Francis W. Porretto
Mount Sinai, NY USA
Author's posts
Apr 29 2023
Breadth Of Vision
He who decides to involve himself in politics, but without personal aspirations to public office, will often have a single motivating issue in mind. This is commonplace today, when so many subjects of public discourse are of intense interest to some but little or none to others. I’ve known several bright and articulate folks …
Apr 29 2023
This Is Who They Are And What They Do
…and why activist has become a dirty word: Perhaps activists on the Right behave better…but present trends continuing, I wouldn’t expect it to last.
Apr 29 2023
Forms Of Community Service
I found this gem at Kenny “Wirecutter” Lane’s site: [He] had a video rental store, that kept getting broken into, so he slept there for a couple nights. After about a week, someone broke in, a couple of 17 or 18 year olds. The story he told was that one of them grabbed …
Apr 28 2023
Inverting The Pyramid
The news is quite static this morning, so I thought I might spend some time musing about more abstract but potentially more important ideas. If you’re easily bored by such things, I recommend surfing over to Sunny Skyz. That would spend your next fifteen minutes more productively than reading my drivel. A great …
Apr 27 2023
Recent Revelations
“You still haven’t got over the idea that politicians are important because the newspapers tell you so.” – Sir Frederick Hoyle It’s become critical to our individual and social mental health that we draw a firm distinction between two categories of vermin. The first of these, the politician, runs for elective office. If …
Apr 26 2023
Great Men And Superheroes
If you attended high school around the same time as I did, you undoubtedly learned about the Great Man theory of history. For our younger Gentle Readers: The Great Man theory is a 19th-century idea according to which history can be largely explained by the impact of “great men”, or heroes: highly influential …
Apr 26 2023
The Really Important News Of The Day
We have it from the very top: WH press sec: "This week is Lesbian Visibility Week, and as the first openly queer person to hold the position of press secretary for the President of the United States, I see every day how important visibility and representation are." pic.twitter.com/ZDqtHz3I9i — The Post Millennial (@TPostMillennial) April …
Apr 25 2023
The Tucker Carlson Firing: One Possible Reason
While we’re doomed to be forever uncertain about the exact reason FOX News fired Tucker Carlson, I think we can adduce some of the ingredients. One that looms large for me, at least is this: The Right is forbidden to talk aboutEvilFrom a respected media perch. FOX News wasn’t always considered “respectable media.” …
Apr 25 2023
No Pretense
The “media megaphone” (William E. Simon) will no longer tolerate sharply dissenting voices: Now, for a Gentle Reader of Liberty’s Torch, this is “yesterday’s news” – literally. But Beck makes a connection that’s likely to have evaded even some of our most vigilant: the major automakers’ rumbling about no longer building AM radios …
Apr 24 2023
Day Off
As I’ve been neglecting my fiction, please allow me a day off from ranting at Liberty’s Torch. Rather than pontificate here, I must service my characters, at least sufficiently to quell any potential mutiny. (Some of them have been threatening to form a union.) So I’ll wish all our Gentle Readers a good day …
Apr 23 2023
A New Page
Yes, friends: the main portion of the site isn’t quite enough. To keep the “Baseline Essays” company, we now have a page dedicated to The LIS Codex. Surf on over and give it a look. You may find that you have something to add. The instructions for contributing are in the first portion.
Apr 23 2023
Horse Latitudes
[The following was first posted in September of 2003, at the old Palace of Reason. It appears as it did then, with one correction. Back then the subject of abortion was as contentious as it is today, owing to the election of a sincerely pro-life president. That always upsets the pro-abortion forces. The overturning …
Apr 22 2023
The New Banana Republic
David presents a tweet from Catturd, dated yesterday. It presents part of a speech by Glenn Beck: Everyone should listen to this – because it’s how we all feel right now. https://t.co/rE9qyAW1Gp — Catturd ™ (@catturd2) April 22, 2023 Yes, I certainly feel that way…but note: Beck delivered that speech in 2020. Here’s …
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 …
Apr 20 2023
It Won’t Go Away
“And what is good, Phædrus, and what is not good? Need we ask anyone to tell us these things?” – Plato, “Phaedrus” Among the seminal conceptions in human thought, there’s one that’s been mocked, parodied, railed against, and serially dismissed without ever losing its force. Repeated attempts to drain it of its power …
Apr 20 2023
Scott Adams Is Looking Pretty Damned Accurate
It can’t be fixed. Just get the BLEEP! away: On Tuesday, a 26-year-old Home Depot worker named Blake Mohs was shot dead while attempting to stop a shoplifter in the lawless state of California, just east of San Francisco. The suspects, 32-year-old Benicia Knapps and 31-year-old David Guillory, attempted to steal a …
Apr 20 2023
Maybe It Wasn’t 1984…
…but Animal Farm the Left chose for its instruction manual: Leftist protestors play music outside @MattWalshBlog’s speech with chants to “F*ck Matt Walsh” pic.twitter.com/DGGZRBgg4n — YAF (@yaf) April 20, 2023 Some Leftist idiot will eventually give the game away by bleating “Four legs good! Two legs bad!” at the top of his voice. …
Apr 19 2023
Whence The Barbarians?
I do hope you like quotes, because you’re about to get a lot of them: The day will come when a multitude of people will choose the legislature. Is it possible to doubt what sort of a legislature will be chosen? On the one side is a statesman preaching patience, respect for rights, …
Apr 19 2023
Wrong Turnings
Please don’t misinterpret what follows. I love my Church, despite my handful of disagreements with it. But now and then some of its notables go off the rails so dramatically that I’m compelled to take exception to it. The United States has a shortage of Catholic priests. Parishes from coast to coast find …
Apr 18 2023
Weasel Wordings
“A process cannot be understood by stopping it. Understanding must move with the flow of the process, must join it and flow with it.” — Frank Herbert When I see certain rhetorical formulations, I’m immediately alert to sententiousness that wishes to go unrecognized. One of those formulas is “no reasonable person.” What follows …
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