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Voxiversity video 001

This weekend, the Voxiversity backers will be selecting the very first Video of the Month, which will also be the first video we will release. The three subjects that are being considered are as follows:

  • The SJW Attack Sequence
  • Religion Does Not Cause War
  • Immigration = War

We will normally have at least five options, but we want to keep things as simple and straightforward as possible for this first video. If you’re interested in having a say in the matter, or if you’re interested in helping us produce these videos, consider joining the 136 146 current Voxiversitans supporting Voxiversity.

Good morning, said Gab

Gab@getongab
Good morning to everyone except Google.

If you’re not sure what this means, perhaps today’s DailyMemeWars might help you understand.

Now, obviously, I don’t agree with Gab’s position on moderation. I don’t agree with it in theory and I don’t agree with it in practice. But that doesn’t mean that I think it is either right or fair for Gab to be locked out of the App Store and the Play Store. As to whether it is legal for them to be blackballed in this way, I have no idea. I simply don’t know what most of the relevant laws are, or how they apply to the situation. Unlike most of the critics of my current petition, I try to avoid opining in ignorance.

It is a daunting task to take on a tech giant with the resources that Google has at its disposal. It’s certainly a courageous move. As to whether it is a clever move or a completely crazy one, we shall have to wait and see what comes of it. But, as we know, giants can be slain.

The black art of the deal

As always, I caution restraint before leaping to any conclusions. But I will readily admit, these initial reports of a deal on DACA look almost spectacularly stupid on the part of the President:

The top House and Senate Democrats said Wednesday they had reached agreement with President Donald Trump to protect thousands of younger immigrants from deportation and fund some border security enhancements — not including Trump’s long-sought border wall.

The agreement, the latest instance of Trump ditching his own party to make common cause with the opposition, was announced by Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer and House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi following a White House dinner that Republican lawmakers weren’t invited to attend. It would enshrine protections for the nearly 800,000 immigrants brought illegally to this country as kids who had benefited from former President Barack Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, program, which provided temporary work permits and shielded recipients from deportation.

Trump ended the program earlier this month and gave Congress six months to come up with a legislative fix before the statuses of the so-called “Dreamers” begin to expire.

“We agreed to enshrine the protections of DACA into law quickly, and to work out a package of border security, excluding the wall, that’s acceptable to both sides,” Pelosi and Schumer said in a joint statement.

White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders partially disputed their characterization, saying over Twitter that “excluding the wall was certainly not agreed to.”

Either way, it was the second time in two weeks that Trump cut out Republicans to reach a deal with Pelosi and Schumer. A person briefed on the meeting, who demanded anonymity to discuss it, said the deal specifies bipartisan legislation called the DREAM Act that provides eventual citizenship for the young immigrants.

House Republicans would normally rebel over such an approach, which many view as amnesty for law-breakers. It remains to be seen how conservatives’ loyalty to Trump will affect their response to a policy they would have opposed under other circumstances.

The House’s foremost immigration hardliner, GOP Rep. Steve King of Iowa, made clear that he, for one, was not happy. Addressing Trump over Twitter, King wrote that if the reports were true, “Trump base is blown up, destroyed, irreparable, and disillusioned beyond repair. No promise is credible.”

Remember, the usual Trump method is one step back, two steps forward. If this pattern prevails, the next two steps forward should be magnificent. Don’t count the man out until he is actually out. That’s not mindless optimism talking, but rather, the voice of an experience recalling how this game has played out before.

Trump can probably survive caving on DACA if he actually gets the Big Beautiful Wall built. But if he thinks he can play the conventional Republican game of “hey, we got a bipartisan deal” in lieu of delivering on his primary campaign promises, he is going to be surprised at how fast his support melts away.

UPDATE: Then again, this does not bode well, and tends to suggest that the God-Emperor simply does not grasp the thinness of the ice on which he is skating. Of course, he may only be chumming the social media waters. It’s impossible to say at this point.

Donald J. Trump‏Verified@realDonaldTrump
Does anybody really want to throw out good, educated and accomplished young people who have jobs, some serving in the military? Really!…..

Supreme Dark Lord‏ @voxday
Yes. Yes, we do. Now throw them out and BUILD THE WALL!

Jerry Pournelle Week III

Steve Sailer, who went to high school with Alex Pournelle, remembers his fellow Californian Jerry Pournelle:

Jerry once told me that if in early 1951 General MacArthur had said, “Boys, it’s time to clear out the nest of traitors in the White House. Who is going with me?” he would have been on the first flight to Washington with his hero.

After Korea, Pournelle went to West Point for a while, was a Communist briefly, and earned numerous advanced degrees in a variety of hard and soft subjects. He became an aerospace engineer at Boeing and several other companies and spent 1964 writing a Dr. Strangelove-style study for the Air Force on how a nuclear war would be fought in 1975.

He pored over satellite photos of the Soviet Union, counting the ratio of trucks to horse-drawn carts, eventually concluding that rather than the wave of the economic future, the U.S.S.R. represented “Bulgaria with nuclear missiles.” With his mentor, Viennese spymaster Stefan Possony of the Hoover Institution, Jerry wrote The Strategy of Technology, arguing that the way to win the Cold War was to turn it into a high-tech competition over who could innovate faster….

Besides being an engineer and a college professor, Jerry ran political campaigns. When I was a seventh grader, I used to write lengthy letters haranguing my new congressman, Barry Goldwater Jr., and getting dutiful replies in return. I only learned recently that the poor scion of the 1964 Republican nominee had never much wanted to go into politics. Goldwater Jr. had been perfectly happy as a stockbroker dating Warner Brothers starlets until Jerry had enlisted his famous name to run for the House.

Jerry also managed Los Angeles mayor Sam Yorty’s epic 1969 reelection victory over the moderate black challenger Tom Bradley.

Jerry’s breakthrough into science fiction came when he teamed up with an established author, Larry Niven (Ringworld), to write the 1974 hard sci-fi novel The Mote in God’s Eye, an immigration-policy allegory of astounding intellectual depth.

Just a reminder that THERE WILL BE WAR Vol. II is still free today. An excerpt from my second favorite story of the collection, “On the Shadow of a Phosphor Screen” by William Wu.

The silent hall was cold. From behind walnut walls, the air conditioner hummed quietly. A stately crowd of spectators radiated bristling energy from the rigid square rows of seats. They sat against the walls, their attention fixed on the dramatic events at the center of the room. Giant video screens high on each wall gave them the elegant details.

The heavy brown drapes and plush burgundy carpet absorbed the excess vitality from the atmosphere. They imparted a dignified solemnity to the ritualistic proceedings and infused the imperatives of business with a sense of duty. Two huge cables hung from the ceiling, suspending old-fashioned horizontal fans with broad, lazy blades and globular white lights at their hubs.

Beneath the sleepy fans, Wendell Chong Wei repressed the surge of elation that threatened to rock his relentless control. He studied the video screen right before him, and his fingers danced on the console to maintain the non-stop pace. Victory should be certain now, but only if he remained clear of mistakes. He drew sharply on the depths of insecurity for a renewal of killer instinct.

On the other side of the complex, out of sight, his opponent sat before her own screen, drawing back her cavalry, hoping that Wendell would allow his own cavalry charges to overextend themselves. No chance.

“Remember, in reality the Seljuks actually circled, and took the baggage and non-combatants. Leave St. Gilles there, even now. Curthose continues to rally well; Tancred’s charges will carry the day. That’s right—restraint. We’re outnumbered; keep together.”

Richard nodded in the back of Wendell’s mind and stopped talking. The smell of blood and dust and lathered horses arose to envelop Wendell’s sensibility as he regrouped the members of the First Crusade, now victorious at Doryleum on the road to Antioch. Frustrated, the Seljuk Turks remained on the horizon, taunting the Crusaders to break ranks.

Wendell refused. In the center of the screen, a digital clock appeared over the words “Victory Conditions, First Crusade. End game.” The screen blanked.

St. Gilles was dead once more. Bohemund was dead again. The Saracens and Crusaders had returned yet another time to their desiccated graves in the sand.

Wendell swallowed, and rose on weak knees to scattered clapping. His opponent, also looking infirm at the moment, stood and offered her hand without comment, and they shook perfunctorily. Wendell eased himself away from the chair, shaking, suddenly reeling in the sweat and nervousness that he always forgot in the heat of gaming itself. His twenty-nine years seemed far too few to account for this.

An attendant rushed over to escort him away

“Nice work,” said Richard.

“Same to you,” Wendell thought back. He wiped his palms on the sides of his chocolate-brown suit jacket. “But, uh, how did you know Robert Curthose could hold fast? In the middle of that retreat? His record’s not so good, back in Normandy.”

The attendant showed Wendell to a comfortable reception room with loungers and plenty of refreshments. When he had gone, Richard said, “He really did that, you know.”

“No, I didn’t. But I learned to listen to you a long time ago.”

“More than that, though, it was deep in his psychological makeup. That’s how I could count on it. If he—”

The door opened, and Richard stopped. Wendell collapsed into a lounger. He despised receptions. People scared him. They scared Richard even worse. The ones entering now were the contractors for the two recent opponents, and his erstwhile opponent herself. The contractors were all bustling with talk and laughter. Wendell was too exhausted to tell them apart, and couldn’t remember all their names anyway. His latent bitterness with the whole business kept him from caring.

Read the rest in THERE WILL BE WAR Vol. II.

Tomorrow

Andrew Torba promises a lawsuit:

GAB.AI, INC.,

Plaintiff,

vs.

———–

While I hate to disappoint those who are hoping that Gab will strike back at me, I’m afraid you’re going to have to… think different.

Building a new culture

Conservatives love to talk about the need to build an alternative culture.

The culture leans sharply left, and in our current, highly-polarized political climate that means conservatives in the arts tend to be treated as outsiders at best and pariahs at worst. Listen to the personal experiences of conservatives in Hollywood, for example, whether “above the line” (the stars, producers and directors) or below it (the rest of the crew), and you will understand why most keep their politics in the closet to avoid bad vibes, ostracism, and/or outright hostility. The left, of course, dismisses complaints of blacklisting and bias as paranoid whining, but they are very real indeed.

The publishing world is not exempt from this state of affairs. When conservative author Dinesh D’Souza’s new book The Big Lie: Exposing the Nazi Roots of the American Left appeared at Number seven on The New York Times bestseller list, despite actually having outsold all fourteen of its competitors on the list, D’Souza called out the Times on Twitter: “In what alternative universe do Jeff Flake’s 7,383 book sales for this week (BookScan data) top mine at 11,651? Thanks @nytimes fake list!”

This was far from the first time conservative authors had called foul about their books’ rankings on the Times’ all-important bestseller list. Cortney O’Brien at Townhall pointed to another noteworthy recent example: Gosnell: The Untold Story of America’s Most Prolific Serial Killer, by co-author couple Phelim McAleer and Ann McElhinney. A horrifying exposé of the dark(er) side of the abortion industry, the top-selling Amazon release was perceived by some as an attack on the left’s sacred cow of abortion rights. The New York Times did have the book at Number 13 on its “Combined Print & E-Book Nonfiction” list, but did not place Gosnell at its deserved Number four slot among bestselling nonfiction titles.

“It’s not only an insult to the people who have bought this book,” McElhinney said “but an insult to the readers of the New York Times who buy the newspaper and think they are getting the truth about book sales across America but instead get false facts disguised as a neutral list.”

A Times spokesman insisted that the “political views of authors have no bearing on our rankings, and the notion that we would manipulate the lists to exclude books for political reasons is simply ludicrous.”

Ludicrous? The Times says its list is based on “surveys” of “a wide range of retailers who provide us with specific and confidential context of their sales each week. These standards are applied consistently, across the board in order to provide Times readers our best assessment of what books are the most broadly popular at that time.”

Confidential context? Best assessment? Broadly popular? This sounds suspiciously unscientific and non-transparent, and does not address the evidence of the sales figures themselves.

Guess how many times a conservative media organ has reviewed, or even mentioned, a Castalia House book? Zero.

The conservative media talks a lot about “the culture”, and complain about the Left’s behavior in relation to it, but as is so often the case, they do absolutely nothing proactive about it. Conservative billionnaires don’t invest in culture, because they’re frightened of what they consider to be a “hits-driven business”. They’d rather blow millions on politics and television ads, even though, as Instapundit noted, all the money spent on political ads in the last presidential campaign would have been better spent buying up all the women’s magazines.

Legal Legion update

There have been a number of developments on the defamation front. First, a member of the Legal Legion of Evil has filed the petition in Travis County and the county clerk has approved the filing. Today a hearing will be scheduled, at which we will seek to be provided with the identity of 14 individuals presently identified only by username, and ask to depose a representative of Gab concerning matters related to the identity of said individuals.

According to other members of the Legal Legion who have been reviewing activity at Gab, there have been a considerable number of additional defamatory attacks, directed at me as well as at others, and we will be amending the petition accordingly to add additional examples and usernames until the hearing actually takes place.

Now that we have actually gone through the process, it is evident that Gab’s recommended path of “get a court order” is simply not viable for the average individual who doesn’t have lawyers and paralegals at his immediate disposal. The process is simply too expensive for most people; the court filing alone is over $300.

As one individual has already discovered, it is much easier and more cost-effective to simply contact the Australian registrar, Asia Registry, at abuse@asiaregistry.com. Unfortunately, rather than address the individual’s concerns, news that the abuse on his site was being reported led Andrew Torba to publicly threaten a campaign of harassment of the gentleman concerned.

Andrew TorbaPRO · @a
If our registrar requires us to remove something again we will publish it here and let everyone know that you whined to them because someone hurt your feelings with mean words on the internet.

However, in Australia, defamation is both a civil and a criminal offense, and Asia Registry’s terms of service say a website owner must ensure that the website, “is not comprised or is not used for any unlawful purpose or activity.”

So, if you have reason to believe you have been defamed on Gab, you can send me the link to the defamatory Gab post along with your real name and the username of the offender with the subject LL-ASIA. I will pass your email along to a member of the Legal Legion of Evil, who will review it and decide if it rises to the level of defamation, defamation per se, or criminal defamation according to Australian standards. If, in his opinion, it does, you will then be provided with an appropriate template that can be sent to the woman responsible for handling abuse-related complaints along with her email address.

Again, I will point out that it is not my intent to harm Gab. We are not requesting any damages from Gab and we do not anticipate any further legal action against them once we obtain the requested information about the parties responsible. As a number of VFM and Dread Ilk have noted, I am handling Gab with kid gloves, in part because they are young and inexperienced and they do not appear be receiving appropriate legal counsel. But I have made it very, very clear that the defamatory attacks on me are going to be removed, one way or another, and as always, I am not bluffing.

At this point, it should be clear to everyone that the Legal Legion of Evil is real. As it happens, the LLoE has over 200 years of collective experience practicing the law in various states in a surprisingly wide range of specialties. Including defamation.

I understand that not everyone is happy with my actions, and I understand that a few of my supporters are extremely unhappy with them. To them, I would merely point out that this is a problem Gab was always going to face. I first warned Andrew of Gab’s need for some form of moderation back in early November 2016. And contra the opinions of the free speech purists, extortion, treason, fraud, defamation, and death threats are not free speech, as the court process should suffice to make abundantly clear.

I am not at all unfamiliar with the way in which some individuals simply refuse to take the easy and obvious way out. I once spent three years to resolve a situation that could have been resolved, at vastly less expense, by sending me a simple one-paragraph letter. I hope it won’t take three years to resolve this one, but if it does, that possibility doesn’t bother me at all. I’ve been through it before, and if I have to, I will go through it again.

Mailvox: The Origins of the Alt-Retard

A Generation X reader sent me this analysis of the Fake Right Clown Posse, which somehow manages to be both sympathetic of the plight being faced by the young men of today and contemptuous of what some of them have become in response. I think he is largely correct, and explains why their attempts to defend their race and their nations so often go awry.

We have no choice but to help them. The challenge is that the only answer to ignorance is information, and as we know, as we have witnessed, there are some who cannot be instructed by information.

The Origins of the AltRetard

I’ve been pondering the origins of the AltRetard. Who are they, and why are they? They are, by and large, young white men, probably middle to lower class, who are the products of the environment and culture that they have been raised in. They know that this environment and culture is broken, is pozzed, and they are seeking an alternative. They are seeking health and well-being in a sick world, and this is good. But they haven’t found it yet.

I have some sympathy for these young men. Their condition is largely not their fault. As a GenXer, my own working class childhood situation was far from ideal, and things have only gotten worse for this demographic since then. We all stumble around in search of knowledge and wisdom that we don’t have, because they have not been passed down to us as they should have been.

“Tradition” means “that which is passed down.” The Western tradition – Christianity and Greco-Roman philosophy – teaches us how to be in the world, teaches us what we are and what to do with what we are. But this tradition has been systematically removed from the education system for the vast majority of Americans and Europeans. Only those whose parents have the foresight and the money to send their children to private schools that still teach the Classics and the Bible have learned much about it. And those men, because they have financial privilege, have mostly sold out for the sake of their own comfort. They have not handed down the tradition.

When my boomer parents and GI grandparents were young, they had to take Latin in high school. They had prayer in school. They learned about the history of Western civilization, its principles, its heroes, its triumphs and tragedies. The average public high school graduate from 1960 knew more about Western civilization than most graduate students today.

As for me and my GenX classmates, not so much. We had the beginning of today’s anti-Western education, not quite as bad as now, but bad enough. As for Millennials and Gen Z (or whatever they’re called), what have they got? Those that are “woke” are only awakened to just how bad things have gotten. But because they have been cut off from their native tradition, they do not have the intellectual tools with which to think things through and find solutions. They are not grounded in anything real.

So they become extremists. Partly because the problems are extreme, and the times themselves are extreme, but also because they lack the wisdom, gleaned from a knowledge of history, that extremes seldom produce good results. Extreme reactions to extreme problems often just become a new problem.

The German National Socialists of the 1930s could only have emerged from the Weimar era – in other words, from a thoroughly pozzed and degenerate environment. That’s why they had so much degeneracy within their ranks, in spite of their public opposition to much of it. The Nazis were not a traditionalist movement, and they were not a Western movement. They were not pro-European, but were German chauvinists, at the expense of many other European ethnic groups. They were not pro-Christian, but were either outright pagans or embraced heretical versions of Christianity such as Alfred Rosenberg’s gnostic-Catharist ideas. Lastly, they were not truly based upon the Greco-Roman tradition and Western history, but upon a dubious, revisionist version of European history that was cooked up by the Ahnenerbe in order to be used as propaganda, a kind of Tacitus-inspired We Wuz Kangz pseudohistory which even Hitler found embarrassing, and wished that Himmler would knock it off already.

You can see the continuation of this sort of non-thinking in much of today’s Alt-Reich, which embraces all kinds of strange conspiracy theories, up to and including the Flat Earth theory of Eric Dubay.

Similarly, the extreme elements within the Alt Right, who openly espouse Nazism and Fascism and any other extremism that they think will get a rise out of people, are the result of a thoroughly pozzed and decadent society not unlike Weimar (hence the oft-used Weimerica theme). They are a reaction to it – an understandable reaction, but not a healthy one. Since they have no moral or philosophical grounding (which, again, is not their fault) the only thing they can think to do is the opposite of whatever the culture is doing. So the solution to anti-fascism is necessarily Fascism. The solution to Jewish influence and power is blanket anti-Semitism. The solution to anti-white racism is white chauvinism. The solution to feminism is “white sharia” misogyny. And since Nazism is held by the dominant culture to be the supreme evil, it must, ipso facto, be the supreme good.

But it isn’t. It wasn’t the supreme evil either, and to that extent it’s the (((media’s))) fault for creating such a powerful taboo in the first place. But while it may feel good for hopeless young men to meme out images of Schutzstaffel Pepes gassing hooknose rabbis, at the end of the day it’s just reactionary child’s play that produces nothing and leads to nothing – nothing for the young men themselves, and nothing for the Western civilization which needs to be not only defended, but first rediscovered by generations of miseducated young men that have been denied their birthright and their spiritual home.

There Will Be War Vol. II

An excerpt from my favorite story in my favorite TWBW volume, Vol. II, which is free today. Those who have read my story in Forbidden Thoughts, “The Amazon Gambit”, will no doubt recognize from whence the inspiration came. But don’t worry about spoilers no matter which you read first. Although the setups are similar, the plot twists are entirely different.

“Cincinnatus” is an excellent mil-SF short story written by one of my early writing heroes, Joel Rosenburg. As it happens, my first attempt at a novel was an imitation of his Sword and Flame books. Spacebunny and I had the good fortune to go shooting with him and his wife one evening, after which we had dinner, and he roared with laughter when, after a few glasses of wine, I shamefacedly admitted as much to him.

The log cabin was drafty, and cold; I moved a bit closer to the open fireplace, and took a deep draught from the stone tankard. It was real Earth coffee, black and rich.

The old man chuckled, as though over some private joke.

“What the hell is so funny?” I didn’t bother to keep the irritation out of my voice. I’d travelled for over seven hundred hours to reach Thellonee and find Shimon Bar-El; and every time I’d try to bring up the reason I’d come from Metzada, the old bastard would just chuckle and change the subject, as though to tell me that we’d discuss business at his pleasure, not mine.

“You are what is so funny. Tetsuki. Nephew.” Bar-El sat back in his chair, shaking his head. He set his mug down, and rubbed at his eyes with arthritis-swollen knuckles. It’s kind of strange, that: I bear the first name of one of our Nipponese ancestors—Tetsuo Nakamura, my g’g’g’g’g’grandfather—but he has the epicanthic folds. Me, I look like a sabra.

“And why am I so funny? Uncle?” You traitor. There isn’t a nastier word in the language than that. Metzada is dependent on credits earned offworld by the Metzadan Mercenary Corps, the MMC, and that depends on our reputation. There hadn’t been any proof that Bar-El had taken a payoff on Oroga; if there had, he would have been hanged, not cashiered and exiled.

Although, the argument could be made that hanging would have been kinder—but, never mind that, the suspicion alone had been enough to strip him of rank and citizenship.

I would have given a lot if we didn’t need him now.


“Well,” he said, setting his mug down and rubbing at the knuckles of his right hand with the probably just-as-arthritic fingers of his left, “you’ve been here all day; and you haven’t asked me if I really did take that payoff.” He cocked his head to one side, his eyes going vague. “I can remember when that was of some importance to you, Inspector General.” The accent on Inspector was a dig. Unlike Bar-El, I’ve always been a staff officer; the only way I could get my stars was through the IG rank— there simply aren’t any other generals in the MMC that don’t command fighting forces.

“I… don’t really care. Not anymore.” I had trouble getting the next words out. “Because we’ve come up with a way for you to earn your way back home.”

He raised an eyebrow. “I doubt that. You’ve never understood me, Tetsuo Hanavi—but I can read you. Like a book. There’s a contract that’s come up, right?”

“Yes, and—

“Shut up while I’m speaking. I want to show you how well I know you—it’s a low-tech world, correct?”

I shrugged. “That’s your specialty, isn’t it?”

He smiled. “And why do I think I’m so smart? Let me tell you more about the contract. It’s high pay, and tough, and it looks like there’s no way to do whatever the locals are paying the MMC to do.”

I nodded. “Right. And we’re short of low-tech specializing general officers. Gevat is off on Schriftalt; Kinter and Cohen are bogged down on Oroga; and my brother’s still home, recovering from the Rand Campaign. So—”

Concern creased his face. “Ari’s hurt?”

“Not too badly. He took a Jecty arrow in the liver. It’s taking a while to regenerate, but he’ll make it.”
He nodded. “Good. He’s a good man. Too good to be wasted on quelling the peon revolts.” Bar-El snorted. “Did you know that Rand was settled by a bunch of idiots who wanted to get away from any kind of government?”

I didn’t, actually. I’d just assumed that the feudocracy there had always been there. Ancient history bores me. “No—but we’re getting off the subject.” I spread my hands. “The point is, that you’re the only one who’s ever generated a low-tech campaign who’s available.”

He pulled a tabstick out of a pocket, and puffed it to life. “If I’m available. What’s in it for me?”

I tapped at my chest pocket. “I’ve got a Writ of Citizenship here. If you can salvage the situation, you can go home.” I waved my hand around the room. “Unless you prefer this… squalor.”

He sat silently for a moment, puffing at his tabstick. “You’ve got my commission in another pocket?”

“A temporary one, yes.” I shook my head. “I’m not offering to have you permanently reinstated, traitor.”

Shimon Bar-El smiled. “Good. At least you’re being honest. Who’s the employer?”

“The lowlanders, on—”

“Indess. So, Rivka manipulated them into asking for me.”

“What do you mean?” He was absolutely right, of course, but there was no way that he should have known that. The Primier had kept the negotiations secret; outside of the lowlanders’ representatives, I am the only one who knew how Rivka Effron had suckered them into a payment under-all-contingencies contract, with Bar-El in command.

He shrugged. “I know how her mind works, too. If anyone else were to fail—regardless of what the contract says—it’d be bad for Metzada’s reputation. But, if they’d asked for Bar-El the Traitor, insisted on him—at least, that’s the way the transcript would read—it’d be on their own heads. Right?”

He was exactly right. “Of course not.” But my orders were specific; I wasn’t to admit anything of the sort. Shimon Bar-El was a sneaky bastard—it was entirely possible that our conversation was being taped, despite the poverty of the surroundings.

Bar-El drained the last of his coffee. “I’ll believe what my own mind tells me, not words from a staff officer.” He said that like a curse. “Of course, it’s out of the question. I’m sorry that you had to come such a long way, but I’m happy here. No intention of leaving; not to be the sacrificial lamb.” He set his tankard down. “I don’t bleat any too well.”

“You arrogant bastard.” I stood. “Think you’re unique, that I’ll offer you a permanent commission if you’ll take this one on.” I picked up my bag. “Well, we’re going to take this contract, anyway. The offer’s just too good to pass up—I’ll handle it myself, if I have to.”

He spat. “Don’t be silly. You don’t have the experience. A lot of soldiers would die, just because—”

“Shut your mouth, traitor. You’re wrong. Maybe I don’t have any field experience, but nobody does, not against cavalry. And—”

“Cavalry? As in horses?”

“No, cavalry as in giant mice—of course it’s horses.”

He chewed on his lower lip. “I don’t see the problem— you just set up your pikemen, let them impale their critters against your line. Take a bit of discipline, even for Metzadans, to hold the line, but—”

I sneered. “That’s fine for a meeting engagement, where they have to come to you—but how about a siege? All they have to do is use their cavalry to harass our flanks, and we can’t ever get the towers up. And we’ve got to use towers: there’s no deposits of sulfur available, so there’s no way we can make gunpowder. Not with what the Thousand Worlds will let us bring in. Low-tech world, remember?”

“You’ve got the tech reports in your bag?”

“Of course I—”

“Let me see them.” He held out a hand. “We’re both going to have to study them.”

“Both?” I didn’t understand. Then again, I’ve never understood my uncle.

“Both.” He smiled, not pleasantly. “Me, ’cause I’m taking this. And you, because you get to be my exec.” As I handed him my bag, he took the blue tech report folder out, and started spreading papers around on the floor. “We’re going to get you some field experience, we are.” He studied the sheets silently for a few moments. “I’ll want all the equipment special-ordered, make sure it gets through inspection. You got that, Colonel?”

“Colonel?”

“You just got demoted, nephew. I don’t like to see stars on anybody’s shoulders but mine.” He picked up a topographical map. “Cavalry, eh?

Announcing VOXIVERSITY

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  • Foundation

Voxiversity is a series of educational video lectures by bestselling political philosopher Vox Day.

Castalia House reaches tens of thousands of people through the medium of books. The ideas first presented in books such as SJWs Always Lie, 4th Generation Warfare Handbook, and The Irrational Atheist have penetrated even those institutions most converged by social justice, such as academia and the media.. But Castalia’s reach is limited to an audience of people who enjoy reading books.

Video offers the ability to reach millions of people in a very short period of time. But the distribution of video is entirely different than book-selling, as most people who watch videos expect to do so for free. Video production is also more expensive, and the combination of those two factors is why it is necessary to crowdfund the production of videos containing the same kind of viral information that one so often encounters in Castalia’s non-fiction books.

The videos will be 20-minutes long, and subjects that require more detailed analysis will be addressed by multi-video series. The videos will also be released as podcasts for those who prefer audio to video.

Voxiversity will change the way people think.

UPDATE: Thanks very much for the staunch support. Our objective is to exceed expectations. In the meantime, I think this was the most amusing reaction.

I suspect that your success will be proportional to your ability to restrain yourself from telling people how much more intelligent you are then them when you fail to explain something clearly. Having said that…I wish you the best of luck ?