ILYA SOMIN: “Like Eugene Volokh and Glenn Reynolds, I too am a big fan of John Scalzi’s recent Science fiction books Old Man’s War and Ghost Brigades. But the New York Times was wrong to describe the Volokh Conspiracy and Glenn as ‘conservative’ in its review of Scalzi’s works.”

True, but on the scale of their errors it’s minor enough that I don’t complain any more. Somin continues: “More fundamentally, it is not clear to me that there really is much affinity between science fiction and conservatism. Most of the prominent ‘conservative’ science fiction writers (e.g. – Robert A. Heinlein, whose work the reviewer compares with Scalzi’s) are in fact libertarian in their ideology.”

That’s true, too, but for many it’s impossible to imagine that anyone other than a “conservative” might favor violence in self defense, or national defense.