Wisdom Archive

This is the Work to be Done

Posted October 22, 2022 By John C Wright

A unexpected guest column from our own radio-jockeyish yet thaumaturgical RJ Wizard. The words below are his. Perhaps we should heed them:

These comments follow a pattern. Mr. Wright posts the latest miscarriage of justice, and several commenters (not always the same ones) howl War! and suggest we lower ourselves to various, but not explicitly identified, forms of violence. I don’t think most people realize how far down the pike we are. That they so freely and without thought throw such words out there, out of all context and consideration.

I just read Walker Percy’s THE MOVIEGOER published in 1960 (that is 62 years ago, more than two generations have passed) and one of his characters laments the post-Christian world of lax sexual visions.

Post-Christian. Think about that. Walker Percy was no dummy (see LOVE in the RUINS). 1960. He was calling it, our world, his Southern, Bible-belt world, post-Christian before the onslaught of the sexual revolution made its first major assault (though the battle was well underway plenty before then) and the general downfall in public decorum, manners. Before the full on assault on education, morality and every single thing that Western Civilization stands for and rests upon was openly underway. Before openly and publicly spitting on Christ was openly and publicly applauded. Before Christian was a sneer word. Before Jesus was invited into the pot circle as an eastern guru in the late 60’s and early 70’s.

Now if it be true that it was already a post-Christian world by then, what is it now sixty-two years later?

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Coop Le Presto on Celeborn’s Glory

Posted September 19, 2022 By John C Wright

I found this comment while wandering at random amid the wilds of social media, and asked Mr. LePresto to share it with you. The words below are his:


Shout out to my man Celeborn.

According to the Rings of Power, Galadriel is THE MOST insufferable, toxic, unlikable, arrogant, conceited, self-centered, RETARDED, elf on Middle Earth and one of the most incompetent leaders you could have the misfortune of serving under.

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Remark on Geo RR Martin

Posted June 15, 2022 By John C Wright

A friend sent me this remark, and I pass it along without comment:

The issue Martin ran into with ASOIAF [A Song of Ice and Fire] is, ironically, one of this own hand… he spent five books subverting expectations, killing key characters, torturing and scattering the survivors to the ends of creation… and only now realized that there’s no way in hell he can actually bring them all back in one place and piece together a story that makes sense in just two books. The problem with endless deconstruction is that, eventually, you have nothing left to build with.

That legacy is why Martin will never write the book – the old hippie has made his life’s work a refutation of classic fantasy like Tolkien, and admitting that maybe he was wrong? That would sting worse than even declining sales. Better an unfinished book with a ton of questions than a badly ended one that disproves its own central thesis.

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Manrepairman on Antiwhite Nihilism

Posted December 20, 2021 By John C Wright

Divine providence lead me to read a column by a writer with the humanitarian restorational name of Man-Repairman. It is called Antiwhite Nihilism and voices conclusions with which logic compels me most strongly to agree.

He begins thus:

… As of 2020, 7% of Americans identify as black Christians. Most Americans today, if asked, would verbally identify themselves as being Christians. However, based on the beliefs and behavior that I and others have personally observed, this is not the case. Many nominal Christians, to varying degrees, do not actually believe what they claim to believe. Most people in the United States have a syncretistic belief system comprised of some Christianity mixed with ideas pulled from the wider culture.

He continues:

Now to explain Antiwhite Nihilism.

The “antiwhite” part is pretty easy to understand on its face, and it is the less important concept. I use that term as a modifier for the core of this philosophy – nihilism. Nihilism rejects the concept of objective truth. Truth doesn’t exist. Or it exists but cannot be known with any degree of certainty. Or it exists and can be known, but it doesn’t matter. Antiwhite nihilism can be summarized thusly – it is a philosophy which abandons truth in its attack on whiteness and/or white people. Most people probably wouldn’t self-identify as nihilists (more would be willing to identify as explicitly antiwhite), but their philosophical foundations are logically implied by what they profess believe.

 

Specifically, the modern incarnation of Marxist thought that currently dominates American culture is nihilistic. Marxism rejects the concepts of objective truth and rational thought as a tools of white supremacy. In fact, antiwhite nihilism can largely be seen as originating from modern Marxist thought. To such people, there is no “truth”. There are only competing narratives. Marxism posits that the dominant ideology of the ruling class cannot be maintained for long simply through violence.

The column can be found here:

Repairing Black Thought

  • Part I:

Theory of Antiwhite Nihilism – Part 1: Paper Christians

  • Part II:

Theory of Antiwhite Nihilism – Part 2: A Definition

(Note: I am flattered the author links back to my columns on THE LAST CRUSADE, showing, it seems, our respect is mutual.)

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The Doc Savage Formula

Posted December 19, 2021 By John C Wright

Lester Dent was the staff writer who, under the house name Kenneth Robeson, penned all but 20 of these 181 novel-length tales of the science adventurer and globetrotting detective Clark Savage, Jr. Dent created a workmanlike product, on tight deadline, to his wordcount.

And a hero who lives on in popular culture forever was born: the Man of Bronze, DOC SAVAGE.

He was once asked to outline the formula for the pacing and plotting his successful creation. The answer is an entertaining read, and involves swatting the hero with a fistful of trouble in the opening act, then then shoveling more grief on him later, when he gets it in the neck.

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Complicity

Posted October 29, 2021 By John C Wright


From Lifesite News: Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò releases to the public an October 23 letter sent to to Cardinal Luis F. Ladaria S.J., Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, and to Archbishop José Gomez, President of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, as well as to all the bishops of the United States of America. This letter is printed below, in whole, without comment.

Your Eminences, Your Excellencies,

I address you, Archbishop Gómez, as President of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, and to you, Cardinals Ladaria and Müller, for your competence, some serious considerations related to the so-called vaccines against Covid-19.

I believe there are some aspects of the question that now allow for a more complete evaluation of what these drugs are and what effects they cause; this evaluation ought to lead to a collegial stance, in conformity with the Magisterium of the Church and not influenced by biased information or by erroneous news spread by the producers of these drugs or by the media.

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Guest Column by Milo Yiannopoulos 

Posted July 15, 2021 By John C Wright
I wanted to share this column by my old boss with my readers, only to discover that it seems to have vanished from its original spot (which, for the record, is here: https://www.churchmilitant.com/news/article/milo-it-was-always-about-the-kids).
At the risk of a breach of Internet etiquette, I here reproduce the whole, unedited, to preserve a copy, just in case. If it reappears on Church Militant, read it there, along with the illos, and peruse their other offerings.

It Was Always About the Kids

by Milo Yiannopoulos  •  ChurchMilitant.com  •  July 8, 2021

“You think that we’ll corrupt your kids if our agenda goes unchecked. Just this once … you’re correct. We’ll convert your children, happens bit by bit, quietly and subtly. We’ll convert your children, reaching one and all. There’s really no escaping it. We’re coming for your children! We’re coming for your children! We’re coming for your children!”

Creepy or what? You’re probably wondering where I found this terrifying threat. An early episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer? The trailer to Blumhouse Productions’ latest horror blockbuster, perhaps? A dream journal lifted from an insane asylum?

Nope. These are song lyrics from an organization more sinister and frightening than any scary movie you had in mind: the San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus (SFGMC), a crying circle for Bay Area pederasts.

It’s what happens when clerical sexual abuse meets soullessness, joylessness and tunelessness.

The song, which keeps disappearing from YouTube because even leftists are shocked by its accidental truthfulness, cannot be unseen.

Musically, it is terrible, and of course boring — because ideas this ugly cannot be expressed in beautiful words or melodies. The singers look haunted — because they are. The message is unvarnished, explicit, unequivocal: It was always about the kids.

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Medieval Roots of Classical Liberalism

Posted May 25, 2021 By John C Wright

A reader with the alphanumeric name of dgg3536 writes the following. I repost the whole as a guest column, with no further comment from me, save for a silent ovation of agreement:

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Arianism nearly swallowed the Church, then it disappeared. Heresies burn themselves out with time. Protestantism is certainly sputtering at this point, but at the same time, more and more Protestants are becoming Catholic, where they aren’t apostatizing. One often finds green shoots among the ashes.

But on the issues of Classical Liberalism and Marxism, I think the situation is a bit more of a tangle than it first appears. As someone mentioned, the nominalism of the Late Middle Ages certainly contributed to the genetic makeup of the Left, but if we’re looking for concrete precedents, then Machiavelli’s The Prince is a prime example.

There you have utility as virtue, the will to power, stability as government’s first end, and the all-powerful secular state. And it circulated in manuscript form before Luther nailed up his Ninety-Five Theses.

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Funeral of a Great Myth by CS Lewis

Posted April 23, 2021 By John C Wright

A reader with the twice saintly name of Andrew Philips writes:

Liberalism is a dead end. The humanist “enlightenment” was a bad idea. Humanist anything is a bad idea, for man is not the measure of all things. Man is not even the measure of himself. Maximizing freedom for its own sake has given us clown-world. What matters is the Good, and laws that promote the Good. Letting each man define the Good for himself is modernist nonsense. We should repent of it.

My comment: Amen. As a once-staunch defensor infidei, so to speak, of the Enlightenment values of humanism and all that laicist humbug, I would like to say a eulogy over its corpse, and consign the undead spirit into the soil.

But a wiser man than I, who, like me, in his youth was lured by the siren-song, and woke only later, has already done so. I repeat the eulogy in full, without comment. It was written in 1944, and published in 1967, posthumously.

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Today’s Recommended Reading

Posted March 25, 2021 By John C Wright

I recommend this 2016 essay by our generation’s G.K. Chesterton, our own beloved Tom Simon:

‘You’re No Good’

It begins with a discussion of a rhythm and blues song, moves onto the horror of plastic knives at picnics, and dives into the deeper waters of discussing the goodness of mosquitoes, the Human Extinction Movement, and other matters of import.

Here is one paragraph from the second half, to whet your curiosity to read more:

A rather saintly German pastor, who had suffered terrible things at the hands of the Nazis, was once brought before Hitler himself. When asked what the Führer looked like, he said, ‘Like any man; that is, like Christ.’ He was capable of seeing the image of God even in his most dangerous enemy. He would not have said to Hitler, ‘You’re no good’; he would have been more likely to say, ‘You have a great capacity for good; why don’t you use it?’ It probably would not have averted the war or the Holocaust, because Hitler was convinced that these things actually were good; but it would at any rate have left the door open for a miracle.

.

Years later, another visitor came away with a hauntingly human image of Hitler. Siegfried Knappe, a young Wehrmacht officer (he was twenty-eight when the war ended) who was briefly the youngest divisional commander in German history, was in Berlin during the final agony of 1945. His superiors sent him to Hitler’s bunker to deliver some bad news, fearing (with justification) that he would do drastic things to them if they delivered it personally.

By all means, read the whole thing.

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The Art and Craft of Writing

Posted March 15, 2021 By John C Wright

My lovely and talented wife has penned a book putting into words the valuable insights both yours truly and a number of authors whose names you may have heard have found useful to our craft:

THE ART AND CRAFT OF WRITING

Book Description:

Up your writing game!

Delve into the secrets of writing fiction, presented in clear language to make them immediate and usable.

Insights into theme, character, description, plot, portraying emotions, avoiding infodumps, dealing with tropes, and more.

New hope for writers in despair.

“The course is a treasure trove of practical, positive advice you can use immediately to improve your WIP or solidify your ideas for a new project.” Marina Fontaine, author of Chasing Freedom.

“I took L. Jagi Lamplighter Wright’s “Guinea Pig” writing class in November of 2018 and it definitely upped my game. Since “graduating” her course, I’ve sold over 30 short stories and 2 novellas (as of February 2021). Thanks, Jagi.” —James Pyles, author of multiple published short stories.

“I especially liked how you simply laid out ideas about story and characters, which instantly made me go, ‘Oh, yeah! I’ve seen that before!’… I felt that these were techniques that would have taken me ages to work out on my own, and seeing them simply stated has seriously helped me as a writer.”—Billy Charlton, teen student.

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A Homily Worth Hearing

Posted March 9, 2021 By John C Wright

Of late, my Church has kept shameful silence on matters of eternal consequences. From time to time, however, one of the shepherds of the body of Christ speaks with authority, not like the Pharisees.

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Five Deaths of the Faith

Posted March 2, 2021 By John C Wright

We are pleased to present a guest column from the great G.K. Chesterton, whom a wart-nosed gypsy witch, known to be reliable about such things, told me once was my pre-incarnation from a former life.

Her words were confirmed by a flock of sardonic ravens, whose ominous motions and croaks were interpreted by a scholarly augur of sterling repute.

Myself, I can only report that I do not believe in the stuff and nonsense of reincarnation. Unlawful necromantic interviews with the ghosts of my past selves have lead to too many discussions of unneeded theological complexity.

Just the matter of indulgences and purgatory for sins committed in the current life while priors shades of the same soul suffer in the flames lead to bewilderment.

Worse still, being visited by the foreshadows of subsequent selves from years yet to come, asking me to help arrange the meeting and marriages of ancestors foretold to give rise to incarnations of myself yet unborn, is disquieting. Legal quarrels about wills, trusts and estates for lives not yet in being also become vexatious, when I try to leave my own property to myself.

Better to have each man live once, and after, face judgment.

So while I would like to resemble Mr. Chesterton in wit as I do in weight, for the nonce, I can only quote him.

The text is taken from THE EVERLASTING MAN, Part 2, Chapter VI, “The Five Deaths of the Faith.”

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A Psalm for Lent

Posted February 18, 2021 By John C Wright

Psalm 94: The Lord Will Not Forget His People

O LORD God, to whom vengeance belongeth; O God, to whom vengeance belongeth, shew thyself.

Lift up thyself, thou judge of the earth: render a reward to the proud.

LORD, how long shall the wicked, how long shall the wicked triumph?

How long shall they utter and speak hard things? and all the workers of iniquity boast themselves?

They break in pieces thy people, O LORD, and afflict thine heritage.

They slay the widow and the stranger, and murder the fatherless.

Yet they say, The LORD shall not see, neither shall the God of Jacob regard it.

Understand, ye brutish among the people: and ye fools, when will ye be wise?

He that planted the ear, shall he not hear? he that formed the eye, shall he not see?

He that chastiseth the heathen, shall not he correct? he that teacheth man knowledge, shall not he know?

The LORD knoweth the thoughts of man, that they are vanity.

Blessed is the man whom thou chastenest, O LORD, and teachest him out of thy law;

That thou mayest give him rest from the days of adversity, until the pit be digged for the wicked.

For the LORD will not cast off his people, neither will he forsake his inheritance.

But judgment shall return unto righteousness: and all the upright in heart shall follow it.

Who will rise up for me against the evildoers? or who will stand up for me against the workers of iniquity?

Unless the LORD had been my help, my soul had almost dwelt in silence.

When I said, My foot slippeth; thy mercy, O LORD, held me up.

In the multitude of my thoughts within me thy comforts delight my soul.

Shall the throne of iniquity have fellowship with thee, which frameth mischief by a law?

They gather themselves together against the soul of the righteous, and condemn the innocent blood.

But the LORD is my defence; and my God is the rock of my refuge.

And he shall bring upon them their own iniquity, and shall cut them off in their own wickedness; yea, the LORD our God shall cut them off.

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A Comment Worth Repeating

Posted January 14, 2021 By John C Wright

I was haunting the blog of Larry Correia, who is a bestselling author that I highly recommend, especially his brilliant Hard Magic series, his rollicking Monster Hunter Series, and his hilarious Tom Stranger Interdimensional Insurance yarns, and his most exceptional Saga of the Forgotten Sword series, which is his best work yet.

I came across the trenchant remark below, by one of his readers, which I repeat in full.

Tis from an man codenamed Archer, who describes himself thus: “In no particular order: Cynic, thinker, husband, father, tinkerer, Christian, conservative with libertarian tendencies, gun owner, freedom activist, IT guy. No, I will not fix your computer.”

His website is here: http://notonemoregunlaw.blogspot.com/

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