The World Wide Web has revealed just how many loose cannons there are out there. Read the posts on any blog site. Loose cannons love to post on blog sites. They fire every which way. They give others a piece of their mind when they really cannot spare it.

This is why I killed the "comments" feature of Tea Party Economist as soon as I gained full control over marketing. I do not want to be reminded of just how vociferous some of these fringe people are: "flamers on the fringe."

AN EMAIL FROM A POTTY MOUTH

I recently received an email from a self-designated Christian who is also a great fan of Ayn Rand. This degree of intellectual schizophrenia by itself would make him a worthy candidate for Fringe Personality of the Year — or even the decade.

He had read my article on the job vs. the calling. Lew Rockwell posted it on his site. In it, I described my work day: 3 a.m. to 8 p.m.

In his email, he described me in terms of a pair of physiological metaphors. Yet only one of them can be true at the same time.

You are a prick. And an asshole, to boot. Not once, in your great defense of how hard you work to follow your calling, not once did you mention your wife, and how she might feel about it all. Not once. I respect you, because of all you have written. But you are an asshole and a prick.

Here are my credentials.

[He supplied an Amazon link to his autobiography about growing up Amish, and why he left the movement.]

I wrote a NY Times bestseller. That was my calling.

It was an eBook best-seller. That is not the same as a printed best-seller. People have to pay a lot more money for printed books. Nevertheless, of all of my foul-mouthed email critics over the years, he has achieved more.