Hiatus

My dear, few but loyal readers:

I have been working on draft versions of a few posts over the past few weeks, but without having actually completed any of them, I now find myself in the final two-week period before a week of huge exams. I therefore think it wise to not even attempt to blog for the next three weeks. Putting patients first requires passing one's exams, I believe.

Please return after that time, when I hope to have a few new interesting posts up, including a discussion of the MCAT promised to Terry Morris, a question of whether sexual liberation dissuades men from becoming traditionalists, and a comparison between a Philip K. Dick short story and the nihilism of today's liberals.

Hermes, your future trad-con doc

The tragedy continues

First, there was the tragedy of September 11th, 2001, when Islamic terrorists tragically hijacked four jetliners and, tragically, flew them into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, tragically murdering thousands of people.

Then came the tragedy of the Virginia Tech shootings, where Seung-Hui Cho tragically murdered 32 people and wounded 17 more, before tragically killing himself.

The latest tragedy is a school shooting in Cleveland, Ohio. Student Asa Coon tragically shot four people before, in the height of tragedy, turning the gun on himself. According to the Cleveland Plain Dealer's headline on October 13th, Coon's death was "tragic." I have captured the online image of the front page, because the article with the headline wasn't available online.

It's a sad, but by this time predictable, fact of our society that we can't recognize violent crime as the deliberate act of an evil person. Since man is basically good, evil does not exist, and all people are equal, murder is just another random occurrence that befalls us unexpectedly like a hurricane or earthquake.

The only tragedy here is how deeply liberalism has permeated our society. Hopefully, in 100 years, we will be using the word tragedy to describe not murder, but our current inability to understand and combat evil.

A Few Reasons not to Give to NRO

At National Review Online's The Corner, fatuous one-line content-free poster extraordinaire Kathryn Jean Lopez posted the following:

A Few Reasons to Give to NRO [Kathryn Jean Lopez]
Victor Davis Hanson.

Ramesh Ponnuru.

Jay Nordlinger.

John Derbyshire.

And they're just from today, and just a few of today's NRO offerings.

Consider making an investment in more of the above and more. Donate to NRO now.

Let's see.

Victor Davis Hanson: Thinks that "Americans believe that freedom and consensual government — far from being the exclusive domain of the West — are ideals central to the human condition and the shared aspirations of all born into this world" and that these values are "the same principles for which Americans died at Valley Forge, Gettysburg, Iwo Jima, and Pusan." Also routinely bloviates against "fundamentalism," a word most commonly used by secularists to refer to any sincere, orthodox religious belief.

Ramesh Ponnuru: Criticized social conservatives' rhetoric against homosexuality as "spiteful, harsh, and obsessive" in an article arguing that homosexual "marriage" is inevitable.

Jay Nordlinger: Wrote that George W. Bush is a "Rushmore-level President" and that if history doesn't bear that out, "history will be wrong." Also that "I have a deep fondness — love, really — for the man, though I don't know him."

John Derbyshire: A nihilistic atheist who thinks that an individual human life has no purpose. When discussing religion, he routinely writes such sneering sentences as "All religious faith, after all, depends on magical thinking. To people who eschew such thinking—people who prefer to ground their beliefs in the strict rules of evidence used in modern law and science—Mohammed’s flying through the air to Jerusalem on a white steed is no more preposterous than the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception." Thinks that Playboy is conservative.

Does a principled conservative need any more reasons not to donate to NRO?