I realize it's been awhile since I've done a Geek List, and a friendly debate over on our friend Sam​'s wall gave me an idea. So, here it is- every Star Trek movie from best to worst. Disagree? Bring it on, nerd-boys.

1. The Wrath of Khan
2. The Undiscovered Country
3. First Contact
4. The Search for Spock
5. The Voyage Home
6. Generations
7. Star Trek the Motion Picture
8. Star Trek '09
9. The Final Frontier
10. Into Darkness
11. Insurrection
12. Nemesis

I like and frequently re-watch everything down to #5. #6-8 all have redeeming qualities, though they aren't great in my opinion. 9-12 are just about completely schlock and I only watch them when I'm feeling OCD completist or sadomasochistic.


Bonus Content! The Star Trek Series from best to worst:

1. The Original Series
2. Deep Space Nine
3. The Next Generation
4. The Animated Series
5. Voyager
6. Enterprise

The original always maintains it's place in my heart. The effects haven't aged well, and probably weren't great even at the time, and Lord knows it's melodramatic and absurd frequently, but the dynamic of the big three and the fact that it was an optimistic view of the future without quite as much socialist utopianism in it keep it fresh for me. Also, this version of Starfleet has "General Order 27," which, if invoked, triggers a starship to sterilize a planet of all life. Not only do they consider it a viable military option- they have goddamn General Order for it! Quite a shout from Picard's, "Starfleet is not a mil-ih-tar-y organization."


Deep Space Nine and Babylon 5 really introduced the idea of extended story arcs for American Science Fiction television. DS9 explored more thoroughly the theme of a ultra-enlightened utopia having to survive against opponents who do not share their sentiments. As a result, Sisko was a deeper and more complex character than the other captains. See the season six episode, "In the Pale Moonlight," for evidence.

Next Gen comes right in the middle of the list. The crew of the Enterprise D get full marks for many things, reviving the franchise, for one, sticking the landing with, unquestionably, the best series finale of the lot for another. But Picard, brilliant as Patrick Stewart may be, is boring and predictable next to either James T. Kirk or Benjamin Sisko. And aside from Picard the cast is kinda, meh, except for Data.

The Animated Series is basically the Original Series. It surrenders two positions because the animation is 70s filmation (note the similarities to He-Man if you watch it in both visuals and sound effects) and because to fit Star Trek style philosophizing into a half-hour package, well, they're incredibly talky, dense cartoons. I like 'em, but I can't honestly recommend them to someone who isn't already pretty in love with Trek.

Voyager, so much potential squandered. By the mid point of the season the only interesting characters were a well-endowed former Borg drone and the holographic doctor. And yes, some of their episodes were entertaining, thought provoking and hilarious, but when the camera wasn't on them, I was bored out of my mind.

Enterprise. I have tried to watch Enterprise on four separate occasions and failed to get through the first season each time. I keep hearing that the last two season are better, except the finale, but the opening sucks so hard I've never gotten to them.

Books You Should Read, Epsiode 1: Gordon R. Dickson’s Dorsai!, The Silver Medal of Classic Military Science Fiction 11:11 AM

I first read Gordon R. Dickson’s novel, Dorsai! (the exclamation mark is part of the title), when I was eleven years old. The novel follows the quasi-transcendent, mercenary genius Donal Graeme from his graduation of his world’s military academy through his ascent to the commander of the largest military force in human history.

Being both military minded and a little (maybe a lot… definitely too much) in love with my own intellect, the themes of the novel greatly appealed to me as a boy. It was good enough to stay on my re-reading cycle for several years, but I realized the other day that I hadn’t read it in the last half-decade or so.

Re-reading it as a thirty-two year old veteran and aspiring author, I find it’s still a good book but its flaws are a little more apparent.

Dorsai! and its attendant sequels, prequels and related books occupy a universe in which humanity inhabits eight different solar systems. Interstellar civilization is marked by an arguably unrealistic degree of specialization by each colony world. The resultant trading of skilled personnel back and forth between the worlds is the basis for the galaxy’s economy.

Some, like Venus and Newton, focus on feats of science and engineering, but the real stars of Dorsai! and every the other novel in this universe are the Splinter Cultures, each of which is focused on some particularly extreme philosophy.

The first are the Exotics who practice a combination of Hari Seldon’s psychohistory, Bene Gesserit breeding programs, and Hindu mysticism/philosophy. They are personally non-violent, but not philosophically pacifistic, ergo they have a closer relationship with the mercenary Dorsai than most despite their philosophical differences.

Then come the ironically named Friendlies who are all fundamental monotheists of various flavors and embody, in various characters, the potential for both extreme decency and irrational zealotry inherent to religious convictions.

Finally, we have the eponymous Dorsai of the planet Dorsai. They are the galaxy’s most elite mercenary soldiers. The Dorsai maintain a libertarian confederation of extended family units upon their world whilst exporting their military talent to the other worlds to support life back on their rugged and beautiful but resource-poor planet.

The novel’s primary strength is a compelling, if clearly overpowered, protagonist in Donal Graeme. A son of the Dorsai’s most prominent family, Donal engages in a meteoric political and military career in the pattern of a soldier/statesmen of the classical Mediterranean. He’s a science fictional Julius Caesar or Alcibiades, if you will, but with a morality more palatable to our modern sensibilities. Donal Graeme is both superhuman and super-humane in his goals and methods.

The novel’s primary weakness is its bloodlessness, both in its philosophy towards war and in its treatment of its characters.

Dickson does posit a few valid notions about war. First among these is the emphasis on simplicity in equipment and disdain for over-engineering—specifically with regard to infantry weapons. Dickson’s far-future mercenaries still use projectile rifles much like our own due to the impossibility of gimmicking such weapons from a distance.

The modern Army could take a cue from the ideas here. I’m not a military luddite, advanced weaponry has its place. Any weapon that relies upon a GPS or any external wireless signal to function at all, however, is going to be easily blunted in a fight against someone more advanced than Iraq. We are entirely too reliant upon radio and computer networks; so much so that the notion of a runner carrying orders back and forth is alien in practice, if not in theory, in the US Army.

But the primary military thesis of Dorsai! is the promotion of the indirect theory of maneuver warfare. That is, the idea that the primary aim of any commander should always be to maneuver and deceive his enemy into an entirely untenable position before engaging in battle, or better yet, accepting the enemy’s surrender when he realizes the hopelessness of his situation.

Tom Kratman examines the flaws of this theory and its relation to Decision Cycles in modern American military theory more skillfully than I could here at the Baen website.


From the standpoint of the novel, this translates into all of Donal’s victories being the result of clear, quick decisions on his part with few if any enemy actions or random factors bearing on the tactical problem. Each victory is decisive from his first outing as a platoon leader to his final triumph as commander of a multi-planetary joint space/ground force.

The issue I have with this, the issue anybody who has led in combat, or even seriously trained as a combat leader should have, is that it captures none of the chaos, confusion and ambiguity of war.

Every time a ground combat leader makes a decision, he does so with less than perfect information about the enemy and about his own forces, almost always under duress and, depending on echelon, while in personal danger. He then issues his orders not to unfeeling machines, but to troops who, no matter how well-trained, are themselves susceptible to the stresses of the environment and combat. The result is virtually never the neat, orderly action that Dorsai portrays.

Furthermore, aside from Donal and his antagonist, William (an evil super-genius commodities/stock trader), the characters are almost uniformly flat. The biggest offender is the love interest, Anea. I’m more willing than many to make allowances for generational differences in how women are perceived when judging books, but Anea is just plain boring in any era. Despite being allegedly bred for superior intellect and moral judgment by the aforementioned Exotics, she spends the majority of the book being a childish ninny until at the very end when she decides she loves Donal for no apparent reason.

No reason that is, until the head Exotic explains that she was bred to have the hots for the most powerful man in the galaxy- so much so that she couldn’t resist marrying him, whoever he was. They actually wanted her to marry the bad guy, William, to smooth his rough edges. But since Donal beat William, lucky her, she gets the hero instead. Phew!

And she isn't even pissed when they tell her this.

Compare Anea with any of Heinlein’s talented and valiant heroines from Podykane of Mars to Wyoming Knott to Hazel Stone or even Carmen Ibanez for her brief appearances in Starship Troopers (THE MOVIE NEVER HAPPENED) and she’s just a sad, sad character. To be fair to Dickson, though, he proves that he can write compelling women in later works. Specifically, Amanda Morgan the First in Spirit of the Dorsai is a multi-dimensional and sympathetic treatment of the stern-matriarch archetype.

Despite all the harsh criticism I’ve just leveled at the book, it is still a classic and well worth the read, especially since it is such a short read. Dickson uses the super-competent arch-rivals trope about as well as anyone in Donal and his archenemy, William of Ceta. The conflict is more interesting for the mismatch of professional soldier versus economic genius. The concepts behind the setting are cool and make for a good milieu—even if they’re not terribly plausible in my opinion. Furthermore, it’s foundational to the Dorsai Series, also known as the Childe Cycle.

There are many superior volumes in the Childe Cycle, including the two other Dorsai books; Spirit of the Dorsai and Lost Dorsai. Each of these is actually two novelettes combined. All four stories are exceptional. The story of Michael deSandoval in Lost Dorsai actually contains the only pacifist in all of fiction that I have ever found sympathetic. I also recommend Soldier, Ask Not and Young Bleys, which showcase protagonists from outside the Spartan culture of the Dorsai. You can read the four books I’ve just named with no background, but the experience will be richer if you start at the start with Dorsai!.

David Drake, himself a luminary in the sub-genre of military science fiction, claims that Robert A. Heinlein’s Starship Troopers and Dickson's Dorsai! are the standards against which all other military science fiction should be judged. I don’t necessarily think he’s wrong, but I think there’s a clear reason Starship Troopers is the better known and more widely read of the two. Dickson wrote an important book, but Heinlein wrote one that was just as important and much more fun.

Justin's Moderate Length Opinion 1:44 PM

There's so much crap going around about the SCOTUS's ruling, I'm actually kind of sick of it and lost my will to write one of my dreaded walls of text (TM). Here's the short (for me) (no pun intended) version:


I wish this had been allowed to happen through legislation rather than judicial fiat. The justices are nigh irremovable from their office and their rulings basically insurmountable once made. The hardest check on them is the extremely limited scope of their power. Perhaps there is wiggle room to argue that they didn't overstep their bounds given the precedent of Marshall's opinion on the broader purpose of judicial review as stated in Marbury versus Madison, but I still say they overstepped the spirit of their constitutional duties, if not the letter of them. My lawyer friends are free to chime in with their opinions.

Yes, I have friends who are lawyers, like you don't have shady acquaintances.

That being said, going hog-wild and completely redefining the entire process of judicial review, nomination, confirmation and allowing congress to remove justices they don't like would be an even bigger fracture in the system, so, no, we shouldn't do that either.

I just want everyone to start respecting the damned rules again. That is a bipartisan complaint, btw. The thing that keeps us from shooting each other is a functioning republic, once that truly breaks down it becomes a matter of who can bribe, coerce and, eventually, kill their way to what they want. Yes, that's dramatic, but seemingly stable societies have collapsed numerous times in history. The results are inevitably worse than the status-quo-ante-collapse.

Justin's Lengthy and Unsolicited Opinion, Episode 3 11:23 AM

Race and the Battle Flag of the Army of Northern Virginia

This is may be my most complex rant to date, so please, if you start this, finish it. If you’re going to be pissed at me, I want you pissed at me for what I actually believe, not a sentence fragment.

I was going to leave this subject alone, I swear, but Andrew Walton, my battery First Sergeant and a man whom I respect a great deal, posted this video on the subject. It is too reductionist in that it implies the only reason to fly a Confederate battle flag (or, more properly, the battle flag of the Army of Northern Virginia) is to support racist ideals, but there are still some valid points here.

I personally do not fly the battle flag, nor would I fly any confederate flag. Whatever else it represents, and I do think it's more complex than slavery/segregation/racism, it was the battle flag of an enemy army. I am a citizen and was a soldier of the United States of America. That we reconciled with and reintegrated the Confederacy, that some of my own ancestors fought for the South, does not change the fact that my primary loyalty is always to my country, not just to any one region. Ergo, while I respect and even admire the martial virtue of the Confederate Army, I will not fly their flag on my vehicle or outside my home.

Furthermore, I really don't like the argument of omission that slavery was a minor factor in the Civil War and it was all about "state's rights." Yes, it was about state's rights, the right to own slaves.

Admittedly, it was not about slavery from the Union's perspective. There's no freaking way Lincoln was going to start the Civil War for the purpose of abolishing slavery. From politician to private, the Union's war aim was primarily to preserve the Union, freeing slaves was an incidental, and only applied to confederate states during the war, not slave holding states that remained in the Union.

But from the Confederacy's perspective, the continuing addition of more and more free states to the Union caused them to worry they would eventually be forced to abandon their "peculiar institution" by the majority. It was an essential factor in their decision to secede. In summary; the Union was not the shining force of abolitionist paladins we read about in third grade, but the Confederacy wasn't the not-really-racist, liberty-loving rebels some people want to pretend they were, either.

Let’s see, some other arguments I want to debunk before we go on…

From the Confederacy’s sympathizers:
“Well, if the South had just won, they probably would have abolished slavery eventually on their own AND it would’ve been a great victory for states’ rights,” Maybe. I don’t know. And neither do you. Counterfactuals make for fun novels and useful mental exercise, but the fact remains that we don’t KNOW that slavery was going to end due to anything short of war.

"But the vast majority of Confederate soldiers didn't own slaves, it was mostly the rich in the south who owned slaves." True statement, but those average, middle class and poor soldiers were taking orders from senior officers and politicians largely drawn from the slave-owning class. Thus, while their personal motivation may have been to repel what they saw as an invading army (and who can argue with a man’s right to defend his home?), they were, in effect, defending the institution of slavery. I'm not trying to demonize them, they were probably largely regular guys doing the best they thought they could, but they fought for an evil cause. Historically speaking, they’re hardly alone in that.

From the Left-wing contingent of our audience:
“So, Justin, we SHOULD order it taken down then, right? See- you’re actually a liberal!”

No. We shouldn’t, and no, I’m not. While I wouldn’t fly one personally, there are places where the battle flag of the Army of Northern Virginia is utterly appropriate. A memorial for the Confederate Army is one such example, and, yes, the Confederate Army deserves to have its memorials. Jesus, even the WWII Wermacht has its memorials.

“But you’re denouncing any private citizen flying the ANV battle flag as a racist, right? Come on, give in to the power of intellectual snobbery and be a ‘'smart' conservative by bashing the rednecks with us...”

No, I’m not doing that either. I disagree with individuals flying the battle flag of the ANV in a place where they might display the stars and stripes instead for reasons stated above. But I do not presume that anybody who disagrees with my reasoning hates black people or wants to return to the antebellum wholesale- because that’s a stupid assumption. I know guys who have displayed the battle flag who are as demonstrably not racist as you can possibly be. As an aside, it’s incredibly difficult to prove a negative, which is what makes a charge of racism such a handy tool for anyone losing an argument. Let us just say I saw the content of their character in garrison and combat and could not detect the slightest hint of racial favoritism or antipathy.

It is possible to take pride in your ancestor’s virtues while acknowledging their sins. No, it’s not just possible, it’s essential. You know why? Because if you examine your family tree with any degree of honesty, there’s going to be a lot of shame there- I don’t give a damn what ethnicity you are. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t still be proud of your heritage, because there’s also likely something there to be proud of.

White southerners should not lie to themselves about the Confederacy, but they should be allowed to retain some pride for those ways in which their antecedents were admirable. And the fact is the CSA fought a better supplied and numerically superior enemy to a standstill for years- from a military perspective, they were impressive and, as aforementioned, the common Confederate soldier probably did believe he was just protecting his homeland from invasion. He was wrong, he was also keeping black people in chains by default, but his motives weren’t quite as purely evil as some are trying to paint.

I truly believe that most folks who embrace the rebel flag aren’t trying to show support for the KKK, or segregation or any number of other racist ideas or causes. They’re not thinking of George Wallace, or Woodrow Wilson or LBJ, they’re thinking of Robert E. Lee as portrayed by Martin Sheen, or Tom Berenger as Longstreet, or Richard Jordan as Armistead. And while Ted Turner did give us a squeaky clean vision of the Civil War in the movie, Gettysburg, the fact is there were admirable qualities about those real men, even as there were things we rightly revile about the Confederacy.

So, no, I don’t assume someone flying the battle flag is racist. I’m not sneering at you if you’ve got one outside your house or on your bumper. I get it. Separately, but related, I also would violently oppose, and that’s not hyperbole, any attempt by the government to force citizens not to display the battle flag or any other symbol, however controversial. This is America and if we give up on something as basic as freedom of speech we will have lost too much, no matter how offensive the voices we silence.

But when Top tells me that he sees the battle flag as hateful and that it offends him, it damn well gives me pause. Andrew Walton is not part of the screeching horde of the perpetually offended. The great American people have basically destroyed the meaning of the word hero by hanging it on every swinging Richard in a uniform, not to mention anyone who has ever been trolled on the internet for an unpopular life style choice, but Top is actually a certified freaking hero. He was decorated for valor for saving another man’s life in Iraq (while being wounded himself in the process) and, furthermore, is one of the most capable, self-motivated people I know- this is not one of the world’s professional victims.

That doesn’t mean I defer to his opinion because badass. I didn’t even do that when I was his commander, although I damned well listened carefully to everything he ever had to say to me… except maybe a few entreaties to be more politic when dealing with my superiors... oops.

But if he thinks the flag is offensive, then that’s at least one honest man who thinks so; not a race baiter, not a bigot- a damned good man. The least I, and you, should do is not dismiss that opinion out of hand.

I’ve rambled a bit more than usual, but I’ll try to tie it up neatly as possible.

1. No, the South should not remove all confederate symbols from everything ever and wear hair shirts for being descended from a slave-holding society.

2. It would probably be a nice and considerate thing to question when, where and in what manner it is appropriate to display those symbols not as a matter of law but as one of courtesy. No, that won’t be enough to appease the shrill cries of the professional race baiters, but to hell with them anyway, I’m worried about what’s actually right, not what demagogues think.

3. When you see some dude with a battle flag on his truck, there’s a good chance it’s got nothing to do with racism in his mind. Likewise, when someone objects to the battle flag, you should consider the possibility that it’s not about white guilt, but upon his honest evaluation of the flag’s symbolism in history. We have to go back to assuming good faith until conclusively proven otherwise in this country. It's difficult, I know, but that leads me to-

4. Ad hominem may be a fallacy, but considering the source is still a valid practice. If a whiny college kid is bitching about your privilege and the evils of white patriarchy, I'm probably going to ignore it. We're all entitled to our opinions, but some have backed those opinions with more than hot air.

Justin's Lengthy and Unsolicited Opinion, Episode Two 11:37 AM

Justin’s Lengthy and Unsolicited Opinion, Episode Two- now lengthier, and with anecdotes!

Well, really episode five hundred and something, more likely, but I’ve just started numbering them, so we’ll go with two.

A Tale of Four Christians

Yes, there is an actual story here, but first some background and scriptural stuff.

The genesis of this essay lies in a comment from my friend Ori’s FB wall where he reposted my first L&UO regarding homosexuality and the Church. It was a great discussion, but I eventually walked away due to internet argument fatigue (yes, even I am susceptible). One of the commenters there opined that shunning open and unrepentant homosexuals would be an appropriate and scripturally sound policy on the church’s part.

This individual’s argument, troubling as many of you may find it, is not without basis in the Bible. Amongst other passages, 1 Corinthians Chapter 5, Romans Chapter 16, 2 Thessalonians Chapter 3 and 2 John Chapter 1 all indicate that followers of Christ should avoid the socializing with unrepentant sinners.

The low hanging fruit would be to point out that the church, to avoid a great big plank in its own eye, would also have to ferret out and shun everyone who hadn’t repented of greed, drunkenness, idolatry (and keep in mind, there are far more subtle and varied forms of idolatry than dancing naked around a golden statue), and all other forms of sexual immorality. That argument hardly proposes a solution, though, and this fellow’s opinion might be that the church should do just that, so let’s not linger here.

Tangentially, it is important to note that some of these passages refer specifically to other Christians who are flagrantly immoral, and not necessarily unbelievers, in 1 Corinthians 5:12 (ESV), Paul writes, “For what have I to do with judging outsiders? Is it not those inside the church whom you are to judge?”

In 1 Corinthians Chapter 6 Paul notes of sinners, “And such were some of you. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.” And in Galations 6:1, “Brothers, if anyone is caught in any transgression, you who are spiritual should restore him in a spirit of gentleness. Keep watch on yourself, lest you too be tempted.” I don’t think I need to number the occasions Jesus reclaimed those who were lost. Clearly, grace abounds.

I do not mean that these scriptures contradict each other- they don’t. I mean (and this should be no surprise to anyone who is trying to live a Christian life outside a hermitage) that there is always a tripartite tension between standing up for what is right, allowing room for those that have strayed to return to the fold and trying not to stray yourself in the process.

I believe this is God’s intention for Christian life to balance and strengthen our own faith and convictions with patience and compassion for others. You have to do all three at once or you’re not doing it right. Pro-tip: None of us is doing it right, but that shouldn’t stop you from doing your best.

Which brings me to Lassen Union High School, just before the turn of the century.

As a teenager, I was utterly assured that the collection of Hebrew mythology known as the Bible was no more real than the fantasy novels I devoured and not as fun to read (except for the stretch from Joshua capturing the promised land to the reign of Solomon, those chapters make Game of Thrones seem tame).

If there was an intelligent Prime Cause, a possibility I grudgingly conceded, why would He/She/It favor some random Semitic tribe of sheep herders with the ONLY spiritual truth over, say, the ancient Egyptians or the Athenians or the Han Chinese? It seemed too random to countenance.

Being in love with the sound of my own voice (some things never change), I was not shy about my opinion on religious matters.

The first eponymous Christian of this tale is a girl I will not name. We traveled in many of the same circles because of honors classes and other nerdy school things. We were, if not friends, then friendly acquaintances.

Right up until the day she told me with smug assurance that I was going to hell, as were all my other atheist, agnostic and Mormon friends and family. There was no sorrow, no regret, no hint of empathy, not even the faintest echo of, “Forgive them for they know not what they do,” just the self-righteous satisfaction that she was the elect, favored by God over her fellow man. In retrospect and fairness, I’m sure I had antagonized her as well in that conversation, so she probably deserves a little more slack than I’m cutting her, but that was the impression I received.

Regardless, have you any idea how easy an interaction like that makes it for a prideful young person to dismiss your beliefs? Oh yeah, not only do you believe some bronze age nonsensical fairy tale with talking snakes and donkeys, you’re also a bunch of uppity A-holes.

The second and third Christians I will name. They are my dear friends, Jake Hosier and Stacy Reger. They were far from my only Christian friends. In fact, I remember a few theological discussions with Anthony Prince, who is now a pastor, and my friends Joseph Turner and Beau Haertling were never ashamed of their Mormon faith. That’s hardly an exhaustive list of Christian friends in my high school.

But Jake and Stacy were the closest friends I had in that phase of my life. Jake stayed at my house so frequently that my parents might as well have had joint custody of him. Stacy is the closest thing I’ve ever had to a sister and was my confidant through the now-trivial problems of adolescence as well as the genuinely dark days that followed high school.

When the subject came up, and when you’re that close it does pretty frequently, neither gave up an inch on their faith. Neither of them nerfed the scripture to make me more comfortable. Neither of them made me feel like they loved me one iota less for not sharing their belief.

Predictably, I’m the fourth Christian from the title. Why I came to accept Jesus in college after an adolescence of unbelief and merry debauchery is another story. Suffice it to say, I had a personal, internal and revelatory experience in which God made it clear to me it was time to accept or deny Him. I accepted Him, and I struggle to keep accepting Him every day.

Afterwards, I saw the hypocrisy of painting Christianity with one broad brush because of the Self-Righteous Girl and her ilk when I’d had many Christian friends who were absolutely wonderful to me, despite my unbelief and the fact that I was, well, am, a smartass, opinionated little jerk sometimes.

As I said, grace abounds.

Furthermore, I recognized that those friends, and especially Jake and Stacy, were given to me as examples of how to interact with friends and loved ones who do not believe without compromising my faith. Even though I was never swayed during those teenage conversations, their conduct and words stayed with me, laying a piece of a foundation I didn’t know existed. Truly, they prepared the way of the Lord.

All this to say, when you interact with others, you don’t know what’s going to stick. My brothers and sisters in Christ, only God can save a soul, it’s true. But when you face the maker of Heaven and Earth, would you rather be the one who planted a mustard seed or gave an unbeliever pause to consider Christianity in a more positive light through your deeds and words, or the one who pushed them away through being a self-righteous douchebag?

Sin is sin, in a spiritual sense no one sin is worse than another, but my spiritual state was arguably much worse than a homosexual Christian’s. I wasn’t just engaging in sinful behavior, I was in utter and total rebellion against God. And yet those who had patience and empathy with me, without surrendering their own faith, were the ones who mattered in the end.

So am I saying we can ignore all those pesky passages about staying out of the company of unrepentant sinners?

No. It’s the Word of God, we don’t get to ignore any of it. We wrestle with every jot and line or we’re not being faithful.

Yet another pro-tip, all of us are unfaithful sometimes, just repent and get your ass back on the wagon. Read the bible, most of the folks depicted in it made a career of doing just that.

Third pro-tip, the scripture is inerrant, your understanding of it is not. That’s why I say we wrestle with it, always invoking the aid of the Holy Spirit.

Two things to consider here- whether we’re talking about homosexuality or some other sin, many people have not accepted Christ and your shunning isn’t going to have much effect on them, if anything, it will simply make any steps towards faith and salvation more difficult.

And two, all followers of Christ have ongoing sin in their lives. Every last one of us, it’s why Christ’s intercession is foundational. Try as we might, we cannot earn our salvation. Kick out everyone who has a sin they haven’t repented of yet and the sanctuary is going to be mighty empty come Sunday.

So when do you shun? In my opinion, you shun when you have talked, and ministered, and reproofed and loved as much as you possibly can and there is nothing left for you to do in that person’s life. When that person becomes a temptation or a poison, which is not to say merely a challenge, to your faith. When the only likely result of your relationship is damage- then you shun.

It’s not an easy answer, it requires case by case judgment and we, as “rational” Westerners, break into hives at such subjective criteria, but if you do not engage with unbelievers and Christians whose interpretation you disagree with, you’re not doing much to spread the Word.

And engagement isn’t just flinging bible verses from across the room hoping that they’ll stick. It’s relational and requires actual empathy, not just judgment. Don’t ever change God’s word in an effort to be popular or PC, but don’t forget that you are talking to another human being and, whether they have acknowledged it or not, another child of God. No matter how screwed up they are, God loves them and would have them come home. You can't lie to get them there, but a browbeating or cold shoulder may not move them along the road, either.

Yeah, I know, the guy who killed people for ten years for a living is lecturing you on empathy. Empathy was the primary reason I took and kept that profession as long as I did in the first place, but that is yet another essay.

Finally, even if you're really good about this, even if you are extremely careful about separating sinner from sin in your dialogue, people are still going to call you stupid, backwards, ignorant and bigoted for holding to the scripture- but you will know you're doing your best to love God and love your neighbor. More importantly, God will know.

Thus ends the rant. I’m no theologian, but I hope I have given you something to think about and maybe a small chuckle or two along the way. Peace be with you.

Justin Lengthy and Unsolicited Opinion 11:36 AM

It’s time for Justin’s Lengthy and Unsolicited Opinion, slow Friday afternoon edition.

Religion and politics in one post. No matter who you are you will probably disagree with and possibly be offended by something I’m about to say. Also, if you’re not a Christian or interested in theology, you may just not care about the lion’s share of this essay. You have been warned.

I openly support marriage equality as a secular concept, though I utterly despise the tactics of a lot of gay rights activists with regard to this particular debate. Specifically, the law is not a club to get people to approve of your way of life. To protect you from physical harm, slander or libel, yes, but not to violate others’ right to free association or punish them for their opinions- no matter how objectionable you may find those opinions. It’s called rule of law, not rule of feels and it protects asshole and saint equally. The being said, the government cannot pick and choose which ostensibly lifelong romantic relationships it’s going to recognize based on religious criteria.

But don’t get too happy with me, my liberal friends, because…

I cannot pretend that homosexual marriage is in accordance with anything remotely resembling sound Christian doctrine. I really, really, REALLY want to, believe me, and I’ve been wrestling with my opinion on the issue for a few years now.

I’ve always described myself, simplistically, as something like a moderate libertarian within our borders and something like an unrepentant imperialist outside them. I was these two things long before I accepted my Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Ergo, my two ingrained philosophical instincts, and I fully acknowledge I am not entirely rational where they are concerned (then again, who is?), are:

1. The United States of America is awesome and unique, despite her myriad flaws and sins.

2. All human beings should be allowed to do whatever the hell they want as long as they are not demonstrably harming their fellow man. In terms of secular law, if not religious and spiritual conviction, this is still the basis of my opinion on any given issue.

But just because the Church cannot and should not enforce scripture via the government does not mean she should simply surrender her principles in those debates where sin and law clearly do not overlap. The Church should not ignore the inspired word of God because it has become inconvenient and highly uncomfortable to live it. In short- the Church should not lobby against secular homosexual weddings- but pastors and priests shouldn’t be performing them either.

Have I managed to piss everyone off, Left and Right, yet? Wait, there’s more!

I’ve attended Methodist churches since I became a Christian. In complete honesty, this was the default choice largely due to Michele growing up a Methodist. Regardless, it has been, I think, a good fit. Methodists run a wide gamut politically, philosophically and theologically. Base on my own anecdotal experience, I’d guess the average Methodist is more liberal than an average Southern Baptist, more conservative than an average Episcopalian.

Episcopalians already allow openly homosexual priests and leave their clergy latitude to perform homosexual marriages. I doubt Southern Baptists, by and large, will ever accept homosexuals with anything other than gritted teeth and attempted conversion therapy. Methodists are wrestling with the issue at present, I expect the denomination will have to sway one way or another and possibly schism over it.

My emotions are with the liberals on this. I want to be accepting, I want to tell my homosexual brothers and sisters in Christ that their sexual orientation doesn’t violate the scripture and they should feel free to love whomever they choose, provided we’re talking about consenting adults, of course.

But I just can’t. Oh, I can like and love homosexuals, but I can’t pretend that I know their behavior isn’t sinful. It’s not in accordance with the scripture, even if you squint and look sideways, it’s still not quite there. I know- I’ve tried.

I’m going to unpack the most common arguments I hear in favor of Christian recognition of homosexual marriage and why I think they fall apart under scrutiny.

1. Well, Leviticus/Deuteronomy has all kinds of dietary/clothing/customary restrictions you don’t follow, how is homosexual conduct, and therefore gay marriage, any different?

Response: Jesus Christ did not abolish the law, but he did fulfill it. Many of the disciplines of the ancient Jews are not necessary for Christians because our new covenant takes their place. You can find elaborations on this topic in the gospel of Matthew and in Paul’s letter to Timothy, off the top of my head, I’m sure there are other places. There is no such easement when it comes to the restrictions against homosexual conduct. I am dying for someone to prove me wrong on that.

2. Jesus doesn’t say anything about homosexual conduct in the gospels.

Response: Well, he does reiterate what the book of Genesis said about marriage, “for this reason a man shall leave his father and mother, etc.,” but I’m going to go ahead and give my imaginary opponent the point, the gospels do not specifically condemn homosexual behavior. But the Old Testament does without being specifically modified by the New Testament and so do a couple different epistles IN the New Testament. Is the cornerstone of your argument that being Christian entitles you to ignore the other sixty-two books of the bible? How is that sound theology?

3. Jesus says to love your neighbor as yourself, how is counseling homosexuals that their only holy options are abstention from romantic and sexual love or “conversion” therapy loving in any way?

Response: The best argument of the lot, in my opinion. I’ve used it myself. And based on my own limited experience, it does seem cruel to tell homosexuals that they are simply wired so that they can never have a romantic relationship that isn’t sinful. I’ll come out now (no, not that kind of coming out) and say I suspect conversion therapy is ninety-nine and forty-four one hundredths percent pure bullshit. I don’t believe I or anyone else can convert a gay man into wanting sex and romance with women any more than one could convert me into wanting sex and romance with dudes. That just doesn’t make any fucking sense.

This third argument continues to haunt me and sow doubt, because I know how deeply sad my life would be without my wife and it is not beyond my capability to imagine that a gay man might feel as deeply for another man what I feel for her. I cannot reconcile it except to say that we are not supposed to follow Christ only when it makes us feel good, only when we know it’s going to turn out okay, or even only when we agree with him philosophically. We are supposed to follow, not mindlessly or unquestioningly, but in genuine faith and, uncomfortable as this word is for modern Westerners, obedience.

What does that all mean in practical terms? Well, to reiterate, nothing legally. The Church does not wield the authority of the government, and the government does not wield the authority of the Church. As it applies to how Christians should treat homosexuals on a personal level, it sure as shit isn’t a justification for anyone to be an asshole towards or exclude homosexuals, including open and unrepentant homosexuals, from worship.

If you’re reading this then you’re likely one of my friends, which means you’re friends with someone who has sinned and does sin and will continue to need Christ’s intercession for his sins. No, I’ve never wrestled with same sex attraction, but I’ve got plenty of other deeds and thoughts in my ledger that would send me straight to hell with a first class ticket on an SR-71 if it weren’t for Jesus. We are all broken, our fractures are just in different places. I understand that you have repent of your sins to be forgiven of them, but how the hell do you expect anyone to repent when you try to exclude them from the body of the church or make them feel like their special sin makes them double bad because it happens to be a hot topic right now?

If anyone has a good scriptural argument to prove me wrong about this, please, by all means, lay it on me.

Trauma, Coping and Parenting 10:29 AM

In which Justin starts talking about PTSD and ends up talking about parenting… yeah, you’ve been warned.

The other day I read an interesting blog post by mil-fantasy author and Coast Guard veteran Myke Cole regarding PTSD. In the post, Coyle challenges the classical violent nightmares/flashbacks/delusions perception of PTSD. He posits that PTSD isn’t as much a somehow curable disorder, but rather a world view that results from experiencing elevated danger for extended periods of time, or abuse, or excessive hardship, etc. For those of you interested you can find it on his blog here: http://mykecole.com/category/blog

I’ve been wrestling with the notion of PTSD since it started garnering significant public attention early in the war. Like most veterans, I know many fine soldiers, courageous, switched on, bad ass motherfuckers, who have needed help dealing with the stresses of not just combat but multiple 12-15 month tours away from their families. Unfortunately, I know many more irresponsible and spoiled overgrown children who end up in trouble due to their own weakness of character. Yet these individuals are often the first to claim they have been traumatized by the Army, even without having experienced combat, or having had only one relatively tame deployment. Keep in mind that just because one deploys does not mean one experiences combat trauma, mentally or physically. I can actually count the times I felt I was in immediate danger without exhausting my fingers; the number of experiences I would consider actual combat are even fewer. There are soldiers out there who spent months in the shit, but a lot more who spent months on the FOB punctuated by a couple hairy days, and still more who ain’t ever seen the elephant at all.

Naturally, one type of patient garners my sympathy more readily than the other. I’m told by a psychologist friend that I shouldn’t judge, that stresses affect different individuals differently and I can’t know what goes on in someone else’s head. Logical, but speaking as an officer, we can’t have soldiers who crumble at the first major stress. And, as a soldier, I have a hard time respecting someone who succumbs to pressure too easily- what constitutes too easily? Well, as a Supreme Court justice once said famously, I know it when I see it.

As an aside, I’m addressing the form of trauma with which I’m most familiar. I know there are countless legitimate tragedies that could cause a person PTSD that have nothing to do with combat. I’m not seeking to discount any of these and, in fact, I’m trying to be respectful by staying on a topic I know something about rather than offering dime store psychoanalysis for traumas I’ve never suffered.

There are many comrades who have had a rougher go of it than I have. Some were maimed, some suffered impairing brain injury, some witnessed legitimate horrors and some never came home at all. Whenever this topic comes up I always feel the need to establish up front that I got off light. I’m still converting oxygen to carbon dioxide, I still have all appendages where they are supposed to be and I’m still making babies with Michele, all of which constitutes a not so minor miracle. I do not feel sorry for myself in the least.

But I did suffer significant trauma; bad enough that I was in the hospital for a month and in physical therapy for a year. By societal expectation, I should be a ticking time bomb, ready to snap on friend or foe alike. I should at least be on a steady cocktail of mood enhancers or anti-depressants or whatever. Yet, I’ve never felt the need. It’s not that I don’t get angry and sad over everything that’s happened in the war, I do. And I feel irrationally guilty as hell every day of my life that two good men are dead and I, after all the dust settled, came through the same blast with relatively minor wounds. On a philosophical level, you could say I stay angry about the war.

But that’s how you’re supposed to feel. I don’t want the pain and sorrow and anger or even the guilt dulled. Those emotions are appropriate reactions to horrible events. They give me focus and remind me why what I do is important, even when it feels like I’m just a cubicle monkey in a uniform. Why would I try to escape that?

I understand for some folks, it gets overwhelming. They do abuse alcohol or drugs. They do take out their pain on the wrong people. I would never begrudge someone who has been through something like what I’ve been through or worse psychological help. It’s far better to get treatment than to lay hands on your spouse or take it out on your kids, or off yourself.

I can’t help but wonder, though, why some of us need the help and some don’t. Why some folks do their duty in an exemplary manner but then fall apart, why some fall apart before the battle even starts.

In the here and now, I credit most of my stability to Michele. I have a fantastic internal support mechanism in the form of my family. I know how lucky I am in that. But I know guys who had loving wives and seemingly happy marriages and families who still ended up breaking down.

Not that it’s a terribly original idea, but I think it boils down to early role models, and especially parenting. Talking to guys who are on the Zoloft diet or some of the shrinking violets who break down before they ever hear a shot fired in anger, I see a common thread of issues in their childhood. Not necessarily abuse, either. While a lot of guys who just can’t cut it as soldiers are the result of abusive or neglectful parenting, another large percentage seem to have parents who convinced them they were special, beautiful snowflakes who deserved consideration over and above what the other children get because they are just so darn special.

Sigh.

Fellow parents and parents to be (which potentially encompasses all of you with fully functional reproductive systems) - we all love our children. We all want to give them the affirmation they need, develop the self-confidence that will allow them to stand up for themselves, and hopefully stand up for what is right. Here’s the thing, though; if the kid grows up with a steady diet of how awesome they are with no discipline, no expectations of performance, no adversity, they turn into one of two things; a sociopath or a god-damned sissy.

It’s a fine line. I get it. I’m not advocating the Great Santini style of parenting. I wasn’t denied paternal affection if I didn’t measure up (and believe me, I disappointed my parents plenty). My dad hugged me and told me he loved me and was okay if I broke down and cried given an adequate reason according to my age. But he expected me to make progress towards being a man who could love and provide for a family and, if necessary, successfully defend them, not a self-serving douche or a coward.

When I was older, he shared some of his war time experiences as well as those of my grandfather. He exposed me not to gratuitously violent movies (I found those on my own), but to the real and often horribly dark history of the human race. He didn’t try to hide evil and suffering from me, he tried to prepare me for it. He encouraged me towards role models, real and fictional, for appropriate behavior when the fecal matter hits the rotary air impeller. He was such a role model. And that has made all the difference. I’m not even remotely a hero by any reasonable definition of the word, but I can live with the guy I see in the mirror every morning.

I’m speaking in broad generalities here. Obviously there are people who come from great homes and still turn into serial killers. There are folks whose parents treat them like shit and who turn into heroes. Despite these exceptions, we as a society need to reemphasize parenting, and not helicopter parenting. Not one-upsmanship parenting, and not “baseball” parenting. We need good old fashioned measured discipline and affection from parents. We need kids to know they’re loved while simultaneously learning that the entire universe doesn’t revolve around them. That the world outside the house may not even give a rat’s ass about their well being and it’s up to them to take care of themselves and stay true to their principles, regardless of what feels good at the moment or what their peers think.

And we need them to be tougher. I think the situation in this country, and around the world, is going to get a lot worse before it gets better. Being the children of the baby boomers, we lack grit on a grand scale. The next generation needs to be tougher, especially mentally. Physical toughness comes in mere weeks if necessary, but mental discipline and resilience take a life time to build. Children can’t build those virtues if they never have to take responsibility for a bad grade, or stand up to a bully or take orders from a parent, even when they don’t agree.

It’s not your job to make your kids like you all the time. It’s not your job to be the cool parent. It’s your job to provide them with the basic tools to be a moral, effective human being. If you can’t handle that, for God’s sake, don’t have kids.

The Trouble with Art and Entertainment 2:44 PM

I enjoy and value the arts. Particularly books, but I also enjoy music of various genres, movies, musical theater and, as a result of my wife's steady and patient efforts, dance and even fine art (to a degree). For the purposes of this piece I'll focus on the cinema. While we are burdened with drek like the Fantastic Four movies, the Star Wars prequels, and pretty much everything Tim Burton made after The Nightmare Before Christmas, we've also created the LotR trilogy, the original Star Wars trilogy, the Godfather trilogy, the Avengers and its component movies, etc. They may be the minority, but there are still a ton of entertaining, inspiring and edifying movies out there.

But watching a making-of feature on the Avengers the other day, and again marveling at the talent and effort it takes to make really good movies, I had a disturbing thought.

As great as these movies are, as much as we love them, are they, perhaps, a symptom of a declining culture?

I'm not even getting into the divide between Left and Right, and the entertainment industry's strong lean towards the Left. That's a different rant. LotR and Star Wars have no overt political messages other than, “be courageous, resist evil, it's better to be the scruffy, gritty secondary (Strider, Han Solo), than the neophyte hero (Frodo, Luke Skywalker).” If you can't agree with that sentiment then why are you reading me?

No, I'm talking about the movies themselves, independent of any political content they may or may not contain.

Stop and think about it, we spend billions of dollars a year on entertainment. It's one thing that we have the disposable income to buy some DVDs, it's another that we, as a culture, have become so committed to our own entertainment that we've set the market value for entertainment in the millions and billions. I'm picking on A-list actors and film makers, but they're hardly the only paychecks I question, professional athletes and “musicians” I'm looking at you.

Hyperbole aside, I'm not begrudging these folks their wealth. Even the ones I don't think produce a damn thing worth buying still earned it by selling it honestly on the market. Hate Justin Beiber all you like, if we raised our daughters to deride his crap instead of swoon over it, he wouldn't be a phenomenon. The fault lies not in our stars, metaphorical or literal, but in ourselves.

If we're dumb enough to pay a twenty-two year old linebacker three million a year to smash running backs and quarterbacks, then why shouldn't that young man take the money? In my not-so-copious free time I'm still trying to write. Realistically I hope that after retirement I can become a solid mid-list author, but if for some reason one of my novels starts pulling numbers like Rowling I'm not going to give the money back on the principle that folks should've been spending their money on more important things.

So I'm not trying to spew hatred at art or artists.

All I'm saying is, we have a culture where people will go into debt to make sure they have direct TV and a 72 inch, high def, plasma screen TV to watch it on. We have a culture where our A-list entertainers make exponentially more money than any one of a dozen vital professions. We have a culture where the majority of voters feel they have to subsidize charity into a government function while we the gainfully employed (and many who are not) spend billions on things we could easily live without and give a pittance, or nothing at all, to charity.

I'm not innocent in this either. Oh, we tithe our ten percent, plus a little extra now and then, like good little Christians, and I give to various charities on the Combined Federal Campaign. But I have a great big TV, a bunch of movies and books, and not a few video games. It's not like I'm against entertainment or having nice things. I just worry that we're trying to fill a deeper void with our materialism. We buy the movies and video games and books not just to enjoy them and perhaps be inspired by them, but to live the lives of heroes vicariously because we've given up on trying to be heroes ourselves.

So I'm not suggesting some socialist redistribution of wealth. Like I said, we gave them the money, they didn't steal it. It's a viable economic transaction, and it's not the problem, really.

I'm just saying that maybe we need to reconsider art's purpose in our lives- instead of throwing money into it in return for an escape from lives we lost interest in long ago, perhaps we need to let our Jedi, and superheroes, and Dunedain, and teenaged wizards inspire us to actually do something about all the darkness in the world. I'm not saying throw on a pair of tights and go vigilante (although if that's your thing I recommend some kevlar under those tights and strongly encourage a Punisher model, rather than a Batman model, in the real world, Bruce Wayne would've had a .357 lobotomy around his fifth issue, I don't care how strong his ninjitsu is).

I'm saying give more to charity (also check the efficiency of the charity, not every donation has equal effect), go on a mission, join the peace corps, become a teacher, become a doctor, become a soldier, sailor, airman, marine or coastguardsman, be the next Elon Musk or Stephen Hawking- for God's sake DO SOMETHING- and then raise your kids to do something too, maybe not what you did, but something. Don't sit on your ass watching movies and forgetting that there's a real world out there that desperately needs good people to be active in it.

Christmas on COP Copper, from '08 10:09 PM

I wrote this four years ago during my second tour in Iraq. I find it more amusing than embarrassing, so, submitted for your entertainment:

T'was the night before Christmas and all through the COP,
Not a Soldier was stirring, not even Top,
Oh, except for the Ugandans on guard in their towers,
And the Soldiers on the gunline, playing Xbox for hours,
I in my PT's and Smoke in his rack,
Had just settled down for another night in Iraq,
When all of a sudden there arose such a ruckus,
Whatever was wrong, I knew it would probably....
I burst out of my connex to see what was the matter,
When a pile of charred venison landed with a splatter,
"You killed Rudolph, you bastards!" Screamed a corpulent elf,
And I knew right away it was time to get help,
"Smoke!," I cried, "Santa's reindeer just exploded!"
"Oh, great," he said, "the gun wasn't supposed to be loaded,
"When I left they were practicing a dry-fire mission,"
"Oh, crap," I said, "can't wait for the 15-6 on this one!"
It seemed Santa's sleigh and the reindeer he was reigning,
Had just now given my Bravos some direct fire training,
I pulled out my claims card for consequence management,
And Smoke, in a low voice, offered optimistic sentiment,
"If you think about it, sir, it's good in a sense,
"We've done FA and Infantry, and now Air Defense!"
"Smoke, you're not helping," I said, as Santa started to twitch,
I could see he was thinking about where to cram the switch,
"I can't believe you jerks," Santa said in a fury,
"Rudolph was my only night-vision, and I'm in a hurry!"
"Santa," I said, as polite as could be,
"We'll figure this out at our FDC,"
"Please stay calm, and hold the switches and coal,
"I promise we'll find a way to get you out of this hole,"
We rushed to the AFATDS, to see what to do,
Me and Smoke, and Jolly Saint Nick too,
"I've got it," Smoke said, "I know how you can resume!
"Our guns will light your way, with coordinated illum!"
In two minute intervals M485 lit the night,
As Bravo Battery got Santa back in the fight,
"I'll let this one slide," he said, as he climbed on his sleigh,
"Just learn the difference between 'ready' and 'laid.'"
We watched his sleigh soar through the black desert sky,
And finally we breathed a sigh of relief, Smoke and I,
Santa's voice filled the air, over his sleigh bells' rattle,
"Merry Christmas to All, and All Hail the King of Battle!"

Merry Christmas 9:59 PM

As we come to the close of the Advent Season, I realize I have very little profound to say (well, very little relative to my normal output). I know you're all relieved :)

To my brothers and sisters in Christ; Rejoice! Emmanuel has come to ransom captive Israel.

It has been a hard year, not one given to optimism. I lose sleep over many of the problems facing our nation and often they appear insurmountable to me. But our hope rests in Him. We cannot know the hour or the day, and we can, unfortunately, be assured that many troubles lie between, but the end game is written. A light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.

To my friends and loved ones who believe differently or not at all, I hope the holiday has given you respite and edification. Though you don't share my religious beliefs, do take comfort in the fact that you are where you are, doing the best you can, and that there are millions of good, decent people like you doing the best they can. Civilization will suffer setbacks, even cataclysmic defeats. Odovacer will overthrow Rome, the library at Alexandria will burn, and it will most likely remain illegal to shoot Westborough Baptists (damn it all), but the human race will continue to strive and achieve. The drive to create something better than the barbarism from which we all spring can be frustrated, but it cannot be destroyed.

Keep up the good fight. Whatever difference of opinion you may have with me, religious, political, whatever, we would not be friends if I didn't consider you in some way an ally in the long struggle to ensure civilization triumphs over savagery.


To Kellen, and all my other comrades spending their Christmas on the front lines of a war that most of our countrymen are all too eager to put behind them, God bless you. I get to spend this one with my family, but I'm thinking about you and praying for you. May the Lord protect and defend you.

Merry Christmas to all.

Why I Support Legalizing Homosexual Marriage and Why You Should Too, Pretty Much Regardless of Your Religious Beliefs 5:24 PM

I pissed off my liberal friends last week with my brief rant against gun control, so I figured I’d go ahead and piss of my friends on the other side of the aisle this week with this much longer rant in support of gay marriage!

I thought of this a while ago when DOMA was not yet even under judicial review. I was still digesting the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell (which will be the subject of its own rant, shortly), and I realized that if homosexuals were going to serve openly, it would be fair and necessary to recognize their spouses for both moral and administrative purposes. I did my whole walk around in circles and talk to myself for a bit, and today I’ve written the results of my internal dialogue.

So, issues with homosexual marriage.

I’m going to ignore bigotry and any variation of, “it’s icky!” Really, if you’re still arguing from there then no one on either side of the issue should care what you think. Don’t get me wrong, I still have my own visceral reactions at open physical displays of homosexuality. That’s not a moral compass, though, folks, that’s just biology and cultural conditioning talking. My glands tell me that two guys doing sexy things are kinda gross and that two girls doing sexy things are kinda hot (sorry, honey!). I am not displaying sound moral or intellectual judgment by appreciating one over the other; I’m experiencing a primitive hormonal reaction. So let’s just ignore “it feels wrong” arguments.

“Homosexuality is deviant sexual behavior and shouldn’t be encouraged because it’s akin to pedophilia.” Oh, brother. You know what? Forget this one as too close to bigotry. Fellow Christians, the minute you compare consensual homosexuality to child-rape, you just lost the argument in the eyes of any civilized person. Don’t do it. Just. Don’t.

“Allowing homosexual marriage will damage the American ideal of the traditional family unit.” Really? How? “Hey, Michele, I noticed Jim and Steve moved in together and it made me think, ‘why don’t I go try sex with men?’ I’m leaving you and the kids to discover myself! Bye!”

Seriously, I don’t know about you, but no matter how many gay dudes I see in committed relationships, I’m not going to be tempted to abandon my smoking hot wife and wonderful kids for a life of knitting sweaters with Larry in Vermont, even if he looks like Daniel Craig (yes… considerably). Besides, gay people aren’t ruining the family unit- we’re doing that all by ourselves. After all, they can’t reproduce kids by accident and then treat them like inconveniences or a means to get a bigger welfare check. Only we can do that. Well, they could, but not with their preferred… oh, you get what I mean.

That’s two common arguments down. So, how about an argument that can hold water? Is there an argument that speaks to my own beliefs and which I cannot dismiss with pithy sarcasm?

“The Bible (and therefore God) condemns homosexuality.” You see what I did there? I ignored the one-man, one-woman variations and everything because they are too easy to shred given the old notables of Judah and Israel were known to have harems that would make Hugh Hefner jealous (you know, accounting for historical differences in hygiene standards that is).

So, the bible condemns homosexuality.

Yes. It does. Unquestionably, in multiple verses of multiple books of the Torah and in Paul’s Letter to the Romans (maybe a couple other places, others with more experience as biblical scholars can probably find a few more citations), there are clear proscriptions against homosexual conduct, no matter how I try to spin it. You got me.

But, and I say this without sarcasm, Brothers and Sisters in Christ, does that make any damn sense?

I mean, really. This is the scenario you’re purporting: God creates one of his children hormonally swayed so that he will be attracted to the same gender, and then tells him that his (or her, whatever) sexual and romantic feelings for another consenting adult are inherently sinful while ours are one of the foundational elements of His plan for us.

“Oh, no,” you say, “It’s not natural, it’s a choice. They could choose not to be gay.”

Deep breath.

Okay, since we’re on this uncomfortable topic, I’m going to make it even more uncomfortable by using first person while talking about sexuality. You brought this on yourself, invisible straw man who lives inside my computer (and sometimes my head).

I don’t know about you, but when I turned the corner from childhood into adolescence I noticed that the girl sitting across from me in home room was filling out and that it made me into a stammering idiot because the birds and the bees were screwing up my whole universe with all kinds of inappropriate thoughts and daydreams. Oddly, my friends, Joey, Jake and Anthony inspired no such fantasies. No, my pimply faced young companions inspired only camaraderie and competition. It wasn’t as if I looked at them, looked at the girls and DECIDED I was heterosexual. So, you see, I NEVER GOT A VOTE ON WHO I WANTED TO HAVE SEX WITH. I’m just guessing that you didn’t either. And if you didn’t, and I didn’t, what are the odds Liberace or Elton John did, just because they like dudes?

So, I reiterate, some poor schmuck who is born gay but wants to obey God is left either trying to pretend he’s straight when the idea is as physically repulsive to him as his idea of a good time is to me, or simply alone.

HOW FUCKED UP IS THAT!? DOES THAT SOUND LIKE THE GOD WE WORSHIP?!?!

Does that sound like the God who takes any paper thin excuse he can to forgive us and accept us into his Kingdom? Does that sound like the God who sent his only Begotten Son, who became mortal and, took on the guilt of all our sins, who humbled himself to Death when he didn’t have to, all to save us? Does that sound like the God who commanded us to love our neighbor as ourselves and pray for our enemies and, and, I mean REALLY? Does it?

Isn’t it, JUST possible that when Jesus fulfilled the Law, freeing us from Kosher restrictions, the absolute necessity of circumcision, etc, that was one more cultural meme that just didn’t apply anymore? And isn’t at least possible that Paul, who is kind of a misogynist amongst other things, let’s face it, inserted some of his own ideas on morality when he was writing down the inspiration God had given him? I mean, this is the dude who said it is better not to marry, but better to marry than burn. Not exactly a ringing endorsement for what most other parts of the bible portray as the fundamental human relationship. Paul was a great man of faith, but he was not Jesus. And Jesus has not a damn thing to say about homosexuality in any of the gospels.

But Paul, you say, did take pains to separate his opinion from divine guidance in many places, so, no. Paul’s strictures against homosexuality are divinely inspired.

And maybe you’re right. I am a Christian, and I don’t get to shake scripture like a magic eight ball to make it give the answer I want, so maybe you’re right and same-sex romance is a sin in the truly eternal and cosmic sense of the word. I don’t like it, I hope it’s not, but I have to admit that is a valid and more legalistically correct interpretation of the scripture than I can offer.

So what?

You heard me, so what? What does our shared religious trepidation with regard to homosexuality have to do with US law? Oh, I’m not questioning your right to believe that two men or two women do not constitute a marriage in the eyes of God, I’m questioning your right to say it doesn’t constitute a marriage in the eyes of the United States. We are a Christian nation only in the sense that Christianity is the predominant religion of the population, not that we are allowed to use our own religious beliefs as basis for legislation, you know who does that? Places like Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran, basically all those Islamic radicals whom I’ve made it a career and an obsession to resist. Yeah, I’ve no interest in being like them.

Yes, most of the Founding Fathers were either Christians or deists with Christian traditions, and they referenced God frequently in their work. They did not, however, use scripture to justify law- the declaration and the constitution, in their mechanics, were inspired by enlightenment thinkers like Locke, Voltaire, Hobbes and Montesquieu, not by Matthew, Mark, Luke and John (none of which say anything about being gay, anyway). I’m not saying the faith of the founders didn’t play an important role in their motivations for creating a liberal (classical liberal, not left/right liberal) republic. I’m saying that even those, often very religious, men did not see fit to impose law from scripture on those who might not believe, or even on those who did believe. So why are you trying?

Because you don’t want people to think it’s okay. If gay marriage is legalized, it will be society signaling its acceptance of homosexuality. And if it is a sin, then people shouldn’t think it’s perfectly acceptable.

Ever downloaded something from pirate bay? Ever watched porn, used profanity, overeaten, drank too much, smoked a cigar or cigarette, been angry at God, or put your own desire for financial comfort over his command to be generous with the poor? Yeah? Me too. Guess what, brother? We’re all freaking serial sinners. You can recognize it and reproof it, but if you don’t legislate against me for my frequent use of the F word and tendency to overindulge in both chocolate and scotch (keeping in mind that I am a follower of Jesus Christ and I AM supposed to know better), why in God’s name would you allow yourselves to oppress some poor sap because he likes dudes?

Seriously, if we’re going to get all self-righteous, let’s go after human traffickers, or the terrorists, or, for Christ’s sake, somebody who is actually hurting another human being. Because THAT we have authority over here on Earth. This kind of sin? That’s between a person and God.

If you liked this piece, please tune in next week so I can piss you off by telling you how gender integration in the military is a big failure (and it’s all the Left’s fault) and the unilateral unphased repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell was a giant, criminal blunder (and it’s all the Left’s fault).

Citizenship, Responsibility and the Peace Corps 11:58 PM

This post comes from a few different places. First is my long held belief that the right to vote and run for office shouldn't be a matter of birth or even passing some citizenship test (which, apparently, a lot of birth citizens can't pass anyway), but actually require some meaningful display of civic awareness. This variation of representative democracy was portrayed, perhaps most famously, by Robert A. Heinlein in the novel Starship Troopers. First one to mention Paul Verehooven's godawful film adaptation with anything other than scorn gets blocked both from this blog and my FB feed. That movie is an abomination and that bastard will never get another dime of my money.

Another military science fiction author, Lieutenant Colonel (ret.) Tom Kratman, has recently taken the service-for-citizenship idea and expanded greatly upon it. While Heinlein did a good job laying out the skeleton of the idea and explaining the philosophical justifications for it in Starship Troopers, Kratman has, in his “Carrera” novels, fleshed it out and looked at a lot of the finer points. Some of which I'll get into later.

The third place is a recent conversation I had with some friends at church who have worked in Africa doing humanitarian missions with the Peace Corps. For not the first time it occurred to me, where the hell was the Peace Corps when were rebuilding Iraq? I'm not criticizing the people IN the peace corps, I'm wondering why the hell the federal government didn't deploy an obvious asset to an environment that seemed to exactly fit their mission profile? I have no idea what the PC's numbers or assets actually are, but I do know they exist to help less fortunate countries rebuild infrastructure, agriculture, medical and educational facilities, etc, etc etc,

So why the hell was I, Lieutenant Watson, United States Army, assessing sewage systems and elementary schools instead of focusing on hunting and killing insurgents when we have an entire federal organization that is supposed to do all that “soft power” stuff?

I'll come back to that question in a moment.

Going back to the idea of service for suffrage; I've received some outrage (oddly, never from those who have served) at the idea. The most common (and valid) argument is that all the governed should have a say in what their government is doing on their behalf. At face value, that is a most reasonable stance. I mean, you are going to suffer the consequences of your elected officials' decisions, why should you submit to their rule when you didn't vote them into office? Universal suffrage is the only just system.

Well, there's just one problem- it doesn't seem to be working so well anymore.

Our system has proven itself vulnerable to “bread and circuses” mob psychology at its worst on one hand and manipulation by crony capitalists on the other hand. Voting is free, given to you just for being born here and thus many people treat it as being worth what they paid for it. Which is to say- nothing. Few are informed on the issues, and those who are face choosing between two professional politicians running along dogmatic lines rather than trying to do what's legitimately best for the country. Run for office ourselves, you say? Perhaps, but in order to avoid becoming part of the orthodoxy you're going to have to crap a fortune to compete with the existing political machines, and even then the Ross Perots of the world have met with little success, whether that's a good or a bad thing is debatable.

I posit, from the state of our economy and the tone of politics, that giving people the vote for free has failed. The result has been the creation of a class of political and corporate oligarchs, not Jefferson's merit-based “natural aristocracy,” but a society run by manipulators of currency and opinion, rather than by statesmen.

Furthermore, while it's true that all are affected by the decisions of the nation's leaders, not all are affected equally. By casting your votes you, the Great American Public, will decide who has the authority to order me to war, and, just as importantly, which legislators will decide my budget and resources to train and equip in between wars. And yet you will certainly not bear the blood price if you choose wrongly. Think on this, for the last twenty years, no Commander in Chief of the United States Armed Forces has had legit military service. In this election, neither presidential candidate had served. That means that Somalia, the operations in the Balkans, Second Iraq and Afghanistan were all ordered and administrated by men who were unwilling to risk their own lives when they were my age. But they were sure as hell willing to expend me and my comrades like pieces of ordinance. I learned at my daddy's knee that a leader's moral authority springs from never telling a subordinate to do something you'd be unwilling to do yourself. So... where's the moral authority?

Before one of my friends from my side of the aisle points out Bush Jr.'s service in the Air National Guard, just don't. Okay. Don't. He served from 1968 to 1974 and magically never went to 'Nam? Yeah, I'm sure that was a coincidence.

So what to do? Universal compulsory service? Require everyone to serve and thus earn their full citizenship whether they like it or not?

Two problems. One- you can't force civic virtue. You just can't. I can't make you love this country as much as I do, no matter how hard I try. I never believed in that False Motivation crap for small things, much less something as esoteric as Patriotism. Two- we don't need everybody in uniform, and what do we do with those who either by lack of will or natural aptitude would be disasters in uniform? We don't have enough clerical and admin tasks to take them all.

Germany and other European states do require universal compulsory service, but you have to read the fine print- if a young man or woman is a conscientious objector, or just doesn't care enough about their country to put up with the hardships of the service, he or she can spend their term changing bed pans in a nursing home, or something equally innocuous. How does this make one value their vote more and thus exercise it more carefully?

Which brings me back to the Heinlein model. No compulsion to serve, and no penalties for refusing to serve, save that you don't get to vote in federal elections or run for federal office. Voting is exercising rulership of your country- those who would rule must serve. Authority must equal responsibility, else we are doomed.

There still remain a few problems. Kratman addresses one, both in his novels and in conversations I've had with him. Some of us join and stay in the Army not necessarily out of patriotism, but because we like it. Oh, patriotism generally runs high in servicemen and women, but it not necessary to be a patriot to be a good soldier. Additionally, I fully acknowledge that people like me often have a very specialized field of knowledge. Oh, I'm pretty well educated, but I'd be a disaster as a President because my knowledge of economics and some other key subjects is strictly beer-and-peanuts level.

So I don't get to vote, and I definitely don't get to hold office, while I'm serving actively. Think about it, if we're going to admit that we need a system where citizens are self-selected rather than just given the franchise willy nilly, it's not the Justin Watsons of the world that need to make up the bulk of the body politic. I'm a lifer. I freaking love the Army and I'm obsessed with warfare. I'd be launching cruise missiles at every country whose ambassador looked at me funny! Not to mention what I'd be doing to insurgents and terrorists. I wrote a law of war essay on that very topic which got me 20 hours on the area (West Point punishment, if not familiar and curious ask me in the comments).

No, the body politic shouldn't be comprised primarily of Spartans, but of men and women who did a term or two, not primarily because the work appeals to them, but because it's the right thing to do. And who, hopefully, learned to place the goals of a group ahead of their own, learned to care more about their comrades' well being and their mission more than their own comfort and safety. We cannot ensure this for every veteran, but future citizens are more likely to learn it in the Army than working at Mickey D's.

So what about once we've taken every potential citizen volunteer with the aptitude and will to fight? Just because you're not a warrior doesn't mean you should be cut out of the political process. Even I know that.

Now we come back to the Peace Corps.

I asserted earlier that simple forced drudgery by itself is not enough to inspire good citizenship out of folks. To value something, they must feel that they've earned it and I don't believe playing post office does that. Hardship, danger, hopefully at least a touch of adventure- these are the things which make experiences all the more valuable to a young person. To those who cannot or will not fight in the defense of the republic to earn their citizenship, the peace corps, beefed up and refocused on US foreign policy priorities, provides a way to serve and to experience the big three I mentioned above without pulling a trigger. By doing the work that the Army has been forced to do in Iraq and Afghanistan, they not only free up our combat forces for their main purpose, they will be ginning a generation of young men and women who have seen the rest of the world and thus appreciate what we have here, who have experienced other cultures and thus may be able to relate better to those who come from different back grounds, and, most importantly, have subsumed their own desire for comfort and safety to go out into the world in service to their nation and, yes, to humanity.

I'm well aware that getting such a system enacted would take a miracle. The proles want their entitlements, the CEOs want to be able to continue buying legislators wholesale, so even if I could get some popular support for this notion, both sides of the main stream media would destroy it before you could say boo. But we better think of something, because we've got more than just a fiscal cliff to worry about. We have millions of Americans in love with rights and derisive of responsibilities- this is not good.

It has been one hell of a month.  I’ve been back from our NTC rotation for about ten days now and I’m settling back into routines at home and work.  I intend to write, both privately and professionally, about my experience at Fort Irwin, but I’m still collecting my thoughts on that whole mess, so I’ll summarize by saying; 1 day of fun 28 days of absolute, mind numbing idiocy.  I love my command, I love the field, but I hate NTC with the fire of a thousand burning suns.

But enough of the negative waves, man.  I’ve been having a blast settling back in with Michele and our girls.  Thanksgiving weekend was a much-needed and appreciated break, though it went by in a blur. I seem to remember it was mostly fun.  Since my friend, Eric wasn’t going home for Turkey Day and his girlfriend is currently holding down a post deep inside enemy territory (somewhere in the vicinity of Boston, People’s Republic of Massachusetts, exact location classified), we had him over for dinner with us.  We are such nerds that after the obligatory stuffing of the faces (Michele did a fantastic job with the chow this year, don’t worry all you 21st Century enlightened types, I did help, but Michele was the mastermind) we (the three adults) played Settlers of Catan, talked about religion, politics and movies and (after the kids went to bed) watched BSG: Blood and Chrome and Caprica.  Have I mentioned lately that the new Galactica universe is, in my not so humble opinion, some of the best science fiction ever filmed?  Well, it is.  I mean, okay, they botched the series finale of BSG pretty badly, but the first two seasons were sheer genius and the third and fourth seasons had moments that eclipsed even the awesomeness of the first two seasons, though they also had doldrums to rival the made-for-TV Babylon 5 movie Legend of the Rangers.

Anyway, even though it’s a little late, I figured I’d publish the top ten things I’m grateful for with a self-indulgent explanation for each.  Attend:

1)      God and all His Works.  Okay, I know this post is technically over since this bullet can cover everything that follows, but it is the first and foremost thing for which I’m grateful.  As painful, sometimes horrific, as existence is; I’m grateful for it.  I’m grateful to experience and think and feel my way through life in this limited, carbon-based bipedal body.  Thanks, God.


2)      Michele.  I could write about my wife every minute until my dying breath and it wouldn’t capture how deeply I love her or how much I’ve come to rely on her.  She’s put up with every quirk and neuroses in my considerable repertoire, changed the bandages on my wounds (this is not a euphemism, my wife has literally changed bandages on wounds I sustained in combat) and borne two wonderful children to us (without a drop of anesthesia)- and that’s the three second highlight reel.  Beneath the self-deprecating attitude, the manic perfectionism and the meticulous decency with which my wife goes through life is a soul forged of high-carbon steel.  She would have made a fine Roman matron or Spartan queen.  I’ve admired few people the way I admire my wife, quite aside from the fact that she owns my affections.  We have our challenges, like any marriage, but in seven years I’ve never for an instant regretted asking Michele to marry me.  Convincing Michele Glosup to become Michele Watson was the smartest thing I’ve done in my entire life.


3)      Evelyn and Maeve.  Along with Michele, our children make up my whole world.  Being a parent is the hardest, scariest, most stressful job in the world.  Appropriately, it is also the most rewarding.  Every day I’m here, well almost every day, I get to see two amazing little people growing and learning, seeing fully formed personalities develop from habits and quirks, and having them look to us to arbitrate their whole worlds.  It’s humbling and wonderful to have to explain the most awkward questions to your four year old daughter- and enlightening!  Your children will ask you questions you haven’t figured out yet as soon as they can talk.  Having kids is (or should be) more impetus to be a better person so that when they’re old enough to realize you’re another human being the same as them, your life is still one they can admire, your memory a legacy worth keeping.


4)      Mom and Dad.  Last sentence of bullet #3?  Totally my parents.  They busted their asses raising my brother and me, and were each admirable as individuals despite having their fair share of flaws.  Those are quite literally gifts that keep on giving, because I see so many people in this world, from angry teenagers to disenchanted middle aged officers and NCOs, hurting deeply for lack of them.


5)      Being Born a Middle Class American in the Late 20th Century.  Look, we’re going through a rough patch (though I think our grandparents might laugh at that claim), but the fact is being a middle class American in the late 20th and early 21st centuries is hitting the freaking jackpot.  We enjoy liberty, security and, yes, comforts and luxuries that only the very uppermost echelons of the socioeconomic stratosphere would’ve known in centuries past.  I live in constant fear that we are sacrificing the first two for the sake of the second two, but that’s a subject for another post.


6)      The United States Army.  I’ve said before that it’s lucky that I have a country I can serve in good conscience, because I might be a soldier regardless.  I bitch, a LOT, about the bad aspects of the Army.  In part that’s because I’m like anyone else and I’m not immune to feeling sorry for myself.  In larger part, it’s because I am constantly and genuinely incensed when the realistic necessities of forging an effective combat unit are eschewed in favor of some politically correct nonsense being pushed on us by the powers that be- often flying under the false flag of “taking care of the Soldier.”  I can’t even mention an example here because it will derail the post into a rant, but what I’m getting at is:  A lot more of my stress comes from my professional life than my personal one.  Yet being an officer in the United States Army is still at the core of my identity.   

There is straight-up magic in being a part of a good unit.  It is perpetually hard to describe the experience, just as it is hard to describe anything based on the spiritual-emotional aspects of life. 

There are men to whom I owe my life.  Even amongst those I didn’t like all that much, and who weren’t overly fond of me, it was and is understood that we would risk our lives to protect each other and accomplish our mission.  There are exceptions.  We have a few cowards and far too many fools in uniform, but even in this dark age of namby-pamby idiocy, they are still the minority.  There are still thousands of damn fine men and women out here fighting for a country that pays lip service to them on July 4th and November 11th and would rather forget that there’s a war on the rest of the time.    


7)      Friends, Comrades and Mentors.  The protagonist of my favorite book says in the second to last chapter of the novel, “my luck has always been people.”  To name a few, not to the disparagement of those unnamed; my big brother James, Jason Taylor and Wayne Hall, who literally saved my life on a really bad day in Iraq, LTC Latham, who took me under his wing from the inauspicious beginnings of a remedial English class (long story), Stacy, who is the closest thing I have to a big sister, Jake and Joe, who have been like brothers to me since the sixth grade, Tucker, who lived with me for two years and still managed to be one of my best friends, a feat matched by only one other person so far (and she volunteered for the job, he didn’t!), Eric, who is one of the most committed fighters I know in the long struggle we wage between civilization and barbarism,  Kellen and Julia who are the best friends Michele and I could ever ask for, Sam, Bethany and (again) Stacy, for reminding me that however insoluble our political differences seem, there are good people and patriots on both sides of the aisle.  Finally, but by no means least; Douglass Dicenzo, Robert Blair, Christopher Swanson, Jeffery Loa, Carl Eason, Derek Hines, and James Puckett.  We will never forget.  


8)      Books.  Author Jo Walton (whom, I’ve admittedly not read yet) said in an interview, “if you love books enough, they will love you back.”  Stories have power, in my case, the power to maintain, arguably, to restore sanity.  Fiction, like acting, isn’t about telling a convincing lie, it’s about using an art form to entertain and to tell something true, if not factual.  Before I believed in God, my father read to me from Heinlein and I knew how a man should act.  When I was turning the corner into puberty I read Herbert’s Dune books- I memorized the Bene Gesserit Litany Against Fear (it’s still useful) and I learned from Duke Leto that the only coin which can buy loyalty is loyalty.  More recently, I read as JK Rowling proclaimed to the children of the world in the seven bestselling novels EVER that dying a hero is better than living as a coward (and what’s your message, Stephanie Meyer? Oh, yeah, you want your shiny vampire boyfriend, you make me sick).  I read Tom Kratman’s barely disguised and scathing critique of our political and military institutions and felt kinship born of frustrated devotion to duty.  

I’ve long since lost count of the number of Truths I learned from books and have since verified in real life.  If you don’t read, I recommend you take it up, there’s no limits to what you can experience and learn with literacy and an imagination.  


9)      Art and Science in General.  The fruits of humanity’s hearts and minds may be like crayon scribbles when you compare them to the raw majesty and terror of the universe itself, but look at how far we’ve come!  From little more than exceptionally clever primates 12,000 years ago (any time before the invention of the written word is a dark age to me, see above) to a space faring civilization today.  Do you know how short a period of time that is?  Earth herself is about four billion (that’s 4,000,000,000) years old and the universe several billion years older than that.  Imagine what we will accomplish if we don’t kill ourselves and a meteor doesn’t paste us before we can get all of our eggs out of this basket.  We are all the inheritors of Socrates and Leonidas, Leonardo and Locke, Christ and Buddha.  We are heirs to millennia of creativity struggling against the dark tide of barbarism that always threatens to drag us under.  


10)   Beer.  Come on, you saw this one coming.  Chimay, Duvel, Franzikaner, Paulaner, Blue Moon, Shock Top, Yuengling, Sam Adams, Modello Negro, Dos Equis and Killian’s Irish Red- I love it all!.  As a great man once said, “Beer is proof God loves us and wants us to be happy.”

WADD/Straw Poll 10:43 PM

Best intentions to the contrary, I've had a hell of a time getting any writing done. It's easy to blame it all on being a battery commander. The new job is, admittedly, not conducive to writing... or sleeping... or doing anything other than BEING a battery commander. (Sidebar: this is not a complaint, I freaking love being a commander, and I have an excellent collection of men, NCOs, and officers under my command, this is unquestionably the peak of my career). That's not all, or even most of it, though.

While I don't think I've ever struggled with writer's block, I have an affliction that impairs my output nonetheless. I have Writer's Attention Deficit Disorder. Seriously, I don't think there's been a time since I was fourteen years old (I'm three months away from thirty now) that I haven't had at least three ideas for novels, hell, for full on epic sagas, running around in my head. To date, I've completed precisely zero first drafts. I usually get somewhere between ten and twenty thousand words into a story and then- I go to the field, or I go to Iraq or Afghanistan, or I watch Lord of the Rings and decide I should be writing an epic fantasy instead of a alternate history, or watch Battlestar Galactica and decide that military science fiction is my first love and I should be writing about powered armor and spaceships not magic. Oh, I'm also in the Army, so, yeah, write whatcha know and all that. Then, for good measure, I'll read The Cat Who Walked Through Walls and decide I want to do some multi-verse hopping brain trip through the World-as-Myth.  I can't stay on one project to save my life and once I come back to an old one, I usually discover I hate everything I've written and need to start over from scratch.

This is all the more frustrating since I've probably got several hundred thousand more words to go before I can start reliably producing solid prose. I'm not sure if all the false starts count or if the word count only locks in once you've got a full manuscript.

For grins I've decided to throw up synopses of all the crap running around my head and see what ya'll think. What follows is a working title and brief description of each story idea I have pounding on the inside of my skull, what I'd like from anyone caring to comment is which ones you might be persuaded to pay money to read and which ones leave you cold from get go. If anyone wants to take the time to rank order with commentary, I'd offer my sincere gratitude and throw in an autograph on the first novel I get published some day (caveat: don't hold your breath, it may be awhile). I'm not promising to order my schedule by the results of the poll, but you'll still be helping me out by assuaging my curiosity.

Here goes:

#1: The Reliquary Wars (Science Fiction): Several thousand years into the future, a colony world that has long lost contact with Earth and degenerated into a pre industrial state of existence is climbing its way back towards modernity. Perhaps the most important resource on the world is the knowledge found amongst the ruins of the original colony settlements which were founded with the full advantage of advanced technology. With nation-states now having worked their way back up to the computer age, the books, databases and artifacts found in the ancient ruins confer large advantages to the parties that can find them first. The use of these “cheats” has advanced technology far faster in relation to the social and political institutions of the various civilizations of the new world than what occurred in our own history. As a result, nations still practicing feudalism are equipped with technology roughly equivalent to our own. Monarchs, feudal lords, shamans and chieftains face the daily question of how to maintain control of their subjects while simultaneously creating effective work and military forces in an environment which requires a large number of skilled workers, researchers and soldiers rather than ignorant agrarian surfs, superstitious mobs and spear fodder. Into this world walks Nathan Day, scion of the middle class which has sprung into existence relatively overnight. Conscripted into a war over a newly discovered ruin, Nathan's service will propel him to the royal court of the world's most powerful Empire where he will be instrumental not only in winning battles and campaigns but in shepherding his society and the world through the technological and social changes that threaten to tear it apart.

#2: Lords of Contagion (SciFi, Zombie Apocalypse, Post-Post Apocalyptic): The brilliant and sociopathic Dr. George Rome uses RNA resequencing to create the rage virus long envisioned by authors of many zombie apocalypse stories. Only the brilliant efforts of nano biologist Erica Hernandez allows the survival of the human race. She creates nanite antibodies which are infectious, just as the virus itself is. Unfortunately, Rome's virus mutates at an accelerated rate, requiring the remaining human population to conduct periodic anti-virus updates to ensure they don't fall prey to newer versions of the rage virus. Fast forward three generations, those organizations capable of reproducing Hernandez's anti-viral nanites have evolved into the real powers of the world. The human population, now at less than one hundred million world wide, has stabilized and even started to rebound, but the savages afflicted by Rome's Virus are showing disturbing signs of intelligence, applying tactics where before they had been mindless ravenous beasts, and, even more disturbingly, evidently gaining the ability to reproduce sexually (don't think too hard about it in a graphic sense) rather than solely through infection. As if this were not bad enough, the factions dividing the American continent; the Washington Remnant, the Mormon Free State, the San Joaquin People's Republic and the Great Lakes Confederation have allowed their relative success at beating back the zombie hordes to foster complacency and even rivalry amongst themselves. The situations is now a powder keg, with the remaining human population eyeing each other suspiciously and ignoring the obvious warning signs from the afflicted. A few clear thinking individuals work to preserve the human race regardless of factional lines, but the polities controlling the antivirals have established the tightest control on their citizenries since the fall of the Soviet Union, and they have no intention of relinquishing that control, even in the face of possible extinction.

#3: System Patrol (Science Fiction, Young Adult): One hundred years into the future, governments and corporations have finally begun to fully exploit the resources of the solar system in the form of asteroid mining, solar relay stations and extensive zero-gee manufacturing, agriculture and research. Shortly following the creation of wealth come those who wish to take it by force rather than develop it honestly. The first space war ends in 2115 with ad hoc forces facing one another in orbit around Mars, mineral rich asteroids and Earth itself. Countries scramble to create viable space forces to protect their offworld interests. Twenty years after the end of the first war, the space powers have managed to avoid the outbreak of another general war, but corporate and covert privateering is commonplace, as is Cold War style brinksmanship between the great powers. We join the class of 2139 of the Western Coalition Space Academy as they come of age personally and come to understand the ambiguities of the solar system in which they will serve. I'll admit this one is heavily inspired by Heinlein's Space Cadet, but with less of a globalist view of the universe. I'm a nationalist who is extremely skeptical of the value of the United Nations. I can believe in strong alliances of countries with aligned interests and values but I do not consider a one-world (or one solar system) government desirable, nor achievable short of massive and multiple genocides.

#4: The Throne of Albion (Fantasy, Alternate Universe): It is the early 19^th century, by subversion or conquest, the whole of Europa has has fallen under the sway of the Marquin dynasty. Only Albion, a land in which industrial advancement and sorcerous knowledge are both at their peak, has successfully resisted the conquest of the Marquins, but the noose is tightening. In an attempt to maintain a modicum of independence while assuaging the Marquins, King Alfred II of Albion agrees to marry Alecta, a powerful sorceress in her own right and youngest daughter of the Marquins. For some years his strategy works, but eventually his bride of convenience sows insurrection and discord amongst his kingdom and finally kills him. Now the King's illegitimate daughter Miriam finds herself on the run with only an apprentice wizard and a smith's son to guard her. To find aid for the loyalist forces of Albion, she must cross the channel to Eire and treat with the querulous Gael tribes and Fae courts that have long eschewed contact with the rapidly industrializing world of man, then return to Albion to oust the assassin queen from the throne.

I have a couple more, but these are the ones that keep me awake at night right now. All opinions are welcome, though I understand if science fiction and fantasy are not your cup of tea, none of these may sound appealing to you.