What they don’t see is what they get

by David Benjamin “… laws are being shoved through Congress that specifically restrict certain firearms, armor, ammo and the like. The Obama administration made it clear that their agenda was to disarm patriots, just like Hitler, Stalin, [Pol] Pot and Mao did. We are headed for disaster…” —Lisa Haven, The Millennium Report (dated Feb. 2018)…

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Variation on a theme from Aristophanes

by David Benjamin “… Without sex what will happen to our great State? Democracy will end if we can’t copulate.… ” —Aristophanes, Lysistrata MADISON, Wis.— It’s a dubious distinction to occupy a province in which, by the decree of white Judges Sam and Amy, John and Brett, along with America’s foremost Self-Hating Negro, abortion has…

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Kid stuff?

Write Away — #13 Among the commonest—and most perplexing—comments I encounter when talking to readers at a book talk is: “I never read fiction.” I understand that reading nonfiction, about history, political science, economics, etc., carries an “educational” cachet, casting upon the reader a glow of seriousness. By contrast, then, fiction is somehow frivolous, a……

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Whaddya gonna do?

by David Benjamin “… I looked and behold, there was a great earthquake; and the sun became black as sackcloth, the full moon became like blood, and the stars of the sky fell to earth as the fig tree sheds its winter fruit when shaken by the gale; the sky vanished like a scroll that…

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“Small moveable forts and magazines”

by David Benjamin “… You may see a file of soldiers, colonel, captain, corporal, privates, powder-monkeys, and all, marching in admirable order over hill and dale to the wars, against their wills, ay, against their common sense and consciences, which makes it very steep marching indeed… ” — Henry David Thoreau MADISON, Wis.— It was…

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The road to bitterness

The road to bitterness When I was in tenth grade, I developed an infatuation with James Drought, an author whose yellow-backed Avon paperback, The Secret, I found on a revolving rack at the drugstore. Drought’s autobiographical novel—more of an extended diatribe—exuded the sort of educated rage and gloom that appealed to a cautiously rebellious and……

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