Francis W. Porretto
Mount Sinai, NY USA
Author's posts
Dec 12 2022
Identity, Attribution, And Affiliation: Some Thoughts
Apologies, Gentle Reader, but the immortal words of Becker and Fagin,in I’m about to do it again: My self-imposed exile wasn’t for any particular purpose. Maybe it served one even so. —No maybes about it, Al. You are not who or what you were. You’re far more. Some of it is invisible …
Dec 11 2022
TITS Up!
Here we are: Gaudete Sunday, when Advent transforms from a season of spiritual preparation to an anticipation of joy. We’ve been here before, we Christians. We know the Savior is coming. We know that He will be born of a virgin in a rude stable, placed in repose in a manger surrounded by animals; …
Dec 10 2022
“Why Is He Sitting Alone?” A Meditation On Political Affiliation
“Anarchists’ rally disorganized. Film at eleven!” – old gag Have you ever gone to a restaurant for lunch or dinner and seen someone sitting at a table entirely alone? Did you watch him surreptitiously, certain that at any moment his companion – spouse, friend, child, lawyer, what have you – would emerge from …
Dec 09 2022
Errors Eternally Embarrass Everyone Erroneous Everywhere
Yes, I enjoy alliterations. What of it? The thing public figures least like to do is admit to error. They regard being compelled to say “I was wrong” about as warmly as a public bowel movement. Thus it doesn’t happen often. The best known occasion in history – Anwar Sadat’s admission that the …
Dec 08 2022
A Word I Hate To Use…
…is slowly but inexorably forcing its way into my vocabulary. And no, it’s not should. Let’s spend a few moments on the incentive structure of retailing. For simplicity, let’s focus on a merchant who buys all his stock-in-trade from others, and attempts to sell it at a profit sufficient to be worth his …
Dec 07 2022
Competence Deemed Racist!
Seems like it, anyway: In 2019, we decided to host anti-racism events in white women’s dining rooms for one specific reason: To turn the age-old adage, “it’s rude to talk about politics at the dinner table” on its head. This is what we’ve learned—if you don’t talk about racism, you can’t dismantle …
Dec 07 2022
The Signs Point To The Return Of…A Sign
We all remember what happened to Sweet Cakes By Melissa, Jack Phillips’s Masterpiece Cakeshop, and Memories Pizza in Indiana. Those are recent enough that the names are practically self-explanatory. But soft! What fresh contretemps through yonder website breaks? A Virginia-based conservative Christian advocacy group was turned away from a local restaurant just an …
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. …
Dec 07 2022
An Early Morning Thought
What the statistics tell us, quite clearly, is that when it comes to rates of violent crimes and crimes against property, demographics matters, while the legal availability of firearms does not. Where there are large numbers of persons predisposed to ignore the laws, the laws – including laws about firearms acquisition – are more …
Dec 06 2022
Largely Personal Scatterings
I’m in a strange place this morning, for miscellaneous reasons some of which might become evident as you proceed, Gentle Reader. I don’t have a coherent subject in mind just now, as is usually the case when I light off on a piece for Liberty’s Torch. All the same, I feel the usual (for …
Dec 05 2022
“Freedom: I Won’t!”
This will be an extremely trying day here at the Fortress, for doggie reasons: our Newf must go back under the knife yet again, this time to correct a dangerous abdominal hernia. So I doubt I’ll be posting anything much. Accordingly, I’d like to recommend that anyone who hasn’t yet read Eric Frank …
Dec 04 2022
Apparently “No Law Abridging” Cannot Mean No Law Abridging
“I have always read ‘no law abridging’ to mean no law abridging.’” – Associate Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black Time was, Black was regarded as a jurisprudential giant, especially by liberals. Of course, we don’t really have liberals any longer; they’ve been swallowed up by the “progressives.” You know, the political creed that’s …
Dec 04 2022
A Light In The Darkness
Quoth Neil Oliver: I love Christmas … always have and always will. In every conceivable way, Christmas is light in a time of darkness and for many of us, that light has never been more welcome and so can’t come soon enough. Especially since the festival is once again under attack by …
Dec 04 2022
More Than Coincidence?
Maine is also a Constitutional-carry state. No permit required, though I think the state will issue you one on request, for use in other states that observe reciprocity. Considerate, eh?
Dec 03 2022
Yesterday Was Newsworthy
And for more reasons than one. 1. The Twitter News. Elon Musk has made good on his promise. I hardly need tell my intelligent, observant, highly skeptical, exceedingly handsome Gentle Readers what I mean by that. Despite the flood of revelations he’s provided through journalist Matt Taibbi, there remains enough ambiguity for any …
Dec 02 2022
Musk And The Censors
“There was a time when men were afraid that somebody would reveal some secret of theirs that was unknown to their fellows. Nowadays, they’re afraid that somebody will name what everybody knows. Have you practical people ever thought that that’s all it would take to blast your whole, big, complex structure, with all your …
Dec 01 2022
Meaning What?
It’s time for another tirade on clarity in expression. Let’s start with a little George Orwell: [O]ne ought to recognize that the present political chaos is connected with the decay of language, and that one can probably bring about some improvement by starting at the verbal end.… Political language — and with variations …
Nov 30 2022
The Triad, The Dyad, And The Monad
If you’re aware that there is a school of philosophy that rigidly separates “real” things from men’s experiences of them, you’re a rare individual, and I commend you. If you’re aware that the promotion of that dichotomy has engendered some of the fiercest disputes in the history of philosophy, you’re an even rarer individual, …
Nov 30 2022
The Fish Rots From The Head
…but in time the decay will reach the whole of the corpus: [Wil] Wilkins has called Montana home for more than 40 years. He bought his property, just over nine acres adjacent to the Bitterroot National Forest, in 2004. When he bought the property, surrounded by pine trees and with plentiful birds and …
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 …
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