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

December 10, 2025:
Freedom Under Siege

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.