New Content At Fran’s Substack Site (Updated Regularly)

December 23, 2025:
Pathways To Bondage

If You’ve Been Wondering What Happened Yesterday (UPDATED)

     Blogger took this site down without warning yesterday morning. Here’s the email I received yesterday, December 8, 2025, at 9:57 AM:

     Hello,
     As you may know, our Community Guidelines (https://blogger.com/go/contentpolicy) describe the boundaries for what we allow-- and don't allow-- on Blogger. Your blog titled "Liberty's Torch" was flagged to us for review. We have determined that it violates our guidelines and have made the URL https://bastionofliberty.blogspot.com unavailable to blog readers.
     Why was your blog removed?
     Your content has violated ourMalware and Similar Malicious Content policy. Please visit our Community Guidelines page linked in this email to learn more.
     If you have any further questions about malware and your blog, you may follow-up by posting to our Help Forum.
     If we feel that a blog's content does not fit within the expectations of our Policy, we no longer allow it to be publicly available. If you believe we made an error, you can request an appeal....
     You may have the option to pursue your claims in court. If you have legal questions or wish to examine legal options that may be available to you, you may want to consult with your own legal counsel.
     Sincerely,
     The Blogger Team

     I was stunned. I had no idea why Liberty’s Torch had been taken down – the email above doesn’t cite a specific reason – so I merely requested a review. The site was restored at 2:05 PM, again without any explanation for the original suspension.

     This, the “V1.0” version of Liberty’s Torch, has operated without interruption since 2012. But as you can see from the above, I can no longer trust that it will remain in operation. So once again, I must make provisions for a new site, possibly at Substack. Watch this space.

     UPDATE: Yes, there is a Substack account:

Fran's Substack Site

     Give it a look.

Your Inspirational Thought For Today

This is Pluto. Be like Pluto! pic.twitter.com/q0TqTInt0y

— Curiosity (@MAstronomers) December 8, 2025

     Who cares whether Pluto clears its orbit? It’s having fun!

Rootlessness

     First, some thematic music:

Now it's been 25 years or more
I've roamed this land from shore to shore
From Tyne to Tamar, Severn to Thames
From moor to vale, from peak to fen
Played in cafes and pubs and bars
I've stood in the street with my old guitar
But I'd be richer than all the rest
If I had a pound for each request
For "Dueling Banjos," "American Pie"
It's enough to make you cry
"Rule Britannia" or "Swing Low"
Are they the only songs the English know?

Seed, bud, flower, fruit
They're never gonna grow without their roots
Branch, stem, shoots
They need roots

After the speeches when the cake's been cut
The disco's over and the bar is shut
At christening, birthday, wedding or wake
What can we sing until the morning breaks?
When the Indian, Asian, Afro, Celt
It's in their blood below the belt
They're playing and dancing all night long
So what have they got right that we've got wrong?

Seed, bud, flower, fruit
Never gonna grow without their roots
Branch, stem, shoots
We need roots

And haul away boys, let them go
Out in the wind and the rain and snow
We've lost more than we'll ever know
'Round the rocky shores of England
Haul away boys, let them go
Out in the wind and the rain and snow
We've lost more than we'll ever know
'Round the rocky shores of England

We need roots
We need roots

Now the minister said his vision of hell
Is three folk singers in a pub near Wells
Well I've got a vision of urban sprawl
It's pubs where no one ever sings at all
And everyone stares at a great big screen
Overpaid soccer stars, prancing teams
Australian soap, American rap
Estuary English, baseball caps
And we'd all be ashamed before we'd walk
Of the way we look and the way we talk
Without our stories or our songs
How will we know where we come from?
I've lost St. George and the Union Jack
That's my flag too and I want it back

Seed, bud, flower, fruit
Never gonna grow without their roots
Branch, stem, shoots
We need roots

And haul away boys, let them go
Out in the wind and the rain and snow
We've lost more than we'll ever know
'Round the rocky shores of England
Haul away boys, let them go...

     [With thanks to Tom Kratman, who first exposed me to this quintessentially English song.]

     I’d guess that most people alive today don’t think much about their roots. Indeed, they might reject the concept, at least if it applies to anything beyond their own families. But there was a time when the traditional concept of roots as including one’s neighborhood, its institutions, and the ethnocultural commonalities that dominated there was widely recognized and honored. That time, in these United States, ended with World War II, if not earlier.

     Several questions arise at this point:

• Did that concept have value?
• Did it have religious or occupational facets?
• What baggage did it carry that we’re better off without?
• Can one remain “faithful” to one’s roots after moving a significant distance away?
• What influences other than geographic displacement can weaken one’s attachment to his roots?

     Those are difficult questions for a Twenty-First Century American to face. They demand a sober look at ourselves and what made us who we are. Europeans face them somewhat more equably, because of the obvious differences among the nations of the Old World, even those near to one another. There’s specific ethnocultural meaning in claims such as “I’m English, “I’m French,” or “I’m German.”

     The song above says strongly that an Englishman should know and honor his roots. That comes close to blasphemy today, with the U.K. having filled up with persons no one would associate with the England of 1940. The multiculturalist gospel condemns such allegiances.

     But what if we need them? Is rootlessness a special kind of vulnerability? Something that attracts predators, perhaps? What if one cannot live a decent life – one that satisfies levels two and three of Maslow’s Hierarchy — without an awareness of one’s roots and their value?

     I need to ponder this awhile before I can continue. However, you, Gentle Reader, are invited to post your thoughts as comments here. When I return to this topic, I’ll make use of them, with proper attributions.

One Lemon Leads To Another Dept.

     There are many things I could say about foreign aid, but the great majority of them are obscene. If we start from the premise that using the tax funds of the nation – i.e., the money already stolen from working Americans – to benefit the denizens of foreign hellholes lands is somehow legitimate, you can rationalize any number of subsequent offenses against the laws of God and Man. But unless my Gentle Readers would like me to start foaming at the mouth this early in the day, I’d better pass from that subject right now.

     Sarah Anderson comments thus on Marco Rubio’s “reformed” foreign aid plan:

     [W]e're no longer just tossing money out the door; there's an end goal. We're partnering with these countries to help them stabilize and eventually take care of themselves with less and less of our help. As a part of the plan, the countries' governments themselves must also increase their domestic health spending. A State Department fact sheet promises that "U.S. government financial support will be linked to countries’ ability to meet or exceed key health metrics with financial incentives for countries who exceed those metrics."
     It's a model that Rubio has been pushing from day one since he took over the State Department, and it's the most logical one for foreign involvement.

     No, Sarah. I like you and I think you write reasonably well, but the “most logical [model] for foreign involvement” is warfare. That’s what comes of laying big prizes before a gaggle of rapacious Third Worlders: they fight over it until one manages to get away with the lion’s share of the booty.

     But let’s leave that highly predictable outcome to the side for a moment. When the fighting is slight and quickly resolved – usually because the most powerful bureaucrats of the recipient government get their claws into the money immediately – the consequences are almost never the ones hoped for:

1. There’s a charade of “bidding” for contracts nominally aimed at the purpose of the aid money;
2. The money goes to the bureaucrats’ relatives or supporters;
3. A great show is made of the inception of the purposed effort;
4. Third World work ethics – steal as much and do as little work as you can – kick in;
5. The money is spent but the “work” is never more than substandard;
6. American Foreign Service representatives frown at the results;
7. The representatives report to the domestic hierarchy;
8. The aid is increased for the following year;
9. Return to Step 1.

     Am I being an old cynic? Why yes, I am – but it’s a cynicism built from observation over five decades. It’s powered by the dynamic that dominates diplomats and diplomacy. It’s protected by the utter unwillingness of politicians and their high-ranking appointees ever to admit to a mistake. And it’s as close to a law of Nature as any phenomenon that involves unequal categories of human beings.

     But supreme among the conceits of professional politicians is this one: We can do it. We can overrule all the rapacity and all the venality that have made the Third World what it is. We’re The US of A! Besides, I can’t admit that the whole deal is a scam, that foreign aid is a huge, unConstitutional mistake. The voters / my superiors would crucify me in public!

     And billions of dollars taken forcibly from American workers in taxes are poured into Third World ratholes year after year on that basis.

     Do you know a way to stop it without toppling the federal government in its entirety, Gentle Reader? I don’t.

For The Advent Season

     There are several hymns for the Advent season: "Come, Thou Long Expected Jesus," "Lo, How a Rose E'er Blooming," "People, Look East," and "Watchman, Tell Us of the Night" are some of the better-known ones. But none are as well-known, or as beloved, as this one beautifully rendered below by The Piano Guys:

     Be watchful, for He is coming.

A Vested Interest In Disorder

     It’s been said that one should infer the intent behind a system from the results it produces. There’s some validity to that, though it’s not an absolute. After all, we understand the Law of Unintended Consequences. We also understand that some consequences are beyond our ability to foresee. So we must make allowances for human fallibility, and for the limits of our reasoning powers.

     But there is this as well: A system that produces perverse or destructive consequences over a long period of time, when at any point in that sequence it was possible to pause or terminate the system and revisit the thinking behind it, is a near-to-irrefutable indicator of malevolence at work.

     Predators exploit our unwillingness to make that inference.

---

     There’s a lot of bilge slopped around about “systems,” “systems thinking,” and whatnot. Most of it isn’t worth the breath needed to say it. I’d rather not sound like an arrogant asshole – I don’t have the wardrobe for it – but I often find myself wondering how anyone could look at an obvious mess and not ask “Why do they tolerate this, when it’s so obviously malign?” Of course, they explicitly and most deliberately excludes your humble Curmudgeon Emeritus, whose inclination is always to fix what’s so plainly broken... or to discard it if it can’t be fixed.

     I could be thinking of any of a huge set of things, couldn’t I? Indeed, I am thinking and talking about a great many things, all at once. For we are surrounded by “systems” that perpetually produce perversities by the common understanding of things. When those “systems” are the fruit of planning, when they demand resources and human action to erect and operate, and when they require the ongoing acceptance of a great many people to continue as they are, it’s my job as a citizen to demand explanations, corrections, restitution for the maltreated, and retribution visited upon identifiable malefactors.

     It’s your job too, Gentle Reader. “The consent of the governed,” remember?

     We appear to have abdicated our responsibilities.

---

     It’s time for a couple of quotes. First, one from a very well-known source:

     "Senor d'Anconia," declared the woman with the earrings, "I don't agree with you!"
     "If you can refute a single sentence I uttered, madame, I shall hear it gratefully."
     "Oh, I can't answer you. I don't have any answers, my mind doesn't work that way, but I don't feel that you're right, so I know that you're wrong."
     "How do you know it?"
     "I feel it. I don't go by my head, but by my heart. You might be good at logic, but you're heartless."
     "Madame, when we'll see men dying of starvation around us, your heart won't be of any earthly use to save them. And I'm heartless enough to say that when you'll scream, 'But I didn't know it!'—you will not be forgiven."

     Now one from another, equally valuable if slightly less popular source:

     “[T]he time-tested method of instilling social virtue and respect for law in the minds of the young did not appeal to a pre-scientific pseudo-professional class who called themselves ‘social workers' or sometimes ‘child psychologists.' It was too simple for them, apparently, since anybody could do it, using only the patience and firmness needed in training a puppy. I have sometimes wondered if they cherished a vested interest in disorder -- but that is unlikely; adults almost always act from conscious ‘highest motives' no matter what their behavior."

     In 1959, when Robert A. Heinlein published Starship Troopers, he was already in his fifties. He’d seen a great deal and had evaluated it with logic and precision. Yet note the extraordinary difference between then and now. Crime was known, but it was hardly a patch on what we endure today, particularly in our cities. Juvenile misbehavior? Racial disorder? General disrespect for law, public order, and social propriety? In comparison with today, in 1959 those things were negligible. If Heinlein is able to see our present from the afterlife, he must be shaking his head at our foolishness. “Didn’t they listen to me? Can’t they learn?”

     But then, at the time of Starship Troopers’ publication, Heinlein could credibly say that “a vested interest in disorder” was “unlikely” – that the motives of those who operated the justice system could be trusted. Would he say so today?

     In that regard, Rand’s penetration was the more accurate of the two. Our forebears will not forgive us. Our descendants, should we have any, won’t do so either.

---

     Our abdication of our responsibilities as citizens has many rationalizations. There’s no need to enumerate them. Suffice it to say that “the consent of the governed” is a real thing. The difficulty in exercising it lies in our lack of an overall consciousness. E pluribus unum may appear on our currency, but it has no application to our will.

     Yet we must rise to the occasion, especially in the matter of criminal justice. When we see serious crimes, especially crimes of violence, go unpunished for absurd reasons; when we see habitual criminals released from prison after trivially laughable confinements; when we see repeat offenders repeatedly released without bond to roam free after thirty, fifty, seventy felony arrests – it’s no longer possible to believe that those who maintain and operate the criminal justice system are acting from “highest motives.” We must indict those persons as deliberate, conscious perpetrators of disorder. We are morally and practically obligated to act.

     Yet we don’t. Whatever rationalization we apply, we don’t muster the will to rise up and compel justice be done to the policemen, the lawyers, the judges, the parole boards, and whoever else works to keep “the system” as it is.

     We have demarcated “the system” as something apart from us.

     I shan’t repeat my sentiments about vigilance committees and their application to our context. That’s a more specific point than the one I’ve set out to make. So it’s time to stop beating around the bush and make it. Whatever political or social malfunction may concern you most, hear and remember this:

We are part of “The System.”
We must function as such.

     More anon.

A Treasure That Must Be Shared

     I could not take the smallest chance that my Gentle Readers might miss out on this gem:

This is the greatest description ever, from a bootleg video in China. pic.twitter.com/yCHzeYu3Mq

— Sandy Petersen 🪔 (@SandyofCthulhu) December 3, 2025

     The movie, for any whippersnappers in this old Curmudgeon’s readership, is of course Alien.

Carta Obsoleta

     It’s difficult to deal with the news coming out of the United Kingdom these days.

     My Gentle Readers already know about some of the things beleaguering the Sceptered Isle. There are the increasingly restive and assertive Muslims, the theft and street chaos, the “grooming” of white girls by immigrants, the sinking economy, the rash of dependency, the use of the police to suppress dissent, and more.

     But can you believe that the Labour government wants to scrap the trial by jury?

'So judges are just better at finding facts?'
'They're experienced at it.'

Sir Brian Leveson, who led the criminal courts inquiry, explains why he thinks Lammy is absolutely right to scrap jury trials. pic.twitter.com/qDTQFw7acY

— LBC (@LBC) December 2, 2025

     Trial by jury is guaranteed by Magna Carta, which serves Britain as a partial constitution. You would think that a man knighted by the Crown would have at least a passing acquaintance with that document. Perhaps he does... yet he’s perfectly ready to violate that guarantee for “efficiency.”

     If Britain’s courts are “clogged,” what’s the nature of the cases that clog them? Might a great many of them be the fruits of luxuriant law and the overextension of government power? How many are free-expression cases, in which the State has striven to punish “misinformation,” or “hate speech,” or sentiments it simply disapproves? How many arise from regulatory overreach, whether via the State or one of the ubiquitous QUANGOs?

     But let’s look a bit deeper yet. What are the foreseeable consequences of a “justice system” that lacks the right to a trial by a jury of one’s peers?

1. A trial judge not restrained by a jury verdict can rule on his understanding of the law alone, which eliminates the possibility of jury nullification of a bad or unconstitutional law.
2. The trial judge has authority over what evidence may be introduced; thus a trial judge can pre-justify any verdict whatsoever merely by excluding evidence that leans in the opposite direction. Thus, as appellate judges are not permitted to assess the evidence, the probability of a successful appeal is greatly reduced.
3. The State can ensure the imprisonment of any British subject, merely by lodging an accusation against him and bringing him to trial before a government-owned judge. Given the British government’s notorious hostility toward freedom of expression, that would effectively establish a censorship regime.
4. Inversely, the State can ensure the acquittal of any subject, by routing his trial to that selfsame government-owned judge. That would allow it to create classes of subjects who are guaranteed immunity from penalty for their crimes.
5. All the above make the “justice system” a weapon the State can use against anyone it pleases: to coerce compliance in whatever direction it pleases.

     That is completely opposite to the conception of the process for ensuring justice that the United States inherited from Britain two and a half centuries ago.

     But David Lammy, Britain’s “Secretary of State for Justice,” insists that there’s no other way to “unclog” Britain’s courts. Notably, he claims that his “reform” is victim-oriented: i.e., that the elimination of the jury will result in the “right” verdicts more often, faster, and with appropriate relief to the victimized. Never mind the other consequences I’ve delineated here. The judges can be trusted to get it right.

     If Parliament allows Lammy to get away with this abridgement of Britons’ rights, it’s all over for the denizens of the Sceptered Isle. Having their right to bear arms taken from them, the British State can now ride roughshod over them. However many pitchforks Britons still possess, they would not suffice to bring down that all-powerful edifice.

Trends In Speculative Fiction: Grimdark

     The morning email brought me to this interview, by the lovely and talented Abigail Lakewood a.k.a. “Strange Girl,” of fantasy writer P. J. Ashton:

     💜: You view yourself as a grimdark fantasy writer. What does that mean exactly?
     A: Grimdark means I don’t put the training wheels on. Some fantasy wants you to believe everyone’s basically good, villains politely monologue instead of killing you, and true love fixes war crimes. Charming, but not remotely true to life.

     Let’s leave aside the haughtiness of Ashton’s response. Has he defined grimdark adequately for you to grasp it? I must admit that I’m groping a bit.

     I get a picture of stories replete with predation and brutality, that end un-heroically, perhaps even tragically. The villain gets what he seeks; the hero – if there is one – either gets the dirty end of the stick or gapes uncomprehending at the way things turned out. Not my sort of story, to be sure. Perhaps George R. R. Martin’s Song of Ice and Fire would qualify, despite its ending. But I didn’t like that series either.

     Let’s have a bit more from the interview:

     For characters like Henna, a woman shaped by years of abuse, violence became her language. She hides her trauma behind swagger and cruelty, and in every man she kills, she still sees Thorne. Henna isn’t hopeless; she’s surviving the only way she knows how. And there’s a strange, tragic beauty in that.
     Grimdark doesn’t smother hope, it forces it to earn its place. When kindness appears, it feels miraculous. When someone chooses loyalty over self-preservation, it matters.
     And if a reader finishes a chapter feeling shaken or breathless… good. It means the story meant something.
     [...]
     The market practically hands out gold stars for playing it safe. But comfort eventually dulls a genre, and readers are far sharper than publishers give them credit for.

     I do agree with that last part. It’s the aim to portray a world in which cruelty and brutality are the rule that baffles me.

     Well, as I said in a comment at Miss Lakewood’s place, I suppose that given my quite different orientation I shouldn’t expect to understand it, nor to find it appealing. And I must admit that there are readers who prefer settings and themes diametrically at odds with mine. Tastes do vary.

---

     C. S. Lewis once said that the tragic disillusionment of his youth was the discovery that the things he most loved – the heroes, the fantastic creatures, the magic, the quests, and so forth of the great works of fantasy – were imaginary. The prevailing sentiment was that kids should be shown a darker, more tragic view of existence. “Realists” exhorted the adoption of that approach. Lewis’s conviction was that children’s literature should prefer a different course:

     Those who say that children must not be frightened may mean two things. They may mean (1) that we must not do anything likely to give the child those haunting, disabling, pathological fears against which ordinary courage is helpless: in fact, phobias. His mind must, if possible, be kept clear of things he can’t bear to think of. Or they may mean (2) that we must try to keep out of his mind the knowledge that he is born into a world of death, violence, wounds, adventure, heroism and cowardice, good and evil. If they mean the first I agree with them: but not if they mean the second. The second would indeed be to give children a false impression and feed them on escapism in the bad sense. There is something ludicrous in the idea of so educating a generation which is born to the…atomic bomb. Since it is so likely that they will meet cruel enemies, let them at least have heard of brave knights and heroic courage. Otherwise you are making their destiny not brighter but darker.

     In the above, Lewis was speaking of stories for the young. Yet optimism pervades his adult-oriented fiction as well – and by “adult-oriented” I most emphatically do not mean sexual. The Space Trilogy, The Screwtape Letters, The Great Divorce, and Till We Have Faces demonstrate this perfectly – and they were plainly not written for children.

     I think a case could be made that even mature adults, immersed in the real world and all that it demands of us, need reinforcement for the conviction that we who people existence are basically good, and that good will triumph over evil, given effort and time. That’s why I write what I write. If even my typical reader occasionally veers to the dark side, perhaps out of a need for variety, he can surely be forgiven. For the world does demand a lot of us. To stay staunch requires that we remain aware that all things, including the ascension of goodness over cruelty and brutality, have a price we must pay.

     But do remember not to eat the cookies:

Loneliness

     There’s been some back-and-forth over this subject recently: men asserting that women have become impossible to please; women countering that men have very little to offer; and so forth. Meanwhile men seek women with perfect bodies who’ll cook, clean, and meet them at the door in lingerie and heels at the end of the workday. The women, of course, seek Adonises of chiseled perfection who earn seven figure incomes and never ask them to wash a dish. It’s all very sad, especially as I’m no longer on the market and neither is the C.S.O.

     Life is like that. The higher your standards for a mate, the fewer the people who’ll meet them. But I’m not here to tell you stuff you already know.

     Loneliness is also prevalent within marriages. Yes, I said prevalent. After they’ve been together for a while, romantic partners don’t provide one another with a lot of companionship. (Never mind sex.) If you’re married or in a long-term / live-together relationship:

• How long has it been since you and the Significant Other had a conversation about anything but the week’s shopping list or Junior’s problems with school?
• What percentage of the day do the two of you spend in the same room?
• When you’re in the same room, what’s your focus? The food? The TV? Making the bed?

     Don’t be alarmed by those questions or by your answers to them. More to the point, don’t think of your situation as a “problem” to be “solved.” Because the terrifying truth of the matter is that after the intoxication of romance begins to diminish, a space will naturally grow between the two of you. It always has. You won’t be exceptions.

     It won’t matter if John finds a Miss America contestant who loves housework and sex, or if Jane finds a Musk / Bezos-level entrepreneur with the physique of Michelangelo’s David (except in flesh rather than marble). Life is composed of many desires, needs, and challenges, especially in these United States. All of them demand attention. Alternately, as put by an old friend: You can’t spend your whole life in bed. Trust me on that; I’ve tried.

     Yes, anything can be overdone; that’s why we have the word obsession. The goal is to find a satisfactory blend. If that involves spending a large fraction of your time alone, what of it? If you genuinely wanted some other proportion of activities that would involve you more often with your S.O., you’d be working on it. Wouldn’t you, you highly adaptable problem-solving demon, you?

     Time was, you would call your partner “needy” if he strove to have more of your attention than you wanted to give him. So the loneliness condition has an inverse: a lack of sufficient privacy, or in the happenin’-right-now argot of the cell phone generation, “no me-time.” And yes, I know of people who complain about exactly that. They talk about their S.O.s as if they were leeches they yearned to detach... when their S.O.s can be induced to be elsewhere, of course.

     This is on my mind for a simple reason: these past two weeks, interleaved with all the usual burdens the Fortress of Crankitude lays on me, I’ve been compelled to adjust to the near-constant presence of the C.S.O. in my office, where I write the crap my Gentle Readers come here to savor. Owing to a siege of intense sciatic pain, she tested every seat in the house and discovered that my office recliner is ideal. Sitting in it relieves her sciatica so completely that she’s fallen in love with it. So she’s camped out in my office for two unending weeks. That might not have been so hard to take, except that she brought the dogs, the cats, her cell phone, her laptop, her Kindle, her water bottle and her Salty Snack Of The Day, and Big Fuzzy, her enormous nappy blanket which I bought for her, not forseeing that it would take over her life. It’s made my day’s usual activities much more difficult, and not because she’s always looking over my shoulder.

     I used to sit in that recliner myself, now and then. I’d read, or nap, or jot down notes about some novel I’d probably never write. Ah, those halcyon days of yore. Right up there with the lingerie-and-heels days, I tell you.

     So there can be too much togetherness in a relationship. But you already knew that, didn’t you? Enough of that, for I too am a highly adaptable problem-solving demon. I’ve ordered a duplicate of my recliner for her office. I’m also researching colorless chemical repellants that will keep Joy the Newf and Sophie the German Shepherd / Husky mix on the other side of the house. And can anyone introduce me to music that makes the listener want to be alone? Nothing too coarse or whiny, please. Thanks in advance.

Some Advent Thoughts

     [This piece first appeared at the old Eternity Road blogsite on December 4, 2005 – FWP]

---

1. The Haunting

     Via the worthy Lane Core -- welcome to the Eternity Road blogroll, Lane -- comes this inspiring take on the conversion of C. S. Lewis to Christian faith:

"Nearly all that I loved I believed to be imaginary; nearly all that I believed to be real I thought grim and meaningless." With these words C.S. Lewis, the great Christian apologist who wrote the Chronicles of Narnia, described the early years of his life. The story of his pre-conversion self, however, is much more than the autobiography of one 20th-century Englishman. It depicts the spiritual torpor of modern man, namely post-Christian man.

     For the first time in the history of humanity, man does not believe in the supernatural. The supernatural was natural to the pre-Christian age. The sun and the stars, trees and rivers, everything that surrounded them was inhabited by dryads and nymphs and all sorts of mythological creatures. Everything bore the trace of the divine. Modern man may smile at the primitiveness of their beliefs. In the best case, he will admit that it would make a good fairy tale for children.

     Lewis did not think so; to him it was the twentieth century that was regressive. By reducing the world to the material reality which one can experience with one’s senses, man has turned the world into a vacuum in which men spend their time, as T.S. Eliot would say, "dodging [their] emptiness." Surprisingly enough, it was pagan mythological literature, permeated as it was with the intuitive belief in the supernatural, which set Lewis searching for God. He became a theist and his conversion to Christ followed later. Pagan literature–Greek myths, the sagas and eddas of Norse mythology and the epics of classical antiquity–acted upon him as a preparatio evangelica. His imagination and his sensibility were "baptised" first, which proved to be a pre-requisite for the conversion of his heart. The material reality around him was the same but his gaze had been converted. Like the post-conversion T.S. Eliot, he ended up revisiting the ordinary experiences of his daily life and saw a transfigured reality:

And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.

     I doubt there remains a reader of this site who doesn't know of my admiration for Lewis, by far the greatest of the modern polemicists for Christianity. But it becomes deeper as I acquaint myself with the details of his journey out of the darkness.

     Lewis was not merely a persuasive writer and promulgator of the teachings of others; he was also the possessor of a mighty intelligence and a fertile imagination. Among other things, he conceived the central need of the modern mind -- accurately, in my judgment -- as a fusion of the spiritual yearning naturally inborn in all of us with a revived, freshly vivid vision of what lies beyond the mundane realm through which we plod. For this reason above all others, his Ransom and Narnia books are among the most powerful of all tools for the opening of the weary, battered, spiritually malnourished human heart. He'd "been there," and had divined what it takes to get from "there" to "here."

     But where is "here"? Perhaps it was put best by Father Andrew Greeley when he said that "Catholics live in a haunted world." (Substitute "Christians" for "Catholics" for, uh, best catholicity.) We are perpetually mindful of a realm beyond the one that's evident to our senses. Our choices are formed as much, if not more, by our consciousness of that realm as by their probable consequences in this one. For us as for no materialist of any stripe, the world is alive and immanent with promise.

     With the help of another great genius, Professor John Ronald Reuel Tolkien (upon whom Lewis's hero Dr. Elwin Ransom was based), Lewis found his way, and then his voice. Then he bestowed it upon us.

    

---

2. Our Pride And Our Burden.

     Curt at North Western Winds presents an interesting citation today from Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger's (Pope Benedict XVI) Introduction to Christianity:

The fact that when the perfectly just man appeared he was crucified, delivered up by justice to death, tells us pitilessly who man is: Thou art such, man, that thou canst not bear the just man - that he who simply loves becomes a fool, a scourged criminal, an outcast. Thou art such because, unjust thyself, thou dost always need the injustice of the next man in order to feel excused and thus cannot tolerate the just man who seems to rob thee of this excuse. Such art thou. St John summarized all this in the Ecce Homo ("Look, this is [the] man!" of Pilate, which means quite fundamentally: this is how it is with man; this is man. The truth of man is his complete lack of truth. The sayings in the Pslam that every man is a liar (Ps 116 [115]: 11) and lives in some way or other against the truth already reveals how it really is with man. The truth about man is that he is continually assailing the truth; the just man crucified is thus a mirror held up to man in which he sees himself unadorned. But the Cross does not reveal only man; it also reveals God. God is such that he identifies himself with man right down into the abyss and that he judges him and saves him. In the abyss of human failure is revealed the still more inexhaustible abyss of divine love. The Cross is thus truly the center of revelation, a revelation that does not reveal any previously unknown principle but reveals us to ourselves by revealing us before God and God in our midst.

     Now, the Holy Father's emphasis on God's identification with Man is quite important. Still, there's more here: a fundamental insight of the sort we overlook until we've stumbled over it...after which, we call it "obvious."

     Rational consciousness, the defining characteristic of Man, is the ability to form abstractions and to use them in reasoning. But every abstraction is an incomplete rendition of the reality it seeks to model. In other words, no matter how sincerely we try to make our conceptions accurate representations of the world, they will always lie, if only by omission.

     But the human mind is unsatisfied by the incomplete. It yearns toward fullness; toward transcendence; toward God. So we tend to take such things and "fill in the blanks," sometimes arbitrarily, and sometimes willfully. But even the best of us is incomplete himself, particularly in his knowledge. And even the best of us is inclined to see the world not as it is, but as we would like it to be.

     This is Man's glory and his cross. Being creatures made in God's image and destined to be reunited with God, we are conscious, yet partial. Conjoined, these characteristics compel us to fantasize...and some of the fantasies are wrong.

    

---

3. Certainties.

     The word "if" has received quite a bit of, ah, critical attention. (Myself, I think that most of it should go to "should," but that's a subject for another screed.) In his novel An Odor Of Sanctity, Frank Yerby called it "the saddest word in any language." In Godel, Escher, Bach, his exposition on the roots of consciousness, computer scientist Douglas Hofstadter called it "the push into fantasy." Our constant need for "if," the indication of a condition upon which other propositions might be found true, is a potent expression of the uncertainty in which we live.

     It's difficult, this job of living. What make it difficult are uncertainty and change.

     Uncertainty keeps us tense. Change wears us out. In combination, they leave us gasping for breath and ever more desperate for surcease.

     The hell of it is that there's so much uncertainty. Indeed, it seems to be everywhere. Even the propositions upon which ordinary people rely in the course of the most ordinary of their days are uncertain. Wait! Stop! How do you know that floor will bear your weight? Yes, yes, you've walked across it before, but things do change. Mightn't it have weakened fatally since the last time you tested it -- at the risk of your life, one might add?

     Uncertainty rules the physical world. Uncertainty is the ruling principle of the fundamental insights of physics. If the quantum physicists can be believed, Heraclitus was essentially correct: everything is fire, and nothing is truly stable. Heisenberg said it, I believe it, and that settles it.

     But we hunger for certainty and stability. So we create them in our heads.

     Create them? Excuse me. Do we really? We don't create anything else! Everything we make is a blend of pre-existent stuffs with the labor of our bodies and minds. Rather, we extrapolate from the order and persistence we can see to wider, deeper degrees of order and persistence, beneath the bottom-most of which lies a Will that governs all?

     Men being partial and limited, we cannot grasp the whole of Creation. Therefore we cannot be certain that there are any truly immutable truths, or any permanence even to the laws our best minds have deduced from what they can see and touch. This recognition has turned many a man to despair.

     Nevertheless, certainty and stability are available, as and where they've always been:

For I know that my Redeemer liveth,
    And that he shall stand,
        at the latter day, upon the Earth. [Job, 19:25]

     We can't be certain of what we believe, but we can be certain that we believe it. The Advent season, which opens the liturgical year, reminds us that the coming of Christ was foretold by the prophesies of Isaiah and others who came before him, and heralded at last by "the voice of him that crieth in the wilderness, 'Prepare ye the way of the Lord'":

John the baptizer appeared in the wilderness, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. And people from the whole Judean countryside and all the people of Jerusalem were going out to him, and were baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins. Now John was clothed with camel's hair, with a leather belt around his waist, and he ate locusts and wild honey. He proclaimed, "The one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to stoop down and untie the thong of his sandals. I have baptized you with water; but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit." [Mark, 1:4-8]

     Job could not be certain of what he foresaw. Neither could Isaiah, and neither could John. They were men, like us, and certainty about factual things is not available to men. But they trusted the visions they had been given. They were firm in their belief -- and they were right.

     For the next three weeks, Christians everywhere will prepare for the arrival of their Certainty, from whose Will flows the inexhaustible stability of all-healing grace.

     May God bless and keep you all.

Edges

     "A man once said to the universe, 'Sir, I exist.'
     'However,' replied the universe, 'that fact has not created in me a sense of obligation.'"

     [Stephen Crane]

     “Utopia is not one of the options” – David Bergland

     The wave of detentions and deportations are having an effect that could easily have been predicted:

A 79-year-old grandfather, in the United States since he was five, was detained by ICE for not complying with a deportation order issued nearly 60 years ago.https://t.co/7QwjcNQN3s

— reason (@reason) November 28, 2025

     Did no one expect that some such cases would arise? I knew they were coming. I also knew that opponents of the deportation policy would strive to capitalize on them. That’s politics, Gentle Reader.

     The above is only one. There are surely others. But that’s in the nature of a rule-based system.

---

     Charles Murray noted in his early work Losing Ground that no matter the “rules,” a rule-based system – i.e., the kind of policy whose decisions could be programmed, given the appropriate dataset – will always irrationally include some cases it should exclude and / or exclude others it should include. He was analyzing welfare policy, but the effect touches every kind of policy a law-based State might implement. The deportation orders President Trump has implemented are no exceptions.

     Every law creates a rule-based system. Even a law as simple as the one against burglary will have edge cases of the sort that make an observer say “That isn’t just.” (I happen to know someone who was snagged on such an edge.) Occasionally, legislators will try to install provisions in the law, or in the system that will implement and enforce it, to “soften” its edges. But that’s not always possible.

     Prosecutorial and judicial discretion soften the edges of the penal law. Those provisions allow human judgment to temper the applications of the penal law. They were undoubtedly well meant. Yet they too have their drawbacks, as politically-minded prosecutors and judges have demonstrated for us recently.

     The quote from David Bergland above covers all such matters. That’s why the appropriate way to evaluate a law or policy is “Has it made things better or worse?” Perfection in law is no more available than perfection in Mankind.

---

     I could go on for days about this. It’s inherent in the nature of things, for a simple and unchangeable reason:

All actions have side effects.
One or more will always be undesirable.

     Physicists call this the Second Law of Thermodynamics. It operates at all scales and in all things. Law and its enforcement are not exceptions.

     To close: Another argument has arisen over the decision of many states to decriminalize the use of cannabis-based products (e.g., marijuana). This has surely had both desirable and undesirable consequences. Some see the negatives as outweighing the positives. It’s unfortunate that there are negative side effects, but whether they mandate returning to the previous state of affairs is a matter for legislators to decide. Should they decide that way, we would shed those undesirable side effects... but we would also lose the positive consequences of cannabis decriminalization: the decreased burdens on law enforcement and corrective institutions, the extra tax revenue, and so forth.

     Edges are like that. They’re never perfect and they’re never infinitely sharp. There will always be persons who seek a way to exploit them for personal benefit.

     It’s a cruel cosmos. But as I typed that, I realized that I need more coffee. Perhaps I’ll be back later.

“Why So Racist, Fran?” Part 2: Let Them Sink

     Appeals such as the following are everywhere, especially in December:

Black children are suffering all over the world.
Imagine if it was a white child pic.twitter.com/r6r0Y0rVxj

— Fighter Rakgadi 🇿🇦 🇧🇫 (@Rakgadi_EM) November 25, 2025

     Oftentimes, they’re proximate to statements such as this: “You stole everything from us.” Of course, you means Whites, and us means blacks.

     Such claims are clearly nonsense, yet they’re repeated endlessly by black racialists and propagandists. They can’t be refuted; they’re utterly counterfactual and nonsensical, so there’s nowhere to start. What is there to say in response?

     Nothing. Silence, cold and absolute, is the proper response. Yet Whites continue to try to reason with them.

     Blacks claim to be our superiors. Yet not one of the advances in science, technology, philosophy, or society came from the Dark Continent. They say we owe them “reparations” for historical slavery. Yet slavery is still practiced in Africa; only in White nations was there an end to it. More, blacks in this country alone have absorbed trillions of dollars in “public assistance,” to say nothing of the many preferential treatment laws and programs that have awarded them privileges over Whites.

     Our forebears were mistaken ever to listen to them.

---

     On this Black Friday, among the things I’m thankful for is the surging White anger and resentment toward blacks – and their sad-sack White apologists – that blacks’ claims and demands have elicited. We’re finally getting close to the cold stare and folded arms that say “Watch out. We’ve had enough of you and won’t tolerate your savagery any longer.”

     Of course, there’s a lot of social and political inertia to be overcome. If blacks had intelligent representatives, they’d know better than to “double down.” They’d turn to their own and say “Cool it! You’re about to provoke a pogrom, with us on the losing end.” But they are doubling down. Violence against Whites, shoplifting and destruction, disruptions of White-owned and operated stores, restaurants, shopping centers, and so on are all on the increase.

     I’ve written before that there’s a race war in progress. The “It’s On” pieces are clearest in that regard:

• It’s On
• It’s On: What Now?
• It’s On Part 3: Where Explanation Remains Required
• It’s On, The Ongoing Saga
• It’s On: No Longer Just My Mad Notion

     It doesn’t have to be a flying-lead war. Indeed, it shouldn’t be. It can and should be conducted with Whites’ traditional weapons: exclusion when it suffices, and impersonal, objective enforcement of the law when it’s required. That would leave the Negro race to its own devices: i.e., to whatever order or chaos / prosperity or squalor it could maintain in the absence of interaction with (or support from) Whites.

     The cessation of the war wouldn’t necessarily be evident to everyone. There wouldn’t be an armistice, or a peace treaty. There would only be a steady diminution of offenses against law and propriety, and a lessening of screechy demands from black racialist mouthpieces. It would take a while, and afterward there would be some ugliness. Unless the radical solution is applied, Whites would still have to endure some savagery. Hopefully, it would fall to an irreducible minimum that ordinary law enforcement can handle.

     But blacks might not permit Whites such a peaceful war.

---

     “No one wants war” is a phrase we’ve heard many times. It’s one of the perennial lies, a pleasant dream that’s utterly false-to-fact. Many people have wanted war over the centuries. They’ve usually gotten their wish.

     Good people have never wanted war; it’s practically a defining characteristic. Yet they’ve been forced to fight wars many times. They haven’t always prevailed.

     To say that “no one wants a war” when we’re demonstrably already embroiled in a war is the height of folly. It’s like closing one’s eyes and chanting “Make it go away.” Once a war has begun, it must be fought to a conclusion.

     If there’s a race war in progress, it must be fought. To refuse to fight is to surrender pre-emptively. Unless you want to live in a nation in which Whites are a designated rightless victim class, to be abused and expropriated by blacks whenever the urge comes upon them, you must fight.

     If you choose not to fight, don’t expect to keep the respect of others who’ve taken up arms to defend you and yours.

Giving Thanks 2025

     It’s here once more: Thanksgiving Day. Also known as the Feast of St. Gluttony here at the Fortress. I’m of two minds about this holiday.

     On the one hand, it’s entirely appropriate for Americans to be thankful for our country – and in that phrase lies a powerful truth: it’s our country. No one else anywhere has anything like it. Our forebears built it, but we, its citizens, operate it and keep it going.

     On the other hand: only one day for giving thanks? Seems a bit... spare. Niggardly. As if we were too busy to remember and celebrate all we have and enjoy, day after day. “Sorry, can’t stop and give thinks just now; I’ve got emails to answer. What’s that you say? We should pray? Who has the time for that?”

     On the gripping hand (All right, make it three minds.) (Cf. this seminal novel) not everything around us is to be celebrated. No, I shan’t enumerate all the burrs under my saddle; it’s Thanksgiving Day. Anyway, you probably have your own set.

     But today, on the 73rd Thanksgiving Day of my life, I have something new to be grateful for. You may find it odd. Eccentric. But remember who’s writing this.

     I’m grateful that I’ve been conned enough, and in enough different ways, that I’ve unlearned my gullibility sufficiently to have evaded the biggest con of my life.

---

     I have no real idea whether my would-be con artist is a man or a woman. As she represented herself as a woman, I’ll treat her as such. Call her Jane.

     Jane has held a long conversation with me over Google Chat. She claimed to be a retired actress of minor stature. Either she boned up on that actress, or she really is that person; it doesn’t matter much.

     After about eight weeks chatting me up, including compliments of the most flattering kind, Jane cast her line: a former husband who was using a shared financial obligation to abuse her and her son. It was a good cast: poignant, sorrowful, adequately protracted and detailed... everything required to lure in an old softy like your humble Curmudgeon. And I, being that old softy, bit the hook.

     Jane let me know, indirectly, that she needed money to exclude that former husband from her life. She didn’t come out and say “Can you help me?” She merely implied, quite adroitly, that help would be welcome. Low key. Lots of half-suppressed suffering. I could imagine the Sorrowing Madonna look on her face.

     ...and I immediately offered to help.

     We pause here for raucous laughter from those Gentle Readers who must vent it.

---

     A tiny current in my forebrain redirected my limbic reaction just in time: Are you certain this is really someone who needs and deserves your help? After all, I hadn’t done much research on Jane. As a former actress, there should be plenty of material on the Web about her, but I had yet to look for any. So I did.

     It developed that Jane – i.e., the retired actress she claimed to be – has a net worth in eight digits, that she’d recently purchased an expensive home in a glamorous part of California, that she controls at least two companies, including a production company, and that she employs a management team and a personal assistant. The financial obligation she’d lamented to me was, if not dismissibly trivial, at least minor.

     That sent me back over some other curious behavior Jane had displayed. I re-examined it with clearer, more skeptical eyes. It followed a familiar pattern: one characteristic of a Con Under Construction. I chided myself for not seeing it previously.

     One such curious behavior was part of Jane’s current appeal. Once I’d detected the conformance-to-pattern, the scales fell from my eyes. I was being had. Jane had discerned in me the key attributes of a con-victim: the willingness to trust and the urge to help.

     Mind you, “Jane” was a stream of characters from over the Internet. A TCP/IP packet stream. I hadn’t seen her in real time. I hadn’t even heard her voice. And I was about to send her money.

     It’s true, Gentle Reader: There’s no fool like an old fool.

---

     I’ve backed away, of course, but I feel terrible about it even so. Yes, I kept a swindler’s fingers out of my wallet, but before that I’d ignored many warning signs that I could now recognize. Worse, I’d disclosed information about myself that persuaded Jane to see me as a target! What was I thinking?

     Answer: I wasn’t. But I woke up in time, and for that, on this fourth Thursday of November in the Year of Our Lord 2025, I give thanks.

     I’ve written many times about the decline in trustworthiness and trust among us. It’s cost this nation dearly. Yet I hadn’t done my personal part in responding to it: I hadn’t become appropriately suspicious and defensive. That is the required response to the plague of deceit that’s upon us, and I had yet to accept my part in it.

     I have now.

     May you all, wherever you are in the world, enjoy a happy and appropriately filling Thanksgiving Day. And may you remember that predators lurk among us. Many wear winning, appealing faces. Strive not to attract their attention. Should one solicit your attention, do your research. Be skeptical, even cynical, for in those attitudes lies survival.

     May God bless and keep you all.

“Why So Racist, Fran?”

     People have asked me that very question.

     There are a number of reasons. Some, I’ve expressed in these pieces. Others arise from personal experiences of which I’m reluctant to speak. But all arise from a pattern that, over time, I grew weary of trying to deny.

     American blacks – i.e., residents of this nation descended from sub-Saharan African ancestors; henceforth simply blacks – are hostile to Whites and Asians. Many of them are openly, violently hostile toward us. The danger is more evident in some places than others, but nowhere that blacks reside is it absent.

     Thomas Sowell and others have pointed out that starting after the Civil War / War Between The States / Late Unpleasantness, blacks had an ascending history: steadily rising economically and socially. Of course if the baseline is rightless slavery, ascent is to be expected. However, even during those ascending years, unwed motherhood was much more prevalent among blacks than Whites: roughly 19% compared to Whites’ 6%. Today black illegitimacy stands at approximately 72%. Nearly three-quarters of all black infants are born to an unwed mother.

     Fatherlessness being an excellent predictor of future crime, blacks’ participation in crime figures has always been out of proportion to their numbers. It’s at its highest today; slightly more than 50% of all violent crimes and crimes against property can be attributed to black perpetrators. Ann Coulter has noted that the great majority of incarcerated offenders – of all races – were born out of wedlock; many never knew their bio-fathers.

     Black participation in various federal and state welfare programs is disproportionate to their percentage of the population. So is black employment by state and federal governments. Despite many subventions, including “equal opportunity” laws and similar preferential-treatment provisions, blacks are net-negative participants in the American economy.

     Heavily black neighborhoods are known to be disorderly and unsafe for Whites or Asians to visit or pass through. “Casual” assaults and harassment of Whites and Asians by blacks are commonplace. Disorderly behavior by blacks, including pointless vandalism, in retail establishments is becoming a major detriment to the retail sector.

     Black youth are highly resistant to education of any kind. This open letter by a White schoolteacher depicts a degree of disorder and pointlessness that’s almost never observed in a classroom of Whites. A typical case:

     Anyone who is around young blacks will probably get a constant diet of rap music. Blacks often make up their own jingles, and it was not uncommon for 15 boys to swagger into a classroom, bouncing their shoulders and jiving back.

     They were yelling back and forth, rapping 15 different sets of words in the same harsh, rasping dialect. The words were almost invariably a childish form of boasting: “Who got dem shine rim, who got dem shine shoe, who got dem shine grill (gold and silver dental caps)?” The amateur rapper usually ends with a claim—in the crudest terms imaginable—that all womankind is sexually devoted to him. For whatever reason, my students would often groan instead of saying a particular word, as in, “She suck dat aaahhhh (think of a long grinding groan), she f**k dat aaaahhhh, she lick dat aaaahhh.”

     So many black girls dance in the hall, in the classroom, on the chairs, next to the chairs, under the chairs, everywhere. Once I took a call on my cell phone and had to step outside of class. I was away about two minutes but when I got back, the girls had lined up at the front of the classroom and were convulsing to the delight of the boys.

     In sum, blacks’ propensity toward aggression, their lack of impulse control, and their unwillingness to accept responsibility for themselves impose a heavy toll on American society. Yet they forever demand special preferences and special programs to cater to them. Black racialist mouthpieces never cease to “blame Whitey,” as if the crimes and destruction blacks perpetrate would never occur had there never been slavery in the United States. And of course there’s the drumbeat for “reparations,” which appears likely to go on to the end of time.

     Charles Murray, the bravest sociologist of our time, put hard numbers to some of the above in his recent book Facing Reality. Others, both credentialed and informal, have added data to the pile. Particularly notable is the late Colin Flaherty’s contribution: White Girl Bleed A Lot, which documents the epidemic of black-on-white violence. The work of Jared Taylor and others also deserves recognition.

     In response to all this, the black activists and racial promoters simply scream “racism!”

     Call it what you will. It’s a response to the depredations and social toll blacks have imposed on America – particularly on Whites. Many have tried in vain to explain those burdens away. Many have declared themselves done with all such efforts.

     Including myself.

A Sulvan Future

     The sex doll is now the sex robot:

The end of problems

In a few years, everyone will be single! pic.twitter.com/FaFFmEg415

— Fun Viral Vids 😊 (@Fun_Viral_Vids) November 24, 2025

     ...and Mankind is in grave danger.

---

     My regular Gentle Readers already know about my little quirks, so the following is for the newcomers in the audience: I’m a white Catholic libertarian-conservative with traditional views on such matters as love, marriage, fidelity, and reproduction. Having read that, it’s likely that those newcomers are thinking they know what’s coming. My regular Gentle Readers know better.

     There’s a crisis of sorts in progress. It goes by many names. Its central filament is an unprecedented level of distrust, and no small amount of hostility, between men and women. Distrust and hostility are seldom good things, but these instances threaten human survival.

     Unless you’ve spent the last three decades in a drug-induced coma – if you did, check your savings account before reading onward; priorities, don’t y’know – you’re aware that there’s been a sharp decline in reproduction rates in the U.S. and other industrialized nations. Americans aren’t producing children rapidly enough to sustain our population numbers. Other First World nations are doing even worse that way, but my attention is on the U.S.

     Until recently, there was only one way to produce a human baby: a human spermatozoön had to get cozy with a human ovum and produce a viable human zygote. That procedure required a man to have conventional sexual intercourse with a woman. But today we have sperm and ovum banks, such that sperm and ova can be introduced to one another at “mixers” in test tubes. The resulting zygote can then be implanted into a woman’s womb for further maturation.

     While it hasn’t happened yet, researchers are attempting to clone a human, possibly after some genetic manipulation. That abomination threatens to reduce children to products, something one can order from a “vendor,” perhaps with specifications for the desired “item.” It might serve to keep population numbers up, but it would assuredly destroy the nuclear family, one of the pillars of civilized society.

     But let’s leave those considerations aside. The following passage, which I’ve used more than once before, comes from C. S. Lewis’s masterpiece That Hideous Strength:

“Who is called Sulva? What road does she walk? Why is the womb barren on one side? Where are the cold marriages?”

Ransom replied, “Sulva is she whom mortals call the Moon. She walks in the lowest sphere. The rim of the world that was wasted goes through her. Half of her orb is turned toward us and shares our curse. Her other half looks to Deep Heaven; happy would be he who could cross that frontier and see the fields on her further side. On this side, the womb is barren and the marriages cold. There dwell an accursed people, full of pride and lust. There when a young man takes a maiden in marriage, they do not lie together, but each lies with a cunningly fashioned image of the other, made to move and to be warm by devilish arts, for real flesh will not please them, they are so dainty (delicati) in their dreams of lust. Their real children they fabricate by vile arts in a secret place.”

     Did God grant Lewis a glimpse of one possible future – perhaps the one toward which we’re headed?

---

     The video at the start of this piece tells us of a development that seemingly cannot be headed off. The emphasis recent decades have placed on sexual sensation and “satisfaction” has helped to power the production of many pleasure-enhancing devices. Sometimes such devices are mockingly advertised as “marital aids.” What role they have in “aiding” a marriage, I cannot imagine.

     Those “marital aids” are entirely focused on pleasure. They have no relation to marital bonding, unless – I must allow for the possibility – that a really good orgasm can make one fall in love with its “provider.” But how often is a second person involved with the use of such devices? I could be wrong, but I don’t think the answer is “very often” or “most of the time.”

     The sex robot is the “marital aid” completed and matured:

• It can produce the sensations that lead to orgasm;
• It’s housed in an attractive humaniform body;
• It’s equipped with an artificial-intelligence module that mimics the behavior of a willing sex partner.

     I doubt that AI module is equipped with a behavioral pathway that would allow the robot to refuse sex to its owner. Once again, I could be wrong, but if I were, what would the point of the robot be?

     Such robots, regardless of their target market, reduce the probability that their owner will seek a human sex partner. Need I spell out the consequences for reproduction?

     Given the no-man’s-land that dating and mating have become, I predict that once those robots come down a bit in price, they’ll prove very popular. Demand will outstrip supply immediately.

---

     I’m not an idiot. I know that the sex robot is a response to conditions that predated the possibility of such a thing. I also know that the great majority of us don’t decide to have children “for the future of the country.” Finally, I know that exhorting people to have (more) kids for the sake of the future is the worst imaginable way to go about encouraging reproduction. I’m really just shaking my head and wondering if this is a sign that the Last Days are upon us.

     I think I’ll schedule a talk with my pastor. As for you, Gentle Reader: have a nice day.

     And pray.

Choices

     Good morning, Gentle Reader! I know, I know: “What’s good about Monday?” Well, I suppose it depends on your perspective. If you still work for wages, perhaps a certain dreariness is to be expected. On the other hand, if you work for no wages, as does your humble Curmudgeon, it’s just one day among seven: as pleasant or vile as any of the other six.

     But we do have some interesting material for you, so have a look:

1. Energy.

     The most recent estimates I can find of annual American energy consumption hover around 94 quadrillion British Thermal Units (BTU). If you prefer the metric system, which I do under these circumstances, that’s approximately 94 quintillion joules: 94x10¹⁸ newton-meters.

     If you have no feel for such magnitudes – and who does? – that’s a whole honkin’ lot of energy. Threats to various portions of our energy-supply system have people looking at all sorts of adjustments and alternatives. Here’s a very interesting one:

     By dropping a nuclear reactor 1.6 kilometers (1 mile) underground, Deep Fission aims to use the weight of a billion tons of rock and water as a natural containment system comparable to concrete domes and cooling towers. With the fission reaction occurring far below the surface, steam can safely circulate in a closed loop to generate power.
     [...]
     Deep Fission’s small modular reactor (SMR), called Gravity, is designed to stand 9 meters tall while remaining slim enough to fit inside a borehole roughly three-quarters of a meter wide. The company says its modular approach allows multiple 15-megawatt reactors to be clustered on a single site: A block of 10 would total 150 MW, and Deep Fission claims that larger groupings could scale to 1.5 GW.

     This is an exciting prospect. However, if we divide that 15 megawatt output into the 94 quintillion joules yearly consumption, we find that that little reactor would have to labor for 6.26 trillion seconds to meet the annual consumption figure. As there are only about 31 million seconds in a day, it appears we’d need more than one. About 200,000 of them, in fact.

     That’s a lot of reactors and a lot of uranium in a lot of mile-deep boreholes. A lot of regulatory bodies to sweet-talk. Well, no doubt someone is working on it.

---

2. Marketing.

     The summary below of chain-gas-station / convenience store Buc-ee’s marketing and design strategy strikes me as the greatest stroke of commercial genius since the drive-through fast-food place:

Did you know Buc-ee's business model is essentially based on our bladder? pic.twitter.com/URlF2amMCA

— Sovey (@SoveyX) November 19, 2025

     That struck me very nearly speechless. (If you’re a regular Gentle Reader, you know that nothing strikes me completely speechless, but this came close.) But like most great insights, it’s perfectly simple once you understand it.

     Buc-ee’s target customer profile is a woman in an automobile. The entire thrust of its design was to cater to her. She might not be alone, but her presence is the key. So attracting women commuters and women traveling with their families were the Buc-ee’s target. The results speak for themselves.

     There are no Buc-ee’s in the American Northeast. Maybe someday. They actually sound like they’re worth patronizing for any reason or none. Hint, hint, Buc-ee’s management!

---

3. Relations Between The Sexes.

     You’ve probably seen images of “bachelor pads” that look like this:

     In truth, that’s a rather upscale “pad,” but it will serve. Such living arrangements have been the targets of sarcastic women for decades. But what if it’s trending upward, owing to the declining interest in marriage and family among men?

     Please view it to the end. This gentleman has thought through the implications of at least some “men going their own way.” If young Smith were to elect such a life path early enough, he could reach his mid-forties in a state that makes retirement achievable then and there. Yes, he would forfeit marriage, children, and the possibility of a McMansion, but those are goals no one is required to pursue.

     No, it doesn’t appeal to me. Nor would it have appealed to me when I was in my twenties. But it’s an open choice that some men, at least, will find palatable, with the consequences the video delineates.

     Women plaintively asking “Where are all the men?” (Variation: “Where are all the good men?”) should ponder this. If you want to mate, you must make the lifelong bachelor / early retirement choice depicted above less appealing to men than mating with you. As you can’t change us... well, what does that imply?

     We have choices, too.

---

     That’s all for the present. Have a good day and perhaps I’ll be back later with another serving of drivel. Until then, for best results in living, adhere to the mighty Precepts of the late Nelson Algren:

• Never eat at a place called “Mom’s.”
• Never play cards with a man named “Doc.”
• And never bed a woman who’s got more troubles than you.

     Smart guy, wasn’t he?

For The Feast of Christ The King

     [Today is the Feast of Christ The King, which falls on the last Sunday before Advent. It’s a unique holy day for several reasons, and one that I find particularly personally significant. It first appeared at Eternity Road on January 6, 2008. I find that I cannot improve upon it, for which reason I've made a habit of reviving it each year on this special day. -- FWP]

    

---

     Let's talk about...Zoroastrianism!

    

***

     The ancient creed called Zoroastrianism predated the birth of Christ by about a millennium. Its founder, Zoroaster, laid down a small set of doctrines:

• There is one universal and transcendental God, Ahura Mazda, the one uncreated creator and to whom all worship is ultimately directed.
• Ahura Mazda's creation — evident as asha, truth and order — is the antithesis of chaos, evident as druj, falsehood and disorder. The resulting conflict involves the entire universe, including humanity, which has an active role to play in the conflict.
• Active participation in life through good thoughts, good words and good deeds is necessary to ensure happiness and to keep the chaos at bay. This active participation is a central element in Zoroaster's concept of free will, and Zoroastrianism rejects all forms of monasticism.
• Ahura Mazda will ultimately prevail, at which point the universe will undergo a cosmic renovation and time will end. In the final renovation, all of creation — even the souls of the dead that were initially banished to "darkness" — will be reunited in Ahura Mazda.
• In Zoroastrian tradition, the malevolent is represented by Angra Mainyu, the "Destructive Principle", while the benevolent is represented through Ahura Mazda's Spenta Mainyu, the instrument or "Bounteous Principle" of the act of creation. It is through Spenta Mainyu that Ahura Mazda is immanent in humankind, and through which the Creator interacts with the world. According to Zoroastrian cosmology, in articulating the Ahuna Vairya formula, Ahura Mazda made His ultimate triumph evident to Angra Mainyu.
• As expressions and aspects of Creation, Ahura Mazda emanated seven "sparks", the Amesha Spentas, "Bounteous Immortals" that are each the hypostasis and representative of one aspect of that Creation. These Amesha Spenta are in turn assisted by a league of lesser principles, the Yazatas, each "Worthy of Worship" and each again a hypostasis of a moral or physical aspect of creation.

     I find nothing objectionable in the above, except that only God, by whatever name He might be known, is worthy of worship; the most a lesser being is entitled to is veneration. But the word "worship" has had many meanings and subtleties over the years, so I'm inclined to let it pass. More important than Zoroastrianism's harmless mythos is its ethos, which Zoroaster himself encapsulated in a unique and memorable command:

    

Speak truth and shoot the arrow straight.

     Unlike the overwhelming majority of other pre-Christian creeds, Zoroastrianism was -- and is -- rational, humane, and life-loving rather than life-denying. It emphasized human free will, moral choice, and the need to defend truth and order against lies and chaos. These attributes made it the dominant religion of classical Persia and environs, though Zoroastrians' numbers are far reduced today.

     (No, I haven't converted to Zoroastrianism. You can all relax.)

     In the Western world, the Zoroastrians were the first practitioners of the pseudo-science we call astrology. They reposed a fair amount of confidence in it, for the creed had had its own prophets, beginning with Zoroaster himself, and among the prophecies were several tied to events foretold to happen in the night sky. The Zoroastrians therefore took great interest in the stars, and made careful records of occurrences therein, for comparison to the utterances of their prophets.

     One of those prophecies involved the birth of God in mortal flesh.

     The Magi of the Incarnation story were three esteemed nobles of Persia, wealthy in gold, wisdom, and the admiration of their societies. In contrast to the pattern prevalent among the nobilities of later times, these three, whose names have come down to us as Caspar, Melchior, and Balthasar, were deeply religious men whose involvement in the investigation of the Zoroastrian prophecies was sincere. When they spied the famous "star in the east" -- quite possibly a nova in Draco now known to have occurred at about that time -- they resolved to follow its trail, to find the divine infant and pay him homage.

     I shan't retell the whole of the story. It's accessible to anyone reading this site, in both secular and liturgical versions. The most salient aspect of the story is that these three exalted nobles -- kings, in the most common accounts -- of a faraway land came to pay homage and present tokens of vassalage to a newborn infant.

     Of course! What else would be appropriate, before a King of Kings?

    

***

     I will pause here to draw an important distinction: "King of Kings" is not the same as "Emperor." "Emperor" is a title appropriate only to a conqueror; that's more or less what it means. Atop that, an emperor is not necessarily concerned with justice, whereas a king, of whatever altitude, is obliged to make it the center of his life:

     The saber gleamed in the muted light. I'd spent a lot of time and effort sharpening and polishing it.

     It was a plain weapon, not one you'd expect to see in the hand of a king. There was only the barest tracing on the faintly curved blade. The guard bell was a plain steel basket, without ornamentation. The hilt was a seven inch length of oak, darkened with age but firm to the touch. There was only a hint of a pommel, a slight swell of the hilt at its very end.

     "What is this?"

     "A sword. Your sword."

     A hint of alarm compressed his eyes. "What do you expect me to do with it?"

     I shrugged. "Whatever you think appropriate. But a king should have a sword. By the way," I said, "it was first worn by Louis the Ninth of France when he was the Dauphin, though he set it aside for a useless jeweled monstrosity when he ascended the throne."

     Time braked to a stop as confusion spun his thoughts.

     "I don't know how to use it," he murmured.

     "Easily fixed. I do."

     "But why, Malcolm?"

     I stepped back, turned a little away from those pleading eyes.

     "Like it or not, you're a king. You don't know what that means yet. You haven't a sense for the scope of it. But you must learn. Your life, and the lives of many others, will turn on how well you learn it." I paused and gathered my forces. "What is a king, Louis?"

     He stood there with the sword dangling from his hand. "A ruler. A leader. A warlord."

     "More. All of that, but more. The sword is an ancient symbol for justice. Back when the function of nobility was better understood, a king never sat his throne without his sword to hand. If he was to treat with the envoy of another king, it would be at his side. If he was to dispense justice, it would be across his knees. Why do you suppose that was, Louis?"

     He stood silent for a few seconds.

     "Symbolic of the force at his command, I guess."

     I shook my head gently.

     "Not just symbolic. A true king, whose throne belonged to him by more than the right of inheritance, led his own troops and slew malefactors by his own hand. The sword was a reminder of the privilege of wielding force, but it was there to be used as well."

     His hands clenched and unclenched in time to his thoughts. I knew what they had to be.

     "The age of kings is far behind us, Malcolm."

     "It never ended. Men worthy of the role became too few to maintain the institution."

     "And I'm...worthy?"

     If he wasn't, then no worthy man had ever lived, but I couldn't tell him that.

     "There's a gulf running through the world, Louis. On one side are the commoners, the little men who bear tools, tend their gardens, and keep the world running. On the other are the nobles, who see far and dare much, and sometimes risk all they have, that the realm be preserved and the commoner continue undisturbed in his portion. There's no shortage of either, except for the highest of the nobles, the men of unbreakable will and moral vision, for whom justice is a commitment deeper than life itself."

     His face had begun to twitch. He'd heard all he could stand to hear, and perhaps more. I decided to cap the pressure.

     "Kings have refused their crowns many times, Louis. You might do as much, though it would sadden me to see it. But you could break that sword over your knee, change your name, and run ten thousand miles to hide where no one could know you, and it wouldn't lessen what you are and were born to be." I gestured at the sword. "Keep it near you."

     [From Chosen One.]

     Note further: a mortal king cannot and does not define justice; he dispenses justice, according to principles drawn from a higher authority. The King of Kings, from whom the privilege and obligation to mete justice flows, is the definer. In the matter of Law, all lesser kings are His vassals.

     The Magi conceded this explicitly with their gift of gold.

    

***

     The pre-Christian era knew few, if any, rulers who claimed their jurisdiction solely on basis of might. Nearly all were approved and anointed by a priesthood. In that anointment lay their claim to be dispensers of true justice, for God would not allow a mortal to mete justice that departs from His Law. Let's leave aside the divergence between theory and practice for the moment; it was the logical connection between Divine Law and human-modulated justice that mattered to the people of those times.

     But the King of Kings would need no clerical approval. Indeed, He would be the Priest of Priests: the Authority lesser priests would invoke in anointing lesser kings.

     The Magi conceded this explicitly with their gift of frankincense.

    

***

     We of the Twenty-First Century are largely unaware of the obligations which lay upon the kings of old. They were not, until the waning years of monarchy, sedentary creatures whose lives were a round of indulgences and propitiations. They were expected not merely to judge and pass sentence, but also to lead the armies of the realm when war was upon it. The king was expected to put himself at risk before any of his subjects. Among the reasons was this one: the loss of the king in battle was traditionally grounds for surrender, after which the enemy was forbidden by age-old custom to strike further blows.

     The king, in this conception, was both the leader of his legions and a sacrifice for the safety of his subjects, should the need arise. He was expected to embrace the role wholeheartedly, and to lead from the front in full recognition of the worst of the possibilities. Not to do so was an admission that he was unfit for his throne:

     "We have talked," he said, "about all the strategies known to man for dealing with an armed enemy. We have talked about every aspect of deadly conflict. Every moment of every discussion we've had to date has been backlit by the consciousness of objectives and costs: attaining the one and constraining the other. And one of the first things we talked about was the importance of insuring that you don't overpay for what you seek."

     She kept silent and listened.

     "What if you can't, Christine? What if your objective can't be bought at an acceptable price?"

     She pressed her lips together, then said, "You abandon it."

     He smirked. "It's hard even to say it, I know. But reality is sometimes insensitive to a general's desires. On those occasions, you must learn how to walk away. And that, my dear, is an art form of its own."

     He straightened up. "Combat occurs within an envelope of conditions. A general doesn't control all those conditions. If he did, he'd never have to fight. Sometimes, those conditions are so stiff that he's compelled to fight whether he thinks it wise, or not."

     "What conditions can do that to you?"

     His mouth quirked. "Yes, what conditions indeed?"

     Oops. Here we go again. "Weather could do it."

     "How?"

     "By cutting off your lines of retreat in the face of an invasion."

     "Good. Another."

     "Economics. Once the economy of your country's been militarized, it runs at a net loss, so you might be forced to fight from an inferior position because you're running out of resources."

     "Excellent. One more."

     She thought hard. "Superior generalship on the other side?"

     He clucked in disapproval. "Does the opponent ever want you to fight?"

     "No, sorry. Let me think."

     He waited.

     Conditions. Conditions you can't control. Conditions that...control you.

     "Politics. The political leadership won't accept retreat or surrender until you've been so badly mangled that it's obvious even to an idiot."

     The man Louis Redmond had named the greatest warrior in history began to shudder. It took him some time to quell.

     "It's the general's worst nightmare," he whispered. "Kings used to lead their own armies. They used to lead the cavalry's charge. For a king to send an army to war and remain behind to warm his throne was simply not done. Those that tried it lost their thrones, and some lost their heads -- to their own people. It was a useful check on political and military rashness.

     "It hasn't been that way for a long time. Today armies go into the field exclusively at the orders of politicians who remain at home. And politicians are bred to believe that reality is entirely plastic to their wills."

     [From On Broken Wings.]

     But the King of Kings, intrinsically above all other authorities, would obviously be aware of this obligation. More, His sacrifice of Himself must perforce be for the salvation of the whole of the world -- indeed, the whole of the universe and every sentient creature in it. Nothing less could possibly justify it.

     The Magi conceded this explicitly with their gift of myrrh.

    

***

     On the first Sunday after the New Year, Christians celebrate the Feast of the Epiphany, called the Theophany by some eastern Christian sects, when the Magi prostrated themselves before the Christ Child and made their gifts of vassalage to him. A vassal is a noble sworn to fealty to a higher authority: a higher-ranking noble or a king. The obligations of the vassal are to enforce justice as promulgated by the vassal's liege, and to support and defend the liege's realm by force of arms as required. To the King of Kings, God made flesh in the miracle of the Incarnation, every temporal authority is properly a vassal, obliged to mete justice in accordance with the natural law and to defend the Liege's realm -- men of good will, wherever they may be -- against all enemies, whenever the need might arise. To do less is to be unworthy of a temporal throne, palace, official office, or seat in a legislature...to be unworthy of Him.

     He took on the burdens of the flesh to confirm God's love for Man and to open the gates of salvation. He went to Calvary in testament to the authenticity of His Authority. The Magi knew, and in their pledge of fealty to Him, made plain that He had come not merely to succor Israel, but for the liberation of all Mankind.

     May God bless and keep you all.