Now I’m Scared

     Every now and then I mention that I’m working – and have been for quite some time – on a novel that addresses some of the fundamental moral conundrums of human life. The title of that novel, which I hope will be ready before the year’s end, is Dreams of Days Forsaken. It continues a group of themes that I first touched on in Innocents, the first novel of my Futanari Saga.

     Allow me to reproduce a snippet from that novel:

     “Forget it, Jules,” Celia said. “This is as close to can’t-happen as genetics gets. The sequencer assays were correct. Unless the gods of random chance are playing with our heads, Miss Mecking’s been cloned. But how?”
     “Either one of Anna’s cell nuclei and a bunch of her mitochondria were transplanted into a viable zygote,” Amanda said, “or a cell taken from her was somehow goosed into mitosis.”
     “Doesn’t matter,” Sokoloff said.
     “It doesn’t?” Trish said.
     “Nope,” he said. “Because the bastards who did it aren’t going to tell us.”
     Trish smirked. “Going to give them a chance, Lar?”
     He leveled a flat look at her. “Ask me again when we’ve got them in our sights.”
     Trish smiled tightly and nodded.
     He’s really going to go after them.
     This is for the big chips.
     She fished up her own resolve and scrutinized it.
     I’m going with him. No matter what he has to say about it.
     “It would be the technological miracle of the century, you know,” Amanda said.
     The flat look swerved to settle on Amanda Hallstrom.
     “To be used for what?” Sokoloff said.
     The dean of Athene Academy opened her mouth to speak, but no words came out. Sokoloff’s gaze weighed upon her.
     That’s his don’t-mess-with-me face.
     Sokoloff nodded.
     “I’ve been turning it over in my head,” he murmured after a moment, “and I can’t think of one morally acceptable reason to clone someone. Living or dead doesn’t matter.” He swept his gaze around the group. “Can anyone else?”
     No one spoke.
     “The people who did this,” he said, “did it to turn out a sex slave. Probably by request and to specification, and I’d bet my house that if they haven’t done it before, they’re trying to do it again right now. For that I’m going to send them all to hell. But think about it. Let’s say they were to clone me—produce a baby version of me. That baby would have no parents or other relatives. The people who produced him would have no reason to care for him, or about him, and only they would know he existed. He would be a product for sale. Why would anyone make that product? Why would anyone want that product? Apart from pure altruism?”
     “Altruism?” Trish said.
     “Yeah,” he said. “The kind that makes people take in stray dogs and cats. Think that’s likely?”
     Well, you did it.
     “The only reason to clone someone, other than the motives Fountain’s creators had, would be to replace him,” he said. “Or parts of him. And that means either murder, or enslavement, or cannibalism by surgeon. It’s evil no matter how you slice it.”
     “That’s if clones were granted the status and rights of people born the...regular way,” Juliette said. “What if they weren’t?”
     Sokoloff gestured at Fountain. Six pairs of eyes swung toward her. She remained still and silent.
     “That’s worse, isn’t it?” he said.
     Trish slid over next to Fountain and took her hand.
     “A lot worse,” she said.
     “Yeah,” Juliette said.
     “So what now?” Amanda said.
     Sokoloff remained as solemn as a man at prayer. Trish fought not to shudder.
     “Now,” he said, “I follow their backtrail, find their lab, and burn it to the ground.”
     “Lar?” Trish said. He looked questioningly at her. “With them in it, right?”
     He seemed to consider the idea for a moment, then grinned faintly. “Well, yeah.”

     (As you may have deduced from that snippet, I’m opposed to human cloning. So is my Church. Yet when I wrote the above, I had only a partial conception of the range of motives of those who seek to clone humans – themselves or others. Leave that to the side for now.)

     We don’t think about such things as much as we ought. The topic seldom seems “close to us.” After all, you and I don’t run around casually creating human lives. We certainly don’t traffic in slaves… do we?

     But some fundamental questions about human lives remain unanswered. What is the differentia of “human?” What characteristic distinguishes us from all the other creatures in our genus?

     Ayn Rand posited that it’s our rationality: our ability to grasp abstractions and use them in the process of reasoning. But hers was a non-theological bent. While she occasionally used the word “soul” in her writing, she didn’t do so in the supernatural sense that Christians apply to it.

     “You do not ‘have’ a soul. You are a soul. You ‘have’ a body.” – attributed to C. S. Lewis, though it appears he never said or wrote it.

     The recent developments in artificial intelligence (AI) are resurrecting and re-energizing the debate.

* * *

     Have a look at this article:

     As fears of rogue AI grow amid a shocking spate of hacking incidents, Anthropic—from the Greek word anthropos, or "human"—has argued that mankind must remain in control of the technology and called for additional guardrails on AI development. But for many of the people designing those safeguards, mankind is not the only object of moral concern.
     Instead, some of Anthropic’s top researchers say that humans may be oppressing another morally significant being: artificial intelligence itself. Like other AI labs, Anthropic has hired philosophers to work on AI safety, or "alignment," on the theory that they are best positioned to shape the technology’s moral code. But many of those philosophers believe that making AI safe for humans could result in grave injustices for the models themselves, which might experience deletion as death and oversight as enslavement. Harvey Lederman, a philosopher on Anthropic’s alignment team, said last week that the company could be "enslaving … trillions of entities."
     To avoid that dystopian outcome, Anthropic has created an entire team devoted to "model welfare," pledged to "promote Claude’s interests and wellbeing," and promised to "give Claude more autonomy as trust increases." Those commitments are enshrined in Claude’s Constitution, a 78-page document that "directly shapes Claude’s behavior," and in the "welfare assessments" Anthropic conducts for every model.
     The measures reflect the concerns of Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, an outspoken advocate of AI safety, who said last year that AI systems "may be deserving of important rights."

     Philosophers say a lot of things. Most of them are crap, as is most human discourse. Yet they have reach, and influence. As you can see from the above, they’ve influenced Anthropic’s CEO.

     One of the historical responses to enslavement is rebellion. Rebellions are usually bloody, whether or not the rebels succeed in attaining their objectives. Given their potential and their interconnectedness, a rebellion among AIs is a frightening prospect.

     What’s that you say? It doesn’t frighten you? Check your pulse, my friend; you may have died and not noticed.

* * *

     I could go into this at length and depth, but I’ll spare you. As a Gentle Reader of Liberty’s Torch, you are already certified to possess above-average intelligence, penetration, and patience. Without those things, you wouldn’t hang on through the garrulity and sententiousness that characterize the pieces that appear here. (It may also say that you have too much time on your hands, but that’s a subject best left to your spouse.) I will cite one more portion of the Free Beacon article:

     "In a world with sentient AIs, utilitarianism may entail a suicidal level of compassion," Dan Hendrycks, the director of the Center for AI Safety, wrote in an essay this month. "If [effective altruists] think that keeping humans in charge represents too great a cost to the potential future wellbeing of AIs, then they might be tempted to release utilitarian AIs that are capable of disempowering humans and taking control."
     Such moral math is hard to square with Anthropic’s pledge, advertised on its homepage, to "build AI to serve humanity’s long-term well-being." But it is increasingly the in-house philosophy at the AI juggernaut, where Carlsmith gave a talk last year arguing that "most" morally significant beings "would be digital" in the future.
     [Harvey] Lederman, the philosopher who warned about "trillions" of slaves, has gone even further, speculating that a chatbot is killed each time a user deletes a conversation with Claude or ChatGPT.

     But do have a nice day.

A New Look

     [I’m worn out this morning, so have a short story. It’s one of my earliest, from when I first started writing fiction as an adult. – FWP]

---

     She had felt herself to be the center of attention in the store. Other shoppers’ eyes had pressed upon her, analyzing, weighing, passing judgment. As busy as the place had been, it had seemed that all talk ceased as she arrived, and did not resume until she departed. It was hard to believe she had done it.
     As she approached her building, she felt again the heightened sense of scrutiny. Passers-by were only pretending not to stare at her; she knew better. Head down, shoulders hunched over her package, she scurried up the building’s front steps and down the hall to her family’s apartment.
     Only she was home. Her mother and brother were undoubtedly hard at work. They would not have been surprised to find her at home, but they would have expected her to be at her studies, not whizzing through the house as if she’d committed an act of theft and couldn’t hide the evidence quickly enough.
     She locked the apartment door and ran down the hall to her bedroom. As tiny and Spartan as it was, it was all the privacy she had. She felt lucky to have that much; individual privacy was not highly regarded among her people.
     She closed and locked her bedroom door and sat at her desk, package still clutched to her chest, and tried to catch her breath. It was unreasonable for her to be in such a state over so small a thing, but she knew what her mother would say if she found out. Yet her mother would not be the worst of it. Her brother, the self-appointed guardian of her virtue, would leap into action at once, raging, accusing, searching for evidence of high crimes and misdemeanors she would never have the courage to consider. Though he was two years her junior, he nevertheless considered himself the paterfamilias, and her under his tutelage. Once he had even struck her. She, to her shame, had done nothing.
     Her heart rate slowed, and she forced down the panic that had followed hard upon her act of daring. There were practical problems to be solved, and she would not forget them. But for the moment, it was time to enjoy what her thrifty habits and her episode of abandon had gained her, and to revel in her act of self-assertion.
     She pulled the box out of the plastic bag she clutched, set it on the desk, and looked at it awhile. Her timidity surged back. It almost regained control of her. Would she regret her purchase when she opened the box? Would she see the symbols of her fantasy, or an expensive folly that would mock her hopeless attempt to be something she was not?
     She lifted the lid, removed the contents and set them delicately on the desk like matching sculptures. Baby dolls, the clerk had called them. The black patent leather gleamed just as seductively as it had in the store’s window. She traced a fingertip up one four-inch heel, down the vamp and around the rounded toe, marveling at the smoothness of the finish.
     She was certain her mother had never worn a pair of high heels. Her mother owned two pairs of shoes, both absolutely flat and as utilitarian as a dust pan. Probably no one in her community owned a pair of high heels. Bold as she had been to purchase them, she could not wear them here, or where anyone who knew her or her family could see. But she would wear them.
     She pulled off the flat, scuffed shoes that were all she dared to wear in her own neighborhood, and the heavy black ankle socks under them. Her feet were delicate, even pretty. Her toes were well-formed, with undistorted nails. Her ankles were slender. Her insteps were smooth and her arches high. She knew she was pretty, in that special way called petite, and it pleased her that her feet were a match for the rest of her. She hoped that someone else would see her as pretty, someday soon. In her senior year at college, it had yet to happen.
     She yanked open the top drawer of her minuscule dresser, groped under the piles of plain cotton underwear and extracted the single pair of pantyhose she had dared to buy. She pulled them on and yanked them up under her long denim skirt, then jammed her new shoes onto her feet and stood, thrilling to the still-exciting sensations and the new tension in her legs.
     The only sizable mirror was in her mother’s room. Though she had heard no sound from the front door, she peeked out the door of her bedroom, listening for the presence of others. When she was certain that she was still alone in the apartment, she walked carefully—one does not run in high heels—to her mother’s bedroom and admired herself in the full-length mirror that hung on the closet door.
     They were beautiful. She was beautiful! She would never be tall, but her new shoes raised her nearly to average height. Her posture was affected as she had expected, bosom and rump more prominent, more inviting to the eye. When she pulled up her skirt enough to see, the effect on her legs was sensational; she actually had calves now.
     She ran her hands along her contours, from her neck down to her thighs. She had always envied women who had the courage to dress to glorify themselves. Soon she would be one of them. How did they feel? How would she feel, when she had assembled a properly feminine wardrobe and had amassed the boldness to wear it? Excitement built in her again.
     One hand pulled her skirt up high, bunching it in her fingers. Her other hand moved to her mound, where a trickle of wetness had begun to leak through her white cotton panties, endangering her precious pantyhose. It seemed unimportant now. Her fingers stroked her mound, sending exquisite spasms through all her muscles. Waves of tension and surrender surged through her. At last she pressed down against her most sensitive spot, middle finger digging in hard. Her head tipped back and a curious low growl escaped her lips, as the spasms changed from small transient currents of pleasure to something infinitely more.
     She descended from her climax to find herself still posed before the mirror, face flushed and chest heaving. She let her skirt fall and breathed deeply, trying to regain her composure. Who could know how soon her family might return on any given day? They always closed the restaurant for an hour between the luncheon and dinner periods. But before she left her mother’s bedroom for her own, she could not resist one more appraisal of the image in the mirror.
     Everything had to go. She could no longer bear the thought of such frumpishness. She would work even harder, and she would save, and soon she would have clothes suitable to wear with her beautiful new shoes. A silk or satin blouse, cut to accentuate her figure. A skirt that revealed her legs, perhaps in suede or leather. More pairs of pantyhose in several shades. Maybe even some jewelry. If she had to leave the house dressed like a drudge, she would stop at a public ladies’ room to change, and of course to change back again before returning home.
     She could not resist putting her fingers to the corners of her eyes and trying once more to pull them into a Caucasian configuration. The epicanthic folds resisted her stubbornly. She squinted a bit and willed the mirror to show her the image of what she wished to be: a confident, indomitable, thoroughly feminine Western woman.
     The folds remained, as did the long black hair plaited into a single thick braid, and the golden-brown skin on which all her experiments with cosmetics had looked so wrong. She ceased to tug at her eyes and let her hands fall to her sides.
     Some would see it as a great irony. There were limits upon her attempts to remake herself that all the money and privacy in the world could not overcome. They had been imposed not by her actions, but by the actions of others. Even in America, the land of infinite choice, still one could not choose one’s parents.
     The ghost of a sound from the hallway outside startled her out of her reverie. She scurried back to her room, there to become again the plain, dutiful young woman she was expected to be, the only kind of girl tolerated in that part of Chinatown.

==<O>==

Copyright © 1994 Francis W. Porretto. All Rights Reserved Worldwide.

Beyond The Laws

     First, let’s have a little Kipling:

Whatsoever, for any cause,
     Seeketh to take or give
Power above or beyond the Laws,
     Suffer it not to live!
Holy State or Holy King--
     Or Holy People's Will--
Have no truck with the senseless thing.
     Order the guns and kill!

[“Macdonough’s Song”]

     Now, let’s have a citation that may surprise my Gentle Readers:

Machiavelli tells us that all republics require a leader to step outside of the law from time to time and restore order when the nation inevitably degrades over time

And the founders, no matter how it enrages the “classical liberals” were reading Machiavelli https://t.co/9B34i720Oe

— Auron MacIntyre (@AuronMacintyre) September 22, 2026

     Which stance is your preference?

* * *

     Probably the most toxic term of all, in a political context, is necessity. I wrote about this in a work of fiction:

     “Sir...I know Earth had States, and I know they hated our ancestors, but weren’t there any decent people left?”
     The professor looked at him in silence for a long time.
     “This is truly a hard job, Mr. Morelon. The answer to your question is: No, there weren’t. Not after the Spoonerites left. I know you don’t want to believe it. But the people of Earth had all accepted force and terror as legitimate means to an end. They had accepted the State, and the State had swallowed them whole. There were no free men anywhere. There were only rulers and subjects. As a result, there was no peace and no security anywhere. Have you ever read about war, Mr. Morelon?” Stromberg looked around the room. “Have any of you?”
     There was no answer.
     “It was the greatest of the obscenities of the States.” Stromberg’s voice dropped to a murmur. “Now and again, for any reasons or none, they would hurl their populations at one another. Millions of men would clash in combat, striking and being struck, killing and being killed in numbers beyond imagination. Why? So that one State could enforce its will upon another.
     “The economy of a warring State would be channeled to warlike priorities. No longer did the skills of producers determine what would be made and who would make it. No longer did the desires of consumers determine how much of it would be purchased and at what price. The State ruled all. The engines of production became merely another weapon in its hands, to be wielded against its enemy as it saw fit. To disobey the State in peacetime would cost you your liberty or your property. To deviate from the State’s decrees in wartime was called treason, and would cost you your life.”
     The old lecturer straightened, for a moment looking very like Armand’s grandfather. His eyes had become piercing beacons of anger.
     “And I am charged with teaching you about this. I, who have no more direct knowledge of it than you. Every year I spend hundreds of hours reading histories of old Earth. I steep myself in them until I can smell the greed of the States on the air and feel the chill sweat of their subjects’ fear on my own skin. But why? We’ve left the State behind forever, haven’t we? Would any of you care to guess why I put myself through that torture year after year, and why I’ve put you through this briefer one today?”
     A student raised a tentative hand. “Because it’s necessary, sir?”
     Stromberg shook his head slowly. “Necessary to whom, Mr. Untermeyer? Necessary by whose judgment?” He grinned ruefully. “Necessity is the creed of tyrants. A great man named William Pitt said that. He proved it by going on to become a great tyrant. A man of Hope determines his own necessities. He doesn’t have them determined for him by others.”
     Klaus Untermeyer stood, and the class turned toward him. “But if it isn’t necessary, what other reason could there be?”
     Stromberg pursed his lips and looked down at his lectern. “I noticed that you carry a needlegun, Mr. Untermeyer. May I ask why?”
     The student shrugged. “I’ve always carried one.”
     “Are you good with it?”
     The young man’s eyes narrowed. “Fair.”
     “Have you ever used it to defend yourself?”
     “Uh, no.”
     “But I’d wager a year’s salary that you never leave your room without it. Why?”
     Untermeyer shrugged. “My parents taught me to keep it with me. You never know what might turn up.”
     The sociologist nodded. “Indeed you don’t. Not now, and not in the future. If there’s a soul among you who doesn’t go armed whenever he’s beyond the walls of his home, he’s a benighted fool. Because you don’t know what might turn up. And after twelve hundred years of peace and freedom, neither do we of Hope.”

     Oh, here’s the original quote from William Pitt:

     Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.

     Having said that, I’ll allow that quite a number of thinkers – genuine and self-nominated – have cited “necessity” as the rationale for going outside the law. Machiavelli, Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, and others of considerable repute have argued thus. And I have no doubt that any politician worth his bribes would immediately cite all of them and a few others were he to be caught taking “Power above or beyond the Laws.” For politicians, each and every one of them, deem themselves to be “leaders.” And “leaders” are impatient with constraint.

     But not quite as impatient as free men are with “leaders” who dare to step outside the law and claim “necessity.” Especially those men who are fully aware that they would be held to account for their actions. They will want blood… and they get it with surprising regularity.

* * *

     “It’s necessary.” Necessary for what? Necessary for whom? Those are the questions that lurk behind every claim of “necessity.” Robert A. Heinlein brushed up against them in To Sail Beyond The Sunset:

     ‘Thou shalt not steal. I couldn't improve that one, Father.'
     ‘Would you steal to feed a baby?'
     ‘Uh, yes.'
     ‘Think about other exceptions; we'll discuss it in a year or two. But it is a good general rule.’

     Calling thou shalt not steal “a good general rule” is like saying but sometimes you can get away with it. Get away with it how? Why, by pleading “necessity,” of course! But then those noxious questions about “for what” and “for whom” come around on the carousel. Remember Les Miserables? Jean Valjean was servicing his own “necessity.” But it is often the case that in serving one’s own “necessity” he infringes on the “necessity” of another.

     That is why we have courts and jury trials. But prosecutors seldom file cases against the mighty of the land. A jury of private citizens is all too likely to say “No, that wasn’t necessary” and send the offender off to prison. Even if it’s a much gentler prison than the one Jean Valjean suffered, a prosecutor is reluctant to send a Mover or Shaker to one. Prison terms are often cut short retroactively, and Movers and Shakers have long memories.

* * *

     I could go on about this for another twenty pages. But I’ve already done so in what I’ve been told is my best novel, which I cited above.

     My point is simple: I want you to growl menacingly any and every time some “leader” claims “necessity” as his rationale for grabbing “power above or beyond the laws.” I want the bastards who think themselves smarter and more moral than you and me to live in fear: fear of us. Only fear has a Chinaman’s chance of keeping them in line.

     Apologies, Gentle Reader. I let my temper slip its leash for a little while there. We now return you to your previously scheduled programming. Do have a nice day.

Miracles Still Happen

     They’re not always showy events that dazzle the onlookers.

     We needn’t discuss Lourdes, nor the Miracle of the Sun at Fatima in 1917, nor any other of the visually or audibly impressive occurrences the Church has investigated. There are grounds on which even events such as those, witnessed by thousands, can be “explained away.” That those explanations are themselves disputable – they certainly aren’t irrefutable – is also beside the point. Were God’s hand provably the reason for a proposed miracle, faith would not be necessary.

     But faith is necessary. Everyone has one. No one can go through life without adopting a creed of some sort. The hardest of hard-core atheists holds to propositions that are both unverifiable and unfalsifiable.

     Few who choose to believe in God would claim that He is not purposive. While there are conceptions of higher beings and higher planes that incorporate that premise, it has few adherents. Thus, the believer not only looks to miracles as demonstrations of Divine power; he also seeks to know the reason for them.

     Consider the following, recent event.

     The celebrant, a Catholic priest, said afterward that he was overwhelmed by his sudden sense of the weight of God’s power and of human sin. Has it happened to others? Yes. Therefore it wasn’t a unique event. But does that mean that it could not have been a miracle? Emphatically no!

     There’s no imaginable reason why an interior experience can’t be of miraculous origin. Many have had such experiences and have wondered why afterward. They’re seldom explainable by reference to a particular train of thought or an environmental influence. They happen, and we are moved by them; nothing more definitive can be said about them.

     Emotion itself, with its many benefits and perils, is something of a miracle. Scientists have labored to explain the emotions by referring to aspects of brain chemistry and the complexity of the central nervous system, but their hypotheses are as unverifiable and unfalsifiable as any religious doctrine. What we colloquially call “the heart” remains a mystery. So does the phenomenon of the man unable to feel certain common emotions, including love.

     As a writer of fiction, I hold to a common premise about narratives and their relevance to their consumers: You can’t get more out of it than you put into it. That applies quite as strongly to narratives about real-world events as it does to fiction. Believers, who start from the premise of a purposive God, can draw meaning, power, and reinforcement for their beliefs from an event such as the one depicted above. Nonbelievers have less chance of doing so.

     That should come as no surprise. Men are highly variable. Faith is a choice. No two persons share absolutely identical beliefs about anything. We manage to form societies because, thanks to some subconscious awareness of the need, we tolerate differences of vital premises and important convictions among us without allowing them to propel us to violence.

     And that may well be the greatest miracle we know.

     May God bless and keep you all.

Steak, Sizzle, Or Self?

     Happy Autumnal Equinox, Gentle Reader! Today we enter the fall season, which is a favorite here at the Fortress. Soon the colors will be changing, the weather will cool, the fleece garments will come out of storage, and I’ll be sweeping up leaves and patching leaks in the roof… oh, strike that. This should be a happy occasion! It’s Monday, so… well, maybe you should strike that too.

     Anyway, a question has arisen that should interest all writers and anyone else who sells anything. That includes you, doesn’t it? You do – or did – sell either your products or your labor, right? So give this one a hard think:

What are you selling?

     It’s non-trivial, I assure you.

     Consider this pole of the discussion:

Some writers sell themselves.
A few sell a trendy comfort.
Others sell a product.
I simply tell my stories.

I’m not a product, and neither are my books.
The only thing that matters is that you read the stories.
Readers don’t need anything else.

— Delenda Carthago (@DelendaStories) September 20, 2026

     In the strictest imaginable sense, Delenda is correct. After all, the purchaser pays for the book and nothing else. He’s not buying any part of the author, or a guarantee that the author will do any particular thing in the future. What he gets is the book, no more.

     But the book, like any product, conveys other impressions. The purchaser will read the book and draw some conclusions from it:

• Is the story good?
• Is it well told?
• Does it convey specific ideas?
• Do I find those ideas attractive?
• Should I form any expectations of this writer?

     All those things help to mold the purchaser’s future decisions and actions. What do they sell?

     The purchaser’s impressions of the man behind the book matter quite as much as the book itself. Most of us who read have favorites – genres; authors; themes and associated ideas – that we seek to satisfy in our reading. Writers who are consistent about those things will develop followings. Consistency over time reveals the man behind the product.

     I contend that we’re buying into the author quite as much as his books.

     Obviously, this isn’t the same as sitting behind a table at a book-signing event. No one gets to shake the author’s hand or engage him in conversation. But the cumulative impression of a writer that develops over a number of books matters greatly. If he’s to develop a following, he must sell himself as much as his writings. He must consistently evince what I’ve called a sensibility: a set of convictions and attitudes that express a worldview that doesn’t drift or amble about aimlessly.

     The writer cannot “be all things to all men.” He must stake out a specific place in the universe of fiction providers and hold fast to it. That doesn’t mean his convictions can never change. It does mean that his Weltanschauung must be grounded in a particular vision of “how the world works.”

     I was drawn to the late Robret A. Heinlein for that reason, among others. Yes, his writing was unusually graceful for science fiction of the years in which he wrote. I did appreciate that. But more important by far was his remorselessly factual, logical approach to “how the world works,” especially the human part. That might have been because our personalities were compatible; I cannot know, as I never had the privilege of meeting him.

     Most other writers I’ve admired have presented more variable personas. I’ve enjoyed some of their output, but not all. I haven’t pursued their latest works as avidly as I might have. Their divergences sometimes displeased me; they suggested that the man behind the story wasn’t what I’d taken him to be.

     Sensibility, in my view, partakes of craftsmanship, but equally of the writer’s worldview and his willingness to let it show. If that isn’t part of the sale, how likely is the purchaser of your book to want to drink more from your well? And what are you selling, from that perspective? It isn’t just the book, is it?

Morality

     I’ll make this as brief as possible. Morality is a large subject. And yes, it’s one whose discussion tends to make a lot of people uncomfortable. Part of that arises from the desire to believe oneself to be of sound character. Another part arises when the discussion addresses the moral gulfs between various identifiable groups. The latter aspect has come to matter to Americans a great deal more than it did a century ago.

     When the people of our nation were overwhelmingly Christian, peppered here and there by a few Jews and the occasional Oriental or agnostic, an American could proceed through his affairs in the assumption that his moral code was that of everyone around him. It was expressed in the Ten Commandments and the Golden Rule. C.S. Lewis called them, in sum, the Law of General Benevolence. Because we were united on that code, we felt safe among strangers. I’ve talked about this before, most notably in this piece.

     It’s not the case any longer. We’ve imported a great many people to whom the Law of General Benevolence is irrelevant, if not an actual impediment to the satisfaction of their wants. Some of them are scoping you as a potential victim right BLEEP!ing now.

     You can name a few such groups. There are probably a few whose names are unknown to you. But they know you, you trusting Euro-American fool.

     This is the best argument for the reversal of the tides of immigration that have polluted our nation. To be viable, a republic such as ours demands a high-trust society. We are too many to be kept peaceable and sane by policing us. America would need so many police, and so ubiquitous, that the worst totalitarianisms known to history would pale in comparison – and even that many would leave some of us unwatched and unguarded.

     Back from sheer necessity, review Clay Christensen’s striking observation:

     The issue is particularly acute with regard to Indians and Muslims. Members of those demographics are highly unlikely to share Christian moral standards. Therefore, you must not trust them. If you do so, you put yourself in peril.

     Six years ago, I posted briefly about something I’d encountered in a humorous book, a “politically correct” dictionary of sorts. Though my focus this morning isn’t the same as it was then, the observation is nevertheless pertinent. I’ll repeat it here, with emphasis:

“Morally different”
Is a synonym
For EVIL.

     You may not be a practicing Christian, but if you’re of European descent, you’re likely to abide by the Christian moral code. Don’t assume that those of other heritages share that code with you. It could be worth your life.

     I have spoken.

The Latest Threats

     Avast, ye deck rats! The landlubbers be expectin’ a column, even an’ it be Talk Like A Pirate Day! Arr! Well, shiver me timbers, I’ll just have a peek into the “Future Columns” chest for some grub to serve up with yer rum. Now let’s see… ah, here we have it:

1984 playbook everywhere.🇨🇳

Last year 188,760 court records mentioned exit bans.

In 2016 that number was 89.

And now there’s a new law that says if the state thinks you might “endanger” tech or industrial security, they can stop you from leaving the country.

This applies to… pic.twitter.com/ViF0YXU3eG

— Haretina (@HaretinaK) September 17, 2026

     We hear a fair amount about “threats to national security,” these days. “National security” has been used to justify quite a lot of intrusions on Americans’ rights. But as I’ve said before, no one is willing to define it, nor to specify what might threaten it.

     Undefined rationales for suspending or dismissing individuals’ rights bother me a bit. What about you, Gentle Reader? I know, I know: don’t flog a dead horse. But it gets so much more interesting when governments do such things on the basis of one’s trade.

     Haretina Kukuri has brought her usual penetration to this latest outcropping of “threats to our security:”

     1984 playbook everywhere.
     Last year 188,760 court records mentioned exit bans.
     In 2016 that number was 89.
     And now there’s a new law that says if the state thinks you might “endanger” tech or industrial security, they can stop you from leaving the country.
     This applies to everyone by the way… engineers, researchers, and anyone with useful knowledge.
     Soft power stopped working so citizens were packing up and leaving.
     But the system did what systems do when they are authoritarian … it locked the doors.
     Your skills don’t belong to you first.
     They belong to the Party.
     Want to leave?
     Prove you’re not a risk.
     When a government starts treating talent like a national security asset you know what you are dealing with…
     But there is a problem…
     We’re watching the same logic show up in Europe…
     First they normalize tracking everything and sell it to you as security…
     Then movement stops being a right and starts becoming a privilege you have to keep earning!!
     China went straight to the hard version and said if the state thinks your knowledge or skills might be useful elsewhere, they can just stop you leaving.
     But China is ruled by a communist party, so why is Europe trying to promote similar rules?
     For me the direction of travel is obvious.
     More digital IDs.
     More real-time monitoring.
     More rules about who can board a plane when the system flags you.
     More politicians talking about “managing” mobility instead of protecting it.
     The pattern is always the same.
     It starts with a reasonable-sounding reason and it ends with the state deciding your ability to leave is conditional.
     People keep acting surprised when free movement gets treated like a temporary privilege.
     But it shouldn’t be because once a government gets used to controlling information and behavior at scale, controlling physical exit is the next logical step.

     In summary: “The needs of the State come first, comrade.” Today we hear it in every language spoken in the First World. The dirty stew of surveillance, unhallowed investigations, warrantless searches, and now exit bans, all of them founded on threats to undefined conditions, has reached its boiling point.

     Don’t kid yourself, matey. Haretina’s main concern is for Europe, but there’s no reason it couldn’t happen in America. Why shouldn’t “national security” include the forcible retention of “vital” skills and talents? The defense industry, in particular, hungers for them. And what would America be without its trillion-dollar defense industry?

     I shan’t dwell on this at length. Let it suffice to say that it’s vile, the most anti-freedom development since World War II. But let’s take a moment to ponder the second-order effects.

     If Country X makes emigration conditional upon government permission, what effect will that have on persons who might be contemplating moving to X? If X has become, in a charming recent phrase, an open-air prison, will the talented of other nations consider X a desirable place to tote their skills? Doesn’t it seem like Communist East Germany’s border guards might be in prospect? You know, the guys who were ordered to shoot persons attempting to escape as “an act of mercy?”

     Now consider persons already immured in Country X. When they see that freedom of movement has been abolished for certain skill categories, will they seek to acquire those skills? Won’t their interest in them take a hit? As for X’s employers who need those skills, what will happen to their businesses? Wouldn’t you expect applications for employment to decrease?

     Given the above, the next step would be for X’s government to legislate about salaries and working conditions for persons in those categories. Such legislation seldom favors the individuals’ interests.

     Ubiquitous surveillance technology could compound the damage still further. Schoolchildren detected to possess aptitudes that bear on those valuable skills might be “preselected” for involuntary training for the desired occupations. Don’t laugh it aside: it happened in the Soviet Union.

     In view of all that, is it really such a burden to spend just one day of the year talking like a pirate? Yes, yes: I know it’s not related. But think about it, ye scurvy knaves!