Category: Uncategorized

The collective Vanilla Ice

Some of the comments at the Black Gate on yesterday’s post regarding the decline and fall of the fantasy novel really have to be read to be believed. There has been a great deal of what appears to be willful obtuseness and a determined inability to understand standard definitions on display, but there’s not much that needs to be said against an argument that relies upon the idea that the basic concept of Western civilization has no intrinsic meaning… although it would certainly make for an amusingly meta defense of post-modernism in modern fantasy.

In any event, I replied thusly: Matt and [B], there appears to be little to discuss with either of you on the subject of Western civilization, still less its observable decline in demographic and other terms, as your knowledge of the concept clearly doesn’t even rise to the level of Wikipedia. Nor is this the proper venue to explain the principium contradictionis, so I suggest you read up on what the “Western world” and “the Occident” are and how they have been defined for decades, if not centuries. What you have presented, Matt, is not a rebuttal, but rather a collection of contorted wordplay and suppositions which attempts to avoid the manifestly obvious. Let me put it in terms you might be willing to acknowledge. Suppose you were to write a modern fantasy set in America circa 2010, but completely leaving out all science and technology. Don’t you think that would create a ludicrously false image of both the setting and the basic mindsets of the characters? Then suppose that people began claiming this omission of science and technology as well as scientific modes of thinking actually presented a more realistic understanding of the period than its inclusion. That would border on the insane, wouldn’t you agree?

Read the rest of my reply at the Black Gate. And if you feel moved to comment there, be considerate and polite. Playing hardball is completely fine here, but it is not the way things are done there.

Matt has also written what I consider to be a more relevant post on the moral aspect of the subject that you should find interesting.

WND column

The Battle for America’s Credit Card

The eyes of the Republican blogosphere are concentrated on Wisconsin these days, as the public employee unions and Democratic senators are lashing out in a desperate and futile attempt to defend the status quo of unsustainable state debt. But despite the mediagenic circus of shut-down public schools, doctors dispersing fraudulent sick notes and teachers waving misspelled signs, the battle between the unions and Republican Gov. Scott Walker is not one that demands reinforcement from either the blogosphere or the tea party.

The focus of the fiscally prudent should be on Washington, not Wisconsin. This is because the outcome in Madison is assured, whereas the one in the national capital is not. While both situations are unsustainable, Wisconsin has already reached the outer limits of its debt expansion. The federal government has not. Wisconsin’s limits are externally imposed, whereas Washington’s are not, at least, not in the near term.

Sleepshops for Boomers

Most of the Baby Boomers didn’t bother saving for retirement. Apparently they were too young and cool and numerous for that.

The 401(k) generation is beginning to retire, and it isn’t a pretty sight. The retirement savings plans that many baby boomers thought would see them through old age are falling short in many cases. The median household headed by a person aged 60 to 62 with a 401(k) account has less than one-quarter of what is needed in that account to maintain its standard of living in retirement, according to data compiled by the Federal Reserve and analyzed by the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College for The Wall Street Journal. Even counting Social Security and any pensions or other savings, most 401(k) participants appear to have insufficient savings.

I say we Logan’s Run them. Stick a disc in their hand, and when the retirement money runs out, it turns black. After what they did to our generation, sleepshops are better than they deserve.

At the Black Gate

Last week, I read with great interest the discussion that began with Leo Grin’s comparison of the heroic fantasy fiction of J.R.R. Tolkien and Robert E. Howard with the anti-heroic fantasy fiction of Joe Abercrombie. As this is a topic that has interested me for years, I certainly have a number of thoughts regarding it. However, since I am a political commentator who is correctly said to be well outside the ideological mainstream of the SF/F community, I think it is best to begin by pointing out to those on both sides of the spectrum who may be eager to turn this into a political debate that this is not a political subject, but rather a historical, literary, and philosophical one. And as such, there is no need to argue over whether the trajectory over time that Grin observes is desirable or not, since that is a matter of perspective and personal opinion.

Regardless of one’s ideological self-identification or opinion on the specifics of Grin’s observations, it should be eminently clear to all and sundry that something material and significant has changed within the field of fantasy fiction in the 71 years that separate Howard’s final publication from Abercrombie’s first one and the 52 years that separate the publication of The Return of the King from The Blade Itself. I should also point out that I offer no personal criticism of Joe Abercrombie here, as he merely happens to serve as a representative of modern fantasy fiction and one of its more accomplished representatives at that….

Read the rest of what is a rather lengthy post on the link between literary decline and societal decline over at Black Gate.

Pull the plug

Considering how one of the primary consequences of the NRO-endorsed neocon objective of “spreading democracy” has turned out to be spreading sharia everywhere from Afghanistan to Egypt and Iraq, it’s well past time to declare the concept a complete failure:

On NRO Friday, Paul Marshall lamented the Obama administration’s fecklessness, in particular the president’s appalling silence in the face of the death sentence Said Musa may suffer for the crime of converting to Christianity. This is in Afghanistan, the nation for which our troops are fighting and dying — not to defeat our enemies, but to prop up the Islamic “democracy” we have spent a decade trying to forge at a cost of billions.

This shameful episode (and the certain recurrence of it) perfectly illustrates the folly of Islamic nation-building. The stubborn fact is that we have asked for just these sorts of atrocious outcomes. Ever since 2003, when the thrust of the War On Terror stopped being the defeat of America’s enemies and decisively shifted to nation-building, we have insisted — against history, law, language, and logic — that Islamic culture is perfectly compatible with and hospitable to Western-style democracy. It is not, it never has been, and it never will be.

It only took 10 years to figure out the obvious. How much longer will it take for conservatives to realize that permitting barbarian immigration is not, in fact, beneficial to the stability or survival of Western civilization?

A failure of atheist logic

A former atheist contemplates the irrationality of atheist opposition to religion:

I had something of an epiphany. One night, after a long dinner, I was walking back to my hotel in downtown Salt Lake City at 2am and I suddenly realised: I felt safe. As any transatlantic traveller knows, this is a pretty unusual experience in an American city after midnight.

Why did I feel safe? Because I was in a largely Mormon city, and Mormons are never going to mug you. They might bore or annoy you when they come knocking on your door, touting their faith, but they are not going to attack you. The Mormons’ wholesome religiousness, their endless and charitable kindliness, made their city a better place. And that made me think: Why was I so supercilious about such happy, hospitable people? What gave me the right to sneer at their religion?

From that moment I took a deeper, more rigorous interest in the possible benefits of religious faith. Not one particular creed, but all creeds. And I was startled by what I found. For a growing yet largely unnoticed body of scientific work, amassed over the past 30 years, shows religious belief is medically, socially and psychologically beneficial…. Crucially, religious people lived longer than atheists even if they didn’t go regularly to a place of worship. This study clearly suggests there is a benefit in pure faith alone — perhaps this religiousness works by affording a greater sense of inner purpose and solace in grief.

This begs the question: Given all this vast evidence that religion is good for you, how come the atheists seem so set against it? They pride themselves on their rationality, yet so much of the empirical evidence indicates that God is good for you. Surely, then, it is the atheists, not the devout, who are acting irrationally?

Not only acting irrationally, but arguing nonsensically as well. I have pointed out on occasion the way in which the desire of some atheists to kick out what they see as a crutch out from under religious believers is an indication of a malicious character. If atheists persist in their attempts to destroy religious belief in light of this growing body of empirical evidence of the beneficial nature of religion, it will prove that their primary motivation is neither truth nor reason, but pure malice and ill-will.

Moreover, such evidence is one more nail in the coffin of Freudian pseudo-science. Since real science indicates that religious belief is good for you versus the Freudian claim that it is unhealthy, those atheists who still cling stubbornly to the outdated Freudian position will be revealed as overtly anti-science, their scientific pretensions notwithstanding.

Don’t miss the comments. It is always amusing to see the self-professed “intelligent” and “educated” atheists revealing their blatant ignorance by citing the usual nonexistent prison statistics, misleading divorce statistics, and imaginary military history.

Cicero on “scientific” morality

I spent a rather pleasant morning finishing de Legibus today, and was inspired to begin putting together some thoughts that I anticipate sharing at some future date. In the meantime, however, I was more than a little amused by these two passages, the first from Book One and the second from Book Two, particularly in light of having read The Moral Landscape. As a general rule, if your argument has not only been anticipated, but brutally dismissed, some 2,000 years in advance, you should probably consider rethinking it.

“As for those who go in for self-indulgence and are slaves of their own bodies – people who measure everything they should seek and avoid in life by the yardstick of pleasure and pain – even if they are right (and there is no need to take issue with them here) let us tell them to preach in their own little gardens and let us ask them to keep away for a little while from any participation in public life, an area of which they know nothing and have never wished to know anything….

What can be more certain than this, that no one should be so stupid and arrogant as to believe that reason and intelligence are present in him but not in the heavens and the world? Or that those things which are barely understood by the highest intellectual reasoning are kept in motion without any intelligence at all? As for the person who is not impelled to give thanks for the procession of the stars, the alternation of day and night, the regular succession of the seasons, and the fruits which are produced for our enjoyment – how can such a person be counted as human at all?”

I think we can be confident that the great Roman humanist would not only be unimpressed with the proposed science of morality based on the happiness/suffering metric, but like most Americans today, he would be more than a little reluctant to cast a presidential vote for an atheist.

I’m sorry, Dave

I’m afraid I can’t accept that answer:

I’m fairly responsible with finances, but my girlfriend is in a terrible financial situation with a lot of credit card debt, an expensive car payment and a big, fancy apartment. Plus, she just quit her job because she didn’t like it anymore. Now, she’s thinking about filing bankruptcy and thinks us moving in together will help solve her problems. If she can’t handle her finances on her own, what’s going to happen if we get together? Can you help?

At least Dave Ramsey advises the guy not to marry the woman or let her move in. But he doesn’t give him the proper advice, which is to ditch the financial vampire now before she can manage to get her teeth fixed any more firmly upon him. Don’t ever date a woman in debt, and don’t even allow the thought of marrying one to cross your mind for a moment. It’s more expensive and less financially prudent than playing blackjack in Vegas.

Fire them all

The Wisconsin governor is doing a staunch job of standing firm, but it’s time to go on the offensive and fire every teacher who called in sick on Thursday and Friday:

State and Madison teachers union leaders are urging their members to report to the Capitol Friday and Saturday for continued protests against Gov. Scott Walker’s collective bargaining proposal. “We need you to come again (today). We need to hear you on Saturday,” Mary Bell, Wisconsin Education Association Council president, said at a rally Thursday, when teachers from around the state joined Madison teachers whose absences closed schools for a second day.

I’d actually like to see Walker go one step further, decertify the teachers union and fire every public school teacher who belongs to it. That would border on epic and would instantly make him a national hero in the image of Reagan. One of the defining lessons of the Thatcher and Reagan eras is that the people love a politician who crushes unions. Pawlenty should be hoping for the spread of the teacher sickouts to Minnesota thus giving him the chance to improve his national profile by breaking the public employee union there… although this would presumably be difficult as I am reliably informed that he is no longer governor there.

Unions are the evil, stupid, parasitic cousin of government. They possess most of the negative attributes with none of the positive ones.

The day you thought would never come

In which I write in praise of Justin Bieber:

Justin Bieber, pop icon and every teeny bopper’s dreamboat, has given the pro-life lobby a totally unexpected and extraordinary coup: he has told Rolling Stone magazine that he thinks abortion is “like killing a baby”. The 16-year-old, a committed Christian, has actually come out and said that an embryo is a human being. Gasp! Gulp! From Montreal to Manchester, this is the most important person in a teenage girl’s universe.

It is always dangerous to place much credence in anything that any celebrity says or does, especially a young one. Michelle Malkin’s foolishly premature praise of Charlotte Church springs to mind, by way of example. Regardless, it is courageous of Bieber to so openly take a stand against the dogma of Hollywood at such a young age and so early in his career.

On a totally unrelated but apparently more predictable note, Abe produced a timely comment: “DRAT! How could I have forgotten the Merlot, Ritz crackers, and canned cheese spread for Vox?! It’s all he ever eats, anyway!” :-p

The reason SB and I thought this was so funny was that at the very moment I read the comment, I happened to be enjoying a lunch that consisted of a 2001 Gran Riserva, spiced Valaisian sausage, and parmigiano reggiano. Ecco la dolce vita….