Vox Popoli

VDH unintentionally makes the case against George Delano:

Had Lincoln lost the 1864 vote, a victorious General McClellan would have settled for an American continent divided, with slavery intact. Without Woodrow Wilson’s reelection in 1916 — opposed by the isolationists — Western Europe would have lost millions only to be trampled by Prussian militarism. Franklin Roosevelt’s interventionism saved liberal democracy. And without the 1980 election of Ronald Reagan and his unpopular agenda for remaking the military, the Soviet Union might still be subsidizing global murder.

This election marks a similar crossroads in our history. We are presented with two radically different candidates with profound disagreements about how to conduct a historic worldwide war.

By the thousand dark young of Shub-Niggurath, VDH inadvertantly makes a better case against George Delano than I ever have. He pulls no punches in equating a vote for Bush with voting for Lincoln, Wilson and Roosevelt. If that’s not enough to scare you straight into the Peroutka camp and the Constitution Party, you may be many things, but you’re not a conservative by any meaningful definition of the word.

Things are looking pretty good for the political book. It’s not definite yet, but we’re over the previous hurdle and it should be confirmed soon. It is definite that my artillery will be, shall we say, guided in one direction, however, on this first book. I don’t have a problem with that as it’s the publisher’s call and I’ll be perfectly content to save some of the material I’ve already written for book two, assuming that the first one is successful enough to justify it. But as you see here, the sort of compromise about which I’ve written – and honestly, that I’m making here – is very real; I happen think it’s justified in this circumstance because the publisher has a right to publish what they want and the book makes absolutely no claim to be encyclopedic, but if you feel that I’m starting to make the same sort of compromises in my column or on this blog, don’t hesitate to call me on it.

As for the comic book, the first volume is out to the distributor already although it won’t be officially in stores until November 15. If anyone has a sighting of Archangels: The Fall in a CBA bookstore, do let me know. I believe it can also be ordered from christianbooks.com and I’ll try to put up a sample page or two at voxday.net soon.

GS isn’t the biggest fan:

The writer known as BM is right when he compares you to Pat Buchannan, except that Pat has a better haircut and doesn’t waste so such effort bashing conservatives. You don’t just bite the hand that feeds you, you eat it. I have rarely seen anyone so impressed with himself as you are. If vanity really is one of the seven deadly sins, you are in serious trouble.

I can see why your column gets the third most number of hits on WND. It is entertaining and you take positions that are supported by few and offend practically everyone. But don’t think that you are going to be a nationally known or respected columnist like George Will or John Leo. Fat chance of that happening so long as you are determined to offend everyone who might support some of your positions.

It’s no wonder than no major newspaper or magazine carries your column but it is fun to see you whine about it at your website. A review of your most recent columns illustrates why they don’t invite you to parties. First you call George Bush “Traitor to the Constitution” and quote your hero, Libertarian presidential candidate Michael Badnarik, who few Americans have ever heard of and who will undoubtedly get fewer votes than Ralph Nader next election. You should follow the advice contained in his quote.

You then spend two columns attacking Michelle Malkin and John Leo, who write far more interesting columns than you do. You top that off by indicating that Al Franken is right in his criticism of conservatives, although he was not talking about you and probably never heard of you either. In your next column, you criticize American corporations in a manner that would make Ralph Nader proud. Then your “Slick Willy and Bad Billy” attacks Bill O’Reilly, Rush Limbaugh, Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity in a manner that would make George Soros proud.

Your final attack is upon FOX news, which is putting forth the conservative position and having a greater impact on the liberal media than any other news source. Maybe you think FOX News it should be more like Trinity Broadcasting, but it has become far bigger in a very short time and gives millions of Americans a good alternative news source. In summary, don’t interpret the number of hits on your column at WND to mean that there are a large number of people who share your opinions. Some of us are looking for comic relief and want to see how reasonable ideas can be taken to illogical extremes.

This is really funny. First, Fox News swears up and down that it is not conservative, as did most of those who defended it as “fair and balanced” in response to last week’s column. Second, the writer to whom GS refers wrote: ” I stand corrected on my assertion that you are a PB clone” so GS is agreeing with an already abandoned position. Third, it’s illogical to say that I’m biting or devouring the hand that feeds me when, by GS’ own admission, it’s not feeding me at all.

Fourth and most important, GS fails to understand that I am repeatedly pointing out that the conservatism he is defending is fraudulent. Malkin defends FDR and race-based internment. Leo’s account of Pearl Harbor is as revisionist as any Soviet-era Russian history. The Freaky Factor is yet to deny the phone sex charges. The multinational corporations are investing millions into shutting down the free operation of capitalism. If conservatism has become, like liberalism, so intellectually blind that it no longer knows what it is, it will, like liberalism, devolve completely into another mutant variant of statism. Indeed, the widespread acceptance of the Bush administration as a “conservative” one suggests that this process has already begun.

Finally, it gets a little tiresome to constantly hear how impressed with myself I am. Sean Hannity’s being a bit of a dim bulb has nothing to do with me. Go check the math in his book yourself. As I have stated repeatedly, the vast majority of people who go to journalism school or major in English don’t know much because they haven’t really studied anything and the nature of journalism is such that it encourages obtaining only most superficial knowledge before writing on a subject and moving on to the next one. That’s why most journalists and columnists are so dependably clueless and reliant on talking points being provided to them; again, that has nothing to do with me.

The fact that I expect to be able to regularly exceed a very low bar does not mean that I’m impressed with my ability to do so. I’d quit if I couldn’t. If that means I don’t get invited on one of the National Review’s cruises, well, I’ll just have to find a way to survive somehow.

GS is not happy:

My mind and heart would not let me believe it. You have probably already seen this:

I hate to admit that you were right.

Actually, I’m against federal involvement in marriage too, so I’m not sure what GS thinks I’m right about unless he was still under the illusion that George Delano either was a conservative or actually gave a damn about them. I have no problem with this action, but I can certainly see where it is a stunning slap in the face to social conservatives who saw George as their last bastion of hope against the moral libertines.

Nevertheless, I’d encourage GS to console himself with the reminder that government doesn’t solve problems of moral debauchery. It solves very few problems of any kind. Far more often, it creates them.

From Slashdot:

Cray’s XT-3 has shipped. Using AMD’s Opteron processor, it scales to a total of 30,580 CPUs. The starting price is $2 million for a 200 processor system. One of its strongest advantages over the std linux cluster is that it has an excellent interconnect built by Cray.

Cool, here’s hoping that the OC, (also known as Craydaddy), can hook me up with a discount! Now that it’s running Linux, I’m in the market for a laptop.

The Evangelical Outpost brought up an interesting point the other day. What’s going to happen after the election, when all the Republican blogs won’t have any scary John Kerry stories to get everyone’s panties in a bunch, and when the lefty blogs will have to simply deal with the fact that Hitler just got re-elected rather handily?

Most of my favorite blogs aren’t overly engaged in the election, so they’ll still make for entertaining reading, but for the life of me, I have no idea what the horserace blogs are going to write about. I mean, I assume it’s too early to start scaring people about the next election before the second term has even started, but then, I also think that Christmas decorations should not go up in stores until after Thanksgiving. Clearly, yet another matter with regards to which I am in the distinct minority.

Anyhow, I will still be here doing my best to resolutely ignore the post-election hooplah – I mean, sure, I’ll comment on it but it’s not going to be the primary subject at hand. Perhaps we’ll have to have another contest, this time devoted to guessing a) how long will it take for George Delano to give conservatives another case of buyer’s remorse, and, b) what administration policy will be the culprit?

GA ponders the Inferno:

To what circle Dante’s Hell do you feel yourself sentenced, Vox? It is good that you have WND to vent your spleen as all other earthly forms of mass communication are controlled by liberal/communists who refuse to see the Truth. Terrible to be the sole Keeper of the Faith/Truth!

Actually, it’s a tremendous relief to understand how the system works. It was very confusing and disenchanting when I was first being syndicated and signed to multiple book deals while simultaneously being told by editors in my home town, (from the very paper for which I had written non-political columns for five years), that my writing was suddenly not good enough to put on the editorial page. It was bizarre to see a very average columnist like Michelle Malkin go from zero to over 100 papers in a flash while a far more original and far more successful writer like Ann Coulter struggled to sell into half that many; meanwhile my column has not been picked up by a single paper anywhere even though it has been a strong third behind Ann and Pat Buchanan on WND for two years now.

I had a choice. To go along to get along and write Three Monkey material or to stand by what I believe to be the truth and accept a career outside the media. I chose the latter, and if my contempt for the former path shows through from time to time, that’s only because the opportunity to hop back on it occasionally presents itself and I am forced to consider the question again, if only briefly.

The truth is that if I was going to sell out my principles, I would devote my time to producing the adult computer games that Big Chilly and I flirted with designing ten years ago. I still possess the technology, the contacts and the knowledge; I could produce Strip Club Manager and sell five million copies within eighteen months if I was so inclined. Believe me, I find that a lot more tempting than going media whore and swapping spit with Sean Hannity on Fox.

Bill is happy with some libertarians: “he [Bush] has instead decided to remove the war from New York City and Washington DC back to the region that spawned and supports the Islamic crusaders.”

Yes, that’s why we’re fighting that war in Saudi Arabia and Pakistan…. Good quotes? I’d say silly and beside the point would be a more accurate description. Badnarik isn’t qualified to be CEO of a socialist-corporate state, he is much better qualified than most to begin the job of dismantling it. George Bush, I have no doubt, will do a very good job of continuing to construct the American Union while working to bolster the legitimacy of the United Nations as well as finding direct financing for it.

This sort of thing, the chickens returning to the roost, doesn’t concern me in the least. You se, the course is set and easily predictable. Bush will win, as I said months ago, and the vast majority of weak-spined but genuine conservatives and frightened libertarians supporting him will be outraged with his administration before the end of his sixth year in office.

BM squeezes out the following:

I’ve read several of your articles. You seem to be a young clone of Pat Buchanan, basically repeating his lines. I don’t intend the comparison to be an insult or a compliment, just an observation by one of your new readers. I agree with you and Mr. Buchanan on some issues, mainly your conservative social positions, however, I disagree with you on the Iraq war, the USA’s strong support of Israel and other neoconservative goals. You claim to be a libertarian; do you have any original ideas of your own, or at least a different position on some issues than the paleocon establishment?

Let’s see, I don’t support government financial aid to Israel or anyone else, I am against the Iraqi occupation but supported the concept of declaring war on the global jihad. This makes me a paleoconservative, when I’m against government recognition of marriage, against the use of government to enforce cultural and social mores and pro-drug legalization?

I don’t think he’s read too many of my columns.

UPDATE: To his credit, BM wrote back thusly: “Thank you very much for taking the time to clarify your positions with a new reader. From a personal perspective, I appreciate your support of Israel and I respect your libertarian goals. I also agree that Mr. PB does not share many of your libertarian positions and I stand corrected on my assertion that you are a PB clone. I look forward to reading your future essays.”

And to be fair, his instincts were not completely amiss. I am a clone, but one of George Will that went horribly wrong and escaped from the laboratory in company with an experimental Norwegian supernanny.

The Original Cyberpunk waxes annoyed:

So I’m in the local Blockbuster the other night, returning some DVDs. It was a slow night, and the clerks were ignoring me and talking with each other while I was popping open cases and making sure my kids had put the right discs back in the right boxes. As I snapped the last case shut and dropped it down the return chute, I began to pay some minor attention to the clerks’ conversation, and that is when I heard one of them utter the most absolutely amazing statement:

“No, dude, I cannot vote for George Bush, ’cause, like, I am so much smarter than him.”

This, I must admit, caused a moment of sheer stunned silence on my part. I wondered: should I just shake my head and go off to look at the new releases? Bite my tongue and quietly leave the store? Or should I slap that little turd down without the slightest hint of mercy?

“Ah, I see. You’re smarter than a Harvard MBA. That must be why you’re a fat, pimply guy with a greasy pony-tail who works for minimum wage at Blockbuster.”

I do find this sort of thing ironic. I mean, the man has an IQ of around 120 as far as we can tell. That’s underwhelming if you’re looking for the perfect philosopher-king, sure, but it is significantly above average. And yet, manifestly sub-par intelligences don’t hesitate to describe him as a dummy, (although to be fair, dim bulb conservatives often do the same with Kerry).

Intelligence isn’t everything, but it is not reasonably hard to discern. Jokers of the sort that the OC is writing about are only revealing their own complete lack of it when they spout off such wonderfully illuminating opinions.