This one isn’t for the regular Gentle Readers of Liberty’s Torch. It’s for the new visitors, the drop-ins who were recently guided here by a link or arrived by surprise, and are wondering what’s beneath our sarcastic-but-serious “schtick.” One such visitor just wrote to me thus: “I like what I’ve read so far, but …
Category: conservatism
May 08 2024
Trends
I spend very little time with other people – the C.S.O. excepted – and none in groups larger than four persons. (Willingly, that is.) So I tend to be late-to-press with social trends. In the main, that doesn’t trouble me. What use has an isolate for social trends? He’s not terribly likely to adopt …
Dec 07 2023
The Unreasonable
Clever title, eh? Gets the brain churning, doesn’t it? “The unreasonable who?” “The unreasonable what?” “Porretto’s playing games again, isn’t he?” (“Again,” you say? When did I stop?) Well, it’s all in a day’s work here at the Fortress of Crankitude, Long Island’s premier shrine to self-indulgent snark over too many glasses …
Dec 01 2023
Apostate Glimpses A Critical Truth
It cannot be said too often: Leftism, whether it goes by “liberalism,” “progressivism,” “socialism,” or outright “communism,” is a religious faith. As with most faiths, believers regard apostates as the worst of evils: The reasons are several, but paramount among them is this one: the Leftist regards his faith as a badge of …
Sep 27 2023
A Good And Worthy Metamorphosis
Tucker Carlson, since leaving Fox News, has become one of American conservatism’s brightest lights. Consider his recent statement on abortion: Carlson noted that human sacrifice, ritual child sacrifice in particular, “rears its head about every four chapters. … Of all the sins the ancients committed, that sin, every single time it’s described, is …
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 …
Oct 22 2022
Conservatism And The Present Age
Among the things that are absolutely essential to progress – regardless of what sort of progress we’re talking about — the recognition and correction of mistakes is paramount. Human knowledge is like a single vector in a disordered field. To arrive at it involves eliminating all the alternatives to that one true magnitude and …
Sep 11 2022
What Endures?
A different sort of reflection today. Current events combine horror and mind-numbing sameness in equal measure. If I were somehow confined to talking about politics, policy, and current events today, I’d give up talking. I’d rather cut my lawn with a cuticle scissors. In his essay of this morning, Roger Kimball announces a …
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