This is from a longtime guest here with the binary and cardological name of the Deuce wrote a comment so clear and trenchant that it bears repeating and emphasis:
I wrote:
Guest Post Archive
Guest Post: On Nominalism
Posted April 13, 2026 By John C WrightAquinas on Power
Posted August 6, 2025 By John C WrightA reader with the cervine yet accipitrid name of Rudolph Harrier wrote so adroit and clear a summary of the flaws of modern political discourse, that I am impelled to quote it here in full, without further comment:
Modern philosophy does not have any coherent explanation of authority. That is, why should I be morally obligated to obey the government?
The only answer that comes close to reality is an appeal to force, i.e. that if I do not obey I will be jailed or worse. But this is not an argument for why the government has the authority to order me, only why they have the ability to force me.
As tyrants have no valid authority, but they have the ability to terrorize their subjects, even this is not a coherent theory of the authority of the government.
If we say that “the government is the will of the people”, there is of course the question of whether they actually are (certainly many governments claim to do the will of the people even when they manifestly do not.) But why am I obligated to obey the will of the people in the first place? This is a particularly hard sell in the twenty first century, since students are routinely told that the will of their ancestors was to enslave, oppress, rape, pillage, etc.
Aquinas could say that a just human law is derived from the eternal law, and by this it binds the conscience. But modern philosophy cannot allow an eternal law. Aquinas can say that a law is unjust if it exceeds the power given to the one making it, but without a coherent idea of authority in the modern world each man’s “power” is what he is able to get away with. Aquinas can say that a law is unjust if it is unequally applied, since it is an affront to justice, but in the modern world “justice” has no more meaning than things like “equity”, “fairness” or “niceness.”
So to sidestep all this the early moderns needed a “just so” story to explain why you were obligated to follow a system that had no backing from God’s law, and which you never agreed to. The story of course never literally happened, and does not make sense when examined in detail, but its purpose is not as a serious argument but rather as an excuse to get you to accept the law of might makes right without realizing it.
Unconditional Surrender
Posted October 26, 2023 By John C WrightJed is my college roommate and lifelong friend. This is his letter to the Review and Outlook section of the WALL STREET JOURNAL, Oct. 24. I share the sentiments.
To the Editor:
In 1945, the Allied powers demanded unconditional surrender of the German government, and the total dismantlement of the Nazi regime. Civilian households throughout Germany hung white sheets from their windows as a signal of acquiescence and defeat to the advancing Allied armies. Russian soldiers raped two million German women. This was the heartbreaking price that Germany had to pay for the choices of its democratically elected leaders, and its quiescent citizenry.
Because Israel is the Jewish state, there will be no rape of the Palestinians. But bad choices, even democratic ones, have their ineluctable consequences. The necessary corrective of fire and lead which will presently descend upon Gaza can properly end only with white sheets and the destruction of Hamas. Like the Nazis in the final days of April 1945, Hamas won’t hesitate to slaughter its own citizens who show insufficient resolve. Regrettably, this is a price Gazans must now pay.
Only then will the stage be set for a Palestinian Adenauer to arise, who can lead his people to the peaceful prosperity that Israel has unflaggingly offered since the day of its founding.
Jed Arkin
Tel Aviv, Israel
Moore on the China Virus
Posted October 4, 2023 By John C WrightThis remark by Joseph Moore in our comments merits the spotlight as its own guest column. The objections raised here are wise and clear. Would that the greater mass of common folk had heard voices like this.
The words below are his.
*** *** ***
While a certain amount of trust is needed in all human interactions, the glory of formal, modern science properly so called is that the rules of the game require:
- you show all your work – no hiding or fudging data, no secret steps involved;
- you answer your critics – all legitimate questions must be addressed;
- other people have be able to reproduce the results you got using the same or similar methods;
- you must tell us what you are counting (science, as our host points out, is the study of the metrical properties of physical objects). If spelling out exactly what you are counting seems easy or pedantic to you, then you are scientifically illiterate.
Do these things, spell them out in your paper or study, and you have my provisional trust. I will take the claims of your work seriously.
Neglect or refuse to do any of the above, and you’ve surrendered any claim to be doing science, and lost any claims on an honest man’s trust in your work.
I read about a dozen papers that came out at the beginning of the COVID panic, and a couple more over the next year. I stopped reading studies at that point, because, WITHOUT EXCEPTION, every last one of them violated two or more of the principles outlined above.
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Guest Column: The New Paganism
Posted June 27, 2023 By John C WrightHilaire Belloc generously agreed to pen an essay on the most recent topics, ripped from current headlines, for my journal today.
That is did so precisely one ninety-two years ago, in 1931, is a testament to the width of his worldview, its universal application, which grants him prescience akin to prophecy.
One might even call such a universal worldview catholic.
— The New Paganism —
by Hilaire Belloc
Our civilization developed as a Catholic civilization. It developed and matured as a Catholic thing. With the loss of the Faith it will slip back not only into Paganism, but into barbarism with the accompaniments of Paganism, and especially the institution of slavery. It will find gods to worship, but they will be evil gods as were those of the older savage Paganism before it began its advance towards Catholicism.
The road downhill is the same as the road up the hill. It is the same road, but to go down back into the marshes again is a very different thing from coming up from the marshes into pure air. All things return to their origin. A living organic being, whether a human body or a whole state of society, turns at last into its original elements if life be not maintained in it. But in that process of return there is a phase of corruption which is very unpleasant.
That phase the modern world outside the Catholic Church has arrived at.
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Filed in Guest Post, Wisdom
Seven Answers to the Problem of Pain
Posted May 8, 2023 By John C WrightA reader with the sunny, angelic, yet septentrionic name of Uriel7 penned a miniature guest column last year, which was brought to my attention again, and which I think merits repeating:
There are seven answers to “the problem of pain” or “how to be happy”.
The Buddhist answer. Existence is pain. Happiness is illusion. Blessedness comes from cessation of existence.
The Pantheist answer. Division – existence as a separate being – is pain. Happiness is found by becoming one with everything – cessation of existence as an individual being.
The Hedonist answer. Existence is pointless suffering and happiness is a lie. Existence can be rendered more tolerable by the maximization of pleasure and minimization of pain.
The Stoic answer. Existence is suffering. The self-commanded man can become happy by disregarding pleasure & pain, becoming indifferent to the travails of the world and motivated only by his sovereign will.
The Gnostic/Bolshevik answer. The current state of existence is a lie designed to entrap and disenfranchise men by an evil and arbitrary authority. The internalization of this evil system by men produces suffering. Happiness can be found if the current order is destroyed; thus, for salvation to be accomplished, both the current state of existence and the nature of man must be changed. This change can only be accomplished by transgression and destruction. The new order of salvation will arise once sufficient transgression and destruction has been accomplished, bringing happiness.
The Theistic answer. Suffering is brought about by transgression of the Law, given by God. Salvation comes through following the Law. If you are saved, God will make you happy. This understanding is fundamentally transactional; pay undeserved suffering & obedience, receive happiness.
The Christian answer. For man, suffering and death came with the Fall. God blessed and hallowed suffering and death by Himself choosing to suffer and die – so He does not ask of us anything He has not done Himself.
Salvation comes via cooperation with God – He who is the Real, the Beautiful, the True, and the Good in His very nature.
This cooperation is accomplished through obedience and imitation of Christ, the Logos – the Way, the Truth, and the Life, the right order and reason of all things.
Obedience consists, in part, of accepting suffering – to “embrace the Cross” as our Captain sought and embraced His Cross. Happiness, in this life and the next, comes from union with God – a “marriage” between God and man. This is a non-transactional relationship. Ultimately, those Saved will become Sons of God – things like Himself, in union with Him.
Filed in Guest Post, Wisdom
Metropolis and the Catholic Imagination
Posted February 9, 2023 By John C WrightI had long believed and said that Fritz Lang’s silent movie masterpiece METROPOLIS was socialist propaganda. I now retract that opinion, because the words of a reader with the Arthurian yet Germanic name of Geheret have opened my eyes. I reproduce his comment to me below, and invite anyone of my former opinion to join me in reconsidering.
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From the Pen of Dave Wolverton
Posted December 7, 2022 By John C WrightDave Wolverton’s “On Writing as a Fantasist” (originally appeared Tangent #18, Spring 1997) in my opinion is the clearest summary of the causes and aims of modernism in mainstream fiction, and the most trenchant criticism of it. I here reproduce the main center of the column as a courtesy to my readers, and because his words bear rereading:
*** *** ***
The postmodern literary establishment grew out of the philosophies of William Dean Howells (1837-1920), the “Father of Modern Realism,” who was an editor for The Atlantic Monthly from 1866-1876.
He claimed that authors had gone astray by being imitators of one another rather than of nature. He proscribed writing about “interesting” characters–such as famous historical figures or creatures of myth.
He decried exotic settings—places such as Rome or Pompeii, and he denounced tales that told of uncommon events. He praised stories that dealt with the everyday, where “nobody murders or debauches anybody else; there is no arson or pillage of any sort; there is no ghost, or a ravening beast, or a hair-breadth escape, or a shipwreck, or a monster of self-sacrifice, or a lady five thousand years old in the course of the whole story.”
He denounced tales with sexual innuendo. He said that instead he wanted to publish stories about the plight of the “common man,” just living an ordinary existence. Because Howells was the editor of the largest and most powerful magazine of the time (and because of its fabulous payment rates, a short story sale to that magazine could support a writer for a year or two), his views had a tremendous influence on American writers.
But as a writer of fantastic literature, I immediately have to question Howells’s dictates on a number of grounds.
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Filed in Guest Post, Musings
54 Babies by George F Will
Posted August 6, 2022 By John C WrightJust a reminder. This article is from 1998.
Do not be impatient with the imprecision of their language. They have not read the apposite Supreme Court opinions. So when they stumbled on the boxes stuffed with 54 fetuses, which looked a lot like babies, they jumped to conclusions. Besides, young boys are apt to believe their eyes rather than the Supreme Court.
The first count came to a lot less than 54. Forgive the counters’ imprecision. Many fetuses had been dismembered — hands, arms, legs, heads jumbled together — by the abortionist’s vigor. An accurate count required a lot of sorting out.
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Seven Answers to the Problem of Pain
Posted May 22, 2022 By John C WrightA reader with the sunny, angelic, yet septentrionic name of Uriel7 makes a comment worth repeating in full. I present it here as a miniature guest essay:
There are seven answers to “the problem of pain” or “how to be happy”.
No Award (Part Eight) Finale
Posted April 14, 2022 By John C WrightThis article first appeared on the now-defunct NerdHQ blog.
“No Award”
The Hugo Awards, Sad Puppies, and Sci-Fi/Fantasy Literature
Part VIII: Is Reconciliation Possible?
By Chris Chan
This is 8 in 8 hence the last in a series of articles.
No Award (Part Seven)
Posted April 7, 2022 By John C WrightThis article first appeared on the now-defunct NerdHQ blog.
“No Award”
The Hugo Awards, Sad Puppies, and Sci-Fi/Fantasy Literature
Part VII: What is a Hugo Nominator to Do?
By Chris Chan
This is 7 in 8 in a series of articles.
No Award (Part Six)
Posted April 4, 2022 By John C WrightThis article first appeared on the now-defunct NerdHQ blog.
“No Award”
The Hugo Awards, Sad Puppies, and Sci-Fi/Fantasy Literature
Part VI: TITLE
By Chris Chan
This is 6 in 8 in a series of articles.
No Award (Part Five)
Posted March 31, 2022 By John C WrightThis article first appeared on the now-defunct NerdHQ blog.
“No Award”
The Hugo Awards, Sad Puppies, and Sci-Fi/Fantasy Literature
Part V: A Look at the Hugo Voting Numbers
By Chris Chan
This is 5 of 8 in a series of articles.
No Award (Part Four)
Posted March 29, 2022 By John C WrightThis article first appeared on the now-defunct NerdHQ blog.
“No Award”
The Hugo Awards, Sad Puppies, and Sci-Fi/Fantasy Literature
Part IV: It’s Not Just the Hugos–
How Similar Issues are Shaking Up Other Awards, Literary Culture, and Fandom
By Chris Chan
This is 4 of 8 in a series of articles.
