Guest commentary

EDITORS' NOTE: We apologize for the lack of a new blog entry today. Even these years later, Ray Kaliber occasionally still suffers from some medical issues related to his wound, and as a result he was unable to prepare a blog entry for today. It is his hope to be well enough to continue his memoirs tomorrow. In the meantime here is an excerpt from a possible preface to the book that we have been preparing.

Hundreds of years ago American presidents named Garfield and McKinley were assassinated by violent men who called themselves anarchists and wanted to throw the government into chaos. Another of these violent men killed an arch-duke and started a World War. It’s a bit ironic that we’ve come to a point where an assassin aimed to kill a man who replaced chaos caused by government with a nonviolent state of what some people might call anarchy.

Let’s get one thing straight from the start: Despite everything that’s been written about him — and most of it is true — Raymond Douglas Kaliber was not a saint. He probably would be the first one to tell you that. But what he managed to show about the need for bosses probably qualified him for sainthood in half the religions in the galaxy, and the other half are the religions for people who are clueless to begin with, if you don’t mind my saying so.

Who am I to say so? That’s a great question. You should never take my word for it. Everything in this book is the truth as Ray and other people told me, but it’s filtered by their point of view and then filtered again by mine.

See, that’s just the beauty of what Ray had to show us. What I’m going to tell you about in this book is my educated opinion. And you’re not going to get the complete picture of Raymond Kaliber from one darn book, so go educate yourself fully about the man and draw your own conclusions.

“I think I’m onto something,” Kaliber would tell anyone willing to listen, “but never take one guy’s word for anything. Check it out yourself.” The good news for Sirius 4 is eventually, enough people listened to him and checked it out to make a difference in the long run.