Francis W. Porretto
Mount Sinai, NY USA
Author's posts
Feb 03 2021
Moral Agents And Leftist Strategy
I slept late this morning – that’s right, I snored on until the unGodly late hour of 4:30 AM — so I’m a bit behind on my news-reading. Nevertheless, our favorite Bookworm’s latest piece has stirred my mental cauldron, and I must “write it out” before it can divert me from my other duties. …
Feb 02 2021
The Ethic Of The Left
Shamelessly stolen from 90 Miles From Tyranny: In what way is this incorrect? Indeed, the game-show metaphor could be extended: one contestant could cause another to lose points by calling him a fascist, a racist, or (gasp!) a Trump supporter. Hasn’t that happened often enough – and on network television, at that? …
Feb 01 2021
Question Thou Not!
When the Left has power, even inquiring into its practices is deemed unacceptable, unconscionable, indefensible…almost (though for the moment, not quite) illegal. The intensity of the Left’s counterblast varies directly with how far from the American norm the practice at issue lies. Critical race theory, which purports to indict and convict (without trial) …
Jan 31 2021
The Believable Hero
Recently, the C.S.O. and I have been enjoying John Nettles’s old Bergerac series. Nettles’s intrepid detective Jim Bergerac, a sergeant in Jersey’s Bureau des Etranges, is a classical hero figure. He gets into any number of personal scrapes, including with his superior, his ex-wife, a succession of ladyfriends, and the rich elite of that …
Jan 30 2021
The Real Plague
New York State has suffered badly under the House of Cuomo. Emperor Mario was disastrous. I was glad to see him go even if his replacement was a centrist wimp. But Mario’s son Andrew is deadly and doesn’t care who knows it: What’s that you say, Andrew? It sounded a lot like this: …
Jan 29 2021
Tipping Points Journal
Many have asked, as America slides down the generously Vaselined slope toward totalitarianism, just “where the tipping point is.” That is: What incursion on Americans’ rights would – or will – provoke actual armed insurrection aimed at reestablishing Constitutionally limited government? Time was, the most widely agreed such point was a major incursion …
Jan 28 2021
How Do I Detest WordPress? Let Me Count The Ways…
Approximately 538 trillion people, aware that I was relocating from Blogger, have: Exhorted me to use WordPress; Assured me that “You’re going to love it.” That group includes (of course) Mike Hendrix, whose assistance in creating this blog was invaluable. You could say Mike is a WordPress fan. He assumed that I would take to …
Jan 28 2021
“Is It Safe?”
Suffice it to say that opinions vary. But the question reposes upon a fallacy: that safe has a specific, objective, and universally agreed meaning. It does not. There are no safe substances.There are no safe activities.There are no safe places.Only degrees of risk…Some of which are incalculable. I could go into a long …
Jan 27 2021
For Those Having Problems With The Left Sidebar Images
I am having no such problem, no matter which of my four browsers (Edge, Firefox, Brave, Dissenter) I use to display the site. The problem might be on your end. How wide, in pixels, is your monitor? The site’s “container,” imposed on it by WordPress, is 1440 pixels wide. If your monitor is …
Jan 27 2021
Allowances
Power concedes nothing without demand. It never did, and it never will. Find out just what people will submit to, and you have found out the exact amount of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them; and these will continue until they have been resisted with either words or blows, or with …
Jan 27 2021
Concerning The Two Party System
Recall this political convulsion from more than a century ago: [T]he Republicans, in the early 1890s, led by Ohio Republicans William McKinley and Marc Hanna, launched a shrewd campaign of reconstruction. In particular, in state after state, they ditched the prohibitionists, who were becoming an embarrassment and losing the Republicans large numbers of …
Jan 26 2021
Depression-Era Songs
There’s a legend of sorts about the Federal Music Project (FMP), a subdepartment of the Works Progress Administration of FDR’s New Deal. That legend holds that many of the songs that became popular during that era were actually commissioned by the FMP – i.e., their composers were paid to compose popular songs. It could …
Jan 25 2021
The 13th Day
The world has been taught to scoff at that which it cannot see, hear, and touch. It has paid a heavy price for its scoffing. I trust I need not enumerate the many tragedies men have inflicted on one another, as faith has retreated and secular humanism, with its innate arrogance and vaulting ambition, …
Sep 24 2019
Valid Argumentation And Expertise
The list of fallacies relevant to argument includes one that isn’t, strictly speaking, a fallacy under all circumstances: the “argument from authority.” If we read authority to mean expert status, there is a place for it in arguments over substantive matters. Problems with expertise-based arguments arise in two venues: The validation of the …
Aug 08 2019
“Too Much Like Work!”
Don’t expect the Left or its mascot groups to solve their own problems. They’ve been told – relentlessly, for decades – that their problems aren’t really theirs to solve. No, that responsibility belongs elsewhere…probably to “the government.” What’s that you say? If they created the problem – perhaps by letting the garbage pile …
Dec 15 2018
Nightmares of a Wine Enthusiast
You know, no matter how aggressively you go about it, there are a lot of wines out there you’ll never taste. And that is probably for the best. Because in keeping with Sturgeon’s Law, 90% of them are crud. As an avid sampler of wineries and their wares, I’ve had some crud in …
Oct 20 2018
On Making The Best Of Things…Including Yourself
[It’s become clear that creating an insuperable condition of distrust and hostility between the sexes is a principal objective of gender-war feminism. At one time I thought the disease had reached its peak and would thereafter recede. Given recent events, I am no longer of that opinion. The following piece first appeared at Liberty’s …
Feb 27 2018
Crisis: The Agar of Leviathan
You never let a serious crisis go to waste. And what I mean by that it’s an opportunity to do things you think you could not do before. – Rahm Emanuel Crisis-mongering has a long history: If I read the temper of our people correctly, we now realize as we have never …
Sep 26 2017
On Being White
I’ve been warned. I’ve been reminded. I’ve been catechized about the unwisdom of giving in to fury. It’s not good for me. If it’s good for you, know that I envy you, because there’s a lot to be angry about these days. The foofaurauw over the National Football League’s decision to “support the …
Fran’s Recent Novels
Margaret’s Recent Novels
