Wherefore is the Decent Right?

It helps, if you're trying to make sense of the world, to collect points of view from all across the spectrum. Certainly, I don't think that one needs to dip too much into the "We are all puppets on the ends of Satan's strings" mindset, and we can leave behind the scientologists, Larouchites, and 9/11 Truthers. But one of the things that I've started to notice is that my RSS reader lacks something important. Wisdom is the collection of useful arguments from both sides springing from a shared set of principles: acquiring it means listening to differing points of view.

There was, a year or so ago, all sorts of blather in the punditocrisphere about "The Decent Left," a supposed cross-section of the left wing that could virtuously claim it never supported the war in Iraq yet earnestly wanted to do the right thing by the Iraq people. These are the people who are now earnestly worked up by Burma and yet for the most part will give you a blank stare and a "Who?" if you mention Robert Mugabe.

One thing that currently frustrates me, however, is the lack of a Decent Right. There doesn't seem to be among even the ivory tower set writers who can consistently quote Edmund Burke, Adam Smith, and John Stuart Mill without making my gut twist. David Brooks was on my list for a while, but when he wrote that "government should be limited, prudent, and conservative... " and then justified our war in Iraq on the grounds that Saddam was none of those things, well... it was just time to pull the plug. For a while, I was enamored of Victor Davis Hanson and Thomas Sowell, but Hanson became a water-carrier for the current administration and Sowell, well, Sowell is so possessed of Ayn Rand that he sometimes seems to have inherited the laser-eyes with which she burned her opponents to a crisp. (I have strong suspicions that the Randians are for the most part correct in their analysis, but their unapologetic use of the guru's confrontational language makes it hard to take them seriously; it's like dating a chick who's hot in bed but whose laugh is so horrifically hyena-like that your friends don't come around anymore.)

Are there any writers of the conservative or classically liberal bent still around, or is anyone normally willing to wear that badge now duck-and-covered against the terrible falling rain of blame?

Charlie Stross visits Seattle

Charlie Stross

Charlie Stross is in Seattle this week, and last night fallenpegasus assembled a crowd of a dozen or so vibrant souls, including your humble gentleman pornographer, to a get-together at the Elysian Pub up on Capitol Hill. The premise of the fete was to keep poor Charlie awake until 11pm, at which point he would crash hard and, hopefully, arise the following morning with his circadian clock yanked halfway 'round the globe. The poor man had just spent eleven hours on a plane wedged into the economy seating experience complete with a woman and child sharing his row.

We met him at his hotel after he had managed to grab the briefest of showers and took him up to the pub. The last time I was in the Elysian, it was for Ron Bailey's Liberation Biology tour (a sort of pre-post-human polemic), at which I learned an awful lot more about Lincoln and the Civil War and the internal politics of the National Review Online than I did about liberation or biology.

The beer at the Elysian is gorgeous, as always: Dragonstooth, smooth, sweet and choclatey; and this season the Pumpkin Ale is flowing, and it smells delicious and tastes wonderful.

And just like last time, I learned more about the politics of sustainable urbanism, the relationship between Medieval Baebes and Miranda Sex Garden, and the "monetization of governmental stupidity" than I did anything at all about Charlie's books and writing. That said he was a wonderful guest, suprisingly full of verve for all the nerve-wracking sense that he'd been running for more than 24 hours straight, and quite charmng in his routine descriptions of driving across the UK "in a car about the size of this table." When I asked if meant the whole car or just the cabin, he said, "Oh, the whole car." Commisseration on geriatric cats, slow wordcount days, and the ongoing battle to find a decent cover artist were all discussed in details. Apparently the figure on the cover of Halting State is supposed to be Sue, all "decked out." For a novel set in Edinburgh, one publisher had to be talked out of using a London skyline. And so on.

Mission accomplished, we broke at 10:45, with time enough to pay the bill and take Charlie back to his hotel. The bill settled in true geek fashion, with one heck of a tip made even better when the bartender bought Charlie's beers for him "because you're one of my favorite authors." We made sure that Charlie thanked him before we left, only to have one of the patrons just sitting there go, "You're Charlie Stross? I really enjoyed The Atrocity Archives! Are you going to be speaking anywhere this week? Where can I find out?"

I love this town.

A taste of Charlie's writing and darker humors can be found in his story Maxo Signals [PDF], "an unfortunate solution to Fermi's Paradox."