionally powerful close.

As far as the non-fiction goes, while the articles on High Frontier are fascinating for their historical significance, my favorite is “Proud Legions” by T.R. Fehrenbach, which appears in Volume II. In fact, I have to confess that of the nine volumes of THERE WILL BE WAR, Volume II is my favorite. That is the very high bar that Volume X will attempt to clear.

SJW science

Whether they call themselves scientists or science fiction writers, the lesson, as always, is this: SJWs always lie. Robert Trivers writes about Stephen Jay Gould, an evolutionary biologist he quickly learned was strongly inclined towards intellectual fraudulence and faux scientific fakery:

Many of us theoretical biologists who knew Stephen personally thought he
was something of an intellectual fraud precisely because he had a
talent for coining terms that promised more than they could deliver,
while claiming exactly the opposite….

Recently something brand new has emerged about Steve that is astonishing. In his own empirical work attacking others for biased data analysis in the service of political ideology—it is he who is guilty of the same bias in service of political ideology. What is worse—and more shocking—is that Steve’s errors are very extensive and the bias very serious. A careful reanalysis of one case shows that his target is unblemished while his own attack is biased in all the ways Gould attributes to his victim. His most celebrated book (The Mismeasure of Man) starts with a takedown of Samuel George Morton. Morton was a scientist in the early 19 th Century who devoted himself to measuring the human cranium, especially the volume of the inside, a rough estimate of the size of the enclosed brain. He did so meticulously by pouring first seeds and then ball bearings into skulls until they were full and then pouring them out and measuring their volume in a graduated cylinder. He was a pure empiricist. He knew brain size was an important variable but very little about the details (indeed, we do not know much more today). He thought his data would bear on whether we were one species or several, but in any case he was busy creating a vast trove of true and useful facts.

I love these people—they work for the future and gather data whose logic later generations will reveal. Precisely because they have no axes to grind or hypotheses to prove, their data are apt to be more reliable than the first wave after a new theory. I have benefitted from them in my own life, most memorably when I was shown a large and accurate literature on ratios of investment in 20 ant species, gathered long before anyone appreciated why these facts might be of some considerable interest, as indeed they were.

In any case, Morton grouped his data by population according to best estimates of gross relatedness, Amerindians with Amerindians, Africans with Africans, Nordic Europeans with Nordic, and so on. It is here, Gould alleged, that all sorts of errors were made that supported preconceived notions that among the smaller cranial capacity (and therefore stupider)) peoples would be Amerindians and Africans. For example, Gould claimed that Morton made more subgroups among Nordic people than tropical ones, thus permitting more of them to be above norm, but in fact, the opposite was true. Morton reported more Amerindian subsamples than European and routinely pointed out when particular Amerindian subsamples were as high or higher than the European mean, facts that Gould claimed Morton hid.

In other cases, Gould eliminates all samples with less than four individuals in order to reduce the number of sub-samples with only one sex—a statistically meaningless goal but one that happened to be biased in his favor and permitted him to make additional errors in his favor by arbitrarily eliminating some skulls while including others. If you are comparing group means, you may not wish to use means of less than four, but if you are adding up sub-samples to produce a larger sample, there is no reason not to aggregate all data. Morton is made to look careless and incorrect when it is really Steve who is arbitrarily biasing things in his own favor.

There is an additional contrast between Morton and Gould worth noting. To conjure up Morton’s mistakes, Gould lovingly describes the action of unconscious bias at work: “Morton, measuring by seed, picks up a threateningly large black skull, fills it lightly and gives a few desultory shakes. Next, he takes a distressingly small Caucasian skull, shakes hard, and pushes mightily at the foramen magnum with his thumb. It is easily done, without conscious motivation; expectation is a powerful guide to action.” Indeed it is, but careful re-measures show that Morton never made this particular mistake—only three skulls were mis-measured as being larger than they were and these were all either Amerindian or African.

The same can’t be said of Gould. He came across distressingly objective data of Morton, and by introducing biased procedures (no sample size below four) he was able to get appropriately biased results. And by misrepresenting the frequency of Nordic vs Amerindian subpopulations, he was able to create an illusion of bias where none existed, by mere emphatic assertion (no one bothered to check).

Where are the unconscious processes at work here? Is Steve flying upside-down on auto-pilot, unconsciously making the choices (substitute Nordic for Tropical, delete all samples smaller than four) that will invite the results he wants while hiding his bias? Is the conscious organism really completely in the dark while all of this is going on? Hard to imagine—but at the end the organism appears to be in full self-deception mode—a blow-hard fraudulently imputing fraud, with righteous indignation, coupled with magnanimous forgiveness for the frailties of self-deception in others.

In response to the criticism of Lewis et al, the keeper of Gould’s Tomb—his longtime editor at Natural History, Richard Milner—had some choice comments in defense of Stephen. Gould acted with “complete conviction and integrity” (that is, with full self-deception). “He was a tireless crusader against racism in any form.” (In what way is misrepresenting the true facts about population differences—and then hiding this misrepresentation—a contribution to anti-racism?) And then, fully in flight, he says that any bias was “on the side of the angels”. Who of us is in any position to say what is on the side of the angels? We barely know what is in our own self-interest.

Quelle surprise. Anti-racism is intrinsically anti-science.

Vile Minion pride

Dear Evil
Legion of Evil,

It has come to my attention that our vile faceless minions,
in their abject loyalty to Our Evilness, crave more than the
mere lash of our whips, the daily sustenance of SJW blood, and the occasional bones of an SJW on
which to gnaw. Such is their pride in the growing spread of the dark
shadow over lands hitherto unengulfed that they have begged for
badges of recognition with which they can strike yet more
fear into our craven and cowardly foes.

It is, of course, exceedingly risible to imagine that we should raise
them up to the extent of providing them with names. Or, as
one minion, who is unfortunately no longer with us after an
accident that involved six Hellhounds and the untimely ringing of a dinner
bell, once had the temerity to suggest, pay them wages. But it occurred to me, in a
stroke of Indubitably Evil Genius, that it might be
useful to be able to tell the difference between these
otherwise indistinguishable, and indeed, faceless,
creatures. Therefore, in my Tender yet Sinister Mercy, I have graciously acceded to their pleas.

An example of the first said badge is provided, one which has already been awarded to the first and most ruthlessly loyal of our minions. Should any
of these vile and faceless minions wish to boast their own number in the Evil Legion of
Evil, they have merely to humbly bring themselves to Our Superlatively Evil Attention via the word MINION.
My Inventively Evil and Aggressively Breasted Executive Assistant, Malwyn, she who is also known as the Whore-Mistress of the Spiked Six-Whip, will subsequently send them a uniquely numbered badge, which they can display
to the public with all the unseemly pride and haughty arrogance they will no doubt feel, filling SJW hearts with fear and horror thereby.

In Supreme Confidence of the Coming Day in which Darkness Shall Cover All the Land,

Vox Day
Supreme Dark Lord
Evil Legion of Evil


And in other news, I answer a few questions about my intentions at File 770:


“I don’t care about awards at all.”

None the less, your nomination of yourself has been noted. Also, your nomination of people who work for you.”

Yes, that’s obvious. And the statement is nevertheless true.

“Well, who cares how many page views he gets?”

Scalzi and everyone who claims how popular and influential he is. It was all self-puffery all along. When he claimed to have 2 million pageviews monthly in a 2010 interview with Lightspeed and everyone bought it, he actually had 305k.

“No-one’s conspiring to keep you from your just rewards, we just individually don’t like you.”

Yes, I know. I still don’t care. Why is it that you feel the need to keep pointing out the obvious? Do you find it that hard to accept that I place no value on your precious opinion? And yes, I will keep coming after PNH, but no I would not go after Stross, Valente, or anyone else unless they give me reason to do so. Leave me alone, I’ll leave you alone. And unlike Scalzi, I have respect for Stross’s writing. I was one of the few people who used to nominate him for Nebulas back when he most deserved them.

“What is your ultimate objective regarding the Hugos this year? Is it to win a few for your writers?”

To see how the SF establishment responds. This was just recon. No, winning awards was never an objective. I do think John deserves to win a few, as with Stephenson and Mieville he is one of the best SF/F writers writing today. And if WorldCon prefers No Award to honoring Wright for works much superior to past winners, that will confirm what I suspected from the start. And what I expected.

See, I’ve never been interested in much more than convincing a large number of people that the SJWs in SF are, in fact, the cultural enemy. You’ve collectively played your part wonderfully well in that regard. Based on his recent piece, I think Jim Hines is one of the first to belatedly figured out what’s actually going on. But it’s far too late. The mask has not only slipped, it’s been ripped off.

“And what will your response be next year if SP/RP nominees are No Awarded this year, as some have threatened?”

I haven’t given the matter much thought, other than to point out the one obvious option. It’s no secret that a fair number of RP want me to declare No Award for everyone and everything THIS year. The idea had some appeal, but the SP asked me not to do that and I agreed to give WorldCon a chance to play ball. If they’d rather play war, well, I am a wargamer. That’s fine too.

“And what is the plan about getting yourself nominated as editor?”

I am the sharpest stick. And I am the best short-form editor this year, as it happens. Not that it is likely to matter with regards to the vote, but then, that’s sort of the point.

“In conclusion, if you don’t care about awards (and I believe you), why go through the exercise? Do you intend to advise your supporters how to cast their final ballot? Will you be actively coordinating the final ballot with Larry Corriea, Brad Torgersen, Jim Butcher, etc.? Will you be suggesting anything for No Award?”

To get a better grasp on what the other side can bring to the battlefield when motivated. Yes. No. I will either suggest everything or nothing for No Award, but I have not made a final decision. Out of respect for the opinions of SP and neutrals, I am leaning towards nothing but it is possible their opinions will change, given the behavior of the SJWs.

With regards to the vote, although Sasquan’s ballot is now open, I will not be posting my list of recommendations until several weeks after the Hugo packet is released. I have no idea when that will be, as I have not yet been contacted in that regard. However, those interested in reading the nominated works of John C. Wright can download them for free here.

Baltimore burning

Yet another example of why racial and national separatism is inevitable is provided in living color:

Maryland Republican Gov. Larry Hogan has declared a state of emergency and has put the state’s National Guard “on alert” after a day of rioting, looting and violence targeting police in Baltimore. The violence broke out just hours after the funeral for Freddie Gray, the 25-year-old Baltimore man who died in police custody April 19, a week after he was arrested on a West Baltimore street and dragged into the back of a police wagon. Police said Mr. Gray died of severe injuries to his spine and are still investigating the circumstances behind his death…. With demonstrators threatening to take the protests to the city’s
prosperous downtown area, Major League Baseball officials announced the
cancellation of a planned game between the Baltimore Orioles and the
Chicago White Sox.

Well, there is nothing like spirited public protest to revive the flagging spirits of democracy in America. Meanwhile, we are reliably informed by one DeShawn that his boy DRAYQUAN, of the Baltimore Loot Crew, IS GOIN OUT TO POP SUM PIGS.

He seems nice. No doubt after he dies in a hail of bullets after pointing that pig-shooter at the police or some National Guardsmen, we will learn all about how he wanted to go to college, how he liked to arrange flowers, and that he was really just a sweet ickle boy who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Is it a parody? Perhaps. That’s the problem. How can you possibly tell anymore?

EQUALITY: THE IMPOSSIBLE QUEST reviewed

Ann Sterzinger reviews Martin van Creveld’s EQUALITY: THE IMPOSSIBLE QUEST in a fairly detailed article entitled: “Your Stupid Questions Have No Answers: Martin van Creveld vs. the Chimera of Equality”:

Van Creveld’s Equality is one of Castalia’s most absorbing
releases, if you’re interested in history anyway—past history, not the
historical destiny of your marching-drum ideology—the sort of history
that’s not only full of holes where the victors and the monks wrote over
chunks of the evidence, but the sort of history that, as far as we can tell, indeed has been repeating itself rather drearily.

As van Creveld says in his preface, the histories of our other two
unattainable ideals, liberty and justice, have been written before—or,
rather, attempted; there’s too much to read on all three of these
subjects for one guy to do it at a go. But van Creveld does his best to
describe all our tragic, failed attempts at equality. When we’ve bothered to make an attempt, that is.

Van Creveld also dwells on one of my all-time favorite tear-jerkers:
the tragic failure of the classical fifth-century democracy at Athens.
This was history’s most famous attempt at “one man, one vote on every
issue,” and the resulting polis served as the cradle of the
greatest explosion of civilized thought and art in our history. The
glory lasted all of about a generation and a half, during which time the
Athenian mob destroyed themselves by repeatedly voting to attack their
neighbors at Sparta.

The Spartan attempt at equality, by the way, is more thoroughly given
its due by van Creveld than I’ve seen in any other historical text. He
also includes fresh perspectives on the interesting mishmash that was
feudalism (a derogatory name invented by snooty post-feudalists); Locke
vs. Rousseau vs. Montesquieu; the fitful, failed, and often bloody
attempts of Hellenic city-states to achieve equality after Alexander;
the ironically “vicious inequalities” of communism; the ever-miserable
war of the sexes; and the medieval revolt of the French jacquerie. The book is as rich in historical detail and perspective as it is thick with bitter disappointment.

Over and over again, van Creveld is forced toward the same conclusion: there are hardly ever two individuals who
are equal, much less entire social classes. And as lovely as it may be
to enjoy citizenship (if you can get it) in a relatively egalitarian
city-state, it’s only a matter of time before your polis gets
swallowed up by the greater driving power—a power which may actually be
the result of greater inequality and therefore organization—of a nearby
empire. Take, for instance, the way the squabbling Greek city-states
were swallowed by the burgeoning Macedonians’ power-lust. Alexander the
Great actually managed to co-opt the Greek cultural prestige while
stripping the Greeks of their political sovereignty and moving on to
bulldoze the Middle East.

Oh, and capitalism never helped much. It may have used the traders
and urban islands—which, clinging to the margins of feudalism, added a
dash of meritocracy to the stupid-son mix—to get its momentum going. But
then, says van Creveld, “The shift towards capitalism and absolutism
did not mean that inequality grew less pronounced. On the contrary, the
growing power of the modern state, which in many ways was based on a
firm partnership between the kings and their nobilities, caused it to be
accentuated even more.”

Read the whole thing there. As for the book itself, EQUALITY: THE IMPOSSIBLE QUEST is available at Amazon and at Castalia House. And speaking of Castalia House, you won’t want to miss Jeffro’s interview with Thomas Mays, US Navy Commander and author of A SWORD INTO DARKNESS:

Jeffro: I have to hand it to you… I was utterly riveted by the scene from your A Sword Into Darkness when they used those fancy missiles of yours on an asteroid for target practice. It’s never crossed my mind that such a thing could be a problem in the first place, much less that a real spaceship would have all manner of ancillary problems to deal with in the process. How did you come up with all of that?

Thomas Mays: You mean in terms of “It’s not like Star Wars, where the target blows up and that’s it?” Well, It’s a question of weapon effects. If you’re going to vaporize something, you have to have a mechanism that can contain the target long enough to apply sufficient energy to break down every molecular bond it has. That’s . . . a LOT of energy and actually very difficult to do. Even with antimatter, the target and the antimatter would tend to blow one another away from contact after only a few micrograms exploded. Aside from my engine (which is a handwavium 1g reaction drive with no reaction mass requirement, used so the story stays exciting (it moves at the speed of plot!)), most of the tech is within the realm of reason.

For the most bang for my buck, I wanted nukes. But nukes don’t work the same way exo-atmospheric. They burn and vaporize up close, and only produce a real blast effect if they blow up inside something. And if you do that, you’re going to have a lot of debris. How do you handle that? Use a different weapon that can reach out and touch someone. So I thought, LASER! But no. Lasers don’t zap things. They burn and vaporize, and they take time and focus. So that means I need big mirrors or lenses, and still the focal length will be relatively small. Lasers weapons are shorter range devices. Kind of like CIWS.

So, I went to my old standby: electromagnetic railguns, which I worked on for my Master’s Degree in Applied Physics. Figure out the proper shell velocity, then figure out your ammo for various effects. Everything in that scene derives from first principles. But I did have a lot of help and reference material from the Atomic Rockets website by Winchell Chung. That helped with a lot of the book’s technical details.

They said it would never happen

But, as we know, SJWs always lie. Persecution is the consequence of tolerance:

Coeur d‘Alene, Idaho, city officials have laid down the law to Christian pastors within their community, telling them bluntly via an ordinance that if they refuse to marry homosexuals, they will face jail time and fines.

The dictate comes on the heels of a legal battle with Donald and Evelyn Knapp, ordained ministers who own the Hitching Post wedding chapel in the city, but who oppose gay marriage, The Daily Caller reported. A federal judge recently ruled that the state’s ban on gay marriage was unconstitutional, while the city of Coeur d‘Alene has an ordinance that prevents discrimination based on sexual preference….

“Many have denied that pastors would ever be forced to perform ceremonies that are completely at odds with their faith, but that’s what is happening here — and it’s happened this quickly,” Mr. Tedersco said, The Daily Caller reported.

At this point, it is fairly obvious that revolution time is coming. All the moderates who said we just had to go along to get along were wrong all along, of course. Never listen to moderates. They’re just cowardly idiots who will do or say anything rather than stand up for what they say they believe in.

The latest on the ongoing case:

Both sides are standing their ground as a lawsuit filed against the city of Coeur d’Alene by the Hitching Post continues through U.S. District Court.

Lawyers with the Alliance Defending Freedom, a Christian rights legal advocacy organization, filed the suit in October on behalf of Hitching Post owners Don and Evelyn Knapp. The civil rights lawsuit claims the Knapps are being forced to violate their religious beliefs and perform same-sex marriages because of the city’s anti-discrimination ordinance.

“The whole problem is that prior to the case being filed, the city was saying the distinction between covered and not-covered was whether or not a business was a nonprofit or for-profit. But after we filed, they changed that statement,” Jeremy Tedesco, ADF senior legal counsel, said. “This ordinance has criminal penalties and jail time if you violate it and because of that, the city needs to have clear guidelines for people like the Knapps who are trying to figure out if they’re exempt.”

“A job well done”

Now we know why none of the big banks were prosecuted by the Obama administration:

Just after announcing his resignation as U.S. attorney general, Eric Holder has accepted a top job with Wall Street finance giant JPMorgan Chase.

Starting in early November, Holder will serve as JPMorgan Chase’s chief compliance officer, where his responsibilities will include lobbying Congress on the company’s behalf and ensuring it “gets the best deal possible” from any new proposed financial regulations. Holder will also fetch morning coffee and breakfast orders for CEO Jamie Dimon and board members.

For his efforts, Holder will earn an annual salary of $77 million plus bonuses for a job well done.

At this point, I think the federal government should go back to the spoils system. It would be considerably less corrupt.