Frontiersman, March 2023

Being Right, However Great the Cost
Sam Aurelius Milam III

When I first started attending school, at the Boldtville School, in Bexar County, Texas, World War II was only a few years in the past. It was still fresh in the minds of the adults. I remember the teacher, Mrs. Dudek, explaining to us, among other things, the difference between Them and Us. In Hitler’s Germany, she explained, the government wouldn’t allow anybody to do anything unless he had a government ID card. Refusal to show the card on demand was a cause for punishment. Many years later, while I lived on the farm in Idaho, the owner occasionally lamented that Hitler would be green with envy at the ID system that exists in the USA today.

I have a Thorndike Century Senior Dictionary, published in 1941. That was the year that the USA went to war, allegedly against fascism. In that dictionary, fascism is described as any system of government in which property is privately owned, but all industry and business is regulated by a strong national government. That’s a good description of the USA today. A long time ago, I mentioned that description to my mother. She sighed and commented that we’d won the war and lost the peace.

A previous acquaintance once told me that his other friends considered me to be an idiot. He said that it wasn’t just because of my situation, but because I’d chosen the situation. Those people had a distorted understanding of the idea of choice. A man will choose to jump from the top of a burning building, but that doesn’t mean that he wanted to do it. He jumps because all of his desirable choices have been eliminated, leaving him with only undesirable choices.

When I became formally employed, in 1972, I was required to have a Social Security number. I’d spent much of my life, up until then, being brainwashed by the establishment. Consequently, at the time, I didn’t associate the requirement with Mrs. Dudek’s description of Nazi Germany. However, by then I’d begun to educate myself. The Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986, which required government ID as a prerequisite to employment, confirmed what I’d been learning. My desirable choices had been prohibited. I wasn’t permitted to work at an honest job, as a free man. My choices were to either comply with fascist ID requirements, or to be unemployed. I refused to comply. I became unemployed. My refusal to comply with the fascist ID requirements doesn’t mean that I’m an idiot, as was alleged by those friends of my former acquaintance. It just means that I’m right.

Additional Reading

•	Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986, Available in The Sovereign’s Library
•	Abandonment, Available in Pharos
•	Cancellation of Social Security Number Available in Pharos
•	Outward Bound, Available in Pharos
•	Ravin’ Evermore, Available in Pharos
•	War of Words Frontiersman, December 1994
•	For Mrs. Dudek, Wherever She Is Frontiersman, February 2000

A Cold Place
Sam Aurelius Milam III

There isn’t any reason to believe that the Earth was molten when it first formed. Even if the Sun was already becoming active at the time, exposure to the Sun would have heated only the surface of the planet, not its interior. Heating of the interior didn’t begin until the Moon was in place. The gravitational attraction between the Earth and the Moon caused tidal forces within both bodies. Those tidal forces generated internal heating in both the Earth and the Moon. Prior to that, the Earth was probably at or near absolute zero.

Tidal forces in a spinning body will oppose its direction of spin. Thus, the Moon’s period of rotation slowed until, eventually, it became equal to its period of revolution, with the result that the same side of the Moon always faces the Earth. After that, tidal forces no longer existed within the Moon. Lacking tidal forces, heat generation within the Moon ceased. The Earth’s spin is also being slowed, and for the same reason, but the Earth’s greater mass means that it will take longer for it’s period of rotation to equal the Moon’s period of revolution. When that eventually happens, the same side of the Earth will always face the Moon. After that, there won’t be any significant tidal forces within the Earth. There might be some tidal forces from the Sun, but they’ll be smaller and have a much longer period. Today, any such Solar tidal forces have a period of one day. After the period of rotation of the Earth equals the period of revolution of the Moon, the period of the Solar tidal forces will be equal to the period of revolution of the Moon around the Earth at that time, maybe about one month. Internal heating in the Earth will mostly cease. The Sun might prevent the surface temperature from dropping all the way to absolute zero but, even so, without internal heating, the Earth will be a very cold place.