Ron Paul did not go far enough

Ron Paul is absolutely right to criticize the horrific abuse of American civil liberties in the pursuit of men who killed fewer people than died sitting on toilets the day of the Boston Marathon:

Forced lockdown of a city. Militarized police riding tanks in the streets. Door-to-door armed searches without warrant. Families thrown out of their homes at gunpoint to be searched without probable cause. Businesses forced to close. Transport shut down.

These were not the scenes from a military coup in a far off banana republic, but rather the scenes just over a week ago in Boston as the United States got a taste of martial law. The ostensible reason for the military-style takeover of parts of Boston was that the accused perpetrator of a horrific crime was on the loose. The Boston bombing provided the opportunity for the government to turn what should have been a police investigation into a military-style occupation of an American city. This unprecedented move should frighten us as much or more than the attack itself.

What has been sadly forgotten in all the celebration of the capture of one suspect and the killing of his older brother is that the police state tactics in Boston did absolutely nothing to catch them. While the media crowed that the apprehension of the suspects was a triumph of the new surveillance state – and, predictably, many talking heads and Members of Congress called for even more government cameras pointed at the rest of us – the fact is none of this caught the suspect. Actually, it very nearly gave the suspect a chance to make a getaway.

Paul’s criticism is strong, but it could be stronger. The fact is that President Obama should be ordering a federal investigation of the violations of the Constitution by the city and state police, as well as any federal agencies involved. It is depressing to think that we might have had a President Paul responding to this unprecedented attack on the American people by the police forces of the State if only the Republican Party had not insisted that Mitt Romney was “electable”.

Moreover, as Karl Denninger points out, not only were the Boston police not heroic, they were both incompetent and dishonest about their incompetency:

The cops unconstitutionally locked down a 20-block area.  This was not a case of “hot pursuit” where a valid exception exists to the 4th Amendment — they had no idea where the bad guy was, other than the general area where they saw him last.  That does not give license for what was done in Watertown.

But then to add to that they were both incompetent in that they didn’t search a street inside the perimeter, they lied about the fact that the boat was inside the perimeter and in addition the cops fired without having acquired a target and without having taken fire themselves when they shot up the boat.

The defendant had no weapon; he clearly did not shoot at the cops first.

In addition remember that the cops claimed the boat was outside of the perimeter.  That, it turns out, was a lie. 

The fact that the police are always full of praise for themselves after an incident such as the Boston Marathon doesn’t mean that they actually merit the praise. In most cases, a closer look will reveal that they are attempting to rewrite history and conceal their customary bumbling.

Who, When, How: the unique nature of SF

John C. Wright contemplates what separates SF from all other forms of fiction, and in doing so, helps delineate the intrinsic difference between science fiction and fantasy as well as why science fiction has increasingly been transformed into fantasy as more women entered the field:

Aliens are unique to science fiction.

In no story about detectives solving a murder or heiresses wondering
what baron to wed will you find anything told from the point of view of a
nonhuman intelligent creature. All other genres, from Westerns to War
Stories to Historical drama to mainstream tales about college professors
cheating on their wives, are told from within the human realm of human
nature and can never leave it. In science fiction and in science fiction
alone is there an opportunity to step outside the human realm, and
turn, and look, and to see the mask of man from the outside.  Only in
science fiction can we speculate on what humans look like to intelligent
nonhumans….

If the task is feasible then science fiction is the only place to go, the only vantage where to stand, to look at mankind, because it and it alone steps away and turns and looks at humanity from the outside.

Before we address that broader question, the gentle reader may be contemplating at least two objections to the bold statement that examining man from a viewpoint outside man is unique to science fiction.

The first is that fantasy stories, myths, fairytales, Aesop’s fables and stories about animals, from Lassie to Black Beauty to Bambi, involve imagining what human beings might look like seen from the viewpoint of gods or sprites, ghosts or talking animals, or dumb animals. It would be odd indeed to classify BAMBI or FINDING NEMO or HAPPY FEET as “science fiction” and yet the audience for those tales sees human beings only from the beast’s-eye view. In the oldest poem in the West, THE ILIAD, many a scene is told from the coign of vantage of the Olympian gods. The far-famed Wagner’s Ring Cycle is told mostly from the point of view of gods and dark elves, giants and river nymphs, valkyries and so on: Indeed, in the first opera of the cycle, DAS RHEINGOLD, there is not a single human character on stage at any time.  The first objection, then, is simply that the statement is not true: many stories look at man from outside.

The second objection is subtler: all stories by their nature take the reader out from his own personal viewpoint. That is the core of what the story-telling imagination is, and what it does. Reading GONE WITH THE WIND as if by magic transforms the reader into the rich and willful daughter of a slaveholding Irish plantation owner; WAR AND PEACE transforms the reader into any number of Russian nobles and serfs in the midst of the Napoleonic wars; in SIEGFRIED, we become a young hero raised by a treacherous dwarf, destined to forge his father’s sword to slay a dire dragon, and win the love of an exiled goddess and the gold the world craves; in BAMBI, we become a deer; in WATERSHIP DOWN, a rabbit.

The second objection, in other words, is that science fiction is not only not unique in taking us outside our own viewpoint, but that this act of imaginative self-departure is ubiquitous and essential to all story-telling. If the reader can look at the world from another set of eyes, what does it matter whether the reader is transformed for an hour into a Southern Planter, a Russian Boyar, a Germanic Hero, or an English Hare?

Science fiction (so the objection runs) is doing something no different from any other genre, and indeed, does something less useful, because, unlike Southern Planters and Russian Nobles, the Vulcan scientist or Klingon warrior or green-skinned Orion slavegirl simply does not exist.

Imaging life from the point of view of a stranger or an enemy may have the benevolent real-world side effect of increasing my sympathy and brotherly love for him, and affirming our common humanity. Whether or not there is any common humanity with the Mollusk Men of Mars, or the Sorns, or the Tharks, or the Old Ones, there is little point in the reader learning how to step by an act of imagination into the shoes of these inhabitants of the Red Planet, because neither do they exist, and even did they, none of them wears shoes.

In sum, the second objection is that looking at ourselves from outside is what all story telling does, so science fiction is not unique; and looking at ourselves from the point of view of characters who resemble real people serves a useful real world purpose of engendering empathy with others.

The answer to the second objection is simple: Empathy is engendered by the care and skill of the portrayal, no matter who is portrayed. Whether or not the person portrayed is real or unreal means nothing.

Scarlet O’Hara of Tara is no more nor less real than Thweel the Martian. Both exist in the imagination only. Both have a relation to reality that is symbolic or emotional. When the nonhuman creature of the Genii in Disney’s ALADDIN yearns for the manacles to be struck from his wrists, and his bondage to end, all spirits longing for liberty understands precisely how he feels, because the emotion is the same in the real as in the unreal circumstances. When the completely unrealistic Siegfried, raised by a magical dwarf in a cave, yearns for the mother he has never known, it is not less poignant than the similar yearning by Oliver Twist, because both are orphans. When Bambi suffers the same loss and longing when his mother is shot by hunters, no skeptic is so foolish as to object that this scene is not moving and melancholy on the grounds that, unlike Siegfried and Oliver, deer cannot put their emotions of filial love for their mother into words, nor can they weep tears.

The answer to the second objection, in other words, is that it is the act of exercising the imagination which is the beauty and the justification for story-telling.

By the nature of imagination, the thing imagined is not real. It can be closer to reality or less close, more realistic or more fanciful, but this degree of realism has little or nothing to do with how well the scene draws the reader out of himself, and how firmly he finds himself planted in the shoes of an orphaned boy or, for that matter, an orphaned fawn.

A realistic scene portrayed without craft or genius does not engage the imagination and therefore fails as an exercise of the story-telling art; an unrealistic scene, even one involving magical beings or talking animals, which is told with craft and skill does indeed engage the imagination, and does indeed accomplish the feat that story-tellers are commanded by the muses to attempt.

The answer to the first objection is not so simple, for it involves a subtle distinction between what seem to be twins.

How is a Martian different from a Dark Elf?

People often attempt to distinguish SF from F on the basis of one being a literature of technology and ideas versus the other being a literature of magic and people, but I think Wright’s point about the dividing line being the one between intellect and emotion is cogent and arguably the more convincing.  While there are intellectual strains in many fantasy novels, such as the financial struggles in Westeros(1) or the military logistics in Selenoth, at the end of the day, the focus in these books is as every bit as emotional as the average urban fantasy featuring a necro-bestial love triangle.  The primary appeal of A Song of Ice and Fire, Arts of Dark and Light, and every fantasy since Narnia and Middle Earth is the emotional one of experiencing what it might be like to dwell in those imaginary lands.  It is the appeal of the What and the Why.

A science fiction novel, on the other hand, concerns the intellectual appeal of posing and answering questions that do not involve feeling. It is the appeal of the Who, the When, and the How.  Which is how it is possible to insist, with a straight face, that one can write a science fiction novel about angels as well as a fantasy novel about scientists.

Wright says it all considerably better than I possibly can, so just go there and read the entire thing.  And perhaps unintentionally, he implicitly explains why reading chick lit can, to the average man, very nearly approach the experience of reading science fiction.

(1) In watching A Game of Thrones the other night, I suddenly found myself getting mildly irritated BECAUSE of the financial verisimilitude involved in Tyrion’s attempt to pay for the royal wedding.  While I appreciated the practical realism of the problem as well as the impact it had on the plot, it suddenly occurred to me that Martin engages in a certain amount of handwaving with regards to the economies of the great families.  The Lannisters are unthinkably rich because they have a gold mine and collect taxes in Lannisport and the Westerlands?  Marcus Licinius Crassus laughed. And House Tyrell is very nearly as rich because they have a large quantity of farmland?  Both families are wealthy, to be sure, but the sources of their wealth are not nearly sufficient in historical terms to fund the size of the military activities in which they are engaged.

Last day to preorder SE

Contrary to previous reports, the hardcover version of Summa Elvetica: A Casuistry of the Elvish Controversy & Other Stories will not be 465 pages, it should be more like 500 pages.  I left out one of the stories from the manuscript upon which I did the word count.  The total comes to 173k words, a bit more than half of ATOB’s 297k words.  Of course, the precise page total will depend upon how Marcher Lord lays it out.

If you’re interested in preordering for a discount price of $17.99, you can do so today from Marcher Lord.  Preordering ends tonight, so if you’re interested in getting one to go with your ATOB hardcover, don’t put it off.  And remember, you’ll get a free ebook, The Last Witchking, which will be available from Amazon within a week or so.

Mailvox: the mind of the science fetishist

The following assertion by Towler is a beautiful example of the way science fetishists think.  They genuinely believe that unless something is stated in a published, peer-reviewed paper written by a real Scientist with a Degree, it not only didn’t happen, it cannot possibly have happened.

There is no reason to believe that a marriage arranged by a father of the bride will lead to more children.

Except, of course, the entire written record of human history, to say nothing of the readily observable fact of the currently extant societies, which exist by virtue of their ability to sustain themselves at replacement level birth rates that are higher than those now seen in the West.  No reason, no reason at all, except for that.

The mode of discourse demonstrated by Towler and others clearly did not escape Catan’s notice:

Note how the naysayers here are arguing their side. They require peer-reviewed scientific papers posted in Nature Magazine for anything opposing their points, but they require absolutely no proof for an assumption of equality between the daughters’ judgment and the father’s judgment. They simply assume that both have equal judgment without any proof whatsoever until proven otherwise.

This is why leftism is intellectually bankrupt. There is absolutely no a priori evidence that life and reality has any basis in equality or fairness, yet they require no proof whatsoever to assume it.

The ironic thing is that there is no shortage of scientific evidence which indicates the probability that the judgment of a reproductively fit, middle-aged male will be superior concerning nearly everything, let alone something as emotionally laden as mate selection, to that of a young female whose fitness is unknown.

Hair of the dog?

In which a vaccine for autism is posited:

A first-ever vaccine created by University of Guelph researchers for gut
bacteria common in autistic children may also help control some autism
symptoms. The groundbreaking study by Brittany Pequegnat and Guelph chemistry professor Mario Monteiro appears this month in the journal Vaccine.

They developed a carbohydrate-based vaccine against the gut bug Clostridium bolteae. C. bolteae is known to play a role in gastrointestinal disorders, and it often shows up in higher numbers in the GI tracts of autistic children than in those of healthy kids.

More than 90 per cent of children with autism spectrum disorders suffer from chronic, severe gastrointestinal symptoms. Of those, about 75 per cent suffer from diarrhea, according to current literature.

Thus raising the obvious question, how does C. bolteae manage to inordinately get itself into the intestinal tracts of autistic children?  It’s customary, at this point, to ritually denounce Andrew Wakefield and Jenny McCarthy. But ask yourself this question: if as much as 50 percent of the studies published in academic science are, to put it kindly, flawed, what are the chances that the oft-cited surveys funded by the vaccine manufacturers, (who, you will recall, are one of the very few industries that are not legally responsible for their products), are not?

To reiterate, I am not a “vaccine denier”.  Based on past discussions, I appear to understand the science and financial issues involved considerably better than most vaccine enthusiasts, including some medical doctors. I even got a tetanus vaccination myself only a few years ago. However, to understand that some vaccines are appropriate in some situations is very different than blithely assuming that all vaccinations are safe and appropriate in all circumstances.

It certainly fits with the break it and charge to fix it model that is presently so popular in the big business of modern medicine.

Mailvox: that which cannot survive won’t

Who Nose asks a pertinent question:

“If you want to understand why women are not permitted serve in Church
leadership, and why human societies do not survive more than a few
generations of young women being permitted to choose their own spouses”

It begs the question: Who ought to choose their spouses?

The Church?
The Father?
The Mother?
The State?

The question is further begged: What kind of law would need to be passed to enforce the choosing of a spouse.

Finally,
another question is begged: What would you do with the 99% of women who
responded to the suggestion or the law with, “F*ck Off”?

  1. The Father, with the advice of the Mother.
  2. No law is necessary. Simply informing their daughter that a woman who is capable of choosing her own spouse is clearly also capable of paying for her own college education and supporting her own lifestyle decisions will suffice for most parents. If a woman is independent enough to insist on paying her own way in order to pursue a career, she’s probably not wife-and-mother material anyhow and would likely end up a reproductive dead end regardless the options she is afforded.  We can always hope that instead of children, such a woman will contribute some revolutionary Powerpoint slideshows to society, produce a cure for cancer, or introduce some truly ground-breaking HR policies that will change the world for the better.
  3. I would simply wish them the best of fortune in their future endeavors.  But the number won’t be anywhere nearly that high because women are, first and foremost, the practical sex.

Demographic patterns make it perfectly clear that societies where women are not only permitted, but encouraged, to make their own mating choices are not sustainable.  I find it deeply ironic that so many people who claim to firmly believe in evolution by natural selection demonstrate that they do not understand the basic concept of fitness as soon as the issue of societal demographics is raised.

One of two things will happen. The society will collapse or be overrun, or the government will pass laws to prevent the demographic collapse from taking place. There are no other alternatives; if Who Nose or anyone else should like to suggest one, I’m quite willing to add it to the list.  It should be kept in mind that a government which has the power to conscript men to die for the security of the nation quite clearly has the power to force women to marry and bear children for the same purpose.

Many would-be critics here don’t seem to understand the implications of my being a libertarian. I don’t believe that laws are the answer to undesirable human behavior, not because they are wrong or evil, but because they are ineffective. Customs and traditions are much more powerful; laws only tend to function if they are reasonably in line with them. Laws don’t shape society, they tend to follow it instead.

Retirement celebration = Holocaust

The Volokh Conspiracy contemplates what may be an impressive new achievement in Jewish self-pity:

“Jews Are Again Faced with a Reality in Which They Don’t Belong, and That Is Painful”  So reports the Dutch chief rabbi, because Queen Beatrix’s retirement celebration is happening Sept. 14, which will be Yom Kippur. (“Beatrix, who celebrated her 75th birthday on Jan. 31, announced in January that she was abdicating and handing the crown over to her oldest son, Prince Willem-Alexander. The abdication officially takes effect this Tuesday.”)

Let me offer a somewhat different perspective: There are about 30,000 Jews in the Netherlands, which is about 0.2% of the population. I think religious minorities deserve not to be singled out for persecution. I think it may often makes sense to exempt religious objectors from generally applicable prohibitions or job requirements, when such an exemption would impose virtually no burden on others: For instance, if headgear is banned in courtrooms for reasons of tradition and symbolism, it may makes sense to exempt religious headgear. Likewise, if a college can let people take makeup exams when the main exam falls on some people’s religious holiday, that’s good.

But I don’t think that governments or institutions have an obligation — even an obligation of good manners — to change their own schedules in a way that accommodates every religious minority, including the 0.2% religious minorities.

So, Rabbi, whatever happened to that whole “next year in Jerusalem” thing anyhow? Are all the El Al flights from Amsterdam booked?

The Gospel according to St. Macklemore

If you want to understand why women are not permitted serve in Church leadership, and why human societies do not survive more than a few generations of young women being permitted to choose their own spouses, this fatuous attempt of a foolish young woman to speak for her idiot generation is a pretty good place to start:

The Church keeps scratching its head, wondering why 70% of 23-30 year-olds who were brought up in church leave. I’m going to offer a pretty candid answer, and it’s going to make some people upset, but I care about the Church too much to be quiet. We’re scared of change. We always have been. When scientists proposed that the Earth could be moving through space, church bishops condemned the teaching, citing Psalm 104:5 to say that God “set the earth on its foundations; it can never be moved.” But the scientific theory continued, and the Church still exists.

I’m saying this: we cannot keep pitting the church against humanity, or progress. DON’T hear me saying that we can’t fight culture on anything. Lots of things in culture are absolutely contradictory to love and equality, and we should be battling those things. The way culture treats women, or pornography? Get AT that, church. I’ll be right there with you. But my generation, the generation that can smell bullshit, especially holy bullshit, from a mile away, will not stick around to see the church fight gay marriage against our better judgment. It’s my generation who is overwhelmingly supporting marriage equality, and Church, as a young person and as a theologian, it is not in your best interest to give them that ultimatum.

My whole life, I’ve been told again and again that Christianity is not conducive with homosexuality. It just doesn’t work out. I was forced to choose between the love I had for my gay friends and so-called biblical authority. I chose gay people, and I’m willing to wager I’m not the only one. I said, “If the Bible really says this about gay people, I’m not too keen on trusting what it says about God.” And I left my church.

She swallowed the progressive lies, and as a result, chose abomination over Jesus Christ.  Unsurprisingly, given her grasp of theology and science history, she has it precisely backward. Her apostasy isn’t the result of Church intolerance and rejection of humanity and progress, it is the direct result of her church, and her family, tolerating progressive nonsense.

Women are dynamic. They follow the strong horse, they do not lead. Her behavior is no different than the young woman who married the Muslim who bombed the Boston Marathon, she is simply following the lead of the most forthright influence with whom she is in contact. If she lived in Victorian Britain, she’d be a prudish Christian. If she lived in Saudi Arabia, she’d wear hijab. In modern secular America, she piously puts a priority on all the St. Gays of her acquaintance and imagines that homogamy is an issue of genuine, rather than symbolic, import. 

And so she finds religion, in all places, at a Macklemore concert.

During the song, almost every person at the concert had their hands up and their eyes closed…it reminded me of church. The whole crowd spoke every word with Macklemore. We were thirsty for those words. We want to hear about equality and love in a gentle way. We’re sick of the harsh words of both sides. Say what you want about my generation, but we can smell fake from a mile away. This rapper from Seattle had brought us truth in song form, and we all knew it. I live in such a conservative bubble that I couldn’t believe the crowd’s positive, thankful reaction.

The Bible has a few choice words about those who call good evil and evil good. There is no equality in the Bible except in Jesus Christ.  Jesus himself said that he did not come bearing peace, but a sword, and that he would divide friends and families, divide the wheat from the chaff, divide sheep from the goats.

This ridiculous young woman worshipping St. Macklemore in a high school auditorium is the end result of all the campfire kumbayas, the compromises, and the watered-down attempts to be of the world rather than merely in it. It will end in tragedy, but we will be witness to a considerable amount of farce first.  The irony is that she genuinely believes her generation can smell fake from a mile away even as she regurgitates the ludicrous lies she swallowed without blinking.

The end of Tebow Time II

The Jets finally release Tim Tebow:

The Jets have released Tebow, the New York Post first reported and the team has officially announced. He will now pass through waivers, meaning every NFL team will have a chance to claim him.

Tebow was widely expected to be on the way out for months, and the only surprise is that the Jets waited until now to do it. The arrival of rookie quarterback Geno Smith in the second round of the NFL draft may have been what it took for the Jets to decide that there was simply no room for Tebow on the roster anymore.

Now the question is whether there’s any room for Tebow anywhere in the NFL.

I think he’s got to go to Canada to prove he can play quarterback. The entire New York interlude was a disaster for everyone involved, although it’s hardly fair to blame the self-implosion of Mark Sanchez on Tebow.

Despite his success in Denver, I just don’t see how he can be successful in the modern NFL. Tebow is a throwback to a time when accuracy wasn’t necessary to have success in the league. He’s basically a bigger, slower, less accurate Michael Vick, which isn’t exactly the ideal quarterback.

On the other hand, he might actually make some sense for the Vikings, since he throws a better deep ball than Christian Ponder and is perfectly capable of handing off the ball to AD.

Coming shortly

I just finished writing THE LAST WITCHKING, which actually consists of three stories, the title story, “The Hoblets of Wiccam Fensboro”, and “Opera Vita Aeterna”.  All three are rather peculiar stories in their own way, but they are all set in Selenoth and each color in different little areas on the map.  Unlike most prequels, I’ve attempted to avoid the tendency to have them reduce the scope of the story; I hope I’ve learned from the lesson of Star Wars in this regard.

Anyhow, as before, if you’re willing to commit to reading and reviewing The Last Witchking before May 8th, please send me an email with WITCHKING in the subject and indicate whether you prefer EPUB or MOBI.  I will send review copies to the first 25 respondents. I have all 25 volunteers, thanks very much, everyone. This will be the last of the shorter Selenoth works for at least a year, as I’m now concentrating solely on AODAL Book Two.

Also, don’t forget that the end of the preorder time for the hardcover of Summa Elvetica and the collection of other stories is rapidly approaching.  The preorder price is only $17.99 and comes with a free ebook copy of THE LAST WITCHKING.  In addition to the title novel, the book includes all eight novellas and short stories set in Selenoth.  It should run about 465 pages or thereabouts.