Category: Uncategorized

Katharine Lopez unsurprisingly declared the debate to be a McCain victory in her eyes, and then goes on to demonstrate up why the landmark magazine has become irrelevant.:

Most of my e-mails tonight look like this: “Your title and post “I Just Don’t Get” present a crystallization of Cornerite obtuseness and delusion that is almost haiku-like in its succinct perfection.

Look, here’s the thing. That, my friends, is the very model of how a contemptuous email is to be written. America. Children. Do it for them. Hope! Change!

If you care to share your impressions of the oratical pyrotechnics, go for it.

Christopher Buckley leaves National Review and what he describes as the modern conservative movement. It’s a bit drama-queenish and quite possibly disingenuous, but he still makes some effective points about the problems of the increasingly narrow “conservative” commentariat:

I have been effectively fatwahed (is that how you spell it?) by the conservative movement, and the magazine that my father founded must now distance itself from me. But then, conservatives have always had a bit of trouble with the concept of diversity. The GOP likes to say it’s a big-tent. Looks more like a yurt to me.

While I regret this development, I am not in mourning, for I no longer have any clear idea what, exactly, the modern conservative movement stands for. Eight years of “conservative” government has brought us a doubled national debt, ruinous expansion of entitlement programs, bridges to nowhere, poster boy Jack Abramoff and an ill-premised, ill-waged war conducted by politicians of breathtaking arrogance. As a sideshow, it brought us a truly obscene attempt at federal intervention in the Terry Schiavo case.

So, to paraphrase a real conservative, Ronald Reagan: I haven’t left the Republican Party. It left me.

I don’t disagree with his decision to leave the Republican Party. However, considering the things he’s complaining about, why on Earth is he supporting Obama? Sometimes watching the conservative commentariat thrash illogically about is like being a three-dimensional being standing over a community of Flatlanders.

“Republicans bad… therefore Democrats good!”

“No, Democrats badder, ergo Republicans good!”

There are still some Republican commentators with more than half a brain at National Review, such as Ramesh Ponnuru, Jonah Goldberg, John Derbyshire – his highly amusing atheist antics notwithstanding – and Yuval Levin, but they’re getting increasingly drowned out by the lesser breed and the neocons.

Eaglewood rather likes the book, but notes what is quickly becoming a recurrent theme:

I downloaded his free e-book version when it came out, and I got quickly engrossed in the vibrant world of men, dwarves, and elves he was creating. Others have compared it to the Hobbit or to The Lord of the Rings, but I am not sure I am willing to go that far yet, but I can see the promise in his writing. Unlike other novels of this sort, I liked that he engaged the mind as the story line was more of a thinking man’s story than the typical slash and burn kill fests that so many fantasy novels turn out to be…. This is part of the brilliance of the authors writing. He is able to take you into the world of his characters and have you see through their eyes and truly be there with them in their adventures and follies. You get the feeling you are right there with them as part of the group and actively involved as a fellow adventurer in what appears to be a well thought out complex world.

It seems I may have to give more consideration to a sequel of some sort than I had originally envisioned. The thing is, I had something completely different in mind, albeit set in the same world. However, it occurs to me that there is a very logical link between that which is written and that which I have been contemplating writing in the near future. (That cynical sound you hear is Spacebunny laughing at me.)

Anyhow, if you liked Summa Elvetica and would like more of that sort of thing, then let me know. I have to admit, I quite enjoyed the intellectual challenge of what I consider to be the most interesting aspect, which naturally has been of little interest to anyone else. It’s a good thing I write primarily for my own amusement, is it not? Of course, if you want more of it in physical form, it would be helpful to order the book from Marcher Lord.

As for the length, I’ll merely mention that it was intended to be a short novel from the very start; you’ll note that the Aquinan structure dictates that it either be around its current length or something nearly twice as long. Also, I attempted to roughly follow Umberto Eco’s concept of describing events according to their duration; for example, I’d originally conceived three “traveller’s tales” but the editor wisely declared that two was sufficient.

So, I’ll probably publish Faelan’s tale as a stand-alone short story at some point in the future.

I seldom agree with Frum when it comes to policy prescriptions. But he’s rather better on diagnosing problems, and it seems remarkable for Republicans to get angry with him for pointing out the obvious:

Do my correspondents (and now my Corner colleagues) truly believe that – but for my pitiful media and social ambitions – nobody in America would have noticed that Sarah Palin cannot speak three coherent consecutive words about finance or economics?

Of course, he left out the fact that McCain, Obama, and Biden can’t either. It’s not as if Palin is alone in her economic incompetence. Speaking of which, don’t be fooled by the Dow’s upward explosion. This is nothing more than the inevitable reaction of which I warned Mr. Lowry last week, it’s not the end of the bear or evidence that the bailout is working.

Bull markets grind slowly upward. Contrary to how it might appear, massive up days, even two or three consecutive up days, are quite common in bear markets.

Conservatives may wish to keep this statistic in mind before attempting to defend the police from libertarian vituperation:

More than one-third of recent Atlanta Police Academy graduates have been arrested or cited for a crime, according to a review of their job applications. The arrests ranged from minor offenses such as shoplifting to violent charges including assault. More than one-third of the officers had been rejected by other law enforcement agencies, and more than half of the recruits admitted using marijuana.

Ah, just give them a badge, a gun, and immunity to prosecution. What could go wrong?

As I have written, an Obama presidency is going to be interesting in ways that none of us can even imagine yet. He’s going to bring more than a little Kenyan political culture to America in a wonderful testimony to the joys of multiculturalism:

Jessica Hughes of Lufkin, Texas, former Marine, mother of three, answered her cell phone in the car, coming home from the emergency room. Her 9-year-old had suffered a mild concussion, but was OK.

The caller was a female Obama volunteer who asked if Jessica would support Obama for president.

Jessica replied, “No, I don’t support him. Your guy is a socialist who voted four times in the state Senate to let little babies die in hospital closets; I think you should find something better to do with your time.” Then Jessica hung up.

The next day, a man and a woman in suits showed up at the door of her home, identifying themselves as members of the Secret Service.

The Secret Service agents stated that the Obama campaign had complained of a death threat. They had quoted Jessica as saying, “I will never support Obama, and he will wind up dead on a hospital floor.”

Jessica’s husband had heard Jessica’s side of the original phone call and verified the actual quote. To which the female agent replied, “Oh? Well why would she (the Obama volunteer) make that up?”

The only thing that would make this story even better is if the two “Secret Service agents” were actually ACORN members.

Monday’s column: “Why the Bailout Didn’t Work”. A deeper, more inexplicable mystery would be “Why Vox Didn’t Start Peyton Manning”.

Rod Dreher decides not to vote for either Obama or McCain next month:

Both parties have run the country into the ground, and I have no faith – none – in the leadership class in Washington. With any luck, the 2010 midterm elections will see true mavericks arise from the grassroots of both parties to challenge the incumbents. This year, though, voting in the presidential and congressional contests only gives voters the chance to affirm Washington’s rent-seeking, self-serving status quo. Granted, anything could happen between now and Election Day that would change my mind. But absent something extraordinary, I’m going to reject both the Republican and the Democrat.

Say what you will, but that will be the first presidential vote I’ve cast, so to speak, that I can truly believe in.

As I wrote recently myself, the only wasted vote this year is the one for the Republican candidate

As Christians are executed in other nations, I have little doubt that American atheists will ignore this example of religious persecution even though it could theoretically affect Iranian atheists and will instead continue to wax hysterical about imaginary persecutions at the hands of nonexistent Western “dominionists”:

A month ago, the Iranian parliament voted in favour of a draft bill, entitled “Islamic Penal Code”, which would codify the death penalty for any male Iranian who leaves his Islamic faith. Women would get life imprisonment. The majority in favour of the new law was overwhelming: 196 votes for, with just seven against….

“As the number of converts from Islam grows,” notes Ms Papadouris, “apostasy has again become a serious concern for the Iranian government.” In addition to 10,000 Christian converts living in Iran, there are several hundred thousand Baha’is who are deemed apostates.

And yet, no atheists? How very peculiar!