AN ANTHOLOGY EDITED BY ROB HOWELL (SPOILER, I’M IN IT. SO IS LARRY CORREIA AND DAVID WEBER AND…): Songs of Valor.

It is a time of high adventure! A time for heroes to say “No!” to the evils that will befall their families and friends if they don’t rise to the task at hand…even if they don’t want to! If they won’t take up arms and spells on behalf of their people, civilization will fall.

Fifteen exceptional authors have spun tales of reluctant heroes—people often like you and me, who didn’t think they were worthy, needed, or even “the right one for the job.” Sometimes all they have going for them is that they’re the wrong person at the wrong time. When there’s no one else, though, a hero must do what’s necessary, whether that’s fighting demons, the undead, or an unconquerable enemy.

Songs of Valor focuses on heroes rising to the challenge presented them. An untrained human facing an ancient dragon. A necromancer fighting a demon in the land of the elves. A dragon rider well past her prime coming back to protect the ones she loves. An over-the-hill fighter who does what he must to stem the tide of evil.

Inside are fifteen incredible stories of heroes rising to the occasion. Their willingness to brave the peril, though, doesn’t guarantee their success. If their valor should fail, all indeed will be lost! Will they succeed? Step inside and find out!

SOMETIMES YOU GO A BIT INSANE:  The Felinidian Theory.

THEY ACT AS THOUGH THEY HAD A MAJORITY OF THE POPULATION BEHIND THEM:  Today’s blacklisted Americans: California Democrats to blacklist all conservative or religious policemen.

Of course they don’t. So this will end in tear. And blood. Lots of blood.

AS SOME OF US HAVE BEEN SCREAMING:  The Sovereign Crime of Industrial Scale Vote Fraud.

SO OF COURSE THEY’RE DOING THEIR BEST TO START A WAR:  There is No Biden Administration.

BECAUSE OF COURSE THEY ARE:   Disqus’ De-Platforming of Frontpage.

HOW DO WE MITIGATE THE EFFECTS OF GOVERNMENTAL ILLUSIONS IMPOSED ON THE REST OF US?  Welfare in the 21st century: Increasing development, reducing inequality, the impact of climate change, and the cost of climate policies.

THAT’S A FUNNY WAY OF SPELLING OBFUSCATOR:  Boston University and Boston Globe to Create New Critical Race Theory Publication ‘The Emancipator’.

REALLY? I WANT CITIZENS TO WASH RED BILLY’S MOUTH OUT. WITH SOAP:  De Blasio Wants Police to Scold People For Saying Things That Are Legal But “Not Appropriate”.

DAY ENDING IN Y:   Biden Calls Kamala ‘President Harris’ During Media Appearance.

MEH. WHY NOT BLAME BIDEN:  White House: Blame Trump For Atlanta Massage Parlor Shootings.

After all his family has shown the world that being a sex addict with morality issues is perfectly fine, if you’re a Biden. Some people learn by example.

NOT AS BAD AS FOR OURS:  Illegal Immigration Bad For Home Countries, El Salvadoran President.

ALL OF US SHOULD:  Rand Paul Torches Anthony Fauci’s Double Mask Theatrics.

LOOK, IT’S ALL CLASS SIGNALING:  Growing number of English, writing scholars prioritize social justice, reject ‘standard’ academic English.

Up to the first World War, books that were considered high literature and won awards were the ones that had allusions to Greek and Roman myth, or dropped other historical allusions, casually, into the prose. It was a way of saying “I had an excellent education.” These days excellent education in terms of expensive colleges means Marxism Leninism, so of course awards and admiration goes to the “woke” stories that push “social justice.” It’s a way of screaming “I have an excellent education.”

BUT at least the nineteenth and early twentieth century taught people to write so they could be understood.  Now?  Well, I’m old enough to have taught some people who are teachers now and I can tell you, it only goes down from here.

ANNALS OF LEFTIST AUTOPHAGY: Incoming Teen Vogue Editor Forced To Resign Over Old Tweets. “She wrote them in 2011, when she was a teenager.”

On the one hand, you’d think that if anyone could forgive teenage excesses it would be Teen Vogue. On the other hand, they’re just the Junior Stasi now, and I’d feel bad about this but associating with the Junior Stasi has its risks.

Plus: “Conde Nest, the media company that owns Teen Vogue, was aware of the tweets when it hired McCammond, who had already apologized for them. The bosses evidently did not expect such furor from Teen Vogue staff—though that’s rather shortsighted on their part, given the large number of similar uprisings at progressive media workspaces. Even so, the perception that anti-Asian hate crimes are rising—including the possibility that the Georgia massage parlor murders were motivated by anti-Asian bias—meant it was bad timing for an incoming editor to be involved in an even tangentially related controversy.”

Note: Dems are trying to make a big deal of “anti-Asian hate crimes” because Asians are starting to drift Republican over affirmative action, and they’re hoping this will be a distraction.

OPEN THREAD: All you filthy freaks and you glamorous geeks, come on.

WITNESSES: Elderly Asian Woman Beats Up Man Attacking Her In San Francisco.

ME TOO: U.S. Space Force would support commercial services to remove orbital debris.

HOW CAN MISS YOU IF YOU WON’T GO AWAY? Move Over, Vinyl Trend: North Texas Produces 8-Track Tapes for Major Labels.

Eight-tracks sucked on multiple levels, so no wonder hipsters want to bring them back.

THE LIST IS HEADED BY MY FORMER STUDENT HEATH CLARK’S H. CLARK DISTILLERY, WHICH IS COOL: Meet the Boutique Southern Distilleries You Need to Know About.

Heath guest-lectured in my Distilled Spirits Law class just a couple of weeks ago.

MINNESOTA: Rep introduces bill that would imprison governor for unilaterally declaring emergencies.

WELL, THE POWERS-THAT-BE WANT THEM DUMB AND DEPENDENT, NOT SMART AND INDEPENDENT: Derek Chauvin Jury Selection Process Highlights Need to Stop Dumbing Down Juries.

LEFTISTS LIE TO BRING PEOPLE DOWN, BECAUSE BRINGING PEOPLE DOWN IS WHAT THEY ENJOY: The Campaign of Lies Against Journalist Jesse Singal—And Why It Matters.

HMM: Likelihood of COVID-19 reinfection low, but elderly at increased risk, study finds. The good news: “Still, fewer than 1% of those infected with the virus once get sick again within six months, though this could change as new variants emerge, the researchers said.”

OLD AND BUSTED: The Devil Wears Prada.

The New Hotness? Anna Wintour Caves to Woke Mob:

It appeared initially as though McCammond’s multiple apologies would save her job. A Condé Nast spokesperson told the Daily Beast the decision to hire McCammond was based on “the values, inclusivity and depth she has displayed through her journalism,” while noting that she had taken “responsibility for her social media history and apologized.”

Several days later, the New York Post reported that the company’s chief content officer, Anna Wintour, was “adamant about keeping [McCammond] even though she’s getting pushback internally.” As is often the case in journalism these days, the internal pushback ultimately prevailed. McCammond apologized for a fourth time in her statement on Thursday.

“I should not have tweeted what I did and I have taken responsibility for that,” McCammond said. “I hope to have the opportunity to re-join the ranks of tireless journalists who are shining light on the issues that matter every single day.” McCammond worked as a reporter for the news blog Axios before accepting the position at Teen Vogue.

As noted in the Daily Beast, the 27-year-old McCammond “was heralded as a rising political star among the D.C. press corps for her headline-grabbing stories about the Trump White House and the 2020 presidential campaign, which garnered her an award from the National Association of Black Journalists in 2019 and frequent appearances as a contributor on MSNBC.”

Read the whole thing.

Related: If Teen Vogue staffers want to prove their wokeness, they should quit their classist company.

If you really believe that wealth inequality is the bane of our existence, racism the scourge of the Earth, the gender binary an “archaic” social construct, fur the antithesis of “sustainable” fashion, and all of these relics of elitism are all intertwined in the dogma of intersectionality, then you cannot possibly work at Teen Vogue in good conscience.

Consider that few people on the planet are more responsible for transitioning and empowering the American aristocracy into the 21st century than Anna Wintour, the global chief content officer of Condé Nast, who oversaw the creation of Teen Vogue. A trust fund baby from a landed gentry family, Wintour was placed in a journalism job first by her father, despite never actually being a reporter or a writer. In her post at Vogue, she (reportedly) has kept black models off of fashion’s most important cover and black journalists out of her newsroom. She famously refuses to hire fat people and single-handedly revived the fur industry.

Wintour, worth some $50 million, doesn’t just specifically cater exclusively to wealthy women in her magazine, where her staff has notoriously balked at her refusal to platform normal working women in news stories. She also runs the increasingly gaudy gathering of the Met Gala. If Condé Nast really cared about the values it espoused in Teen Vogue, wouldn’t the tens of millions of dollars accrued by the Met Gala each year go to New York City’s schools or homeless population rather than the Costume Institute at the Met, which already has an endowment of $3 billion and receives tens of millions in taxpayer funding?

The mob’s cancellation of McCammond is obviously a microcosm of the tragedy of illiberalism, and she surely deserves solidarity against the wokes. But just as importantly, her fate illustrates the fundamental unseriousness of the keyboard warriors attempting to hold our culture hostage. It’s easy to make a 27-year-old black woman a scapegoat to prove how woke you are. But if these staffers believed in one word of what they preached, they would quit their disgrace of a blog.

Wintour, 71, was recently promoted to the position of chief content officer at Condé Nast, after “a turbulent year and a reckoning over diversity at Condé Nast that prompted speculation over Wintour’s future. In a staff memo in June, Wintour admitted that Vogue has made mistakes that were ‘hurtful or intolerant’ to Black creators. ‘I take full responsibility for those mistakes,’ she wrote.”

So as with Dean Baquet of the New York Times, rumored to be retiring next year, Wintour apparently has no desire to keep her uber-woke staffers in check. It’s quite an ignominious turn for the icy star of The September Issue documentary and the roman-à-clef, The Devil Wears Prada.