Vox Day - Crisis & Conceit, 2006–2009

The Collected Columns, Vol. II: Crisis & Conceit, 2006-2009

Vox Day

Castalia House

Kouvola, Finland

www.castaliahouse.com

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World Net Daily. I had never heard of it. I watched Fox News regularly and got at least 40 minutes of Rush Limbaugh every day during lunch. What more can a guy need? I cant remember really having another news and opinion source before then. World Net Daily, huh? So I checked it out. Here I am, minding my own business and enjoying lifes rich party with the recreational drug of talk radio and then someone, peering from behind a cracked door with strange voices and smoke seeping out, says to me, psst! Come on in here. Try some of this.

Upon entering the world of WND, I felt I had just been dropped into the deep end of the pool. There was plenty there that reinforced what I already knew to be absolutely 100% true. Hey! Theres Ann Coulter. Look Michelle Malkin. Awesome! Oh hey, that guys fills in for Rush! Nice. Still, looking around, there were plenty of faces and ideas I had never seen before. Wow. This woman is a Jew from South Africa living in Canada and shes talking about this guy named von Mises, whoever that is.

Just as I was starting to get used to my new friends, I spotted a stranger in the corner. Sitting alone at his table, a man with a Mohawk and a metaphorical cigarettehanging from his mouth beckoned me to join him. He was wearing shades like the Matrixs Morpheus we were indoors. I could tell this man gave zero f^*#s!

He didnt introduce himself, but WNDs party organizer had provided name tags. I could see it peeking out from behind the lapel of his trench coat: Vox Day. He spoke in a more courteous tone than his appearance suggested. Hve a seat.

I feel like Ive joined a conversation that has been going for a good while already.

George W. Bush is a traitor to the American people and their Constitution. Bam! Like a punch in the nose from a left jab you just did not see coming. But John Kerry is a fraud, so he continued. Michelle Malkin is an ignoramus. I stared wide-eyed for what seemed like weeks. Just then a party attendant dropped off his drink, a bright blue drink in a high-fluted glass. It sported an umbrella.

I pressed him. Do you like anybody!?

Yeah. You know Joseph Schumpeter, right?

What?! Who?! Perplexed, then resigned, I had to admit: I had no idea what he was talking about. How could I have gotten this far in life and never have even encountered the ideas or concepts he was telling me about?

I managed to get caught up on the previous conversation that I had missed to that point. Every now and then I had to run out and look up a reference, but mostly I just took it all in.

Each week thereafter, like clockwork, we met at his table. Bright and early each Monday we sat there together and hashed out the latest geo-political event or, sometimes discussed a new topic I had not thought about before.

To look back through the compilation of Vox Days WND columns is to look into a time capsule. It is the freeze-frame photography of the evolution of a man and of a nation. As you read through the columns, you will be swept back to the thoughts and feelings you had at the time, only now they will be filtered through what you know, or what you think you know now: 9-11; arguments about freedom and privacy; war in multiple theaters; presidential elections. Sometimes youll feel validated. Often, youll realize that you just didnt get it then.

Youll also find a number of columns that will make you say, what the hell were we talking about then? Who cares? But these entries are just as significant as those addressing the topics that are still relevant. They remind us that its fairly easy to caught up in the ephemeral topics of the day those items and issues and problems which dont last and which wont really matter in the near future. Fast forward 15 years from today: can you believe anyone even gave ten seconds of their precious life discussing if President Trumps inauguration was as well-attended as President Obamas?

By then, the Great Wall of Trump will be erected, Kek willing, and we will be tired of all the winning.

In this second volume of collected columns, you can see clearly the evolution of a man. While still liberty-oriented, Vox Day no longer considers himself to be a small-l libertarian. You will find here several references to that now-abandoned libertarianism, and speaking of ephemeral things, even an endorsement of one Michael Badnarik.

You will also see the rumblings and percolations, of ideas that eventually came to the fore many years later. Vox Day began pointing out the demise of the EU long ago, observing how more than 80 percent of all the laws and regulations affecting the British people were emanating from Brussels, not the British Parliament. This was eleven years before Brexit! Vox was the first Christian I heard to say that our current civil and legal structures give young men no incentive to marry. It was this bluntness, uncloaked in Chistianese, that made me take note. And he was right. Youll recognize these columns as forerunners anticipating those who hand out red pills today.

There was one idea against which I held out longer than I should have. I was sure the Democrats and liberals were bad and that Republicans and conservatives were the good guys. But Vox was right again. He wrote about conservatives in 2005:

But nothing dissuades the Three Monkeys from screeching and howling their enthusiasm for their Dear Leaders every action. They have redefined conservatism to be the actions of one known as a conservative, so the individual is no longer defined by his ideology, the ideology is defined by the individual. September 2005

Of course, looking back now, it makes sense. At the time, I thought he was just trying to be edgy. I can see now that he was planting the seeds to one of my favorite Vox Day works, Cuckservative: How Conservatives Betrayed America, ten years prior.

Like talk radio was a gateway to WND, WND was a gateway to the world of Vox Day. Vox introduced me to The Irrational Atheist, the four horsemen of the Bukkakelypse, Sam Harris, free will, omniderigence, Steve Sailer, Austrian Economics, dialectic vs rhetoric, John C. Wright, #gamergate, Derb, TENS, Milo, the Alt-Right, Scalzi, and so much more.

Welcome to his mind.

Andrew Urban

Toledo, Ohio

By 2006, I had found my groove as an editorialist and blogger. Although the Universal Press Syndicate's attempt at nationally syndicating my column had failed, my WorldNetDaily column continued to grow in popularity, regularly ranking third in the weekly readership charts behind Ann Coulter and Patrick J. Buchanan. Other columns, including some written by popular media figures who are now considerably better known than I am, such as those by Michelle Malkin and Ben Shapiro, never saw traffic that came even reasonably close to mine at the time.

The moral of the story: television appearances tend to trump the written word.

Although my column was popular and I never lacked for ideas or subjects to write about, the period from 2006 to 2009 was a time of personal and professional turmoil for me. On the personal side, my father's long-running battle with the Internal Revenue Service, a battle which dated back to 1989 and a PCB-manufacturing facility in Ireland, finally came to a close with his arrest and subsequent conviction on five counts of tax evasion, one count of conspiring to impede an officer in violation of 18 U.S.C. 372, and one count of aiding and abetting the obstruction of justice. After a not-inconsiderable amount of legal drama, he was sentenced to 15 years and 2 months in U.S. federal prison; as of 2017 he is still serving out his sentence in a Texas prison.