Best Commentaries

Based Opinions with a Dash of Cinnamon 

I started my writing career as a magazine columnist. No, not political opinions. My columns were about computer technology. My first book, The Digital Organization, was also a nonfiction, computer technology book. Then I lost control of my senses and wrote Tempest at Dawn, a novelization of the Constitutional Convention. Big subject, big book. And big surprise. I loved storytelling. Been at it ever since, and I have now written eleven novels and several short stories.

Tempest at Dawn, my first novel, brought me some unexpected attention. I had a few scary national television appearances and some surprise endorsements. It also brought me invitations to write for Constituting America and What Would The Founders Think? Soon I was in the thick of political blogging. Along the way, I also wrote for RedState and The American Thinker. It should be obvious from names of these sites that I wrote from a conservative perspective, so, fair warning, Best Commentaries is a collection of conservative opinion pieces.

Here’s a sampling.

We often hear laments that our politicians no longer honor their pledge to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States. This is backward. The Constitution was not written for politicians. Our political leaders have no motivation to abide by a two hundred year old restraining order. Americans must enforce the supreme law of the land. The first outsized words of the Constitution read We the People. It’s our document. It was always meant to be ours, not the government’s. It is each and every American’s obligation to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States.

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Democrats are disappointed because past campaigns did not go the way they wanted. Occupy Wall Street did not incite class warfare, Black Lives Matter did not start a race war, and Antifa did not expose a vast cadre of neo-Nazis lurking in the background.

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If you lay every economist in the world end to end, you still won’t reach a conclusion. If you want to carry out bad economic policy, it’s not difficult to find a tenured professor to provide the rationalization. Roosevelt, Carter, Obama, and Biden have all applied disproven Keynesian principles … to the same result. Now, remind me, what was the definition of insanity again?

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Proponents of Big Government used different nomenclatures to describe their ideal system, but they all have one overriding characteristic—power centralized in government. Socialism, fascism, communism, feudalism, monarchies, dictatorships, theocracies, police states, a unitary state, oligarchies, et. al. concentrate power in the state. The underlying political theology is irrelevant. In each and every case, the individual is subject to control by the state. It doesn’t matter who orders you about. It could be a king, emperor, dictator, a party general secretary, or an elected machine politician. The result is the same. You do as you’re told.

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The United States of America is exceptional, but we are not exceptional because we are a different people. People are the same the world over. We are exceptional because of the uniqueness of our founding. The Declaration of Independence and United States Constitution were not events. They were processes that took many years to come to fruition. They both engaged an entire nation. They both were guided by clear principles. They both reflected timeless truths that inspired us to move ever closer to greatness.

You can order an e-book, paperback or hard cover at Amazon or order a print version from your local book store. 

If you like it, tell everyone. If you don't, mum's the word.

Can Novelist see the past better than historians?

I recently read Stephen Hunter’s, The Third Bullet, which is a novel about the John F. Kennedy assassination. Through the years, I have read a half dozen nonfiction books on the assassination. Although I didn’t completely accept the conspiracy motivation presented by Hunter, I think he made a better case for a second shooter than any of the other books on the subject. Hunter clearly sees the incongruities in the official portrayal of events, imagines alternative scenarios, and then figures out what most likely happened given the existing record. He does an exceptional job while presenting a standard Bob Lee Swagger suspense thriller.

The Third Bullet made me think: Do novelists see the past better than historians?

I’m prejudice, but I believe so. Historians search for facts, facts that can be verified with attributable sources. They need those tiny footnotes for credibility. Novelists naturally go to the character of people, especially if those people are orchestrating events. Novelists search for motivation. The novelist looks for the thread of a story, which will always be about people and what drives them. They focus on why, not what. Historians at times engage in conjecture, but good historians put plenty of qualifiers around anything that cannot be proven with hard evidence.

Everything that happens in the world is not documented. Worse, much of what is recorded is inaccurate. Politicians, businessmen, and luminaries dissemble, obfuscate, and sometimes outright lie. But if someone of importance spoke it or wrote it and it becomes old enough, it takes on the stature of a documented fact. This is where a good novelist has an advantage over the historian: what historians see as documentation, the novelist looks at with a skeptical eye. The novelist imagines the circumstances that might have caused that particular piece of evidence to be created. And the novelist does not always come to the same conclusion as the historian.

My book, Tempest at Dawn is a dramatization of the 1787 Constitutional Convention. Although George Washington was president of the convention, he only spoke one time at the very end. Since there is no record of Washington being engaged in the proceedings, most historians dismiss him as a figurehead. I looked at Washington’s character and knew he would never sit on the sidelines, especially when it looked like the entire nation was about to collapse. Once I came to that conclusion, I found ample evidence of him working behind the scenes. Why would he work secretly? My guess is that he didn’t want to appear to be architecting the new government he would undoubtedly lead. I could be wrong … but I don’t think so.

I believe a good novelist can digest facts, get to know the character of the players, and draw respectable conclusions about what probably happened. The novelist can make leaps of logic that would tarnish the reputation of an academic scholar. It’s true that many novelists throw facts to the wayside and tell the story the way they wanted it to happen. Stephen Hunter is not one of those types of authors. His books are fictional, but grounded in solid research.

Here’s the bottom line, authors can’t write novels about historical events without historians, but historians can get along quite fine without novelists. So, thank you to all the historians who have helped me write better books.

10 Films that Revolutionized Computer Graphics

I object when computer generated imagery overwhelm the story. Actually, I've objected when CGI is substituted for storytelling. About.com has listed what they believe are the 10 Films That Revolutionized Computer Graphics. I think it is a good list, but I would have added one of the superhero film.

Blade Runner

CGI is a great development in film when it is used to advance the story instead of as an end in itself. I think Jurassic Park is an excellent example of the blending of live action, CGI, and storytelling.

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I beg to disagree

Writer’s Digest is not my favorite source for writing advice. Actually, the magazine and companion website are not even on my radar. I have found Writer’s Digest articles arcane or commonplace. Sometimes they are downright wrong. Recently they published “5 Mistakes to Avoid When Writing a Fiction Series” by Rachel Randall, the managing editor for Writer’s Digest Books. Since I write a fiction series, I looked up this article. It pulled off the difficult task of simultaneously being arcane, commonplace, and wrong.

The “5 Mistakes” were commonplace, but the advice on how to avoid them was often arcane. Like everything in this magazine, it is writing by formula. It’s all about the mechanics. This may work for their readership, but not for me.

Calling the article wrong is probably an overstatement. The content is correct. The problem is omission. The “5 Mistakes” have nothing to do with why readers adopt a fiction series. Readers pick up the next installment of a fiction series because they want to learn what happened to the characters in the story. Readers must be invested in the characters. In fact, I believe characterization is the sole key to a fiction series.

Writers need to know their characters. Thoroughly. If a writer truly understands his or her characters, many of the “5 Mistakes” will be avoided automatically. Characters have a personality, a backstory, and a network of friends and acquaintances. They do not behave inconsistent with these characteristics. Like real people, fictional characters don’t change willy-nilly—they constantly change and/or grow, but the reader must witness this challenging process. (Breaking Bad is a good example.)

The “5 Mistakes” article misses the greatest mistake in fiction series—poor character development. A great deal of series fiction puts too much emphasis on technological wizardry, relentless quests, or slow revelation of a mystery. These authors forget to populate their plots with characters that readers care about. And in the end, that is what matters most.

http://amzn.to/29oDRbQ

Honest westerns filled with dishonest characters.