Musings Archive

The Envy of Queen Zixi of Ix

Posted February 7, 2025 By John C Wright

This is a story by L Frank Baum, author of the Oz books, one of his lesser known works, called QUEEN ZIXI of IX it was written in 1905.

The tale is now 120 years old, but this point is more poignant and potent in our day than when it was written.  Allow me to quote the whole passage at length, so that my dear readers might see and savor the simple wisdom here, and also the delicate beauty of the illustrations by Frederick Richardson.

The conceit of the tale is that the fairies have bestowed on mortals a cloak to grant its wearer his spoken wish.  The cloak is given to two innocent children, King Bud and Princess Fluff of Noland, but when the Witch Queen of the neighboring kingdom of Ix hears rumor of it, she vows a mighty vow to obtain possession of it.

This vow, and her many efforts and deceptions, she expends to achieve it, unbeknownst to her, are in vain from  the outset. For the fairies who wove the magic cloak wove in the blessing that the cloak grants no wish to anyone who steals it.

The author insists Queen Zixi is not a bad person, despite being a witch, but is carried off by her envy.

What I find fascinating about this 1905 children’s book is the resolution of the Queen’s fascination with envy is brought about by the chance encounter with three weeping figures: an alligator, an owl, and a ferryman’s daughter.

Note in particular what it is the third weeping figure pines to have, and how it was used in the tale as an epitome of foolishness.

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Meanwhile, In a Continuum Nearby

Posted February 7, 2025 By John C Wright

Meanwhile, in a continuum nearby to ours, but not ours, the Star Wars franchise was true to the original

In our continuum, Disney squandered the greatest and best intellectual property of our generation, which, if treated with respect and nurtured, could have thrilled and enchanted generations to come, winning them wealth and praise. Instead, dreck.

On an utterly unrelated noted, the second book of my Starquest series, SECRET AGENTS OF THE GALAXY, is coming out next month.

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The Art and Craft of Writing Romance

Posted February 5, 2025 By John C Wright

My lovely and talented wife is kickstarting her first Kickstarter campaign.

Beauty and the Beast, Scarlett and Rhett, Lizzie Bennett and Mr. Darcy… we love to read and re-read our favorite couples falling in love.

Do you yearn to know how the authors wove these timeless tales and how you can do the same?  

Then this course, The Art and Craft of Writing Romance, is for you!

kickstarter.com/projects/artcr

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The Pardon Power

Posted January 20, 2025 By John C Wright

This is not my field of expertise, so my amateur opinion is that of an amateur. Nonetheless, there are conditions and limitations to the Pardon power as expressed in the US Constitution.

The second article of the Constitution of the United States, section two, contains this provision, namely: “The President shall have power to grant reprieves and pardons for offenses against the United States, except in cases of impeachment.”

However, the case law states “The language used in the Constitution as to the power of pardoning must be construed by the exercise of that power in England prior to the Revolution, and in the states prior to the adoption of the Constitution.”

And no exercise of this power, in America since the revolution nor in England before it, allowed for pardons and commutations of speculative crimes for which there is no conviction, no sentence.

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The Dignity of Degradation

Posted January 14, 2025 By John C Wright

This is a revision of a column from 2011, updated to the current decade.

At one time this link from from the ironically named Hookingupsmart.com led to an article entitled “Why Do Feminists Find Abstinence Intolerable.” The original seems to be missing, but here is a quote:

Rachel Kramer Bussel, a sex writer and leader in the sex-positive movement, believes that casual sex is “under attack”:

“There’s a world of difference between being branded a sex object and choosing to be one…I may like to get spanked until I scream, but I still deserve to be treated as an intelligent human being… Feminists are just like any other women, and it’d be a shame for us to hold back in a misguided attempt to live up to the legacies of Susan B. Anthony and Gloria Steinem.”

The article goes on to list other “sex positive” feminist kinks that the postrational postmodern postchristian ladies demand be treated as liberating choices for women: Rape fantasies, BDSM, Swinging, Polyamory, Fisting, Bukkake, Prostitution and all forms of Porn. (It deeply saddens me that the internet has allowed me to know what all these terms mean, who had no such Hollywoodian knowledge in my youth.)

The article is from 2011. In 2025, social media is currently showing boasts by an internet harlot that she has coupled with a record breaking number of men in record time, outperforming even Empress Messalina at her most depraved.

Sex-positivity is newspeak for harlotry. We live in an era when prostitution, adultery, sluttish behavior is lauded, and chastity condemned. Ironically, this is done in the name of freedom.

The modern notion of freedom is an assertion of nothingness. Freedom is the lack of impediment to the willpower.

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Murphy’s War by Stephen G Johnson

Posted December 11, 2024 By John C Wright

These are books by a personal friend of mine, Steven G. Johnson, which I am willing to recommend just on the strength of his role playing games he moderated back when we were in school together. He knows how to cobble together a fun, fast-moving action-adventure plot.

Operation Vampirehttps://www.amazon.com/Operation-Vampire-Murphys-War-Book-ebook/dp/B0BNYC9QGF

Operation Reaperhttps://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0BNY9JWY8
Operation Zombiehttps://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0BNYB6VJZ
Operation Werewolfhttps://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0BNYC6GQN

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A World without Dogwhistles

Posted November 30, 2024 By John C Wright
I was trying to tell my children what it was like to live in a society where no one, and I mean NO ONE, noticed, mentioned, or applauded or condemned a man based on his skin color. We did not notice it any more than we noticed hair color.
 
The only “racism” in those days was as mild and milquetoast as “dumb blonde” jokes, or the stereotype that redheads were hot-tempered.

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Phalanxes of Fourier

Posted November 29, 2024 By John C Wright

A reader with the Edwardian but yummy name of Ed Pie asks why so many of the utopian communities founded in antebellum America were called “Phalanxes.”

The term comes from an early socialist writer Charles Fourier.

He envisioned a world organized into thousand-man work cooperatives called Phalanxes housed in uniform dormitories called Phalansteres.

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Historic Failures of Applied Socialism (Excerpt)

Posted November 29, 2024 By John C Wright

Apropos of our Thanksgiving column recounting the failure of the Mayflower pilgrims to enact the vain conceit of Plato to hold all property in common, we may eye this partial list of similar failures, and note not a single corresponding counterexample anywhere in all the annals of any tribe, tongue, people or nation. 

The text below is quoted from Historic Failures in Applied Socialism by Hon. Daniel J. Ryan (1921). 

The words below are his

  • A Catalogue of Failures

Over fifty years ago, John Humphrey Noyes, the founder of The Oneida Community, wrote a History of American Socialisms from which I have excerpted freely the facts that follow. Says he, “Though they may be faulty in some details, we are confident that the general idea they give of the attempts and experiences of American Socialists, will not be far from the truth.”

He gives the experiments of the Owen epoch as follows:

  1. Blue Spring Community; Indiana; no particulars, except that it lasted “but a short time. “
  2. Co-operative Society; Pennsylvania; no particulars.
  3. Coxsackie Community; New York; capital “small”; “very much in debt”; duration between one and two years.
  4. Forrestville Community; Indiana; “over 60 members”; 325 acres of land; duration more than a year.
  5. Franklin Community; New York; no particulars.
  6. Haverstraw Community; New York; about 80 members; 120 acres; debt $ 12,000; duration five months.
  7. Kendal Community; Ohio; 200 members; 200 acres; duration about two years.
  8. New Harmony; Indiana; 900 members; 30,000 acres, worth $ 150,000; duration nearly three years.
  9. Nashoba, Tennessee; 15 members; 2,000 acres; duration about three years.
  10. Yellow Springs Community; Ohio; 75 to 100 families; duration three months.

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Tunnel of Death in the London Underground

Posted November 29, 2024 By John C Wright

This is something directly from a Robert W Chambers horror story starring the King in Yellow, penned in the Victorian Era. He predicted the suicide booth.

In the following winter began that agitation for the repeal of the laws prohibiting suicide which bore its final fruit in the month of April, 1920, when the first Government Lethal Chamber was opened on Washington Square.

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Thanksgiving: The Vanity of Plato’s Conceit

Posted November 28, 2024 By John C Wright

As a public service, we reprint this column for any readers who may have missed it.

——————————————

For this Thanksgiving, let us give thanks for the lesson learned by the Pilgrims in the first harsh years of their colony.

The real history of the Mayflower Pilgrims was recounted by their leader, William Bradford, in his book Of Plymouth Plantation (1647).

The words below are his, where he explains how, at first the colonists attempted to hold all property in common:

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2024 Black Friday/Cyber Monday Based Book Sale

Posted November 27, 2024 By John C Wright

From our our Aether Czar, Hans Schantz

https://basedbooksale.substack.com/p/2024-black-fridaycyber-monday-based

Once again, it’s that special time of year when based authors take a moment away from their Thanksgiving plans to band together and promote each other’s work: books without the diversity checklists, woke tropes, and cultural programming of mainstream traditionally published stories.

Bypass the cultural gatekeeping, support non-woke authors, and get yourself some great based books from both established and emerging talent for only $0.99 – many titles free – but only for one week! The sale starts today, and it runs through Tuesday December 3.


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Mi-Go Journalism

Posted November 26, 2024 By John C Wright
I could not watch the whole clip, despite it being less than a minute. I choked on the falsehoods, and my vision swam with indignation.
 
I used to work in journalism, first as a newspaperman, then as an editor. I can solemnly assure you from the bottom of my heart that this creature is lying, and everything he says is a lie.
 
I call him a creature because he has foresworn his humanity. I suspect he is a lizard-being from Alpha Draconis, or Mi-Go, merely wearing a human mask of clever waxworks, with prosthetic appliances to mimic human hands or voice.
 

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Cultural Appropriation

Posted November 24, 2024 By John C Wright

Fabian Socialists, including the famed H.G. Wells, after observing the horrors and failed utopian promises of the Soviet revolution, urged a peaceful means of persuading the free world to surrender its freedom.

In his book THE OPEN CONSPIRACY (1928) Wells proposes the propaganda of the socialists convince all men that all resources be communally owned, including the open seas, the wildlife, and any natural resources.

Behind his prose lurks the idea that act of using resources, any resources used for any reason, was sinful, shameful, and must be curtailed.

The writings of Malthus, warning that population should not be allowed to expand beyond the rate at which arable land was brought under cultivation, lest war or starvation be the only means to restrict the population to the available resources.

This is a perennial error of the socialist, and no amount of counterevidence nor argument can cure it. Hatred of population growth is based in hatred of people.

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The Powers That Be

Posted November 23, 2024 By John C Wright

The Democrats are currently lost and leaderless, floundering in a paradox of their own creation.

This will last for a season, but will not last forever.

In the short term, the Dems cannot admit that they themselves are the Powers That Be against whom they stand in eternal rebellion, proud as Lucifer.

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