Vox Popoli

Between fiction and real life:

A little over a year ago, we conducted a survey of women readers to find a “watershed” women’s novel – the book which, above all others, had sustained individual women through key moments of transition or crisis in their lives. We began by polling women who were prominent in the arts and the media, then moved on to women journalists, academics, university students, schoolteachers and sixth formers. By the end we were polling every woman reader who crossed our paths; in total, 400 women responded to our inquiry.

Absolutely every woman we spoke to had her favourite. The top titles that emerged were surprisingly varied. They ranged from The Lord of the Rings and The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy to Catch 22, Gone With The Wind, Rebecca, Heart of Darkness and The Golden Notebook. This was alongside such perennial favourites as Jane Eyre (our way- out-in-front eventual winner), Mrs Dalloway, Wuthering Heights, Pride and Prejudice, Middlemarch and Anna Karenina. Jeanette Winterson’s Passion and Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit, Toni Morrison’s Beloved and Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale had bands of loyal followers.

This year, we tackled the obvious next question: what do men read to get them through life? If polling women’s reading habits had thrown up such an astonishing variety of reading, surely men’s reading would be equally revealing. After all, as two female researchers, we might have been prepared for women’s reading choices; in the case of men, we admitted we really hadn’t a clue.

Our sample of reading men was selected on exactly the same principles as the women – that way, we felt the results could be directly compared. The first thing we found, unexpectedly, was that the men were more reluctant than the women to discuss the influence reading might have had on them. Or, perhaps it might be more accurate to say, they seemed suspicious of the question. Women had responded to our questionnaire without hesitation, producing a number of key moments in their life at which they unselfconsciously acknowledged that fiction had offered them guidance or solace. Many men we approached really did not seem to associate reading fiction with life choices.

Because it’s a ridiculous question! What sort of moron associates imaginary characters with life choices? I’ve read thousands of novels, I’m an avid reader and not one ever “sustained me through a transition or crisis”. I couldn’t name one such book, let alone five, nor could any other sane human being. Can you? Anyhow, if you don’t manufacture imaginary crises for yourself every other month you probably won’t find yourself requiring fictional solace.

What this study actually reveals is two things. First, it shows that people lie about books they claim to have read or found significant. They might as well have asked the question: “name five books that will make people think you are an intelligent and educated individual.” I’d bet more than half the people who claimed that Jane Eyre or The Outsider were the most significant book in their lives have never read more than a chapter or two.

(The correct answer to the question, of course, is American Psycho or maybe the Executioner series. “Because, you know, The Executioner really consoled me when I hit this confused period in my life, I was sort of wandering and just fell into this rut of tracking down and killing Mafia hit men.” Another quality answer would be: “Watership Down, because I honestly feel that I’m a rodent trapped in a man’s body.”)

Second, it demonstrates that the average women’s grasp on reality can be more than a little shaky. If a man told you, in all seriousness, that reading an HP Lovecraft novel had changed his life, you’d surely back away slowly and attempt to avoid making any sudden movements.

Catkiller! poses the question:

If the conservative movement survived the New Deal, it will survive George W. Bush and Bill Frist.

It’s interesting that you set yourself apart from a movement that would be more than a little thrilled to see most of your agenda implemented. Moreover, is libertarianism really a “progressive” or “innovating” political movement? I’ve never seen it as such. The difference I see in conservative thought (books, not radio hosts) is that we want the right to live in communities whose uniformity goes no further than the local level. To me, that is the only road to diversity and liberty. I honestly don’t see how either conservatism or libertarianism seek to improve the human condition through government policy.

I have no doubt that most conservatives would be delighted if I were king for a day, or at least they would be once they got over the shock of seeing what I had in mind and saw the results of removing sovereign power from the central government and returning it to individuals and the states.

The reason I separate myself from conservatives is threefold. First, I have little in common with most of the politicians and commentators who call themselves conservatives. Second, I reject the popular conservative concept of using government to impose moral, communal and business standards on individuals and organizations. For example, conservatives want to use government to protect marriage – like that will work – whereas I want to see the separation of marriage and state.

Third, there is little about American society that I want to conserve. I believe it was Josh that described conservatives as those who see yesterday’s defeats as tomorrow’s victories; I think that is a cogent summation. Of course, as I pointed out in my column today, the word “conservative” has become rather nebulous, so perhaps we had better define the term more precisely before discussing whether or not it applies to various individuals.

As for survival, I’m not so sure. Conservativism itself will surely survive, but the movement in which it supposedly resides today may not.

The two soccer seasons are over just in time to collapse on the couch, watch the World Cup and let my body try to recover from the abuse. We won the championship with fingers crossed as our late-season collapse left us needing a win over the team that had just usurped our rightful position in first place the previous week. Things didn’t look good in the first half, but our tactically challenged manager made an astute change for once in making the astonishing decision to put two players on the wings who could actually run, and we finished with a 2-0 win, a 13-3-6 record and a two-point advantage in the final standings.

I had a lousy season myself, having spent most of it playing out of position at attacker. This confused me, until I realized that any manager who regularly starts not one, but two players who lumber like crippled oxen on the wings simply doesn’t know what he’s doing. I’m not sure if the team’s promotion will mean more or less playing time, so I’m contemplating a move to a different club next season.

The kids did about as well as they could, considering that we were starting three six-year olds against teams comprised entirely of eight year-olds. We finished 11th out of 16 and 10th out of 12 in our last two tournaments, and if it was a little frustrating to watch teams we beat handily for the last two years win it all, well, not only is everyone back next year, but more than half of them will be back for the year after that.

The most amusing thing was the big area church tournament. Our pastor asked me to put together a team, but we didn’t have nearly enough players to field one, so in addition to recruiting every warm body over five feet tall, I told the more serious players to bring a friend along. This was contrary to the rules, but the option was to simply not show up.

The problem was that we won our first three games too handily, prompting complaints, especially about my Dutch friend. He’s excellent in the air and I could throw the ball into the center of the area on the small field, so we were scoring whenever the other teams gave up a throw-in. So, we found ourselves disqualified even though he had to depart at noon in favor of a tournament in which his son was playing.

We ended up beating the eventual champions even without him; ironically, I later learned that three of the other teams, including the champions, were fielding more “illegal” players than we were. In the process, I also learned that black women are completely insane, as the girlfriend of an African player kept shrieking that the reason we’d been disqualified was due to the racism of the tournament directors.

The fact that the other four “illegal” players were white and no one had any problem with the five black players who belong to our church didn’t seem to register with her no matter how many times I tried to explain it. But the nadir of the farce wasn’t reached until the referee stormed off the field towards the end of our last game claiming that our goalie had punched him after he wrongly tried to award a goal to the other team on a free kick that he allowed while our team was just assembling its wall. (The ref was a total drama queen, I was standing ten feet away and the goalie merely laid a hand on his shoulder while providing some much-needed remonstration.)

I rather doubt we’ll be invited back next year, but the craziness did have the positive result of creating a genuine team bond among the players. This morning at church, it was amusing to see how Jamaicans, Nigerians and Italians who hadn’t really known each other before the tournament were greeting each other by shaking hands, bumping shoulders and bursting out laughing together.

As for the World Cup, I haven’t been favorably impressed by anyone except perhaps the Argentines, who are not as bad as I expected. Germany looks very weak in the backfield, Ivory Coast even worse, Sweden can’t break down a defense with eighty-percent possession, (and that #20 striker was simply disastrous, blowing no less than three excellent chances), T&T played hard and stayed disciplined in back but simply don’t have enough talent to go out and beat anyone and England doesn’t have any dependable goal scorers up front.

This is looking more and more like Brazil’s tournament. But we’ll see….

The delicate Captain Ed is overcome once more by the vileness of it all:

Whether Rall or Coulter says it, impugning the grief felt by 9/11 widows regardless of their politics is nothing short of despicable. It denies them their humanity and disregards the very public and horrific nature of their spouses’ deaths….

This represents the downside of provocateurs, even those entertaining enough to enjoy for 80% of the time. Instead of arguing facts or philosophy, the provocateur usually relies on ad hominem attack in order to degrade and dismiss their opposition. A little of that goes a very long way, and unfortunately Coulter delivered it in droves yesterday. She owes these victims closest to 9/11 an abject apology and a retraction of her remarks, and she should pray that she doesn’t ever experience the kind of loss that these people have had. Regardless of their politics, their grief was and is all too real, and that drives their public engagement. I doubt a single one of them wouldn’t gladly trade their influence for one more day with the ones they lost. Shame on Ann for implying otherwise.

How, precisely, does questioning the obvious enjoyment and employment which these women derive from their dubious celebrity – however tragically it was obtained – “deny them their humanity”? They’ve been grieving publicly for nearly five years now! This is politically correct nonsense of the first degree and full credit to Ann for pointing out the complete lack of credibility possessed by these women to speak out on anything but their grief.

Perhaps in the Captain’s kinder, gentler world, no wives ever leave their husbands and no one ever kills a family member for the insurance money. Sure, it’s possible that some of these women would trade in the money, fame and influence to have their husbands back, but it’s equally possible that they cackle gleefully in secret at the Faustian deal they have so visibly accepted. I don’t know and neither does Captain Ed, but Coulter’s point would not have inspired such a reaction if everyone didn’t know exactly what she was talking about. The idea that there are holy women ennobled by grief whose pronouncements must be accepted unquestioningly is absurd; given that there are no shortage of similarly grief-stricken 9/11 widows that Coulter is not criticizing, it should be clear that the Captain’s point is just another attempt to showcase indignant drama.

And his point, such as it is, is particularly ironic considering how Ann Coulter is the one pointing out relevant, if uncomfortable facts, while the Captain himself is doing nothing but pointing his finger and decrying others, again demanding an apology is rather less likely than seeing the Stanley Cup settled on Hell’s home ice.

Another day, another example of faux outrage. When did the conservative movement come to be dominated by such a bunch of whiny, oversensitive scolds?

UPDATE: The White Buffalo points out a similarly “despicable” post from the Captain robbing the famously bereaved Cindy Sheehan of her humanity:

SOTU Psychotics On Parade

The inevitable parade of nutcases will be in full flower tonight as the President delivers his State of the Union speech. (Sheehan is one of the two individuals mentioned.)

Given that the good Captain previously accused Sheehan of having “gone seriously off-balance with grief”, I can only think that he owes her “an abject apology and a retraction of [his] remarks”. What’s more offensive, accusing someone of enjoying fame, political influence and millions of dollars or accusing someone of being a seriously unbalanced nutcase?

Equus Pallidus vs the Gay Mustachio: a transcript:

We go to Forth Worth, Texas, and Gregg, you’re on the Michael Medved show!

Hi Michael. I disagree with you about your mischaracterization of Vox Day’s article on deporting illegal aliens. You basically called him a Nazi, he’s not a Nazi and I don’t know how anybody could compare a libertarian to the National Socialist party.

I’ll tell you how, now hold on, let me read you a quote from the article that led me to say he was basically taking a Nazi position. He was talking about the idea of deportation. He said this. He said “Not only will it work, but what can actually estimate how long it – meaning deportation – would take. If it took the Germans four years to rid themselves of six million Jews, many of whom spoke German and were integrated into German society, it couldn’t possibly take more than eight years to deport 12 million illegal aliens, many of whom don’t speak English and are not integrated into American society.”

Now doesn’t that sound like he’s saying we ought to follow the example of the Nazis?

No, I think what he’s saying is, if you read on in the article, that Bush is just not telling the truth, that we can do this. That it can be done.

Wait, wait, wait! The Nazis did it by murdering people! They put people in death camps!

He never suggested murdering people, did he?

But he said that the Nazis showed how it could be done! Isn’t it close to saying – listen let me read it to you again –

No, it’s not close to saying that! You made that up in your head.

I didn’t make it up, I read you the quote from his own article. He wrote that, I didn’t! Are you there?

He said nothing about killing people.

Listen again. “Not only will it work, but one can easily estimate how long it would take”

To deport.

Okay, the Germans didn’t deport Jews, they murdered them.

So what? You’re comparing the final example of the Jews, what he’s talking about is deportation.

No, he is not talking about deportation! Do you see?

That’s exactly what he’s talking about.

Unless, he is denying that the Holocaust took place. First of all, he’s an ignorant fool, because the Holocaust, of the six million Jews who died in the Holocaust, about 200,000 of them were German. Most of them were Polish, they didn’t even live in Germany. They weren’t deported from Germany. Secondly, what he’s talking about is murder, here, and he’s talking about it approvingly.

No, he’s not.

“If it took the Germans less than four years to rid themselves of six million Jews…” let me ask you, Gregg, how did the Germans rid themselves.

Well, the Germans, that’s the end. They killed them. They gassed them.

Okay, if it took the Germans less than four years to rid themselves of six million Jews, it couldn’t possibly take more than eight years to deport 12 million illegal aliens! What he’s saying is that he approves of the Nazi program of deportation and execution.

I tell you what. Inference doesn’t equal implication. You’re putting words in his mouth that’s in your head.

I read you his own words. Don’t you think that it hurts the case for deportation to analogize the Nazi persecution of Jews?

I don’t know whether it does or doesn’t. He was making a point. He doesn’t even support the deportation of illegal aliens. He was pointing out that George Bush was lying that it can’t be done.

Okay, first of all, it cannot be done in the United States of America. Secondly, it couldn’t even be done, in other words, in the Nazi regime, they, many of the six million Jews who were killed – and again this is his ignorance and you need to know it too – many of the people who were killed were killed by the Einsatzgruppen in their own villages. They came in and they lined people up in their own villages and they never got deported anywhere. They just got shot by firing squads and then put into ditches and then buried over. That’s what happened in Babi Yar in Ukraine. And people were killed that way. But you see, if you’re comparing the way we want to treat illegals in the United States to the slaughter of millions of German Jews – and European Jews and Ukrainian Jews and Romanian Jews and Hungarian Jews – if you want to compare it, then you’re giving the worst possible association to the anti-immigrant movement. Appreciate your call, nice try.

What a contemptible fraud! Now I’m not just a “Nazi boy” and a “Nazi-lover”, I’m also ignorant and a Holocaust denier, at least in Michael Medved’s Happy Faux Conservative World. Notice first that he never even attempted to answer EP’s question regarding the rather obvious difference between a libertarian and a member of the German National Socialist Worker’s Party. Second, one can see how in this short dialogue, Medved commits six blunders, although he managed to catch himself just after committing the last and most fatal one.

1. Compare these two Medved quotes referring to me: (1)“he was talking about the idea of deportation” and (2)“he is not talking about deportation!” So, in an article devoted to the question of immigration and a border wall, which one do you think it is, Mustache? Make up your little mind.

2. Medved talks about 200,000 German Jews killed in the Holocaust, which is correct to the best of my knowledge. But he omits to mention that the Jewish population in the June 1933 German census was 600,000, and as Robert Wistrich notes in HITLER AND THE HOLOCAUST “nearly 10 percent of German Jews had already fled the country by the end of 1933”. So, the Germans managed to remove around 430,000 Jews from the population – 512,000 if you count German-speaking Austrian Jews as German – without mass slaughter or even mass deportations. Only a very shallow thinker or a propagandist could believe that there is nothing to the historical example but bloodshed.

3. Identifying and locating illegals is the primary logistical challenge at hand, not transportation. So, for the purposes of the illegal alien debate, it makes no difference if the Jews of the analogy were deported or killed by the infamous Einsatzgruppen. Considering that 25 million children are bused to school every weekday in the United States, it is silly to assert that transportation is the challenge. Furthermore, Wistrich not only has 29 references to deportations, but, with regards to Poland, has the following in the index: “Poland: and deportation of Jews, 59, 74, 82, 97, 138, 208, 214, 224-5”. Medved is simply flailing about here.

And on behalf of the quasi-illiterate, let me quickly assure everyone that in using the schoolbus analogy, I am not calling for the forced public education of all illegal aliens….

4. More comparative Medved: (1)“They weren’t deported from Germany.” (2)“the Germans didn’t deport Jews, they murdered them.” (3)“What he’s saying is that he approves of the Nazi program of deportation and execution.” So, Medved is outraged by what he infers to be my approval for what he declares is a nonexistent program of deportation. While I am ignorant of many things, logic isn’t one of them. It’s clear one cannot say the same for Mustache.

5. Medved, in attempting to correct my accurate statement about “many German Jews”, makes a mistake in saying that “most of them were Polish”. Historians estimate that about three million of the 3.3 million pre-war Polish Jews were killed, but three million is half of six million, it is not “most” of it. Medved puts himself in the unique position of simulataneously denying that between 200,000 and 700,000 German Jews are “many” (depending on if y
ou count only the dead or if you include the self-deported) but one-half is “most”. Even his pedantry is incompetent.

6. Medved himself referred initially to the slaughter of “millions of German Jews”, before realizing it and quickly correcting himself. In doing so, he was making use of the common rhetorical shorthand that I was using in the original column, but since he has chosen the role of the outraged and overly pedantic critic, he’s no longer in a position to do so.

As I have said before, Michael Medved is a peddler of false outrage; his schtick depends upon having something to get worked up about, however imaginary. Last week it’s Nazi Libertarians, perhaps next week it will be Communists Under Your Bed. Like Michelle Malkin, he prefers to destroy his own credibility and look like a fool rather than admit to making a mistake that is obvious to everyone. That’s bad enough, but what’s contemptible is his cowardice in hiding behind a microphone rather than directly confronting those he is so willing to criticize from the safety of screened phone lines.

WORLD CUP PREDICTIONS

GROUP A
Germany
Ecuador

GROUP B
Sweden
England

GROUP C
Holland
Ivory Coast

GROUP D
Portugal
Mexico

GROUP E
Italy
USA

GROUP F
Brazil
Australia

GROUP G
France
Switzerland

GROUP H
Spain
Ukraine

Group E is the real group of death. The USA could easily upset the fractious Azzurri, Nedved could lead the Czechs over both the USA and Italy, pretty much anything could happen except for Ghana winning the group. Argentina is usually very good, but they are young this year and Ivory Coast is full of quality players playing in the English Premiership. The fact that Eboue and Toure play together in back at Arsenal is a big advantage as most of these teams simply haven’t played together very often.

Elements of NRO are very excited about Zarqawi’s death:

“When the history of the global conflict of our time—I call it “the War for the Free World”—is written it seems likely that June 7, 2006, will be seen as an important moment, perhaps even a tipping point, in that war’s Iraqi front.” – Frank Gaffney

“I believe this is a major coup. Zarqawi was the public face of the non-Iraqi side of the insurgency.” – Mackubin Thomas Owens

“Zarqawi’s death is very important at this juncture, for symbolic in addition to operational reasons. Although al Qaeda in Iraq was decentralized, the loss of its prime strategist there will insidiously have long-term repercussions.” – VDH

My prediction is that three months from now, there won’t be any sign that Zarqawi’s death ever happened. There won’t be any significant reduction in attacks, civilian fatalities or US casualties, nor will the pressure to end the Occupation have abated. A hallmark of 4th-generation warfare is its decentralized nature, therefore, taking out one so-called “leader” is unlikely to significantly disrupt anything. Note how the man who actually studies terrorism is markedly less inclined to interpret the killing as an important step, let alone a turning point.

“Zarqawi was a strange character—a thug without a constituency. He was never “part of” al Qaeda, just used it as a cover. His own clan in Jordan was after him; his ideological mentor, Al Maqdissi, criticized him, as did Al Zawahiri. Iraqi Sunni groups hated him—to say nothing about the Shias.” – Michael Radu, senior fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute’s Center on Terrorism and Counter-terrorism.

How can someone be a “leader”, the “prime strategist” and “the public face” of an organization to which he did not belong? This strikes me as far too much ado about a minor success, which only highlights the administration’s weakening position. The insurgency seems to have survived without Hussein & Sons, after all, arguably a far more important loss.

Big boom, big bust. You can’t have a huge move like the one to 725 without a correction. I expect AU to fall to around 540, and AG to drop to 9.50 over the next month or two. That’s a reasonable point to jump in again, the mere fact that there are advertisements on WND encouraging people to buy in now at 680 – which is already 620 – is a contrarian indication that it’s too early to buy.

Jamie, do you recognize a turning point yet? I readily concede that you’ve smoked me over the last 18 months, but the charts sure look rather grim these days. The Wonder from Down Under makes an important point about psychology well worth reading for anyone regardless of their bearish or bullish instincts.

Bob miraculously reinvents the wheel from scratch.

ag·nos·tic: a person who holds the view that any ultimate reality (as God) is unknown and prob. unknowable; broadly: one who is not committed to believing in either the existence or the nonexistence of God or a god.

Ok, broadly, that defines me.

Until I see evidence that is more than just adrenalin surges, day dreams, heresay passed down a long line of story tellers, and/or personal feelings as proof that God or some god actually exists, I’ll stay that way.

However, you and your claims to moral superiority can go back to the rear of the classroom. To claim that religion is needed to give us proper and acceptable rules to live by — or whatever you may label them — is nothing more than advertising hype by church leaders and their dedicated followers.

I don’t claim to speak for any athiest or any other agnostic, but I have rules of conduct and a code of ethics as evey bit as valid as any to be attained from religiouly taught “morals”.

What Bob fails to understand is that Christians can only make a claim to moral superiority because their moral advantage over the agnostic is infinite. The agnostic possesses no morality of his own, let alone one that he can rationally apply to another individual. Bob is, quite likely, what most of us would consider to be a good and decent human being, a moral man, but it is no coincidence that his “rules of conduct” and “code of ethics” is identical to the Judeo-Christian morality of the society that spawned him.

With very, very few exceptions, no one ever sits down and seriously attempts to construct an individual morality. Instead, they absorb their rules of conduct and sense of morality from the dominant culture, then use their lack of faith to justify ignoring those elements that thwart their more powerful desires. This is why nearly every agnostic and atheist takes high-minded exception to the moral strictures against promiscuous sex, but not those against murder or a failure to be charitable.

Indeed, were Bob an agnostic in an Islamic culture, he would subscribe equally easily to polygamy, the execution of homosexuals and the stoning of sexually active women. “When in Rome…” is the sine qua non of the agnostic and the atheist alike. There are few godless martyrs in the pages of history; it is amusing that two of the names most often cited as such by atheists were an ordained priest and a devout Catholic.

The evidence provided by post-Christian cultures such as Scandinavia and England increasingly demonstrates that Bob’s assertion is incorrect and that religion is indeed required to provide a moral base for society, as irreligious men such as Socrates* and Voltaire have recognized for centuries. It is not an accident that the rise of Western civilization took place within Christendom, nor that the abandonment of Christianity should coincide with a decline towards barbarism, brutality and bad art.

*Yes, I know Socrates denied the charge of atheism. I didn’t buy his denial, obviously, neither did 280 Athenian jurors. His words notwithstanding, he managed to produced both an Alcibiades and a Critias, to say nothing of Plato.