Why I Blog

I have led an interesting life. I have met several famous people, some famous throughout the world, some famous in a specific field. Two that are germane to this post are the Nobelist in literature, Isaac Bashevis Singer, and the renaissance man, public intellectual, and man of letters, Erik Maria Ritter von Kuehnelt-Leddihn, painter, journalist, novelist, political philosopher, social critic, and Hereditary Knight of the Holy Roman Empire..

I met them both after lectures they gave at my university, and had a chance to chat with them. In Mr Singer's lecture, he had referred to himself as an 'old fogey'. As we were chatting, I told him that if he was an old fogey, I was a young fogey (I was in my 20s at the time). He patted me on the shoulder and said that he was glad to know that there were people to follow him.

I had a more extended conversation with the Ritter von Kuehnelt-Leddihn. I was Eastern Orthodox at the time, whilst he was Roman Catholic. As we discussed religion, he suggested I should look seriously at Catholicism, especially given my current status, at the Eastern Rites of the Catholic Church. A number of years later, I did, and became an Eastern Rite Catholic. If you're interested, you can read my conversion story here.

As we continued to chat, I mentioned that I wanted to contribute to the counterrevolution by writing. He encouraged me strongly to do so. Of course, in those pre-internet days, he was thinking of journalism, articles, and books. 

Over the next few years, I did manage sporadically to write. I published an occasional ephemeral sheet called 'The Ultra Review', copies of which, I believe, are included in the Wilcox Collection of the Spencer Research Library at the University of Kansas. An article or two from it were translated into French and Portuguese and republished in France and Brazil. In fact, Dom Luiz, de jure Emperor of Brazil, sent me an enameled stickpin in thanks for an article supporting the Brazilian Monarchy.

I wrote for a couple of small Integrist Catholic/Monarchist reviews as well, and in the early 1990s I was asked to speak at the Catholic Voice International conference in Chicago on the subject of 'Christ the King and Monarchism'. It was there that I was privileged to meet Charles Coulombe, Gary Potter, Roy F. Moore, Michael Davies (R+I+P), and Father Nicholas Gruner (R+I+P).

However, the stresses of marriage and fatherhood to five children severely limited my time and mental concentration on writing.

In 2005, I took up blogging. There is a link to my original blog, 'The New Crusade' in the sidebar. However, it was little more than a news aggregator. I would cull the internet for stories on Catholicism, the European problem, philosophy, ethics, and the like, and post a link with one or two lines of introduction. Even that died a slow death when I moved to Canada because of the 'hate crime' laws there, which I call thought crime laws.

So now, at 70, more than 40 years after meeting Mr Singer and Ritter von Kuehnelt-Leddihn, I'm trying to take up their challenge again. The Ritter, I hope, would be approving of using the internet as my medium, since I can reach a much larger audience than by writing for print.