Commentary Archives - Backwoods Home Magazine

Training for the Boston Marathon

By Dave Duffy Issue #92 • March/April, 2005 Ever get a wild idea in your head that just won't go away, and you start working on it like crazy? It happens to me all the time....

The state of freedom in America

By Claire Wolfe Issue #149 • September/October, 2014 The world is becoming less free. In the Middle East and Africa, Islamist fanatics try to bring back the Dark Ages. Europe stagnates...

Next time you see me, don’t be afraid to say, ‘Hello.’

By John Silveira January 29, 2000 Mom and Dad were divorced before I even turned four, so it didn't dawn on me they'd even been married until I was a lot older. But, as I grew...

My View: Three Cheers for Free Enterprise

By Dave Duffy I love free enterprise. I see it all the time in our many trips across the country to show Backwoods Home Magazine at the fairs and expos we attend. Perhaps the most...

The Coming American Dictatorship Part XI — The Tenth Amendement Movement

By John Silveira Issue #119 • September/October, 2009 O.E. MacDougal, Dave Duffy's poker-playing buddy from Southern California, had come to town to fish the Rogue, a river that runs 215 miles from the heels of Crater...

Defending against terrorists

By Dave Duffy Issue #152 • March/April, 2015 I watched a lot of TV news in the days following the terrorist assassinations of the Charlie Hebdo cartoonists in Paris. What struck me as odd was that...

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...

Personal guns getting to be in style

By Dave Duffy Issue #74 • March/April, 2002 Have you noticed how the mass media's attacks against gun ownership have gone way down since the terrorist attacks of September 11? Of course, it's kind of difficult...

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...

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...

Reaching for the stars during a recession

By Dave Duffy Issue #125 • September/October, 2010 Toby is the volunteer assistant golf coach for the team this magazine sponsors, the Gold Beach High School Panthers. He has spent hundreds of hours of his own...

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,...

The Government gorilla in our home

By Dave Duffy Issue #101 • September/October, 2006 The other week, Vince, a contractor who does occasional work for me, was arrested for slapping his 14-year-old daughter on the behind when she talked back to her...

Which wars work best? The ones we fight or the ones we avoid?

By Dave Duffy Issue #102 • November/December, 2006 History is supposed to teach us the lessons of wars past so we won't blunder into stupid wars in the present. Since I have mixed feelings about our...

Justice Breyer is wrong about the 2nd Amendment

By John Silveira Issue #128 • March/April, 2011 December 12, 2010, on Fox News Sunday, Justice Stephen Breyer said the Founding Fathers never intended for guns to go unregulated. His reasoning was that James Madison, often...

ID cards are an idea whose time should never come

By John Silveira October 28, 2001 I just read in the October 8th issue of U.S. News and World Report a column by Randall E. Stross in which he advocates some kind of national I.D. Card....