Fraud Someone hacked into the emails at University of East Anglia's Climate Research Unit (a major think tank for the Anthropogenic Climate Change theory). The scientist discussed how to falsify data to prop up Anthropogenic Global Warming theory, because the data did not support the theory.
If these reports are true, I will expect a statue erected to me in the Agora.
Million, Billion, Trillion I came across this information when I was looking up, for my latest science fiction novel, a way of expressing the difference between a million, a billion and a trillion.
My current novel takes place at several different levels, on several different orders of magnitude. To keep my dates straight, I have to use
1. my small scale timeline (covers the decades between AD 1 and AD 2400)--my hero travels to an antimatter star 50 ly distant, and back again. 2. my middle scale time line (covers AD 1 to AD 70,000) -- my heroine travels to a Messier object galactic cluster outside the plane of the Milky Way, some 35,000 ly distant. 3. my large scale time line (covers 1,000,000,000 BC to AD 2,000,000,000: the period of the war between the unified intelligence of the Andromeda Galaxy and the slowly-coalescing galactic intelligence of Milky Way. My characters blow up a few clusters of galaxies in their war, an get dragged before the ruling mass-mind intelligence of the Virgo Group, which contains 2000 galaxies, so the loss of one or two of Virgo's "parts" while my hero is duking it out with my arch-villain eventually comes to her notice. 4. my very large scale time line (covers from 12,000,000,000 BC to AD 500,000,000,000 or thereabouts: the time scale of the struggle for supremacy between the Horologium Supercluster (900 Million lightyears away) Corona Borealis Supercluster (1 billion lightyear away in the opposite direction). 5. I move to an extreme large scale to introduce the entities living beyond the event horizon of the universe, 15 billion lightyears distant and receding. I don't have a time line for these events.
I wanted a way of visualizing the differences in orders of magnitude, to make it clear to my readers. I was planning my curtain scene to take place some five hundred billion years in the future. Half a Trillion. Think that is a big number?
By way of comparison:
A million seconds is 12 days. A billion seconds is 31 years. A trillion seconds is 31,688 years.
A million minutes ago was – 1 year, 329 days, 10 hours and 40 minutes ago. A billion minutes ago was just after the time of Christ.
A million hours ago was in 1885. A billion hours ago man had not yet walked on earth.
A million dollars ago was five (5) seconds ago at the U.S. Treasury. A billion dollars ago was late yesterday afternoon at the U.S. Treasury. [Note: this was pre-Obama] A trillion dollars is so large a number that only politicians can use the term in conversation. Here is some perspective on TRILLION: Trillion = 1,000,000,000,000.
The country has not existed for a trillion seconds. Western civilization has not been around a trillion seconds. One trillion seconds ago – 31,688 years – Neanderthals stalked the plains of Europe.
By way of comparison: This is the national debt of the United States. Eleven TRILLION and climbing. This is more debt than all previous debt in history combined.
That is how much you owe, O Taxpayer. Look at your income, your last year's taxes, and multiply that by the population of the United State (divided in half, since roughly half our population pays no income tax). How many generations of your children and grandchildren will be paying?
Now do the same calculation again, but this time (1) compound the interest on the debt and (2) subtract the national budget for each year, and assume spending will continue with more medicare, social security, medicaid, bail-outs, overseas wars, major acts of terror in major cities, and government purchases of banks, housing markets, and medical industries -- all these things are expensive (and all but two are government actions not permitted by our written Constitution).
Repudiation of the debt means collapse of the money and credit system.
Please note that National Debt of this type cannot be contracted by any government which ties its currency to a hard metal money standard, as God and the laws of nature discovered by Adam Smith ordained. This debt is insane: but why it is that politicians who talk about the Gold Standard are dismisses as far from the mainstream? Why is it that politicians who talk about restricting the federal government to its enumerated powers (as it is clearly written and promised by our supreme laws) as regarded as crackpots and dreamers?
I have a question for Uncle Sam and the press and opinion makers who speak for him -- You run up a debt like this and you have the effrontery to call Ron Paul insane? I wonder what your basis of comparison is.
To any science fiction readers reading these words: did you actually wonder why we do not have the flying cars, the moon bases, the manned Mars landing, the O'Neil colony, the Orion drive, the rocketships to Jupiter, maybe even the beginnings of an interstellar ship, not to mention the medical advances in geriatrics and prosthetics, cell regeneration, even the eternal youth envisioned by our optimistic fathers when they wrote SF? That is because those books were written, by and large, before 1968, before the Baby Boomers, before the Flower Children and the Me Generation and Generation X.
Where is my moonbase? Sorry, kids. Your parents, the Boomers, spent all their money. Then they spent all your money. Then they spent all your children's money, and your grandchildren's.
Moonbase? Mars landing? Can't afford it. Count yourself lucky was have a Hubble Telescope. At least we can see what we will never reach.
Graham v Holder 384 U.S. 436 (1966) Today I had a unique experience: I actually heard from a lawyer who is less knowledgeable and skilled—less lawyerly— than I.
This is remarkable (indeed, I am even now remarking on it) because I graduated third to last in my class of 145 after being kept back a semester. The school team mascot (which I think was a stalk of Asparagus named Ebrit), got a better grade on its final in Police Procedural class than I did.
So where, in all of this great land, did I actually find a lawyer who knew less about law than yours truly? I heard him on the radio. His name is Eric Holder, and he is your Attorney General, yes, your very own, Mr. & Mrs. America.
Most of my readers have probably never had the dubious pleasure of being in Law School, but you may have seen the movie or television show a few years back called THE PAPER CHASE, where the crusty old professor Kingsfield announces “You come in here with a skull full of mush and you leave thinking like a lawyer.” One of the ways crusty old professors ladle out the mush from the skulls of students, and train them to think like lawyers, is by means of hypotheticals. Of course, we have no time to say the whole word “hypothetical” in Law School so we call them “hypos” a word similar to what you call a needle that pierces your flesh.
The classrooms (at least in my Alma Mater at William and Mary’s Marshall-Wythe School of Law) are large semicircular lecture halls shaped something like a gladiatorial arena cut in half. To cut the students in half, the crusty old professors will call upon a student at random. The student must stand. A dread silence fills the arena. The “hypo” is uttered, and the student must, on his feet, analyze the facts, apply the law, and support his conclusion with any case law he can recall without looking at his notes. To fail at answering a hypo is to fail before the eyes of your fellow students, who will one day be your colleagues.
Nothing is worse than standing before the eyes of all and having nothing to say to the hypo. Nothing is better than lounging in your seat, not called on, and knowing the answer, and the case law, and having the argument to support either position ready on your lips. Ah! The Germans have a word for that: schadenfreude. Pleasure at another man’s distress.
Well, on the radio today, I suffered a 'Nam style foxhole-flashback to my law student days, and felt once more that sickly-sweet yet fiendish pleasure of schadenfreude when I heard another student of the law being grilled. And toasted. And deep fat fried. And turned over on the griddle to sizzle on the other side.
But it was not law school. It was a senate hearing. Mr. Holder the Attorney General was being cross-examined by Senator Graham of the Judiciary Committee, who posed a simple question.
The hypo was this: “If we captured bin Laden tomorrow, would he be entitled to Miranda warnings at the moment of capture?”
Extreme Unction of the West -- Clarification In a recent discussion in this space, I waxed indignant over the inability of our popular leaders, both political leaders and opinion makers, to admit that the Jihadists with whom we are currently at war are Islamic and not Christian. They regard it as impolite, nay, as hateful, for anyone to mention the religion and the religious motives of the Fort Hood mass assassin, for example. This provoked a remarkable reaction -- roughly half the comments in my comments box not only affirmed the Politically Correct position, that we are not at war and dare not admit we are at war, but expressed the fear that the Christians were about to shred the Constitution and impose a theocratic dictatorship on the United States. (In all fairness, 1. the other half of the comments were sane; 2. most comments came from the pen of one or two readers.)
Because I was writing a screed, and not a reasoned philosophical position, I did not even try to qualify my statements, or to be all that clear. I sort of assumed the kind readers would know what I meant. The unkind readers would not understand me even if I qualified my statements, so I saw no reason to try. But this cavalier attitude of mine caused me to offend unwittingly more people than I meant to offend.
Upon reflection, when I doff the robe and beard of a philosopher to don the hairshirt and rope-belt of a prophet on a Jeremiad, I should actually make it clear where I myself stand on the issue.
Let me, Socrates like, ask any reader willing to answer a set of questions: ( Read more... )
Book Review: Story of Your Life and Others by Ted Chiang I found to my surprise that I never posted by Amazon.com review of Ted Chiang's brilliant (but to my taste too nihilistic) STORY OF YOUR LIFE AND OTHERS here on my livejournal. Let me rectify that oversight at once. ( Read more... ) I also have a longer discussion of my great discontent with the 'Hell is the Absence of God' posted here.
Nasa's LCROSS mission proves once and for all there is water on the Moon. A new chapter in space exploration has been opened up after Nasa confirmed that their mission to bomb the Moon had found "significant quantities" of frozen water.
Any headline that contains the phrase "NASA confirmed their mission to BOMB THE MOON had found..." is a winner.
While this does not necessarily mean that the Va-Gas are roaming the interior seas of the Moon, it does mean that a moonbase, should one ever be constructed, would have some local naturresources to draw upon.
An article by historian Victor Davis Hanson pointing out that the Fort Hood shooting was a terrorist act following a pattern of terrorist acts. He note the absurdity, if not insanity of public figures denying the obvious link between Muslims and Muslim violence.
An article by historian Fabio Paolo Barbieri offering an explanation as to why public figures say things that they know to be absurd, if not insane, such as denying the obvious link between Muslims and Muslim violence..
Second, let me comment on the Fort Hood shootings:
Our public figures (either freely elected voters or freely selected by the marketplace for media info-entertainment) reacted to the Fort Hood shootings with Politically-Correct clownishness unparalleled even in this clownish age.
I thought I was bitter and cynical and unemotional enough not to be appalled. Apparently that thought is false to facts. I am so appalled it makes me seasick.
Commentary ranged from the mulishly stupid to the seriously stupid to the flippantly stupid to the surrealistically stupid.
ADDED LATER: The comments have reach roughly 200 comments, of which roughly half are speeches written in a fury of passion telling us all that, not only is there no war, but that to say that there is, is cowardice, bigotry, un-American, treasonous, racist, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. One commenter said there was indeed a war, but that America was to blame. A large number of comments seem to agree that we cannot discriminate against the enemy or think ill of him. Nearly everyone was horrified at the notion that this nation might retaliate if and when the terrorists ignite the first of many nukes inside our major cities and military bases. Even people in sympathy with the idea of defending the West against the Jihad had to pause to say that the Christians were the real enemy, that being Christian was treason against the Republic, that Christians are frightful monsters out to get us all, and that Christians all secretly conspire to make Nehemiah Scudder into our Prophet and Dictator. ( Read more... )
Evidence to all would-be science fiction writers that one does not need big budgets, more than one location, or more than simple character development to write a witty tale. I am going back into the past to show myself this video, so that I, rather than Robert Heinlein can write BY HIS BOOSTRAPS.
A single note of defiance This is just a short note to the world at large: be it known that I have purchased, despite the extreme poverty that my recent voyage across the world imposed on my budget, THE MAMMOTH BOOK OF MIND-BLOWING SF (Mike Ashley, editor).
Since I am a Null-A trained Houyhnhnm from planet Vulcan, I am (of course!) a being of pure logic unmoved by any passions or emotions, but from time to time one simply must make a gesture, no matter how small, to oppose the Dark Lord, even if that gesture is only symbolic.
In this case, the book is one that holds for me only mild interest, despite the fact that some of the contributors include giants in the SF field, Arthur C. Clarke and Stephen Baxter, Gregory Benford, Robert Silverberg and Michael Swanwick.
No, my interest in the book was piqued only because of a pseudocontroversy that was ginned up over the race and sex of the authors in the table of contents. Because the editor did not include a token female, he was excoriated by the unwitting servants of the Dark Lord.
Not only was the editor threatened with boycotts and reduced to the status of an unperson, any authors or editors who spoke in his defense, no matter how mildly, were also boycotted. Much of the ire seemed to be over the cover blurb and title, which (as best I can tell) is boilerplate boosterism, no more meaningful than Stan Lee of Marvel Comics assuring potential buyers in blazing all-capital letters that this issue is the best battle issue ever!
What was the cause of so much vexation, we might wonder?
We may indeed be older now, in so far as we are heirs in enjoyment or in practice of many generations of ancestors in the arts. In this inheritance of wealth there may be a danger of boredom or of anxiety to be original, and that may lead to a distaste for fine drawing, delicate pattern, and “pretty” colours, or else to mere manipulation and over-elaboration of old material, clever and heartless. But the true road of escape from such weariness is not to be found in the wilfully awkward, clumsy, or misshapen, not in making all things dark or unremittingly violent; nor in the mixing of colours on through subtlety to drabness, and the fantastical complication of shapes to the point of silliness and on towards delirium. Before we reach such states we need recovery. We should look at green again, and be startled anew (but not blinded) by blue and yellow and red. We should meet the centaur and the dragon, and then perhaps suddenly behold, like the ancient shepherds, sheep, and dogs, and horses— and wolves. This recovery fairy-stories help us to make. In that sense only a taste for them may make us, or keep us, childish.
Mr Nicholson, 42, from Oxford, told a previous hearing that his views were so strong that he refused to travel by air ...
The grounds for Mr Nicholson's case stem from changes to employment law made by Baroness Scotland, the Attorney General, in the Employment Equality (Religion and Belief) Regulations 2003.
The regulations effectively broaden the protection to cover not just religious beliefs or those "similar" to religious beliefs, but philosophical beliefs as well.
My comment: so if my strongly-held belief in the Phlogiston theory, or the geocentric model, makes it so I will not travel by air when and where my boss tells me (after all, jet engines may be combining oxygen and phlogiston to produce dangerous calx, causing a drop in the quintessential elements superlunar planets in the aether need to turn on their epicycles), I am to be immune from being discharged? What if I believe the Lamarckian model of evolution, and so I require my boss to put things on low shelves, because I do not want to stretch high and make my children have long giraffe-like necks?
The ramifications in law are endless.
No science fiction story, not even Robert Heinlein's 'Future History' with its mention of the Crazy Years, could have predicted the Alice Through the Looking-Glass lunacy which characterizes the modern age. Perhaps Jack Vance captured some of the flavor of self-righteousness, eccentricity, and artificiality of modernity in some of the quaint and pompous rogues, villains, and unsmiling petty officials in his imaginative worlds, which we now see taken with perfect seriousness around us.
I was going through my Mechagodzilla music collection, and came across this gem. Allow me to sum up the action so far: cute Japanese woman is singing a J-Pop tune to a giant sleeping doggy-ape thing-monster, (whose name is Shisa or Caesar or something) which is our only hope against the mind-numbing gut-crunching terror of Mechagodzilla, who is like Godzilla, only, you know, wearing Mobile Infantry Power Armor, or something.
It seems that the Azumi Clan has had this giant big-toothed dog-monster dude snoozing in their local mountain for the last hundred years or so.
Anyway, the Azumi clan doll sings for a minute and a half, and the other people stand around with awe-struck expressions while nothing continues to happen. The song goes on for another minute, but Mechagodzilla is only about as swift of foot as your average marauding Mummy who thinks the English archeologist's beautiful daughter is the reincarnation of Nefertiti, so the Azumi dame sings another chorus. For about another minute. Nice set of pipes, I think. Then when King Caesar wakes, his mountain nook explodes. Cool beans. I wish my bed exploded every time I woke up.
This clip does not show it, but King Caesar gets his doggy ass kicked in about half the time it took to wake him up. Giant mammals are just no good against robodinosaurs! When will mankind learn that terrible yet all-important lesson?!
Anyway, I like the song. Catchy. The lyrics (for those of you who are interested) are below the cut.
Dialog with Trypho and the Myth of Er Recently in this place began a discussion where was examined by what faculty, if any, man might perceive God, assuming God to be both benevolent in wishing Man to see Him, and omnipotent to accomplish that at which He aimed. One side argued that such a God would provide abundant evidence to the senses of Man so as to quell all honest doubt, and that since no such evidence existed, such a God's existence, or His providence, was in doubt. The other argument was that God, a spirit, both of necessity (since spirits are invisible) and of His providence (since it is less open to doubt, and more readily available to all men, including the blind and unlettered, than either empirical proofs or formal logic) reveals Himself to those who seek Him directly and not through the medium of the sense impressions.
Without revisiting that argument, I note with amusement that it is an old one. Here, for example, from circa 135 A.D. is Justin Martyr, my namesake, the patron saint of philosophers, discussing the purpose of philosophy, and the conclusion of Plato that the divine nature hidden in man allows men to perceive God directly, though the mind, much at other mental forms are perceived. He is debating an old man, not otherwise named, who (later in the dialog) leads him to doubt the wisdom of the philosophers.
‘Are you, then, a lover of words' said he, ‘but no lover of deeds or of truth? and do you not aim at being a practical man so much as being a sophist? '
‘What greater work, 'said I, ‘could one accomplish than this, to show the reason which governs all, and having laid hold of it, and being mounted upon it, to look down on the errors of others, and their pursuits? But without philosophy and right reason, prudence would not be present to any man. Wherefore it is necessary for every man to philosophize, and to esteem this the greatest and most honourable work; but other things only of second-rate or third-rate importance, though, indeed, if they be made to depend on philosophy, they are of moderate value, and worthy of acceptance; but deprived of it, and not accompanying it, they are vulgar and coarse to those who pursue them.'
‘Does philosophy, then, make happiness? ' said he, interrupting.
‘Assuredly, ' I said, ‘and it alone.'
‘What, then, is philosophy? ' he says; ‘and what is happiness? Pray tell me, unless something hinders you from saying.' ‘Philosophy, then, 'said I, ‘is the knowledge of that which really exists, and a clear perception of the truth; and happiness is the reward of such knowledge and wisdom.'
‘But what do you call God? ' said he.
‘That which always maintains the same nature, and in the same manner, and is the cause of all other things-that, indeed, is God.’ So I answered him; and he listened to me with pleasure, and thus again interrogated me:-
‘Is not knowledge a term common to different matters? For in arts of all kinds, he who knows any one of them is called a skilful man in the art of generalship, or of ruling, or of healing equally. But in divine and human affairs it is not so. Is there a knowledge which affords understanding of human and divine things, and then a thorough acquaintance with the divinity and the righteousness of them?'
‘Assuredly, 'I replied.
‘What, then? Is it in the same way we know man and God, as we know music, and arithmetic, and astronomy, or any other similar branch?'
‘By no means, 'I replied.
‘You have not answered me correctly, then, 'he said; ‘for some [branches of knowledge] come to us by learning, or by some employment, while of others we have knowledge by sight. Now, if one were to tell you that there exists in India an animal with a nature unlike all others, but of such and such a kind, multiform and various, you would not know it before you saw it; but neither would you be competent to give any account of it, unless you should hear from one who had seen it.'
‘Certainly not, 'I said.
‘How then, 'he said, ‘should the philosophers judge correctly about God, or speak any truth, when they have no knowledge of Him, having neither seen Him at any time, nor heard Him? '
‘But, father, 'said I, ‘the Deity cannot be seen merely by the eyes, as other living beings can, but is discernible to the mind alone, as Plato says; and I believe him.'
As a special bonus, she has not one but two Writers Write on Writing articles, one from redhead Pirate Queen Misty Massey, one from workaholic fantasy writer extraordinaire David B. Coe, but also posts some views and news from our recent China adventure.
Here is a snippet from Misty Massey:
“Where DO you wacky writers get those crazy ideas?”
I don’t know if fantasy writers get this question more often than mystery or romance authors, but we get it quite a bit. And I have decided, in the interest of fair play and brotherhood, to share the Secret. Yes, you guessed it – there IS a place we all go to get these nutty ideas: the Gregorovich-Feister Idea Farm and Fresh Market. It’s a coop tucked into the high grass along Interstate 26 between Columbia and Charleston. Take exit 132 and 2/3 (it’s a dirt road, so be sure and slow down on the curve, else you’re liable to go flying!) and drive at exactly 42 miles per hour for exactly 17 minutes. Stop at the 17 minute mark, close your eyes, and whisper, “I just can’t think of what to write,”, and the gate will appear on the left. Drive in quick, since it only stays open about 30 seconds.
Here is a snippet from David B. Coe:
... when I’m asked, “What’s your best book?” I usually name my most recent publication. When I’m asked, “Which book of yours should I read first?” I’ll usually recommend the first book of my current series. But occasionally I’m asked, “What’s your favorite of all your books?” That’s another matter entirely.
Certain books of mine are dearer to me than others. This has nothing to do with how good or how flawed I might think they are. It has everything to do with the emotions I drew upon when I wrote them, with the characters I encountered as I developed them, and with what milestones they might represent in my career.
The faculty of belief This is something I wanted to answer, which is too long for a comment box, and significant enough to allow a violation of my rule against weekday postings.
Someone who rejoices in the moniker Surly One comments: "If an omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent God exists, and wants me to believe in him, it should be easy for him to make this happen."
Oddly enough, back when I was an atheist, this was my exact conclusion as well. My reasoning forced me to the next logical step, which I hope you can deduce.
Before we answer the question, let me point out that God (if he is as described) does not want your mere belief. The fallen angels (if they are as described) obviously "believe" that God Almighty exists, but they rebel against his authority and do not love him. So something more than mere belief seems to be indicated here. What it is?
Another question would be--what is the nature of the belief God (if He has the sense God gave a duck) is said to want?
I suppose the maker of a robot could program the robot with an Asimovian Three Laws of Theology or somesuch rot, but in that case the robot's "belief" would then of course be nothing of the kind. It would be a mechanical repetition, like listening to your own voice on a phonograph, not the belief of another moral agent. Nothing in our experience suggest that human can be "programmed" like machines into believing anything, not even by God Almighty. As an author I can assure you that even fictional characters I invent in my own head cannot be made to believe what I want them to believe, or do what I want them to do, if their nature goes against it (and here we are only talking about a fictional and make-believe nature, not a real nature). So, when we speak of 'making' us believe in him, God (if he is as described) would not have recourse to mind-control. He wants belief freely given, because otherwise it is not really 'belief' at all, but parrot-noises.
Next question: what would be necessary for making this easy in just the way you (and I) deduced it must be?
In other words, if logic suggests that an omniscient and benevolent God who wants us to believe in him would arrange provisions as necessary to make us believe in him, what would those provisions be? If we can deduce what they would be, and if we then see such provision in evidence around us, while this does not prove God exists necessarily, it would defeat the argument that the lack of such provision indicates no such God exists.
What is the provision of making us believe?
If the act of making one believe were dependent, let us say, on empirical evidence, sense-impression evidence, then those people not in a position to see Christ with their eyeballs, and those people not in a position to assess the credibility of surviving documents could not be made to believe. Paradoxically, this means that if Omnipotence wants you to believe in him, He would have to use a means more obvious than empirical sense impressions, not less.
If the act of making one believe were dependent, let us say, on a philosophical argument, on logic and reason, then those people not inclined by nature nor trained by education in logical reasoning would be in a position to be made to believe. Paradoxically, this means that if Omnipotence wants you to believe in him, he would have to use a means more obvious than philosophical argument (which is the type of argument you are asking me to produce), not less.
This would seem to imply, if the Omnipotent God is a logical and elegant creator of Man, that there must be something in man, some provision, or faculty or innate knowledge or readily-available means, a means available even to the blind and to the unlettered, to come to know God.( Read more... )</div>
What the Left and Fascism share is a belief in the transformative power of the state. Both regard government as the “high ground” of society and not, as some Americans still believe, simply a necessary evil. It is a prize to be seized by main force; the castle to be stormed. In the long run there is little reason to think that Nick Griffin will allow any more freedom than Gordon Brown. What is likely to happen is the substitution of one set of sacred cows for another. When the Left and fascists contend for power, the surveillance cameras are in every case fully employed.
One of the commenters at Chicago Boyz writes, “A friend of mine is a professor of Surgery and Anatomy in London. He has told me he is very concerned about the number of young women converts to Islam who are medical students. These women, like the louts in the Dalrymple books, are not from immigrant families. Why an educated young woman would convert to Islam is a real puzzle. Maybe they are seeking structure but I expect it will come at a high price. The other side of that coin may be the BNP voters.” Maybe this infatuation with Islam should not be surprising: if the central role of the state is accepted, then the only question is what the character of that authority will be: Islamic, Communist or Fascist. When you come to it, who cares? It is the same dog with a different collar. And perhaps the young ladies are simply choosing Islam on the basis of fashion. It’s as good a reason as any.
How does one get away from the dog?
Perhaps the greatest service that religion once rendered to Western civilization was providing the individual with a real or imagined hotline to God. Whether this was simply a conceit or not let us set aside for the moment. For as long as man imagined himself to be sacred and accountable to the Creator he stood at the center of polity. The state was there to serve him and not the reverse. Today he has lost that central place and is no more or less than a collection of curiously animated chemical substances with a market value of less then fifty dollars which the state has deigned to keep alive until some bureaucratic panel decides it is too expensive to do so. Just as Global Warming can be understood at one level as an attempt to bring nature into the purview of politics, it is impossible to understand the Left’s fixation with abortion except as a sacramental affirmation of the state’s power over man. The strident insistence on abortion on demand goes way beyond any conceivable need to prevent backroom abortions, or even an affirmation of a woman’s right to choose. It is really an absolute display of the power of politics over life. Abortion’s principal utility is as a stake driven through the heart of the notion of human sacredness, which once performed, ought to prevent its revival entirely.
My comment: the choice in the modern world grows ever narrower and ever more stark. Perhaps in the past one could maintain a position that affirmed human reason and human dignity without any pledge of allegiance Christendom from which those notions uniquely spring. These intermediate positions seem to grow ever more precarious, as they occupy a no man's land between contending armies of darkness and light, whose ranks are being ordered for final battle. One side upholds the labarum which blazes like a comet's tail, foretelling the doom of worldly kings; the other side, the black and anarchic banner which bares no charge, no sign, no symbol, for nihilism despises all names. The stark choice, to borrow a phrase from David B. Hart, is between Christ and Nothing.
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