Baseline Essays

     I’ve spent much of today – October 1, 2018, if you must know – reviewing everything I’ve posted at Liberty’s Torch. The idea was to arrive at a sort of Campbell’s Condensed Cream of Fran, the fifty or so essays that best express the fundamentals of my thinking. The list below was assembled from that review. If you’d like to comment on it, or to suggest additions to or deletions from it, please feel free.

All my best,
Fran

1. Wastrels: Concerning the destruction of Americans’ ability to trust one another.
2. The Conservative-Libertarian Schism: The issues that have united and divided libertarians and “orthodox” conservatives.
3. From My Cold Dead Hand: Firearms and the American ethic.
4. Dark Gods: The disembodied – fictional, really – beings that threaten America and its promise.
5. Dark Gods Part 2: The War on Truth: Exactly that.
6. Ultra Vires: Quandaries for Catholics and Conservatives: An exposition on baseline authorities for those two communities of conviction.
7. The “Off the Mishnory Road” trilogy: Important divergences from contemporary habits of thought:
   • Fun and Games
   • The Stoic Virtues and Masculinity
   • Absolutes
8. The “Stupid Or Evil” trilogy
9. Present Enemies, Future Wars: The threat Islam poses to the West.
10. Tea Leaves By Twilight: A reflection on contemporary race relations.
11. On Being White: Just what it says.
12. Pragmatics: A demolition of “social justice.”
13. Heroes: What they are, what they aren’t and why every society needs them.
14. The Food Chain: What makes Christianity really different.
15. King Cash: Money, commerce, and privacy.
16. Shamans: One route to power over people is power over their language.
17. “The Good Ship NEWF:” The nature of identity.
18. A Cabal Of Its Enemies: Why a standing diplomatic institution cannot work as intended.
19. Disparates: Why abortion is no simple matter of “a woman’s right to choose.”
20. The Desiccated Remains: What is liberty?
21. The Most Awful Day: When civilized nations abrogated the rules of civilization.
22. Giantism: The enabling and sustaining conditions for “bigness.”
23. Egos the Size of Cathedrals: What happens when Christian humility is spurned in favor of overweening pride.
24. The Helix: Prayer and why it’s a good thing.
25. Pieties: Every society has them – and to contradict them is an acto of daring.
26. The New Segregationists: Word gets around. Always.
27. “We The People,” Who? Why a nation’s borders are important and not mere “imaginary lines.”
28. Damage: A discourse on homosexuality.
29. A Maxim, The Law, and the State of the Nation: Why is ignorance of the law no excuse?
30. For the Feast of the Epiphany: The true significance of that celebration.
31. The New Lunatics: An inmates’ insurgency.
32. Principles and Politics: Why the former is important to the latter.
33. Patterns: No, the fox cannot, will not, and must not “guard the henhouse.”
34. The Manly Virtues: A burden men once knew it was their duty and birthright to shoulder.
35. The Celebritarian Revolution: Politics by celebrity prescription is the latest attack on our polity.
36. When It Came: A prognostication.
37. The Calculus of Freedom: Philosophical underpinnings and discarded remnants.
38. Licensure: The State’s best scam for taking away your freedom and selling it back to you.
39. On Privacy: We want it – so why are we making it impossible for ourselves?
40. Habituations: A discourse on the State’s use of “salami tactics.”
41. The Forbidden Subject: Thou shalt not mention race...if you’re white, that is.
42. Strifings: The State’s use of divide et impera to make us more ruleable.
43. Owners: Who owns you? Defend your thesis.
44. An Intellectual’s Duty: For the love of God, don’t elect smart people to high office! (No, not me, either!)
45. Language Corruption Continues: The deliberate distortion of common terms for political purposes.
46. Exclaves: "Nations within the nation."
47. Nightmares Of A Wine Enthusiast: Just read it.
48. You're Getting Colder! A debunking of "global warming."