Francis W. Porretto
Mount Sinai, NY USA
Author's posts
Feb 13 2021
Forked Tongues Dept.
I didn’t bother to watch any of the “debates” among the various Democrat aspirants to the 2020 presidential nomination. Thus I was unaware of much that took place in those exchanges that would later become items of controversy. Most recently, the following surfaced: Yes, Gentle Reader: Kamala Harris really did say all those …
Feb 12 2021
Turning It Around: The Prospects
Paper constitutions raise smiles on the faces of those who have observed their results; and paper social systems similarly affect those who have contemplated the available evidence. How little the men who wrought the French Revolution and were chiefly concerned in setting up the new governmental apparatus, dreamt that one of the early actions …
Feb 11 2021
We Really Can’t Help It…
…we humans have a hard time separating people’s personalities and characters from our opinions of the ideas they espouse. We tend to assess the validity of a Cause according to the strengths and weaknesses of those who promote it: their public conduct, their cumulative reputations, and whatever we can learn about their pasts. The …
Feb 11 2021
Ace Does It Again
Striking the jugular in a minimum of words is becoming his specialty: [O]nly the dishonest attempt to panic other people into making decisions. Please read the whole column. Now, Gentle Reader: Which side of the political spectrum has made a specialty of screaming that “There’s no time to waste!” and “We’ve got …
Feb 10 2021
Religion and Realism in Fiction
There’s “religious fiction,” of course. Everyone is aware of the “Left Behind” series, which despite its many flaws was widely read and applauded. We also have the works of writers such as C. S. Lewis, Taylor Caldwell, Frank Peretti, Ted Dekker, Karen Kingsbury, and others. Their novels are explicitly religious, almost polemic about the …
Feb 09 2021
Too Important Not To Publicize
“When a man shows you who he is, believe him.” – Maya Angelou Here is Massachusetts’ Undersecretary for Climate Change David Ismay, showing you exactly who and what he is: a totalitarian who would rather that we freeze to death, and sacrifice forever the power to go where we please, when we please, …
Feb 09 2021
The Sacrament Of The Hour
For a long time, I’ve referred to abortion as “the sacrament of the Left.” Having an abortion, or having had one in the past, is one of the ways a woman establishes her bona fides as a trustworthy (?) leftist. (Men who are responsible for pregnancies terminated via abortion receive a “derived” form of …
Feb 08 2021
Marginalia 2021-02-08
1. Missings. Just about the only way to know how important something, or some activity, really is to you is to go without it for awhile. The C.S.O. and I were once pro-football addicts. Sunday during the NFL season, we would watch at least two, and more often than not three games. It …
Feb 06 2021
“Where Do You Get Your Ideas?”
If you write fiction, it’s inevitable that you’ll be asked the title question. I’ve faced it innumerable times. Typically, it will come after a forlorn announcement by the questioner that “I’d love to write, but I can’t seem to come up with any ideas.” The questionee – that’s you – will be tried to …
Feb 05 2021
Learning To Live With It
The following snippet is from Robert A. Heinlein’s early novel The Puppet Masters: I dialed for him, and told him about the success of the experiments with the apes. He nodded. “Yes, I had heard. Sounds good.” ” ‘Good’, the man says! Colonel, we are on the one yard line and goal …
Feb 04 2021
Hard Truth
I’ve long been an admirer of Ace of Spades HQ and its eponymous proprietor. Ace has a gift for the penetrating phrase, the ultimately concise expression of an important truth. Just yesterday, he fired off one that’s probably his best ever. No, I’m not going to present it baldly; it must be contextualized for …
Feb 03 2021
Moral Agents And Leftist Strategy
I slept late this morning – that’s right, I snored on until the unGodly late hour of 4:30 AM — so I’m a bit behind on my news-reading. Nevertheless, our favorite Bookworm’s latest piece has stirred my mental cauldron, and I must “write it out” before it can divert me from my other duties. …
Feb 02 2021
The Ethic Of The Left
Shamelessly stolen from 90 Miles From Tyranny: In what way is this incorrect? Indeed, the game-show metaphor could be extended: one contestant could cause another to lose points by calling him a fascist, a racist, or (gasp!) a Trump supporter. Hasn’t that happened often enough – and on network television, at that? …
Feb 01 2021
Question Thou Not!
When the Left has power, even inquiring into its practices is deemed unacceptable, unconscionable, indefensible…almost (though for the moment, not quite) illegal. The intensity of the Left’s counterblast varies directly with how far from the American norm the practice at issue lies. Critical race theory, which purports to indict and convict (without trial) …
Jan 31 2021
The Believable Hero
Recently, the C.S.O. and I have been enjoying John Nettles’s old Bergerac series. Nettles’s intrepid detective Jim Bergerac, a sergeant in Jersey’s Bureau des Etranges, is a classical hero figure. He gets into any number of personal scrapes, including with his superior, his ex-wife, a succession of ladyfriends, and the rich elite of that …
Jan 30 2021
The Real Plague
New York State has suffered badly under the House of Cuomo. Emperor Mario was disastrous. I was glad to see him go even if his replacement was a centrist wimp. But Mario’s son Andrew is deadly and doesn’t care who knows it: What’s that you say, Andrew? It sounded a lot like this: …
Jan 29 2021
Tipping Points Journal
Many have asked, as America slides down the generously Vaselined slope toward totalitarianism, just “where the tipping point is.” That is: What incursion on Americans’ rights would – or will – provoke actual armed insurrection aimed at reestablishing Constitutionally limited government? Time was, the most widely agreed such point was a major incursion …
Jan 28 2021
How Do I Detest WordPress? Let Me Count The Ways…
Approximately 538 trillion people, aware that I was relocating from Blogger, have: Exhorted me to use WordPress; Assured me that “You’re going to love it.” That group includes (of course) Mike Hendrix, whose assistance in creating this blog was invaluable. You could say Mike is a WordPress fan. He assumed that I would take to …
Fran’s Recent Novels
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