Dangerfield’s Syndrome

     Forgive me, Gentle Reader. It’s very early, I’ve been reading some disturbing stuff, and it has me in a foul mood. Two tweets in particular ignited the urge to blather about something that will offend at least half the human race.

     For those who may not have noticed – the Web does conceal a lot about those who rant here – I’m a man. Male, that is. A Y-chromosome bearer. Therefore, I share in the common burdens of the male half of my species. I try not to dwell on them; it’s not good for any of us. But the consciousness of some of those burdens can be difficult to suppress.

     Have a second look at the title of this piece. (For the moment, just the menfolk. The ladies will get their turn.) Know what I’m talking about now?

     The old saying that familiarity breeds contempt has a special application to male-female relations. Familiarity is rooted in the word family. Families of the traditional sort – one man, one woman, and some number of minor children, dogs, cats, and their appurtenances – don’t stay together for as long as they once did. If you’ve noticed that and wondered how to redress it, you’re not alone.

     Part of the reason is burgeoning contempt, especially hers toward him.

     Even at its most obvious, that can be puzzling. Why should she feel contempt for him? She married him, didn’t she? She claimed to love him, back then; has her love lapsed? If so, why?

     Remember the old slogan that love is the answer? We heard it a lot more often a few decades back. It was wrong then. It’s still wrong today. It’s especially wrong when applied to male-female relations, especially those of the (previously) intimate sort. The error inheres in a single word.

     Bide a moment while I fetch more coffee.

* * *

     Have a look at a particularly striking tweet:

"Only women, children and dogs are loved unconditionally. A man is only loved under the condition that he provides something." - Chris Rock

Changing this dynamic should be at the top of the priority list.

— Lisa Britton (@LisaBritton) December 30, 2025

     That was a stunner. It points to a truth that virtually no one is willing to face squarely. In part, that’s because there’s a misdirector in it. Once again, the misdirector consists of a single word.

     Have you found that word yet? No? Well, as it’s my job to illuminate things that elude other people, I shall tell you forthwith.

     The word is love.

     Miss Britton’s statement is both admirable and factually impeccable. However, the underlying disease isn’t a failure of love. For all the air time it gets, love isn’t a primary emotion. It’s a resultant that's made possible by other factors.

     Primary among those factors is respect.

     Many a relationship between a man and a woman is actually devoid of love. Her love of him, that is. She needn’t feel love to bind herself to him. She does need to acknowledge and respect his ability to protect her and provide for her. Say what you will about “modern women” and the contemporary independence thereof; she would never tie herself to him if he didn’t seem equal to the protect/provide role.

     There’s a lot of talk about how today’s women are all determined to hold out for a modern prince: tall, handsome, self-assured, chivalrous, and with at least a six-figure income. There’s a lot of truth in that. The expectation may be unreasonable, but a lot of women hold it even so. They’ve been told that he’s what they deserve.

     Young women, that is. After about age 30, their standards start to slip. In part that’s because of the “biological clock;” in other part, it’s because they own mirrors. Reality has banged on their doors for long enough to get their attention. Men they’d have dismissed a decade earlier start to look good; good enough for a trial run, at least.

     The complementarity of the sexes is hardwired into us. Women yearn for protectors and providers. Men are designed for the role, and seek to fulfill it. Eventually those urges overcome the propaganda. The desire to see oneself as deserving of a prince or a princess gives way before their power.

     If you’ve been wondering why we bear so many fewer children per couple than previous generations, that’s a part of the reason that’s much harder to face plainly than the various nostrums about “consumerism” and changes in the “economic value of progeny.”

* * *

     As time passes, the respect she feels for him can wane, and often does. This is especially prevalent if occupational and economic advancement eludes him. Those things are not automatic; indeed, many men never consciously seek them. Over time, it can seem to her that he’s just there. Marking time. Doing what he’s always done, with the rewards he’s always received. Her labors loom large in her consciousness, especially if she’s the mother of minor children. His do not.

     The diminution of respect that often proceeds from those perceptions is poison to a marriage. Yet it happens, especially between couples surrounded by other families that seem to be doing better. Her protestations of love start to ring hollow. He senses it through her behavior, which will always outweigh her words. The marriage begins to lose its cohesion.

     Five years, ten years, fifteen years… the interval will vary according to the characters of the participants. But the behavioral changes are consistent. She complains more and more, to him and to others. He develops a “wandering eye,” with adultery a frequent result.

     This isn’t about love. If there was love in any degree at the outset, it will begin to crumble as the respect that made love possible crumbles beneath it. But the respect is primary; the failure of love is a consequence.

* * *

     The above is a general, surface-level diagnosis of a common phenomenon. It’s unclear to me that there’s an antidote to it. Yet I’m confident that a lot of the midlife failure of sexual intimacy is explained by it. It’s less about loss of love than about his failure in her eyes to bring her what she married him for.

     But has he failed, truly? I don’t think so.

I care about men because im a human being being with empathy for Christ sake it’s not that hard is it? I feel protective toward those carrying silent weight and I always have. That’s called being in tune with this thing that we were given as human beings called the ability to…

— Chloe Roma (@The_RomaArmy) December 29, 2025

The Deepest Divide

     I’d intended to apologize for a sudden attack of intellectual sloth and declare a day off, but I have something on my mind that demands a piece, if only a brief one.

     You’re a Gentle Reader of Liberty’s Torch. That marks you as intelligent, erudite, on top of current events, and unusually handsome and charming. And that means you’re already aware of the enormous “daycare fraud” being perpetrated by Somalis in Minnesota. It’s a good thing you’re already aware, for the national media have done their best not to mention them.

     Citizen-journalist Nick Shirley has done excellent work at exposing these frauds. Not one of them has any children in its care. All are consuming federal and state funds with a voracity that would impress Ungoliant.

     The scandals that surround the scandal pertain to the Minnesota state government’s tolerance – nay, its protection – of these fraudulent institutions, and the complete failure of any national news organ to report on them. Governor Tim Walz, already a figure of considerable ignominy, has openly said that he will support the Somalians against ICE and the justice system. All in all, it forms a pile of ordure that would sicken Satan.

     If Satan were an American, that is. If he’s a Third Worlder or a Muslim, it’s business as usual, except for the embarrassment of getting caught with your hand in the till.

     If you were raised in the U.S. or in Europe, you were raised to Judeo-Christian moral-ethical standards: broadly speaking, the Noahide Commandments, of which the Ten Commandments of the Book of Exodus are a superset. Those standards are not common to persons reared outside the nations of Christendom. Third Worlders generally live by another rule:

Getting Away With It
Is All That Matters.

     Military science-fiction writer Tom Kratman has called this amoral familism. Of course, the term amoral implies a moral standard that an amoralist would deny. The standard of the First World, as previously mentioned, is the one delineated by the Ten Commandments.

     It doesn’t matter that we of the First World are shocked by the Somalian fraud system. That is: it doesn’t matter to the Somalians. All that matters to them is getting away with it. They feel no guilt. They’re merely embarrassed about being exposed. They have powerful protectors, so there’s a good chance they’ll continue to get away with it. Should that protection fail, such that they’re indicted, tried, convicted, and imprisoned for their crimes, well, “them’s the breaks,” right? Imagine a big Third World shrug.

     Prison, by the way, would not change them. They’d come out as amoral as they went in.

     In this cleavage between the moral standard shared by the U.S. and Europe and the non-standard of the Third World lies the clinching argument against permitting Third Worlders to immigrate to the First World. To the Somalians, the U.S. is a goodie bowl from which to grab all they can get away with. Their attitude is shared by virtually all other Third Worlders. They start stealing as soon as they’re here. They don’t stop of their own accord; they must be stopped. To avert that calamity, they make use of every bleeding-heart slogan and epithet you’ve ever heard, with copious assistance from the American Left.

     (Why the American Left is so willing to defend these migratory vampires is a subject for another tirade. For now, just take it as written.)

     The 1965 Hart-Celler Act made it possible for Third Worlders to apply for entry to the United States, with the possibility of naturalization after five years’ residence. Beyond that, the Immigration and Nationality Act and the Refugee Act allow such persons to petition for asylum here, on the representation that they’re fleeing persecution. These were regarded as humanitarian reforms. However, as we have seen from the Somalians and other Third World arrivals to our shores, the humanitarianism is one-way only. Third Worlders don’t assimilate. They certainly don’t adopt the Judeo-Christian ethics that makes our open, generous, excessively trusting society possible.

     President Trump has said that he will deport them. I hope he’ll keep his word. For longer-range relief, the Hart-Celler Act and all legislation that draws from that foundation must be repealed in favor of an immigration policy that admits only those who can be expected to conform to Judeo-Christian moral-ethical standards, no matter what religion they profess. I imagine Buddhists would be fairly safe.

I Should Have Mentioned…

     What I write will henceforth appear here as well as at my Substack site. I’ve also decided to reproduce my essays from the now defunct “Version 2.0” site at a Blogger site. Further news will be forthcoming.

Attractively Packaged Lies

     Have a brilliantly compact observation from a brilliant source:

Any memetic structure that inhibits biological reproduction must necessarily transfer to the minds of those who do reproduce or it will die out.

They target the youth especially, because their mental firewalls are not yet strong. https://t.co/ICxY3e1Xq2

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 28, 2025

     Bravo! I hope a great many people see the above and reflect on how nicely it characterizes the incentives faced by young Whites today. It also raises a parallel question: were the memetic firewalls of which Elon Musk speaks stronger in previous generations, or have those dedicated to the destruction of the White race and the civilizations it’s built become that much cleverer and more insidious?

     I’m suddenly in mind of an old Heinlein story:

     “Reason is poor propaganda when opposed by the yammering, unceasing lies of shrewd and evil and self-serving men. The little man has no way to judge and the shoddy lies are packaged more attractively. There is no way to offer color to a colorblind man, nor is there any way for us to give the man of imperfect brain the canny skill to distinguish a lie from a truth.”

     [From “Gulf,” in this collection.]

     To be sure, we’re all “men of imperfect brain.” Yet I have a sense that the generations before the great wars of the Twentieth Century were less easily swayed than those that followed. That may be because the examples of family structure were more attractive, more enduring, and less often challenged than are those of today. Today, “alternative” family “structures” abound. Long-term endurance isn’t common. And the promises they make, while seldom spoken aloud, are seductive.

     Young Whites of the prewar years grew up among intact nuclear families that tended to be larger than those of today. They were exclusively heterosexual. They were racially unblended. Childbearing was applauded. Infidelity was condemned. Divorce, while it did occur, imposed a stigma upon those divorcing, especially if minor children were involved.

     The rise of aggressive, subtly anti-family feminist ideology was a large factor as well. World War II forced many women into the workplace, which supplemented the feminist proposition that women could and should have “lives of their own,” apart from child-rearing and homemaking. A young woman’s prime childbearing years, if expended on wage-work, are forever lost. Meanwhile the Betty Friedans and Germaine Greers were exhorting young women to “make something of themselves” – to go to college or enter the workforce – rather than to leave themselves “dependent on a man.” Women’s magazines were increasingly used to reinforce that message.

     I hardly need to expound on the social and economic changes that followed the wars. Compared to the incentives presented to Whites of the prewar years, the differences could not be more striking. (They stand out even more starkly when compared to the incentives faced by young blacks.) The mental defenses of postwar generations were far more easily undermined than those of their predecessors. Many forces converged to do the undermining: schooling at all levels, the news media, the entertainment industries, and the activists perpetually deriding tradition in favor of “change.”

     Just this morning, a young friend – a young woman who recently opted to enlist in the Army – reminded me that inferences are always subject to dispute, and that opinions will vary. No question about that! Were the postwar changes to social structures, customs, and attitudes uniformly bad? Perhaps not; traditional ways aren’t always indisputable or unchallengeable. But they explain much about today’s reproductive malaise.

     Elon Musk spoke of “memetic firewalls” that are too weak to repel the ideological bombardment today’s young Whites endure. Add the great intensification of that bombardment, and it begins to seem that things could hardly have developed otherwise. But human happiness, which Aristotle called the consequence of right doing and right living, appears seriously endangered by the changes the youth of the preponderantly White First World nations have faced. Many who eschewed the old ways of faith, family, and community look back on their decisions with regret. Perhaps lessons are accumulating for those that follow them… however many or few they may be.

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

December 27, 2025:
Pogrom 2026

“There Were Shepherds Abiding In The Fields...”

And there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night.
And, lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them: and they were sore afraid.
And the angel said unto them, Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people.
For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord.
And this shall be a sign unto you; Ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger.
And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God, and saying,
Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.
And it came to pass, as the angels were gone away from them into heaven, the shepherds said one to another, Let us now go even unto Bethlehem, and see this thing which is come to pass, which the Lord hath made known unto us.
And they came with haste, and found Mary, and Joseph, and the babe lying in a manger.
And when they had seen it, they made known abroad the saying which was told them concerning this child.
And all they that heard it wondered at those things which were told them by the shepherds.
But Mary kept all these things, and pondered them in her heart.
And the shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all the things that they had heard and seen, as it was told unto them.

[Luke 2:8-20]

     Hearken to the late, great Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen:

     When God came to Earth, there was no room in the inn, but there was room in the stable. What lesson is hidden behind the inn and the stable?

     What is an inn, but the gathering-place of public opinion, the focal point of the world’s moods, the residence of the worldly, the rallying place of the fashionable and those who count in the management of the world’s affairs? What is a stable, but the place of outcasts, the refuge of beasts, and the shelter of the valueless, and therefore the symbol of those who in the eyes of public opinion do not count and hence may be ignored as of no great value or moment? Anyone in the world would have expected to find Divinity in an inn, but no one would have expected to have found it in a stable….

     If, in those days, the stars of the heavens by some magic touch had folded themselves together as silver words and announced the birth of the Expected of the Nations, where would the world have gone in search of Him?

     The world would have searched for the Babe in some palace by the Tiber, or in some gilded house of Athens, or in some inn of a great city where gathered the rich, the mighty, and the powerful ones of Earth. They would not have been the least surprised to have found the newborn King of Kings stretched out on a cradle of gold and surrounded by kings and philosophers paying Him their tribute and obeisance.

     But they would have been surprised to have discovered Him in a manger, laid on coarse straw and warmed by the breath of oxen, as if in atonement for the coldness of the hearts of men. No one would have expected that the One whose fingers could stop the turning of Arcturus would be smaller than the head of an ox; that He who could hurl the ball of fire into the heavens would one day be warmed by the breath of beasts; that He who could make a canopy of stars would be shielded from a stormy sky by the roof of a stable; or that He who made the Earth as His future home would be homeless at home. No one would have expected to find Divinity in such a condition; but that is because Divinity is always where you least expect to find it….

     The world has always sought Divinity in the power of a Babel, but never in the weakness of a Bethlehem. It has searched for it in the inns of popular opinion, but never in the stable of the ignored. It has looked for it in the cradles of gold, but never in the cribs of straw – always in power, but never in weakness.

     [From God’s World and Our Place In It]

     Merry Christmas, Gentle Readers. And really, why not be merry? Why not rejoice and be glad? For the Savior of us all has come into the world: not as the son of royalty, laid in a gilded crib and wrapped about with silks and furs, but as the Child of two poor travelers, who birthed Him in a stable and laid Him in a manger. For He came not to counsel the great nor to lead armies into battle, but to heal our souls: to make us worthy of eternal life in His nearness, if only we accept Him and His gift.

     Peace on Earth, and good will toward men!

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!