out of step

Finding freedom in life's nooks and crannies
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  • Wally Conger

What’s the greatest anti-war manifesto ever written? Jun 23, 2014

Back when I was a flag-waving Young Republican who thought America had a duty to “keep the world safe for democracy,” my dad, a World War II vet, took me aside and set me straight. “Son, no war is worth its cost,” he said. Soon after, a punctuation-deficient old novel called Johnny Got His Gun, by Dalton Trumbo, fell into my hands. It rattled the hell out of me. It’s not just a novel. It’s a concussion device. The story is all told “in the head” of Joe, a young American soldier who has fought in The War To End...

By Wally Conger Vote14 4

Greetings from Ground Zero Jun 22, 2014

[First published on LewRockwell.com, June 28, 2006] Mercury, Nevada, sits 65 miles northwest of Las Vegas, next to nowhere in the broad Nye County desert. For decades, it was a booming "company town," with some 10,000 people, a first-run movie theater, a lending library, a dry cleaner, a health center, and an interfaith chapel. Its eight-lane bowling alley was busy on most weeknights and packed them in on weekends. The cafeteria seated 800; the Mercury Steakhouse offered more elegant dining for special occasions. And the Olympic-size community swimming pool drew big crowds when temps frequently topped a hundred degrees. But...

By Wally Conger Vote3 3

One Anarchist’s Nightstand Jun 19, 2014

"By a man’s finger-nails, by his coat-sleeve, by his boot, by his trouser-knees, by the callosities of his forefinger and thumb, by his expression, by his shirt-cuffs -- by each of these things a man’s calling is plainly revealed," Sherlock Holmes told his pal Watson in Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Sign of the Four. And so, throughout the 60 Holmes adventures -- four novels and 56 short stories -- the master detective deduced the personal habits, qualities, and philosophies of hundreds of people by studying everything from their ashtrays, to their felt hats, to their breakfast dishes. I’ve always thought...

By Wally Conger Vote9 1

How to sling the A-word with tact and finesse Jun 17, 2014

I couldn’t help myself. I let out an audible groan last Friday night while watching an old Vin Diesel super spy movie on cable. The flick’s called XXX, and its bad guys, who are plotting to biochemically handiwipe all humanity, are identified as “anarchists.” Sheesh! This is why we anti-statists have such big PR problems. Back in the 1980s, the late Marshall Fritz suggested we expunge forever from our movement lexicon what he dubbed the “A-word.” He said it stirs up visions of chaos, lawlessness, terrorism, and other naughty stuff. Of course, Fritz also had problems with words like liberty...

By Wally Conger Vote20 13

Night, Fog, and the State Jun 15, 2014

I noticed last night that the most devastating documentary film ever made is now streamable from Hulu Plus. Some four decades before Hollywood effectively grappled with the Holocaust through movies like Schindler’s List and The Pianist, there was Alain Renais’ 31-minute Night and Fog. Here’s how its narration begins… “Even a peaceful landscape…even a meadow in harvest, with crows circling overhead and grass fires…even a road where cars and peasants and couples pass…even a resort village with a steeple and country fair…can lead to a concentration camp.” Renais’ 1955 film is for me not only a chilling record of Hitler’s...

By Wally Conger Vote21 6

How Tarzan’s daddy wrote a “lost” liberty classic Jun 13, 2014

When I was 13, my parents gave me a copy of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ The Moon Maid for Christmas. Two reasons… First, they knew I loved Burroughs’ Tarzan and John Carter of Mars books. Second, they knew I loved science fiction. I thanked them for the gift. Then I tossed it into the back of my closet, unread. Again, two reasons... First, neither Tarzan nor John Carter was in the novel. Second, it was called The Moon Maid, and that stirred up images of the awful Moon Maid character I knew from the Dick Tracy comic strip. Well, I rediscovered...

By Wally Conger Vote9 2

Good news from Edward Abbey Jun 12, 2014

I think by now I’ve read everything by the late Edward Abbey. It’s all great. Abbey was the so-called “Thoreau of the American West.” He called himself an “agrarian anarchist,” a conservationist who thought wilderness deserved preservation mainly because it offers the best places to hide from federal agents. His solution to “illegal” immigration was to “stop every campesino at our southern border, give him a handgun, a good rifle, and a case of ammunition, and send him home. He will know what to do with our gifts and good wishes. The people know who their enemies are.” There are...

By Wally Conger Vote5 0

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