Regular Gentle Readers have noticed that I’ve been indirectly touting this novel recently. A couple have expressed curiosity about it: “If you’re going to sneak pitches for your novels into your op-eds, why that book? It’s one of your oldest.” One, whom I know more personally than most of my other readers, went even …
27 results for spooner
Apr 01 2024
From Tolerable To Intolerable…
…can be a very short journey indeed. Whether it’s possible depends on whether the State decides the protection and promotion of some human aberration would serve its interests. Buckle your seat belt and fold your tray-tables; this ride could get bumpy. *** I’ve ranted before about how the politicization of transgenderism has transformed …
Mar 21 2024
The Anarcho-Tyranny Chronicles
[Apologies, Gentle Reader. Another repost is upon us. I’m so frazzled that to produce something new would require an intervention from God. So please ponder this piece, which first appeared at Liberty’s Torch V1.0 on Saint Patrick’s Day of 2017 — FWP] If you’ve been a Gentle Reader of Liberty’s Torch for a …
Feb 28 2024
What Is Caesar’s And What Is Mine?
Pro-freedom journalist John Stossel has a plaintive piece up today about that special feature of this time of year. After all, it’s the season when a young man’s fancy turns to what his wife, fiancée, or Significant Other never stops thinking about: what’s in his wallet – and I don’t mean his Capital One …
Nov 25 2023
No Americans Were Released
John Hinderaker comments pithily: On October 7, Gaza murdered 31 Americans and is believed to have kidnapped 13 more, including a three-year-old child. Yesterday an initial exchange of hostages for prisoners was carried out. Ten Thais and one Filipino were let go, but no Americans were released…. […] If our president …
Nov 11 2023
This Is The Era Of Graphics And Videos
When Lysander Spooner wrote this: The government does not, indeed, waylay a man in a lonely place, spring upon him from the road side, and, holding a pistol to his head, proceed to rifle his pockets. But the robbery is none the less a robbery on that account; and it is far more …
Jul 12 2023
The Unattainable Country
Apologies in advance, Gentle Reader. If I were to demand absolute lexical accuracy of myself, the title would have been “The Unattainable Condition.” But I decided to cheat a bit, in the interests of “punch.” Everyone has his own conception of Utopia. No two are identical, which is why Robert Nozick’s gedankenexperiment at …
Jun 16 2023
Homelands Part 2
Everyone is born somewhere. Well, today at least; that might change if we ever become a spacefaring species. But for the moment, each of us has a birthplace in some Earthly land. The majority of us live our whole lives in that land, vacations and business trips notwithstanding. Some striking fiction has been …
May 05 2023
The Plunderers Hunger Part 3: The Root Of It All
Do you reject Satan and all his works, and all his empty promises? – Rite of Confirmation If you undergo Confirmation as a Catholic, you’re asked that question, and you’d better answer it correctly. Yet Catholics are usually Confirmed around thirteen years of age. The young Catholic is seldom much acquainted with Satan, …
Apr 21 2023
It Won’t Go Away Part 2: “It”
Yesterday’s essay brought only one comment and a single ping. Perhaps our Gentle Readers were nonplussed by it. I could hardly blame them; it was a “passion piece,” the sort that writes itself with the fervor the subject aroused in me. If it left readers wondering when the men in the white coats toting …
Jan 21 2023
Tirade #2
Stand back, Gentle Reader. This could get ugly. I’m about to vent. *** Mostly, I eschew watching videos of more than two or three minutes’ duration. I read very fast, and I much prefer to absorb information that way. Thus, the time spent watching a video is almost always several times what reading …
Jan 20 2023
I First Saw This A Long Time Ago
…and I’ve only just found it again: It’s a brilliant visual encapsulation of a famous Lysander Spooner quote: The secret ballot is fundamentally wrong. Two elections in a row have demonstrated its perniciousness – and that’s for people who continue to think there’s anything good about government. Now consider that anyone …
Dec 07 2022
Life, Death, and Decay: A Coda
Old people think about such things far more frequently than young people…but now and then, a young person will think about them. It’s about mindset: The lecture hall had emptied, but Armand and Teresza remained in their seats. Armand had not moved since the closing bell, and Teresza was afraid to nudge him. …
Nov 29 2022
A Direct Hit On The Jugular
Dan Gelernter’s column of today is a must-read. The Sunday punch: We—individuals, local governments, state governments—need to get off the drug of government money. Ultimately, it’s just our money but with all the freedom filtered out: We’re actually paying to be enslaved. I’d like to start a petition declaring a national federal …
Nov 12 2022
Voiceless Victims
Way, way back in the darkest recesses of history – my history, that is – I had a brief exchange with a much older colleague about the presidential election that had just taken place. The year was 1976, and Jimmy Carter (God help us) had just become the President-elect. My colleague, whose name was …
Jun 30 2022
A Month Of Free Fiction!
(Scroll down for new posts.) Smashwords, where I first listed my fiction for sale, is having a Summer Sale that will extend from July 1 through July 31. My novels will be part of it: The Realm of Essences Series: Chosen One On Broken Wings Shadow of a Sword Polymath Statesman The Spooner Federation …
May 01 2022
Need To Know
No, this won’t be about federal security regulations. And I know a father Who had a son He longed to tell him all the reasons For the things he’d done. He came a long way Just to explain, He kissed his boy as he lay sleeping Then he turned around and headed home again. …
Apr 08 2022
Some Fiction News
While I’ve had my novels at Amazon in the “KDP select” system for some time, it hasn’t done anything for the expansion of my readership. Therefore, I’ve decided to slough “KDP Select” status, so I can distribute more widely than just through Amazon. I’ve just resubmitted all 19 of my novels to Smashwords: …
Feb 12 2022
Free Fiction!
For today, February 12 only, until Midnight Pacific time, the most daring science fiction novel since Stranger in a Strange Land: is a free download at Amazon! When the remnant of the anarchist Spooner Federation fled Earth before the genocidal wrath of the States, the fugitives had only the slimmest chance of …
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