MAGA Mindset reviews

First, thanks to everyone who made MAGA Mindset Castalia’s second-most-successful book launch after Cuckservative. That was great; Mike noted that it was even more successful than his Gorilla Mindset launch. And more than a day after its launch, it is still in the Amazon top 250.

A couple of people have posted reviews I thought worth highlighting here, first of all, Caleb Q. Washington:

If I had to describe the book in just a sentence, it is SJWs Always Lie meets Gorilla Mindset condensed to their core, with a unifying theme of Donald Trump.

The book is divided into three sections on culture, media and mindset. The first lays out, in brutal terms, the cultural landscape of modern America and how it paved the way for Trump’s rise. Cernovich does it in such a way that he won’t sound like a conspiracy theorist to uninitiated readers, which is really hard to do given the gulf between reality and the media created dreamworld most of America lives in. The first section is as good of a redpill as any I’ve seen. It will convert people to Alt-Right….

For people like me, who read Cernovich & Vox Day blogs and books, who know the state of cultural rot in America, who already see the media as adversarial to the American nation, this book is going to feel like it’s preaching to the choir and telling you things you already agree with. This book was written to create more allies for us. You should read it, enjoy a well done work pushing your worldview and pass it on to people who it will impact greatly.

He’s right. MAGA Mindset is a great starting point for young men and women who sense that there is something wrong with America, but would be overwhelmed by the likes of SJWAL and Cuckservative. It’s short, it’s succinct, and it’s straight to the point.

The notorious Charles C. Johnson took a break from his various nefarious plans to wreak havoc throughout the world to write a review as well:

You may ask: are you really telling me Donald Trump fought the world and won just thanks to his mindset?

Yes. And Mike Cernovich makes that compelling case in MAGA Mindset, using Donald Trump’s boyhood pastor, who was also a best-selling author of “positive thinking” books, as evidence.

And it looks like he’s right. Trump never backs down, never stops fighting, and always wins in the end.

But it all begins in his head.

I am genuinely alarmed. Chuck Johnson is a serious dark lord, and the idea of him applying even some of the lessons taught in MAGA Mindset is not only frightening, it is almost beyond imagining. He is the Dr. Evil of the Alt-Right. In other news, Mike Glyer of File 770 was amused by the press release Castalia’s PR team sent out to the media concerning Mike’s latest book:

Mike Cernovich’s new book, MAGA MINDSET: Making YOU and America Great Again, is the #1 bestseller in Amazon’s Politics & Social Sciences>Leadership category. That’s not surprising, as his prevous book, Gorilla Mindset, self-published in 2015, was also a bestseller

What is surprising, however, is that languishing behind the Donald Trump-supporting author’s latest bestseller is Stronger Together, a book published only last month, written by Democratic Party presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and her running mate, Sen. Tim Kaine. The Clinton-Kaine book, signed by Simon & Schuster to $14 million advance, currently sits at 5th place in the category…..

The new Cernovich bestseller, signed to an advance that was, according to Day, “pretty close to $14 million less than Clinton and Kaine got,”….

As always, the perspicacious commenters at File 770 didn’t hesitate to demonstrate their astuteness and keen powers of observation in all matters even tangentially related to the Supreme Dark Lord.

“Teddy doesn’t mention it’s number one in that tiny subcategory because it was FREE, and listed prominently on ebook freebie sites. I follow a couple so I don’t remember which.”


One almost has to admire their determination to stick to the Narrative no matter what the actual, readily confirmable facts are. As it happens:

  • The book is $7.99 for ebook, $9.99 for paperback.
  • The book ranked #226 on all of Amazon and #22 in Nonfiction.
  • The #2 book in the Media Studies category has 831 reviews and is ranked #3,425 on Amazon.
  • The #2 book in the Leadership category has 971 reviews and is ranked #803 on Amazon.

MAGA MINDSET by Mike Cernovich

Castalia House and Mike Cernovich are happy to announce their first collaborative effort, MAGA MINDSET: Making YOU and America Great Again.


MAGA MINDSET: How to Make YOU and America Great Again is not a traditional political analysis of Donald Trump or the success of his political campaign, which would be boring and useless to the reader. MAGA Mindset is an overview of the cultural forces that have propelled Trump forward while using the example of his candidacy as a case study for the reader’s own life.


MAGA MINDSET will give you a deeper understanding of America, the challenges it is facing, and how those challenges created the conditions for Donald Trump’s inevitable rise. You will understand how Mike Cernovich was able to successfully predict Donald Trump would be the Republican nominee when all the professional political pundits considered his campaign to be a joke, and why, win or lose, the Trump revolution will continue beyond the 2016 election.


In MAGA MINDSET you will learn:


* The cultural forces behind Trump’s rise
* How Trump and other masters of social media are able to drive the news cycle
* The mindset techniques and strategies YOU need to succeed at life, even when it seems hopeless


Mike Cernovich is the bestselling author of Gorilla Mindset. He is a lawyer, a journalist who has broken several news stories of international interest, and the producer of the film documentary Silenced.


MAGA MINDSET: Making YOU and America Great Again retails for $7.99 and is available exclusively at Amazon. It is 101 pages and DRM-free.

Now, you may well wonder what is the point of releasing a book about Donald Trump only a few weeks before an election that the media, and almost everyone else, assume that he is going to lose, and lose badly. You may also wonder how it is possible that a book of barely 100 pages could possibly be worth the asking price.

But, as Mike points out in the Introduction, this isn’t a book about who will or won’t be the next President. This isn’t a book about how to run for office, much less a history of an American political campaign. This is a book about the challenges faced by both America and you in the years ahead. Whether Donald Trump wins or loses on November 8th, neither he nor the cultural forces that caused his rise are going to disappear. If anything, they are going to grow stronger and make the lessons contained in this book that much more important for the reader.

And those lessons are important. Because, in a society riven by cultural war, one of the most vital is the ability to affect the culture. Mike Cernovich not only explains how Donald Trump has been able to do that, he explains how you can learn from his example and achieve your own vision. This isn’t think-and-grow-rich snake oil or the Prosperity Gospel, it is a practical analysis from an author who has been practicing exactly what he is preaching that picks up where Gorilla Mindset left off.

From Amazon:
#1 in Books > Social Sciences > Communication & Media Studies
#1 in Books > Politics & Social Sciences > Leadership

What is particularly amusing about the latter category? Twelve spots behind, at #13, is Stronger Together: A Blueprint for America’s Future, by Hillary Rodham Clinton (Author), Tim Kaine (Author)


CLIO & ME: An Intellectual Autobiography

“Martin van Creveld ranks high among military historians, and given the changes in technology since Napoleonic Times, his work is a necessary supplement to Clausewitz.” 
– Jerry Pournelle

Dr. Martin van Creveld is a significant contributor to the literature of war. A Professor Emeritus at the Hebrew University, Jerusalem, Dr. van Creveld is one of the world’s leading writers on military history and strategy, with a special interest in the future of war. He is fluent in Hebrew, German, Dutch, and English, and has authored more than twenty books, including the influential Technology and War: 2000 BC to the Present (1988), The Transformation of War (1991), and The Culture of War (2010). He is known for his development of the concept of “nontrinitarian” warfare as well as contributing two books to the 4GW canon, and he is deeply respected by military officers and professional strategists around the world.

CLIO & ME: An Intellectual Biography is Dr. van Creveld’s most personal book, an honest, heartfelt account of his lifelong love affair with the Muse of History. It is an autobiography, not of the life, but of the mind, and as such, will be of great interest to historians and students of history alike. This “intellectual autobiography” reveals one of the great historical minds of the 21st Century to be eternally curious, endlessly inquisitive, and, unexpectedly, possessed of more than a little charm. CLIO & ME: An Intellectual Biography is 288 pages, DRM-Free, and retails for $4.99 on Amazon.

I have to say that has been a real pleasure for me to work with Martin, who is very warm and friendly in person, in stark contrast to the vast and coldly calculating mind that one occasionally glimpses in his work. He is certainly the only Castalia author with whom I am on hugging terms. But it is not at all surprising to learn that some of his professors later confessed themselves to have been intimidated by him in his youth. This is a rare opportunity to see inside the head of a genuine genius, with the historian’s lens reversed and turned on himself for a change.

Anyone who admires the military historian must read this work, of course, but it will also be of interest to those who enjoy reading biographies.


Mindset or Metal?

It’s coming soon. From Mike Cernovich and Castalia House. Now, you have to keep in mind, I’m probably the only person who has read the book before seeing the cover. When I saw it, my first reaction was to laugh. And my second reaction was to say, “oh, yes, that’s perfect”. The only way a non-fiction book could be more metal is if it was an actual encyclopedia of heavy metal. You can almost hear the guitars crunching.



“Readers are tired of basic bitch content. They want edge. They want pop. They want swagger. My readers are ferocious and want to stand out. Let the content serfs serve up the same undifferentiated slop. I only want savages and madmen and madwomen reading me.”


Until MAGA Mindset is released, readers will have to contend with Gorilla Mindset, “which is more complete than MAGA Mindset,” Cernovich said. “However, my editor Vox Day told me the writing in MAGA Mindset is the best I’ve done. I’ve always said the only person who can best me is me. Once MAGA Mindset is released, readers will be able to decide for themselves!”


It is good. It is really good. There were entire sections I wanted to underline and read to my kids. I won’t be even a little surprised if it outsells Gorilla Mindset, and Gorilla Mindset has sold astonishingly well.

Mike is a madman. He’s also one of the very few people I seek out for advice, because he’s one of the few people whose advice has been of material benefit to me. Some longtime Dread Ilk have commented that VP seems to have gotten more intense over the last year, and to the extent that is true, it is a direct result of my relationship with Mike.


For the ladies

Cryptofashion is now offering women’s v-necks as well. They have Castalia House REVOLUTION IN SCIENCE FICTION in black and various shades of blue.

And PLANETARY KNOWLEDGE CORE shirts are available too, but only in black. If you are a female Original Galaxian, don’t forget to use your code if you want an ORIGINAL GALAXIAN version instead. If you send us pictures of you in your v-neck, or tweet them, we’ll RT/Tweet them from the appropriate Gab/Twitter account.


Another category bestseller

While I’m very pleased to be informed that THE NINE LAWS, Castalia’s new mindset book by Ivan Throne, has hit #1 in the Consciousness and Thought category, I am more than a little amused to see that two of the top three Gender Studies books are a) The Nine Laws and b) Gorilla Mindset.

Who would could have possibly imagined something like this happening back in the days when the chief adversary of the blog was Amanda Marcotte and the Pandagonian feminists? And now there are not one, but TWO Castalia House authors dominating the Gender Studies bestsellers.

From the reviews of THE NINE LAWS:

  • Ivan provides a counterpunch to the weakness permeating our culture.
  • This isn’t a book written by some nobody who’s lived an easy life and speaks only about theory. Rather, his struggles and endeavors have taught him firsthand how brutal the world can be and what you must do to survive and thrive.
  • “If you love Game of Thrones, this is the self-help book for you! P.S. You’re gonna die.” His pain is your gain.
  • This book is NOT for everybody. It reads like a gathering storm, and deals in hard truths.

On a tangential note, the first Castalia House “Revolution in Science Fiction” t-shirts are now available from Dark Lord Designs. I’d be interested in knowing what other Castalia-related designs might be of interest to the Ilk. Anything is possible, from There Will Be War covers to red Van Creveld Che shirts. I’d like a half-hex 4GW-logo baseball cap myself.


THE NINE LAWS by Ivan Throne

Castalia House is proud to announce its first mindset book, THE NINE LAWS, by Ivan Throne. Ivan, also known as Dark Triad Man on Gab and Twitter, is an impressive man who has overcome many difficulties and life-challenges through accepting the callous disregard of the world and ruthlessly imposing his own will upon it.

Do you dare to discover what you’re truly capable of? 


THE NINE LAWS is your living manual of power, distilled for you by the man who was forced to build it to survive. The author forged this system over decades of cruel experience. It began with profound trauma in early childhood, shaped itself during long training in the eastern warrior arts, and was polished amidst financial industry competition and family crisis. Master this content, and deliver yourself to a place that few men ever reach: joyous mastery of your own fate. 


This book is not for the uncertain or the timid. THE NINE LAWS is designed for men who are acutely aware that one lifetime is all they have to pursue and achieve their sacred purpose. Far more than a mere self-help book, or a simple collection of advice and ideas, THE NINE LAWS is a gravely serious operating system for success in a dark world.


Read it. Train it. Live it. Survive the dark world with momentous ferocity, and triumph.


THE NINE LAWS is 371 pages, DRM-Free, and retails for $9.99 on Amazon.


PREFACE: THE DYING CHILD

The man sat across the sterile room and watched his child dying.


He had stood calmly under the hostile machine guns of the Soviets within the charred and shattered rubble of Berlin in service to his Crown and country. He had then crossed the world to America where he built and lived, loved and raised his family.


Now this former reporter could do nothing but watch, and wait, and take notes in a sad and tired hand on a yellow legal pad, recording details with the practiced habit of a journalist as fever migraines prodded his youngest son into crying, wakeful pain. The boy would writhe, then subside into exhausted silence on the bed once more.


Bruises covered him where intravenous lines had been run for weeks into his hands and arms, his feet and ankles. With each passing day there were fewer places to insert fresh ones, fewer issuances of hope from doctors and nurses who were reduced to mere attendants of pain and no longer able to act as healers.


Days and nights were a blur, for sleep and waking were run not by play and rest, by meals and repose, but by the fits and starts of fever and the incomprehension of the innocent who woke in the dark hours before dawn and cried and cried with pain at the soft light that glowed from the nurse’s station.


As the weeks went by the man documented the progression of meningitis that writhed in the skull of his child, burning the boy’s mind away and murdering his senses.


“His hearing is going,” the man wrote.


“Even in the pain, he can tell something is happening to him, and complains that he cannot hear.”


The love and helplessness inscribed into those pages shone from the written words.


The documentation stopped near the end, when against all odds the fevers broke and the doctor took the man aside and said to him, “It’s happened. We saved him.”


The grave illness had lost. The pain was gone, and the gift of calm and sleep had replaced the tossing and turning of agony and pressure within the golden head of the young child.


Soon enough the boy went home to his family, and entered into a world where nothing made sense any longer. The world had been turned upside down, and everything had been severed.


He was deaf. Birds, laughter, music, human connection through voices had all been stolen by the disease and the fevers and the drugs pumped into him with desperate hope and quantity.


The boy could no longer walk, for the nerves that connected his inner ears to his brain had been burned away. There was no longer an up or down to perceive, and even a simple attempt to stand on his own made the world tumble and turn and the floor would leap up and slam into him without sympathy.


The voice of his mother, which used to sing to him and lull him to sleep as one of the sweetest sounds of the universe, was now silent. There was only the great effort of slowly mouthing words, beginning the long and exhausting process of teaching the boy to lip read as if his life depended on it… and it did.


The living feeling of connection with friends and family was severed forever. No longer could the boy simply listen and be an integral and accepted partner of humor and discussion, of sharing and whispers. He was now a permanent outsider, cut off and reduced to an observer rather than an equal participant.


Gone were the dreams of a little boy to be an astronaut, a firefighter, a policeman, a soldier. Never again would a future be possible that relied upon the ability to hear, to listen, and act.


And so the boy was dependent, and hurting, and terrified, and did not understand. And finally the day came when the family sat down to dinner, and he laid on the floor and cried for help, because he could not walk. And not one person came, and he laid there alone in miserable despondency.


Until he started to scream in rage.


Then his older sister came down, and stood over him. And when she spoke, she made certain he could read her lips and understand.


“Get up and walk,” she said. “Quit wailing.” Her face was harsh and neutral. “The world isn’t going to help you.”


And she turned away, and went back up the short flight of stairs to the kitchen and the family.


The boy laid there for a moment, stunned, and rebelliously enraged at reality.


Then something contracted inside him, and he sat up. He looked at the stairs, then silently wiped his face.


He crawled to those stairs and dragged himself upwards, furious, finally reaching the chair next to his father. Then he gasped and clambered until he had pulled himself onto it. Not one person at the table glanced at him or offered assistance. When he was seated, his father looked over and calmly offered him a serving of dinner. But in that Englishman’s eyes was the glint of the most powerful approbation that an officer of the Royal Horse Guards can give another man.


It was respect, and the boy never forgot that look.


I was four years old.


An interview with Peter Grant

Now that BRINGS THE LIGHTNING is out in all four formats, hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audiobook, and is available on Kindle Unlimited as well, it seems a propitious time to link to this excellent interview of author Peter Grant by Scott Cole of Castalia House. The level of knowledge that Grant has about the weapons of the period, and the amount of research he puts into his books, are truly astounding. – VD

Scott Cole: How did you decide to base your first Western novel on Walt’s demobilization, journey home, and quest to find a new life in a changed world?

Peter Grant: A lot of this was personal experience. I’ve been in military service, and experienced demobilization, a journey home, and having to start all over again. I knew that hundreds of thousands have had to do the same thing after almost every war in history. I researched the stories of both Union and Confederate veterans, and found they shared similar experiences. Also, the corruption, attacks on returning Confederates by both official and ‘unofficial’ enemies such as bushwhackers, etc. are all documented in books and narratives of the period. It was a logical step to make this the beginning of my novel.

Q. Is Walt’s character based on historical figures or is he your Western alter-ego?

Walt is entirely based on historical figures. Some were Southern veterans who became first guerrillas, then outlaws, such as the James gang. Others are based on veterans from both the North and the South who wrote about their experiences of coming home after the war, then heading west to make a fresh start. I have no alter ego in the book at all.

Q. You mentioned that you fired many of the weapons mentioned in the book. Were these updated versions of the original models or part of private collections that survived the years?

These were original weapons that had survived the wars in Southern Africa. I’ve fired original versions of Colt’s 1861 Army and 1873 revolvers, Winchester Model 1873 and 1886 rifles, and the Winchester Model 1887 lever-action shotgun. All were in private collections.

Q. Walt does a good job in explaining the advantages and disadvantages of various firearms in the book. Then again, he had a lot of them. If you had to choose only one pistol and one long rifle to equip yourself with in that time what would you choose and why? Would you make different choices if you were equipping yourself for the African bush?

Good question. If I were in Walt’s shoes, I’d have gone with the choices he made, for the same reasons: the Remington revolver and the Henry rifle. Both were suitable for the plains. I’d have liked a heavier rifle as well, to handle buffalo on the plains and bear, etc. in the mountains, but if I was limited to one rifle, the Henry would be it, because it would be so much more useful in combat to have its rapid rate of fire and large magazine capacity.

If I were to pick one of each for Africa, during the period when it was still wild and filled with very dangerous animals, the revolver would be the same, but the rifle would unquestionably have to be a much more powerful weapon. Don’t forget, African dangerous game is much larger and more powerful than those in North America. I’d pick a European big-caliber rifle, probably (in the days of blackpowder propellant) an eight-gauge or even a four-gauge muzzle-loading weapon. That would have obvious limitations in its speed of reloading, etc., but it would have the power to take down the largest African animals, unlike any American rifle of the period. If dangerous animals were less of a factor, I might consider a repeating rifle; but all of the cartridges during the period in which this novel is set (mid to late 1860’s) weren’t very efficient or powerful. If we were in the 1870’s, I’d take the Winchester 1876 rifle with its .45-75 cartridge, or, a bit later, the Winchester 1886 in .45-70. By the 1890’s I’d take a European bolt-action repeater with a smokeless round; the British Lee-Metford, the German Mauser, etc.

Q. Why were the cartridges so weak and inefficient in the mid to late 1860’s? Cost savings by manufacturers or just the technology at the time?

The cartridges were weak for two reasons.

The technology to produce metal cartridges was brand-new and in its infancy. Extruded brass was unknown; cartridges had to be formed from a sheet of the metal, with consequent weaknesses at the seams. This meant that if a powerful propellant load was used, it risked rupturing the case; so all early cartridges were relatively lightly loaded. For example, the Henry rifle (and its immediate successor, the Winchester Model of 1866) used a powder charge of only 25 to 28 grains, less than many handguns of the day. The Winchester 1873 used 40 grains – an improvement, but not greatly. It took until the 1870’s for more powerful cartridges such as the .50-70 and the later, more efficient .45-70 (and their larger, longer cousins) to be developed.

During the 1860’s, the centerfire primer had not yet been invented; all early cartridges were rimfire, like modern .22LR, or pinfire. This meant that ignition was less reliable. It also meant that the bases of the cartridges were less strong, as their rims had to be hollow to accommodate the priming compound and/or the pin. It took until the 1870’s for central primers to be developed (most notably the Berdan and Boxer priming systems). That, in turn, allowed for solid rims that were stronger.


Brings the Lightning audiobook

Castalia House is very happy to be able to announce that BRINGS THE LIGHTNING, a Western by Peter Grant, is now available in audiobook. Narrated by Bob Allen, the audiobook is 7 hours and 56 minutes long.

When the Civil War ends, where can a former Confederate soldier go to escape the long memories of neighbors who supported the winning side? Where can Johnny Reb go when he can’t go home? He can go out west, where the land is hard, where there is danger on every side, and where no one cares for whom you fought – only how well you can do it. 


Walt Ames, a former cavalryman with the First Virginia, is headed west with little more than a rifle, a revolver, and a pocket full of looted Yankee gold. But in his way stand bushwhackers, bluecoats, con men, and the ever-restless Indians. And perhaps most dangerous of all, even more dangerous than the cruel and unforgiving land, is the temptation of the woman whose face he can’t forget.


When you can’t go home again – go west!


Safe as houses

The cartoon above is a reasonable summary of the current state of the West. After finishing The Clash of Civilizations, it is eminently clear to me that most people, from proposition-nation white conservatives to rainbow-haired, diversity-drunk, quad-gendered, genetically-vibrant multiculturalists, are as completely and absolutely clueless about what the future holds with regards to the ongoing remaking of the world order as the average rotisserie chicken. That’s not surprising. To me, the remarkable thing is how early, and how clearly, Huntington saw the civilizational trends developing. This just goes to show how useful a sound conceptual model is, and how pointless it is to stubbornly insist on retaining models that events or logic have proven to be observably false.

Which leads me to address a concern that was expressed by several people concerning the way in which certain specific individuals happen to disagree with me, such as John C. Wright, whose recent post entitled Hooey and Phooey takes serious exception to what could be described in general terms as my Alt-West thesis. From the comments:

John C. Wright
“As for Vox, I admire his fight against the enemies of civilization, he’s actually doing something about it. He can be wrong about an issue and right about the need to fight for something. An unintegrated horde of millions of people with a hostile ideology from one of the most violent places on earth should be opposed on the basis of common sense (no race-science needed).”

I agree.

This is a holy war, not a race war. The religion of secular leftism (and it is a religion in all but name) has made an alliance with the horrid and enduring heresy of the False Prophet, Mohammedanism, against the religion of the West, Christianity: those two are teamed up, and the Left are trying to use demographics to destroy us. He is right that it is an invasion: he is right that men who hate us cannot assimilate and certainly must be expelled from the nation.

Vox is dead wrong on the ultimate reasons and the ultimate cure for it. The ultimate reasons are spiritual, not genetic. The ultimate cure is revival of Christianity, a re-dedication to the founding principles of this nation, not the creation of a White Lives Matter movement coupled with an abolition of those principles.

Tom Simon
Vox is dead wrong on the ultimate reasons and the ultimate cure for it.

Sir, I am very glad that you acknowledge this. I have sometimes been fearful lest your business dealings with Mr. Beale (conducted to mutual profit) might incline you to overlook his faults in politics and dialectic.

Camilla Cameo
At the same time, I for one hope that this disagreement does not cause any rift between! (Though I suggested debate earlier, it was with the acknowledgement that the possibility of ill feeling would be a good reason not to.)

Let me be perfectly clear. I don’t expect anyone to agree with me on anything, let alone everything. I suspect – let me correct that, I KNOW – that every single Castalia House author disagrees with me with at least some aspect of my Alt-West thesis even if they tend to generally support its objectives. Not even the co-author of Cuckservative wholly agrees with me; he is not a Christian, for one thing. I think William S. Lind would probably come the closest of them all and he does not even use computers.

So, I have to assume that my idea of direct techno-democracy is right out with him.

Now, I do happen to think the estimable Mr. Wright is so vastly and utterly and risibly wrong on this particular subject that one day he will find it it hard to imagine that he ever genuinely believed what he now believes quite sincerely.

But so what? I have been every bit as wrong about other concepts myself in the past, such as free trade, just to give one example.

There is neither a rift nor any reason for one. I don’t edit and publish Mr. Wright’s books because I care what he thinks about the Alt-Right or Western civilization, but because he is one of the three best SF/F writers writing today. His novels are entertaining, important, and uplifting. I wouldn’t hesitate to publish China Mieville either even though Mr. Mieville’s ideas concerning political economy are considerably more frothing-at-the-mouth mad than Mr. Wright’s could ever be even if Mr. Wright were bitten by a rabid, syphilitic mongoose.

Nor do I admire Mr. Wright because I agree with him about one particular concept or another, but because he is a great writer and a good man. He is, without question, better than me on both counts. Although I think he is wrong with regards to American posterity, Aristotelian rhetoric, human intelligence, genetic science, and the art of war, just to name a few things concerning which we disagree, I enjoy reading his thoughts on those and other topics, and I do not mind his criticism in the least, as it is considerably more honest and substantive than most I receive. I consider it to be both an honor and a privilege to work with him.

The truth is immutable. But none of us have the capacity to see it clearly and fully. Perhaps time will help clarify who is correct and who is not, or perhaps not. In the meantime, all we can do is observe and reflect as honestly as we can.

Besides, if current events are any guide, I expect Mr. Wright and nearly everyone else to begin to come around to my way of thinking soon enough once the ongoing clash of civilizations strikes close enough to home to make an impression on them. Back in 2002, people were a lot more dubious about my opinion concerning a coming financial crisis than they are about anything I say these days. Frankly, I see “dead wrong” as a big step up from “seriously, what color is the sky in your world?”