Eric and Arthen

On the off chance that someone somewhere is wondering what happened to Eric and the story that I was posting upon this blog, I thought I would enlighten that someone.

Eric changed his name to Nikolas and left Narthlan, heading south to attend The University at Cirithul, which I did not know existed until he decided to attend it. When I asked him how he got so much money he replied that his family was in fact a merchants family in Morkal, and while his father was dead, his uncle was taking perfectly good care of him.

Arthen also went on several excursions (he still will not tell me where he went), and informs me that it was not Ethelstein to whom Fingarion gave the weapons, but to King Ulrayne some two hundred years before Ethelstan (Arthen says I spelled it wrong too) ascended the throne of a kingdom several hundred miles south of where Ulrayne ruled.

I have been attempting to correct my errors, but Rovik has been most uncooperative, and Raven refuses to follow any rules whatsoever. Several new characters have found their way into the story, and Arthen has introduced me to several who I knew only from brief meetings some time ago.

On the whole the tale is coming along, but people are so contrary, and characters simply refuse to do as written and will insist on going somewhere else to look after interests I did not know they had. However, Arthen has given me multiple manuscripts for research, and if you want something to read I can reproduce some of them. Most of them are of old, old times but some people might find them interesting.

Irresponsibility 101

As a conservative who believes in responsibility, I naturally disagree with much of the spending that President Obama and the 111th congress have shoved through the legislative process. However, we can whine about democrat spending till the cows come home or until the cowboys start winning, and it will not make much difference. Fox News reports that NASA is being forced to spend $500,000,000 on the Ares I rocket, which is cancelled. Last October, President Obama signed into law a new NASA plan, which canceled the Constellation program, an umbrella program that included the Ares I which was meant to replace NASA's aging shuttles. However, even though the program was canceled, congressmen inserted clauses into NASA's budget to prevent NASA from cutting jobs related to the program in their states.

Before anyone claims that is a good thing (they are protecting jobs, right?), may I point out that the money being spent on the program is tax money, i.e. money that has been taken from tax payers. Put simply, money is being taken from the American People to pay American People. In other words, the American People are paying themselves; and that assumes that none of the money is being spent over seas, which I find highly unlikely. It should also be remembered that we technically don't have the five hundred million dollars in our pockets, that money is being borrowed from the next couple generations.

At the same time that we are spending half a billion on building technology that may or may not be used, congressmen are talking about cutting military budgets in order to reign in the budget, despite the fact that we are fighting a war.

Bringing spending under control is simpler than many people are making it. Stop spending money we don't have on programs we don't need just so that you'll look good to your constituents.

Priorities?

This Wednesday Mexico, and 10 other Latin American Countries presented amicus briefs against Arizona's new immigration law to the 9th circuit Court of Appeals. The 9th Circuit Court allowed them to submit the briefs, and Arizona Govenor Jan Brewer is understandably irritated. Before I comment on the precident of foreign nations sumitting legal documents to American Courts in American Cases, I would like to look at another issue that is developing at the same time.

On September 30th, David Hartley and his wife Tiffany were jet skiing on Falcon Lake, which sits on the American-Mexican Border, when they were attacked by members of the mexican Zeta drug cartel. David was shot in the back of the head, and fell into the lake. His wife tried to turn around and get him, but was driven off by gunfire from the cartel members. In the last few weeks, Mexican authorities have done little, and have denied the little help our government has offered. The few who have tried to help have suffered the consequences, such as Rolando Flores Villegas who took up the search for Hartley's body and was found beheaded on Tuesday. The State Department has remained for the most part silent on the issue.

If the Mexican government really cares about the welfare of the people of Mexico, they should spend more time and energy on stopping drug cartels and less time worrying about Arizonan's limiting illegal immigration. The drug cartels are doing more damage on the border than anything else. The Mexican government has no interest in slowing down illegal immigration, a decent amount of money comes into the country from jobs made possible by America.

If you take a second and think about it, what kind of precedent is set by a foreign nation submitting legal documents to a civil court dealing with a constitutional case? American Law lives on precedent (It's always easier to say 'they said it first' when you are critisised) and what is used today will be abused tomorrow. If mexico can submit amicus briefs in this case, then why should Canada not submit amicus briefs against gun rights, Pakistan against women's rights, any African nation against business ethics? Foreign nations have no jurisdiction in domestic maters of our nation. If anything, Mexico should be apologizing for the number of it's citizens who violate our law on a daily basis, and not just by crossing the border.

Priorities people, priorities. Get them in line, and your problems will begin to diminish.

On Critisism

The last few days I have spent some time looking at critiques of various writers, and several on G.K. Chesterton have set me wondering as to how we can make an objective critique of a writer, mainly because there are some writers I dislike almost as intensly as some seem to hate Tolkien and Chesterton. After some thought, here is what I have come up with.



You cannot dismiss someone's arguments simply by saying they are not a trained philosopher or scientist. In the past, and a little today, people educate themselves. If someone has made stupid mistakes, it will take little or no effort to point out said mistakes. If you want to dethrone someone from a wrongly held seat of cultural authority, show what is wrong with their work, and how that corrupts what they have to say.



It is not enough however, to prove them wrong by showing how it conflicts with your beliefs. The two places that philosophies and worldviews can destroy themselves by having conflicts. If an idea conflicts with itself, or how the world works, then it can be viewed as false. Too often ideas are dismissed because they do not fit a belief system they are attempting to challenge simply because that belief system is the one held by the reviewer.

The problem is that it is difficult to show where an idea conflicts with how the world works, but if there were no problem, philosophy would not be fun.

Christianity v. Life

I have been looking at a lot of different books and blogs about and by atheists and christians, and I have to say that the amount of weight given to the study of plants and animals is far out of proportion to it's actual importance. Despite the fact that most of our construction of 'pre-history' is based on falicious assumptions and straight up guess work, it is still treated as the irrefutable refutation of theism in general and Christianity in particular. The fact is that such pre historical guestimating is far less important than what the world is doing now, or within the last two hundred years.

The fact is that Christianity fits reality better than any other belief system. You can say that we can have morality without God because we have no need of logic, that life is illogical and thus has no meaning (using logic to prove such), but the fact is that people living their lives know that logic and reason are basic pieces of how life works. No one has ever lived their life without logic and no one ever will.

You can say that Christianity is cruel and causes people guilt, but it also gives them redemtion, while aethism gives people dispaire and leave them in it. Christianity has a problem of evil only when you demand that God be accountable for everything and man for nothing, but when man becomes responsible for his actions, the problem vanishes. Evil is still there, it is still painful, but it is not a permanent part of the cosmos as it is in aethism or eastern philosophies. You can say, as Budhism does, that good and evil, peace and war, life and death, are all the same, but people do not live that way.

You can say that we are chance products of matter and that thoughts and emotions are simply chemical reactions in the brain, but again, people simply don't live that way. Some people may find it convenient to blame behavior on such chemical reactions, but the theory undercuts itself by denying man's ability to theorize.

You can say that what we do doesn't matter, that it will all vanish, but man cannot live that way, and those who have tried usually end up blowing out their brains. Life and man only make sense in Christianity. Why are we continually amazed by how fast or slow time moves? Why can we not simply accept murder and rape as good? Why are we sad when people die? Why are we consumed with love, burn with hate, sink in despair, or rise in joy? Why do our hearts leap at the sound of the horns of Rohan as the Witchking stands at the gate of Gondor? Why do tears start to our eyes as random people pay their respects as Lt. Col. Michael Strobl escorts the body of PFC Chance Phelps home from the Iraq War?

Before people bash Christianity for being "full of contradictions" (Which are usually idiotic readings of the scripture that a six year old can understand), they might want to look at the bleakness of their own beliefs, and look at the hundreds of ways that such beliefs simply do not fit reality.

Hurrah for Good Old Southern Manners (and guns)

In my Arthurian Literature class this week, we have been discussing Chivalry (how you act as a warrior) and Courtly Love (How you act as a lover) in the romances of Chretian de Troyes. Most of the young men in the class still open doors for ladies and give up their seats on the bus (To be fair, there were a good number of Corps people there). What was interesting was the small number of girls who would want their boyfriend to be a 'courtly lover', a grand total of zero. I think the reason was the impression that such a friend would be a push over. Maybe, maybe not, I have no experiance in that area so I can't talk much lest I set my foot firmly in my mouth.

What I can talk about a little, and was slightly disappointed we did not discuss, was Chivalry, a code of conduct for combat. If they have no code of conduct, are you still bound by one? Obviously there are boundaries, i.e. if they use human shields or launch missles from hospitals you can't do it either. However, the practice of taking prisoners is dependent to a large degree on the assumption that the prisoner will not suddenly blow up in your face or pull a knife when you turn your back.

Also, in combatives this morning we learned something very interesting. Who always wins an unarmed fight?

The guy who's buddy with a gun shows up first.

Fiction

I would highly encourage all of you to read Martin Cothran's article 'The Rhetoric of Amazement', I think he is spot on in what he is saying. I would like to add just a few thoughts of my own.

Fiction, and Fantasy in particular, has been attacked as escapist, full of lies, and not worth our time, etc. Much of this stems from the pragmatism that has become the trademark of modern times. Like everything else, fantasy can be good and bad, but it is not bad because it is fantasy.

Fantasy is an instrument that allows the author or creator to do two things. The primary joy that Tolkien and many other Fantasy writers had from their work was the joy of creating. It is the same joy that God felt when he made heaven and earth, and it is a reflection of his image in us. Also, fantasy is and always has been, a tool to explore and make moral points. Until recently, if you wanted to know how to or not to act you looked at heroes and villians in legends. You followed the example of Hector, Beowulf, Diomedes, Sir Gawain, and avoided the actions of Paris, Unferth, or Loki (The modern 'dark hero' has changed all that, but another time). Humans learn best by experiancing, worst by lecture. Literature and stories is one of the best ways to learn without actually making every mistake yourself.

Just as we would neither subsist on a diet of sweet potatoes nor on a diet of cookies, neither should we subsist on only one type of literature, much less disregard it completely.