2007 Great American Conservative Women Calendar

The 2007 calendar is free for students and available to others for a suggested donation of $25. To receive your calendar, email Lauren Daugherty

 this looks like a good book: Help! Mom! There Are Liberals Under My Bed! (Hardcover) by Katharine DeBrecht, Jim Hummel

 En Garde!

How did Harvard - Harvard!? - become the country's best fencing school? With an Israeli coach who combines brilliant swordsmanship and a touch of socialism.

By Andrew Rimas | December 17, 2006

To strike another person with a sword is an outrage. It’s an aggression from the gut – an act more riling to the viscera than the sight of a pigskin at the end of a field or a baseball swatted into the bleachers. It is, in the most literal sense, an attempt to make another person bleed

Rest of article here

I’m able to touch on both politics and swordfighting in this positive review (I’m recommending it) of this 426-page fantasy by an Ohio woman with the exotic name of Cinda Chima.

THE BASIC REVIEW

First, my basic review:

Jack, 16, like Harry Potter, is a normal boy who finds out it is his destiny to be a hero-wizard. His two best friends, Will and Fitch, come along for the ride.

The backstory and plot are good (better, I think, than Harry Potter); but the writing is mediocre (not as good as Harry Potter). For instance, if you read the dialogue without knowing who’s speaking, you wouldn’t know who is speaking.

The prologue will discourage some. It is 18 pages long, 12 pages of which take place 100 years before the start of the story, and six pages of which take place 16 years before the start of the story.

In other words, the first 18 pages read like a “period” fantasy – long ago and far away –and the next 400 pages read like a modern young adult novel (with fantasy thrown in).

So I would eliminate the prologue, or at least find a place for it somewhere not at the very beginning.

The end of the novel, no less than the beginning, could use improvement – luck plays too big a part. As writer and writing teacher James N. Frey says, the hero should win in the end because he figured it out, not because of dumb luck.

POLITICS

The novel is liberal, but not gratingly so; it is safe for most conservatives to read without much discomfort due to liberal themes.

The hero and his mom are liberal.

One of the minor villains uses the phrase “bleeding heart” to derisively describe one of the good guys.

On page 329, in the second paragraph, the hero reflects: Maybe that’s how they convince young men to go to war, Jack thought. You’re just swept along until you find yourself looking death in the face, and you wonder how it ever happened.

Jack, a liberal, has difficulty distinguishing between different kinds of killing: for instance, murder and self-defense. On page 424, in the third paragraph, he reflects: …he’d come close to doing murder.

SWORDFIGHTING

On page 161, foil fencing makes its first appearance. Jack’s mentor Hastings (think Obi Wan Kenobi in the original 1977 Star Wars) starts teaching Jack foil fencing as part of his warrior training. Foil fencing is mentioned in passing a couple times more, and never shown or even described.

So the fact that foil fencing is mentioned at all is great, but of course as a fencer, I would have taken the opportunity to write more about fencing.

In the course of the story, Jack does more real swordfighting than sport-fencing, but even the real swordfighting isn’t especially well-described. Not to be sexist, but chances are that the swordfighting scenes would be better if a man had written this novel, as opposed to a liberal female college professor and nutrition columnist.

That’s about it.

I’ll end with a “semi-spoiler,” i.e. you can probably read what’s below without spoiling your enjoyment of the novel. But if you want to take no chances, stop reading now.

--Swordfish

SPOILER ALERT

One way I would change the end:

I would’ve had Jack set up the end: In the warrior duel, I would’ve had it be his plan all along for them (he and Ellen) to move out of sight of the crowd so he could make his play.

 Was thinking about reading "What If?: The World's Foremost MILITARY Historians Imagine What Might Have Been"

But came across this review on Amazon.com, of which this is an excerpt:

The pain starts with William McNeill's "The Plague That Saved Jerusalem, 701 BC." The actual title should have been "Why I, William McNeill, am a really smart atheist and assume the reader is, too, as I'll be driving that point home with VERY little time spent on the titular subject.' Just one example: "The biblical (sic) stories, inaccurate or exaggerated though they may be, were what really mattered."

An excerpt from another review:

They state Europe would have been better off had we been defeated by moslems

Did you know the word "bushi" is Japanese for Warrior? Appropriate when you consider what a great warrior our president is.

If it receives no federal funding, it can be as racist as it wants. But there's no doubt that Kamehameha Schools, perhaps the richest school in the world, is racist.

From the Anti-Hawaiian Sovereignty Page :

"Hawaiian immersion schools are purported to be one of the methods by which the fragments of the Hawaiian culture are to be preserved.  In these schools, the Hawaiian language is used almost exclusively in educational instruction.  For a child to be enrolled in an Hawaiian immersion school it is strongly emphasized that they be of Hawaiian descent; this is obvious racial segregation and discrimination.  In reality Hawaiian immersion schools are little more than cultural re-education camps; that is, they are institutions where youths are brain washed into incorporating racist ideologies in their every day lives.

Kamehameha School was instituted to enable the children of Hawaii to obtain a first rate education.  However, only students of Hawaiian descent are permitted to enter Kamehameha School.  All others are excluded.  Apparently, the administrator's of Kamehameha School do not realize that a first rate education includes egalitarian views of social justice.  Indeed, social justice does not comport with racially segregated schools"
------------------------------
A letter to the editor in the Star-Bulletin:

"Rudeness replaces aloha for patriotism"

Sovereignty protesters used a sound system, bullhorns and in-your-face shouting to disrupt Statehood Day celebrations (Star-Bulletin, Aug. 19). They terrorized a high school band into leaving before the music could be played.

Five days later, I attended a blessing ceremony to open a $23 million renovation project at Windward Mall. Kamehameha Schools owns the mall.

I am an active opponent of Kamehameha's racist admissions policy...

[the rest of the letter to the editor by Kenneth R. Conklin here (You have to scroll down a bit)]

excellent article by Thomas Sowell.

A mild “thumbs down” for this thriller starring Nicole Kidman, Sean Penn, and the United Nations building in New York. I have visited this building, but of course I despise the UN. So for me to enjoy a liberal movie starring big-time liberal activist Sean Penn and featuring the self-important UN, well the story would have to be compelling.

It isn’t.

The reason I’m only mildly not recommending this movie is that it some good technical aspects (good acting, some good action scenes, etc).

--Swordfish

In his article, "Bush’s Faith-based Incompetence" rabid Hawaii liberal journalist Dan Boylan takes a cheap shot at Bush, saying "Bush was in town last week. He visited military bases, wreaked his usual havoc (this time at the expense of four motorcycle cops) and departed - mercifully - after 15 hours."

He is referring to the fact that three motorcycle cops escorting his entourage crashed after slipping on wet pavement; one of them later died of his injuries.

What a cheap shot; what a gratuitous and un-classy comment.

--Swordfish

It's not necessarily that by their nature liberals are more cowardly. But if a liberal does have courage, it is subverted to a certain degree by his liberal ideology.

--Swordfish

 “Greatness” by Steven Hayward, is excellent. A short book (about 150 pages), it can be easily read in a couple sittings. Highly recommended.

--Swordfish

Just heard on the Medved show that the Austrians have canceled Santa Claus's visits to public schools because of muslim objections! Austria is one of the places I associate with Santa Claus (Father Christmas) and Christmas things!

--Swordfish

Said recently by Dennis Prager: "[Hypocrisy is] not if you do something you say is wrong. We all do things that we say is wrong. We tell our kids not to use bad language and we occasionally use bad language. Right? Are we hypocrites? No, we're not hypocrites. We're inconsistent with our highest values. Everybody is. And if we can't advocate higher values because on occasion we will violate them, then it's the end of advocacy of higher values."

--Swordfish