Marvel’s DR STRANGE was not only the first comic I ever read as a teen, but it has remained my favorite from that day to this. So it is with some hope and excitement that I see he has finally been given the big production film treatment with an A-list actor.

Aside from an obscure television pilot, which I also recall fondly albeit it was not without its flaws (they turned the Ancient One into a White Dude named Linmer — get it? Merlin) and an even more obscure straight-to-video where Dr. Strange’s name was changed to Dr. Mordred, the cinema has never attempted to capture the mystery, awe, and comic booky wonder of the good Doctor.

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Originally published at John C. Wright's Journal. Please leave any comments there.

Mr. George RR Martin expresses hope that the coming Hugo season will not be characterized by rancor:

So in the spirit of the season, I am going to say something nice about the Sad Puppies….

Last year’s Puppygate was an ugly affair. I am not going to rehash it here. My views are all on record, my original blog posts still up for anyone who wants to go back and read them. The last thing I want… the last thing anyone who truly loves science fiction, fantasy, and fandom would want… would be to have to go through the whole thing again in 2016. Whatever your view of how the Hugo Awards turned out at Sasquan, I think we can all agree that we would like MidAmericon II’s awards to be more joyful, less rancorous, less controversial.

And maybe… just maybe… we’ll get our wish. Call me naive. Call me an innocent. Call me too trusting by half, too nice a guy to see how things really are… but, really, I am starting to have some hope. All over the internet, people are already talking about the Hugo Awards, making recommendations, discussing the work… the WORK, the things we love, the stuff that unites us instead of the stuff that divides us.

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Originally published at John C. Wright's Journal. Please leave any comments there.

Bobby Trosclair, in the comments, says in a few paragraphs what I said in twelve pages:

I have to agree that Lucas stumbled upon a conservative plot probably by accident in the first film. One has only to look at his first SF film, THX-1138, to see a film that was steeped in the doom-and-gloom views of much of 1960s and 1970s dystopian fiction.But, having written that, I have to question that premise – was the poor critical and box-office reaction to THX-1138 what led Lucas to appropriate wholesale the pop-culture motifs from an earlier, saner time? Did he recognize the cinematic dead-end such tales led to?

(And as anyone who grew up in that era recognizes, THX-1138 was just one in a long line of dark, dystopian, and apocalyptic SF films of that era – SOYLENT GREEN, ZPG, ROLLERBALL, PHASE IV, LOGAN’S RUN, WESTWORLD, FUTUREWORLD, COLOSSUS: THE FORBIN PROJECT, A CLOCKWORK ORANGE, PUNISHMENT PARK, A BOY AND HIS DOG, DEATH RACE 2000… I have personal affection for a lot of those films, but all of them and THX-1138 shared the same dark Manichean world-view: the world is a crappy place, The Man will crush your free spirit, and individual heroism will earn at best only a temporary victory. It was the cinematic equivalent of a lot of the trends going on in the New Wave movement of SF literature.)

Lucas evoked the older tropes of a more Christian, even chivalric worldview (although I doubt he would recognize it as such) – where a community of like-minded, noble individuals can overcome the soul-deadening power of dark forces by doing what is right. It changed the nature of cinematic SF (in some ways for the better, arguably in some ways for the worse by creating a horde of imitators that copied the form but lacked the substance. I am not familiar enough with Lucas’s statements to say whether this was a conscious and commercial attempt to offer a bright, lively, and engaging alternative to the dystopian alternatives of the era.
And it’s of interest that many of the tropes that Lucas, cough, “borrowed” were from earlier eras, or from alternative genre worldviews of Lucas’s own approximate era that did not share the same Manichean world view – the Tolkienish (and very Catholic) fellowship of disparate heroes, assisted by a noble, sword-wielding wizard (played by the very Catholic Alec Guinness, perhaps coincidentally) who falls in battle and rises again to assist the fellowship; the scene-for-scene shots of aerial battles from WWII films like THE DAM BUSTERS; Jack Kirby’s Old Testament-derived comic book visions of the Fourth World, with a mystical “Source” that binds and unites all things and which can be manipulated by hero and villain alike (not to mention Kirby and Lee’s creation of a certain scarred, armored and cloaked Dr. Doom, master of both scientific and mystical powers); Japanese samurai films; western revenge dramas like NEVADA SMITH, the hero of which returns from the desert to find his family killed and burnt by marauders and who must be mentored by an older warrior-figure to pursue his quest; the upbeat, can-do Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers serials and shows; Frank Herbert’s Dune series, with its desert planet, sand worms, oppressive galactic empires led by an evil emperor and clans that control mystical powers and are able to control weak-minded enemies by the power of the voice alone and princesses Leia and Aliyah; even 1950s era comic books like “Planet Stories,” in which the alien villains (the Voltamen) of a long-running series (“Lost World”, written by SF pro Jerome Bixby) spoke with the exact same idiosyncratic speech patterns as Yoda, essentially Latin translated word for word into English, verb at the end and so forth: “Me to your leader take”; the planet-size weapons and psionic powers and Jedi-like galactic protective corps in E.E. Smith’s Lensmen series. And so forth.

In all these sources, heroism is not simply an alternative but the only alternative both individually and as part of a group, and the universe is not seen as inherently evil, but as an often wondrous place which is a stage for human creativity and nobility.

Originally published at John C. Wright's Journal. Please leave any comments there.

I have written many articles on many unimportant social and political issues, but nothing has the weight and gravity of this, my attempt review of STAR WARS: THE FORCE AWAKENS.

You may wonder why so much fervor and rhetorical pyrotechnics is now and ever will be expended on what is basically a Flash Gordon Space-Samurai Soap Opera adventure flick. Why is not the Internet invented by Al Gore (Peace Be upon Him!) lit up with discussion, debate and commotion about much greater, graver, more intricate and well-crafted films, such as CITIZEN KANE or THE SEVEN SAMURAI or ALEXANDER NEVSKY or SPACE BATTLESHIP YAMATO?

The answer is that there is no need to remake SPACE BATTTLESHIP YAMATO into a live action film, especially since Leader Desslok was not in the script, one of the most awesome villains of all Japanimation, if not of all sci-fi; he was replaced by some sort of generic hive-mind who possessed human host bodies, and what is up with that? What happened to Queen Starsha of Iskandar? Some remakes do not need to be remade, particularly if you are going to downgrade the villain, make the heroes less memorable and less likeable as the beloved childhood original, and do nothing imaginative with the material.

Just kidding. The real answer is that great, intricate, well-crafted movies are of interest only to a small cadre of socially awkward intellectuals. On the other hand, popular movies and stories define the dreams that define society. Mark Twain once quipped that the Civil War was caused by IVANHOE, with the popularization of notions of chivalry and manly honor among the South. Politics is downstream of culture, and culture is carried from one generation to the next in the form of storytelling.

Myths, not facts, rule mankind.

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Originally published at John C. Wright's Journal. Please leave any comments there.

A rather flattering review from Marina Fontaine of Liberty Island:

https://www.libertyislandmag.com/creator/mafontaine/blog.html?i=21

Book Review: Somewhither by John C Wright

Occasionally while reading a book, there comes a point where I pause, smile and tell myself, “This one will be special.” Sometimes it’s a particularly riveting action scene, or it’s a clever turn of phrase, or a personally relevant reference. Somewhither is full of all three,making it appeal todifferent readers in a variety of ways, as most novels do. For me, the key is found near the start of the book, when Ilya, the protagonist who is not yet the hero, explains why he had made the decision to-literally-rush headlong into danger.

“It was because of the guy I wanted not to be.”

Who says that? Especially now, when self-esteem appears inversely related to achievement, when everyone is special and everyone is a hero? This protagonist does, and the contrarian that I am, I immediately suspected he would, in fact become one of the more memorable heroes by the time the story is done. And I was not wrong.

Somewhither presents a world that is both recognizable and surreal, taking comfortable sci-fi and fantasy elements and using them as only Mr. Wright can. A young man on a quest? Check. A beautiful love interest? Of course. A Big Bad of world-shattering proportions? You bet. A team of quirky sidekicks? Oh yes, big time. The novel takes all of these pieces and lifts them into the stratosphere. There scope is bigger, the questions weightier, and the over-reaching vision is like nothing you might expect to come out from the sum of its parts.

The tone of the novel, to match both the age and the attitude of the first-person narrator, is surprisingly light for a work of this ambition.

[…]

The pacing is near perfect, alternating between breathtaking, at times extremely violent, action and the slower sections that allow the reader to absorb the wealth of information about the world. Although Amazon estimates the novel at over 500 pages, it comes to the end almost too quickly and provides just enough closure to make us impatient for the sequel, which, rumor has it, is in the works. I, for one, can’t wait.

Originally published at John C. Wright's Journal. Please leave any comments there.

Announcing A.D. Day!

Remember the scene in MERRY CHRISTMAS, CHARLIE BROWN, where our poor bald hero, Charlie Brown, dismayed and lost when he sees commercialization and selfishness robbing the meaning of Christmas, cries out in despair asking what the real meaning of Christmas is? And Linus, trusty blanket in hand, recites a fifty second quote from Luke, explaining in a few versus of brilliantly poetic, stirring, deep and moving words of King James’ English the meaning. No Christmas special ever dares mention the real meaning of Christmas, but this one did. Schultz, the creator of PEANUTS had to butt heads with the network executives, who, even in the 1960s, thought any honest message about Christmas was unbecoming, and might offend the audience, or offend advertisers.

Well, Schultz won that round. But now the hatred of Christ is much more serious, much more deep, and this generation is much, much shallower and stupider than that one. This generation not only hates Christ, they hate any mention of the hate, because they simply want Christ to go away and make no demands on them, say nothing to them, save no one.

So it is happening again:

http://www.glennbeck.com/2015/12/18/audience-members-recite-bible-passage-censored-from-elementary-school-play

Despite elementary school officials’ attempt to censor a Bible passage from a school play, one community took a stand for religious freedom and refused to let political correctness dictate the performance.

On radio Thursday, Glenn shared the back story of how the school district censored an elementary school presentation of a “Charlie Brown Christmas” in Johnson County, Kentucky.

He called for somebody to stand up and said what he would do as a parent in that situation.

“I would get together with parents and I would — if I knew this was coming — I would take the script of what Linus actually says and I would stand up as a block of parents and just stop the show,” Glenn said. “And all of the parents stand up and just start saying it.”

Well, it looks like that’s exactly what parents in the audience chose to do

My comment: The time for submission is past.

Christians have been slandered, libeled, demeaned, and buffaloed by a very small and very patient group of Leftwing zealots who have somehow convinced the world that there is no place for us in the this world: no place for our nativity scenes at Christmas, no place for Christian marriage, no place for the Ten Commandment in our courthouse decorations, no place for historical accuracy, reality or truth in our lives, and no prayers in our schools.

Enough is enough. We outnumber them. It is time to drive them from our midst, and return our civilization to being civilized.

Let us be Christendom again.

As gesture, I would like everyone who reads these words to go onto Wikipedia, and find ten articles which use the insulting term ‘B.C.E.’ for ‘B.C.’ and the insulting term ‘C.E.’ for ‘A.D.’ and change them. And if he anonymous editors change them back, change it again.

It is four days until Christmas as of the time of this writing, which is the memorial of the day from which our calendar takes its reckoning: our calendar, made by the Church, for the Church.

The abbreviation “C.E.” was instituted with only one sole purpose: to insult the Christian religion, to use our calendar without giving us credit, and to pretend that the central event of history, first, did not happen, and second, was a rude, unbecoming and unspeakable event if it did happen, and event so shameful that it cannot even be referred to by initials of words in Latin, so that you are rude, unbecoming and unspeakable, perhaps even a racist, if you insist on referring to dates honestly.

More than this gesture is needed, of course.

That time is not yet, but soon, when we must take further steps to prepare for the storm that is coming.

We must pry their hands from the levers of power, slap their megaphone from our ear, remove their boot from the neck of our economy, drive the swine from the public trough, remove the leprous private parts from their plundering the soul of innocence.

The Sexual Revolution, and no fault divorce, has done infinite harm to the public weal, and ruined countless private lives, including those in my immediate family and immediate circle of friends. Femininity, motherhood, fidelity, charity, chastity, honor, honesty, monogamy and family, all these things were demeaned and repudiated in the name of freedom. Freedom did not result, but slavery. Those chains must be broken. The feminist movement has grown into a corrupt parody of itself.

We want our men back. We want our women back. We want masculinity for the men and femininity for the women. The man-haters have no more arguments to make and nothing more to say.

How have we come to the pass where to indulged in unspeakable sexual perversion is a constitutionally protected right which overrides the rights of the faithful not to participate in the celebration of an abomination their religion, as well as common decency, condemns: but to use the word ‘pervert’ is to be shunned by the elite, subject to harassment and lawsuit, and in our neighboring countries, to jail?

Leftists have proven themselves unfit for positions of command and trust in our society. Even my little corner, the science fiction field, has been overrun by the termites that enter the moldy walls once the sunlight of truth is absent.

Once Christianity is gone, the postchristians do not do without religion. They merely adopt the religion of an antichrist. Instead of religion, they revere and honor lying for its own sake, which they called Political Correctness; they revere and honor sexual perversions and mental illnesses of several kinds; they reverse and respect race-hatred, provided that the hatred is directed against Caucasians; they respect and revere the heresies of Mohammed, and the brutal violence against the weak and innocent they adore and applaud. Whenever there is a mass shooting, they call for the disarmament of more victims, so that more shootings will be easier to take place.

They accomplished a decades-long march through each and every one of our social institutions, so that there is now no leadership for us, nowhere to coalesce our efforts.

That does not matter. God is on our side. Peace is on our side. Love is on our side. Truth is on our side. These things are stronger than court of law, the decrees of bureaucrats, the corruption of teachers and students, the shenanigans of central banks, the opinion manipulation and propaganda and continual stream of lies that issues from our entertainment media, news media, and social media.

It is time to be witnesses. It is time to oppose the princes of this world. It is time to expunge the barbarians among us, the filth who corrupt our children, the vermin who prey on our goodwill, who cannot even be trusted to put on something as small and insignificant as a children’s school play without thought-policing it in the vain and hateful attempt to remove Christ from our lips, our deeds, our hearts.

This is no longer a matter of polite discourse. The option of each man living and letting live was scorned when the government decided to force all Christians to celebrate sodomy, pay for abortions, and fund the contraception needed for a fornication-based attack on monogamy.

They will not quit and will not leave us in peace. They want every last dime of your money, they want to dictate the contents of every last syllable of your speech, they want to dictate how you buy health insurance, how you invest, how you work, whom you can applaud. They want you disarmed. They want to control your mind and soul, and leave you with nothing.

They are not on your side. Resist them. Defy them. Disobey them. Expose them. Hound them from our midst. Pray. Arm yourself with the full armor of God.

Originally published at John C. Wright's Journal. Please leave any comments there.

The Devil invented lies to turn the power of speech into a weapon of falsehood. And God invented the parable, the poem, the epic, the song, and the sonnet in order to turn the power of lies into fables, myths, types and shadows, to turn fiction into a weapon of truth.

I know more people who were converted by Aslan than by Aquinas. What does that tell you about the power of fiction?

Originally published at John C. Wright's Journal. Please leave any comments there.

From a Some Random Guy on the Internet with the handle DC Sunset, but I thought it was as clear as anything from Poor Richard. This is why pride is the chief of sins and the father of all others:

http://voxday.blogspot.com/2015/12/so-brave.html#c933059254954684209

All is lost when a man’s first vice is a delusion of infallibility.

All other vices will then cascade through their lives, and they will be forced by the resultant cacophony to jam their fingers ever more forcefully into their ears.

Wise people realize the limits of their own knowledge and accept that new arguments must be confronted or compel a change of opinion. Fools have all the answers and brook no new questions.

Originally published at John C. Wright's Journal. Please leave any comments there.

Jeffro Johnson wrote a herculean series of 48 entertaining columns of interest to the devout Dungeons and Dragons player. Gary Gygax in Appendix N to his rules left of list of authors and novels useful and inspirational for the campaigns in the way the early campaigns were run. Mr. Johnson decided to read and review at least one book from each author or series mentioned.

He posted his final in this cyclopean monument to retrofiction: http://www.castaliahouse.com/appendix-n-matters

He peppers his review with observations about D&D and the way it was originally meant to be played, or insights about the influence of “picaresque” fiction on the giants of early Weird Tales and pulp fiction stories.

Picaresque is not a word I had heretofore met. I love learning new words. It refers to fiction starring lovable rogues outwitting the bullies and officials of a decadent society: think of Fafhrd and Gray Mouser, or, less lovable, Cugel the Clever.

Most D&D adventures that I have played in, were played not in the hero’s home town, and usually on the outskirks and ugly underside of society. It is ‘urban fantasy’ in the sense that “city mouse”morals apply. Earthsea and Middle Earth and Narnia have something more like “country mouse” morals. Sparrowhawk of Gont may be as ambiguous between light and dark as a Tao symbol, but there is nothing gritty, weary, or cynical about him. But most Weird Tales heroes would fit cheek by jowl with Phillip Marlowe or Sam Spade. (Except that Cugel would have pocketed the Maltese Falcon and gone with the Fat Man to Marrakech; and Solomon Kane would have stabbed the gunsel straight off with his Toledo steel blade.)

The columns are interesting to me not a book reviews — I’d read them all, or almost all — but as an artifact of sociology. You see, Mr Johnson and his generation are on the far side of an ‘canon gap’ from me and mine.

The boys of my generation read the adventure fiction and fantastic stories our fathers and grandfathers had. The boys of Mr Johnson’s youth, on the other hand, read only the slicker but more derivative texts of today, and have a disturbing and parochial tendency (which Mr Johnson himself does not share) to dismiss the older works unread, or, worse not to dismiss them because they never heard of them.

In times past, I could make reference to Solomon Kane or Cugel the Clever to a science fiction audience, and expect to be understood. Now, not so. We live in a golden age of science fiction: it is abundant, it is exploding. But the drawback is that the young whippersnappers have no need to seek back to prior decades of work to slake their thirst for the fantastic.

That itself would not be so bad a thing — Tempus Fugit, after all — save that a deliberate and concerted effort is afoot to stuff all the old writers down the memory hole, and work that is worth remembering is subject to calumny solely due to its age.

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Originally published at John C. Wright's Journal. Please leave any comments there.

My first column for EveryJoe was called ‘Why I am no longer a Libertarian.’

The short answer is that Libertarianism proposes that the government remain utterly neutral on all legal questions where no physical harm, trespass, or fraud is being done by one citizen to another. This requires that the law neither be used by the minority to trespass on the majority, nor by the majority to trespass on the minority.

But Leftism, particularly in its toxic pre-extinction form it has now assumed, the Social Justice Morlock stage of devolution, cannot allow for the neutrality of the law. Libertarians want victimless crime laws or vice laws taken off the books: but this calculates without a crucial fact of the psychology of vice.

The four virtues all men know by nature are fortitude, prudence, justice, self-command. The corresponding vices are cowardice, folly, partiality, and self-indulgence.

Those who indulge in vice, particularly in sexual vices, want not just to be left alone and to leave us alone. They want to be praised, applauded and petted, and demand that we normal people abjure, insult and avoid virtue under penalty of law.

Judgement, the mere act of preferring virtue to vice, is what they cannot tolerate. All their endless blather of self contradictory philosophies, the idea that truth is relative, that words are meaningless, that logic is local, the whole nonsense cavalcade of multiculturalism and moral relativism all is mean for one and one thing only: to suspend judgment hence perpetrate vice.

So the answer to the libertarian is: if you can create a truce with those who would use the law to attack virtue qua virtue, a neutral zone could perhaps be established, and a government which made no decisions one way or the other about vice, only about aggression, then your idea would be sound.

But since those who attack virtue qua virtue have repeatedly and publicly declared and shown that they have no intention whatsoever not to use the law to impose their vicious norms on us, and punish us for virtues, therefore your idea is not sound.

One more data point in the argument:
https://reason.com/blog/2015/12/12/atlantic-lgbt-summit-dispatches

Originally published at John C. Wright's Journal. Please leave any comments there.

Apropos of my previous column, a reader with the rather tenebrous yet archangelic name of Dark Seraphim writes as follows. His words are so clear and passionate on a topic where dungheaps of obscurantism have been erected that I quote him here in full and without comment:

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Originally published at John C. Wright's Journal. Please leave any comments there.

A rather unintentionally unserious conversation on another thread (the gentleman seemed to be arguing that that were my legal and social inferiors with no right to argue with me — a somewhat elliptical point of view to take) nonetheless intentionally brought up a deeply serious point, which I would like to address here.

I apologize for the inadequacy of my thought here, but we are now treading in deep philosophical waters. Regard this, dear reader, rather as a starting point for cogitation, rather than a settled and well articulated theory.

Someone asked me what is meant by freedom?

The context concerned political freedom only; of other type or other nuances of the word, I do not address.

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Originally published at John C. Wright's Journal. Please leave any comments there.

Welcome, Instapundit readers!

I made a comment, which frankly I thought to be unexceptional, almost routine, that I would rather die than doff my cap to a king, since I am a Virginian.

To my infinite surprise, several readers wrote in expressing puzzlement, asking for clarification, wondering if I meant this as a general rule, or only for myself. Would I actually endanger my family by defying the sovereign person had I lived in the Middle Ages? Other readers said monarchy was a respectable form of government, or asked about living under King Arthur of Camelot or King Elessar Telcontar of Gondor, who were good kings, and so on.

I am happy to find so many monarchists here on my website: I would have thought that school of political philosophy deader than the Dodo bird.

My answer to you all is written beneath the great seal of my commonwealth: Sic Semper Tyrannis.

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Originally published at John C. Wright's Journal. Please leave any comments there.

Today’s must-read article is by Milo Yiannopoulos

http://www.breitbart.com/tech/2015/12/08/birth-control-makes-women-unattractive-and-crazy/

It is about time someone mentioned all these scientific findings in public.

… I can prove with the power of science that religious folk were right all along and that science has a little-known but undeniable Roman Catholic bias.

BIRTH CONTROL MAKES YOU FAT

Let’s start with the grossest form: injectable birth control. IT MAKES YOU FAT. A 2009 study from the University of Texas found that women using DMPA gain an average of 11 pounds over three years, a 3-4 per cent increase.

Worse, this was abdominal fat, which is linked to cardiovascular disease, strokes and diabetes. 25 per cent of women on DMPA experienced “significant and potentially dangerous body composition changes.” Yes, that’s right. They became dangerously fat. On the bright side, they’re able to stop the injections at that point because being fat is the best form of birth control anyone could ask for.

So in other words, your birth control injection will add on pounds that will prevent the injection you really want — of man meat.  This, in turn, will lead to depression and excessive ice-cream consumption, which adds on more pounds. Eventually, you’ll find yourself in what medical professionals call “a vicious cycle” but what I call FFAS, or “Female Forever Alone Syndrome.”

BIRTH CONTROL MAKES YOUR VOICE UNSEXY

It’s not just your body that will get less sexy. Your voice will lose its seductiveness too. Women sound most attractive to men when their estrogen levels are high, and their progesterone levels are low. Birth control lowers the former and raises the latter, making women sound as erotically appealing as Bruce Jenner giving a croaky acceptance speech.

If you think the man of your dreams will be eager to meet you after that first Skype call where you sound like a lumberjack, keep dreaming. Men trust their senses and will create a mental picture of you long before you meet. Do you really want to be labelled a pity lay, betrayed by your whacked-out hormones? No you do not.

BIRTH CONTROL MAKES YOU JIGGLE WRONG

Women on the Pill don’t look right and don’t talk right. What could be worse? Well, they can’t jiggle correctly either. A study from the University of Göttingen in 2012 gauged the attractiveness of female dancers. Men judged fertile women as more attractive dancers — and even walkers — than women in their non-fertile phase.

The researchers speculated that estrogen fluctuations during a woman’s fertile period can affect muscle, ligament and tendon strength, leading to subtle differences in movement. Fertile gals, in other words, have all the right moves.

The rougher elements in society will talk about a woman’s posterior — or mine — and describe the way a quarter might bounce off it. Birth control’s estrogen enroachment is liable to have that coin ricocheting off into someone’s eye or just slowly sinking in (see cottage cheese, below).

BIRTH CONTROL MAKES YOU CHOOSE THE WRONG MATES 

It’s already established that going on the Pill makes you less attractive to men. But it also affects who you’re attracted to as well. Healthy, fertile women seek out men who are genetically different to them. Women on the Pill do the opposite, seeking out men who are closer to their own tribe. That’s right, ladies: the Pill turns you into Lannisters. I understand lusting after close relations might be a positive thing in some locations, such as West Virginia, or Norfolk, so YMMV on this one.

BIRTH CONTROL MAKES YOU UNSEXY ALL THE TIME

Don’t be fooled into thinking that birth control only makes you stupid and unattractive during your fertile periods.

He goes on in like vein. Milo does not mention groundwater contamination from the hormonal chemicals passing through the artificially sterile woman’s system. Some scientists think this may account for the rise of autism and same-sex attraction and other biochemical malfunctions in recent generations.

All the sexy female and feminine Catholic girls in my circle, of course, have heard about these scientific studies, but of course they are too busy raising their five to ten children to have the time to write articles.

And the Catholic moms I know are all very attractive, and did not lose their hourglass figures after having a child.

(And they are better educated than you, because they did not go to government-run public school, nor get degrees in Grievance Studies. And their menfolk are more manly than yours. Just sayin’.)

Originally published at John C. Wright's Journal. Please leave any comments there.

Today’s must-read essay is from 5 years ago, but still timely:

http://thelawdogfiles.blogspot.com/2010/09/ok-ill-play.html

I hope I will be forgiven for quoting major sections of his essay, because the man is brilliant and crystal clear.

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Originally published at John C. Wright's Journal. Please leave any comments there.

Below are choice excerpts from a column by Mike Vanderboegh, originally printed two years before the close of the Second Millennium. Read the whole thing here: http://sipseystreetirregulars.blogspot.com/2009/02/vanderboegh-classic-what-i-have-learned.html

From the Liberty Pole
June, 1999
by Mike Vanderboegh

As an amateur historian of this sad century whose time is almost up, I would like to reflect upon six lessons I have learned in my studies. Folks who wish to live free and prosperous in the next century would do well to understand the failures of the past.

LESSON NO. 1: If a bureaucrat, or a soldier sent by a bureaucrat, comes to knock down your door and take you someplace you do not want to go because of who you are or what you think — kill him. If you can, kill the politician who sent him. You will likely die anyway, and you will be saving someone else the same fate. …

LESSON NO. 2: If a bureaucrat, or a soldier sent by a bureaucrat, comes to knock down your door and confiscate your firearms — kill him. The disarmament of law-abiding citizens is the required precursor to genocide.

LESSON NO. 3: If a bureaucrat tells you that he must know if you have a firearm so he can put your name on a list for the common good, or wants to issue you an identity card so that you be more easily identified — tell him to go to hell. …

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Originally published at John C. Wright's Journal. Please leave any comments there.

I have no comment to make, just a column to recommend.

https://retiredmustang62.wordpress.com/2015/12/06/its-just-too-much/

I’m angry. I’m angry that my country has been attacked. I’m angry that innocent people were killed and maimed by at least two other people who were, as far as we can tell, dedicated to a death cult (ISIS). I’m angry there’s a real (albeit relatively small) possibility similar people could not only attack my country again, they could do so in a way that directly and immediately threatens my family. But there’s more.

I’m angry that my government, in the person of the President of the United States, has chosen to dance around the question of why the two now dead murderers chose to commit their atrocity. I’m angry that there is such mealy mouthed discussion about the two murderers. Instead of plain and direct speech, we have been subjected to countless references to them “possibly” or “maybe” having become radicalized or that their actions were those of terrorists. Really? The two parents who abandoned their 6 month old daughter “may” have become radicalized? The two who had multiple homemade bombs on R/C toys in their apartment “may” have had a motive that extended beyond an argument at the place one of them was employed? That one of the two appears to have lied on her visa application “may” suggest she was radicalized and might have even come to this country for the specific purpose of committing some horror? Attempting to destroy their digital tracks “may” indicate this was a terror attack? Wearing cameras to film the carnage and pledging allegiance to the leader of the death cult that is ISIS “might” suggest radicalization? Again, really? But there’s more.

I’m angry that a representative of my government, the Attorney General of the United States, would be so vile as to refer to the events in San Bernardino as in any way “wonderful.” I’m angry that she would be so disgusting as to suggest she is more concerned about violence toward Muslims in general than she is terror attacks against this country. I’m angry she would even remotely suggest citizens exercising their First Amendment rights might potentially subject them to the full wrath and fury of the U.S. government. And yes, I’m angry some of my fellow citizens apparently want to paint all Muslims with the same brush. But there’s more.

I’m angry so many on the left view this as an opportunity to attempt to deprive their fellow citizens of any reasonable attempt to defend themselves should they ever be in such a situation. I’m angry they would suggest those who don’t embrace what the left has decided is the only answer to violence are somehow unconcerned with the violence and its victims.

I’m angry they would either forget or ignore the fact that the Declaration’s “unalienable rights” of “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” cannot exist in the absence of a way to defend them. I’m angry they would pretend “the security of a free state” is in no way endangered when one or more assholes chooses to unleash their terror on the unsuspecting, the unprepared and the innocent. I’m angry they would pretend that same security is not threatened when one or more other assholes break into someone’s house with the willingness or even the intent to do harm to those who live there. I’m angry they would suggest that perhaps it’s reasonable to prohibit the possession of firearms by those whose names are on the same watchlist so many on the left have rightly decried as unconstitutional. I’m angry they would deny those folks, who’ve been neither convicted nor even charged with a crime, the right to defend their lives and the lives of their families. I’m angry they can so effectively and callously declare those folks lives, and the lives of their family members, are worth less than the lives of the rest of us.

Bravo, Amen, and by all means read the whole thing.

Addendum:

Allow me to explain the allusion. Herodotus reports that Leonidas I, leader of the Spartans, upon receiving a command from the Persian King to lay down their arms, returned the typically laconic Lacedaemonian  reply: “Having come, take thou them.”  Note that the phrase is in the second person singular. Leonidas is asking the Persian Great King personally to take the weapons from the hands of the Spartans.

The Texans returned a similar brief defiance to General Santa Anna when the Spanish demanded the surrender of their cannon.

On a related note, Dallas will not be Paris.

I love the mom with the baby toting the firearm. Any of you young ladies who want to be equal to a man: Get an equalizer. Running to the men in government to reward you equality as a gift, nay, as a token of their wooing your vote is something real men would never do.

Originally published at John C. Wright's Journal. Please leave any comments there.

I have never understood the appeal of John Rawls’ so called theory of justice which he examines in a book of the same name.

I read it in Law School, and it struck me then as now as amateurish, lazy, sloppy and sophomoric thinking about a deep subject men like Aristotle and Aquinas and even Hobbes had already examined with greater clarity and rigor. His is a second rate mind.

John Rawls’ theory was that justice consists of considering in the abstract from behind ‘the veil of ignorance’, that is, without knowing your rank in society, what kind of society would be best.

His conclusion was that a modern socialist welfare state would take care of the lower ranks well enough so that if you, not knowing where you would be placed in the ranking, want to make prudent provision for your own wellbeing, you would support a welfare-state socialism out of your own self interest.

A minor flaw here is simply to assume that the man behind the veil of ignorance would act in his own self interest rather than in the interest of the society whose ranking system he is being asked to decide. An ancient Jew might want a king, for example, because he honestly sees that kingship is needed to organize his people against the surrounding enemies, and to be like other nations, without ever once hoping he himself would get the job.

More to the point, the crippling flaw in this theory is that Rawls assumes by hypothesis that the positions in the social rank are arbitrary.

He has the hypothetical person deciding in which society to live make the decision ‘behind the veil of ignorance’ that is, not knowing his own capacities or merits or birth.

He assumes, without ever examining the assumption, that there is no justice in the ranking, and can be no justice. The one thing the veil of ignorance removes is your knowledge of what you did to earn or to deserve your rank.

In other words, Rawls asks the reader to decide about how society should be ranked without saying, or even hinting, what the ranking is based on.

If the ranking is based on birth, as it is in a class society of commoners and nobles and royalty, Rawls’ argument might almost make sense for someone more afraid of being born a commoner than eager to be born royalty, and unwilling to take the risk on the throw of the dice of fate.

Because of course bolder men would always vote for a birth-class society because the prospect of being royalty to them is worth the risk of being common. Men more adverse to risk, like Rawls, base their thinking on envy, and the envious would rather eliminate the royalty altogether than run the risk of being born a commoner.

But if the crippling flaw is taken away, and the society is not just a choice between a monarchy or a socialism, then Rawls’ theory is reduced to nonsense.

An American would always choice a free society over the soft injustice of the Welfare state or the hard injustice of Monarchy. The American would say, “Stuff your welfare bullshit. Make the rules JUST, give me liberty, and I do not care where I might be in when the veil of ignorance is lifted, and I find myself poor or rich. Give me liberty, and if I am poor I will make myself rich.”

The one thing Rawls leaves out of his theory of justice is justice.

The one option never explored is the option of leaving every man to enjoy the fruits of his labors in peace, each owning what he earned.

Instead his discussion is about how to divvy up the loot among pirates, that is, how to distribute unjustly acquired goods that fall upon you by happenstance, luck, or whatnot.

This flaw in Rawls can be made clear if we look at the analogy of a law court. Instead of the jury deciding the case on the merits, a veil of ignorance is placed on the murderer, on his victim’s widow, and on the judge, and the three of them get to vote on how severe the punishment shall be without knowing which one of them is the guilty party. By the John Rawls theory, each man out of self interest should vote for the punishment to be minor, or to have no punishment at all, because there is one chance in three that he himself is the murderer. By that logic, no one would vote to live in a society with a death penalty, because when the veil lifts, he might be the murderer.

But in real life is it not a matter of random chance whether you are a murderer, and the decision about the death penalty should not be based on self interest, but on what is a fair recompense for the magnitude of the crime. In reality, the decision should be made not based on self interest but what is best for serving the interests of justice.

Men who do not take self interest as their primary motive in voting for the laws would always vote for the death penalty, and run the risk that when the veil of ignorance is lifted, he would go to his deserved hanging without complaint because he would deserve it.

The idea that Rawls is attempting to assassinate with his argument is the idea that liberty is unfair, but he does this without ever once mentioning liberty. He speak only of the advantages of birth and happenstance, as if the prosperous and successful men in America got there by dumb luck.

Ever since I first read his trashy book (sometime in the Second Millennium) I had thought he was British. It was on that basis that I did not utterly condemn him. For I thought that if he were British, of course,  his ignorance would be excusable. The only thing the poor English have ever known are Monarchy and Socialism, a system based on class, and a system based on envy.

However, an alert reader points out that this panderer of social justice is an American. I hang my head in shame for a nation that produces only intellectuals who despise America and all for which she stands.

Originally published at John C. Wright's Journal. Please leave any comments there.

A reprint of a column from 2006. I thought it worth posting again, because Mark Levin read an column of mine using the phrase ‘the unreality principle’ on the air, but not an explanation of what it means. I give that explanation here. 

*  *  *  *

Do they want to live?

This is from Frontpage Mag, an interview with one Rima Greene. She is one of the (alas, far too few) Jews of the Left who recognize the growing anti-Semitism of the Left.

She had been a member in the 1970’s of a rural all-women community of socialist feminists, but was shocked upon her return from a trip to Israel to discover that her feminist and lesbian friends favored the Arabs over the Israelis, even though Israel is the only nation in that part of the world where women can be free, and homosexuality is legal.

She found herself reduced to the status of an unperson, because the god of the Progressives is a jealous god, and no man can be Jewish, and have loyalties or love for his home, and also serve the Cause.

Please read the whole thing. It is fascinating and heartbreaking all at once.

http://frontpagemag.com/2011/04/01/a-leftist-feminist%E2%80%99s-journey-out-of-the-political-faith/

When I was part of the Left, I thought “evil” and “enemy” were outdated concepts brought on by indoctrinated mental patterns. When I was at a peace camp in Portugal – a German peace community – I met the people who’d paraded through Israel with the banner: WE REFUSE TO BE ENEMIES. This is new age thinking, that you can refuse reality and just keep going on your merry way.  We as Jews are targeted. We as infidel Americans are targeted. We are the ultimate prize as the Big Satan — although Jewish blood is the best for the West’s contemporary adversaries.

We do not grasp the mental universe of our enemies. Their obsession with our blood, their obsession with butchering us. They are like an army of vampires. They actually want to suck our blood. Especially Jewish blood. We in the West have not a clue. They do not just want to kill us any old way. Poison gas will not do. They want to spill our blood.  I could never make this stuff up. That is what I was trying to sort out with the Daniel Pearl incident, but my friend tried to put a stop to my thinking by calling me a racist.

[…]

When I started really understanding that Israel is in continual danger because of a theological commitment to destroy us, and that includes me, as a target, my body got it, my creatural body that fights for its survival with everything it has. That is a missing piece on the Left. My old buddy from high school, a famous Jewish anti-Zionist academic, would rather die in a plane terror incident than have “racial profiling.” I said, “It could save your life.” He said, “I don’t care. It’s racist. I don’t care.” It was a kind of petulant: “I don’t care.” It’s like a three-year-old’s outlook.

[…]

On the Left, with the “universal” values supposedly which transcend the need of the Jewish people to survive, there’s an ideology that Jews are selfish for wanting to survive together, as a collective. It is raw naked anti-Semitism.

My comment: The central tenet of the cultic and hysterical mental disorder called Leftism is what I call ‘the unreality principle.’ This is the principle, baldly stated, that reality is bad and unreality is good, therefore unreality is real.

Read the rest of this entry »

Originally published at John C. Wright's Journal. Please leave any comments there.

Mark Levin “The Great One” just read one of my columns on the air, thanks to Instapundit.

Of course, he got my name wrong (John C. Cartwright) and he caught a spelling error I had made (‘come’ should be ‘some’). Ah, well. The price of fame.

If you want to find a podcast of it, it is his Dec 07 show, right about an hour and a half from the end.

More to the point, the Superversive SF site asked me to do a podcast with them. You can listen to me talking over people, interrupting them, not listening, and disagreeing with everything, including ‘hello.’

It went this way. Him: “Hello, Mr. Wright!” Me (crossly): “What do you mean by ‘Hello’? Define your terms!”

Meanwhile, on another topic, those who want to repeal the Second Amendment do not seem to be able to base their conclusions on scientific evidence:

Originally published at John C. Wright's Journal. Please leave any comments there.