Today I got an e-mail from super-author Andrew Klavan, directing me to this column on his blog, in which he gives me a nice plug.

Novelist Lars Walker — a friend of this blog and an insightful reviewer of some of my own novels — makes a trenchant comment in the Elizabeth Smart post below. I know it’s trenchant because I was about to make basically the same comment but Lars beat me to it! In the comment, he makes a delightfully concise reference to “the Osteenian view that suffering is always a sign of God’s displeasure.” This, of course, refers to popular preacher Joel Osteen, who has been promoting his new book at the Blaze and other places. He basically preaches that God wants wonderful things for your life and you only have to open yourself to God’s will in order to receive those blessings.

He was particularly pleased, he said, by my use of the adjective “Osteenian,” meaning theological ideas in line with Joel Osteen’s preaching. He seems to think I may have coined it, though I find it hard to believe nobody’s used it before.

In any case, this counts as a good day.

I have a column called “The Book We Still Can’t Spare” at The American Spectator today. It’s about the Bible and democracy.

John Sigismund of Hungary with Suleiman the Magnificent in 1556.

Today, Grim of Grim’s Hall cited Hailstone Mountain again, pointing out that one of the issues I dramatized in the book has shown up in the New York Times.

I’m getting really sick of being a prophet.

“It is my understanding that the prophet Jeremiah frequently expressed a similar sentiment, sir,” said Jeeves.



Over at National Review’s The Corner, Andrew C. McCarthy links to an article about the Islamic institution of the Jizya tax. Jizya is part of the process of submission in a sharia state. The kuffar (infidel) pays the jizya and suffers various social indignities, in order to be permitted to go on living and to practice his religion (this is the much-vaunted freedom of religion of which Islamic apologists boast).

The argument is that the Egyptian government openly considers U.S. foreign aid to be a payment of jizya. In their view, they are in the process of conquering us, and this is the beginning of our submission.

Will this information cause liberals, most of whom are adamant that our government should pay for nothing that can possibly be regarded as religious, to call for an end to our aid to Egypt?

No, no of course not. When they say “religion” they mean “Christianity.”