Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in John C. Wright's LiveJournal:

[ << Previous 20 ]

Thursday, May 31st, 2012
11:17 pm	Guess about Gauss Okay. Here is the anecdote that John C Wright, innumerate, found in MEN OF MATHEMATICS: here’s a popular story that Gauss, mathematician extraordinaire, had a lazy teacher. The so-called educator wanted to keep the kids busy so he could take a nap; he asked the class to add the numbers 1 to 100. Gauss approached with his answer: 5050. So soon? The teacher suspected a cheat, but no. Manual addition was for suckers, and Gauss found a formula to sidestep the problem: Sum from 1 to n = {n(n+1)}/2 Sum from 1 to 100 = {100(100+1)}/2 = (50)(101) = 5050 Shamelessly stealing the anecdote from real life, and assuming my hero could figure out the same trick, here is the way I describe it in my book: Menelaus had simply folded the number line in half in his mind, noticed that every one of the fifty pairs added up to one hundred one, and multiplied one hundred one by fifty. But a reader said Found mistake in sum 1-100. I’m probably the 5050′th person to mention that. The correct answer is 101×50 not 101×50 – 50. So … is he simply wrong here? From the balance of his comments, I don’t have much faith in the gentleman’s reading comprehension, but I also know I am the worst student of mathematics the human race has ever produced, so I’d like a second opinion. Some kind reader set me straight, please. View or comment on this post at John C. Wright's Journal.
Wednesday, May 30th, 2012
1:43 pm	On Imperfect Knowledge Sean M. Brooks writes and asks: In debates or discussions with other online friends, I’ve been told that “opinions” cannot be wrong, false, mistaken, erroneous, etc. My reaction was to argue this did not make sense. It could be my opinion that 2 + 2 = 5 or that Hitler was a noble, wise, saintly, and holy man. Are these “opinions” truly not wrong or false? One person did concede an opinion can be factually wrong while still arguing opinions cannot be wrong. This did not make sense to me–and I rejected it as self contradictory. If this interests you, do you have any comments to make? Am I wrong to say opinions can be erroneous or false? Am I missing something? The short answer is that you are right and they are wrong, because if no opinions can be false or mistaken, then my opinion that some or all opinions can be false and mistaken cannot be false nor mistaken. The long answer is more subtle: it depends on the meaning of the word “opinion”. The longest and best answer requires a few paragraphs on the nature of human knowledge, and requires we draw some distinctions. ( Read the rest of this entry » ) View or comment on this post at John C. Wright's Journal.
Friday, May 25th, 2012
9:37 am	My Balticon Schedule The Balticon 46 hotel is Marriott’s Hunt Valley Inn, 245 Shawan Road, Hunt Valley, Maryland 21031 USA [north of Baltimore off of I-83] (Phone: 410-785-7000) This is my schedule for Balticon this weekend, in case you need an autograph, or suffer the inexplicable need to hear my humble yet insufferable pontificating (or better yet, moderating) on choice topics of interest to fanboys, or, as we call ourselves, Homo Futurus (even though the official Linnaean classification is Homo Geeco Livsinmoms Basementicus). ( Read the rest of this entry » ) View or comment on this post at John C. Wright's Journal.
Thursday, May 24th, 2012
5:16 pm	Mistake Time! If you have read Count to A Trillion and noticed any mistakes, including math errors, please let me know or post them here. I am trying to correct them for the paperback. View or comment on this post at John C. Wright's Journal.
4:20 pm	An Interesting Corner of Comicbook History This letter was published in #3 of The Forever People by Jack Kirby concerning issue #1. I thought you would be interested in the comment, the style, and the sender. Dear Editor: Just to add a few words to the already awesome mound of praise (one might term it a “mountain of judgment,” had one a way with clever nomenclature) surely deluging you, my compliments on the first issue of Jack Kirby’s The Forever People. In recent memory only Deadman, Enemy Ace and Bat Lash seem to match this strip for innovation and success. Which probably means — if we are use as yardstick, the commercial failures of these high-water marks of quality continuity — The Forever People is too good for the average comic audience. Its power and inventiveness display the Kirby charisma at its peak. Every panel is a stunner. Potentially, it appears to be the richest vein of story material National has unearthed in years. One hopes Kirby will be given total free rein, that he will be allowed to ride his dreams wherever they take him, for the journey is a special one, and we get visionaries like Kirby only once in a generation, if we’re terribly lucky. To constrain him, force him to fetter himself with the rules and rags of previous comics experience, would be to dull the edge of his imagination. After the many false starts of National efforts in the past five years, at last it seems you’ve struck the main route. That it should be Kirby — at the top of his form — that worked point-scout, is not surprising. He has long been master of the form, and in The Forever People, it seems he’s found his metier. ( Read the rest of this entry » ) View or comment on this post at John C. Wright's Journal.
Tuesday, May 22nd, 2012
6:43 pm	The Usefulness of Hate Hate may not be useful for anything but corrupting the soul. Despite what hatred itself seems to advocate for itself, it does not actually lend strength or energy or conviction or moral probity to one’s cause, and, like the itch that promises relief if you scratch it, it betrays its promise and merely aggravates itself when indulged. But the usefulness of accusing one’s opposition of hate, of pretending he is moved by the darkest and most despicable of motives, that is useful to the point where no other weapon is needed in the arsenal, no other arrow in the quiver, no other argument on the lips, no other though in the head. It is a tool of infinite utility and zero cost. Like the catalytic Philosopher’s Stone of myth, as an excuse, accusing the opposition of hatred creates infinite riches and is never consumed nor grows less. Consider that if the opposition’s motive is the darkest and most shameful of motives, hate, that nothing he says with his lips has any meaning. For we all know that like the flattery of the infatuated, the obloquy of the hater is merely an expression of inner passion, words without reason. A man in hate, like a man in love, will say anything. ( Read the rest of this entry » ) View or comment on this post at John C. Wright's Journal.
Saturday, May 19th, 2012
12:10 am	Close Encounter of the Unseen Kind This is the single most odd thing that has ever happened to me. I got this letter in my inbox just now: Thought you might find this amusing. I had the good fortune of attending a talk by Marc Barnes, the Bad Catholic, held at a local restaurant. My friends and I got there early to get good seats (which we did), and I had brought a copy of Orphans of Chaos with me to kill time before the talk began. It was still sitting on my table when Marc began talking, and in the middle of his introduction he spotted it, leaned over to look at it more closely, and broke off on a tangent: “John C. Wright is a great author! You all should look him up, he recently converted to Catholicism and blogs apologetics. My teacher brought him in to talk at my scifi writing class and he was like this huuuuuge tall dude and he brought a sword with him! It was a cane sword and he swung it around and my teacher was looking like ‘Ohmygosh I’m gonna get fired for this o.O’. Can I see that book, no, wait, after the talk…” For those of you who do not recognize the name, Marc Barnes (not to be confused with Marc C. DuQuesne) is the bad Catholic of BAD CATHOLIC, one of the wittiest and most well spoken young men who takes up the pen in defense of the faith. This precocious prodigy is but a tender eighteen summers of age, but he writes with the wisdom of Nestor. He was in the same room with me, and I did not even know he lived on the same continent with me! I am flabbergasted that he did not walk up and offer to sign an autograph for me. He should know I am a fan. I had a brush with fame and never knew it. I might have actually spoken to him and not known it! View or comment on this post at John C. Wright's Journal.
Friday, May 18th, 2012
11:57 am	A Glimmer of Reason in the Age of Unreason Some of my faith in humanity is restored when a Leftist has the humanity to confess that certain moral rules are objective. The mere act of condemning in one’s own party the self same sin condemned when committed by the other party confesses a faith in the objectivity of morals, hence the objectivity of reason. Allow me to quote an enemy of my Church, but who, in this regard, is an ally, Thomas Paine, from his work (with unselfconscious irony) named AGE OF REASON: It is necessary to the happiness of man, that he be mentally faithful to himself. Infidelity does not consist in believing, or in disbelieving; it consists in professing to believe what he does not believe. It is impossible to calculate the moral mischief, if I may so express it, that mental lying has produced in society. When a man has so far corrupted and prostituted the chastity of his mind, as to subscribe his professional belief to things he does not believe, he has prepared himself for the commission of every other crime. Mr Paine is, of course, mistaken, for he misnames mere self-consistency fidelity; whereas fidelity is faithfulness or loyalty to the truth. One must have self-consistency as a necessary precondition for loyalty to the truth, but this lesser precondition is not the whole of the thing. Mr. Paine makes the classic blunder, nay, the defining blunder of our current age, rightly called the Age of Unreason, since to depart from loyalty to truth is the same as to affirm that there is no truth, which is the same as to affirm that reason is vain, impotent, arbitrary. Nevertheless, integrity to even mistaken principles is needed before  any reasoning, hence any human nature, can be sought in a man, or fulfilled. It is perhaps for this reason that the Son of Man in the Book of the Apocalypse announces so sternly to the Laodiceans “I know thy works, that thou art neither cold nor hot: I would thou wert cold or hot.  So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spew thee out of my mouth.” The indifference of which He speaks is the lack of principles. Myself, I have more respect for a self-consistent atheist who hates my Church and all her works because he hates on principle a thing he rejects as evil, than I have for a bland modern nihilist agnostic who rejects the notion that anything is evil, and merely mouths a mealymouthed approval for all things spiritual. Burning hate can become blazing love when conversion strikes: bland nothingness can be made into nothing. Likewise I have respect for integrity even for causes of which I do not approve, because an enemy faithful to his flag is something to admire, even in a foe. How much more respect do I have for a foe who in this case is an ally against anyone, Left or Right, who defaces the Constitution, or would substitute a Cult of Leader-worship for a Rule of Law! The Leftist is this case is Glenn Greenwald, whose ire I applaud first because as an America is he is right to be wroth with the insolently unconstitutional evils being perpetrated, and second as a Leftist he is right to be wroth with his party for the betrayal of their high-sounding principles. A core plank in the Democratic critique of the Bush/Cheney civil liberties assault was the notion that the President could do whatever he wants, in secret and with no checks, to anyone he accuses without trial of being a Terrorist – even including eavesdropping on their communications or detaining them without due process. But President Obama has not only done the same thing, but has gone much farther than mere eavesdropping or detention: he has asserted the power even to kill citizens without due process. As Bush’s own CIA and NSA chief Michael Hayden said this week about the Awlaki assassination: “We needed a court order to eavesdrop on him but we didn’t need a court order to kill him. Isn’t that something?” That is indeed “something,” as is the fact that Bush’s mere due-process-free eavesdropping on and detention of American citizens caused such liberal outrage, while Obama’s due-process-free execution of them has not. Beyond that, Obama has used drones to kill Muslim children and innocent adults by the hundreds. He has refused to disclose his legal arguments for why he can do this or to justify the attacks in any way. He has even had rescuers and funeral mourners deliberately targeted. As Hayden said: ”Right now, there isn’t a government on the planet that agrees with our legal rationale for these operations, except for Afghanistan and maybe Israel.” But that is all perfectly fine with most American liberals now that their Party’s Leader is doing it Here is Mr Greenwald’s article: http://www.salon.com/2012/02/08/repulsive_progressive_hypocrisy/ hat tip to Mark Shea: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/markshea/2012/05/stop-the-hhs-mandate.html Myself, I have always been a warhawk, if not a Crusader, but for the love of Christ, let us not lose our souls during this holy Crusade, nor stoop to barbaric means, nor even unlawful. We fight with the Omnipotent on our side against barbarian darkness who embrace the naked evil called Jihad. Do you think gentle Jesus smiles on those who send a retarded child equipped with an explosive vest into a crowd of women and children? What need have we for panicked and extraordinary measures? Our lawful weapons will suffice.The war is spiritual, not physical, psychological, not conventional. We have means enough, if we but avail ourselves. If even so extreme a war-zealot as I am disgusted by the excesses of both administrations, Bush and Obama, in the prosecution of this war, something surely must be wrong.   View or comment on this post at John C. Wright's Journal.
Wednesday, May 16th, 2012
4:21 pm	When I went to go talk at Franciscan University … I did not realize that it was the last time that prestigious institution would be allowed to offer insurance to its faculty. http://www.lifenews.com/2012/05/15/obama-mandate-forces-catholic-college-to-drop-insurance/ The world is attempting, and with nearly unopposed success, to drive all religion, especially Christians, and most especially Catholics, out of the public square. Our Elite Masters have been willing, in times past, to allow Christians to do the works of charity, care for the poor, see to the sick, educate the ignorant, free the slave. But no longer.Charities not willing to help freed slaves have free abortions are defunded; institutions not willing to fund and celebrate aborticides, sterilization, contraception are being forced to give up their conscience and their rights of conscience or else give up their insurance. It is not that these who are in need will have their needs filled by that secular church we call the State — that they will suffer does not come into the calculus of the compassionate and reality-based community. They want to smite their fathers, and we are a convenient stand-in. That is why the Church is being driven away. View or comment on this post at John C. Wright's Journal.
Saturday, May 12th, 2012
6:20 pm	If any of you who like Science Fiction books Or any books for that matter, want to help the publishing industry from being bureaucrated to death, you may read the following letter, and send comments to the Department of Justice: http://aardvarknow.us/2012/05/09/letter-to-the-department-of-justice/ Anti-trust laws are anti-just. If you set your price even with your competitors, that is price fixing; if above, that is evidence of monopoly due to market dominance; if below, that is evidence of predatory pricing. Anti Trust Law was the Progressive Movement first, greatest, and most utterly illogical victory in legislation coming back to bite us.     View or comment on this post at John C. Wright's Journal.
Friday, May 11th, 2012
12:17 pm	I cannot believe we are still having this discussion Note: I had thought this topic long dead, as the title indicates. Since someone brought it up again, I reprint my previous thought on the subject, not seeing the need to add or subtract any words. A reader who, on other topics, I deem worthy of respect, has ventured the following comment in regards the Iraqi war: “When we invaded, freeing the Iraqi people was not anywhere near the top of the list of reasons given to the American public. Only after a succession of the original rationals turned out to be hogwash, did the administration start using the “promote democracy” argument.” The implication here seems to be (I am not sure I get his point) that since the “promote democracy” argument was not argued vehemently at first, therefore the democracy in Iraq does not count as really “real”. He is intellectually aware of it, in some distant, numb way, but that is not where the spotlight of his reason and passion are focused: the spotlight is on Bush and Cheney, whom he regards as sinister figures, and he says these public figures were obviously not sincere in their desire to go to war for the right reasons, so we must not trust them now. Freeing people doesn’t “count” unless your motives were too pure to be slandered from the get-go. Or something. Actually, I don’t understand his point at all. So let us put that to one side for now. If I did not have respect for this man, I would simply call him a liar. As it is, I will argue as if his recollection of the event leading up to the war are valid, and therefore he need only be told the facts of the matter to correct him. He makes one statement of fact which can be proved wrong beyond a shadow of a doubt and to a moral certainty. The original rationale for the war is the same now as it has always been. Since someone else has done the work for me, I will simply post his line of argument in full, saving my comment for the end. Note particularly item 7, the argument to end the brutal repression of the Iraqi people; which is not only not at the bottom of the list, it is the second item after item 6, the argument of a threat from weapons of mass destruction. ( Read the rest of this entry » ) View or comment on this post at John C. Wright's Journal.
Tuesday, May 8th, 2012
3:20 pm	What’s Wrong with the World? This essay is in many parts What’s Wrong with the World Part I — Introduction What’s Wrong With The World Part II— Qualifications & Definitions What’s Wrong With The World Part III —Illogical What’s Wrong With The World Part IV —Hypocritical What’s Wrong With The World Part V —More Hypocrisy— Four Puzzles What’s Wrong With The World Part VI —Vicious What’s Wrong With The World Part VII— Ignorant What’s Wrong With The World Part VIII—More Ignorance — The Parochialism of the Enlightened What’s Wrong With The World Part IX—More Ignorance — A Digression on Intolerance What’s Wrong With The World Part X—More Ignorance—A Digression on Ingratitude What’s Wrong With The World Part XI—More Ignorance—The Necessity of Ignorance What’s Wrong With The World Part XII—Barbaric What’s Wrong With The World Part XIII—More Barbarism—Paranoia What’s Wrong With The World Part XIV—More Barbarism—Loss of Authority What’s Wrong With The World Part XV—Craven What’s Wrong With The World Part XVI —Ugly What’s Wrong With The World Part XVII—Foolish What’s Wrong With The World Part XVIII—More Folly—The Role of Science What’s Wrong With The World Part XIX—Confused What’s Wrong With The World Part XX—More Confusion—Seven Deadly Sins What’s Wrong With The World Part XXI—More Confusion—The Role of Incoherence What’s Wrong With The World Part XXII—Conclusion—The Mother of Reason View or comment on this post at John C. Wright's Journal.
1:34 am	My Instinct is to say the Morality is not Instinctive Part of an ongoing conversation: wrf3 writes “I hold to the rules of logic … because without them communication with others is impossible, and because they are required for coherence with the natural world. In other words, if I want my bridges to keep standing, there are certain mathematical forms that I must follow. If I want to talk to you, there are also certain forms that I must follow.” Very good: do you also want to be honest with me when you talk to me? Do you want me to be honest to you? Do you want to be honest to yourself in your own thinking when you use the rule of logic on logical propositions, or when communicating, or when building bridges? Because you could of course choose to deceive yourself, use rhetoric rather than logic, communicate lies and nonsense, and let the bridges fall. My question specifically is about this conversation. Do you want me to be honest with you when we discuss this matter, to tell the truth, not to play rhetorical tricks or change the subject, and not to pretend I have won the debate if I lost it? If so, what it is you are wanting when you want that? I submit that what you are wanting is that I adhere to a moral standard we both tacitly acknowledge as having authority over us. Since I did not make it up and neither did you, and I never agreed to it and neither did you, the common sense conclusion is that it is not manmade. Since this rule applies no matter what the laws of physics are, it is not a rule deduced from any empirical perception, any more than the rules of logic or math. “We generally think it is wrong to break one’s word because that is uncooperative behavior and we, as a species, realize that our biology works better when we cooperate…” So, if I were a Martian, or a ghost, or a robot, or some other creature with a slightly different or very different biology, would it be morally right for me to break my word in that circumstance? What makes you think the biological origins are inventing something rather than perceiving something? My eye is a biological organ, but it perceives light, it does not create light. “You’ve taken a biological fact and enshrined it in mysticism, because you don’t understand the underlying mechanism.” My theory about the origins of the perception of the moral order of the universe has not the slightest hint mysticism to it. Puh-lease. But, even granting your argument about the biological origins of morality, what makes you think that cheating at chessgames is not a Darwinian survival trait? ( Read the rest of this entry » ) View or comment on this post at John C. Wright's Journal.
Monday, May 7th, 2012
12:11 pm	The Law of Nature — parable of the poor sport Part of an ongoing conversation: wrf3  writes: “Now, it seems to me you’re equivocating on what “Natural Law” means. On the one hand, you say that “Natural Law” is how men behave. If “Natural Law” were purely descriptive then I’d have no problem with this aspect of its use. But “Natural Law” is also used in a prescriptive manner and it is with this usage that there’s a problem.” No, not at all. I did not use ‘natural law’ to mean a description of how men act. That is the discipline properly called history. I used ‘natural law’ to mean the moral order. This is the way CS Lewis and writers in the West since the times of the Greeks has used the phrase. It does not refer to an empirical description of anything that can be perceived by the senses. Let me ask you this. You yourself are aware of a moral order of some sort in the universe, because without such an awareness, you could not disapprove of illogical thinking or self deception or shoddy thinking. In other words, if there is no duty to be reasonable, to be fair, or to be honest, then there is no way you could disapprove OR EVEN IMAGINE DISAPPROVING of someone who was deceiving himself in his thinking. To chide someone for a breach of duty implies a belief that the duty exists. Your argument, such as it is, is merely a verbal confusion. You are treating the word ‘nature’ to mean ‘empirical nature.’ But I direct your attention to your own loyalty to the duty to be honest, the duty not to deceive oneself. This duty has no mass, nor length, nor duration, nor candlepower, nor temperature, nor moles of substance, nor current. Hence it is not a physical thing. It is not perceived by the senses nor discovered any possible combination of sense impressions by induction nor deduction. Whence comes it? The reason why I cannot answer your question is that I do not accept the unspoken premise that the word ‘nature’ is confined to material and empirical reality. Were that so, there could be no discussion of morality. You mention in passing a test or rule to see if something is a moral imperative: you say that you and I both agree on it. But we are not legislators of the nature of reality. Morality is not a game like Chess. If you and I sit down at the Chessboard we can agree that no one will be allowed to castle for this game, or that the bishops will start adjacent to the rooks, and knights adjacent to the King and Queen. We would be playing a variation of Chess, or Displacement Chess, but the rules would be binding on the two of us for the duration of the game, since that is what we agreed. But suppose I found myself in a bad tactical position, and in order to improve my position, I castled my king. You could make two complaints against me: first, you could say that I had broken the rules of the variation of Chess to which we had agreed. Second, you could say that I had broken my word. The first complaint, perhaps, I could answer like Hobbes, and say that the rules of Chess are arbitrary, and that I have as much authority to change them as any sovereign. But what of the second complaint? That men ought not to break their word is a moral primary known to all men above the age of reason. It is intuitive and undeniable knowledge. Even those who argue against it tacitly acknowledge it. It is not, indeed it cannot be, an arbitrary rule enacted by the two of us binding on us only for so long we give our word to obey it, for if it were such a rule, no rules could ever bind anyone, since no one could be trusted to keep his word, including that particular form of keeping one’s word involved in agreeing to obey a rule during a game called sportsmanship. If so, you and I, merely by tacitly agreeing to have an honest conversation on the topic we presently discuss, are ourselves evidence that a moral order, called ‘the natural law’, exists; and our knowledge of its existence is metaphysical rather than physical. For this reason, your minor premise that the physical and empirical world must display a end goal in order for there to be a moral order in the world of ideas and ideals is a premise whose sense I do not see. View or comment on this post at John C. Wright's Journal.
Thursday, May 3rd, 2012
12:36 am	Another Triumph for the Darkness — Chen Betrayed From All Girls Allowed. I am particularly outraged by the failure of our government to lift a finger to help. One of the few things President Clinton did that I admired was save another famous Chinese activist. Here is the announcement from All Girls Allowed, a group attempting to stem the tide of both prenatal and postnatal infanticides pandemic in China, aggravated by their nightmarish One (usually one boy) Child Policy. At the end of last week, exciting news broke out of the escape of Chen Guangcheng, the blind attorney who was imprisoned in 2006 for filing a class action suit against the Chinese government on behalf of 130,000+ victims of forced sterilization.  The western media immediately picked up the story, as Chen’s escape was daring and occurred at a critical time ahead of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s visit to Beijing. Unfortunately, recent reports have revealed that the U.S. government has reneged on its promises to help Chen and his family to safety, as Chen was sent out of the U.S. embassy to a hospital with no embassy escorts.  He is now pleading for the opportunity for his family to safely leave China. In a statement, Chai Ling said, “It’s disappointing. Chen’s escape gave the U.S. a chance to demonstrate its commitment to freedom and be on the right side of history-and now the chance is all but gone.” Chen’s friends have said that he is already under intense government surveillance and has not been allowed to make outside contact. Ling continued: “Secretary Clinton, whose work I’ve admired, had the power to provide asylum for Chen and his family. But she gave way under pressure-and now we don’t even know what will become of the activists who were arrested last week after helping Chen escape.”  While the mainstream media has been quick to point to Chen’s daring escape, there has been very little mention of the cause for which he has suffered–the defense of millions of women who have suffered forced abortion and forced sterilization under China’s brutal One-Child Policy. Read Ling’s Huffington Post article here. And an article from the Atlantic  here, which reads in part: A little over 12 hours after blind Chinese activist Chen Guangcheng was released from the U.S. embassy in Beijing, to which he had fled after escaping house arrest, Chen now says that American officials encouraged him to leave the safe haven of the embassy building, in part by making promises that they failed to keep. In an interview with CNN’s Steven Jiang, he expressed deep disappointment with the U.S. and with President Barack Obama personally. He said that embassy officials were no longer picking up his calls and that he already felt his rights being “violated” by the Chinese government, which had promised him his freedom in exchange for him leaving the embassy. He strenuously and repeatedly asked the U.S. and Obama to help him and his family leave China. The interview portrays Chen as furious at the U.S., which he had only 24 hours ago seen as his greatest hope, and portrays the Obama administration as having sold out the high-profile activist, who in 2005 made an enemy of the Chinese government when he campaigned against thousands of forced abortions and forced sterilizations. The interview, initially published on Jiang’s verified blogspot account, has since been removed. Neither he nor CNN appear to have explained why. (Update: Jiang, on Twitter, says he removed the interview to re-post it later as part of a larger CNN.com story, which is now up.) Chen’s comments portray the U.S. as manipulating him, cutting him off from outside communication and encouraging him to leave the embassy rather than seek asylum. He said he was denied his requests to call friends. He said he felt the embassy officials had lied to him.   View or comment on this post at John C. Wright's Journal.
Wednesday, May 2nd, 2012
4:06 pm	What’s Wrong With The World Part XIX—Confused Confused The main thing dismissed by modern writers as being, since not open to empirical confirmation, ergo either mere opinion or mere myth, is that reality which forms the basis of ethical, political and aesthetic philosophy: the idea moderns forget is the idea that there is something that the mind of man can grasp which is not invented arbitrarily by the mind of man, including norms and imperatives of thought, passion, and feeling. That reality is called Natural Law or Right Reason. It was not until quite late in my life—after I was married, in fact—that I realized how thoroughly and entirely the Modern Age had repudiated the idea of Natural Law and Right Reason. Two anecdotes spring to mind. ( Read the rest of this entry » ) View or comment on this post at John C. Wright's Journal.
4:00 pm	What’s Wrong With The World Part XVIII—More Folly—The Role of Science The Role of Science Oddly enough, this is the only aspect of the rot of the modern world which I think could be solved by a diligent application of philosophical learning. If students and scientists were trained, not only in science, but in the philosophical and metaphysical underpinnings logically necessary for science, and if scientists publically and frequently repeated the rule and hence the limitations of the scientific method, then those things which claim to be science but which are patently absurd unscience and antiscience, such as socialism, materialism, eugenics, social engineering, would be etiolated of their usurpative and abusive claim to be science or scientific. ( Read the rest of this entry » ) View or comment on this post at John C. Wright's Journal.
Tuesday, May 1st, 2012
3:59 pm	What’s Wrong With The World Part XVII—Foolish Foolish The one aspect of philosophy which stands as a shining exception to the criminal neglect of philosophy of the modern age is the study of the natural world, the discipline called natural philosophy or physics. Here, it is not the ignorance or neglect of philosophy which is the error; the error is the over-emphasis, the exaggeration, the idolatry of science which leads to a perversion and hence, ultimately, to a neglect of science. A basic and repeated folly of Modernism springs from a single cause: with the well-merited success and progress brought about by the scientific and industrial revolution in the West, the intelligentsia of three and four generations sought to idolize the physical sciences, and apply empirical methods to the study of Man. ( Read the rest of this entry » ) View or comment on this post at John C. Wright's Journal.
3:57 pm	What’s Wrong With The World Part XVI —Ugly Ugly I had always, even from earliest youth, known that something had gone terribly wrong with the world at about the time of the industrial revolution. Up until about the time of the Victorians, and lingering in every dwindling spots and spasms up until the Great War, music still displayed harmony and melody, poetry still spoke like music, painting looked like what they represented, novels contained matter to delight the senses, inspire the soul, and educate the mind. Then something happened; Something horrible. If a primordial monstrosity from a novel by H.P. Lovecraft had risen from the deep and driven all mankind instantly into screaming paroxysms of insanity, the magnitude of what happened could not have been greater. Something horrible happened. Beauty died. The first thing a traveler brought forth from the past would notice, if escorted by the Ghost of Christmas Past or the time machine of H.G. Wells into a modern industrial center or modern museum of the fine arts, is the overwhelming ugliness of the age. ( Read the rest of this entry » ) View or comment on this post at John C. Wright's Journal.
Monday, April 30th, 2012
3:53 pm	What’s Wrong With The World Part XV—Craven Craven The third glimmering that came to me that the rot was deeper than it seemed came in the year 2001 after September 11th. The World Trade Center attack, and many others of its kind, were acts of war by the most dishonorable and despicable enemy in the history of warfare: an enemy indeed that not only was unwilling and unable to face our fighting men in combat, but which went out of its way to attack the weakest, most helpless, and most inoffensive of victims, women, children, and civilians—and even then was not willing to attack the weak in a face to face match, but only attacking by surprise and ambush, without warning or parley, at targets chosen only for propaganda value, not military value. To add Orwellian dishonesty to dishonor, the enemy refers to their gruesome henchmen, who violate their own religious law by committing suicide, as ‘martyrs’ — a word that among sane people means someone who is the victim of violence, dying at the hands of oppressors rather than repudiate his faith; the word does not mean an oppressor, driven mad by hate to the point where he destroys himself merely to mar a non-military target and wound the innocent. Having been soundly and deeply bored and annoyed by the super-hyperbolically over-exaggerated accusations of the Moderns that an utterly imaginary boogieman Theocracy was hounding and persecuting them, I confess I was curious (once 9/11 brought the Jihad sharply into the public view) at how the Moderns were to react to an utterly real and undeniably present Theocracy, who both announced and carried out acts of terror in order to hound and persecute them. ( Read the rest of this entry » ) View or comment on this post at John C. Wright's Journal.