But they're not conservatives. That's the problem.

[elfs]

So, Larry Correia is taking credit for getting Vox Day and Ayn Rand on the Hugo ballots, and then enjoying the idea that "the left" is "losing its shit" over the nomination of those two as if they were somehow representative of "conservative" values.

They're not. And it's deceitful to claim they are.

Look, I'm not going to go into Vox "If Hitler could eliminate the Jews without computers, surely we can track illegal Mexicans," "Women ruin everything," "There's no such thing as marital rape" Day's infamous history, nor am I interested in taking Ayn "No meadow is beautiful without a billboard to show man's claim" Rand apart any further. But they're not conservatives. They're radicals, and they belong in the same edge of a Venn Diagram with anyone who's primary interest is to see most of humanity reduced to cattle, with a few born and bred to ride, booted and spurred with whip in hand.

There are plenty of conservative SF writers who have won Hugos. Bujold and Weber come to mind: both adhere tightly to the conservative values of taking the world as it is and seeking out how to preserve what is best in human institutions, the research program begun by Adam Smith, Russell Kirk, Michael Oakeshott, and so forth. The Baen Catalog reads like a who's who of conservative writers; not all of them, surely, but Baen has never been a home for leftist values whatsoever. What Baen offers is confirmation of conservative values, and it has always been consistent in doing so.

Rand and Day belong to an ancient, ugly impulse that believes some people simply *are* better than others, and deserve *more* before the law, and the rest are left without protection for their weaknesses or compassion for their failings.

Before we start taking so-called "right wing" writers seriously, we should see just how many of the believe most human beings are little more than cannon fodder for their dark fantasies. SF is supposed to be forward-looking; I look forward to a world where no human being's life is considered so cheap we can just throw it away.

Comments

[ainmer.livejournal.com]

What is it with Mormon authors that they write such hate-filled vitriol toward their critics? Not only are they fake conservatives, they are fake Christians. Christ would never had treated his enemies the way Correia treats his critics.

[happilymyself.livejournal.com]

Now, now, you've met Howard Taylor, and he's nothing like this. Don't lump them all into the same basket. Patricia Briggs is also a nice lady. Lots of LDS authors are rather Christlike.

[happilymyself.livejournal.com]

Oh, and Ken Jennings seems like a nice dude, too. Tho he's not an author. And Brandon Sanderson, I've never met him, but if Howard thinks he's ok, he's probably ok.

[elfs.livejournal.com]

For a "not an author", Ken Jennings has a lot of books on Amazon (http://www.amazon.com/Ken-Jennings/e/B001IGO4O8).

[happilymyself.livejournal.com]

oh, well then! Good for him! :D

[dr-memory.livejournal.com]

Side-note: can we please stop indulging Ted Beale by using his ridiculous fucking nom de plume?

[elfs.livejournal.com]

What, "Snot nosed?"

[resonant.livejournal.com]

Wait, Bujold is conservative? Her works are full of cases of progressive policies triumphing over old regressive hierarchies. Equal rights for quaddies, successfully overcoming the sexism of Barrayar ... for that matter, my local bookstore wouldn't order "Ethan of Athos", and I had to get it at a gay bookstore.

[elfs.livejournal.com]

That's the thing about Bujold: She always comes back to The Motherhood Statement. As much as she talks about overcoming sexism and racism, she's taking the world as it is, and having her characters adapt to it, rather than forcing the world into the mold that they want. That's real conservatism of the traditional kind, the kind epitomized by people like Smith and Oakeshott.

What we have now is a tribal radicalism that seeks to create a different kind of mold, one in which New Soviet Christian Men demonstrate their manly manliness by blowing shit up. That's not conservative; it seeks to conserve nothing, it wants to over-throw the world as it is.

Bujold and Weber (and most of Baen's corral of authors) love a special, familial status quo (http://brianniemeier.com/motherhood-statement/). That's why neither Honor Harrington or Miles Vorkosigan ever experienced feeling alienated from their parents' love. And that is conservatism.

[resonant.livejournal.com]

Hmmm.


A case that comes to mind - in Barrayar, when Cordelia is buying a swordstick and someone tries to sell her a shoddy blade, she breaks the stereotype of the frail Vorfemme by stabbing it into the wall and snapping the steel in two - showing up the patriarchy. But then she asks the clerk if he wants her Vor husband to know that he tried to sell his wife such inferior weapons - using the traditional patriarchy to support her position.

Not sure how to interpret that. It's an excuse to re-read my collection!

[prock.livejournal.com]

You may be confusing "conservatives" with "Conservatives". The later are certainly radicals.

[(Anonymous)]

Back when I kept up with Jerry Pournell's post-BYTE proto-bloggings, he made several mentions of how some up-and-coming fast-talkers calling themselves "Neo-Cons" we're going around conservative circles denouncing people who weren't with their program as "paleo-cons".

We soon got Shrub after that.

--Gon

[elfs.livejournal.com]

Yeah, the paleocons. I generally like them even when I don't agree with them. Pat Buchanan and his "Diversity is the root of all problems" can go suck a tailpipe, though. Most of them aren't crazy.

The American Conservative reads like National Review written by people with a socially acceptable level of humility and shame.