Goodbye, dear readers

I wish I knew how to impress it on you so deeply that you will never forget it: It is the torch, not the torchbearer, that matters. The torch, the Truth, shines on; the old torchbearer recedes into the darkness.

Let it shine on through the Green stench that is enveloping us ever more closely, let it throw light into the black night of ignorance, let it prevail over the dark forces of tyranny and stupidity. Keep it flying high!

I would nevertheless like to muse a little over the 20 years of Access to Energy. I feel satisfaction for having kept my promise of never accepting any grants, contributions, or anything else but subscriptions. If I am not good enough, I said in vol. 1 no. 1, let me go under. Free marketeers don't panhandle. If the amount was small, I would tag it onto the subscription. If it was large, as it was in several offers, I would reject it outright. Clean independence is worth more than money, and it provides a check on how good you are.

In the newsletter world any renewal rate over 50% is considered excellent. Many newsletters have a renewal rate close to zero. They spend their budget on advertising and sell it to a different set of subscribers every year. For the last 8 years or so, Access to Energy did not spend a solitary cent on advertising. The renewal rate very rarely dropped below 80% and usually stayed above 90%. New subscriptions made up for the dropouts, and for the last 8 years or so the circulation held steady.

Why? In part, because I did not play by the rules. Every newsletter manual will tell you to "conceal your sources." You know that I carefully documented every single source.

To get at the truth, it is well to go to the original sources. What do Dan Quayle, Niccolo Machiavelli and Friedrich Nietzsche have in common? A reputation ruined by night club comics and half-learned dimwits. Quayle, presented as an infantile bungler, was in fact the only strong anchor in a weak, unprincipled and hollow administration. Machiavellian means cynical dishonest, scheming, surreptitious, conspiratorial. But Machiavelli's The Prince (1527) is none of these; it is a sober assessment of the contemporary systems of government and a plea to unify Italy. And Nietzsche's superman, allegedly the ideal Nazi? Nietzsche was one of the most impressive philosophers. He was an internationalist, and his superman was the ideal man. He was Swiss, but if there is one nation for which he felt an ill-disguised contempt and disgust, it was the Germans, whom he despised for their slavish obedience to authority. Some Nazi!

The search for truth begins at the sources. Truth is what agrees with experience after all possible alternatives have clashed and have been shown unviable.

So what was the sense in fighting the charlatans for 20 years, they talking to 50 million for hours every night, I talking to 6,000 on 4 pages once a month? The demon inside me just said "Don't let them get away with it." But after 20 years it suddenly had an answer for me. "Do not count the heads; weigh them!" The birdbrains who listen to mental cripples like Tom Brokaw & Co, taking a swig from their six packs whenever the lies are interrupted by the incredibly stupid melange of foods, soaps and chewing gums, have been there during all the ages. They are the cowards, and slavish parrots only a little more stupid than Brokaw and the other charlatans themselves. They will never do anything except in a crowd with a mob mentality. But also throughout the ages there were others, the ones who knew better: the mathematicians behind thick cloister walls, the Great Navigators, all those who brought about the Renaissance and raised the shining torch of truth. The riff-raff of dim-witted parrots would sometimes lynch them, but they could not extinguish the torch.

Keep the torch of truth shining bright and high!

Dear readers, I would like to take leave of you with the words of a great Czech, Jan Hus, a religious reformer 100 years before Luther. He voluntarily went to defend his views before the Ecclesiastic Council in Constance (on the border of Germany and Switzerland), but the Council condemned him as an heretic and he was burned at the stake on 6^th July 1415. In his last letter from his dungeon in Constance sent to his people ("via a good German") he wrote: "Love the truth and be generous in letting everybody benefit from the truth!"