Hello Mr Kratman

As can be seen on a quick gaze through this site, I have all the readership of a paving slab. Under six feet of snow. So it was with a little surprise that I found that two of my posts had actually garnered comments (you can see them here and here). So after doing my reflexive duck and hide response, I (eventually) took a look.

To my utter surprise the commentator was the last person I'd ever expected: Mr Tom Kratman. That mostly explains my immediate hide response. Both posts didn't exactly agree with him and he kind of noticed. But still, I did write those posts with the intention of being read.

So, without further ado:

Welcome to the site Mr Kratman.

You'll probably want to read my review of your books here (you probably won't like it)

You'll also want to read my opinion of Watch on the Rhine (you also won't like it)

You might want to read my opinion of Baen's decision to publish Taxpayer's Teaparty (you definitely won't like it)

Also it seems I should respond to your comments (it's been almost three months since you posted them after all) so here's my response.

Firstly your comments on my Tuloriad piece:

I don't really want to waste much time on this but, sorry, Tim, no, that's not the argument. The argument - stripped - of all sneers and dicta - is simply this: unreasoning faith is power. Period. Only a fool could believe otherwise.

Consider, using nothing but unreasoning faith, some cloth,, cheapie detonators, and a little high explosive, a minority group poor in everything but unreasoning faith first stymied the greatest military power not merely in the world but in the history of the world, then nearly drove it out of Iraq. Or do you imagine suicide bombers operate of off objective, real world, measurable, physical self-interest?

Just about everything you've claimed about the above afterword is wrong (I am tempted to add something about moats and beams, but why bother?), but I don't care about that as long as you get it through your head that faith is power and that to believe otherwise is at least as credulous as someone's hope and expectation of 72 self-rehymenating virgins.

By the way, many thanks for helping me scar some people. Yes, I'm still struggling with the whole Christianity thing. Even so, I appreciate it when someone helps me along with my purpose.

best,

Tom

Actually, the interesting thing here is, I have no problem with your central argument. I agree that faith is power. What I disagree with is your method, because it is terrible. Your central argument that the Battle of Lepanto is an example of faith in action isn't hugely credible. A cursory glance at the record simply doesn't support your conclusion. You then proceed to spend half your time bashing atheists, which by the basics of your argument are already irrelevant, as they lack any faith. There seems to be no real reason to this beyond what seems to be your own personal animus against those you disagree with.

The problem here is you have a fixation on religious faith as a powerful force multiplier. What I really think you're looking for is 'faith in one's convictions'. Take for example your favourite people, Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens. Do you really think that they speak so frequently and forthrightly about the benefits of atheism because logic demands it? No. They have faith in their convictions and find themselves driven to speak on it. Is that really so different from the courage shown by the religious who have stood up and fought for what they believe in? One of the things I've always found admirable about America is its conviction that to be American is to be held to a higher standard of morality and law, to accept that freedom requires sacrifices and pain, that the better path is often the harder one. Is that not, in its own way, faith?

I'd be more forgiving of this particular afterword if it simply wasn't so poorly put together. Both the comments about Lepanto and Brights don't stand up to even the most cursory research (in particular your comments about Brights display a stunning lack of comprehension). Far too much of the work is taken up with petty, poorly thought out attacks on people who don't agree with you. Rather than an essay meant to change people's opinions, this instead comes off as an incitement against a group you don't agree with. As I said, I agree with your argument, but not with your approach, because it simply doesn't work.

Now for your comments on my piece on Transnational Progressivism:

Well...personally I prefer Kosmos, for Cosmopolitan Progressivism, but that's just me. "Tranzi" will do.

You're not the first one to note that Tranzis never call themselves Tranzis. I'm not sure what they gets you or them, though. Nazis didn't call themselves M3s, for mass-murdering monsters, yet they still were; the term would be apt, whoever used it.

It's not actually a conspiracy theory, or at least, to me, it isn't. In my not inconsiderable experience of people, even very capable people, they're just not competent to conspire at that level. Of course, a larger consensus doesn't rule out the existence of smaller conspiracies, here and there, to support it. But its existence doesn't depend on them, either. The whole gamut of things we call "Victorian" was just a consensus, well-placed people with similar (enough) backgrounds, seeing similar problems, coming to similar conclusions and solutions, and (generally independently) moving things as best they were able to effect those solutions. Tranzism operates like that.

As for the rich (and we may as well include the other players), old Euro royalty, the entertainment industry, media, academia, etc., having little to do with those at the bleeding edge of the class struggle, I think you're forgetting about hypocrisy and dishonestly, and writing the existence of useful idiots out of the equation.

In any case, have fun writing your review. Hell, it will probably sell a few more of my books, as such things tend to, no matter what the reviews say. If you get anything factually wrong, I may come by and tell you. Otherwise, have at it.

best,

Tom Kratman

I think I should start by saying I respectfully disagree with you here. Firstly your point about names is off. My point was that any movement reminiscent of Tranzi-dom doesn't really seem to exist. The evidence cited for their existence by yourself (in your afterword for Yellow Eyes) and by John Fonte doesn't convince me that there really is such a movement. To be honest much of what you cite is the simple desire to make the world a better place, rather than some grand scheme for world domination. Whether that desire is misguided or not is, of course, a different matter.

Your second point misses the original point by a mile. Basically, I think of Transnational Progressivism as a conspiracy theory. As I've already pointed out, I don't particularly think Tranzi-dom exists, but it is, to be blunt, a conspiracy. While your argument as to its memetic nature, rather than a specific organization, make it clear that you don't view it as a classical, organised conspiracy, it's very clear that Transnational Progressivism is most defined by its conspiratorial nature. It is after all, an effort to do one thing(gain global power), under the disguise of doing something else(maximise minority power). Isn't that pretty much the definition of a conspiracy? Merely because there isn't a group of guys meeting in a dark room somewhere directing the efforts of the ignorant masses, doesn't make the overall tone of the predictions extremely conspiratorial.

It took me a little while to work out exactly what your third point was, based as it was on a single sentence tucked somewhere in my argument. My point was that the idea that people of power can't do anything out of the goodness of their hearts is a little ridiculous. David Carr's full statement statement, which inspired the comment, is frankly ludicrous. Basically, he seems convinced that the because the left-wing contains people of power and influence, it can't still be involved in Marxist class struggle. This actually falls over at two points. Firstly, to continue to classify the entirety of left-wing politics as 'Marxist Class Struggle' is to betray a massive ignorance about the realities of said politics. A short example would have to be environmentalism, which unfortunately seems to be a predominantly left-wing area. There's no way someone can claim that concern for the environment is classist. Secondly, the attitude that no-one of power and influence cares about those with a worse lot in life says more about the author than it does about the people he talks about. I'm well aware of hypocrisy and dishonesty, but they're far more believable than some attempt to buy popular support for a bid at global dominion.

As a final note, I have written that review of your books, linked above. If anyone did consider buying one of your books based on my review, I'd have to conclude that it can only be out of a sense of morbid curiosity.

I'm sure you're probably tempted to respond by now, so I'll just leave you with a thought from someone a lot smarter than me.

I don't mind continuing this discussion, but then again, I've always thought windmills make great targets.

Best

Timothy Maguire

Tom Kratman: Possibly the Worst Sci-Fi Author I've Ever Seen?

You can tell a lot from the prologue and epilogue of a book. They frame the novel and give the reader perspective. The prologue sets the scene, gives you the perspective necessary to follow the story. The epilogue tells you that the story isn't over, that while this particular part of the journey is over, the next step is already beginning. Together, the beginning and end of a novel are the story in microcosm.

So, with that in mind, let's start this essay of with a visit to Tom Kratman's first novel: A State of Disobedience and, more specific, its prologue. It's an extract from a historical retrospective from 2097, reflecting back upon the events leading up to the novel's story. I'll let it speak for itself:

Yet, despite this mutual interest in maintaining the balance of power, the rewards of attaining control were simply too great to be forgone. For the Democrats, control—could it but be achieved—would make the revolution begun in the 1930s complete. Control of the economy, control of education, control of the environment (difficult to understand now, with the then-common predictions of ecological disaster proven wrong, but a powerful concern at the time); could all three branches be made to fall to the Democracy, however briefly in theory, the Democrats could so arrange matters that no one and nothing could ever remove them from power, or alter their vision of America's proper and just future.

For the Republicans, however, the Democratic dream was a nightmare: thought control through linguistic control, micromanagement of the economy by those least suited to economic power, social engineering under the aegis of the most doctrinaire of the social engineers, disarmament of the population and the creation of a police state to rival that of Stalin or Hitler, at least in its scope if not by design in its evil.

So, in summary, Kratman's first novel opens with the assertion that Democrats want to turn America into a totalitarian, socialist state and Republicans are fighting a rear-guard action to protect the people from this horror. Never let it be said that Mr Kratman isn't direct when he wants to be. This is the perfect summary of everything that is wrong with his books: a constant theme of dark conspiracy at the heart of all things liberal.

Colonel Tom Kratman has been writing military science fiction for Baen Books (link to his page on their website) since late 2003 (the above State of Disobedience). He currently has eight books to his name: A State of Disobedience, Caliphate, his Legion El Cid series (A Desert Called Peace, Carnifex and The Lotus Eaters) and his collaboration with John Ringo in the latter's Legacy of Aldenata series (Watch on the Rhine, Yellow Eyes and The Tuloriad).

First of all, Kratman doesn't really seem to care for actually writing Science Fiction. Most of his novels can best be described as a kind of forward evolution of history. Despite most of them being set in the future, there is a distinct lack of social and technical evolution. If anything, his worlds are regressed, both scientifically and socially.

His major series, the Legion El Cid series, is the worst offender. Set primarily on the planet Terra Nova, it may have to be the least imaginative colony world ever written. According to the background, the colony vessels were split down religious and ethnic lines, thus creating early settlements based upon the Earth's original countries. In truly ridiculous fashion, this means that Terra Nova is a pseudo-Earth, with nations in the identical pattern to Earth. There's a pseudo-US with a pseudo-Mexico on its border, an Islam dominated pseudo-Afghanistan and a pseudo-Iraq. There's a pseudo-EU dominated by the pseudo-France. In Carnifex, there's even a pseudo-Somalia with pirates attacking the shipping passing through the pseudo-Suez Canel. Quite simply, Nova Terra is the least imaginative sci-fi world I've seen. It's got the same political layout as Earth, is at about the same technology level as Earth and it has the same events going on (The War on Terror). The sole part of this world that's vaguely original is its biology, which is primarily made up of animals taken from Earth's prehistory, but that's barely involved in the storyline, aside from being used to make some weak political points.

There are other examples. In Kratman's afterword to Watch On The Rhine, he makes it clear he isn't much interested in the alien technology which dominates the prior Aldenata novels written by Ringo. Yellow Eyes has much the same themes, with the only piece of alien technology to feature heavily in the novel being a rogue AI which is treated more like magic than actual science (in one of its first scenes it melds with the memories of the WW2 ship it is being connected to). The power armour that forms such a central core to Ringo's novels is relegated to the finale of Yellow Eyes.

The most definable element of Kratman's novels is his political opinion. In all of his books, he maintains a constant right-wing slant. Actually, it's probably more accurate to say an extremely right-wing slant. Let's take a few examples. Firstly, State of Disorbedience. Kratman's first novel is about the attempt of a Democrat President to turn the US into a dictatorship. That's nothing major, there's been thousand books of various quality with similar themes. What makes State of Disorder stand out from the pack is its sheer conspiratorial nature. It isn't the President who is trying to take over the country, but the entire Democratic Party, which is acting through the President to take power. It's a measure of Kratman that this is perhaps the least conspiratorial of his novels. Caliphate, for example, features a world where unchecked Muslim immigration and childbirth has produced a Europe where Islamic terrorists rule and Sharia law is paramount.

For the best display of Kratman's strange political beliefs in action, there's really only two things to look at: Watch on the Rhine and the Legion El Cid series. As I said in my review, Watch On The Rhine is a disturbing book, entirely thanks to Kratman's seriously off take on the Nazi's SS. While the original concept is sound (were the SS the monsters they are made out to be or were they honourable soldiers serving an evil regime?), Kratman quickly chucks it out and replaces it with liberal conspiracies to end life on earth and SS hagiography, marked by some profoundly uncomfortable parallels with historical events (the new-SS' involvement in arresting the conspirators is uncomfortably reminiscent of the SS' involvement in the Nazi takeover of Germany). Almost as bad is his Legion El Cid series. Best described as Kratman's view of how he would have fought the War On Terror, the series is dominated by Kratman's favourite conspiracy theory: Transnational Progressivism (which I commented on before). In a nut-shell, Kratman believes that there is a drive inside international liberalism to create a one-world government where a new caste system will be introduced, effectively reducing the world to something comparable to the Party/ non-Party society of twentieth century communism. I'll comment more on Transnational Progressivism later, but it's sufficient for now to say that the theory is seriously off mainstream discourse. It doesn't come as much surprise as you read the books to find the entire left-wing engaged in plotting to betray their own soldiers (the capper has to be the world's media offering material support to pseudo-Al Qaeda).

To be honest, much of Kratman's novels would be significantly improved by something he seems constitutionally incapable of doing: make his villains two-dimensional. Far too many of his books feature central villains far more in keeping with capering panto villains and action movie baddies than actual human beings. President Wilhelmina Rottomeyer from State of Disobedience is probably the best example to start with. In the very first chapter, she's revealed to be a narcissistic, megalomaniac, closet lesbian who derives sexual pleasure from her supporter's cheering. She gets worse. It's quickly revealed she had her running mate assassinated to get more votes and that her FBI head is actively using the organisation to blackmail and control Congress. At one point in Carnifex, he introduces the psuedo-US Secretary of Defence as he's reminiscing about his windsurfing in his campaign adverts (as did Senator John Kerry in the 2004 election) and having him walk in on the psuedo-US President as he's getting a blowjob from an intern (As President Clinton is famous for). It tells you everything you need to know that the psuedo-SecDef is barely phased by this and immediately goes into the business of the day, which is, unsurprisingly, deliberately screwing over the country. You have to admire this scene for its sheer chutzpah if nothing else. Kratman successful hits every dog-whistle about the Democrats in one go: elitist, unfaithful, stupid and determined to destroy their own country.

Disturbingly, his sympathies are often profoundly off. Reading his Legacy of Aldenata books, it's immediately apparent that he has more sympathy for the alien Posleen than he does for the liberal characters. To be clear, these are the aliens who have marched half-way across the galaxy, destroyed hundreds of worlds and devoured trillions of sentient beings. These are the aliens that have almost depopulated the Earth by the end of the story. Yet reading Yellow Eyes and Watch On The Rhine, you can't help but feel that Kratman thinks more of them than he does of his strawman liberals. The entirety of The Tuloriad revolves around the rehabilitation of the Posleen which culminates in their adoption of Catholicism.

The problem extends to the villains' supporters. They're constantly cast as ignorant or brainwashed, existing in a kind of terminally ridiculous world were wishful thinking and blind service replace rational thought. It's just as laughably one-dimensional as his villains. Take Watch on The Rhine for example. The start of the book features several groups of anti-war protestors, seeking peace instead of war with the Posleen. This is of course despite the fact that the Posleen are the alien race that has been invading and destroying every world they touch for several centuries, that they've already invaded the US, destroyed several cities there and have been documented earlier in the novel to be eating human CHILDREN. So yeah. Observation and IQ aren't exactly a 'liberal' tendency, according to Kratman.

In the Legion El Cid novels, the evils of United Earth are clear. It's a decaying socialist aristocracy with a collapsing skillset and a total lack of morality (Sex is the easiest thing to get in the society and The Lotus Eaters reveals that one of the UE's churches is involved in ritual human sacrifice). Most gallingly, fifty-odd years in the pseudo-US' past, the UE nuked several of their cities during the course of pseudo-WW2. Despite this, the left-wing of the pseudo-US are still determined to become like them. It's as if the entire British Labour Party was determined to become like the Soviet Union, despite everything they know about it. His attitude is frankly both insulting and ridiculous, spectacularly puncturing the reader's suspension of disbelief with its sheer idiocy.

I'd probably be willing to cut Kratman a lot more slack if it weren't for the afterwords to his novels. With the exception of State Of Disobedience, all of Kratman's books include a short Op-Ed written by the author where he delves into the genesis of the book and why he feels it relates to the real world. You can find them here: Watch On The Rhine, Yellow Eyes, The Tuloriad, Caliphate, A Desert Called Peace, Carnifex (The Lotus Eaters wasn't release at the time of writing). For the curious, you can read my review of The Tuloriad's afterword here. I find there's just two problems with these little editorials: firstly, there's something profoundly noisome about the conclusions he draws and, secondly, he thinks that the stories he spin have some relevance to the real world.

Let's take the first point first shall we? Kratman can't help but display his profoundly weird and strange views on life and politics. Take, for example, the afterword to Carnifex. In a nutshell, Kratman takes cosmopolitanism, adds a few famous displays of corruption and assume it means that cosmopolitanism is will always produce disaster. It's also a call for nationalism and suspiscion. This kind of attitude is prevalent in all his afterwords. The afterword to A Desert Called Peace, begins by basically calling all liberals insane and then tries to justify it. The afterword basically states that secularism weakens a nation while Christian faith makes it stronger. The inescapable conclusion to this particular nugget is that to be a good soldier is to be Christian. I'm sure there's a few priests out there that would object to such a conclusion.

Most memorable is his constant harping about Transnational Progressivism. It's most prevalent in the afterwords to Yellow Eyes and A Desert Called Peace. Amusingly, after doing some research, I found myself coming to one conclusion: Kratman fundamentally doesn't understand what he's actually talking about. Take a look here. That's an essay I wrote about Transnational Progressivism last month. In a nutshell, it's a concept proposed by John Fonte, that views the behaviour of certain transnational organizations as a prelude for a replacement of democracy with a group-based decision making system. Despite Fonte's evidence being derived from behaviour from the early Noughties, Kratman has somehow managed to interpret this into a global conspiracy from the early years of the Soviet Union. Furthermore, he somehow substitutes Fonte's group-based decision system with a new aristocracy. He's basically taken a fairly unknown political theory and reworked it into a huge conspiracy where the left-wing parties of the world are united in a drive to turn the world into a totalitarian state only nominally socialist.

Anyway, back to the second point. The entire point of Kratman's writing is to present his political positions as the right solution to the world's problems and his afterwords make this very clear. The problem is, if he wants this to work, it needs to be part of the novel, not in an op-ed at the end of the novel. Reading them, you suspect Kratman doesn't really think that his audience can draw the conclusions he wants them to have. Still there's something objectionable about doing this. Books which are a form of advocacy are common (Animal Farm and 1984 are probably the best known examples), but they're often far more subtle than this. With the addition of his afterwords, he's effectively beating his readers over the head with his beliefs. There are also moments when this approach is best described as laughable. This is most noticeable in his novels with John Ringo: Yellow Eyes, Watch On The Rhine and The Tuloriad. Despite all three of these novels beign set either during an invasion, or the aftermath thereof, of the Earth by alien that think humans make a decent meal, Kratman's afterwords suggest that the behaviour within is the best solution to modern day problems. In particular, using the afterword to Yellow Eyes to advocate for the complete revocation of all laws of war baring the 'traditional law of war'. Yes, he takes an alien invasion and uses it to advocate for more barbarous strategies in the here and now.

This leads neatly into the central issue with Kratman's writing: his stories are profoundly unpleasant. They're a mixture of barbaric behaviour mixed with unpleasant displays of weird advocacy. Legion El Cid is perhaps the best example. A Desert Called Peace begins with the main character's wife dying in pseudo-9/11, him then taking revenge by killing a group of ridiculous Muslim caricatures before founding a mercenary army with his wife's money. To ensure he retains the money, he sends some of his allies of to murder his brother in law (who, being gay, is found in the toilets of a gay bar, dishing out free blowjobs). Finally, once he gets into the action (in both pseudo-Afghanistan and psuedo-Iraq) he prosecutes battle in the most brutal manner going. This comes to a head in the battle for pseudo-Fallujah, where, rather than engaging in street-fighting, he instead starves the city into submission and executes every male able to grow a beard. Carnifex is just as bad. Practically the first scene involves the hero's intelligence arm torturing a terrorist leader until he makes a propaganda video for them. The book culminates with another intelligence coup: the nuking of the capital city of the terrorists' main supporters, by the hero. Yes, he kills over a million civilians to make the terrorists look bad. That's grotesque.

No mention of Legion El Cid would be complete without a little more focus on the pseudo-9/11 scene near the start of A Desert Called Peace. Firstly, it's a gut punch of a scene, for all the wrong reasons. The book was first published late 2007 and to be frank it's still too soon. There's something horrible about the re-use of such a raw wound as the start of the series, where almost any other similar act of terror would have done just as well. Making this scene even worse is the ridiculously noble behaviour of the characters involved. The hero's wife, children and father-in-law are all caught near the top of one of the towers with no chance of escape. While the wife proceeds to lead her children in prayer, her father picks up the phone and calls his attorney to put the hero in his will. There's no effort to contact the rest of his children and tell them he loves them, or anything else more important. Instead he has an abrupt epiphany about his previously-disliked son-in-law and proceeds to turn over his entire fortune to him. While facing inevitable death.

There are other elements to his books that make me worry. Firstly, there seems to be a profoundly anti-democratic side to his stories. Whenever a government isn't able to handle the threat in his stories, it is swept away and replaced. A State of Disobedience revolves around multiple American states semi-seceding from the Union until the evil president is assassinating. Yellow Eyes has the corrupt Panamanian government being replaced with an American dictator. The Legion El Cid series contains the most worrying example, with the hero's forces co-opting and effectively absorbing the pseudo-Mexican government until he practically controls the country through the close allies he has in every branch of government (most notably, their version of the Senate is solely open to ex-members of his mercenary force). This tendency towards the replacement of democratic governance when the heroes disagree with it is uncomfortable.

In addition, there's something worrying about Kratman's use of love in his books. With the exception of State of Disobedience, loving someone in his novels seems to be a death sentence. Legion El Cid begins with the death of the hero's wife and children, with the story being driven forwards by his desire for revenge. In both Yellow Eyes and Watch On The Rhine, characters fall in love only for one of the couple to be killed during the course of the novel. I'm not saying that every romance should have a happy ending, but Kratman seems to treat love and loss as cheap sources of motivation for his characters. This would perhaps be more convincing if they did not have more scenes thinking about their loved ones than they do in the same room as them, before their deaths.

Tom Kratman likes to say he writes social commentary with a faint covering of science-fiction. In reality, he explores extremely right-wing conspiracy theories beneath a thin veneer of low-quality science fiction. If he wanted to write social commentary, he'd have to start by including actually sympathetic left-wing characters, instead of going for caricatures that are either actively evil or stupid. Worse, the prejudices he's incapable of hiding actually cheapen his arguments as there's no way you can ever see him as a dispassionate oracle. Instead, in both his stories and afterwords, he comes of as a rabid fearmonger, a crazy crank belonging more on the depths of the internet than the bookshelf.

The Tuloriad Afterword: Not Exactly Scholarly

As I said in my last post, I'm planning a little rant about Tom Kratman's collection of work. While researching it, I found another of his afterwords online, this time from his most recent collaboration with John Ringo, 'The Tuloriad' (Read it here). Like all of his afterwords, Kratman attempts to extend the elements of his novels into the real world, with various degrees of believability.

Any way, the afterword 'Where Was Secular Humanism at Lepanto?' is Kratman's attempt to, I think, make the argument that religion (specifically Christianity) is better for the world than atheism or secular humanism. After reading through it, I couldn't help beginning to pick it apart. With a few minutes' research, I was quickly poking holes in it.

So for fun, I thought I'd take you through it and just note where reality and Kratman diverge. Prepare for a dive into the mind of Tom Kratman (I'm sorry for the scars you're about to collect). Kratman is in italics, I'm in normal.

Where Was Secular Humanism at Lepanto?

The moral of this story, this afterword, is "Never bring a knife to a gunfight." Keep that in mind as you read.

In any case, religious fanatics? Us? We don't think so.

We're not going to sit here and lecture you on the value and validity of atheism versus faith. We'll leave that to Hitchens and Dawkins or D'Souza or the Pope or anyone else who cares to make the leap. One way or the other. Hearty shrugs, all around. A defense of the existence of God was never the purpose of the book, anyway, though we would be unsurprised to see any number of claims, after publication, that it is such a defense.

Um, no. This entire essay is supposed prove that faith is better than atheism. Later on, he'll go on to mock an atheist's arguments against God. So yeah, he opens with a lie.

Sorry, it ain't, either in defense of Revelations or in defense of Hitchen's revelation that there was no God when Hitchens was nine years old. (Besides, Dinesh D'Souza does a much better job of thrashing Hitchens in public than we could, even if we cared to.)

Moreover, nope, we don't think it's unethical to be an atheist. We don't think it's impossible, or really any more difficult or unlikely, to be an atheist and still be a highly ethical human being.

Let's just take a moment to mention Dinesh D'Souza. Who is he? Well he's a conservative intellectual famed for believing it's Roosevelt's fault for the Soviet Union taking over Eastern Europe and thus it's his fault that the Taliban took over Afghanistan. He also believes that church-state separation is an effort to make all religious people second-class citizens.

The same, sadly, cannot be said for governments. Thus, consider, say, the retail horrors of the Spanish Inquisition which, from 1481 to 1834 killed—shudder—not more than five thousand people, few or none of them atheists, and possibly closer to two thousand. Compare that to expressly atheistic regimes—the Soviet Union, for example, in which a thousand people a day, twenty-five hundred a day by Robert Conquest's tally—were put to death in 1937 and 38. And that's not even counting starved Ukrainians by the millions. The death toll in Maoist China is said to have been much, much greater. Twenty million? Thirty million? A hundred million? Who knows?

Hmm. So let me get this straight. The activities of a non-governmental organisation, using 15-18th century technology, with official blessing, but not much support, is a comparable example to mass-murder with full state support and 20th century tech? Hmm, yes, of course the Spanish Inquisition is completely comparable to Mao and Stalin.

Personally, we'd take our chances with the Inquisition before we would take them with a militantly communist, which is to say, atheist regime. The Inquisition, after all, was a complete stranger neither to humanity nor to the concept of mercy.

Umm, what? Firstly, the second sentence is a weirdly pointless double negative. It'd be simpler to say 'The Inquistion, after all, wasn't a complete stranger to humanity or the concept of mercy'. Also, I'm not much taken by the conflation of communism and atheism here. Sure, communist states have always been atheistic (elevating the state over all others), but Kratman makes the mistake of conflating cause and effect here. Basically, communisms aren't atheistic because of an ideology, but because loyalty to God is an added loyalty that distracts their citizens from their work for the state. To ascribe the sins of communisms to atheism is to ignore all of the other reasons for those crimes.

Now we're onto the main thrust of the arguement: the Battle of Lepanto.

But that's still not the point of this book or this afterword. Go back to the afterword's title. Ever heard of Lepanto? Everyone knows about the Three Hundred Spartans now, at least in some form or another, from the movies. Not enough people know about the battle of Lepanto.

Lepanto (7 October, 1571, 17 October, by our calendar), near the mouth of the Gulf of Corinth and the site of several battles from Naupactus on, was a naval battle, the last really great battle of oar-powered ships, between the fleet of the Moslem Ottoman Empire and the combined, individually much inferior, fleets of the Papacy, Christian Venice, Spain, plus tiny contingents from various places like Malta and Genoa. The combined Christian fleet was outnumbered, both in terms of ships and in terms of soldiers—"Marines," we would say today—who made those ships effective. Yes, they had half a dozen "super-weapons" in the form of what were called "galleasses"—bigger galleys (but much slower, they had to be towed into line by others, and one third of those could not even be towed into position), mounting more and larger guns, and carrying more Marines—but still the odds lay fairly heavily with the Ottomans.

Those odds ran about two hundred and eighty-six warships, some of them smaller (Turk), to two hundred and twelve (Christian), six of them larger. In soldiery the odds were similar. The Christians had a better than two to one advantage in artillery, yet this means less than we would think today, since the bulk of artillery on a galley was intended to be fired once, generally without careful aim, and then promptly forgotten as the ship-borne infantry took over the fight.

Worse for the Christians, the Ottomans had a much greater degree of unity of command. Indeed, for most of the larger individual sections of the Christian fleet, there were long-term, serious advantages to letting the other sections be crushed. It wasn't, after all, as if Spain and Venice were great friends.

Nor were the stakes notably small. The last jewel of the Byzantine Empire, its capital, Constantinople, had fallen the century prior (after, be it noted, having been badly weakened by being sacked by "Christians" two and a half centuries before that). Since then, the Ottomans had exploded across the known world. The Levant was theirs, as were Egypt and Mesopotamia, along with most of North Africa. The Balkans, too, had fallen to the crescent. Thousands in Italy had been killed or enslaved by Ottoman sea raiders. An almanac of Venice, for the year 1545, showed half a dozen Ottoman galleys, raiders, close offshore.

Times looked bleak, indeed, for Western Christendom. And yet, when the smoke cleared, the Ottoman fleet, despite exemplary bravery on the part of the men, was crushed, never really fully to recover. Christian losses in men had been severe, yet were only about equal to the number of Christian slaves liberated from Ottoman galleys.

It was a victory even an atheist might be inclined to call miraculous, with the Ottomans losing about fifteen ships for each Christian loss; over one hundred and eighty Moslem galleys to twelve.

I'm going to start this with a little note: this is the first moment of this afterword I'm going to ascribe to poor research. Either that or some very deliberate interpretations in one direction. Let's take a look at the battle's Wiki page. Let's start with being out-numbered. The Holy League fleet actually had 284 ships (202 Galleys, 6 heavier Gallease and 76 'other', presumably privateers, armed merchantmen and the like), while the Ottomans had 287 ships (208 Galleys, 46 galliots, a smaller class of galley, and 23 fuste, an even smaller class of galley). So the Ottomans had a 3 ship advantage, just a 1% size advantage, with most of their 'larger' fleet being smaller ships. The Holy League had approximately 41,000 soldiers and sailors, while the Ottoman fleet had 47,000 soldiers and sailors (a 15% advantage). In addition, while much of the Holy League soldiers were of high quality, the Ottoman had few of their Finally, the Holy League had approximately 1815 guns on their ships in total, while the Ottoman fleet had approximately 750, which is slightly over a third of their opponent's.

So it's not like the odds were as bad as Kratman makes out. Even worse, reading the account of the battle sinks his opinion of the Gallease (the 'super-galley'). Almost the first thing that happens is that the Ottoman fleet takes two of the Gallease for merchant ships and attacks. The ensuing skirmish ends with 30 sunk Ottoman galleys. That's the Ottoman numerical advantage gone, along with approximately 5,000 men (almost 11% of the fleet's total military complement).

This isn't to say that the battle wasn't a considerable victory for the Holy League. The casualty count reflects a titanic disaster for the Ottoman fleet, that isn't in dispute, but I have a lot of reservations attributing the success solely to divine intervention and not a mix of superior technology and training.

Now let's suppose, just for the moment and just arguendo, that God doesn't exist, that He's a pure figment of the imagination. What then won the battle of Lepanto? No, back off. What got the Christian fleet together even to fight the battle, for without getting together to fight it it could never have been won?

First question? Umm, superior weapons and training? Second question? Pure self-interest? I'm not saying that the main reason the Holy League came together is that they were Christian and the Ottoman Empire was Muslim, but there's no mention of simple self-interest or the Christian nations' desire to control Mediterranean trade.

The answer is, of course, faith, the faith of the Pope, Pius V, who did the political maneuvering and much of the financing, and also the faith of the kings, doges, nobles and perhaps especially the common folk who manned the fleet. And that answer does not depend on the validity of faith, only upon its sincere existence. Faith is, in short, a weapon, the gun you bring to a certain kind of gunfight.

So of course, it follows that the Ottoman Empire didn't bring any faith to Lepanto. Am I allowed to laugh now? Kratman's got a massive Islamaphobic streak to his writing (baring State of Disobedience, every single one of his solo novels has involved villainous Islam as the central enemy), so it's not a surprise that he makes no reference to the strength of faith inherent in the Ottoman fleet. Evidently, to Kratman, sincere faith in Allah does not help in a fight.

They've taken to calling themselves "brights," of late, those who disparage and attack faith. At least, some of them have. One can't help but note the prior but parallel usurpation of the word "gay" by homosexuals. And, just as gays do not appear notably happier than anyone else, one may well doubt whether "brights" are any smarter . . . or even as smart.

Perhaps sensing that he's flogged his first dead horse a little too much, Kratman switches to a head-snapping alternate argument. It only takes him three sentences to spectacularly hash it up, which may have to be a new record in this sort of thing.

This is research fail number two: Brights. As anyone who spends the time to stick 'brights' into Google then look at the Wikipedia entry (here) will tell you, he's very wrong. 'Brights' was originally coined by the movement's founder (Paul Geisert) to be a positive umbrella phrase for anyone who considered themselves 'godless'. The idea was inspired by the homosexual co-option of the word 'gay', which has helped give them a positive sound. In other words, Kratman's belief that 'Brights' think themselves better than the religious based on their own self-coined name is simply wrong.

To make things worse, guess what the Bright term is for the religious? Super, as in someone who believes in the supernatural. I'm pretty sure no one outside of a comic has ever used 'super' as a perjorative.

Example: The religious impulse is as near to universal a human phenomenon as one might imagine. Not that every human being has it, of course, but it has been present, and almost invariably prevalent, in every human society which did not actively suppress it (and some that did).

Yep, well done, religion has been around as long as humanity. I'd have loved to seen some mention of the 'God gene' in here, but I doubt Kratman accepts its existence.

Now imagine you're a human being of broadly liberal sentiment, much opposed to religion and also much opposed to the oppression of women and gays, equally much against sexual repression, which, by you, and not without some reason on your part, religion is generally held responsible for. You are, in other words, a "bright." Let's say, moreover, that you're a European "bright."

Kratman decides, once again, to ascribe his own image to a liberal group. Having had a quick glance at the Bright philosophy, it's quite clear that every member disagrees on their exact opinion on religion. Some are at best indifferent and others are clearly opposed solely to religion iself, not the existence of God.

What has been the effect of your, the collective "your," attacks on and disparagement of Christianity? Did you get rid of religion? Yes . . . ummm . . . well, no. You got rid of Christianity for the most part. And left a spiritual vacuum for Islam. So, in lieu of one religion, a religion, be it noted, that has become a fairly live and let live phenomenon, you've managed to set things up nicely for a religion which is by no means live and let live. You've arranged to replace a religion that hasn't really done much to oppress women and gays in, oh, a very long time, with one firmly dedicated to the oppression on the one and the extinction of the other.

Oh God, it's all my fault! Because I don't like religion, Good, Kind Christianity has been displaced by Evil, Intolerant Islam!

Sorry, Sarcasm-Mode Off. This may have to be the stupidest part of Kratman's argument yet. Kratman makes no reference to Christianity's own failings, like the huge hammering the Catholic Church has taken for its hypocrisy over child-abuse or the loss of relevance to most in the West. Of course, he then sprays his Islamaphobia all over the place.

Finally, I'm going to have to stop here and go: Christianity 'hasn't really done much to oppress women and gays in, oh, a very long time'? Then what the FUCK was the Mormon church doing funding Prop 8? What the hell is with the huge church opposition to abortions? Why the hell do so many American churches bar homosexuality and treat it as though it was a disease? Even if it's not as bad as Islam in many places, oppression is still oppression.

And you'll insist on calling this "bright," wont you? Because it so cleverly advances your long term goals, right?

No, not really. Firstly because Kratman's got this so wrong that this actually makes no sense.

Christopher Hitchens even subtitled his recent book on the subject, "How Religion Poisons Everything." Odd, isn't it, that the subtitle fails to note that with poison toxicity is in the dose? Or that some doses are worse than others. Or that, given that near universal religious impulse, to get rid of the non-poisonous dose sets things up for a poisonous one? Yet this is "bright."

Hmm. 'How Religion Weakens A Few Things and Kills Some Others'. Yeah, that sounds catchy. Gods, has this man ever heard of the word metaphor? Not very 'super', Mr Kratman.

If you look up 'poison' in a dictionary, you'll find that it doesn't just mean 'to give someone a substance in hope of killing them'. It can also mean 'to ruin, vitate or corrupt' or 'something harmful or pernicious'. Which is what Hitchens was obviously looking for.

Oh, and by the way, Mr Hitchens doesn't actually like the label 'bright'. Just an FYI.

Ahem.

Did religion poison those Christian sailors, rowers, and Marines at Lepanto? No; it was not poison to them, but the elixir of strength that gathered them and enabled them to prevail against a religion that was poisonous to them and their way of life. And isn't that odd, too? That such a bright man as Hitchens should claim religion poisons "everything," when the plain historical record, just limiting ourselves for the moment to Lepanto—something a bright man ought to know about—shows that this is not the case?

As it's pretty clear that because Kratman hasn't bothered to actually read Mr Hitchen's book, his criticisms aren't really valid. Worse though, he seems to conflate the words 'religion' and 'faith'. Brights have issue with religion, not personal faith. Yes, many brights disagree with religion and the concept of faith, but many also have faith in their own personal convictions.

This is the real problem with the whole essay. Kratman is basically saying 'faith makes warriors stronger', but his every example is Christian and his opposition is atheism. There's no other samples of faith, just Christianity or none at all. There's no examples of faith in other people (ie 'The General is coming and we need to hold out') or ideals ('my belief in X gives me strength'), just Christianity. There's no examples of other religions (like Judaism or Buddhism) having a similar effect.

Hmmm. Perhaps "bright" doesn't mean, after all, what "brights" want it to mean.

No, 'bright' doesn't mean what you want it to mean.

Theft of the word "bright," while it doesn't quite rise to the level of linguistic matricide (the malicious murder of one's mother tongue), so common in PC circles, is still an exercise in intellectual dishonesty. It's hardly the only one. For example, it is often claimed that there's not a shred of evidence for the existence of God. This is simple nonsense; there's lots of evidence, some of it weaker and some of it stronger. Some of it is highly questionable and other portions very hard to explain away. (And one of our favorite bits revolves around just when and how Pius V knew that the battle of Lepanto had been won, at the time it had been won, and in the absence of long range communications. Look it up. Really.)

Again, Kratman repeats his mistake about 'brights' (This actually seems to be his favourite complaint about them).

His linking here is a bit suspect. Basically, he extends his miscomprehension of 'Brights' and then adds their belief that there isn't any proof that God exists to claim that they are intellectually dishonest. Firstly, again, Kratman has the meaning of Bright wrong, so that's not dishonest. Secondly, the existence of God is one of the oldest arguments in existence, so claiming that the Brights are intellectually dishonest for not accepting Kratman's side is a little iffy. He pays no interest in any evidence for the non-existence of God, which is even more intellectually dishonest.

Evidence, in any case, there is. What there isn't is absolute, irrefutable proof. To use the word "evidence," when what you mean is "irrefutable proof," is intellectual dishonesty of quite a high order, much worse, much more vile, than simple theft of a word. It's even worse, in its way, than the intellectual dishonesty of failure to note, when discussing poisons, that toxicity is in the dose.

The problem here is that there also isn't irrefutable proof of the existence of God. While the Catholic Church has documented hundreds of miracles and the Bible is full of many more, there is little provable evidence, But no-one has ever found Noah's Ark or anything similar. Every miracle is apocryphal in its extent, often reveal solely after the saint's death, when there isn't any chance to truly document it.

But then if "brights" are not required to be "bright," if a disliked religion must give way even if it opens up the world to a loathed one, how can we expect "evidence" not to mean "proof" or dosage to matter to toxicity?

So let's just stop here for a moment. Brights don't actually think they're brighter than Supers, the actual idea of brights is to have nothing to do with any religion, not destroy them, there's no real proof either way on God and Kratman still doesn't understand metaphor.

We clear on all that?

And some would insist, still, that the contradictions claimed to be in the New Testiment render it invalid.

Ahem.

Note, at this point, that we have still not claimed that, in fact, there is a God. We may, and do, believe that there is, and believe that there is evidence that there is. But there is no absolute proof, a point we've already readily conceded, and we see no point in arguing for what cannot be proven.

But you'll happily claim that there's no evidence against the existence of God. Right, that's a completely different thing.

Still, we can't help but note that much of what masquerades as disbelief in God is really just disapproval. Consider the following pair of claims on the subject, voiced, along with some others, by Hitchens during a debate with Dinesh D'Souza:

1) People are badly designed. No god could be so incompetent.

2) Earth is not paradise. Most of humanity has lived in misery for most of mankind's existence, though things are somewhat improved now. No god could be so heartless. No real god could have permitted Auschwitz.

Leave aside that people for whom evolution, biological and social, is an article of faith are therein complaining that a real god could never have permitted evolution, social and biological. That's funny enough, of course, being more reminiscent of some snake-charming cult in the backwoods than a new York salon, but not the point. The point is that, by those measures, a real god would be a eugenicist ala Heinrich Himmler, so that man would not have been or be so biologically imperfect, and, since most of mankind's self inflicted misery arises as a result of freedom to act, no real god would permit man that freedom. Rather, He would be a sort of benevolent Stalin.

These are the criteria by which a god should be measured, his similarity to Himmler, in some particulars, and Stalin, in others?

Hmm, a sardonic compression of several hours' debate followed by the evocation of Godwin's Law. That's not a good sign. Let's take his two arguments separately:

1) People are badly designed. No god could be so incompetent. The evidence that humans evolved rather than be designed is long-running so I'll just grab a simple example: the Appendix. The Appendix serves absolutely no purpose in the human body apart from getting infected and having to be removed. I'd love too see Kratman explain why God put it in.

2) Earth is not paradise. Most of humanity has lived in misery for most of mankind's existence, though things are somewhat improved now. No god could be so heartless. No real god could have permitted Auschwitz. This is the oldest question in religion and weirdly, Kratman seems to think that citing this shows that Hitchens has no real argument. This question is one every religious person struggles with, either from a personal perspective or a pastoral one. It is 'the' question in religion. Strangely, Kratman seems to find it moot, which makes me worry about him.

Kratman then continues by making a few laughable connections. Firstly, Kratman falls for the old 'evolution is a belief' canard. It's actually a scientific theory that Hitchens is convinced is right. There's a world of difference there. More importantly, belief in God implies an acceptance of the story of Creation, rather than evolution. Kratman's complaint is that Hitchens' can't accept the idea of a God who uses evolution as his tool. That may well be right, but technically, any faithful person is also in the same position, as this would deny the story of Creation.

In addition, Kratman assumes that because Hitchens dislikes the idea of a God who does not create a 'perfect' being, he thinks God should be a eugenicist like Heinrich Himmler. This argument falls face first several times, most notably because it seems to be an argument that God isn't omnipotent and omniscient. If God is interested in creating a perfect, disease-free human then he could just do it. He wouldn't have to spend time experimenting and failing, as he is, by definition, fully capable of succeeding first time.

Finally, he assumes that to prevent man's self-inflicted evils, God would have to become a benevolent Stalin. Umm, you what? Basically, Kratman assumes that all our evils and suffering are due to Free Will and that to remove that would create a Godly dictatorship. He seems not to consider any other acts, like for example, taking away the major causes of conflict, like scarce resources and giving a single defined religion to the world in uncontested style. Strangely, there's also no mention of what would happen with natural disasters, one of the biggest creators of the 'Why?' question.

Ahem.

Never mind. Let "brights" be not very bright. Let dosage not matter to toxicity. Twist word meanings. Make Stalin a god, too. Why not; it's been done before and likely will again.

Even so, never go to a gunfight without a gun and, if you intend to win, never go to a religious war without religion. You'll lose.

Right so let's sum up. Kratman doesn't really research his opponents. He also doesn't understand metaphor. He's a master deliberately misunderstanding something to make a point. He uses Godwin's Law when possible. All atheists are bad.

To be frank, Kratman really doesn't understand the argument he's trying to make. He's trying to make a case for faith giving more strength than disbelief, but he hasn't properly researched his central case and then wanders off into his usual, petty attacks on liberals. His arguments aren't well researched and are often little more than alternate definitions of single words. In particular, he never misses an opportunity to misunderstand the title of 'Bright' every time he uses it, despite the insanely simple amount of research he would have needed to know the correct answer.

I'm not a fan of Kratman and after reading an afterword like this, it's not hard to remember why. He's got an over-inflated impression of his own intellect and scholarly skill. He clearly restricts his research to sources which agree with his opinions and doesn't really seem to even consider alternate views as valid. Most unfortunately, he's not much good at holding together an argument. His faith as a force-multiplier argument is unfortunately derailed by his desire to smack-down atheism. This weakens both arguments and eventually cripples the two.

Baen Finally owns up to being Right-Wing (and not in a good way)

Baen Books has long had a reputation for being a bit right wing. It's not entirely unwarranted, given their massive love for all things Heinlein (king of sci-fi libertarianism). Still, they also publish a number of authors (in particular Eric Flint) who are definitely not right wing. However unfortunately, they then turn around and publish something like this:

http://www.webscription.net/p-1153-taxpayers-tea-party.aspx

The book's called Taxpayer's Tea Party by Sharon Cooper and Chuck Asay. It's a reprint of a book published in the 90's during the Republicans' big revolt against Clinton. As one might imagine it's aimed at the Teabagger and their friends. The book doesn't entirely raise one's hope about its contents, proudly proclaiming it's dual forewords by Newt Gringrich and Rush Limbaugh. Yes it has the support of a Republican who resigned from office due to corruption charges and, well, Rush freaking Limbaugh, they guy who has his face next to the dictionary definition of 'Right-Wing Jackass' (For added humour, their website's preview of Taxpayer's Teaparty contains no actual book, just the two forewords and a cartoon I had to keep reminding myself wasn't satire). It's also possibly the sign that Baen's finally fallen down the rabbit hole they've been can-canning around for the last decade or so.

The thing is, Baen is a Science Fiction and Fantasy label. That's not to knock them. They publish dozens of truly excellent books every year and I'm a big fan of several writers (the aforementioned Eric Flint and David Weber in particular). They've also got a few books in the catalogue which are non-fiction works on the science involved in Sci-Fi. What they aren't however, is a political publisher. They publish entertainment, not education.

Still, to be honest, I'm really not surprised that Baen's finally taken the plunge into publishing right-wing populism. They've been doing it for years in stealth. I first noticed Baen's rightward lean when they published Tom Kratman's unpleasant screed, A State of Disorder. Anyone who can read the book's prologue alone and claim that it's completely balanced deserves a medal. The book itself is even worse, with possibly the most grotesque parody of Hillary Clinton ever written (Let's just say she starts off as a narcissistic closet lesbian who was actively involved in the death of her first running mate and that she gets worse), while the book's conclusion, a series of constitutional amendments rammed through by the good guys, is likely to provoke sheer horror in anyone left of Limbaugh (the amendment banning abortion alone is awe-inspiringly clueless and offensive). To be honest, my first response to ASOD was sheer horror, but now it's almost a nodding acceptance. This is what Baen does these days.

The years after ASOD haven't been good years either. Kratman's continued to write a handful of books, none of which can be really considered fair or balanced. His Caliphate might just have to considered one of the most incredibly racist science fiction novels ever. His Legion El Cid novels are a incredibly unpleasant screed about how Kratman 'would' fight the War on Terror, with a disturbing obsession with brutality. Kratman's books brim with right-wing anger and paranoia. He constantly casts all liberals as the enemy, with vehemence particularly reserved for the media (which he sees as terrorist supporters, let alone enablers) and 'transnationalists' (a weird right-wing fantasy about an illuminati of liberals looking to reintroduce Soviet style aristocracy). About the only thing that can be said for his books is that they so quickly accelerate past the suspension of disbelief as to at no time can you take the books for anything to do with reality.

No mention of Kratman would be done without mention his frequent collaborator, John Ringo. Mr Ringo is one of Baen's biggest authors, but unfortunately that seems to have only magnified his tendency towards the more ridiculous end of the political statement. Ghost is probably the best starting point. Ghost tells the story of a ex-Navy Seal who finds himself getting into multiple encounters with various Islamic terrorists while also meeting a bevy of beautiful girls. Think of it as the right-wing bastard child of Jack Bauer and James Bond. The book and its sequels are incredibly right-wing, attributing all failures in the War on Terror to either Clinton or political correctness. They're also incredibly over-sexed, frequently in directions that are incredibly tasteless and unforgivably vile (Any possible good feeling I felt for the main character disappeared by the end of Ghost, where he hires and rapes a prostitute, a scene written with far more detail than necessary).

As bad as Ghost and its sequels were, the true cherry on the top has to be The Last Centurion. If you want a full description, look at the review below. Here's its suffice to say that LTC is a book with only one real purpose: blame every ill in the world on liberals and suggest that right-wing solutions are the only way to fix the mess that the world is in. The first ten chapters of the book are little more than an extended, poorly thought out rant as to the failings of an imaginary female Democrat President (see a pattern here? Baen seems to have its hate on for Hillary), with her every move being exactly opposite to the logical path mapped out by the author. What makes the book so thoroughly objectionable was that it was published in late 2008, in a transparent attempt to be out before the presidential election (a decision presumably made when every one thought Hillary was a shoe-in for nominee).

Still, much of Ringo's work shines before his collaborations with Kratman. A Watch On The Rhine may just take the cup for most incredibly wacko book ever published by Baen. Again, see my review below for details, but in a nutshell, the SS save Germany from invading aliens. I'm going to repeat that, in case your mind instinctively wiped the idea from your head, the SS save Germany from invading aliens. The book is an ode to the SS' ruthless strength and epically manages to make the liberal villains less sympathetic than the cannibalistic aliens. Their other collaboration, Yellow Eyes, is an improvement, but only by a little. The story's relatively forgiveable and is frankly the best story to come from Kratman's pen, but it all falls over at the end. Kratman sees fit to include an afterword about some of the book's themes and the results are well, memorable. He offers a weird little rant about Transnationalists and their goals, vis-a-vis the International Court and warcrimes prosecution. Being, well, Kratman, he misses the point in style and comes to the conclusion that everything is an effort to hamstring the common soldier with the fear of prosecution. It's the kind of pap he pumps out on a regular basis, secure in his little happy place, uncaring as to the realities of the world.

I honestly don't mind some of the right-wing books published by Baen. I greatly enjoyed reading Freehold by Michael Z Williamson, even if I think the libertarian country at the centre of the story is a laughable fantasy. I'm also hugely tempted by Monster Hunter International by Larry Correria, a book with a notable anti-government theme. What I do mind is where the author can't put his politics behind the needs of the story. Many of the above books by Ringo and Kratman would be far better if they'd restrained their urges.

In all honesty, I feel much of my complaints about the above stories would be improved if their editors had restrained them. I can't imagine Yellow Eyes would have done worse without its repugnant afterword. Nor can I imagine A State of Disorder doing worse with its ridiculous liberal bashing excised. To be honest, I can't imagine any amount of editing fixing some of their other works (Watch On The Rhine). Honestly, I find it hard not to imagine an editor handing most of Ghost and Caliphate back to their respective authors with a message along the lines 'start again, less ick'. Quite frankly, there seems to be a decision by the editorial staff not to remove the more offensive lines of their right-wing authors, instead letting them run rampant.

This decision leads almost inexorably towards publishing something like Taxpayer's Teaparty. Baen already lends succour to the extreme right-wing by publishing fantasies of Liberal treachery and Conservative victory, so why shouldn't it directly help by publishing a blueprint to protest? It's hard to say exactly what Baen's lost here, but legitimacy is probably the best word to start with. The argument that Baen isn't a conservative company, with a distinct bias in a given direction has fallen over, probably forever. By publishing Taxpayer's Teaparty they've lost forever the right to claim that they are misrepresented.

It's possible that one day someone's going to look back at the history of Baen Books and directly trace it's decline to Taxpayer's Teaparty. It's definitely not a positive sign for the company, clearly trying to cash in on the conservative zeitgeist and it's going to backfire. Baen's already garnered an amazing amount of ill will with readers like myself, who don't enjoy having asinine politics shoved down our throats. The only reason I look at their site at the moment is to keep up with the latest books by David Weber and Eric Flint, as well as seeing if they've got any new authors that might catch my eye. As soon as those two leave Baen's fold, I'm gone as well.

A Watch On The Rhine

Author: Tom Kratman and John Ringo

Publisher: Baen Books

Quick Synopsis: Germany is forced to reform the SS to stave off alien invasion

Quick Review: An idea with potential mutilated by the wrong author

I have to admit that the idea behind A Watch on the Rhine is an original one: can the German SS really be redeemed? Are they the monsters of history, or are they misunderstood, patriots fighting for an evil regime? Unfortunately, the authors don't really manage to answer these questions. They go into the book with their own preconceived notions and don't manage to make them convincing. Worse, they let their own prejudices colour the story, further damaging their efforts by trying to score cheap points with hollow characterisation and weakarguments.

Plot: Set in John Ringo's Legacy of Aldenata universe, the book follows Germany's defence against the Posleen hordes (an alien species that considers all animal life food, up to and including their own dead and young). Aware that their army stands little chance, their government decides to rebuild the SS, using alien technology to regenerate the few survivors and give them fresh recruits to train (Just to be clear, by SS, I mean the Schutzstaffel, the paramilitary force within Nazi Germany infamous for running the concentration camps as well as several other atrocities). While the intention is to use the new units up in the coming conflict, they prove far more useful than that.

It's a measure of AWOTR that I'm still unsure on the central theme of whether or not the reputation of the SS can be redeemed. Quite simply, there is very little of the book devoted to this argument. Those few characters who make the argument that they are irredeemable and that Germany shouldn't resurrect them, regardless of the alien threat, are generally classed as at best misguided or at worse, villains (indeed the primary opposition is from one of the book's biggest villains). Kratman (Ringo appears to have been very hands-off on the novel, going from the authorial afterword included with the book) ultimately seems uninterested in this argument, consistently portraying every SS character as mostly apolitical, with little interest in any aspect of Nazi ideology (the exception would have to be the vile Kreuger, who openly celebrates his service in the Totenkopf brigades, those parts of SS who served in the concentration camps). Most memorably, this occurs early on in the novel, when one of the old SS encounters an Israeli army officer. It is the Israeli who is portrayed as being out-of-line, not the SS officer who barely seems to care. The few references to the SS's crimes are simply waved away with either a distinction of the Totenkopf's responsibility or the excuse of 'everyone did the same thing', an argument best saved for the schoolyard. To be blunt, Kratman simply doesn't care about the SS's crimes, paying mere lip-service to the pain that they have caused.

Unfortunately, if a mere inability to make a decent argument was the biggest problem with AWOTR that probably wouldn't have made the book as bad as it is. No what really picks the book up and slaps it out of the park is Kratman's political axe-grinding on top of the sensitive subject matter. Remember that villain I mentioned above, the one opposed to the resurrection of the SS? He is the leader of a cabal of left-wing and green (he's the leader of the Greens in the Bundestag)politicians who assist in an alien conspiracy to weaken Germany's defences in before the invasion, in an effort to ensure humanity's downfall. His explanation for this when confronted? He's 'protecting' the Earth by using the Posleen to wipe out the excess population, planning to return with his evacuated family and do things 'right' after the Posleen have been eradicated. The entire speech where this is admitted is gloriously over-the-top and ridiculous, sounding as if he's ad-libbing the villain from Moonraker. What of course makes this all the more laughable is that the Posleen are known for destroying the worlds they conquer, breaking out into nuclear infighting as their population spirals out of control. The protests he organises earlier on are just as ridiculous, with SS characters musing about the hypocrisies evident within the crowds and the protesters being portrayed as brain-washed and clueless(crowning this is the protester who is so impressed by the SS riot police that he immediately goes off to a recruiting station). Most disturbingly, this gives a creepy moment in one scene, where the German chancellor orders the SS to arrest all of the members of the conspiracy to weaken the defences, implying to the reader that the SS are occupying the same quasi-political position they had in the Third Reich, acting as the muscle for those hunting 'enemies of the state'.One cannot help, but get the feeling that Kratman views the liberal characters as more evil than the Posleen, who are often treated with more empathy than the humans (please note that these are the aliens who make use of human shields and make a quilt of human hair during the course of the book).

These issues unfortunately overshadow the book's actual plot. Not that that isn't a good thing. There's very little coherence to the book's set up and Kratman is very bad at setting the scene for all of the action sequences. The narrative is spread over about five years, covering the preparation for the first and then second waves of invasion as well as the battles fought during them, but there seems to be little development during the time-skips (most notably, the few 'new' SS characters don't seem to receive any sort of promotions during the book, despite being veterans of the first wave). The book is also achingly non-canonical, frequently violating many of the setting's rules (Ringo constructed an alien force for which the best counter is infantry supported with artillery, while Kratman instead plants the SS forces in supertanks). Perhaps worse is the actual reason given for the necessity of resurrecting the SS. The stated rational is that Germany needs everything it can get, that its own military lacks the training cadre needed for the massive expansion necessary. It all rings a little hollow. Kratman consistently portrays the regular German army as weak and cowardly, crippled by political correctness. The SS are necessary because Kratman makes them necessary, effectively writing them in by authorial fiat. There's little consideration given to the repercussions, nor are the German opposition portrayed as anything other than clueless. Grotesquely, the book's epilogue has the surviving characters engaging in what is implied to be genocide in the future, deliberately attacking a planet of the alien species which has been playing the Posleen against the humans with the intention of destroying their entire species.

Most laughable is Kratman's big theme of 'Survival overrides programming'. He tries to make the argument that the modern military is not ruthless enough and that modern sensibilities are to blame. Unfortunately, the theme is shoehorned into the book, primarily with a French woman who is a liberal stereotype as only Kratman can write them, ie clueless. In a poorly thought out scene near the end, her son fails to demolish a crucial bridge during battle. Kratman would like you to believe that it his liberal 'programming' that is to blame, but unfortunately that's about the last conclusion the reader is likely to draw. The boy in question is a child soldier in his first battle, who's placed in a position of utmost importance. The bridge in question is packed with human refugees at the time, being used by the Posleen as human shields. As far as can be seen, Kratman decides that mere human compassion is an obstacle that can be blamed on liberalism. Disturbingly, his authorial afterword suggests that he considers this to be a major problem in the War on Terror.

Watch on the Rhine is not a good book. The arguments made within are hollow and self-serving, the story is instantly forgettable and the characters are weak. Kratman seems to think that the SS's talent for ruthlessness forgives all of their sins, when he is not drawing false equivalences between their crimes and the Allies'. His personal politics colour the narrative, with left-wing politics being made out to be the biggest threat to the cast. This is unfortunate, given that he is essentially writing in support of one of the greatest right-wing perversions in history. Watch on the Rhine is at its core a poorly thought out polemic which, given its sensitive subject matter, is all the more appalling. One of the worst books I've ever read.