Commentary Archives - Backwoods Home Magazine

A vast cultural divide exists between environmentalists and gun owners

By Dave Duffy Issue #113 • September/October, 2008 Backwoods Home Magazine has had an exhibitor's booth at the MREA Fair in Wisconsin almost every year since its founding by Mick Sagrillo in 1989, which is the...

If you want to take care of your health, you have to take control...

By Dave Duffy Issue #100 • July/August, 2006 The other day a man called the office to thank me for writing Issue 98's page 7 editorial, in which I urged readers to get a stress test...

How do you save freedom in America?

By Dave Duffy Issue #116 • March/April, 2009 Following is part of a letter I received from Ron Dugan of Nanty Glo, Pennsylvania: "What is it that we can do to stop the loss of freedom in...

Lessons for My Children Chapter 1

By Dave Duffy Issue #136 • July/August, 2012 I've been working for several years on a small book for my kids called Lessons for My Children that will attempt to give them advice about how to...

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...

Should we scrap our ‘old’ Constitution?

By John Silveira Issue #135 • May/June, 2012 In a recent New York Times article by Adam Liptak, he observed that the Constitution of the United States is not only the oldest constitution in existence, but...

Our energy crisis Part 2 — Nuclear energy is sensible and safe

By John Silveira Issue #114 • November/December, 2008 When an atomic bomb was detonated over Nagasaki, Japan, August 9, 1945, the amount of energy...

Activists on both the left and the right spotlight a broken federal government

By Claire Wolfe Issue #97 • January/February, 2006 On October 28, 2005, 400 citizens of Vermont met amid the pomp of their capitol building and voted to secede from the Union. The media, to say the...

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...

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...

Dark Winter — A simulated terrorist attack on three American cities using weaponized smallpox

By Dave Duffy Issue #81 • May/June, 2003 Historically, smallpox has been the most deadly of all diseases for humans, killing between 300 and 500 million in the last century alone, far more than the 111...

Science and truth. Are they related?

By John Silveira Issue #46 • July/August, 1997 It was an argument about science. Dave and I were on one side, Dave's friends Tom and Bill, though curiously nonallied, were on the other. I say nonallied...

Paying for social security with worthless $

By Dave Duffy Issue #117 • May/June, 2009 The year was 1976. I was 32 and writing a book about retirement planning with Tony Lamb, a noted 73-year-old activist who had taken up the cause of...

Exercising with gadgets

By Dave Duffy Issue #75 • May/June, 2002 We've all seen those TV commercials featuring all sorts of exercise gadgets that will get you that buff body or that rib-like belly with minimum effort. There are...

Remembering a decade of BHM

By Dave Duffy Issue #61 • January/February, 2000 Deadline has just ended as I sit down to write this, the last remaining page of this issue. The staff has gone home, and, except for Silveira who...

The current ‘Gun control’ push — A cop’s eye view

By Massad Ayoob Issue #142 • July/August, 2013 First, a word of explanation. The reason "gun control" is in quotes in the title and in this sentence is because, for a very long time, the prohibitionists...