When Man forgets his Creator

He forgets how to create. Once you read this, you will know why John C. Wright’s review of Star Wars: The Force Awakens was the only one I was actually interested in reading. One should not read this being wary of spoilers, but rather of having one’s ability to mindlessly enjoy the cultural detritus of Western decline irretrievably hampered. As always, Mr. Wright cuts to the chase by stating an obvious fact that has nevertheless escaped most of the movie’s critics and fans alike:

How can this movie both at once be a really enjoyable return to a beloved childhood favorite, and be a bland and dull, and in places offensively stupid and politically correct, piece of trash?

Because it is a remake, not a sequel.

Oh, I know that technically it is a sequel, allegedly taking place decades after the close of TEDDY BEARS OF THE JEDI, but the story follows the same plotline, except that the roles of Han, Luke and Leia are all played by Junkyard Girl, since she is the cynical rogue, the innocent novice, and the girl with the McGuffin needing rescue all at once. Except she escapes on her own. The rollerball robot is not as cute and sassy as R2D2, because he is not given as much to do, and the Exhenchman and the Ace Pilot don’t actually do all that much.

There is a way cool scene when the X-wings come screaming across the lake to the rescue. The hollow star-eating weapon-planet with forests and snowy mountains and atmosphere above its hull was a convincingly impressive weapon, but, again, there was no moment where the impressiveness was played up, no moment when someone whispered, that’s no moon…

So it is a fairly good remake as remakes go, and it does what it sets out to do, and recapture some, or almost some, of the energy, cleverness, craft, excitement and innocence of the original.

So why is this not the review I wanted to write, with me dancing jigs on the steeple, painted with woad with bells on my toes, yodeling for joy? Because the jerkwads of Hollywood had to take a favorite movie and crap it up with political correctness. Because this film is critic-proof. No matter how bad it is, everyone and his brother will go see it.

And the political correctness is subtle. It has to be subtle, because if the poison tasted of poison, the victim would spit it out: so it is sugar coated to go down easy. Do you think controlling the myths and dreams of a generation has no effect on the generation? Story tellers are the secret legislators of mankind.

The scene where Luke tosses his lightsaber away rather than using it in righteous wrath to smite the evil Emperor may have only been a scene in a kid’s space opera flick: but the majority of the American public regards exactly that same maneuver, preemptive self-disarmament,  as the only moral and right thing to do in the face of the appalling evils of our present war, a war they dare not admit exist, lest they feel a split second of anger, and like a lightswitch being flipped, turn entirely evil themselves. That is what they think will happen if we fight back. If you smite a Sith, you become a Sith.

Why can’t the modern Leftist tell a decent story? Even when he is copying a good and healthy-minded original scene by scene in a paint-by-numbers fashion, it turns out sick-minded.

The answer is ultimately where all ultimate answers reside, in the deep places of the soul.

When we forget God, we forget how to tell tales. I submit that when a man forgets his Creator, he forgets how to create.

It is rather remarkable, when you think about it. Abrams is no different than Brooks is no different than Scalzi. They are not only “creators” who cannot create, they are parasites who, regardless of their technical skills, cannot even successfully execute a paint-by-the-numbers imitation. Like a colorblind painter, their moral blindness renders them fundamentally incapable of utilizing a full moral palette.

This is, I think, the best realistic outcome for Star Wars fans, and one that is pretty close to what I assumed would be the case. Abrams is a technically competent remaker, and he was never likely to resist the conventional SJWisms. Better a competent and mildly poisonous remake than an incompetent or virulently poisonous one, but all the same, it is a remake, not a genuinely new story.

For that, you’ll have to turn to the Expanded Universe, or, later next year, to an entirely different science fiction universe entitled Faraway Wars: Embers of Empire.

Merry Christmas….


Freedom trumps “free speech”

Eugene Volokh somehow manages to completely miss the salient point. This is why lawyers tend to be intrinsically flawed defenders of freedom; their training predisposes them to miss the forest for the trees:

Monday, a three-judge U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit panel handed down a third opinion in Wollschlaeger v. Governor, the Florida “Docs vs. Glocks” case. Florida law limits doctors’ conversations with patients about guns. The first opinion in the case held that the law wasn’t really a speech restriction, because it just regulated the practice of medicine (a deeply unsound view, I think). The second opinion, issued after a petition for rehearing, changed course and held that the law was a speech restriction, but that — as a restriction on professional-client speech — it had to be judged under “intermediate scrutiny,” which it passed.

First of all, since the State regulates doctors and protects them from competition, they can do anything they want with regards to how they go about their business. Second, as the article shows, what is actually being prohibited is doctors being used as a line of attack against gun rights.

It bans doctors “from unnecessarily harassing a patient about firearm ownership during an examination.” This means, according to the panel majority, that a doctor “should not disparage firearm-owning patients, and should not persist in attempting to speak to the patient about firearm ownership when the subject is not relevant [based on the particularized circumstances of the patient’s case, such as the patient’s being suicidal] to medical care or safety.”

And whenever there is a conflict between gun rights and speech rights, gun rights much always come first, because gun rights defend speech rights far more effectively than speech rights defend gun rights.

But that is a philosophical point, not a legal one, which is why even a libertarian lawyer is likely going to miss it. Here is the crux of his error:

Now I think that the supposed imbalance of power between doctor and patient, like the supposed imbalance of power among students, is quite overstated.

That’s completely absurd. This attempt to turn the medical community into a white-coated Stasi should be shot down in any and every way necessary. 


We’re not radicals or extremists

We’re “policy entrepreneurs”. That’s a useful little phrase, that is.

This dynamic is inherently more challenging for those of us on the Right, who have good reason to believe that politicians’ incentives to placate various factional constituencies are so often at odds with the long-term effort to rein in the federal footprint. While political parties can exist as factions rather than ideological entities, conservatism cannot succeed as a factional constituency to a political party.

Several years ago, Ross Douthat identified the Obama-era GOP’s worst tendency as “[n]ot an ideological extremism, exactly, but rather a vision of government that you might call ‘small government for thee, but not for me,’ in which conservatism is just constituent services for the most reliable Republican groups and voters.” This is the worst of Republicanism, and it is incompatible with conservatives’ long-term project.

The GOP could exist as a political party by handing out patronage to its constituent groups—a prescription drug benefit for seniors, corporate agriculture pork masquerading as a farm bill, Export-Import Bank loans to Boeing. Conservatism, however, has no chance of advancing an agenda in this type of factionalized party.

A conservative reform effort, therefore, requires the Republican Party to forego factional politics and the patronage role of elected officials in favor of winning the argument on a conservative articulation of public policy. We must have the confidence that our reform ideas will best serve the nation and, realistically, if the government we have today has been built over 100 years by progressives with a vastly different conception of good policy, it will require attacking the status quo in a manner that makes niche constituencies nervous.

Never mind the pitchforks and torches. They’re just policy implementation enhancers.

Anyhow, this is precisely what I was saying about a year ago. You must cherish your extremists, not turn your backs on them, much less shoot at them. They provide the impetus for advancement; even if they go too far, at least they are going in the right direction.


Dialogue with a moderate

This discussion between Nate and a #GamerGate moderate should help illustrate the essential problem with the moderate perspective and demonstrate how they are never truly on the side they nominally claim to be supporting. It should also make it clear that for all his posturing and preening, the moderate is guaranteed, on the basis of his own unprincipled philosophy, to be a loser.

Mr. Scary Cell @gameragodzilla
If you respond to disagreement with any of these: Shill, Concern Troll, Divide and Conquer, you want a hugbox just like SJWs do.

Nate @bloggerblaster
horse shit. moderates shooting at their own side because they are scared to shoot at the actual enemy. Concern Trolls suck

Mr. Scary Cell @gameragodzilla
Fuck this tribalistic “us vs. them” crap. If you can’t handle dissent, you’re no better than “the enemy”.

Nate @bloggerblaster
We didn’t make them the enemy. They made us the enemy. Talk to them.

Mr. Scary Cell @gameragodzilla
So? If you refuse to allow dissent and dismiss criticism with labels, you’re no better than “the enemy”.

Mr. Scary Cell @gameragodzilla
I’m not dismissing your criticism of me. I’m still talking to you, aren’t I? Meanwhile, you dismiss all criticism from me.

Nate @bloggerblaster
more poser bullshit. Look son…we’re being punched. and now you’re bitching at us because we’re punching back.

Mr. Scary Cell @gameragodzilla
I’m not gonna engage in the same tactics SJWs do when it’s their tactics that make me dislike them in the first place.

NOTE:  The tactics are what make him dislike SJWs. He apparently has no problem with their ideals or objectives.

Mr. Scary Cell @gameragodzilla
If I “punch back” in the exact same manner, then there is no functional difference between me and “the enemy”.

Mr. Scary Cell @gameragodzilla
If you handle dissent this way, then I have no desire to help you “punch back”. And nor will the vast majority of people.

Nate @bloggerblaster
But using dialect to people who only respond to rhetoric is not only ineffective its actually counter productive.

Mr. Scary Cell @gameragodzilla
I don’t compromise my principles for what is supposedly “effective”, especially when I remain unconvinced that your rhetoric will do anything other than alienate those who might be sympathetic but aren’t as extreme.

Vox Day ‏@voxday
That’s because you’re ignorant. Aristotle explained your position was hopelessly wrong 2,400 years ago.

Mr. Scary Cell @gameragodzilla
I’m criticizing the idea of using the exact same tactics SJWs do when SJW tactics are what make me dislike them.

Vox Day @voxday
Then you have no principles. It is the objectives that are relevant, not the tactics.

Mr. Scary Cell @gameragodzilla
It’s the tactics that I find distasteful about SJWs in the first place. If I use those tactics, I’m’ no different.

Nate @bloggerblaster
You’d rather lose than win wrong. Then go away loser. We want to win.

Mr. Scary Cell @gameragodzilla
Never compromise. Not even in the face of Armageddon.

Vox Day @voxday
Compromise what? You have no principles. You dislike certain TACTICS. That’s just style over substance. That’s etiquette!

Mr. Scary Cell @gameragodzilla
My principles forbids the use of certain tactics.

Nate @bloggerblaster
so you admit it. You’d rather lose than win wrong.

Mr. Scary Cell @gameragodzilla
Winning by becoming just like SJWs is no victory at all.

Vox Day @voxday
You’re being a complete idiot. TACTICS do not make you like the other side. They have different objectives.

Nate @bloggerblaster
I would tell you that history is full of losers with your view. but it was written by those that killed them. so no.

Mr. Scary Cell @gameragodzilla
And history is also full of people who fought against monsters and eventually became them in the end.

NOTE: I actually double face-palmed here…

Vox Day @voxday
No, it’s not. That’s a stupid aphorism that isn’t even remotely close to being true.

Mr. Scary Cell @gameragodzilla
And I’m supposed to just accept that so I can beat whichever enemy is in vogue right now? No thanks.

Vox Day @voxday
That’s fine. Then lose. That’s what moderates always do.

Mr. Scary Cell @gameragodzilla
If the extremist tactics on either side win, I lose either way

Nate @bloggerblaster
sounds like you’re used to losing already. So honorable!

 Vox Day @voxday
That’s what we’ve been telling you.


The disorder of the counterfeit virtues

Edward Feser explains how substituting social justice ideals for the cardinal virtues necessarily disorders both SJW minds and society:

Let’s consider the fate of the cardinal virtues in a modern democratic society.  The words “wisdom,” “courage,” “moderation,” and “justice” are certainly not absent in such societies.  To some extent the content of the traditional virtues is even respected — democratic citizens will approve of the courage they read about in military history or see portrayed in movies like Saving Private Ryan, will commend moderation where overindulgence might affect bodily health, and so forth.

But much more prominent than the cardinal virtues — and to a large extent coloring the conception democratic man has of the content of the cardinal virtues — are certain other character traits, such as open-mindedness, empathy, tolerance, and fairness.  The list will be familiar, since the language of these “virtues” permeates contemporary pop culture and politics, and it can be said to constitute a kind of counterpoint to the traditional cardinal virtues.  And in each case the counter-virtue entails a turn of just the sort one might expect given Plato’s analysis of democracy — from the objective to the subjective, from a focus on the way things actually are to a focus on the way one believes or desires them to be.

Hence wisdom, as a Plato or Aquinas conceives of it, is outward-oriented, involving a grasp of objective truth in the speculative and practical spheres.  Open-mindedness, by contrast, is oriented inwardly, toward the subjective, concerned not with objective reality itself so much as with a willingness to consider alternative views about objective reality.

Courage has to do with the will to do what one ought to do in the face of danger or difficulty.  The courageous man will do his duty even though he is afraid or feels uncomfortable or put upon, and we praise him precisely for ignoring these subjective feelings.  Empathy, by contrast, involves precisely a focus on such feelings — indeed, even to the point of sympathizing with the one who has failed to be courageous.  Courage says: “Yes, it was difficult; but you should have done it anyway.”  Empathy says: “I understand why you didn’t do it; it was so difficult!”

Similarly, moderation tells us that we sometimes need to refrain from indulging our appetites, in some cases even when we have an extremely powerful desire to indulge them.  Tolerance, by contrast, refuses to condemn such indulgence.  Toleration works in tandem with empathy, as moderation works together with courage.  Just as courage is reason’s ally in keeping the appetites at bay — it reminds us that it is weak and shameful to indulge when reason says we shouldn’t — so too is empathy the ally of the appetitive part of the soul in its war with reason, giving it permission to indulge and to ignore what unkind, unfeeling reason is saying.  Courage and moderation command: “You’re a human being!  Don’t act like animal!”  Empathy and toleration respond: “We understand, go ahead, you’re just an animal anyway!” 

Finally, whereas justice requires us to conform our desires to the order of things, fairness commands the order of things to conform itself to our desires.  Justice says: “John is richer than you are and Paul has more authority.  But that is as it should be, since John worked harder and Paul is wiser.”  Fairness says: “John is richer than you are and Paul has more authority.  That’s not fair!”  Justice treats equals equally and unequals unequally.  Fairness treats everyone equally; or rather, it treats everyone the way the one shouting “Unfairness!” thinks they should be treated.

Now, all of that makes the counter-virtues in question sound pretty bad — or it should make them sound bad, anyway — but I hasten to add that none of this entails that there is nothing of value in open-mindedness, empathy, tolerance, and fairness.  Far from it.  The objective truth at which wisdom aims is not all built into us and it is not all obvious; it needs to be acquired through hard work.  Open-mindedness facilitates that.  Realistically inculcating the virtues, including courage, requires an understanding of actual human circumstances, including human weaknesses.  That requires empathy.  The road to virtue is, given human weakness, inevitably paved with repeated failures to live up to it.  Tolerance of these failures (albeit not approval of them) is, accordingly, no less necessary to the realistic inculcation of virtue than empathy is.  And some inequalities really are rightly decried as unfair insofar as they arise from injustice.  (John might be richer than you because he is more hard-working.  But it might instead be because he is a thief or a fraudster or someone who knows how to game the system.)

So, there can be real value in open-mindedness, empathy, tolerance, and fairness, and a wise man will acknowledge this.  But it is crucial to see that their value is instrumental.  They are of secondary value, of significance precisely insofar as they facilitate the acquisition of wisdom, courage, moderation, and justice.  A soul which strives primarily to acquire those traditional cardinal virtues, even while acknowledging the value within limits of open-mindedness, empathy, tolerance, and fairness in the process of acquiring them, is rightly ordered.  But a soul which primarily values open-mindedness, empathy, tolerance, and fairness, and either rejects the traditional cardinal virtues or relegates them to second place, is disordered.

Dr. Feser is more measured than I am. I believe we can confidently declare Equality, Diversity, and Tolerance to be evil, because we can judge them by their fruits. And their fruits are nightmarish and societally destructive.


Freedom

I do so enjoy having no credibility, as I have been reliably informed is the case for many years now. It’s just another word for having absolutely no external limits upon one’s behavior:

Vox has 430-odd (so far) Vile Faceless Minions who have pledged to vote as he instructs them. This gives some people heartburn. On the other hand, the VFM support Vox voluntarily, so it’s not really anyone else’s business.

By the next Worldcon, he’ll have even more Minions; a nontrivial voting bloc he can use as he sees fit.

The current “Vox Day” is a creation of the SJWs. They vilified him so thoroughly nothing he can do can alter public opinion one way or the other, so he’s free to say and do anything he wants without concern for repercussion.

“What part of ‘Supreme Dark Lord’ did you not understand? Don’t you get it? I am not the good guy. I am the very bad guy.”

They literally have no idea what to do when you agree and amplify their accusations. I mean, don’t you grasp that they are POINTING and SHRIEKING at you? That is supposed to be your cue to stammer, cringe, and apologize!

So now he’s the dark monster living rent-free in their heads. Which suits him just fine, as far as I can tell.

I had dinner with Mike Cernovich tonight. Two fearsome monsters of the Internet… and yes, we were most definitely plotting dastardly and nefarious deeds.


The importance of failure

I was speaking to an entrepreneur today whose project is struggling and on the verge of failure. I encouraged him to NOT ask for donations; the need for a commercial venture to ask for donations is the market’s way of telling you that your project HAS ALREADY FAILED.

Now, it is important to understand that failure is the seed of success, just as success is the seed of failure. This isn’t a Zen koan, it is a simple and straightforward observation. Most successful individuals, myself included, have more failures than successes. There are very, very, very few exceptions; I am having lunch today with a 2x New York Times bestselling author whose first two novels were #1 bestsellers, but she is the exception and she very well knows it.

The three keys to failure leading to success are as follows:

  1. Fail faster. Once it is clear that it isn’t working as anticipated, shut it down!
  2. Learn from the mistakes you made. 
  3. Apply the lessons learned in your next venture.

There is zero shame in failure. There is only shame in lacking the courage to try, and lacking the resolution to pick yourself up afterwards and try again.


A lesson learned

Since I hammered Ken White of Popehat for his howler on the UN report on “cyberviolence”, it only seems fair to point out that unlike an SJW, he did not double-down:

I was right in saying that we need to scrutinize any specific proposed laws or policies that arise from this report. But I was wrong to downplay the rhetoric as mere rhetoric, and to say it was premature to criticize it. On a more serious look, the report’s rhetoric suggests an effort to use the language of violence to cover non-violent and protected conduct. That is of particular concern since it is directed at the UN….

I screwed up. I didn’t blow a closing argument or put the wrong pacemaker in someone or crash a car, but I offered my thoughts without exercising due care. The easy reason was that I rushed, because I was busy. The harder reason is that some of my attitudes colored my approach.

I expected that the report would not be read, that its contents would be overstated and distorted, and that it would be treated as an open and explicit call for censorship because of the people involved with it. I wasn’t wrong to think that. But I was wrong to let that thought stop me from a more careful examination, and to allow myself to breeze by the implications of the rhetoric while looking for the specific proposals that weren’t there. If I had looked at it from a “is this rhetoric bad or not” standpoint, instead of a “imagine the reaction to this” viewpoint, I would have gotten it right.

People have been getting suckered by the Left’s “it’s only rhetoric” and “it’s just this one brick” for over a century now. That’s how the income tax got started. That’s how Britain joined the European Union. If there is one lesson to be learned from White’s mea culpa, it is this: rhetoric is not irrelevant.

Rhetoric is a form of persuasion and it is MORE effective than logic, science, data, reason, and dialectic for the vast majority of human beings. It is never to be dismissed lightly or ignored, not even by the dialectical thinker, because the manipulation of human emotion is one of the most powerful means of inspiring human action.

Furthermore, one should never assume that facts are either true or false on the basis of how one feels about the individual supporting or opposing it. Even the Devil can quote Scripture, after all. But if someone is known to be dishonest, or an SJW, or affiliated in any way with the United Nations, one should always take the time to carefully scrutinize any assertion they make as well as any source they cite.


Nero eviscerates PopeHat

The Popehat project–endless, tedious, insufferably smug posts about
minutiae–only really works if you read your own goddamn sources.

Top tip for bloggers whose raison d’etre is smugly correcting others: actually read reports before posting about them.

Milo is referring to this amusingly clueless post by Ken White, in which the inveterate champion of free speech flirts with abandoning his principles because a) he doesn’t like #GamerGate, b) he doesn’t like certain GamerGaters, including me, and c) girls had feelbadz! It’s a pity, because the guy has done some genuinely good work defending free speech in the past, but has somehow failed to recognize that SJWs represent one of the most serious enemies that his chosen cause has ever known.

Ken tried to belatedly explain his failure to bother reading the entire UN report before responding to it in an update.

Further information suggests I was far too benefit-of-the doubt here, which is what happens when you write fast and when you generally despise some of the people involved. Some of this is still right, but regard the conclusions and characterizations with skepticism. Taking a second look. See, e.g., the fact that they cited this [footnote 118] for the video game discussion I cite below. When I’m wrong I’m wrong. Will revisit.

Hey, I think we all understand that there is no time for actually “reading” things or ensuring one is accurately “informed” before leaping to the defense of a woman experiencing feelbads; it is a white knight’s pleasure to destroy his own reputation if by doing so he can save a fair maiden from even a single incident of cyberviolence.

I haven’t read the report myself nor do I have any intention of doing so. I have not hitherto found either the United Nations or Literally Who to be interesting or even remotely credible. But I do find Ken’s excuse-making to be fairly typical of the moderates who are always happy to bend over backward to rationalize the most blatantly dishonest SJW behavior while repeatedly casting aspersions at those who actually stand up to them. And I expect there will be further backtracking on the subject, as I would be very surprised if the SJWs responsible for the report got anything right at all.

“Cyberviolence” is a false and deceptive issue. I have been the recipient of far more “cyberviolence” and death threats than all of the Literally Whos combined, and for much longer; if it is such a serious issue then why hasn’t the UN or Ken White rushed to my defense at any time in the last 14 years?

When I reviewed and critiqued the economics study on immigration and jobs here yesterday and the day before, I gave the benefit of the doubt to the economists whose views on immigration creating jobs opposed my own. I interpreted every statistic and every assumption in a manner that favored their perspective, not mine. That is exactly what you must do if you wish to provide a serious analysis that will withstand objective review. But by his own admission, Ken White gives the benefit of the doubt to those who oppose people he generally despises. And that is why, despite his legal work on behalf of free speech, he cannot be considered an intellectually credible individual.

Case in point:

So there’s a solution to, that you know. Don’t read the blog any more. Unfollow the Twitter feed. Look for someone whose viewpoint is more acceptable to you. Maybe even write it up yourself.

But that’s not the GamerGate way.

Also, note how angry you are, and then look at the original again. I warned that UN speech restrictions are suspicious, I pointed to multiple things to be concerned about, and I even questioned the content at issue — I just didn’t see how crazy the sourcing was, yet. And I suggested that any actual codes that come out of it should be examined carefully.

But none of that is enough for you. You want hate. It’s not enough for you unless I excoriate the people you hate.

That’s why normal people don’t take you seriously.

This is deeply amusing coming from an individual who is literally mentally unstable. How would he know what normal people take seriously? Ken, you’re not normal. You’re not honest. You’re not intellectually rigorous. And you’re not credible. People like me would be delighted to continue to ignore you, but you go out of your way to attack us online, both on PopeHat and on Twitter.

Neither of the two commenters was demanding that Ken hate or excoriate anyone, they were simply expecting him to show at least a modicum of discernment concerning various individuals and institutions widely known to be less than entirely truthful. He failed to do so, and when rightly taken to task for it, he completely mischaracterized their responses.

Of course, it does make a certain amount of sense that he would side with the SJW whack jobs. Birds of a feather and all that. And as we all know, SJWs always lie.


Mailvox: get your syllogisms straight

TB goes awry in the second step:

This post (which was about IQ, part of a larger issue of Civilization) seemed to me to be about the very foundation of the Civilization discussion.

1. Genetics and culture are inseparable,
2. Only British genetics can grasp and enact Western Civilization,
3. The U.S. cannot allow a drop below a certain level of British derived population.

I understand that civilization requires trade-offs in education, economics, religion, and other systems. It just seems that the Civilization you describe was doomed the very moment it started. I believe the Constitution allows the nation to be hardier than this hot house flower being described.

2. is false. The U.S. Constitution is not synonymous with Western civilization. Western civilization is hardier than the U.S. Constitution, which was not only written by and for Englishmen, but is only understood correctly by them and those who have sufficiently adopted their culture.

More than that, it was only written for them and their descendants and was never intended to apply to anyone else except some of the German colonists who successfully grasped, accepted, and supported their unusual limited government philosophy.

The descendants of the countries who came later, the Irish, the Italians, the later Germans, the Scandinavians, the Jews, and the Hispanics are not the posterity of the Founding Fathers. It should be no surprise that they have not successfully defended a philosophy they have never accepted or understood nor respectfully abided by a document that was never written for them.

And my rebuttal to those who would argue is very simple and straightforward. Look around you. Do you see anything that is even remotely respectful of the concepts put forth in the U.S. Constitution?