Monthly Archive: November 2016

14

Trump Must Cut Parasite Pay

This is long overdue: “President-elect Donald Trump and the Republican-controlled Congress are drawing up plans to take on the government bureaucracy they have long railed against, by eroding job protections and grinding down benefits that federal workers have received for a generation.” No wonder Virginia voted for Hillary. After the South switched to Republicans around the 1970s, the Old Dominion regularly voted for the GOP. When I lived there during the mid-1980s, the Maryland suburbs of D.C. were the place Democrats liked to live, while Northern Virginia was where Republicans tended to move, probably because that’s where the Pentagon and...

3

Constitutions and How they Die

“Limited government” is a phrase one hears a good deal, especially from Republican candidates for office, who claim to be in favor of it.  Since election to office has now become a guaranteed way to become rich quickly, we can assume that those candidates do not really mean what they say.  Besides, no government will voluntarily limit itself.  The only way to limit a government is to use force. Twice in Anglo-American history people have successfully used force to limit government.  In both cases the result was a government limited by constitutional law, and in both cases the result proved...

17

Gary Keillor vs. the Yahoos

Desperate to get his name into the news, Garrison Keillor is now posing as a political pundit.  We now live in two nations, civilized Christian people who voted for Hillary and the yahoos who voted for Trump “Broadway shows will now feel obliged to give lectures on diversity to any prominent Trumpist in the audience. Trumpists will explain, as one woman did, “Voting for him was the only way I could say that I exist.” (People who shoot up theaters may feel the same way.) The Trump faction will boycott chamber music concerts, wine tastings, lectures on Byzantine art and poetry...

2

Debunking the Sanctuary Movement–30 Years Ago, Part I

This Perspective from January 1986 analyzed the budding sanctuary movement and dissected its entirely bogus spiritual, moral and constitutional foundations.  It infuriated Richard John Neuhaus, who at that time led the movement to silence an irritating political heretic.  I was naive and did not yet realize how much so-called conservatives hate the truth, whenever it conflicts with the short-term goals of their little movement. “Shelter from the Storm” The trial of 12 sanctuary workers in Tucson has heated up an issue which is being hailed in many quarters as the great moral issue of the 1980’s. The movement, whose members...

23

When Will We Ever Learn

Mike Pence went to the hottest show on Broadway-a leftist/revolutionary travesty of Alexander Hamilton and, he found himself insulted and attacked by the cast.  He must have been shocked to discover that leftists  are never honorable.  Don’t like the Catholic Church?  Then rape and murder nuns and blow up churches.  Don’t like the Czar?  Murder his family.  Don’t like the way people in Florida and Alabama voted in a presidential election?   Tear up Portland and Los Angeles, where they voted your way. The left has never played by any rules but its own, and those are the simple rules...

4

Anthony Trollope on Sermons

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This is Trollope’s musings on the sermon preached by the odious Mr. Slope in Barchester Cathedral: There is, perhaps, no greater hardship at present inflicted on mankind in civilized and free countries than the necessity of listening to sermons. No one but a preaching clergyman has, in these realms, the power of compelling an audience to sit silent and be tormented. No one but a preaching clergyman can revel in platitudes, truisms, and untruisms, and yet receive, as his undisputed privilege, the same respectful demeanour as though words of impassioned eloquence, or persuasive logic, fell from his lips. Let a...

6

What Would Trump Success Be?

Historically, presidents are “successful” if they can achieve two, maybe three, great things in office. I define “successful” in their own terms – what they wanted, not what they ought to have done. Thus, Reagan was “successful” because he beat the Soviets in the Cold War, revived the U.S. economy and was the only president since World War II to be succeeded by a member of his own party. He was less “successful” with such goals as bringing “strict constitutionalists” to the Supreme Court; of his three appointments, only Antonin Scalia approached that goal. President Obama was “successful” in passing...

0

Wednesday’s Child:  This Way Up (2)

It is perfectly possible, even likely, thaat the reader whose face would be saved by the genre in the pages of my biography already knows more about Boris Pasternak than the one incontrovertible fact that he wrote the book on which a major motion picture called Doctor Zhivago was based.  Similarly, Nietzsche would have had the ready advantage of addressing a literary audience wholly receptive to the angry disclaimer that the Superman comic is only loosely based on his Zarathustra. But information, however complete, is not the same as the explanation of feeling which I have been reckless enough to...

2

Latin, Episode 7

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Join Dr. Fleming on this special “Dialogues with a Young Latin Teacher” episode featuring Eleanor Lacy. Original Air Date: November 15, 2016 Show Run Time: 31 minutes Show Guest(s): Eleanor Lacy Show Host(s): Dr. Thomas Fleming The Fleming Foundation · Latin, Episode 7   The Fleming Foundation Presents Latin℗ is a Production of the Fleming Foundation. Copyright 2016. All Rights are Reserved.

1

Thomas Fleming: All Gone in Search of America

What does it mean to be an American? Major debates over legislation and proposed constitutional amendments raise the question. Without stretching a point too much, it is easy to see the American identity as the underlying question on the immigration issue, the Equal Rights Amendment, and perhaps even in the debate over abortion. It comes out very clear in discussion of the English Language Amendment sponsored last year by Senator Huddleston of Kentucky and supported by U.S. English, a group headed by former Senator and linguist S.I. Hayakawa. The amendment would make explicit a fact of life obvious to anyone that...