Current political controversies and “debates” have allowed me to discover that I know a lot of things. Really know them. I’ll bet you know them too.
- I know that a nation doesn’t create prosperity by increasing taxes.
- I know that no industry can be “fixed” by having it operate by force — that is, government.
- I know that you don’t help “the homeless” by giving them more and more free stuff. You don’t help their neighbors, either.
- I know that the world is not being destroyed by “climate change,” and that no one who takes out a 30-year mortgage and schemes to get his little daughter into Stanford really believes it is, no matter what he says.
“Income inequality” is neither immoral nor harmful in itself, despite the fact that holders of great wealth are generally harmful in themselves.
- I know that Thoreau was right: that government is best which governs least.
- I know that “income inequality” is neither immoral nor harmful in itself, despite the fact that holders of great wealth are generally harmful in themselves.
- I know that the United States is not to blame for the political systems of other countries.
- I know that the United States should stop trying to make itself to blame for the political systems of other countries.
- I know that you can’t trust people just because they’re cops, soldiers, teachers, judges, or workers in “intelligence agencies.” (My, what a lot of scare quotes I use, and need!)
- I know that a managed economy is a sick economy.
- I know that it’s not a good idea to open any country’s borders to everyone who wants to cross them, especially when you guarantee the entrants free education, free healthcare, free housing, free lawyers, and applause.
A managed economy is a sick economy.
- I know that guns don’t kill; people do.
- I know that wars on drugs aren’t good for anyone but gangsters.
- I know that wars on poverty aren’t good for anyone but bureaucrats.
- I know that hanging around an Ivy League school doesn’t make you smart, but it’s very likely to get you a government job.
- If people asked themselves, “Is that really true?”, and spent a few minutes finding out, there would be a revolution in this country.
- I know that the great majority of America’s “leaders,” and “opinion leaders,” haven’t read a real book in the past 20 years, if ever.
- I know that if people asked themselves, “Is that really true?”, and spent a few minutes finding out, there would be a revolution in this country that would dwarf all the upheavals in our history.
As you see, I could go on. But that’s a sample of the things I know — and again, that you know too. These things aren’t even debatable. We know them. It’s a waste of time to argue about them, unless you want a laugh; and it’s hard to laugh at irrationalities you’re expected to pay for, either with money or with something more important, which is sanity.
You can’t trust people just because they’re cops, soldiers, teachers, judges, or workers in “intelligence agencies.”
With that thought in mind, I’ve stopped listing the things I know and started listing the things I don’t know. This list is much longer — in fact, it’s endless — and it’s a thousand times more interesting.
Here are a few things that I don’t know, and would like to know.
- I would like to know what happened to the Lost Colony of Roanoke.
- I would like to know how far south the Vikings got in North America.
- I would like to know where Jesus got the money that financed his ministry. Mary, Martha, and Lazarus?
- I would like to know whether Lizzie Borden really did kill her father and stepmother, and if so, how she managed to do it without leaving any traces of evidence on herself. Recall that the parental units were butchered with an axe in a small frame house, just before noon on a warm day, when there were windows open all over the neighborhood, and people were walking by in the street, just a few feet away, and that one of the victims faced her assailant and might be expected to have made some protest, loudly.
Why are alligators native to the southern United States and to China, and to no place in between?
- I would like to know what happened to Judge Joseph Force Crater, who disappeared from the streets of New York on August 6, 1930, and was never seen again. Though a ladies’ man, he had bought only one ticket for a show called Dancing Partners, which he did not attend, at least literally. (One thing I do know is that Judge Crater is the best of all possible names for a public official who suddenly disappears, and that Dancing Partners is a pretty good name for whatever it was that happened to him.)
- I would like to know the explanation for the Crouch family affair, https://www.mlive.com/news/jackson/2010/11/peek_through_time_crouch_murde.html a series of mysterious deaths that began on November 22, 1883, in my home county in Michigan.
- I would like to know why very few of the big infectious diseases were found among the pre-Columbian inhabitants of the Americas, since those people had not only originated in the Old World but had many contacts with the Vikings. And by the way, didn’t anyone ever just get blown in a boat from Africa to Brazil, carrying his diseases with him?
- I would like to know what happened to the Mound Builders and the Anasazi.
- I would like to know why alligators are native to the southern United States and to China, and to no place in between.
- I would like to know why Sequoyah gave his people a syllabary rather than an alphabet. Come to think of it, I would like to know why Saints Cyril and Methodius gave the Slavs a new alphabet, instead of adopting either the Latin or the Greek, which would have made more sense.
- I would like to know what became of Wallace Fard Muhammad.
How salty did St. Peter and St. Paul’s conversations get while they were arguing theology?
- I would like to know exactly what Aaron Burr had in mind, or if he had anything in mind, when he did those strange things that got him indicted for treason.
- I would like to know exactly what happened to Louis XVII and to the little princes in the Tower.
- I would like to know why insects preserved in amber for tens of millions of years appear to be the same insects that live with us today.
- Having had kidney cancer, I would like to know what causes it. In fact, I would like to know what causes a lot of forms of cancer. And other diseases. Many.
- I would like to know how salty St. Peter and St. Paul’s conversations got while they were arguing theology. (See Galatians 1 and 2.)
- I would like to know why — really, why — Richard Nixon didn’t demand a recount in the election of 1960.
- I would like to know why, after some of the greatest lines of poetry ever written (“Look! Look! He is climbing . . .”) Robert Penn Warren’s “Evening Hawk” https://poets.org/poem/evening-hawk concludes with “a leaking pipe in the cellar.”
- I would like to know why Eleazer Williams, an American who translated the Book of Common Prayer into Iroquois, suddenly decided that he was the king of France.
- I would like to know where the rest of the Satyricon is.
Why — really, why — didn't Richard Nixon demand a recount in the election of 1960?
- I would like to know, out of all the Viking ships that set out for Iceland, Greenland, or Vinland, and all the Polynesian vessels that set out for Hawaii, once those places were known, what proportion got lost and were never heard from again.
- I would like to know what happened on board the Mary Celeste.
- I would like to know where the Griffon went down.
- I would like to know what happened to Peking Man.
- I would like to know who wrote the book of Job, and when, and where.
- I would like to know, for sure, how the pyramids were built, and what all those big rooms inside the Great Pyramid were used for.
And, not least, I would like to know what readers of Liberty would like to know. What’s on your list?
