Francis W. Porretto
Mount Sinai, NY USA
Author's posts
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 …
Nov 29 2022
Perhaps The Truth Really Will Set Us Free
The Twitter Files on free speech suppression soon to be published on Twitter itself. The public deserves to know what really happened … — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 28, 2022 Initially, I was dubious about the relative importance of Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter. However, the above suggests that Twitter and its deliberate suppression …
Nov 28 2022
Perspectives
One of my favorite Catholic writers is the late Venerable Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen: Venerable Fulton John Sheen (born Peter John Sheen, May 8, 1895 – December 9, 1979) was an American bishop (later archbishop) of the Catholic Church known for his preaching and especially his work on television and radio. His cause for …
Nov 27 2022
The Adventure Of Love
A number of my fiction readers have commented that the romances I write are “different.” Well, I should hope so. Why write what everyone else is writing? Why not follow a unique path that persons bored with “the same old thing” can use for their refreshment? All the same, it raises the question of …
Nov 27 2022
Conversations
From the “Questions No One Is Asking” division: FWP: What do you think would happen if a jug band were to appear for a scheduled concert without its jug? Say if it was broken in an accident on the way over? CSO: Horror of horrors! FWP: Well, yes, but would the show go on? …
Nov 26 2022
A Thought-Provoking Observation
Equality before the law only extends as far as does the law itself. In matters not subject to the purview of the law, we are entirely unequal. We are unequal in status, in general approbation, in intelligence, in ability, in social standing, in wealth, and in many other ways. There’s no getting around this; …
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