One of the tidbits of knowledge that I’ve gained recently is that Israel, for all you see their Soldiers walking around with guns at the beach, or at a pizza joint, has severe gun control throughout the country. That actually made me stop and scratch my head. A country of millions, surrounded by BILLIONS of …
Category: freedom
Oct 04 2023
The American Way to Resist
Courtesy of According to Hoyt. I’m inclined to think this method is uniquelyAmerican. ‘Course, I’m also descended from a LONG line of Americans of Scottish Appalachians, on my Daddy’s side. The term, cussed (pronounced Cuss-ed) applies to all of them. Stubborn, to a fault. I remember my Dad telling me of a relation of his …
Aug 25 2023
The Last Stand
Apparently, what’s been widely rumored is true: I listened to Sid Rosenberg on WOR radio [CBS NY], and he said he’s hearing that the masks, lockdowns, and other restrictions are returning. They are coming back. You must resist. They are changing America, and that includes taking your freedoms away. […] This …
Aug 24 2023
Targets And Guards
If you’re a longtime Gentle Reader, you’ve surely seen this Clarence Carson quote before: [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 …
Jul 12 2023
The Unattainable Country
Apologies in advance, Gentle Reader. If I were to demand absolute lexical accuracy of myself, the title would have been “The Unattainable Condition.” But I decided to cheat a bit, in the interests of “punch.” Everyone has his own conception of Utopia. No two are identical, which is why Robert Nozick’s gedankenexperiment at …
Jul 04 2023
On Non-Payment Of Premiums
Have a few quotes from the greatest of all Americans, the author of the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson: “The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions, that I wish it always to be kept alive.” “I hold it that a little rebellion now and then is a …
Jun 27 2023
The Great Retreat
What follows will be rather lengthy, I fear. So if you have other obligations that mustn’t be postponed for too long, please see to them before embroiling yourself in this piece. Among other things, it will embed quite a lot of citations from other, better known writers. As I know this displeases some readers, …
Apr 28 2023
Inverting The Pyramid
The news is quite static this morning, so I thought I might spend some time musing about more abstract but potentially more important ideas. If you’re easily bored by such things, I recommend surfing over to Sunny Skyz. That would spend your next fifteen minutes more productively than reading my drivel. A great …
Mar 11 2023
This Coin Called Freedom
No one can make a coin that has only one face. A coin will always have an obverse and a reverse. That property of coins has been used in rhetoric innumerable times. Yet among its implications is one that virtually no one has addressed: For all values of X: If you are free to …
Feb 22 2023
Freedom Of What?
I have a great admiration for the Founders of this nation. Many of them thought more deeply about political processes, especially the innate dynamic of governments to grow over time, than anyone who’s come since them. This morning I find myself reflecting on the wisdom of one in particular: the celebrated yet underappreciated Alexander …
Feb 07 2023
Smart Tactics
Clever tacticians know it: Strike the enemy at his weakest point. Believe it or not, that – not tanks, aerial warfare, or poison gas – was the biggest innovation that came out of World War I. Before that, nation armies would hurl themselves at one another’s strength, each hoping to destroy the another and …
Feb 04 2023
Can Freedom Be Individualized?
“Professor, I can’t understand you. I don’t insist that you call it ‘government’—I just want you to state what rules you think are necessary to insure equal freedom for all.” “Dear lady, I’ll happily accept your rules.” “But you don’t seem to want any rules!” “True. But I will accept any …
Jan 21 2023
Tirade #2
Stand back, Gentle Reader. This could get ugly. I’m about to vent. *** Mostly, I eschew watching videos of more than two or three minutes’ duration. I read very fast, and I much prefer to absorb information that way. Thus, the time spent watching a video is almost always several times what reading …
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 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 …
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 …
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, …
Sep 20 2022
My Horrifying Opinions
Time was, I studied the natural sciences: physics, chemistry, astronomy, geology, even a little meteorology. It’s not a program I recommend to anyone else. You see, it made me socially unacceptable. Stop looking so shocked! The study of the sciences equips the student with facts, and you should know that the possession of …
Aug 10 2022
Torch Song Elegy
I’m on an “Internet retreat” at the moment, in case you’ve been wondering where the interminable essays have gone. But I want to post a quick word before returning to my fiction labors. Perhaps it will serve to explain why I’ve absented myself. You don’t need me to read the news to you. …
Fran’s Recent Novels
Margaret’s Recent Novels
