Remembrances

     Yes, yes: I’ve been lackadaisical about keeping this place hopping. So you’re not hopping. And this is my fault? You can’t hop on your own? C’mon! I expect more from a Gentle Reader of Liberty’s Torch! But let’s leave that to the side.

     I’m cursed with an unusually retentive memory. Immediate events often prompt reminiscences about times and events of many years ago. I’ve been reliving one this morning. You might find it interesting. If you don’t, well, them’s the breaks.

     When I was a young boy, I went to a Catholic grammar school: Saint Catherine of Alexandria in Blauvelt, New York. The teachers were habited Dominican nuns. The classes were very large: typically about fifty students in each. But they were orderly, at least compared to what goes on in primary school classrooms today. Disruptors were punished immediately and often harshly.

     The town I lived in was overwhelmingly Catholic. Whether or not they attended Saint Catherine’s, the kids were raised in the Catholic faith. We saw one another at Mass, and now and then at Saturday Confessions. We talked about what we’d been taught about God, Jesus, and the faith. And we assumed that that was the way it was everywhere.

     But we grew up. As there was no nearby Catholic high school, we went from Saint Catherine’s to a “public” high school that drew its students from a larger area. Suddenly we found ourselves among Episcopalians, Presbyterians, Lutherans, and the occasional Mormon or Jew. It was disorienting, even a little upsetting. Could people that differ so greatly in their most fundamental beliefs get along?

     Sometimes we didn’t. Sometimes there were arguments. Some of those arguments were not resolved gracefully… or peacefully. And that was before the arrival in our district of any blacks or Hispanics.

     Fundamental differences beget conflicts that are hard to resolve. Yes, the great majority of us had been raised Christian, but there were cracks, fault lines that could give rise to trouble. It took a while for me to puzzle out why.

     Each of us had been taught that anyone who disagrees with us on religious matters is simply wrong. Even dangerously so. He had to be corrected, brought to the light, before matters got really serious.

     You see, we had not been taught a “faith.” We had been presented with “fact.” Anyone who dared to question any of it was severely dealt with.

     I’ve been musing over that recently. In various other settings, I’ve advanced my opinion that religious indoctrination of the young is a bad idea. The conflicts I remember from those early exposures to youngsters raised in other denominations are among my reasons.

     Indoctrination is all you can do to a young mind. He has hasn’t yet learned the rules of reason and evidence. He hasn’t yet grasped the critical distinction between the propositions of faith – any faith – and the propositions of spatiotemporal experience. So if you want him to accept religious teaching, you have to pound him with it relentlessly, make it so that it becomes omnipresent, inescapable. Sort of like God.

     Religious instruction of the young is characterized by repetition and memorization, just like the multiplication tables. The term catechism captures the essence of it. The teacher asks questions from a standard list; the students are expected to memorize the correct answers and repeat them when demanded. The treatment that the dismissive or indifferent ones get is supposed to inform the others that religion is a serious business.

     And it is, Gentle Reader. Just think about the religious wars of earlier days. A lot of people died in those wars. There’s an exchange from Richard Lester’s movie The Four Musketeers that’s apposite:

     Porthos: You know, it strikes me that we would be better employed wringing Milady's pretty neck than shooting these poor devils of Protestants. I mean, what are we killing them for? Because they sing psalms in French and we sing them in Latin?
     Aramis: Porthos, have you no education? What do you think religious wars are all about?

     The young indoctrinee quickly comes to understand that he’d better toe the line. Remember the questions and their answers. Give the answers when demanded. Go to church on Sunday and make sure you’re seen. Don’t forget the donation envelope with your name and address printed on it.

     It’s ultimately counterproductive. The inherent, coercive mindlessness of it is why so many kids reared in a religious faith abandon it completely once they’ve reached their majorities. It gives rise to conflicts that might otherwise be avoided.

     I’ve been talking about religious indoctrination and the resulting conflicts, but really, the same argument applies to indoctrination of any kind. The subject matter can be racial, ethnic, social, anthropological, political, even aesthetic. Hard positions on arguable matters create hard feelings.

     We often think we “know” things. Far more often we only believe them. They remain arguable, susceptible to exception, even refutation. Oftentimes we learn that to our sorrow, by alienating others whose good will had previously been ours.

     Once we’ve shuffled off this mortal coil, we’ll have all the answers and all the certainty we’ll ever need. I can wait. What about you?

     Just a few early-morning thoughts.

Your Morning Firebranding

     My admiration for the great Charles Murray grew by an order of magnitude after this recent episode. First, the windup:

I’ve stayed in hotel rooms over the past week and was wondering if anyone else wishes manufacturers would write “shampoo” and “conditioner” in a bigger font so we could read them in the shower without our glasses. FFS 😖

— Mike Bales 🫡🇺🇸 (@MikeBales) February 18, 2026

     And now the pitch:

Occasionally someone makes a point on X that I've been fretting about for years but was too timid to raise. But now that Mike has broken the ice, I also demand that the color of the font have more contrast with the color of the bottle. We've been victimized long enough. https://t.co/l00ol9tPSW

— Charles Murray (@charlesmurray) February 18, 2026

     To which I was compelled to respond:

     Yes! Ditto! And why isn't the music on hold Beethoven, Bach, or Chopin?
     We declare the Revolution!!

     Now, who will man the barricades alongside me?

Awakenings

     A lot has been written about “the living Earth,” “the spirit of Gaia,” and similar notions. Common to them is a conception of the inanimate as animate: a world alive and aware, not only of itself but of all that dwells upon it and in it. It’s a thesis I’ve touched very, very lightly in In Vino:

     The others hung back as Ottavio directed Fountain to the vat of unclarified Malbec. The Monti vats were made of aged wood bound in black iron bands. They were smaller than those at Broadhead. Their bases rested flat on the villa floor. The room was filled with the aromas of wine, yeast, and fermentation.
     Fountain imperceptibly took command of her host. She urged him close to the vat, took his hands and set them against its surface, moved to stand behind him, slid her arms around his chest, and rested her chin upon his shoulder. They stood thus in silence for perhaps half a minute. Within her embrace, Ottavio Monti trembled as if his strength were being tried to its limits.
     “What is it you feel?” she murmured against his cheek. “Tell me everything.”
     “Wood,” he said. “Rough, warm wood. And...the wine. And...” His voice dropped most of an octave. “And life.” He trembled in her embrace. “It is alive! But the vat is two hundred years old and the wine is grapes crushed to a sauce! How can this be?”
     “All things are alive,” Fountain whispered. “All things are aware. What else do you feel?”
     “I...” His tremor intensified.
     “Tell me, Ottavio Monti.” She squeezed him gently. “It is safe. It is right.”
     “Love,” he whispered incredulously. “Your love. And mine.”
     “All things know love,” she said in the voice of an oracle dispensing a mystical revelation. “And all things respond to love and return it in equal measure. Do you love the wine?”
     “Si, molto.”
     “Then tell it so,” Fountain said. She laid a hand over his heart. “From here, Ottavio. Use any words, any language you like, but tell it that you love it and listen for its answer.”
     The vintner of Villa Monti closed his eyes and bowed his head. Fountain held him snugly.
     Larry, Trish, and Domenico Monti stood transfixed. Ray murmured the Lord’s Prayer under his breath.
     “Gran Dio!” Ottavio whispered.
     He pulled his hands from the vat and dropped to his knees. Fountain released him, ascended the steps to the vat’s rim, took up the dipper that hung there, extracted a cup of wine, and descended. She knelt before Ottavio and offered him the dipper.
     “Taste it.”
     He did. His eyes brimmed over. He handed the dipper back to Fountain.
     “Now do you see?” she said.
     He smiled through his tears and nodded.
     She rose, brought the dipper to the others, and bade them taste it. They did, in turn.
     “Wow,” Larry said.
     “Oh my God,” Ray said.
     “As good as Broadhead’s, maybe even better,” Trish said.
     “Gloria a Dio,” Domenico said.
     Fountain nodded serenely.

     Now and then, I’m blind-sided by the idea. I certainly was when I wrote the above.

     If it’s true, which I doubt, we have no evidence of it. But that doesn’t mean it won’t be true someday. David Brin’s novel Earth toys with that possibility. It’s thematically related to his other “Uplift” tales, in which nonsentient creatures are “uplifted” to sentience through genetic engineering and selective breeding.

     No, I’m not saying I expect it. But the notion itself is appealing. A world alive and aware! What would it do? We worry about extraterrestrials finding us and proving unfriendly. How much worse an enemy would a living, sentient planet be, were it to weigh us in the balances and find us wanting?

     Hey, I’m a writer. Ideas like that one are both the tools of my trade and toys for my imagination. And I have to admit, the idea of uplifting the whole planet is more than moderately ambitious. One must ask who would see it as worth attempting, at what risks and at what cost.

     Anyway, the idea of awakening the Earth itself, calling forth the Weltgeist (or giving it one), found a remarkable expression in melody that I’ve only recently discovered. Hearken to the incredible, angelic voice of Ekaterina Shelehova:

     Did the souls of your ancestors cluster about you as you listened?

     Mine, too.

New For 2026!

What do you think, Gentle Reader?

Making It Clear

     Every now and then, someone will post a rendition of the following sort, somewhere on the Web – typically, these days, at X:

One year ago, I publicly came out in support of President Trump.

I had absolutely no idea how severe the backlash would be.

The Left tried to destroy everything good in my life.

My job. My family. Our safety.

We lost more friends than I ever could have imagined.

Politics is…

— Matt Van Swol (@mattvanswol) February 15, 2026

     Please read it in its entirety, Gentle Reader. It’s worth your time.

     The story isn’t a new one, of course. We’ve heard similar accounts before this. The commonalities among them are striking. But the differences among them are just as important. It’s worth noting them for general consideration.

     Matt Van Swol describes himself as “Former Nuclear Scientist for US Dept of Energy.” So we must suppose he has a few working brain cells. Despite that, it came as a surprise to him when those that he regarded as friends before he announced his support for President Trump turned against him as a person. Hadn’t he noticed the pattern? Or did he think it wouldn’t apply to him?

     Then there’s this part:

     There’s a specific kind of grief that comes from realizing people didn’t just disagree with you… ...they re-categorized you as "unsafe." Someone once told me that, in person. "We don't feel safe with you." Like you became a different species overnight.

     Now, in point of fact, Matt’s former, left-leaning “friends” don’t feel “unsafe” around him. They’re not worried that he might hurt them, steal from them, or kidnap their children. As an intelligent man who consciously changed his opinions, the threat he presents is to their assumption of righteousness. That’s the core of the Left’s appeal to its adherents: “Just adopt this political posture and you can preen yourself as being smarter and more moral than those Neanderthals in the Right!”

     This too is part of the pattern. It’s been on display throughout the Twenty-First Century… but one must see it to acknowledge it. And it speaks volumes… but one must hear it to comprehend it. Many people, including some highly intelligent ones, fail to do those things.

     This is not a major new revelation. Thomas Sowell covered it in detail in his masterpiece The Vision of the Anointed. Nearly every other significant aspect of the Left-Right divide flows from it. On June 28, it will be thirty years since the publication of that book, yet far too few people have read it.

     But I don’t mean to make heavy weather of that facet of things. Rather, allow me to note one more thing about Matt’s “transition:”

     We went to church for the first time ever, with our kids.

     Just twelve words. A simple declarative statement. But it says more than one might think upon first reading it.

     Conservatives tend to be practicing Christians. Religion of any sort mixes dubiously with politics, but the correlation between conservatism and Christianity among persons in the Right cannot be denied. Note that Matt and his family went to church “for the first time ever.” That’s a haymaker… but for the full impact one must ask “Why?”

     Allow me a snippet from an old Heinlein story, “The Man Who Sold the Moon:”

     "Ever read Carl Sandburg, George?"
     "I'm not much of a reader."
     "Try him some time. He tells a story about a man who started a rumor that they had struck oil in hell. Pretty soon everybody has left for hell, to get in on the boom. The man who started the rumor watches them all go, then scratches his head and says to himself that there just might be something in it, after all. So he left for hell, too."

     I have no doubt many of Matt’s family’s friends were practicing Christians. But he’d had no interest in such things… until he noted the correlation between conservative opinions, decency and courtesy in treating with others of divergent views, and Christian faith. He saw, and he wondered. Maybe he thought that there just might be something in it, after all.

     It’s happened before, hasn’t it?

     Spread Matt’s tale around, Gentle Reader. It has more punch than many thousands of my own words.

Valentine’s Day

     I got nuthin’, as they say, so have a few words about the saint whose deeds inspired this day:

     Saint Valentine, officially known as Saint Valentine of Rome, is a third-century Roman saint widely celebrated on February 14 and commonly associated with "courtly love."
     Although not much of St. Valentine's life is reliably known, and whether or not the stories involve two different saints by the same name is also not officially decided, it is highly agreed that St. Valentine was martyred and then buried on the Via Flaminia to the north of Rome.
     In 1969, the Roman Catholic Church removed St. Valentine from the General Roman Calendar, because so little is known about him. However, the church still recognizes him as a saint, listing him in the February 14 spot of Roman Martyrolgy.
     The legends attributed to the mysterious saint are as inconsistent as the actual identification of the man.
     One common story about St. Valentine is that in one point of his life, as the former Bishop of Terni, Narnia and Amelia, he was on house arrest with Judge Asterius. While discussing religion and faith with the Judge, Valentine pledged the validity of Jesus. The judge immediately put Valentine and his faith to the test.
     St. Valentine was presented with the judge's blind daughter and told to restore her sight. If he succeeded, the judge vowed to do anything for Valentine. Placing his hands onto her eyes, Valentine restored the child's vision.
     Judge Asterius was humbled and obeyed Valentine's requests. Asterius broke all the idols around his house, fasted for three days and became baptized, along with his family and entire 44 member household. The now faithful judge then freed all of his Christian inmates.
     St. Valentine was later arrested again for continuing to try to convert people to Christianity. He was sent to Rome under the emperor Claudius Gothicus (Claudius II). According to the popular hagiographical identity, and what is believed to be the first representation of St. Valentine, the Nuremberg Chronicle, St. Valentine was a Roman priest martyred during Claudius' reign. The story tells that St. Valentine was imprisoned for marrying Christian couples and aiding Christians being persecuted by Claudius in Rome. Both acts were considered serious crimes. A relationship between the saint and emperor began to grow, until Valentine attempted to convince Claudius of Christianity. Claudius became raged and sentenced Valentine to death, commanding him to renounce his faith or be beaten with clubs and beheaded.
     St. Valentine refused to renounce his faith and Christianity and was executed outside the Flaminian Gate on February 14, 269. However, other tales of St. Valentine's life claim he was executed either in the year 269, 270, 273 or 280. Other depictions of St. Valentine's arrests tell that he secretly married couples so husbands wouldn't have to go to war. Another variation of the legend of St. Valentine says he refused to sacrifice to pagan gods, was imprisoned and while imprisoned he healed the jailer's blind daughter. On the day of his execution, he left the girl a note signed, "Your Valentine."

     [From Catholic Online.]

     Happy Saint Valentine’s Day, Gentle Reader. Be with someone you love today. And may God bless and keep you both!

“Self-Government”

     Just recently, I stumbled upon this:

     If those percentages still hold, then once again we’re in the mystifying position where an overwhelming portion of the country is demanding a policy change that Congress is resisting with every trick at its disposal. Senate Majority Leader John Thune says one thing but does another. Several GOP Senators have pledged to oppose the SAVE Act anyway, so even were the filibuster barrier to be overcome, it probably wouldn’t garner a majority of the votes.

     Of course, it’s not the first time. A strong majority wanted Obamacare repealed; remember what happened to that? A strong majority wants federal taxation and spending slashed, the troops brought home from wherever, and Jeffrey Epstein’s porno-pedo clients hanged. Given those precedents plus what we know about the dynamic of power, the probability is that the SAVE Act – i.e., the act that would require voters to present proof of citizenship at the polls – will die aborning.

     Yes, that will allow the Democrats to steal future elections with fraudulent and otherwise illegal votes. Likely it will also cost the Republican Party both Houses of Congress in November. But so what? This is “the system.” You know, that nebulous but supremely important thing Pam Bondi has told us will collapse if Epstein’s associates are indicted and tried. Apparently that’s what Pam Bondi has sworn to protect.

     It’s out in the open, now. “The system” will defend itself and its allegiants a outrance against the nation itself. There’s no pretense of anything else any longer. “Self-government” has been revealed as a joke, an empty notion that regime propagandists have foisted upon us to pacify us. We are ruled by men whose aims run counter to our well-being, and they don’t care who knows it.

     Don’t mind me, Gentle Reader. I’m having “one of those days.” I’m sure that I’ll soon be numb enough to get back into step with the thing. I’ll get back to writing these screeds as if the details matter. It’s just that for the moment, I can’t believe any of it.

     Have a nice day.

The Fermi Paradox And Other Conjectures

     He who writes science fiction is regularly embroiled in certain arguments about what’s possible, what’s impossible, and what might be coming soon to a planet near you. He who writes far-future SF invariably resorts to “handwavium:” the postulation of imagined developments that would make possible the sort of events he wants to write about. One of the developments that’s frequently hand-waved into fictional existence is very rapid interstellar travel: i.e., travel at speeds faster than that of light.

     When I decided to write Which Art In Hope, I resolved to avoid postulating faster-than-light travel. That first volume of the Spooner Federation trilogy does a little hand-waving – e.g., it postulates developments in the biological sciences that would extend an individual life to span many centuries – but it does avoid the FTL premise. (Yes, the latter two volumes do “go FTL.” That was forced on me by the themes I sought to explore.)

     There’s much talk among SF writers about whether we’ll ever encounter other sentient species, or extraterrestrial life of any kind. Some make probabilistic arguments; others simply say “yeah, we’ll see.” But if our knowledge of physics today is accurate and sufficiently complete, we might never know.

     If we omit all hand-waving, what remains are the speed-of-light limitation and the problem of lifespan. For travel of any kind rests on two factors:

• The risks involved in undertaking that travel;
• The ratio of the time it will require to a human lifetime.

     For creatures with human-like longevity, interstellar travel is a non-starter. Let’s say Smith boards a vessel bound for Proxima Centauri, or any other “nearby” star. He will die en route. Perhaps descendants of his will get there; he won’t. And he will know that ab initio. So what’s his motivation for boarding?

     Yes, Smith could be under the pressures that motivated the Spoonerites. He’d know that he wouldn’t live to see the destination, but he might undertake the journey to perpetuate “his people.” Would any other motivation suffice?

     The enthusiast now waves his hands: “What about suspended animation?” Well, we don’t know how to do that just yet. “What about relativistic time dilation?” That would require propulsion of a magnitude that’s beyond us today and possibly tomorrow. Besides, where’s the reaction mass to come from? Newton’s Third Law can’t be suspended by Congressional decree. So present conditions continuing, Mankind will likely be confined to the Solar System.

     This makes me sad. I’d love for Mankind to “go interstellar.” The adventures our progeny would have are beyond anyone’s imagination. But physics will have the last word. Unless some currently unborn or unrecognized genius can break the lightspeed barrier, or can extend a man’s life to many centuries in length, we’ll be “staying home.”

     But let’s imagine that there are other sentient species in the universe. Might they be equal to the challenge, by virtue of extreme longevity? A species whose members expect to live a millennium or two would look at the matter differently, especially if they could solve the propulsion problem. Yes, it’s hand-waving again, albeit of a different kind, but that desire to believe in interstellar travel, galactic confraternity, and so forth is very strong. Maybe, rather than humans going to them, they might come to us.

     Maybe. The famous Green Bank Equation suggests that there’s life elsewhere in the Milky Way – if we set its variables to the “right” values. But we’re hand-waving again. How would they get here? What would they necessarily be able to do that we aren’t, to make that possible? Given the costs, the risks, and the difficulties, what would their motivation be?

     We don’t know enough to be certain of anything. We don’t know whether there’s a way to slip past the lightspeed barrier. We don’t know whether there are methods of propulsion superior to what we possess today, or whether Man or any other sentient creature is capable of living long enough to survive an interstellar journey. Even if the trip should become possible, we have absolutely no idea whether there’s a reason to undertake it other than sheer curiosity.

     The Fermi Paradox is summarized thus:

     The Fermi paradox is the discrepancy between the lack of conclusive evidence of advanced extraterrestrial life and the apparently high likelihood of its existence.

     That “paradox” is only worth consideration if:

• There’s another sentient species “out there;”
• There are ways to communicate reliably over the intervening distance.

     But even communication over interstellar distances is dubious. Ultra-collimated, ultra-powerful lasers? Modulated gravity waves? Using the resonant frequencies of stars to encode messages? It’s all hand-waving. Physics as we know it today says it won’t happen.

     But what if we “know differently” somewhere down the timestream? What if the lightspeed limitation is just a misunderstanding that some future Einstein will dismiss with a grin and a wave of his whiteboard marker? What if we manage to “cure death,” or extend human life far beyond what’s currently possible? Don’t get me waving my hands. I write this stuff for the entertainment value!