Commentary Archives - Backwoods Home Magazine

What is reality?

By John Silveira April 7, 2006 I don't read much. So, I missed James Frey's A Million Little Pieces, though it made best sellers lists from the New York Times to amazon.com. If the truth be...

Is the Mainstream Media Finally Recognizing How the War on Drugs is Destroying Our...

By John Silveira December 17, 1999 The December 1999 issue of Harper's Magazine has a headline the likes of which I'd given up ever seeing on the cover of a mainstream magazine. The newsstand jacket...

When “good” laws are bad

By John Silveira Issue #134 • March/April, 2012 I recently read an opinion piece on CNN's website titled, Edison would've loved the new light bulb law. It's supposed to be about the new law to force...

The Coming American Dictatorship Part XII — The militarization of America’s police forces

By John Silveira Issue #146 • March/April, 2014 He's back our poker-playing friend from Southern California, O.E. MacDougal. He came up here to fish. I thought he was after salmon, but this time he came...

Body language and threat recognition

By Massad Ayoob Issue #87 • May/June, 2004 Reader mail indicates that while some Backwoods Home readers turn to this column for advice on putting wild game on the table or keeping four-footed poachers out of...

Planning the lives of generations to come

By John Silveira March 8, 2006 I was reading the March 2006 issue of Discover Magazine and read Asteroid Watcher Worries, an interview with Clark R. Chapman, a planetary scientist at the Southwest Research Institute at...

Which is better, a small town or city?

By Dave Duffy Issue #78 • November/December, 2002 Traveling has a way of giving you perspective. For the past several summers my family and I have traveled around the country, covering as much as 9,000 miles by...

Armed civilians can help fight terrorism

By Massad Ayoob Issue #90 • November/December, 2004 This article was written before terrorists seized a school in Beslan, a town in North Ossetia, one of the small republics that make up the modern Russian Federation....

Who’s supposed to protect our rights?

By John Silveira Issue #102 • November/December, 2006 Who is supposed to protect our rights? The President? The Congress? The courts? The police? Before you answer, let me remind you of something: Our rights are supposed...

The false argument about defending our freedom

By John Silveira Issue #142 • July/August, 2013 I'm tired of hearing how we should honor our veterans because they're defending our freedoms. They're not. No one in any of the Islamic countries is trying to...

Getting the state out of marriage

By John Silveira Issue #127 • January/February, 2011 There's a new TV "reality" show on TLC called Sister Wives. It's about a polygamous family: Kody Brown, his 3 wives, their 13 children, and a soon-to-be (maybe...

If you don’t like it here, why don’t you move to another country?

By John Silveira Issue #99 • May/June, 2006 That's a question I've been confronted with, more than once, when I've complained about the PATRIOT Act, the RICO Act, creeping gun control, the empowerment of the bureaucracy,...

Do we need a Taxpayers’ Bill of Rights?

By John Silveira Issue #53 • September/October, 1998 Once again there is a storm of complaints from American citizens concerning abuses and harassment on the part of a government agency. In the past the offending agencies...

The Runaway

By John Silveira February 9, 2006 My kids are grown. But it didn't come about without a lot of frustration, tribulations, and laughs. Runaways: What do you do with a six-year-old who threatens to run away? One woman...

My View: Grand Theory vs. Stark Reality

Dave Duffy While visiting Boston between issues, my wife, Lenie, got into a conversation about preparedness. It was a brief, but telling, discussion because our host, like many people who live in cities, had not...

Self-reliance equals freedom

By Dave Duffy Issue #107 • September/October, 2007 There seems always to be an underlying debate among self-reliant types who make up a majority of the readership of this magazine as to whether or not the...