Francis W. Porretto
Mount Sinai, NY USA
Author's posts
May 02 2021
Three Lives, Three Deaths
She was young. Far too young, by most reckonings, to be equipped to cope with tragedy. She’d been married only a short time when she discovered that she was pregnant…and only a short time later discovered that her baby daughter was anencephalic, incapable of living outside the womb. Against medical advice and …
Apr 30 2021
To Be Or To Do? A Rumination
Before I launch into today’s indulgence in sententiousness, allow me a few prefatory words. Several Gentle Readers have written to ask why I’ve been writing so much about subjects in moral-ethical thought. I expected to be asked about it, and have been thinking about the answer for my own benefit as well as that …
Apr 29 2021
The Virtues And Virtue: A Rumination
If you’ve had any kind of education at all, you’ll be familiar with the three “theological” virtues: Faith, Hope, Charity. …and if you managed to graduate high school without being incarcerated for a major felony, you’ll probably know about the “cardinal virtues:” Prudence, Justice, Temperance, Fortitude. I shan’t expend server space expounding …
Apr 28 2021
Faith And Fiction: A Rumination
The more you look, the more you see. — Robert M. Pirsig It’s amazing the way the realm of the mind expands, providing ever more room to prowl, and hopefully to grow, to him who is willing to look at significant subjects synthetically as well as analytically. Consider this observation from the great …
Apr 27 2021
The Political Function Of Racism
I cribbed the title above from a chapter in one of the books on my Most Admired list: Jean-Francois Revel’s masterwork The Flight From Truth: The Reign of Deceit in an Age of Information. In that chapter, Revel does a masterful job of delineating the Left’s perversion of what was once a simple, precisely …
Apr 27 2021
Freudian Slips Dept.
This one is courtesy of Wes Rhinier at NCRenegade: Laugh? Cry? Or bellow in fury? In this particular multiple-choice test, there are no wrong answers.
Apr 26 2021
Misplaced Faiths
Some years ago – I hesitate to say how many – a colleague and I got into a wrangle about the compiler he was using in his development work. I’d found a fault in the generated code – I did my debugging in machine language, back then – and, upon comparing it to the …
Apr 25 2021
Cumulative Acceptance
I’ve been watching the trends that run through the various genres of fiction I’ve occasionally produced: Science Fiction, High Fantasy, Urban Fantasy / Horror, Romance, …and I believe I’ve deduced a few things about both reader and writer behavior, all of which pertain to the important consideration called willing suspension of disbelief. …
Apr 25 2021
From Tim
I’ve been in a bad way lately: physical problems, difficulties in managing my household, a persistent emotional trough, and low levels of energy and motivation. Some of that’s to be expected in a septuagenarian. As for the rest, I try to cope. Still, it can be very hard when the negatives gang up for …
Apr 23 2021
Unspeakabilities
There are things we of Polite Society are not supposed to discuss. Indeed, throughout the history of Mankind there have always been such things. Mention of them was forbidden by custom and the threat of ostracism. However, the specific subjects within the realm of unspeakability have changed as time has passed. I’ve written …
Apr 22 2021
Survey!
Everybody’s taking surveys and polls lately. Seems that way, anyway. So I figured it’s time to survey the Gentle Readers of Liberty’s Torch on a few subjects of current importance. For each of the statements below, please indicate, on a scale of 1 to 5, whether you: Disagree strongly; Disagree somewhat; Are indifferent; …
Apr 21 2021
Concerning The Judicial Lynching Of Derek Chauvin
This only just sprang to mind: “We are not fighting against single individuals. We are exterminating the bourgeoisie as a class. Do not look in materials you have gathered for evidence that a suspect acted or spoke against the Soviet authorities. The first question you should ask him is what class he belongs …
Apr 21 2021
Capturing The Moment
Were you under the impression that the United States is not currently in a state of civil war? Minneapolis City Council Candidate and Former City Employee Encourages Rioters to Burn Down Wealthy Neighborhoods Right On Cue: Portland Rioters Go On Destructive Rampage After Chauvin Verdict, Police Actually Intervene BLM Minneapolis: ‘I Don’t Want to …
Apr 20 2021
Extinction And Rebirth
We called them “the media.” Some of us knew why: they were the middlemen between us and the information we sought. They formed a conduit between events of significance and those of us who wanted to know about them. We trusted them to pass the information about those events to us, undistorted and untainted …
Apr 19 2021
Good Ideas Always Resurface
A long, long time ago, back when there was music on AM radio and I was a wee proto-engineer who spent his days correcting other people’s errors in Fortran (Fortran-66, mind you), a colleague commenting on a promotion we in the Computing Center were attempting urged us all to “Think visual.” He exhorted us …
Apr 18 2021
There Is No Time
Today will be a very busy day for me, for reasons beyond the scope of this rant. And so, as befits the Grand Ironic Tradition we faithfully maintain here at Liberty’s Torch, I have far too much to write about. Worse, I must begin by reposting an old piece: one which first appeared fifteen …
Apr 17 2021
Pushing The Outside Of The Credibility Envelope
Courtesy of Weasel Zippers, we have this literally incredible story about Joe Biden’s “popularity:” Joe Biden approaches the 100-day mark of his presidency with a relatively strong job approval rating and the public continuing to express positive views of the coronavirus aid package passed by Congress last month. Moreover, nearly three-quarters of Americans …
Apr 16 2021
FLASH! Breaking News!
The super-secret investigators of Liberty’s Torch have made a shocking discovery. Anthony Fauci, for more than a year the federal government’s most recognizable face as regards all things COVID-19, has been revealed as a high executive of the Umbrella Corporation: RACCOON CITY: Earlier today, Anthony Fauci was overheard deep in conversation with Albert …
Apr 15 2021
Transitions In Thought
The history of human thought has not been one of monotonic advance. There have been times and places where material rationality — i.e., the use of the methods of the physical sciences to investigate the properties of the physical world – has attempted to supplant aspects of thought that those methods cannot address. One …
Apr 15 2021
Gazing Into The Abyss
If you’re not aware of Catholic moral theory – and even many Catholics aren’t fully aware of it – you might not have become acquainted with the “five non-negotiables” of the Catholic Church: i.e., the five subjects on which no alteration in doctrine will ever be contemplated: Abortion; Same-sex marriage; Embryonic stem-cell research; Euthanasia; …
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