With a small number of exceptions, I find the fictions of John C. Wright not to my taste. However, as a general commentator, the man ranks with the best. Yesterday, he let fly with a jeremiad that Jeremiah would have envied. Have a brief taste:
All of our current society, as embodied in every major institution, are likewise aimed toward a purpose, but a far less noble one. The purpose is the opposite of Christendom. It is Antichristendom. The purpose is to conform the current laws and customs to the most hypocritical, perverse, and most wicked vices that benightedness can produce.
The purpose is falsehood.
Our age ventures to destroy civil order, to denature man, to defame heaven, and to establish and maintain an Empire of Lies. For our age is devout toward unreality, and worships untruth. Every major institution is fraudulent, fake, and false.
And that’s before Wright is fully warmed up. After that he “swings for the fences.” Please read it all.
With most commentators, I can find some points on which we disagree. That’s natural; after all, how often do two persons on this ball of mud agree on absolutely everything? Even the late Joseph Sobran, my commentator-hero whose style and penetration I’ve striven to emulate, differed with me about a couple of things, most notably in his criticisms of Israel. But in my opinion, Wright’s essay is a dead-center bull’s-eye. Andrew Klavan and others have discoursed on the “Empire of Lies,” but never with Wright’s precision, concision, and fury.
I don’t think I’ll have time for a regular essay today, so please read Wright’s opus and reflect on it. Yes, it’s unsparing. But perhaps the time has come for us – We the Perpetually Babied, who demand not merely tolerance but applause for the worst of our excesses, who’ve been told from innumerable sources that “Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law” – to be spared no longer.
Thanks and applause to Concerned American at Western Rifle Shooters for bringing this to my attention.
3 comments
World of coincidence. I had just finished Wright’s essay when I clicked over here this morning. It is a barn burner for sure. I’ll concur on his science fiction. I read the “Count to a Trillion” series all the way to the end. I really wanted to like it, but… Some of the short stories are good, though.
I had the misfortune of majoring in English in college, because I wanted to become a teacher. (I know…) About the only thing I got from school was that it totally destroyed my love of reading. Joyce, DH Lawrence, and Henry James pounded a stake right through the heart of it. Years later I picked up one of Anne McCaffery’s Pern novels. That lit the fire again, and for several years I devoured science fiction. Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time sort of ended that burn. I got to the next to the last book, when he died. Somehow I never took the time to finish. A few years back I read your Spooner Federation series. It was a blast, but I still haven’t been able to get into reading novels of any sort again. Time changes all things. There will be time…
JWM
Misanthropic sustainability has a purpose, simply one that certainly isn’t Godly. So many have caught on to what the end goal is, how did this author miss it?
Maybe I missed him getting it. I surely would like to be shown where.
Author
Few persons are willing to confront the reality: that those who hold the levers of power actively hate the rest of us. Even most who grasp this are unwilling to acknowledge the depths of that hatred.