A cloud no bigger than a man's fist.

John C. Wright resigns from the SFWA:

When SFWA first departed from that mission, I continued for a time to hope the change was not permanent. Recent events have made it clear that there is not reasonable basis for that hope.

Instead of enhancing the prestige of the genre, the leadership seems bent on holding us up to the jeers of all fair-minded men by behaving as gossips, whiners, and petty totalitarians, and by supporting a political agenda irrelevant to science fiction.

Instead of men who treat each other with professionalism and respect, I find a mob of perpetually outraged gray-haired juveniles.

Instead of receiving aid to my writing career, I find organized attempts to harass my readers and hurt my sales figures.

Instead of finding an organization for the mutual support of Science Fiction writers, I find an organization for the support of Political Correctness.

Instead of friends, I find ideologues bent on jihad against all who do not meekly conform to their Orwellian and hellish philosophy.

Politics trumps Science Fiction in the modern SFWA.

I've been a science fiction reader since I was a teen. I've always admired science fiction writers and had a romantic view of the SFWA. Now it appears that the totalitarian left is taking over more and more institutions and driving off those who refuse to sign on to their ideology.

Note also that John C. Wright is an outspoken Catholic.  Is this a sign of things to come as Believers are made to feel less and less welcome among the "better people."

Read this.

Now.

In every other respect we as humans act as individual organisms except when it comes to intercourse between men and women — then we work together as one flesh. Coordination toward that end — even when procreation is not achieved — makes the unity here. This is what marriage law was about. Not two friends building a house together. Or two people doing other sexual activities together. It was about the sexual union of men and women and a refusal to lie about what that union and that union alone produces: the propagation of humanity. This is the only way to make sense of marriage laws throughout all time and human history. Believing in this truth is not something that is wrong, and should be a firing offense. It’s not something that’s wrong, but should be protected speech. It’s actually something that’s right. It’s right regardless of how many people say otherwise. If you doubt the truth of this reality, consider your own existence, which we know is due to one man and one woman getting together. Consider the significance of what this means for all of humanity, that we all share this.

Now if one wants to change marriage laws to reflect something else, that’s obviously something that one can aim to do. We’ve seen the rapid, frequently unthinking embrace of that change in recent years, described one year ago in the humanist and libertarian magazine Spiked as “a case study in conformism” that should terrify “anyone who values diversity of thought and tolerance of dissent.”

Are we sure we need to accept that lie? Are we sure we want to?

Perhaps there should have been a bit of a burden of proof on those who wanted to change the institution — something beyond crying “Bigot!” in a crowded theater. Perhaps advocates of the change should have explained at some point, I don’t know, what singles out marriage as unique from other relationships under this new definition. What is marriage? That’s a good question to answer, particularly if you want to radically alter the one limiting factor that is present throughout all history. Once we get an answer for what this new marriage definition is, perhaps our media and other elites could spend some time thinking about the consequences of that change. Does it in any way affect the right of children to be raised by their own mother and father? Have we forgotten why that’s an important norm? Either way, does it change the likelihood that children will be raised by their own mother and father? Does it by definition make that an impossibility for whatever children are raised by same-sex couples? Do we no longer believe that children should be raised by their own mother and father? Did we forget to think about children in this debate, pretending that it’s only about adults? In any case, is this something that doesn’t matter if males and females are interchangeable? Is it really true that there are no significant differences between mothers and fathers? Really? Are we sure we need to accept that lie? Are we sure we want to?

And:

Far more than the political folks on either side, though, is the importance of what happened to the apolitical. In one sense, the most frightening aspect of the Eich termination was the message it sent to people throughout the country: Shut up or you will lose your livelihood. But in another sense, this dissident moment may spark something previously thought impossible.

The place for dissidents to fight for freedom is in the space where the complex demands of the system affect the ability to live life in a bearable way.

Havel says that party politics and the law are the weakest grounds on which to fight against group think. Instead, he says that the real place for dissidents to fight for freedom is in the space where the complex demands of the system affect the ability to live life in a bearable way — to not be fired for one’s views, for instance. “People who live in the post-totalitarian system know only too well that the question of whether one or several political parties are in power, and how these parties define and label themselves, is of far less importance than the question of whether or not it is possible to live like a human being,” Havel said.

And:

 It’s in this sense that Eich’s most important political work was not making a paltry $1,000 donation in defense of natural marriage laws. It was in refusing to recant.

Consider first the response of one of the activist’s calling for Eich’s head. After he resigned, activist Michael Catlin wrote that he never thought his campaign against Eich would go “this far” and that he wanted “him to just apologize.” So he was “sad” that Eich didn’t say the magic words that would have allowed him to keep his job. Yeah, he really said that.

We see in Eich a dissident who forces us to think about totalitarianism and our role in making society unfree.

And then think about how horrified people were that Eich lost his job for his views that men and women are different in important ways. Regardless of our previous views on marriage, we saw in Eich a dissident who forced us to think about totalitarianism and our role in making society unfree. Did we mindlessly put up red equal signs when we hadn’t even thought about what marriage is? Did we rush to fit in by telling others we supported same-sex marriage? Did we even go so far as to characterize as “bigots” or as “Hitlers” those who held views about the importance of natural marriage?

Denmark makes it mandatory for churches to marry homosexuals.

Rights of conscience?

Freedom of Religion?

Screw that.

You. Must. Approve.

Notice the Orwellian doublespeak in this Telegraph story:

Gay Danish couples win right to marry in church

Homosexual couples in Denmark have won the right to get married in any church they choose, even though nearly one third of the country's priests have said they will refuse to carry out the ceremonies.

The country's parliament voted through the new law on same-sex marriage by a large majority, making it mandatory for all churches to conduct gay marriages.

Denmark's church minister, Manu Sareen, called the vote "historic".

"I think it's very important to give all members of the church the possibility to get married. Today, it's only heterosexual couples."

Under the law, individual priests can refuse to carry out the ceremony, but the local bishop must arrange a replacement for their church.

The far-Right Danish People's Party mounted a strong campaign against the new law, which nonetheless passed with the support of 85 of the country's 111 MPs.

In other news, I've won the right to withdraw funds from your bank account. If your bank teller objects, the bank manager has to find a teller who will allow it.

Screw any bank or bank manager who has a conscience issue with the idea of "thou shalt not steal."

According to this Communio article, this is the logical end point of liberalism, which in a totalitarian fashion denies any right to exist to any principle apart from that of liberalism.

Perhaps that's true, but this is clearly a signal flare about what we are in for if we don't stand up to the violations of freedom of religion and conscience that we see all around us.

The Saddest Little Member of the Totalitarian Left whines that "Democracy is Dead."

In light of my prior post showing empirical data supporting the thesis that the project of Wisconsin "Progressives" depended on implied and real coercion, I'm enjoying a moment of schadenfreude in this video of the Saddest Little Wisconsin Progressive.



In 50 seconds you get it all - the delusion, the self-righteousness, the absolute certainty, the reinforcement of the leftist mentality through transparent falsehoods, etc.

I may run it a few more times to savor the moment.

Via Riehl World.

The Totalitarian Left - Cheesehead Edition.

Apparently, attempting to maintain a status quo where all kinds of left wing groups tell everyone else what they should think - or else they were be hauled before a "people committee for ungood badthink - tends to foster the habit of disimulation.

Roger Simon notes the difference between exit polls and actual results in Wisconsin:

But the Bradley Effect has resurfaced dramatically in a different manner in the Wisconsin recall vote. The polls — and, yes, the exit polls as well – were showing Scott Walker in a narrow victory. But he won beyond anyone’s prediction.

Apparently, the silent majority of Wisconsin voters didn’t want to admit to nosy pollsters and anyone else that might be listening that they were opposed to runaway unions, runaway spending, or the Democratic administration. They just wanted to cast their votes. And they did.

This Bradley Effect, then, is not like the Bradley Effect of yore. It’s about race to some degree, but I suspect there are much larger components of being fed up with elites of all sorts, interest groups, media groups, union groups, all sorts of groups telling the average citizen what he should and shouldn’t think, openly or covertly threatening to ostracize him or her for not going along with the pervasive liberal status quo. This was a cry of “Ya, basta!”

So if I were a member of the Democratic Party this morning, if I were David Axelrod and his team of so-called wise men, I would be wondering – what if all the polls are wrong? What if this is true across the entire country?

Even if these polls are wrong by three or four points in only a handful of states, the results of the coming election could be disastrous for the Democrats. Romney could win in a walk and bring a Republican House and Senate with him. And then, if the economy revives….

You can bet that many Democratic politicians are scratching their heads. Is it time to desert Barack Obama before it’s too late? (Bill Clinton evidently did long ago.) How many of them are suddenly going to be going Blue Dog?

(Surprisingly, Charles Krauthammer, of all people, missed the point on Fox when he pointed to Obama’s nine-point lead in Wisconsin exit polls as indication the state would not be in play in the presidential election. It was those same exit polls that said the recall election would be close.

Factor in how Wisconsites have left public unions in a manner reminiscent of Cubans leaving Castro's socialist utopia in the Mariel Boatlift:

Wisconsin membership in the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees-the state’s second-largest public-sector union after the National Education Association, which represents teachers-fell to 28,745 in February from 62,818 in March 2011, according to a person who has viewed Afscme’s figures. A spokesman for Afscme declined to comment.

What you get the sense of is that Wisconsin is not entirely disimilar to an Eastern European Soviet-style "democracy" circa 1985, where the population is kept in line by a fear of ostracism and by the accumulated weight of governmental power.

Is that really how leftists view themselves?

If not, why not, inasmuch as that seems to be the historical record of leftism?