Francis W. Porretto
Mount Sinai, NY USA
Author's posts
Nov 08 2022
Piebald Nation, Magpie People
Well, it’s finally here: Election Day 2022. Until late this evening, those of us unwilling to break the law can know very little about what’s taking place. Unfortunately, there are quite a few who are willing to break the law. Whether they can cheat sufficiently to retain their grip on the federal Leviathan will …
Nov 08 2022
Site News 2022-11-08
If you’re a regular Gentle Reader of Liberty’s Torch, you may have noticed that we’ve had an outage here for about 18 hours. That was a consequence of a “port” of the site from a sluggish server to a better one by our Web host. The new server was apparently incompatible with some “plugin” …
Nov 07 2022
On The Eve: November 7, 2022
There’s too much to say, and not enough pixels in which to say it. But the Curmudgeon Emeritus to the World Wide Web has never yet quailed before a challenge. He’s not about to end his streak today. *** 1. “Rooting for Laundry.” First, a little Jerry Seinfeld: As a (lapsed) baseball …
Nov 06 2022
Frontiers In Incredulity
I’ve written before about the Usurpers’ employment of cognitive dissonance as a tactic for inducing paralysis in the populace. It appears that the powers behind the throne have decided that no lie is too extreme for their purposes: During a visit to California yesterday, President Biden gave a speech in which he made …
Nov 05 2022
Facing Reality
Many things have been said about reality. You might say it’s the most discussed subject of all time…and space…and matter and energy. But that’s neither here nor there…unless it’s both. An old gag, usually presented as part of a mock test called “Qualifying Exam,” includes as an “extra-credit question,” this chestnut: “Define the …
Nov 04 2022
The Ongoing Firestorm
Emily Oster’s saccharine-saturated column in The Atlantic, in which she argues – unpersuasively – for a “pandemic amnesty” has ignited a blaze that, so far, has refused to go out. Indeed, it seems to be mounting as the days count down to the midterm elections…and that’s a good thing. I’ve already said my …
Nov 03 2022
May I Or Mustn’t I?
On this third day of November in this Year of Our Lord 2022, I refuse to talk about the upcoming elections. I refuse to talk about the attempts to pre-anesthetize us about the massive, nationwide act of vote fraud we must anticipate. And I flatly refuse to talk about the whining for “pandemic amnesty.” …
Nov 02 2022
The Cogly Life
“I said it as soon as I got to Elbow: I’m a free man, I didn’t have to come here! . . . We always think it, and say it, but we don’t do it. We keep our initiative tucked away safe in our mind, like a room where we can come and say, …
Nov 01 2022
When Not To Forgive
This Atlantic article has stimulated quite a few jeers and raised middle fingers from us in the Right…and that, Gentle Reader, is entirely appropriate: We have to put these fights aside and declare a pandemic amnesty. We can leave out the willful purveyors of actual misinformation while forgiving the hard calls that people …
Oct 31 2022
Hold The Presses!
I was about to turn to other things when I saw this John Tierney article at City Journal. It made my day, and I’ll bet a dollar that it will make yours. Utopians almost never admit to error. Their moral self-exaltation forbids it. How would they continue to posture as morally superior to …
Oct 31 2022
Hypocrisy, 2022 Edition
First, a most striking quote from one of science fiction’s foremost practitioners: “You know, when I was a young man, hypocrisy was deemed the worst of vices,” Finkle-McGraw said. “It was all because of moral relativism. You see, in that sort of climate, you are not allowed to criticise others — after all, if …
Oct 30 2022
Capturing The Future
“Children are our future,” as the saying goes. It’s true enough. It’s equally true that a nation that disdains to produce children will have no future. Mark Steyn, in America Alone, tells us that “The future belongs to those who show up for it.” This is irrefutable. By implication, those who hate and …
Oct 30 2022
Early Morning Thought
Edgar Allan Poe used a Greek-mythology-inspired way of expressing the comforts of home, hearth, and spouse: Helen, thy beauty is to me Like those Nicean barks of yore, That gently, o’er a perfumed sea, The weary, wayworn wanderer bore To his own native shore. On desperate seas long wont to roam, Thy hyacinth hair, …
Oct 29 2022
Some Music
Sometimes a song about the loss of love can be a soothing thing: I doubt that there’s anyone of my age who hasn’t suffered at least one such loss. Don’t forget it or try to gloss it over. There’s value in there…as painful as the extraction can be.
Oct 29 2022
Rising Stars
It’s occurred to me recently that political ascension has come to require physical attractiveness, just as has pop stardom. We have a number of examples before us: Marjorie Taylor Greene, Lauren Boebert, Kari Lake, Herschel Walker, and Ron DeSantis come to mind at once. But while comeliness seems to have become necessary, it is …
Oct 29 2022
Conversations
Life really is getting too complicated for the average schlump: FWP: Say, you know those fancy plug-‘em-in massage chairs? The kind that cost three of four thousand dollars? CSO: Yeah… FWP: What do you do if yours breaks down? CSO: Hm. FWP: Do you think there’s an industry of massage chair repairers? CSO: I …
Oct 29 2022
Early Morning Thought
Glory be to God for dappled things – For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow; For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim; Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings; Landscape plotted and pieced – fold, fallow, and plough; And áll trádes, their gear and tackle and trim. All things …
Oct 28 2022
A Digital Transformation, Or Merely More Of The Same?
Yesterday’s closing of the deal, whereby Elon Musk became the owner of Twitter, was announced to its user base thus: I wanted to reach out personally to share my motivation in acquiring Twitter. There has been much speculation about why I bought Twitter and what I think about advertising. Most of it has …
Oct 27 2022
Desperation On The Anti-Free-Speech Front
This conference has raised something of a row: There’s mounting faculty opposition to an invitation-only, no-media-allowed academic freedom conference scheduled for next week at Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business. The conference, headlined by libertarian tech billionaire Peter Thiel and organized by the business school’s Classical Liberalism Initiative, has been criticized as pre-emptively …
Oct 27 2022
The Further Desiccation Of The Desiccated Remains
The late, great Clarence Carson wrote the following in 1964: [W]e are told that there is no need to fear the concentration of power in government so long as that power is checked by the electoral process. We are urged to believe that so long as we can express our disagreement in words, …
Fran’s Recent Novels
Margaret’s Recent Novels
