If I say “I’m not a particularly political person” in front of my husband and kids, they’ll probably laugh so hard that they’ll break something. And yet it’s true.
I’m not a particularly political person, though I am aware of and anxious about politics, because seeing a country slide into ever more leftist and dysfunctional regimes while the media covers up the results and attributes them to “bad luck” is one of those things one only cares to do once per life time. So I have an obsession with the news (and these days blogs) and sometimes I can only work in front of the TV, if things are particularly iffy (the three months after 9/11.)
I’m not a particularly political person because I don’t think there is a one-size fits all political solution for every land. I believe, by and large the United States constitution is the best way ever come up with to organize government and the people, but I’m not saying improvements couldn’t be suggested that would enhance individual liberty and keep government in check. I’m rather enamored of Heinlein’s idea of having a chamber JUST to repeal laws and prune the hydra-like growth of over regulation.
I’m also not going to say that in a different world, with different technology/setup a better system couldn’t be created.
Unlike the collectivists, I don’t have this dream that human nature will suddenly change. So the only things I truly believe in is that individuals know what is better for them better than the government, and that individuals should be allowed to spend their wealth in the way they see fit, which is likely to accrue greater benefit to society than having the government take it and spend it in the way the government sees fit. Studies about the buying of gifts, and studies of how one spends one’s own as opposed to “found” money (like lottery wins) would seem to confirm this in spades.
So in almost all circumstances, I pick the ticket/candidate who will have a possibility of being closer to the founding principles, fully cognizant half the time the choice is between bad and worse, and also fully cognizant of the fact that there are circumstances in which greater individual autonomy has to be sacrificed to third party control, such as during war (but not the “moral equivalent of war” which gets tricky.)
Because I’m not devoted to a universal solution to the human condition, and because furthermore, the idea of being recruited to preside over the implementation of any regime gives me the cold grue (Terry Pratchett about nailed it when he said “it would be like cleaning other people’s rooms for them”. Apparently I’m not normal, or perhaps I’m normal to half the breed but not the other half, because there seems to be a lot of people who would do anything for power. I’ve often wondered what kind of broken is in them that they feel the need to control others as if that were the only way they’d be safe. Marx, btw, who “reads” Asperger’s, completely failed to take that impulse into account.) I feel zero compulsion to write characters that follow this or that ideology, spout this or that solution to mankind’s problems, and/or write about the paradise to come under enlightened rulers.
But Sarah, you’ll say – Darkships! And, possibly more when you read it A Few Good Men!
Well, science fiction, by its nature, pulls into the writers’ understanding of both people’s motives and historical facts. And that means that it will read “political” to many people, though really I’m just world building and playing with my characters’ circumstances.
As Heinlein once said – I think, though this is a wild paraphrase – I’d be very disappointed if any of my readers just reads the book and agrees with everything in it. The goal is always to make you think.
Which is not to say I don’t think individual will is more moral than control by the state, or that the right to own property individually doesn’t, ultimately, redound to greater wealth than all the collectivist dreams – but that’s because I’ve read both history and economics, and I’ve lived through a good chunk of it, in a small country whose revolution was about as well understood by the American media as the current “Arab Spring.” (Sometimes there just isn’t a side to cheer for, something progressives fail to get because they think history is sentient and has favorites.)
Anyway – while you might find politics (MY politics) – in my science fiction, you’d have a really hard time figuring out who I was voting for in almost any election based on that. Because that’s not the point of the books.
And my other books are virtually apolitical. Except, of course, for my understanding of human nature. I realized, for instance, that Tom and Kyrie do fit the model of industrious small businessmen, and do not reach for government handouts which in the era of “you didn’t build that” might strike inquisitors determined to ferret heresy as contentious. However, since my mother built and ran a business while I was growing up, it is just what I saw happening.
So I’ve always stayed away from speaking of politics in this blog – reserving anything I felt a need to say for PJM or Classical Values.
Part of this was mere prudence. Until recently if Baen dropped me, I’d be in a position of never working again (and now I’m not sure if I’ll be able to live exclusively from indie, but that’s something else. Sometimes you do what you must do.) The other part is that I like people. I like most of my colleagues, respect a good number of them, and only laugh at their politics because crying would make my mascara run.
Most of my colleagues are good people, see, and good people believe what they were told in school, and what they’re told by the “real” media, and… And didn’t have eye-opening experiences like reading Time magazine completely misreport an event they’d been present at to present a “triumphant democracy” slant on something that was a communist takeover.
I can’t fault them for that. I’d give my right arm and all its typing fingers not to have gone through/seen what I did before 18. The desire to believe the mainstream narrative is correct is so great, and the fear I’m crazy for not believing it even though I was there so strong that even now, thirty years later, I’m likely to cry with relief when I come across an American who KNOWS — because he was there, or because he worked in some position that made him have to know – my recollection and not the collective myth is true.
So I understand my colleagues, and still like them despite the fact much of what they favor would destroy the country and my life and the life of those I love. They don’t know that, see – and at heart they’re good people. So, I don’t want to pick fights.
When they post stunningly ignorant, smug little posters with gloating type slogans that they think “prove” everything, I just unsubscribe from their updates. And I go on.
Oh, there is another reason. I don’t care what my favorite writers believe, so long as the story grips me. Pratchett’s ideas on fiat currency make me want to dent a wall with my forehead. It doesn’t mean he isn’t a god among writers or that I don’t love the other parts of the book.
The exception is when I’m reading some book where the author brings the action to a screeching halt and goes into current politics (for when the book was written) by name. I’m likely to feel that way about both sides, mind. I don’t want to be reading a mystery and suddenly fall headlong into a rant about Clinton, any more than I want to fall headlong into a hate screed about Reagan. What makes it worse, though, is that often these go on the “preferred narrative of the left” such as that Reagan was going to bankrupt us AND get us in a war. I’m reading this thirty years later and my ability to believe anything this author tells me, including but not limited to that the sky is blue in her world just went out the window. Which, you see, is a problem.
However I’m aware that a lot of readers – usually hard, loony left – vet on beliefs of the AUTHOR and not the book, and that the hard loony left, with their incessant screeching have a way of cowing the soft left and even a lot of the center into place and convincing them NEVER to read someone because they’re “sexist/racist/homophobic.” I’ve watched them do this to Heinlein, possibly one of the least racist/sexist/homophobic writers of his generation and it wasn’t worth my dime to have them do that to me. I figured they were never going to love me, but they also wouldn’t find enough energy to hate me, provided I didn’t talk about politics openly outside books.
And that’s where we’ve been for the last few years, though I started talking more about my beliefs in the last year, with the possibility of indie.
Except…
Except when people like me stay quiet, when for our self-interest and because the loony left are vindictive harpies (particularly the men) as fond of free speech as your average brown shirt, we allow the other side to define us. As we saw in that stunningly clueless comment yesterday, they’ll decide it’s all race, or that we want to control their ladyparts, because that’s the screams from the other side, who would much rather you don’t look at their record, or, OMG Benghazi.
We don’t say “I’m voting for so and so, not because he’s ideal but because our debt is so massive that otherwise we’re going to have a collapsed economy (I probably SHOULD write about living in a collapsed economy. Most of what you guys envision is far direr than what it is – OTOH the fragmentation happens in interesting ways and with a country this much bigger, it could be MORE lethal in spots.) and a health care system that won’t work at all, which kind of affects me/mine and can’t be allowed.”
That means they get to decide we hate gay people, or black people, or that we’re all textual Christian fundamentalists or that…
Among the regular readers of this blog, I know several agnostic, a few atheists, at least one Buddhist (hi sweetie!), an adherent to an offbeat Muslim sect (or perhaps it’s not considered Muslim. The Muslims hate it, at any rate), at least a handful of pagans of various descriptions, and yes, a contingent of Jews and Christians, some of whom even belong to defined sects within their religion (but not all.) Yeah, I also have at least one very devout Christian fundamentalist (hi sweetie!)
I have no idea what shades y’all are, but when I was growing up and spent a lot of time outside, and when afro perms were in fashion, shop keepers in Portugal – much more so than here – called me “the young lady of color.” My older son looks like a younger Marco Rubio. My younger son, OTOH could blend into any IDF unit unremarked, save perhaps for being a bit darker than any of them. (Right now he’s growing a beard and a ridiculous moustache, and could also blend into any foreign legion posts as a French assassin – ah, mon dieu.) I’m going to assume the rest of you are just as varied. If you aren’t it doesn’t matter either. Who the heck cares what something that’s literally skin deep does when we’re all related several ways. (We’ve reasons to believe that at various times the human population was reduced to a few thousand, if not a few hundred. So you and you and you and you are all my cousins, whatever color you are.)
Because I’m not a joiner, and because I know devotees of small government and individual rights come in all sizes, genders and shapes, it never occurred to me that fear of us would be enough to stampede people to vote for the most stunningly incompetent administration this country has ever known, one that, furthermore, displays open contempt for the people they are supposed to lead and which, in the end, believes the lie that if only America is made small the rest of the world will get better. (I wish the people who believe this lie got the panicked phone calls I got from people all over the world who know better.)
Because I wanted people to not be able to demonize me and my books, I didn’t talk about how much these ideas are wrong – historically – and how demonizing “old white males” is exactly the same as demonizing anyone else. I didn’t – not on this blog – point out that the people who think state power is always a good and the instrument of all improvement and who, themselves, crave power over others, have found it effective to paint anyone who opposes them into this dreaded, stereotypical “Other.” Or how this was a total misrepresentation of our ragtag and diverse band of freedom-lovers. I didn’t denounce it as the only, last thing they had.
Would my having done all that stuff do any good? I don’t know. It is possible the indoctrination has been so successful their ears and eyes shut down and, like the creature yesterday, they actually assume I’m an old white male (!) Would I get more by simply embedding my beliefs in my books? I don’t know. I’ve found these people also not only do not read the “banned” books, but they don’t read outside the “approved” list that they’ve been told are so “good.” So I don’t think I can reach most of them anyway. I might have been able to reach the mushy left or the middle. Maybe. If there were time.
I don’t think there is time. Because they believed the “othering” of conservatives (and calling us conservatives is hilarious, since most of us are so far out of power it’s not even funny, and want to change society as it is now completely – and before the ladyparts kick in – towards greater freedom of individual action) they voted for the hardest financial landing a country ever had. This would be true even if the administration weren’t doubling down on stupid with things like carbon taxes (an unproven solution to a nebulous problem, but guaranteed to destroy whatever industry remains in the continental US, at this time.) On top of that, while I’ve lived through a slo-mo financial collapse before, it was in a country that was getting so much money from the IMF we could all have landed on it from the top of mount Everest and survived. There is no cushion for the US. We ARE the cushion.
But people voted for this because they didn’t want to align themselves with racist/sexist/homophobes, like all my gay conservative friends, like the black family who was working phones for Romney alongside the rest of us, like the Philippine lady at the Romney rally crying hysterically and saying that the other guy couldn’t win, because he’s going to destroy us all. Like ALL the women who gave their all to prevent this, because they don’t want their children and grandchildren to live in indentured servitude to the government. (No? What do you call it when someone is forced to perform actions/provide services because the government tells them to, and won’t let them leave? Do you even know that under this administration, if you have unpaid student loans you can’t leave the country? No, not even if that’s your only chance to find a job and pay the loans. What would you call that? You’ve become a serf, attached to the land. You didn’t know? Why not?)
And so, whatever it costs my career, it’s time to come out. I think it’s time for all of you to come out too, wherever you are, though honestly, I wouldn’t presume to judge your circumstances better than you. Like my gay friends who never judge someone who chooses to continue closeted, I don’t presume to know what’s best for you.
However, everyone sending me “kind” missives on how they’re going to never read me again, because they always suspected I’m racist/sexist/homophobic but now that I’ve said it I’m despicable, and I’ve hurt them, can stop. What you’re experiencing is neither hurt nor my despicableness. It’s the cognitive dissonance of KNOWING I’m neither racist/sexist/homophobic nor – amazingly – a Marxist. You can’t reconcile those two, and so you want me to make it go away and shut up. That’s understandable, but no. As a country we have (economically) come to the end of cake and as a person I have come to the end of patience with those who would enslave others and ruin the last, best thing on Earth to make themselves feel good.
If that means I lose readers, so be it. And you can’t cow me into shutting up by telling me I’m losing readers – guys, we’ve gone well beyond that point. When a mad woman is running around soaking the bridges with gasoline before setting them on fire, she’s just going to laugh at you when you tell her she’ll now have to swim across. She knows. She thinks it’s more important to keep the armies of ruin, starvation and statism from marching in and despoiling her home.
And this is me laughing at you. And your pious little missives (only one of you, btw, is a recognized reader/fan) only make me angrier, and you won’t like me when I’m angry. Chiding me on not understanding the current trend won’t save you either – I’ve seen this before. THESE EXACT POLICIES. (Okay, so they haven’t sent our Port Wine to Russia. That’s because we don’t have Port Wine – no, California doesn’t qualify – and Russia probably wouldn’t want it) and I know for a fact where they lead. Except here we seem to be trying them harder and faster and whatever your college professor told you, it wasn’t a matter of implementation and it won’t be different this time.
Does this mean this blog will now be forever and all the time politics? Partisan politics yet?
Most of the time it won’t be partisan politics at all. Usually I don’t even vote for any party, but against the other side. But sometimes I might feel the need to remind people who think they’re “on the side of history” that history has ONLY one side and what she whispers is always “die.” Most people of historical significance are dead. That’s it. History is not sentient and did not anoint your side, and those who believe in that have fallen for a dead economist’s understanding of history as a machine and of economics as a set of gears. Marx is dead. His ideas will never be sufficiently so.
However, I’m not a politician. I’m a writer. I’m also an historian, a reader and a mother. More often my blogs will revolve around those, particularly the writing because it’s an all-consuming passion, but sometimes about some fun discovery and occasionally about a good book or something the kids have done.
If you’re okay with that, stick around. If you’re not – that’s fine. But you don’t get to go all concerney and tell me to fall in line.
I know where you’re coming from. If you weren’t trying to impose your wrongheaded delusions on me, I’d even sympathize. But if you think you explain me away by projecting on me all those things they told you “conservatives” are, you have no idea who I am or where I’m coming from.
If you’re a thinking human being, you’ll stick around and try to figure it out. Or you can run away, with your hands over your ears, back to your safe corner, away from the cognitive dissonance.
Your choice and frankly right now I don’t care which you choose. What I care about is figuring a way to keep me and mine safe through that big crash to come – mine being defined as those who will listen.
You see, individual rights was NEVER about not caring for the weaker. It is the weaker who are going to be hit bad in this. They’re probably going to go hungry, cold, and ill. BUT worse than that and even if they escape that, their children are not going to be able to start life in any way that leads to independence and prosperity.
I care about finding a way to avoid one or two lost generations. I care about avoiding the world of Friday where the only safe place is in an enclave. I care about my fellow man. Far more than any pretty theories.
And if no one buys my books anymore because of this, fine. There’s underpasses and free wifi at the library.
So when I need to speak out, I shall do so. You don’t like it? There’s your hands over your ears and your comfy corner. You should be okay there.
Until the precipice.
And my friend Larry Correia is experiencing similar concern. Isn’t it precious?
Setting bridges on fire, now a family affair.
WELCOME INSTAPUNDIT READERS and thank you to Glenn Reynolds for the link.
According To Hoyt 
What Sarah said. Nobody should be afraid of being the only one who seems to feel a different way. Probably the greatest benefit of my old blog was that thousands of people suddenly realized that they weren’t the only ones who thought that way.
And your old blog (and “radio” show) are indeed missed.
WOOT! OK, I’m bringing another can of gasoline and some matches!
“for to go against conscience is neither right nor safe”.
I’m with you all the way, Sarah!
Replying to myself. Alas! Nobody added the next lines to my quote!
“…for to go against conscience is neither right nor safe. Here I stand. I can do no other. God help me. Amen” – Martin Luther.
So, in the face of united, overwhelming opposition, we stand firm.
Amen Sarah. [Smile]
Oh the only “politics” I’ve seen in your books is Eden as I doubt that it would have lasted two generations. [Wink]
Still it was in a fun book and the idea that a “no government” society would last that long is a very minor flaw.
Enjoyed Renegades as well. [Smile]
Lasted only because it was very small and they’d had a thorough spanking before getting there. As you see from Renegades, things are… changing.
Didn’t want to “commit” spoilers for Renegades. [Smile]
Still good point on Eden being very small. There are society models that don’t scale up very well and “no government societies” is one of them.
Well said, Sarah, well said.
I crawled out of my sick bed this morning and read with growing disbelief and, yes, anger, some of the comments on your post yesterday. If you were one of those who happened to be extolling the virtues of the Democratic party and denouncing Gov. Romney and all things associated with the Republican party, I have no doubt at least one of the commenters would have praised you for your enlightened view. It never ceases to amaze me that those on the so-called “enlightened” side are the ones who yell the loudest and condemn the quickest if you don’t happen to agree with them.
I’ve had a lot of time to think over the last few days and one phrase kept coming to mind. I keep thinking about the phrase from Nixon back in 1969, “the silent majority”. That is what those of us of a libertarian or conservative bent have become. Not necessarily because we don’t talk about what we believe in but because the mass media and entertainment industries (yes, I know that is redundant these days) have silenced us. So each of us have to ask ourselves if we are willing to follow the example you and others have set for us. Are we willing to take to social media to voice our beliefs? Are we willing to look for alternative ways of getting the message out? I, for one, applaud you and will do my best to add my voice to the growing number of those who want to see this country put back on a path to prosperity and freedom.
Thank you Amanda. And GET WELL.
Thanks. Getting there slowly.
People should also remember history. The LBJ landslide supposedly finished Republicans…four years before electing Nixon. Watergate was a fatal blow to Republicans…until Reagan won 44, then 49, states. The democrats were done as a national party in 1988…until the country elected Clinton. Republicans were on the permanent outs in 1996…then we elected Bush. There was a permanent realignment in 2004…and then we elected Obama.
Poltics is cyclical. Even Canada eventually voted their (liberal) government out of power.
RD,
I understand that, honestly, except for several things:
1- since motor voter the process gets MORE corrupt each cycle.
2- The Chicago Machines KNOWS corruption. Note that whoever is selected pretty much wins it.
3- After these four years things will be entrenched which pretty much put paid to the US constitution
4- unlike other nations, we don’t exist without our constitution. We’re a people only by the force of those words.
Can it be brought back? With more difficulty the more time we let pass. And I fear with higher cost.
I’m simply more optimistic than that. I think it can and will come back, and I believe in the resilience of the American people. I know I sound like a sap, but I have trouble accepting that things are so far gone we won’t recover. For me, that’s post-election depression that a lot of us share, but it’s temporary.
I’m hoping so. What scares me is the kids. yes, I know schools always trained for obedience, but now they’ve gotten GOOD at it.
No. They are very bad at it.
Without drugs there is no discipline for all too many kids. And that’s in the “good” schools. In the problem schools the teachers carry panic buttons and travel the halls in pairs. The kids that are not problems are the ones whose parents taught them self discipline–and often critical thinking.
Oh, sure, OWS looks like a pack of obedient drones, brains parked until they are told to use them, but kids have a nasty habit of growing up, and noticing the real world.
I’m still _angry_, but my optimism is starting to kick in.
No, Pam. Your kids are older than mine. What I mean is the smart kids, the ones who will take the real jobs, are being trained to “say what the teacher wants, even if it is arrant nonsense” and there’s the whole “it’s more important to have it in on time and in red pen than right” mentality to a level that made even me — who went to school under socialism — gag.
Example offered: The homeschooled Daughtorial Unit aced her social sciences G.E.D. by selecting not the “most correct” answer but rather the “most politically correct” response from the proffered choices.
As hypocrisy was once the tribute paid by vice to virtue, double-think is the price paid for admission to the cultural estuary.
Ditto with Robert and the verbal MCAT.
The Daughter thanks Robert for the tip.
Ahem. The Daughter scored 100% correct on the social science section of her G.E.D.. She told me that she read the answers first, choose the most politically correct and then went back and read the prompts to see if they even related to the offered answers.
While most kids complain that history in school seems to be all about dates it is not. The dates, at least, are resistant to being spun. What the lay consumer of history so often does not consider is why certain dates are considered important as well as the what and how they are told happened on those dates is spinning. It can be a real eye opening experience reading the text books offered to schools.
(This does not take into account the information that is simply wrong. UNC-Chapel Hill did a survey of text books offered and found grievous errors in many. Did you know that the equator passes through the U.S. just north of Brownsville TX? Not!)
To a significant extent, school’s been that way for a long time. 40 yrs ago, when I was in college – much the same, just more of it now. But the ‘higher education bubble’ is near the point of deflating, and the replacements that are being created seem to be better at skills training and less adapted to ideology imposition. Pray, hope, and do what you can to make it so.
Seconded. With bells on and spiked boots if need be.
Hm. I don’t always read all the comments (mostly as a time-saver). But I do always read your posts. On writing, which is my driving force, but also on whatever topics you blog about on any given day. I always find them intelligent and thought-provoking, at the very least; sometimes I even find them enlightening. (And I’m against the ‘soft’ censorship of demonizing those whose opinions one disagrees with, in any case.)
I read books (yours or anyone’s) based on whether I like the book. It’s a rare author whose real-life shenanigans might put me off their books (and it would have to be something much worse than ‘shenanigans’ implies), although, like you, I don’t like instructional soap boxes wedged into stories that might otherwise be good.
I guess this is my long-winded way of saying I’m sticking around. Please keep posting. You have at least one (nearly silent) reader who would miss it terribly if you ever stopped.
I know someone who has a thing against authors injecting their politics into the story when unwarranted. He cites Stephen King as someone who has been doing it for the last few years.
By the way, I haven’t seen either side bring up carbon taxes. Can you link me hard data of why they’re not working or are making things worse?
In what way do you mean, “not working”, or “Making things worse”? I can’t tell what measurement you are wanting to use in order to make that determination.
My own personal interpretation of that question has this answer: They cannot “work” because there is nothing for them to “work” on. Anthropogenic Global Warming is a farce, so carbon taxes cannot affect the temperature of the Earth. If you don’t believe this, then either you have a lot of reading to catch up on, or else there is no point. If you are interested, then go to wattsupwiththat.com and read through the archives there.
They will, however, make things worse, by raising the cost of energy and making it harder on those with less money, trying to pay for their heating bills. If you are looking for evidence that they are increasing AGW, then see the previous paragraph.
Chihuahua Zero;
The better question about carbon taxes is whether there’s any reason for them in the first place. And the short answer is: there is not. The long answer requires you to research and learn for yourself the truth about CAGW: that it is a fraud perpetrated on the peoples of the world by the neo-marxist “environmentalist” Left. There is sufficient empirical — and reproducible — data available on the Web to demonstrate conclusively that the thing has been debunked. A good place to start is to look at the actual raw data itself — it’s readily available all over the place. Also read What’s Up With That. I can almost guaranteed you that, if you approach the subject with an open mind, the more you learn about it, the angrier you will become.
M
Echoing Mark’s recommendation of Watt’s (not “What’s”) Up With That. Which is at http://wattsupwiththat.com/ by the way, in case a Google search on “What’s Up With That” failed to bring you to the site in question. Whether you agree or disagree with Mr. Watts, he does good science (provides all his data, explains how to reproduce his results, and so on), so his site is valuable no matter what your opinions are on the AGW question.
I forget the details (it was a water is wet, fire burns, dog bites man type of news story) but there was a revelation a little while back that a massive carbon tax / cap & trade scheme in (IIRC) Europe proved to be less of what Brits mean by “a scheme” and much more of Americans mean by the word. [SEARCHENGINE] “carbon trading hoax” for specifics or look up “Europe’s Emissions Trading System” to see how organized crime sold non-existent carbon credits for big bucks.
I’ve done audits of companies with carbon credits. It’s just a money moving scam to force companies to pay bribes. There is no ecological benefit whatsoever.
And this crony-capitalist administration is all about the bribes and punishing the producers, so of course they love it.
I found you a few months ago…and I absolutely LOVE your view on things…I am so much like you…so much…and I am right there with you. I changed my blog to a much more public forum and began posting – like you – to STOP the other side from “defining” all of us…if we don’t step up…if we don’t speak as loudly as the left…we will be buried…I’m right here beside you sister in arms! Let’s do this thing!!
Thank you.
Welcome to the trenches, Sarah.
Myself, I keep my identity hidden because I am in an industry that is at least as political as writing, and possibly more political, and a chance comment has cost me promotion opportunities in the past. I also am not in a financial position to do without my employment, so I can’t have the vindictive left (and these days, that’s most of them) know who I am so they can’t “punish” the “unbeliever.”
If/when I ever have the ability to post what I think under my own name and not worry about keeping a roof over my head and food on the table, I will unmask so fast you’ll think it’s midnight at the masquerade.
Until then, however, I hope the people that read my tiny little blog can accept the necessity, and judge my writings based on what they say, and now that they byline says.
There are some who would essentially call you a coward for hiding your identity, but you really can do a whole lot more good if you have steady employment keeping your pantry stocked and a roof over your head.
Been there, done that.
Personally, if they’re going to judge me based on that, I doubt anything I say could sway them anyway, so it’s no great loss.
They also serve who only subvert the dominant paradigm. Contemplate the bet between the Sun and North Wind and remember: You can do more with a little judiciously applied heat than by being a blowhard.
Understood CW– my hubby has the same problem.
*waves from behind her screen name* I understand, C.W. I’m still trying to get a position in academia or at least to go regular part-time at the parochial school where I currently sub. No way I can post under my real name.
The use of political pen names have a long and honored history in this country. Among them have been Silence Dogood (Benjamin Franklin) and Publius (Hamilton, Maidson and John Jay for the Federalist Papers). see Wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_pseudonyms_used_in_the_American_constitutional_debates
I know that well, but some are convinced it shows dishonesty.
I even lost my writing slot at the PJTatler because they didn’t want me using a pseudonym.
Thank you, Sarah.
You see, I was having an unpleasant weekend. Then you wrote this, and I tried to picture this whole “Sarah Hoyt, falling into line” thing that you say some people want and/or expect. And I started laughing. And laughed and laughed and laughed.
It’s really hard to have a bad day, when you’re laughing that hard. 🙂
For what it’s worth, in my experience “I’m mad about this sudden revelation about you and I’m never going to read your stuff again” is a pretty reliable indicator of somebody who wasn’t really reading your stuff before, either. And it’s kind of a misnomer to speak of “losing” something you never actually had to begin with.
(frowns distractedly) You people have a strange idea of me. I always think of myself as retiring and kind of nice. Uh… Guess that’s not how I come across? Who knew?
Yeah, I get that “look” from people when I describe myself as a harmless, nice guy. Let’s just sya that the word “hitman” and “dangerous” are common terms offered in rebuttal — and that’s from FAMILY members.
Eh, when your public persona is the one you use to vent your frustrations, it’s going to look a little grumpy to some people.
People who realize that it’s mostly the venting coming out can tell that you’re not so bad as it might seem to some, although when you discuss keeping in practice to be ready to ventilate someone who might threaten you or your family, “harmless” might be a bit difficult to swallow.
By the way, my avatar was suggested by one of my children
‘S OK. A good friend of mine refers to me as “the sheep with a switchblade.” 🙂
(Note: I do not own, nor have I ever owned, a switchblade. Not only are they unreliable, poorly-made, and utterly useless for doing chores, they are illegal.)
And I always think of myself as boring, but for some reason, even my husband laughs when I protest that it’s true.
I’m sure you are very nice and mildly retiring to most of your neighbors, whom you rarely see and have little in common with… as long as they don’t rile you. But you’re firmly attached to reality over the “politically-chosen-as-correct” narrative, and you’re the mother of two polite and well-brought-up teenaged men. The amount of spine and lurking threat that had to take is fearsome indeed to contemplate riling!
You’re not boring. we had to remind ourselves we couldn’t keep you!
It is an demonstrable fact that Leftists have poor perception and are prone to shrilling in horror over the tiniest of mice.
In spite of current fashions you have been rather unashamed about your mostly clear eyed love for the country by choice. That might have provided a hint to some of us.
Which leads me to ponder the accusations of the left that people who say conservatives have no heart will at the same time call sappy for loving their country. Once again logic fails — one would hope it would effect the analysis by the mind — but acknowledges that it often has little to do with the human heart.
Love you, Sarah. That pretty much sums it up.
Bravo.
I don’t understand why people want to poke the bear with a stick because this bear gets mighty grumpy and starts swatting. Bears have large claws and teeth. They also cause a lot of damage when riled.
A round about way of saying I am with you Sarah–
As someone who has been chewed on by a bear, I highly recommend not riling a bear for fun.
I agree that the current administration has multiple wrong ideas and flawed conceptions.. I also agree that social media is an excellent way to counter not only the media’s basis but it laziness. I feel that the saving virtue of the American government is that it is designed not to work However .I think that this administration has a long way to go to equal the ineffectualness and futility in the time of stress of the Buchanan administration.
About our shades, well, a bit off topic but since I just got some old photos scanned (hope I made the link right):
my mother
So, maybe I could try to pass myself off as 1/4 something or other based on her photograph? Some researchers classified Finns as ‘Mongolians’ during the 19th century, based on the fact that there are some who look like her, and yes, I remember her telling me she had to face some bullying when she was growing up because of her looks, but since we aren’t by modern definitions the ‘other’, just common Europeans, I guess I can’t claim that victim status. 😉
Did you see the article on Otzi? I might post on that later. Found in Switzerland, his closest descendants are in Sardinia. Which means even in the Neolithic people mixed… a lot. The mystery is more how races perpetuated. Maybe it was one of those genetic bottle necks. To see me, I look like middle aged Greek, Portuguese, Italian, something like that, depending on the weight. However, two of my grandparents were blond, and three had light eyes (two blue, one green.) Race is the last thing I care about.
My hubby’s paternal DNA shows Sardinia as well, but his family were from Germany around the time many of the Anabaptists left the area. He has that face, hair, and eyes that can adapt to any country he is living in– It is amazing to me.
Me? I look to Scandinavian to blend in–
Although I find it strange that when I am walking in a group of people, they walk through me– I still don’t understand that one–
Blink. You might be a ghost? (Sarah says puzzled.)
Well I have dang good elbows. I had once person walk into me (thinking they were going through me) and I got them in the ribs. I pretended that I didn’t see them. Some of these people try to walk between me and my hubby even when we are walking with locked elbows.
Someone else is invisible? I’m sorry to hear that. 😦
*Jasini
Facts are stubborn things, but not nearly as stubborn as fallacies.*
On Sun, Nov 11, 2012 at 1:12 PM, According To Hoyt wrote:
> ** > Cyn Bagley commented: “Well I have dang good elbows. I had once person > walk into me (thinking they were going through me) and I got them in the > ribs. I pretended that I didn’t see them. Some of these people try to walk > between me and my hubby even when we are walking with locke” >
Yes, I did. About Finns, if I remember right a relatively recent study found three major male lines, and one had markers which originate in what is now Vietnam, so yes, people mixed.
And that ‘Mongolian’ label – somewhat ironic, isn’t it, that when being white was the thing Finns weren’t considered quite white enough and did have to deal with prejudice because of that, not to mention that quite a bit of time was spent in efforts to prove that we were, after all, quite white and European. So those efforts succeeded. And now, less than a century after we ‘became’ white lots my contemporaries and their children seem to be busy feeling the white guilt. 😀
Well, you’d never find me if I hid out at a Highland Games or sat in a set at a pub-sing in County Galloway.
You’ve added at least one committed reader and supporter Sarah. And let me add two tangible things that I hope will encourage you.
First. I’ve added a link here to my blog roll. Just a very modest little slice of the web but every little bit helps (I hope).
Second. To send a message to the “I hate you and will never buy your books again for this” crowd I will, today, go to my local bookstore and buy one each of every Sarah Hoyt book I can find on the shelves. Then I will hit one of the online stores and buy the ones they didn’t have. I will repeat every time you come out with a new title until either you retire or I run out of money. All the haters can kiss my old, white ass (I’m 53).
We MUST support those who publicly voice the ideas and truth needed to reverse this slide into Statism, folly and despair. Especially when they demonstrably have something to lose. I applaud your decision to put aside your fears and concerns and address the things you deem necessary and I will back you and support you tho the limit of my ability.
Keep the faith.
Thank you. But you don’t have to buy one of every one of my books. (There’s A LOT of them. And from the trad published ones, everyone’s accounting but Baen’s is funny. So… Baen — Darkship Thieves, Darkship Renegades, Draw One In the Dark, Gentleman takes a Chance — though you might wait for the omnibus.) The ones published by Naked Reader Press (on side) I get my fair cut. And the short stories I put out myself under Goldport Press are way cheaper in the collections, so I’d recommend that.
But thank you, truly. It does help.
While you may not receive you just recompense for some of your other titles: So far those I have read have been entirely worth the time, and then some. Maybe if enough of us ask for titles by Sarah Hoyt the stores may notice. I know this latter may be a pipe dream, but I can dream big. And right now I dream that there will be such a growing readership that will enable you to continue to feed my need for delightful written words.
You go girl. I’m with you and Sarah Hoyt all the way
On Tuesday, I asked myself if this is how the fly felt after he found himself in a well-woven web. I don’t know how to deal with my concern for the country and of course my family. This sentence you wrote resonates with my conviction: “As a country we have (economically) come to the end of cake and as a person I have come to the end of patience with those who would enslave others and ruin the last, best thing on Earth to make themselves feel good”. Thank you, Sarah. At least I am not alone, and I don’t expect everyone to think like me, how could they – each life is unique in attributes and events.
I dread the Fiscal Reckoning. The debt doubled in the past six years. The run rate for new debt is $100 billion a month. QE3 is really unlimited printing of fairy money.
I thought if Romney was elected we might have a “soft” landing. Economic activity is what he knows the way a Cy Young pitcher can win ball games. This is what he does, has done. I believed he would work tirelessly to right the US economy. In this sense, Romney was a gift of the gods. I am married to a man who started a business, and I signed over all my rights to our assets so he could have a very small line of credit to rent an office, purchase needfuls, and inventory.. Only a fool would risk his time and any assets to expand or start a businss with an army of all-powerful, well-paid kommissars with the right to invade his premises, fine him, demand costly changes in his operation (or else), plus sneering at success, if he managed to do so.
Now I realize it is drip drip time, until something trips us into a downward spiral from which there is no return until all hands (including foreigners) have turned against my beloved country. I predict rising electricity prices “necessarily” pushing businesses to other countries which didn’t demonize carbon,. I foresee the new health care taxes and premium increases pushing business to countries which don’t do as much curing, but charge less. I foresee regulators gone wild using drones to fine farmers $1,000 a day if their cows use the stream when the flow is down in August. If the farmer’s farm is taken away, who gets it? Another farmer? No, probably someone who earned his millions getting politically favored contracts. Think Zimbabwe. Friends of politicians own most of the rich farmland,which they are ignorant of tilling and nurturing, and the former food exporter now has malnourished children.
Regarding the US debt, I found a very good home-made video by a retired accountant which exp0lains the magnitude of our debt problems. . It’s just 5 minutes. Google Hal Mason Youtube Debt. I checked all the “official” government URLs he cited. All true.
By the bye, I didn’t know that Portugal was taken over by marxists until I read your story. No wonder you are frantic at the lack of accurate information about “statism” in the media.. No surprise you got “bit” this week – the utopians don’t want an eye witness to how their theories work out in real life. Cognitive dissonance, dontcha know. You have “bottom” as the Brits say. Please keep posting.
Until about 78, when it started pulling back to social democrat, which STILL couldn’t save it, except for massive amounts of foreign money. But between seventy four and seventy eight it was like a slow descent into madness. And while I’m typing that, I realize it was just four years, and yet it feels like a century to me. Perhaps I was too young. Mind you the regime before 74 was no better than the deposed Arab regimes. It was no worse, either, though. What followed would have been lethal, except for foreign money. And meanwhile the US prattled of a “flower revolution” and “democracy” while, incidentally the Portuguese colonies in Africa — the real aim of the coup, which is why Portugal was sort of allowed to escape — descended into Dante-like horrors, from which only now SOME are slowly creeping back. They became essentially the plantations of Russia and Cuba. We were an incidental hit.
By eighty five we were at least no crazier than Greece or Italy — note the comparisons.
Now European money has run out, and the country looks like it’s rotting from the inside, and I don’t think they’ll survive a US collapse — and my worry does extend there, since I have relatives and friends still living there. (Most of them. I moved away on my own. Voting with your feet they call it.)
I don’t believe you were even alive in ’74, Sarah.
I was, tho. I am an olde farte. 😉
ROFL. I was born in 62. I turn fifty in seven days.
No way will I believe you’re four years older than me.
Not gonna happen. Nope.
Flattery will get you everywhere!
Just a baby. (Born June 1954). [Wink]
You’re six months younger than my brother.
I’ll make you feel young, Sarah! I was born September 1st, 1946 – one of the very EARLY baby boomers. My oldest daughter turned 45 last week. I’m living proof you can do dumb things in your life and still live past 60. Not well, but beyond 60.
So, five years and six months younger than my mom. And yet we can be friends. I love the internet and the age-group mixing.
BTW on a serious note, my mom also asked me to be quiet. But her purpose is different, of course. I told her, “Mom, respectfully, at my age, in the face of much clearer and present danger, did you shut up and act meek.” She sighed and said “no.” I said “remember where I take after you?” She sighed. “Yes. You just be careful, young lady, and don’t lead those boys of yours into trouble.”
I love my mom.
You have to love mothers, I’m sure she will call you again to tell you the same thing, because she is worried about you. At the same time she is probably bragging to her friends about you, because she is proud of you.
And nothing, nothing equals the filthy year of 78. For years my only compensation for getting older was that every year took me further away from 78. Only now I fear there’s worse ahead.
I’ve been taking some small comfort here recently in the knowledge that America survived the Seventies. If you weren’t here and aware then, it might be hard to credit the notion that conditions were actually WORSE than today in a lot of ways. Starting when Nixon took us off the gold standard, we had 1,000% inflation in remarkably few years. Yes, prices went up ten times. A candy bar that cost a nickel before the change cost fifty cents after. It was a time when Heinlein’s measure of the value of labor — How long does a journeyman carpenter have to work to earn a loaf of bread? — really hit home. Day old bread was a nickel a loaf before. After, the bakery stores were out of business and bread was breaking two and three dollars a loaf for the wallpaper paste. Jerry Ford had those insipid WIN (Whip Inflation Now) buttons out. OPEC decided that a dollar that was no longer gold-backed wasn’t worth the paper it was printed on and they cut back production. Gas lines. Kissinger gve up in Vietnam. Nixon betrayed Taiwan to Red China. Jimmy Carter gave away the Panama Canal. Earlier, Johnson and Humphrey had saddled us with the Great Society. And then: Reagan.
We don’t seem to have a Reagan waiting in the wings these days, but then, in ’76, very few people would have said we did then, but we did. I won’t claim we made out just fine, because the traumas of the period did do damage that may never be repaired. But we did survive. Even thrived for a bit.
I think we can hope we’ll do something the like this time, too.
M
As you said, we didn’t realize we had a Reagan in the wings in ’76. I mean, he was a former Democrat, former union president, who would have thought he’d turn out to be the hero of conservatism?
We have a plenty deep bench, lots of room for a Reagan to emerge from there, and four more years for him — or her! — to come forward.
For a fun parlor game imagine various 2016 Republican tickets that are credible, then rank them by their ability to make Leftists’ head s explode. My current favorite is Bobby Jindal and Susana Martinez, although a Rubio/Ayotte ticket has great entertainment value.
Rand Paul/Palin would have to rate at the top for head exploding, would have to do some studying to see if it was feasable.
Jindal/Martinez 2016! Let’s see them try pulling that “oh, Republicans hate darkies and women” routine when we’re running a first-gen citizen from an Indian family and a hispanic woman! 🙂
Helps that they’re both real conservatives, too.
*Channels ultra-PC far Leftist* Oh, but Jindal isn’t culturally Indian – he converted to Catholicism and he’s part of the Anglo cultural hegemony. And Well, Martinez is Hispanic by marriage, and anyway if she’s a Hispana and not a Chicana than she’s not REALLY a Hispanic. *ends channeling* Yeah, I do that a little too well, don’t I?
PFFFF. Yeah, I was told I’m typical, because wives who marry away from the tribe, in anthropological studies, always become MORE of their husband’s tribe than native borns.
Note the stunning lack of understanding that through most of history they’d have to, being women, strangers and powerless. Or that this SURELY doesn’t operate now.
Things are getting so bad, I’ve been thinking about moving back to Louisiana — or to Texas. I have relatives in both places (someone to have your back), you can stick a twig in the ground most places and it’ll grow, and it never gets so cold a wood-burning stove won’t keep you alive. The major thing keeping me from doing it is that the humidity would kill me — literally. The biggest problem with the West is that all the good ground belongs to the %$&%^^%$ government, or there’s so danged little of it the prices are astronomical. All-in-all, though, I’m tired of city life. All the things I worked to get aren’t worth what they cost (or won’t be soon).
I remember reading intelligence messages about Portugal and its NATO commitments during the mid-1970’s, but you bring it to life. Thank you. I’ve got your back, any time you need it! I went too long before I found this blog, no one’s going to make me leave it. Any way I can help, I will.
I haven’t read the comments yet, so somebody may have pointed out everything I am going to say. First I’m pretty positive Baen won’t drop you for allowing your politics in your books (I mean they publish Kratman, Williamson, and Ringo) they will drop you if your books don’t sell, but I don’t believe that will happen. I believe you will gain more readers than you loose by speaking openly about your politics. There will be a fair number of people that have never read you that reading what you have to say on politics will agree with you and think, “You know, what she says makes sense, I wonder how she sees this playing out in the future?”, and go out and buy Darkship Thieves or A Few Good Men. There will even be some that disagree with you, but go out and buy your books either because they think you make a good arguement and want to hear more (these would be the middle and soft-left) or they want to see what you have to say simply so they can dispute it and/or ridicule you, (these will be those that are harder left, but some will still have 2 brain cells to rub together). Regardless, they will still be buying your books and providing you a paycheck (Kratman has a fair number of such anti-fans who buy each of his books as it comes out).
On another note, I just finished reading Time Spike, I found it hilarious (probably much more so than Eric Flint would) that though I know it was written during the Bush administration, and the ‘current administration’ they vilify so much in the book is intended to be the Bush administration; the Obama administration fits the description and profile in the book SO much better. (It was laugh or throw the book against the wall, and I chose to laugh)
Time Spike sounds interesting. Does it feature star chamber hearings to authorize death lists without judicial proceeding, followed by targeting the listed people for assassination by umanned airial drones (along with significant collateral damage, aka innocent bystanders?)
No, none of that…just the standard combination of ignorance, willfulness, and stupidity one would expect to find among a government by professional politicians, along with a community that proves remarkably capable of self-organizing despite being composed of the inmates and guards at a prison. (It’s an Assisti Shards continuity novel, like the 163x ones. Unlike in them, though, it spends about half its pages set among the people in our timeline, showing how things change in the modern world after chunks of real estate get shipped back in time by mysterious means.)
I didn’t honestly read its depiction of government as being specific to _any_ particular administration.
It was set in 2006, and written during the same time frame it was set in, while always referred to as ‘the current administration’ it read like a standard leftist anti-Bush conspiracy (I suspect a lot of that is due to the coauthor, Flint is usually more subtle with his politics) down to specific actions that the Bush administration did being attributed to ‘the current administration.’ The description of ‘the current administration’ however fits the Obama administration much better.
A bunch of reviews didn’t like the book for this, if you can get past the politics however, it is a good read.
Ahem. If Baen can publish an old crustacean like Jerry Pournelle, I think Sarah is probably safe from political revolution.
I’m safe with Baen, Alex, but I don’t have Jerry’s numbers, and if I don’t sell, I won’t make it. Even Baen works for money. My fear was that I’d lose enough of my marginal numbers to become non viable. Maybe they’re dumb fears.
And don’t make me tell him you called him an old crustacean. (Runs.)
(My dad who is the same age, as we were discussing books I recommended to him, and said “he’s communist, but readable” told me in the tone of a man who has finally had enough “Life is too short and I’m too old to read communists. No.” In that sense I feel like an old crustacean too… In the future, we’re all lobsters?)
Sarah–he IS an old political crustacean–a paleocon of the first water, a Russell/WFB conservative most of the time, with occasional lapses into constitutional monarchy. And he’s my Dad. I can get away with it.
He doesn’t like it when I point out that primogeniture put Charles The Embarrassing into the line of succession, so I think he’s more of the VDH the-collapse-is-underway type these days.
As for book sales: hard fantasy readers probably have less tolerance than Mil-SF readers.
Er — space opera and urban fantasy of sorts, but no, not mil-SF.
Also probably part of the reason I like him as a person and as a writer. You could be describing my dad. In fact, I think the two of them would get along perfectly — if my dad spoke English…
I agree with those think that most of those who are presently threatening you never were your readers to start with. It is an ugly tactic meant to scare others, particularly eloquent others, into silence. Don’t let the bullies get you down. Yeah, times are going to be rough, but for the ones whose best argument they can muster is an empty threat — don’t waste your fears.
This country has had a habit of ‘catastrophe on the horizon’ for a long time. What we have always needed were the people who know, understand and embrace the principles upon which it was founded and who are capable of articulating them in ways that others can continue the process. This is not always done directly, as you well know. Stories have power…for good or ill. Stories can get under a person’s mental blinders. Please keep writing.
Sarah,
Thanks for blogging over at Glen’s.
I was depressed that Romney did not win – so close! The claiming there is a mandate for O is bs, he won due to running a better campaign. Just read the stories on orca and contrast that to O’s gotv effectiveness.
Moneys a little tight (I have my own business and it’s hard), but I did buy your ARC and some ebooks. It’s just wrong and sad some publishers would drop you for political reasons. Good news is their future does not look bright for them, where yours is. Ebooks and amazon are killing the traditional publishing industry. And the msm is also contracting, and non biased media is growing – pjmedia!
It’s going to be a painful 4 years probably, but the long term trend is positive. And the best thing may be O getting elected, and getting the responsibility for the mess he created. He can’t vote present anymore!
Maybe he “can’t vote present anymore”… but he will just the same. Just watch him. He’s going to continue to talk about the mess he “inherited” from Bush, because who else is he going to blame? Himself?
Gracious Lady,
You have articulated much that I would have desired to express if I but had the ability. (No, I do not speak in such a manner as I write.) I have long lurked here but only now have recent events given me enough impetus to post. I enjoy your free-spirited outlook, both in your written material and this blog. As a result of your postings in recent days, I have purchased several of your books and short stories from Amazon.
Your posting the day after the 6th of November (“A day which will live in infamy”) gave me hope and was a salve to one so wounded in spirit. There was something of determined defiance in that post. Your further postings have enlarged and, indeed, ennobled that sentiment. My appreciation and gratitude for your work is immense and has inspired me.
I wish, therefore, to declare myself a(n) Usaian for I, too, love liberty and free-thinking, which you have so faithfully championed. America the country may, like Alice, fall down the rabbit hole or perhaps through the looking glass, but the dream that is America will never die, thanks in no small part to the efforts of wordsmiths such as yourself, M’lady.
With warm wishes and fondest regards.
(Whew, that was a mouthful to type!)
It’s about time you came out! You should blog your ‘experiences’ growing up… You know the ones I’m talking about, make those smug US Marzist wannabes piss their pants! Add in your adventures with mother too!!!
I always have your back youngling, as much as we can. Be safe. I’ve been laughing at Dan-o’s FB rampages… Heh…
basset
I think a book would be in order. I’d pay good money for it, as I have for many of her books in ebook form from Baen.
Unfortunately most of the stories aren’t mine. NOT until my parents are both gone, and maybe not even then.
BUT I am pliable with drinks at cons…
I think the world of Friday is much more the only free place is in an enclave (and which enclave changes with time) – safe is as we find or make it – and I think Mr. Heinlein came to believe himself that saving the world (Gulf) was too ambitious and the times called for working on the remnant (see Alfred J. Nock and previous discussion by IIRC Kim du Toit) Saving the remnant may be the eternal struggle and certainly the current political objective.
Actually I didn’t mean Friday, and only realized it when reading your answer. I meant I Will Fear No Evil.
That was an interesting world, of course if you look at Soviet Russia you can see some interesting parrallels, and then some leftist ideas, like rehabbing convicted rapists and murderers slipped in. The (to me) ridiculously unrealistic free love, and lack of a riveting plot, detracted from the book, but it had its good parts. Not the type of country and government would should be aiming for however.
Exactly, but it is what it feels like they’re aiming for.
In Friday, btw, when first reading it, I thought that the whole “motors banned” thing was ridiculous.
Not laughing now.
Does the “government who bans x will be replaced by a government who doesn’t” trope apply here?
Actually, with Job, Mr. Heinlein personally told me he was going to be offended if the Moody Bible Thumpers didn’t protest the book. It was good for sales, as long as they spelled his name right.
I don’t think they ever did, much to his chagrin. (Probably still trying to figure out their reaction to Stranger. So am I, come to that.)
The funny thing is how COMPLETELY Job went over my head. Even after living in the South, I don’t “get” it. eh.
I really don’t understand Stranger, myself, though probably the “How can I tick off the most religious readers” strategy has much to do with it and Job.
The hierarchical deity thing does run through both, of course.
From what I understood from Ginny, part of Stranger was “digesting the youth movement stuff” or at least a lot of it fell in there.
I’ve got a love-hate relationship with that book. Loved it when I read it at 14. At about 24 decided I hated it. Have gone back and forth on it.
I recently found one of the “uncut” SFBC copies of Stranger–literally in a box on the street–and re-read it. Very uneven and probably intentionally annoying.
Probably the best thing from Stranger was the concept of the “Fair Witness”, in my opinion. So it’s not all bad.
I used to be un-political. I also used to consider myself liberal/Democrat, because everybody else around me was, and I “knew” that the good people were Democrat.
Then I started to pay attention and read economics and try to fit things together so they made sense. And now I belong to the local tea party and was horribly disappointed that empty-suit Obama and his Marxist team won the election.
Somehow we have to make a louder noise and change the public perception so that eventually people will not adopt the liberal ideology as that of “the good people”. “Coming out” about your beliefs is part of that. If we all go around hiding what we think, the illusion is perpetuated.
We need a preference cascade. I thought I was seeing some of that in the election. Sigh. Maybe one day… But we absolutely must do something about the media. As long as they control the message, there’s no way we can get through. The success of the idiotic “war on women” was because of media collusion. They kept acting and sounding like it was true. The assumption of truth – not even bothering to argue it – is in some ways more convincing than actual discussion or conflict – particularly to low-information voters.
Anyway, congratulations 🙂
I’ve done this math for myself. For a long time, I’ve had to divorce my work life from my blogging because my day job is in the music biz, which, As We All Know, is rife and fraught with liberals and other leftists.
When it came to my own work — my fiction and my art — I’ve had a different take. It’s one thing if my employer does not want his business associated with my “toxic” political views and quite another for me to remain silent on my own behalf.
My political opinions (which pretty well track with what you’ve expressed here and elsewhere) are: 1) as far as I can make them, right, 2) as far as I can tell, the majority opinions in this country (despite voting patterns (to the extent they can be accurately determined) most Americans live their own private lives as conservative individuals), 3) held by others who believe in supporting creatives and businessmen who agree with them.
Plus: part of my purpose in telling my stories is to — ever-so subtly — influence the thinking of my readers in favor of liberty and individualism.
So what in this formula should persuade me that I am well-served to hide my light under a bushel?
I think that, by speaking out, you are doing the world a lot of good, and will certainly do your career no real harm.
M
Mostly it was just good marketing. O’s campaign found an issue that resonated with un-married women, and the GOP never responded effectively.
http://swampland.time.com/2012/11/07/inside-the-secret-world-of-quants-and-data-crunchers-who-helped-obama-win/
>The success of the idiotic “war on women” >was because of media collusion.
Fascinating article. So they market-tested the message and found it was working and kept using it. It does seem like the Romney team was way outclassed. But it’s also hard to see how their message could have gotten through anyway, with the very effective filter of the mainstream media.
Yes, the mainstream media MUST be castrated.
With any luck, once the difference between their rosy projections of the second Obama term and the reality becomes unignorable (is that a word?), they’ll lose even more credibility than they already have.
They’ll try to spin. we must not let them.
We do what we can, and leave the rest in God’s hands.
I think you mean :hamstrung.” In my experience you cannot remove what they don’t have. Most MSM journalists are already eunuchs.
I’m not satisfied with either castration or hamstringing, because the victim typically survives both procedures. The MSM must be eviscerated.
That is a very interesting choice of words there, considering the people in question are already playing the role of court eunuchs…
*Shakes fist at RES for beating me to it*
Damn this time zone difference!
*Shakes fist at sun for not rising earlier*
Well, you’ve got a fan, and a reader, in me (I’m actually a respectful agnostic, but I like to tell the lefties I’m an atheist because it’s easier and it ticks them off). I think people are gaining fans as much as losing them.
And yes, I actually believe you’re not a politically inclined person. You have a job. You don’t have time. That’s one of the big problems – all the Makers have jobs and the Takers don’t and have time for politics. The Tea Party is pretty much all people who never got involved in politics before.
Pass the gasoline.
A point just occurred to me…
I wonder how many of the people writing Sarah to say they’re no longer fans and will never read her again were actually fans or readers in the first place?
It seems a pretty easy way to earn some leftist-cred by writing to an author you’ve never read to declare that you’re never reading them “again.”
Our hostess did say that only one of the people to do so was “recognized reader/fan”. So I’m willing to bet most of them just stumbled upon the blog and decided to try to frighten her by way of her pocket book into shutting up.
I’ve stopped following the blog of a favorite author before because during the previous election cycle, she called everyone on the Right some nasty names. It crushed me. I just dropped her. I didn’t threaten to stop reading her (I don’t think I’ve purchased any books from her the last few years, but that’s mainly waiting for a book to come out at all and then waiting for it to come out in matching trade paperback). I didn’t send her a wounded email. I didn’t even want to take back the words to her I said to her when I met her at a convention and had her sign one of her books. (Something along the lines of, “I’m an author and I hope that in a few years I’ll be able to sit a panel with you, grab some lunch together, and thank you again for inspiring me.”)
I think that the truly wounded reader-fan would probably be more like me and more likely to quietly step away. Unless they were a longtime reader/poster here and they know that our hostess would notice they’d gone and maybe worry about them (as she’s mentioned once that she does).
“Unless they were a longtime reader/poster here and they know that our hostess would notice they’d gone and maybe worry about them (as she’s mentioned once that she does).”
Which would imply that they liked her and wished her not to worry. Which doesn’t mean they wouldn’t stop reading her blog (reasonable, I don’t read a lot of leftist blogs) and possibly quit buying her books, but would probably be polite about it, most likely in a private email, rather than ranting at her on her blog. Since I haven’t seen a regular throw a hissy fit on here and swear they’ll never read her again, that is most likely what happened. (I will note there is a liberal that was a commenter on here that I haven’t seen since the election, I hope it wasn’t her, because though I disagreed with her politics she had a brain in her head, and I liked to here what she had to say)
No. I’ve actually been worried about her, but I think she’s avoiding the loonies till we calm down. And she’s not as black and white liberal as that — we’re all entitled to be odd.
Hi Sarah.
Love what you write – as usual. I maybe agree with fewer disagreements than most, but then, I’m teh first generation born here, as my g-parents dragged my parents out of Lithuania one step ahead of the Russian army. I’ve studied the period and the policies, and the propaganda.
I still remember the chills running down my back reading “Road to Damascus” by Ringo and Linda Evans, as the stories echoed my grandfathers, and the propaganda echoed both his stories and Ayn Rand (who is a horribly plodding writer, even accounting for the russian style).
I think I have a project that may help.
1) I love kipling – and always needed a topic for youtube videos that wasn’t another “how to do stuff on your computer” screencast.
2) I’ve always wanted to do a “what I believe” series that skipped the current politics or political labels, but went into core theory using language that I’ve often found I could get moderates and even some liberals to agree on.
Fascinating idea, Xnook.
Do it.
Yes, do it.
Appearance determines politics only applies to the desperately shallow. Want some fun? Try [SEARCHENGINE] for the phrase “hitler’s jewish soldiers” and wrap your head around that. It is all too easy to otherize people who don’t share your politics, don’t belong to your “church” and don’t cling to your tribe. It is ever so much easier than responding to the actual arguments they make.
http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.kansaspress.ku.edu/images/righitgoldberg.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.kansaspress.ku.edu/righitpix.html&h=302&w=225&sz=13&tbnid=7Cuyj3xyPbIeZM:&tbnh=90&tbnw=67&zoom=1&usg=__RTS6VAh2FtJDhTbahoCs-5_S3ak=&docid=5hOFx5flE6nmmM&hl=en&sa=X&ei=ro-gUNWXGIWB0QH2loH4Dg&ved=0CEgQ9QEwBA&dur=5010
Try watching this (approx. 1.5 hour) clip from CSPAN: http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/Hitlers
Widen your thinking. Sometimes people disagree with you because they detect a flaw in your argument, because while they share your goals they believe your solutions will exacerbate rather than alleviate the problem, because you are simply wrong.
I think you might find this essay of interest: Superversive: The failure of subversion in imaginative literature
This is the post I’ve been trying but failing to write since Tuesday night.
I did my time in the “conservative closet,” first as a struggling wanna-be screenwriter in Hollywood and then as a semi-anonymous political blogger whose wife didn’t have tenure yet. I don’t have any regrets about keeping my mouth shut at times to avoid any blowback on her career — especially now that she has tenure and I can fire back at faculty parties, assuming she doesn’t do it first — but I wish I’d spoken up more in those meet-and-greets and development meetings. I would have felt better about myself, and the phone still would have stopped ringing after I turned 40 anyway.
One thing I have noticed as I changed from a college-aged liberal to a middle-aged conservative is that my conservative friends have never, not once, called me a “bad person” for any disagreements I still have with them on certain social issues, but my often-former liberal friends were quite ready to condemn me morally for supporting a 35% rather than a 39.6% tax rate on the upper income brackets. At first, I thought maybe I just knew the right conservatives and the wrong liberals, but these day, I doubt that was the reason.
No. Liberalism is in place of religion, so disagreement is “evil.”
I’m ashamed to say I haven’t come across your books/name before. I will remedy that immediately by buying at least one (we’re on the poor side), since by this column you have gained an instant fan.
(Just FYI, I came here via PJ Media.)
SH wrote: “If you’re a thinking human being, you’ll stick around and try to figure it out.”
Is this going to be a monologue (by you) or dialogue? In other words, is there any chance you could learn from a dissenting commenter, or are you already (nearly) absolutely certain of your worldview?
Reading the comments above, this blog and comments look like it’ll pretty much be an echo chamber for political topics with you preaching to the choir. If that’s what y’all want, I don’t want to rile anybody up so I’ll keep my mouth shut. I’m mostly read this blog because I think that Sarah is an exceptionally brilliant novelist and because of that I’m intrigued and want to see what she has to say.
A thoughtful challenge that is intended to open conversation will generally be received as just that. An accusation of willful heartlessness because one does not tow a party line is not thoughtful — it is an end, not a beginning to conversation.
Agreed. And a devil’s advocate is welcome as well. You’ll find open respectful discussion is always acceptable – emphasis on “respectful.”
Insults, bigotry and trolling, however, will be thoroughly thrashed. Stupidity isn’t going to thrive here, either.
I have gotten thrashed once or twice– but I did learn something ;-). Of course, it was more on religion and less on politics. So if you are willing to take the thrashing and really think through what you said that caused the reaction– you are welcome.
Well, someone said that saying something good about any form of socialism here is the same as saying that Hitler might have been kind to his mother as a little boy at an Holocaust Survivor’s picnic. That’s probably true. I’m willing to concede that Scandinavian socialism works better than most, but even there the wheels seem to be tilting outward, partly because what makes it work: the mono-culture and close blood pool (yes,apparently race-uniformity or more than that to where you actually are related to most of the community DO count at an instinctive level to keep you from abusing the system) is being destroyed by immigration from other parts of the world. But this is precipitated by plunging fertility which seems to be a direct side effect of socialism. And no, I don’t buy this is because “people don’t need kids to look after them in their old age.” Most people don’t think of that, when they want kids. I think it’s something else, and the massive cases of infertility I heard of even in the seventies in the Scandinavian countries seem to be a side effect of socialism. (It could be as simple as raising the marriage age, of course.) Someone should do a study.
Yea– I saw the plunging birthrates when I visited Denmark in the late 90s. Also in Holland I saw what was going on when the Turkish radicals went there. There is a huge divide between the immigrants (they have their own mosques, their own stores, their own areas). The immigrants run off citizens– which causes no end of discontent–
I could go on– Also I was in Germany and saw the taxes the citizens paid. It was horrendous. If parents bought a house, it took three generations to pay the house off– Plus the Germans were complaining how East Germany was a drain on the manufacturing areas of Germany. A closed system worked for awhile– when it was open, it started to fail.
On the lower marriage rates – don’t know if this applies beyond my generation or the US, but I’m in a ten-or-so year group that apparently contains the lowest number of married women ever in the US. I think there are a number of reasons for this, but the biggest one is that this group was the first real wave of women hitting the work place in jobs that weren’t the norm for women in the past. At the very least, this meant all efforts had to be toward the career because there was more to prove. And the available males had been raised in homes with full-time moms, so marriage meant a woman was working both her outside career and then going home to the full time job there. That’s gotten better now, for those following us, thank goodness, but I saw a lot of really tired women and wanted nothing to do with the “second shift.” I could have done the full time homemaker thing, but that wasn’t going to happen. Still doesn’t, sadly.
(Frankly, I think the 70s being the era of twig-thin models and anorexia and women developing some of the worst body images ever may have something to do with it, too.)
On the plus side, differential fertility does not favor the liberals.
Bret,
Actually we’re very far from an echo chamber. You have everything from socons to libertarians, with most people anywhere in the middle.
The ONLY thing my mind is set on is this “Socialism doesn’t work” nor does communism, its harder sister. Am I going to “learn” differently?
No. I saw it in action, and I know history. It hasn’t EVER worked. so why should I ‘learn’ that it does.
Here’s the thing — we hear all the arguments from the “other” side. It’s the mainstream media, education, etc. Most of us have post graduate degrees. TRUST me we heard the other side.
The other side OTOH thinks — as you seem to, vid, echo chamber — to view us as all white, christian males over sixty, full of privilege and stuff. Can you see why that both fails to persuade us and makes us think they need educating.
You’re using the “reasonable” “both sides can learn from each other” thing socialists and undercover communists used during the cold war. “Both sides are equally bad.”
Turned out… no. While not perfect, the difference between the US and the USSR was NOT something we should split the difference on, and the argument was just a piece of agit prop.
I’m no believer in socialism or collectivism or any “ism” at all including capitalism (which has this annoying tendency to evolve in to crony capitalism, sometimes known as corporatism, and sometimes called fascism). I rather like the concept of free markets but realize that’s just a subjective preference and that any system that produces wealth is ultimately going to fall prey to “looters” (per Ayn Rand) and end up as a sclerotic system as described by Mancur Olsen’s “The Rise and Decline of Nations” or the more easily readable “Demosclerosis” by Jonathan Rauch.
So far, my main issue with the political posts of yours (this one and a few at Instapundit) is the hyperbole. Here are some examples:
“…to vote for the most stunningly incompetent administration this country has ever known…”
First, there have been an awful lot of incompetent administrations. Johnson? Nixon? Carter? Second, I think Obama is taking the country exactly where he wants to, which may not be what you like, but it’s plenty competent. Perhaps too competent as far as you’re concerned. 🙂
“…they voted for the hardest financial landing a country ever had…”
Ever? “Ever” is a long time. How about the Dutch tulip bubble? The collapse of the Roman Empire? I personally doubt it will even be worse that the Great Depression which led to WWII and tens of millions dead.
“…live in indentured servitude to the government…”
Anybody can leave. You just can’t necessarily leave with an american passport and you might not be able to come back.
“… that big crash to come…Until the precipice…”
We may be on the Road to Serfdom, but it’s a very, very long road. Indeed, we’ve been on that road at least since FDR and really since his cousin Teddy was POTUS more than a century ago. At the present rate it’ll be another century until we arrive at the destination.
Japan is an interesting study. They were where we are about two decades ago. Sure, their economy has been kinda sucky, but no big crashes, no precipices and they’ve been living pretty comfortably. The PIIGS (Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece, and Spain) may well illuminate the likely outcome for states such as California and Illinois, but the US as a whole is much, much more similar to Japan as a whole: they both control a reserve fiat currency, have a large, advanced, diverse economies, and are approaching the end stages of a sclerotic government. However, those end stages will take decades before a “crash” or “precipice” are encountered and we’re decades behind Japan on that road.
I’m a futures and derivatives trader (one of my careers) and have studied fiat currencies and monetary theory for decades. Nobody completely understands how fiat currencies work. I’m mean nobody. Not Bernanke, not me, probably not even Milton Friedman when he was alive, and probably not you. The complexity of fiat currencies and the associated banking systems is simply beyond the capacity for human understanding when you also consider the psychological, sociological, political and other aspects along with the economic.
One quick digression/example. When I want to spend money, I first have to get it (earn, beg, borrow, or steal). When the government wants to borrow money (or collect taxes), it’s exactly the opposite. It first has to spend before it can borrow or tax (imagine the startup case where there isn’t money yet in circulation – there’s not money available yet for the government to borrow until it spends money!). Most of the rules comparing private and fiat currency borrowing aren’t quite as opposite as that one, but they are for the most part completely orthogonal. Anything you know about private borrowing simply doesn’t apply to a government with a fiat currency.
Anyway, the point is that collapse probably isn’t imminent, at least at the federal level, or at least not because of fiscal or monetary constraints.
The country can easily survive 4 more years of Obama. The only question is whether it can survive, in the long term, an electorate that chose to elect Obama. But you and I will probably not live long enough to know one way or the other.
Bret, you should fit in here just fine. (Yes, we’re being a bit hyperbolic here right now, but that’s because last week was a really emotional week.)
“The country can easily survive 4 more years of Obama. The only question is whether it can survive, in the long term, an electorate that chose to elect Obama.”
I think this nails it precisely.
On incompetent administrations – for the record, Nixon was very competent. Brilliant foreign policy, which was under his control, and the poor economy was more the fault of his Democratic congress (though he did sign the bills, so he’s culpable).
As to our current administration: either he’s completely and utterly incompetent (and the fact that most of what’s been accomplished domestically was done by a Democratic congress under Nancy Pelosi points to this, not to mention a disastrous foreign policy, starting with sending the Winston Churchill bust back to Great Britain and going downhill from there), or he is, as you say, very competent and really does want to reduce America’s place in the world, and believes that all First World wealth exists because it was stolen from Third World countries and must be returned. I’m not sure which is worse, but I’d prefer to think incompetence for now.
“…for the record, Nixon was very competent…”
Have you considered that Nixon’s wage and price freezes probably set the stage for the stagflation and high unemployment of the 1970s (the “malaise” famously described by Carter) and the widespread adoption of employer provided health insurance which decimated what remained of the free market for health care which led to ever increasing inefficiencies and spiraling costs which ultimately led to … Obamacare!?
That’s, of course, ignoring Watergate and a president resigning and the negative impact on the national psyche.
Even on foreign policy, there’s far from universal agreement (Reagan, for example, vehemently disagreed) that detente was a good idea. It gave the Soviets breathing room so they could continue to oppress their people and wreak mischief and havoc around the globe.
If you’ve really studied the Nixon era and consider him to be “very competent” we’ll just have to disagree on that one.
Bret, btw, capitalism ONLY decays into crony capitalism, when the “third way” comes in and competition is stifled by government. The free market sans government works just fine.
Only when it’s back up by strong custom. The free market needs the rule of law to function or it becomes a free-for-all and very ugly. (“Little else is requisite to carry a state to the highest degree of opulence from the lowest barbarism but peace, easy taxes, and a tolerable administration of justice”)
Sarah, I think you’re ignoring Public Choice Theory and its concepts that strongly and usually irresistibly push governments from supporting the institutions of free markets towards crony capitalism. Can it be avoided? Maybe. Could we avoid it? Too late, we’re already well down that road (GM bailout, Wall Street bailout/too-big-to-fail, Solyndra, etc.). Can we reverse it? Very unlikely, again, given public choice theory. The best hope to slow it is to strongly lobby for and push towards smaller government and more federalism (the more distributed the power structure, the harder and more costly it is for “looters” to loot.
But wage and price controls, etc., came from a very left wing Democratic Congress (though, as I said, Nixon signed the bills) – and yes, those were disastrous. I lived through the 70s, I remember them well. Presidents are blamed (or praised) for things actually done by Congress.
On Watergate – yes, the cover-up was stupid, but rushed cover-ups, no time for planning or even thinking, often are (witness the current cover-ups going on for Benghazi).
yep. But again compare Watergate with Benghazi.
IF there were no other reason to vote republican the fact that the press WON’T cover for them is enough to make me do it.
Go read Dick Cheney’s Road to Damascus moment on the wage and price controls–he basically realized he wasn’t as smart as the invisible hand, after making up prices for a few months.
“… an electorate that chose to elect Obama.” A point Rush Limbaugh has been making all year. Great minds thinking alike or stopped clock, your choice.
Incompetent? Well, it depends, don’t it, on your definition of incompetent. Too many instances to list here, but in the last six months there is:
0 Benghazi(-gate), arguably a bigger foreign policy blunder than Carter’s hostage rescue Charlie Foxtrot, coupled with Nixonian cover-up.
0 FEMA mismanagement of Hurricane Sandy’s clean-up is quite arguably worse than Katrina, even if the media coverage is far less
0 Economic (mis)-management, Seen the latest (mysteriously) delayed report on # of Americans on Food Stamps? Permitting the country to come so close to the economic cliff, even (especially) during the presidential campaign is about as high a level of economic malfeasance as we’ve seen in generations.
0 Protection of civil liberties? Non-judicial execution through drone-warfare, infringement on religious freedom of speech and conscience.
Listing more would be tedious; this administration has demonstrated mal-competence across a stunning breadth and depth of responsibilities. Most other administrations managed to achieve competence in at least one core function of government.
I will say this in defense of BHO on FEMA (I try to be absolutely fair) – Sandy is the failure of the local government, just as Katrina was. Yes, FEMA is incompetent, but all government bureaucracies are. At least the northeast doesn’t have the idiot governor and mayor that Louisiana did, or things would be even worse.
But I don’t blame BHO (well, other than the usual show-up-for-the-photo-op then run off to Vegas, but that just looks bad). All the president can do is authorize the money, which he does with a phone call, and he did that, just as Bush did with Katrina. (I do blame the press for the spin differences, of course).
I offer no defense of Mayor Bloomputz (an example of my extreme contempt, as I ordinarily eschew such childish name-calling, but the Marathon Mayor has earned such disapprobation) in handling this crisis, but FEMA failed to even ORDER sufficient bottled water for distribution until after the first weekend subsequent to the storm. As for generators … don’t even let’s get started n this. The response by NY and FEMA is making the Louisiana Katrina response look only mildly disappointing.
Mayor Bloombug.
FEMA is more or less useless.
You forgot to mention the reports that when FEMA did get water, but ran out on a Friday, they simply shut the offices for the weekend. Never mind that the people were doing without essentials. While the President is not the one running FEMA the President, as the head of the executive branch is the one responsible for who he appoints, their oversight and the general policies. And the President had turned up and made public promises (to the cameras, at least) that he would be responsible and see that things got done.
I take issue with “anybody can leave” — first, there is no other USA. And by that I don’t mean the land, etc, I mean the principles. Second, do you know how difficult is is to immigrate ANYWHERE ELSE? I don’t think Americans are even aware of this, hence the continuous call to soften our laws. I come from a family of immigrants. Trust me, it’s easier said than done, even if all other countries weren’t a variety of soft socialism (at least.)
On the most stunningly incompetent administration — depends on what you consider incompetent. They seem to be very good at administering a parallel world in which academic socialism works. Unfortunately, we don’t LIVE there.
Oh, and look — I’ve lived through a collapse. We’re already in slo-mo collapse as is. Whether it accelerates and becomes visible is something else. No. When you are inflating currency to SURVIVE you’re in collapse.
“Nobody completely understands how fiat currencies work.”
Nobody completely understands how _macroeconomics_ works. Any competent economist can give you a long list of variables that all matter, and a discussion of how frobbing each one (in isolation) is likely to impact overall outcomes. But the honest ones will all admit that we don’t even know what all the variables are, we don’t know which ones are more important that which other ones under the present circumstances, and in a number of potentially critical cases we don’t even know which way the values are trending until it’s too late to matter.
We can say for sure that nothing quite like this has ever happened before. Lots of things that are arguably similar have, to different people at different times…but which arguably-similar cases actually are similar in the ways that matter, and which aren’t? Dunno. Can’t know, until it’s all over and we’re looking back at the history.
A credible case for your Japan analogy could be made, and it’s worthy of study. A credible case could also be made that the most relevant historical parallel is the Fall of Rome.
(For the record, I don’t fear Barack Obama. I think that the best evidence to date is that he’ll be perfectly happy to go on playing Nero, playing golf and travelling the world, giving speeches and collecting the applause and adulation of sycophants while the economy crumbles. Which, while sad, beats the hell out of the kind of politician who’d prefer to skip the vacation and spend his time manning the wrecking ball. I _do_ fear living in the sort of country that chose to re-elect him, though.)
Oh, yes — as P.J. O’Rourke said about Carter, I thank G-d the bastard sleeps eight hours a night.
But his advisers are just as incompetent/malevolent, you know?
I agree that the fall of Rome might be a good analogy. That took hundreds of years, almost a thousand if you include the Holy Roman Empire.
Given that, I’d say we still have some time.
No. We’re not Rome. If we become an Empire, the US is gone.
If we become an Empire the US is finished no matter how much further on the corpse stumbles, even if it lasts ten thousand years.
I just don’t want to become Europe. Or Argentina.
Or Napoleonic France. Or the Roman Empire. Or…
At the present rate it’ll be another century until we arrive at the destination.
I don’t think you’ve correctly factored in a couple of things:
1) Whether you think the current administration is competent at its goals, or incompetent to run the country, the fact is that it is absolutely antagonistic to the idea of liberty and American Exceptionalism. This means that they will be doing everything they can to turn us into a third-world country. Carter was merely incompetent, but these guys are actively against us.
2) We were already on the brink of economic collapse due to over-regulation making it impossible to do business profitably. Now that Obama doesn’t have to worry about re-election, the regulatory hurdles will accelerate. See the new Carbon rules brought up by the EPA to be released after the election.
3) One thing I don’t think anyone really factored in to the recession we (may) have been recovering from is gas prices. People talked about it, but I never saw any numbers attached, so I figured them out: Between the sub-$2 gas in the mid-2000’s and the $4 gas of 2008, we were spending $1.6 billion dollars more per day in 2008. That’s $1.6 billion dollars that were not going to increasing jobs. We’re almost back at that number now, but if Obama’s pre-2008 words come to pass, we’re looking at double that. We’re using less oil daily than we were then, so it’s not a simple multiplier, but it works out to spending $4.5 Billion more per day than when gas was $2. The impact of that would be more staggering than I can calculate.
4) The past 4 years have seen an unprecedented increase in people who depend on government. That will only continue, and when the weight of all that breaks the bank, then what’s going to happen? I don’t know, but the possible scenarios are not pretty.
After the election, dozens of businesses are laying off tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of workers, and cutting hours on even more, in order to avoid the Obamacare mandates. The likely response from the Government to that will be tighter regulations, for preventing companies from laying people off, so that they are forced to comply with the new rules, which will probably result in those companies shutting their doors. It will only accelerate.
“I’m no believer in socialism or collectivism or any “ism” at all including capitalism (which has this annoying tendency to evolve in to crony capitalism, sometimes known as corporatism, and sometimes called fascism).”
I must disagree a bit here – fascism is socialism, not capitalism. Everything can evolve into socialism, all too easily. I agree with Milton Friedman, who said you can have capitalism without freedom, but you can’t have freedom without capitalism. Crony capitalism is that slippery slope toward socialism, where the government chooses winner and losers, and destroys competition.
I recommend The Road To Serfdom.
Do you mean reading Hayek’s book or do you mean continuing down the path we seem to be on? 😉
Well, I don’t recommend the path, but being aware of it IS a good idea.
Bret,
I appreciate your optimism, because I have none left. One thing that I have not heard you address (sorry if i missed it) is the national debt, currently accelerating past $16 trillion.
My optimism? That it’s going to take a long time to collapse instead of Sarah’s conjecture of imminent collapse? Glad to be “optimistic” then.
Yes, as Romney said, on Sesame Street this election was brought to you by the letter “O” and the number 16 trillion. I’m not going to tell you that are current large deficits are a good thing because they’re not. However, as I alluded to above in discussing fiat currencies, the $16T debt is not anything like private (individual) debt and may not mean what you think it means and is more a reflection of past spending than future burden.
First, let’s consider a hypothetical closed system: your left hand and your right hand. Turns out no matter how much money your left hand borrows from your right hand and no matter what the interest payments on that debt are, you, as a whole are no poorer. Likewise, if a country with a fiat currency borrows only from itself in that fiat currency, no matter how much it borrows and how high the interest payments are, it can never be poorer overall from the borrowing itself (it can potentially but not inherently be poorer from market distortions due to the borrowing), Japan is nearly a perfect example of this where the government has nearly twice the debt relative to GDP that we do and it’s mostly held by their citizens.
Once we add in foreign creditors, the picture becomes more complicated but doesn’t change quite as much as some think. First, the dollar is the main world reserve currency so we are still borrowing from “ourselves” where the world is a closed economy. Second, even ignoring that, as the foreign entities cash in their US treasuries (maybe one day), that money will ultimately flow here generating significant exports and stimulating our economy which would help us get back towards full employment and robust economic growth which will also reduce the debt as a percent of GDP.
Given Japan’s example, we can probably double the debt to GDP ratio before it becomes a huge problem which will probably take at least two decades and possibly much longer even if we have Obama like Presidents forever going forward.
Of course you’re poorer. You’re poorer because the only real (material) wealth is the fruits of the earth and of people’s labor and your fun and games prevent both, and so decrease wealth.
Turns out no matter how much money your left hand borrows from your right hand and no matter what the interest payments on that debt are, you, as a whole are no poorer.
When the government holds on to the money and passes it from right hand to left hand it is not available for other investments. But I find your juggling image unsatisfactory. Spent ahead or behind that money must be pulled from somewhere other than thin air. The government, while it can print money, does not create wealth. So that value is pulled out of the private sector, if only by inflation. Since the government is presently buying its own bonds and printing money to do so it bears more resembles to a magic act.
“…that money must be pulled from somewhere other than thin air…”
No, the money is literally created from nothing, or a slightly better metaphor is that there are an infinite number of dollars, the only question is how many of those the Fed chooses to deploy.
“So that value is pulled out of the private sector…”
Creating money in and of itself pulls nothing from the private sector. Government spending displaces resources from the private sector. The question is then whether or not that government spending provides more or less value than the equivalent spending in the private sector and that depends on a number of factors.
YOU CAN’T CREATE MONEY. You can print money. But you can’t create the value it symbolizes. Look up Weimar Republic. Look Argentina. Look up Zimbabwe. THIS IS NOT ARCANE KNOWLEDGE. What are they teaching you kids?
Weinmar Republic, Argentina, Zimbabwe, and every other case of hyperinflation and/or default involved borrowing (or owing reparations in cases like Germany) money in SOMEONE ELSE’s CURRENCY OR GOLD.
The rules for a fiat currency are much, much different and this is one of the areas where you are making a mistake Sarah.
No. Look, we don’t exist in isolation. First of all we owe TONS of money to China. Second, we buy oil from abroad — and a ton of other stuff too. ALL printing money does is devalue the money.
There is no fairydust, sorry.
IF your idea were true, then the government could print money, hire all the unemployed to move paper around, and we’d prosper.
You forgot money is a means of exchange. More money pursuing the same resources, even without foreign debt ALWAYS means inflation.
I don’t know where you learned economics, but that’s just wishful thinking and daft wishful thinking at that.
OK. Then explain why, as we’ve doubled the debt in the last few years why inflation has remained very low and interest rates have dropped to zero instead of spiking (which generally precedes increasing inflation). Explain why Japan, which has the highest government debt to GDP ratio in the world (230%) and has had deflation and interest rates of basically zero for decades.
The markets are saying that there is no inflation (much less hyperinflation) is coming and interest rates are going to remain low.
You don’t need to listen to me, but 30 year mortgages at 3% in the face of a large increase in government debt is telling you that there’s something wrong with your narrative. (By the way, the vast majority of economists take my side in this one).
Because NO ONE is spending — as for inflation they’re calculating it in squirrily ways. Bret — I assume you don’t buy groceries?
The interest rates have been kept down artificially by the Fed. This is part of the reason that there has been less inflation than would otherwise be expected. Another part is that companies have been sitting on money, waiting to find out how this election is going to go. I don’t know what they are going to do now, but I expect them to keep sitting on money, and trying to find more ways to cut costs.
Eventually, though, the money being printed is going to overwhelm that, and inflation is going to go off like a roman candle.
It’s already hitting food and oil. Look, they don’t count food, they don’t count gas, but people still eat and drive.
Believe me, I know. I’m the one who does all the shopping and driving. Looking at the price of beef nearly drives me to tears. Also, when i moved to where I live now, gas was $1.50. Now, of course, it’s more than twice that. I never would have moved this far out if I had had any idea.
Didn’t those same markets say there was no problem with mortgage backed securities?
You can dilute the liquor all you like but all it means is you need to drink more to get as drunk, and your kidneys take a beating.
Banks are under a great deal of pressure from the Fed to maintain low interest rates. These rates are artificial and do not reflect the cost/risk of doing business. The banks, under these restrictions, cannot afford to extend credit to anyone other than those they are most assured will repay. So we have people complaining because they are having trouble getting loans, and people are having trouble buying and selling houses. The government is pressuring the banks to make loans, which is part of what lead to the last collaspe. It is said that real stupidity is to keep doing what got you hurt in the first place hoping for different results.
Bret, the reason we haven’t had too much inflation yet (though it is there) is because the banks are still sitting on the money. They aren’t lending it out, so it hasn’t hit the economy. Hopefully, they still won’t. If it stays there, propping up their reserves after the mortgage debacle, we may get away with it.
Not with open ended QE3, this time it’s deadly!
Sarah,
This time it’s [QE3] deadly? I’ll quote you on that next year. Or I guess I should ask the time frame in which you think the deadliness will occur and what you predict the deadliness will be?
Also, let me point out that government borrowing is the OPPOSITE of printing money. Borrowing REMOVES money from circulation. In other words, the government spends “printed” money then borrows (or taxes) it back to take it out of circulation.
Again, you’re focusing on the wrong thing. Spending (especially inefficient spending) is a problem. How it’s financed (taxes versus debt) matters little.
Bret wrote: “[L]et me point out that government borrowing is the OPPOSITE of printing money. Borrowing REMOVES money from circulation.”
That’s true if private citizens or organizations are buying the debt. Problem is, the largest single holder of U.S. debt is now the Federal Reserve, which is printing money to buy our debt, which is ADDING new money to the circulation.
Borrowing REMOVES money from circulation. In other words, the government spends “printed” money then borrows (or taxes) it back to take it out of circulation.
But it is borrowing the money to spend it. It has borrowed to pay off private debts (the auto bail-out). It is has borrowed to invest (Solyndra, SunPower, First Solar and others, all faltering or now bankrupt). It has borrowed to meet prior obligations.
As others have explained, money represents value. It cannot be created out of thin air without cost. Those who have accepted such house of cards theory are why we are headed into trouble.
Sarah wrote: “More money pursuing the same resources, even without foreign debt ALWAYS means inflation.”
Yes, but the money would actually have to pursue the resources. The government borrowing money takes that money out of circulation so it can’t pursue the resources. With a fiat currency it’s spend first, borrow or tax second, which is the exact opposite of how private debt works.
They may budget first, but they cannot spend first. That is a complete fallacy. I don’t know who convinced you of that, but it’s ridiculous.
As for debt? What happens when the service on the debt becomes more than the entire government budget? Once that happens, it becomes an impossible-to-stop exponential increase, which only refusal to pay can affect.
Bret — you are fracking insane. No, seriously, you’re fracking insane. You think the government is a perpetual motion machine.
Hey, guys, I’m going to print some cash and borrow it from myself and be rich, rich, rich…
Good EFFING G-d, man — what good is the money if it’s not being used, except for being a stealthy way of taking everyone’s savings away through inflation as soon as it starts moving?
RES wrote: “Didn’t those same markets say there was no problem with mortgage backed securities?”
Assuming you’re trying to craft a narrative that might convince people to support a free market, non-collectivist approach, you want to be very, very careful with arguments of that genre.
The collectivist will heartily agree with you and say markets shouldn’t be trusted and therefore the government should run everything, which, if markets really suck that badly, isn’t a bad argument. Is that where you want to head?
Markets make mistakes but either you accept that they are, on average, pretty decent at reflecting reality such that they can guide the allocation of scarce resources, or you don’t, in which case free markets versus socialism/communism becomes a subjective preference to be chosen at the ballot box.
My comment as originally constructed, Brett, included some snark about government meddling with market efficiency. But I deleted that as tedious and largely irrelevant to pointing out your logical flaw.
“Yes, but the money would actually have to pursue the resources. The government borrowing money takes that money out of circulation so it can’t pursue the resources.”
But the government is spending. Wildly. The budget now is the ridiculous one from 2009, only with the automatic increases on top (which is why the Dems have no problem with no new budget, they’re perfectly happy with the old one).
I’ve lived through this before. I remember the 70s, and Keynesian policies tried here. All it got is was a stagnant economy, high unemployment and outrageous double-digit inflation.
Increasing the money supply to match GDP is necessary, or there’s deflation. Increasing it wildly with nothing on the other end, no increase in goods and services, decreases the buying power of the dollar.
Wayne wrote: “…but they [the federal government] cannot spend first…”
It can only be in that order. Consider the initial condition where a fiat currency is decided upon. At that point there is NO money in circulation. The government cannot tax or borrow at that point because no money exists. It has to first create money, then it has to spend that money, and only then can it borrow or tax it back.
The rules for fiat currencies are very counter intuitive and generally orthogonal (and in this case opposite) to private spending and borrowing.
Yes, we know that fiat money is not linked to actual physical reserves. Simply because the money has no backing in the form of a reserve, does not mean that it does not represent value – ingenuity, work, products. To function it requires the trust of the people (full faith and credit). That trust is based on the people’s belief / experience that their money is relatively stable — and that it has a value when they take it to the market. If the people lose faith in a nation’s paper currency, the money will ultimately collapse. What is presently going on sets up a condition that will result in that loss of faith.
Oh, I suspect that no foreign governments will lend money to us if they think that what they will receive is new money printed just pay them off.
Laurie wrote: “But the government is spending. Wildly. ”
Yes, and that makes us poorer (probably, assuming the spending is inefficient). That’s because real resources are (probably) diverted from productive uses to less productive uses.
The method of financing that spending with a fiat currency matters relatively little. Borrow versus tax doesn’t make much difference.
Y’all need to separate the problem (spending) from the non-problem (financing of that spending).
We recognize both problems, Bret.
I’m taking Art Laffer’s word over yours. As of 2010, the problem was a potential, and yes, it may not realize, but there is a point of no return. I don’t know if we’ve reached it yet, but 4 more years gives me little hope.
Sarah wrote: “Hey, guys, I’m going to print some cash and borrow it from myself and be rich, rich, rich…”
You could, of course, create your own personal fiat currency in your household and call it Sarah Bucks or something like that.
Unfortunately, it’s very unlikely that anyone outside your household will lend you money denominated in Sarah Bucks or allow you to buy anything with Sarah Bucks.
Thus, you’re playing by different rules than the Fed and your hypothetical doesn’t apply.
If it makes you feel good to call me “fracking insane” go right ahead and I’m sure your readers probably enjoy it. But what I’m trying to do here is point you to some serious holes in your narrative. If you just want to preach to the choir here, then there’s no need to refine your narrative. If you want to have a hope of appealing to and convincing the center and possibly center left, you need to be able to answer these questions without resorting to ad hominem. If you can’t engage me in this very simple dialog about very straightforward economics without resorting to ad hominem, how on earth are you going to engage folks like that champion of left-wing economics and Nobel Prize winning economist Paul Krugman?
You actually have a chance of making a difference because you have a wide and hopefully growing audience. I’d like you to succeed as I don’t like the direction the country is going in either. But if you’d prefer to just preach to your choir, let me know and I’ll let you preach in peace (I’ll still read your books because I think you’re a great author).
Bret, you’re the one who is getting tangled up here. Fiat currency evolves from ‘hard’ currency in the form of promissory notes which ultimately become a paper currency. Governments trying to force a fiat currency on a population that hasn’t evolved a de facto one already face an uphill battle because the mental framework isn’t there. You get cargo cult type effects instead (Please don’t ask for references – my brain contains all manner of weird facts floating around largely disconnected and I’m not up to googling today. I suspect most of the people here can give you a ton of references anyway).
Governments can promise money (value) that doesn’t exist yet. That’s called an IOU. It gets formalized in the form of a loan with interest. The interest represents value that is expected to be created by the use of the funds being lent out. The loan principle itself must exist, or it can’t be lent out – except of course that this relationship has become rather tenuous since the advent of computerized banking. Most banks don’t possess anything close to the amount that they supposedly have. Some of it is committed elsewhere, but a lot is… well, non-existent. Hence the bailouts and a lot of noise to convince people that they did NOT want to run to their bank and withdraw everything in their account. That would destroy the system.
Governments can play the shell game longer than anyone else, but they are still bound by the same rules. No government has ever successfully inflated its way out of financial difficulty.
BRET – the government has not and/or will never learn how to spend money efficiently. Leave the money in the citizens hands and the money will be spent efficiently–
And before you gleefully rip apart my argument, I lived through the 70s debacle with rising inflation. It was not fun— It will not be fun now either-
Bret,
Actually, this is a fallacy pushed by those who benefit when people don’t understand money.
Money is at its core a representation of value. Usually agreed-upon value, which is usually a function of some combination of raw material, work, and transformative input. If the number of dollars in the world doubled tomorrow, the amount of value represented by those dollars would not change – which is pretty much the definition of inflation.
Changing the value available is creating wealth – that’s usually done by transformative inputs: working out how to transform a collection of metal and other bits and pieces into a car and then making the process of getting from metal etc to vehicle as efficient as possible (grossly simplified, but that’s the general idea). Wealth creation tends to advance more or less linearly with leaps that happen when a major change rolls through a society.
People lose this because most of the time now money isn’t even bills and coins. It’s numbers in a computer somewhere. Way back when people carried gold and silver, even that was an abstraction: a representation of the general agreement that an ounce of gold represented a certain quantity of some other material, or that a pound of silver represented so much (where did you think the British Pound Sterling came from?).
We’ve been keeping mental tally of “this is worth about that” pretty much since humanity started being human. We tend to forget that underneath all of it lies something concrete – which leads to the notion that printing money won’t hurt anything and might help.
I suppose that implies that if big crunch hits the U.S. it’ll come about in a way much, much different than almost everybody expects. I think about the postbellum South and its fiat money no longer being a legal tender. Another legal tender filled the vacuum.
In the late 1970s and early ’80s a lot of folks were worried about the (then, as now) upward spiraling U.S. debt. It was a headline story then, changes in M1 and M2 were reported on the evening TV network news. One of the finance managers for the firm I worked for, a real smart guy, said he wasn’t worrying about the debt and trade deficit with Japan “unless Sony TV sets start to arrive packed in shredded dollars.” Now that I’ve seen what you’ve been saying about the counterintuitive behavior of fiat currency in so many comments here, Bret, what the guy said 30 years ago is starting to make sense to me.
P.S. Don’t knock the fall of the Western Roman Empire. Because of that, slavery faded away in western Europe despite remaining ubiquitous in the rest of the world. Agricultural productivity notably increased. Standards of living began to rise. Technology improved. See The Victory of Reason by Rodney Stark.
Second, I think Obama is taking the country exactly where he wants to, which may not be what you like, but it’s plenty competent. Perhaps too competent as far as you’re concerned.
That this administration may have done exactly what they wanted is not really the measure of competency we are have decried. What concerns me, for one, is what they have put in place and what more they are planning to do. These policies have been tried elsewhere and failed. The government has amassed a devastating level of debt, it is not simply that the number is huge, it is insupportable by the GDP — and so our national credit rating has been downgraded. The treasury is printing money that has no backing to buy our debt. Meanwhile higher fuel costs are adversely effecting businesses and farming at all levels, from the costs of raw good, all the way to distribution and sale. This has a multiplier effect as a product moves through the stages to bring it to market. The only consistently growing pool of workers has been in the public sector, with a shrinking base of non-government employee taxpayers. This is not a recipe for a healthy economy.
Count me as another Christian Fundamentalist reader of yours. Maybe a bit more libertarian tending than others that carry that label, I do hate the label, it isn’t the be all and end all of me and doesn’t account for all of my beliefs. But, its close and the shortest way for those who want to sort me into a box. I understand the need to speak out. I am always disgusted when those who preach for me to be open-minded and diversified refuse to be open-minded enough themselves to understand a world with others who have legitimate difference of opinion to theirs. I understand it. I have gay friends, liberal friends etc but when it comes to politics I detest that the media insists I am a rabid racist, a homophobe, a rabble rouser etc because of my politics, all the while touting that the world should be more open-minded, more inclusive. irony. they don’t even see a hint of it….
Hey Sarah, I generally just ghost through on your blog, but I want to day I’m heading to buy a book or two today after this post. Keep up the good work.
<> and I’ll ditto this, totally agree. I have several author blogs I have to stop following during elections because they spew hatred at my kind of politics. Some I like enough to read again after the elections, some are so nasty and vile towards the right that it colors what I think of them as a whole and I cannot. Only one has it ever made me stop buying her books. And NONE of them did I ever write and tell them about how I felt and/or threaten not to purchase their books. None. I think the vast majority are like this.
I’ve never even read one of Sarah A. Hoyt’s books. But I’m going to go look up her works and read some now. I’m not saying they’ll be my cup of tea, but I’m damn sure going to find out.
“If that means I lose readers, so be it. And you can’t cow me into shutting up by telling me I’m losing readers – guys, we’ve gone well beyond that point. When a mad woman is running around soaking the bridges with gasoline before setting them on fire, she’s just going to laugh at you when you tell her she’ll now have to swim across. She knows. She thinks it’s more important to keep the armies of ruin, starvation and statism from marching in and despoiling her home.”
I have never read anything of yours, Sarah, but after reading those section, I hopped on my Nook and immediately bought Heart and Soul, this first of I expect of many. Lose some, win some. Thank you for taking a stand.
I can only hope one of your detractors reads this and is annoyed.
That might not be the best of books to start — being for one the third in the series… I’d recommend Draw One In the Dark.
H & S was also from my “stealthing” series, so any conservative point is buried fathoms deep.
I agree. I literally couldn’t read H&S until I went back and read the first two. Usually starting in the middle isn’t a problem. (I picked up Cherryh’s Foreigner series at book 3 or 4 and still loved it.) Darkship Thieves and Draw One in the Dark are better starting places.
I sent your blog the day before the election to my best friends.
It was the most concise depiction of the choices we had before us as Americans.
My heart aches now, but life goes on.
I like many others are relearning to find joy in the more simpler aspects of life, like a great sunset or a clear autumn day.
To paraphrase Ayn Rand, “A is A. You cannot cheat reality.”
And who is better suited to rebuild from the ashes?
Take care and keep after it!
You just gained a new reader and I bookmarked your blog. Nice piece of writing, this post. Thank you!
Sarah, a fellow Coloradan here, and a SF reader for many long decades. I came out of the closet this year to many of my fellow churchgoers as, gasp, a conservative. I have had it up to here with the “you are all racist, homophobic, stupid party, flat earthers.” I used to think that this was a lot of election time posturing, but, alas, there are a lot of very bright progressives that actually do believe all of the malarkey about voter suppression, war on women, big bird, binders, and so on.
I was an official poll watcher last week (Arapahoe County). There were some problems throughout the day, with the worst being that several people were showing up as having already voted, and were forced to vote a provisional ballot. It was easy to observe, since these people were very upset about this, insisting they had not voted earlier that morning.
I called the state lawyer hotline for the Romney campaign, and the lawyer I talked to asked me if the county clerk rep was following all of the steps she was legally required to do before making them vote (like calling into the county and having someone there confirm this before making them vote provisional). I wasn’t sure, but I said I would talk to her and let her know what she needed to do.
Not once was I asked the race, age, color, or any other demographic information by the hot line, nor was I instructed to ignore it if were women, minorities, young people, or other potential Obama voter. The concern was only that the correct legal process be followed BEFORE someone was denied the chance to cast a regular ballot.
My Dem counterpart actually said this to me a few minutes later:
“Wow, I’m surprised that you being a Republican and all, that you actually care about people getting to vote”
And later
“You seem so nice and reasonable; you’re not like most Republicans, you know, wingnuts”
The Dem poll watcher was a 30 year old lawyer and she had a button saying “Voter Protection 2012”. The whole Democratic meme was that all us evil Republicans were out to deny the vote to anyone unless they were white, middle-age, and obviously Republican.
I didn’t want to upset her world view any more than it already was, lest she suffer a stroke or an aneurysm, by telling her I also belonged to a church denomination that had a women head bishop, two openly gay bishops, gay priests, and was now allowing same-sex blessings.
Who the heck cares what something that’s literally skin deep does when we’re all related several ways. (We’ve reasons to believe that at various times the human population was reduced to a few thousand, if not a few hundred. So you and you and you and you are all my cousins, whatever color you are.)
Which means nothing. That was 50,000 years ago,.
Now, today, forensic anthropology tells us that there are three biologically distinct and distinguishable races. Asiatic, African, and Caucasian. Each race is superior to the others in some ways and inferior or equal to the others in other ways. Each race is populated by persons sharing to one degree or another a common genetic heritage.
Of these three races, two are populated by members who recognize and cherish their racial identity and wish to perpetuate it. Only one contains members who have been carefully trained to not only hate their own race, but to deny that it even exists. As a result, the number of members of this race are on the decline worldwide.
The self-hating, self-denying race is the Caucasian race.
But the tide is turning, Around the world, people of European ancestry are breaking free of the auto-genocide program in which they have been entrapped. Every day, more and more Caucasians are refusing to live in the self-detructive colorblind fantasy and deal with race relations as they are instead of as we might wish them to be. Ever day, more and more white people are recognizing the Three Truths:
1. White people exist
2. White people have the right to exist
3. White people have the right to exist aswhite people.
White people have been carefully programmed to react with visceral anger at any positive mention of the white race — or even at a mention of its mere existence. The fact that you are angry right now, dear reader, is proof.
Stop hating yourself. Stop denying what you know to be true from everyday, real-world experience. You can love yourself without hating the other guy. White people can love themselves, be proud of their race, and act to benefit their fellow whites without stooping to hate anybody. Being pro-white has nothing to do with hate, nothing to do with swastikas, nothing to do with pointy hoods, nothing to do with paganism. It just means loving your family — your extended family.
Dr. King’s dream is over. It has become a nightmare. Wake up — before it is too late,
I don’t give a flip about someone’s race. America isn’t a nation of race, or national background (and most of us are mixed these days). We are nation of ideas, that’s what holds us together. We have too many people today who have forgotten what those ideas are, or have come here and refused to learn and try to impose the old ideas they brought with them instead (why does humanity gravitate back to slavery?)
Dear Laurie,
Thank you for your polite reply. It’s more than I typically get from your average “open-minded person of ideas”.
America isn’t a nation of race, or national background… We are nation of ideas, that’s what holds us together
You are of course correct. The USA is a propositional nation, a “nation” united by ideology written on parchment.
As was the USSR.
Which is why it will fall apart as the USSR did.
We are not “holding together”. We are not a nation. We never have been. The federal union, as was the Soviet Union, is and has always been a political entity, a multiracial, multiethnic empire held together by naked force (as all empires are).
The political process is the means by which the members of the dominant ( = most numerous) race enforces their collective will, culture, and value system on the others. The white race was the dominant group in America until the early 1800s, when a universalist, centralist ideology began to spread among Northeastern whites.The end result of this process was abolitionism, and the political movement spring from it (i.e. the Republican Party). These universalist and centralist whites captured the federal government in March of 1861, and since that time have enforced their will and value system on the rest of America by brute force.
The federal government has acted explicitly in the best interests of non-whites since 1964, and this trend is accelerating. The most recent election is proof of this. White people are now being openly dispossessed, a fact that no one is trying to hide. Blacks and browns and Asians now openly trumpet their dominance over white people in explicitly racial terms. It is “the end of White America”.
Which means the end of America, period, and for obvious reasons. Non-white rule will destroy this country. The future of America is multiracial, multicultural failure. See Detroit… Gary… Baltimore… Philadephia… Atlanta… Zimbabwe.
You may not give a flip about race. Most whites don’t. We don’t because we have been brainwashed into denying that we exist, that we have every bit as much right to self-definition and self-determination as do members of other races.
And it’s going to cost us. Because even though whites don’t care about race, blacks and browns and yellows do. And they will act to protect and promote what they care about.
Ethnic nationalism is the wave of the future. From Belgium to Bologna, from France to Finland, from Russia to Hometown, U.S.A., people of every race and ethnicity are waking up and realizing the Three Truths: That white people exist; that white people have the right to exist; and hat white people have the right to exist as white people. With malice toward none, with charity toward all, European peoples around the world are turning their backs on the fake “nations” that have turned their backs on them and turning towards true nations — nations united not by parchment or ideology but by shared blood, shared culture, shared language.
What’s sauce for the brown and black goose is sauce for the white swan. All we want is what every nation wants: the right to determine our own destiny with our own kind in our own land. All we want is national self-determination for all peoples — black people, Native American people, Jewish people, Buddhist people, Mormon people — and, yes, for white, Christian people as well.
Thank you for considering my opinion.
If you are talking about the denigration of Dead White Males, I’m with you. Or enforced multi-culturism, which does not work. A local radio host here has started “White History Month,” both as a joke and a poke at the politically correct, but also as a way to remind people of European history, which is the history of the ideas that formed the US.
These are fine. But talking about race isn’t the way to go. Race doesn’t matter. Culture does. And I’d rather respond by filling people’s heads with the Constitution, which is what we used to do in schools.
Exactly. India is doing pretty well, since it rediscovered Western Culture. Their race remains the same.
Most people in India speak English. It proved impossible to decree one of the High Caste languages the Indian language without mass revolt. There’s something about the mental processes that results
If that’s true, what are Americans speaking? (Other than your godson. He speaks math.)
Which is fine by me. I want a common language as confused and confusing, as bizarre and as outright vulgar as modern English. The language in which we think affects the way we think.
Heck, western culture goes back to Roman and Greek culture. My ancestors were the peoples the Romans considered too barbaric to civilize. And yet my ancestors took to Roman and Greek culture and ran with it, became some of the greatest proponents of it, and yet they had no genetic connection. Genes don’t matter. Ideas do.
If you’re talking of the Scotts-Irish both the husband and I have a dollop of that, and yep, too barbaric to civilize is about it. 😉
Lots of Scotts-Irish, some Irish, English (and thus Germanic Anglo Saxon).
If I were teaching a high school history class, I’d point to the Hispanic kid and the black kid and point out they probably had more Roman blood in them than me, for any kid that thinks European history isn’t relevant to them.
Yes, the idea the races only connect WAY back, is silly. Portugal of course was a welcome mat of Europe for VERY long. We had everything from vikings to Berbers. Add to that that a considerable portion of my family er… wanders… and what you have is mind boggling. (Though to be honest mom’s side liked to marry their cousins. Thank heavens Dad’s side went for as weird as possible.)
I think the only Human subrace we were missing was Amerindian, and being a completist I made sure my kids got a healthy those of that.
When the school tried to play cute games and asked them to color the map regions their ancestors came from, I said “Color everything, even the sea, because you never know.”
Right you are, Laurie. For those who argue Race = Culture I offer Walter Williams, Thomas Sowell, Bobby Jindal, Susana Martinez, Marco Rubio, Star Parker and Zo Rachel.
There are plenty of white socialists, as well, from Reid to Pelosi to, well, just about every white Democrat in Congress. Those who conflate race and culture need to stop looking at people’s skins and look instead into their hearts.
“Plenty of white socialists” understates the case. Most of the socialism was introduced by WASPs. Americans don’t come much “whiter” than FDR and Woodrow Wilson.
“It’s all about race” is the enemy’s argument. If we start believing that nonsense, we lose, and lose _forever_. It’s about _culture_. Which is, yes, strongly correlated with race in many cases, but nevertheless is a _choice_ rather than something we’re stuck with from conception to death.
Stands. Applauds.
Really Robert– I cannot allow my mind to open up to that kind of imperialistic nonsense. National self-determination? Actually we want individual self-determination for every individual no matter their race, gender, or religious affiliation–
Plus if I believed for a moment that America was better for multiculturalism (and yes, I know what it is because it was one of those subjects we were forced to study in my degree) than I would be the first to promote reservations for races. You may be too young when we were proud to be a melting pot– a land that welcomed many people as long as they were willing to work for the same dream.
Liberty and equality for all is not equality of results… it is equality of potential. You have every right if you are willing to work hard and make enough money to get a degree or become a millionaire as do I. You and everyone else have the right to be bums. Color is just a divide used by a certain group of people to divide us.
What makes me sad, extremely sad, is that we are now seeing people who do not want to make the American ideal work. Many of these people have not had the hardships of previous generations. They are spoiled and believed they are entitled to everything without having to work for it.
If we split, our strength will split with it. It is this type of dystopia that makes me weep.
I have considered your opinion– if your world comes into being, then the ideals of our Founding Fathers (old white men?) will be washed away– and we will be in a civil war that will make the first one seem small.
Ok, there’s only one possible response to this sort of rant. I’m buying Darkship Renegades. I hope you learn from this…
(Humbly) Yes, sir. Thank you sir.
But you might want to read Darkship Thieves, first… (DSR should stand on its own, but all the same…)
I, for one, will be buying MORE of your books because of this.
I stopped giving a crap what progressives think and stopped being polite and “I’ll let this go” when people who knew me started calling me a racist for opposing Obama. Said I ‘don’t care if women, even your own daughter, die of no health care’ because I said I don’t want to pay for someones’ birth control pills and abortions. And other assorted crap.
I’ve read people explaining away vote fraud as ‘bad reporting’ and ‘lies from Fox and the corporations(!!)’, and when people started getting layoff notices, and “You’ll only be allowed to work up to 28 hours/week” notices, oh, that’s not POSSIBLY because of Obamacare rules and the economy, oh no, it’s because the Greedy Corporations ‘don’t care about the workers’ and ‘just want to get richer no matter what’.
And it’s NEVER the fault of socialism, or Obama, it’s ALWAYS the evil Republicans and conservatives and libertarians, on and bloody on.
Burned some bridges over this crap, and don’t care; there’s a limit to the level of crap I’ll tolerate in the name of being friendly/polite/’It’s not worth it’. And that limit gets lower as time goes by.
Long way of saying good on you; I got sick of being defined by lies and bullshit, and we can’t allow it anymore.
Well, you also gained a new reader. I saw some of your posts on Instapundit, learned you wrote sci-Fi, and bought ‘Darkship Thieves’ from Baen. I’m about 60% of the way through and am really enjoying it. I’ll buy the sequel. I buy some of your other stuff as well because I like your writing and I love a good story.
I’ve never cared about an author’s politics, except when they get overly pedantic and didactic in their story-telling. I suspect we agree politically on many things, and no doubt disagree on others. . You tell a good story, and that’s what I’m looking for. I wish continued success in doing so…
Thank you. Right now I’m steering readers ONLY to my Baen books, because I’m trying to get rights back to the others (where the royalties have become highly fictitious — or at least the statements.)
Right on, Sarah. I’m with you. I have worked in Congress (both bodies) for Republicans, and I’m proud of it. I’m proud to *not* be a Democrat (which I once was, before the party went off the cliff to the left). I don’t count myself as a Republican, however — I’m a Tea Party kinda guy who is also a social ultraliberal. Result? No one likes me.
Oh well. As someone certified as an abusive asshole by the very smartest mind in sf/f/h, I stand proud for my beliefs. I work for them. I always have.
I guess this means I’ve “come out.” Despite having worked for Rep. Dana Rohrabacher starting in April 1989. Anyone surprised?
Free minds, free people. Works for me. Pity it doesn’t for 51% of the U.S. population. The takers have hit their tipping point.
I enjoyed that. It came out a lot better than the way I put it over at Aces place. My problem is with all the.. ahem.. lesser minds saying “Let it burn”. They haven’t a clue about what that will mean, to them or anyone else. I don’t have much of a clue either, except for watching Mexico self destruct in the ’80s.
After a while, a political aside will not be recognized as such. For example, Prelude to Space by Arthur C. Clarke mentioned “Britain’s last millionaire.” That was probably intended as a prediction that Labour would succeed in redistributing wealth without damaging the economy. By the time I read it, it sounded like a comment on deindustrialization.
a political aside doesn’t bother me — it’s the political ten pages that reassure us the reader (and the writer) is on the side of angels because “he didn’t vote for Reagan and blah blah blah blah, madman, blah, world war, blah, if we were only reasonable and negotiated with the USSR and more blah.”
Thanks for your good works. Looking forward to more of it.
Thanks,
I think I’ll order a couple of your books this evening.
Marty
Go for the Baen published ones. The others the royalties can be iffy, and I’m sending my second demand for my rights back, anyway.
Oh, yeah, if you’re reading ebooks, Naked Reader is fine too — but not the traditional publishers other than Baen.
Ah, if it is in interest of you getting control over your rights back I will stop promoting the rest of your books. Praying that I will be able to promote them again soon. 😉
Sarah,
Your post struck me as so important to our world today. I am lucky enough to work in a small firm with people who respect me for my work. As such, I’m comfortable joking that I’m the only “out” conservative in the place. Prior to the 2008 election, I let my neighbors in my very liberal, urban Denver neighborhood think I shared their views. Once the McCain sign went up in the yard, they lost their minds, accusing me of wanting their middle-school-aged sons to die in the war. This kind of cruelty to others simply because we have a different point of view must stop.
But, if we want to change the frightening direction of our country, where the philosophy that government knows best is becoming accepted, people like us who disagree must be brave and speak up for what we believe in.
I’d never heard of you until your Instapundit guest blogging — which I loved BTW —, but this post has now inspired me to try your fiction.
I wish you all the best.
Jen
We’re in Colorado Springs, and one thing I resent about last night, is that we were intending to move to Denver in a year or two — now I’m not sure it’s a good idea.
And I’ve wanted to move to Denver since I was 8 (in Portugal. don’t ask. I don’t know either.)
Also, since we’re going mini-galt and spending as little as possible, this will curtail our forays to the DMNS, City Park (under, ‘molest the ducks’) and Pete’s Kitchen. Sigh. the sacrifices I make for this country.
Though beyond the mini-galt, we need to save ALL we can, to attempt to survive the mess ahead — double sigh.
Sarah. I came across your site from reading you on Instapundit. You are quite a writer and I will be visiting you often. For the folks upset about your politics and are not reading you anymore, that is their loss.
Your work on Instapundit brought me here; your work here keeps me here.
I’d like to say that at least you gained a reader—me–but I can’t because DARKSHIP got me. But now I’m no longer a reader, but a full fledged fan. An admirer. Courage and service comes in all forms, and thank you for yours.
Thank you. Preording Darkship Renegades MIGHT get it closer to a good laydown in stores, so…. if you’re inclined to buy, please pre-order from Amazon.
Sarah, I salute you. And I read your books.
Castle Rock is nice, and you can drive up and take the light rail downtown from Parkmeadow Mall. Of course, I didn’t discover Castle Rock or Parker until after my real estate agent directed me towards the Cherry Creek school system after I moved the family to Colorado.
I saw your posting on Mile Hi Con too late to make plans to come get my book(s) signed. Hopefully next year. It is so hard trying to find well written SF these days. Keep up the great writing.
Hi Sarah, I found you via InstaPundit, yea! Maybe I should know, but… I don’t! What are you referring to above, that you witnessed & Time mag. completely misreported? You wrote:
“And didn’t have eye-opening experiences like reading Time magazine completely misreport an event they’d been present at to present a “triumphant democracy” slant on something that was a communist takeover.”
Also, is that what you refer to here (experiencing before you were 18)?
” I’d give my right arm and all its typing fingers not to have gone through/seen what I did before 18.”
Hope that isn’t taken as being nosy. It’s actually from being on the outer ring, so far so long. ;-}
I look forward to continuing to follow & hopefully interact with you, Sarah!
— Rhonda
Portugal had a revolution in 74 when I was 11. I don’t have much to say for the ancien regime. Think Mubarak’s, only you know, Portugal is not an Arab country.
The Portuguese revolution was described as “bloodless” and “a revolution of flowers” the initial Junta were MOSTLY democrats, (in the sense of supporting democracy) but there was a communist in the middle. That’s all you need. He had a plan.
Over the last several years, till at least 79, we had revolution and counter-revolution, and 78 was horrible, including a Maoist period of some months (I can’t remember how long. It’s been a long time.)
The media here never reported the ugliness, like the time a demonstration I was in was fired on, the times anything to the right of the Communist party had their headquarters firebombed, etc.
Hell, the media there wasn’t very good at it.
Because I was a student of English, I’d read Time Magazine and Newsweek (Usually at the booksellers. I couldn’t afford them) and I remember their praising the revolution as painless even when it was at its worse.
And BTW for the “bloodless” I’m not sure from when these were, because I’m not there and all I get are second hand reports, but they still find mass graves. I think probably both from the initial phase and from the Maoist phase, when tons of people were reported to have “fled the country.”
(Shrugs.)
The mess that was Portugal in those years — experiences I cannot report because they don’t belong to me alone and my family has decided to forget and let it be — has scarred me at what might be an indelible level. By nature I don’t trust bureaucracy or government.
And yet, when I try to say anything even vague about this, to my colleagues, they look bewildered “but it was a peaceful revolution — flowers!” (BTW the damn red carnations, the slogans were exactly the same in Iran and in portugal — if you think that’s a coincidence, I have news for you. The truth was the Sov Union wanted Mozambique and Angola. Portugal was the way to get them. So they did. And Mozambique and Angola became Cuban-Russian farms for more than a decade — and suffered far more than we did.)
Well put–and other than Monica Showalter, who’s crying for Argentina*? She pointed out that 1 in 40 Argentinians are in the street over the mess they’re in, and you don’t get any more of that in the US press than you do about Benghazi or the butcher’s bill in Queens and the Bronx.
*Yes, I know Argentinians are, but I was going for the reference.
I went over to Baen and bought some of your books. Damn the torpedoes!
Well, whatever readers you may lose, rest assured you’ve got a new reader in me.
“if you have unpaid student loans you can’t leave the country”
Surely that can’t be right. (Then again, surely Obama can’t possibly get re-elected…) Sources, please?
I don’t actually remember the sources, only at the time I looked at it and went “holy moly! We have to make sure any loans the kids take are paid by the time they finish.” Google it. I’m sure it’s findable. You do know they’re not dischargeable in bankruptcy, right? (Also there was something about basically denying exit if the IRS SAID — no need to prove — you owed taxes.)
I found an article in The Atlantic which reported that under a law proposed by Barbara Boxer the IRS could put travel restrictions on anyone owing more than a certain amount in back taxes. Within the article it mentions, in a discussion of the various powers of the IRS, that those who have failed to pay their student loans in a timely manner are among those who will not be seeing their refund checks.
Easy, I’m on your side. No, I didn’t find information in an initial search, and yes, I know the loans aren’t dischargeable, I’m plenty outraged over the obstacles the US places in the way of its residents who wish to legally emigrate (look it up 🙂 ), but given the prevalence of student loans, the policy you described seems too ridiculous. Thanks to Cyn for the links. Might it be that what you had seen was a discussion about the possibility of travel restrictions on people who are in (unilateral) arrears on their student loans?
Back to the general discussion, I know you solely from your political writing (mostly through Instapundit). Once I get under from the pile of life I’m buried in, I’ll try some of your books. So coming out doesn’t have only negative effects.
“soaking the bridges with gasoline before setting them on fire”
We don’t need no water, let the mother burn! 🙂
Other people have put up links. I was right.
Sorry, but if you are referring to Cyn’s links (and CACS’ reference), you seem to be mistaken. I have read and re-read them and nowhere do they state that travel restrictions are in place on people who are in arrears on their student loan payments, let alone on people who are keeping up with their payments, as you seem to state. I detest the steady encroachment on our liberties, but I can find no evidence for this particular claim.
Besides which, just think about it: no matter how much we dislike this administration, and how clueless much legislation is, and how uninformed many voters are, a large majority of college graduates have student loans and they are the ones who are stereotypically most likely to favor foreign travel. Would anyone dare propose such a policy, and wouldn’t we have heard howls of protest? (No, this does not constitute proof, it just indicates why I found the initial claim surprising.)
Weddie – MAP-21 is the common denomination for paying taxes and student loans. If they start stopping people who are not paying or partially paying their taxes, then because student loans is under this same program– not allowing students to travel with student loans is a practical and easy next step. This is how regulations and Presidential Executive Orders work.
The first thing the common person learns about it is when the are in front of TSA being told they can’t travel. Travel is a freedom (I think a right) that is one of the first to go when a government wants to own a people– first step to serfdom. It is an historic precedence.
Cyn, what he means is that it wasn’t signed yet. Perhaps it wasn’t, though I remember discussing/reading it as if it had been signed.
The problem with this rule by executive order, Weddie, is that I keep forgetting one because the next one is worse. What was the thing in the Declaration of Independence? Something about functionaries to eat our our sustenance? Like that.
I couldn’t find a signature– but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist ;-). I understand– plus I have a deep disgust with EOs– whoever does them. It just doesn’t match my view of how Constitutional Law should work.
Last comment of mine on this side-point: I have trouble imagining such a step would ever be implemented. (I just might see this happening for those who are in arrears on their debt.) Student loans are just too widespread. Heck, our benevolent leader himself didn’t pay off his debt until eight years ago! It’s not that I think such a policy would be wrong (duh) as much as ridiculous. Even to our betters in Washington. (And if this is or does become the law, I will first discover what crow tastes like, and I will then change my name to Harriet Tubman.)
More generally: there are too many laws, too many regulations, too many executive orders to keep track of it all, and one cannot get by on common sense anymore. Ignorance of the law is no longer an excuse, it’s an simply unavoidable.
“Ignorance of the law is no longer an excuse, it’s simply unavoidable”
I agree with your last statement– I don’t make crow, but I am sure I can find a recipe. 😉
I wasn’t arguing. I just plead that I’ve seen this kind of nonsense. I don’t know if it’s true here, but in Portugal, even though there’s no draft, men in draftable ages need a special paper to leave the country — and yes, I can see the same sort of thing for student loans. This seems all too plausible when they start talking about not letting “unpatriotic rich leave” — which I grant so far has no teeth, but…
Nothing like Zimbabwe can ensue WITHOUT that type of law.
So you can see where it seemed plausible, if insane to me.
It is the cunning art of socialist regimes to make every man a criminal, so you live only on the sufferance of the leader.
Yea – I remember when that happened in Zimbabwe. The rich left, but were not allowed to take anything with them except transportation and some clothing. It happened bad pretty fast too.
http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/04/no-taxes-no-travel-why-the-irs-wants-the-right-to-seize-your-passport/255940/
The first url talks about Map-21 and IRS seizing passports.
The second url talks about MAP-21 and student loans–
http://www.pewlaw.com/map-21-gives-undergrads-a-break-on-new-student-loans/
One and One equals two–
I just subscribed to your blog. Well, I will, as soon as I finish this comment. I won’t be hiding anymore either, but neither will I be fighting the same old partisan battles. It’s time to defend first principles, stand by them, and let others judge however they will.
As an emerging writer with what I’m told is a potential blockbuster nonfiction book set to be published next year, I plan to remain mum on my politics for one reason: My voice won’t change anything.
Most people are unreachable except by negative ads that make them stay home. The last election proved it. The GOTV efforts of both candidates produced fewer voters than the previous election although everyone agreed that the stakes were higher this time around.
The entire resources of a staggeringly powerful political party couldn’t overcome ads that were designed to depress turnout. Me speaking out on politics won’t make a difference except to me, in that it’ll alienate half my potential readership.
Our system is self-correcting. That correction may take the form of a drastically reduced standard of living, civil unrest, unending political scandals, and so on. But eventually we’ll get back to an even keel without me adding my voice to the cacophony.
No amount of talking will convince most people. No amount of evidence will change their mind. I’ve tried for twenty years to get my father to not water the orange trees in his back yard the way he does, and he’s always refused to listen. He knew best. Now his orange trees are all dying, and he’s inconsolable.
But he still won’t admit he killed them.
Biggest problem with the left is they have no clue thieir great “revelations” apply to themselves not just the others. For example “power corrupts ……”. So explain to me why bigger govt is better. I live in the Tampa fl area. Voted republican for national offices and democratic in local and state elections with only two exceptions. Why? because the republicans have owned thIs area for twenty years. To those on the left live what you preach
If it helps balance the scales at all, you’ve gained a new reader in me. Because I admire what you’ve written here, I’ll be following the blog and trying out your work as soon as I have an opening in my reading schedule!
With regard to the upcoming fiscal cliff, have you any thoughts on how the coming change in manufacturing ie Molecular nanotechnology manufacturing will change the economy? Both the downturn and the maturing of this new manufacturing are coming this decade. I’m really interested in your thoughts, not many people outside of the techno-geek realm have even noticed this coming and -they- aren’t terribly well versed in economics and/or political structure. (I know, I know this is off topic somewhat, it’s just I’ve watched for this change coming for about 15 years now, and it’s happening in a really, really, bad decade for a major techo upheaval. And I’m tired of thinking about it alone.)
It’s not close enough. A collapse will forestall it. Actually, I think most of the political stuff we’re seeing is to TRY to forestall the future. Which is funny for “progressives.”
It would be material for a whole article, I think.
I write in that field (get paid for it too) and follow developments closely. The collapse will only slow adoption. Because elements of the new tech are being adopted already. The cost/benefit ratio is unbelievable.
The cost/benefit ratio is unbelievable.
Care to expand on that?
If he does, I’ll guest-post/echo it.
OK. I have been wanting a column for Friday for my electronics blog. So I’ll write it up there. I’ll leave a link here.
http://www.ecnmag.com/blogs/2012/11/future-nanotechnology-now
Gave you a book plug too.
FB’d you Simon (which is connected to my twitter) 😉
Ah. So that’s what you look like! Nice “meeting” you. 🙂
I’ll blog about it later today, after litterboxes and laundry. 🙂
Yes, that’s what I think. Keep working.
If nanotech is the game-changer it’s touted to be, I agree. There’s precedent. The U.S. economy was in a world of hurt in 1969-’71 and yet Intel (founded 1968) grew and brought to market 3 major semiconductor families, microprocessors and two important types of solid-state memory, dynamic RAM and EPROM.
Sarah, I… I think I love you. Just a little 🙂 I would be one of your new readers.
I’ve read “Gentleman takes a chance” quite a while back and loved it.
Wonderfully well said ma’am. I saw your name again recently in the post with Tom Kratman and Larry Correia. Just picked up the Darkship book one.
Thank you again.
I only discovered you when you guest blogged for Instapundit. I have added you to my personal blogroll. Keep up the good work.
I’ve puchased and read most of the books you have available at Baen. Looking forward to the rest of Renegades (I tend to buy the Monthly Bundles) and also chomping at the bit to get my hands on A Few Good Men.
I’m also going to have to start following your blog more closely from now on.
Keep up the good work.
Could you return to the collapsed economy and your contention that it probably won’t be as bad as we think it will? Because… well, damn it, I’ve been more or less counting on the Mad Max scenario and will be very disappointed if I don’t get to shoot and blow up marauding biker gangs.
two plus two equals five
Without context, we cannot determine whether you’re speaking in support of our hostess’ words, attacking the ideas, or stumbled into some odd digital form of verbal diarrhea. Please elucidate.
Reblogged this on The Skeptic Conservative and commented:
Expect to see more Sarah Hoyt reblogs in the future, if the tone of her commentary remains this strong. I’m not a big fan of defeatism, you shouldn’t be either.
Well darn, looks like I am finally going to have to lay out some cash for one of Sarah’s books. Been wanting to, but just putting it off as cash is short and list of desired books is long.
Darkship Thieves or the other Baen books!
It would be nice if you got some more Indy stuff up on Amazon. [Wink]
In the mean time, I’ll help feed your Kitties.
I’m working on it. I need to get Noah’s Boy to Toni, so I can finish Shadow Gods — but unfortunately I seem to have the flu. It’s a low level flu and might be reaction to the vaccine, but ARGH
Darkship Thieves is the one I was looking at. My kids and I have a deal. I pick books I think they would like too, then they get them for me for Christmas/birthdays. Win-win.
Sounds like it.
I knew I had something when the boys liked DST — they normally don’t read me because, well… mom.
Late to this party, but at times like these, it’s good to reflect on the three additional commandments of Yehuda Bauer. They were written about genocide but apply to any injustice:
Thou shalt not be a victim,
Thou shalt not be a perpetrator,
And thou shalt never, but never, be a bystander.
Fight the good fight, Sarah.
I’m a new subscriber. Thanks for speaking up –even when I disagree with you, I’ll appreciate the fact that you promoted freedom just by not being too intimidated to speak your mind.
If you have tips on how to reach people who have been indoctrinated with Leftist propaganda their whole lives, that would be appreciated, because I’ve found that facts and logic don’t seem to have any effect. Republican = Evil, is all they seem to know or care about. My liberal friends like and accept me, but all those “other” Republicans (and, in my case Christians) — the one’s they don’t know and have never met, but that the msm has told them about — are greedy, stupid, facist, racist, right-wing extremists, and therefore everything they believe must be wrong. Since they like me, they assume I must be uninformed or I’d think like them, and if only I would watch Jon Stewart and maybe 60 Minutes, I would see the light.
I don’t know what to do about this. I can’t slap them.
Unfortunately it takes a real shock in their lives before they see the truth… The seduction of the Left has been going on for a long long time. Just keep pointing out things when they happen–
My hubby listens to his co-workers’ complaints and then tells them “You voted for this.” And yes, they voted for it. Since he is considered the jokester in his area– they take it pretty well. Interesting– our State Congress lost a lot of Dems. The Dems are one more than the Reps– a start here.
I’m lucky. Being libertarian in engineering is well understood. In fact it is almost expected. The people I write for professionally LOVE my libertarian attitude. Although I have been asked to tone it down a little on occasion.
Well, maybe the lefties are going to stop reading you, but I think I just may have to check your books out, now…
You may have just *gained* a reader, Sarah… but please for the love all that is good, never again say “an historian” unless it’s a character speaking in a thick Cockney accent, in which case it’s spelled “an ‘istorian”.
Sorry; pet peeve. 🙂 Now I’ve got to go see what all these comments were the other day that caused all this rukus…