Category: Access

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All Paid Subscribers / Andrei Navrozov / Wednesday's Child

15 Nov, 2017

Wednesday’s Child: On Schadenfreude

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If on my deathbed somebody were to ask me whether I was ever able to formulate a universal principle of human intercourse, I would say yes, and it is that the people any man dislikes, which includes his enemies, are always more numerous than those he likes, which includes his friends and usually, though not necessarily, his immediate family. Our dislikes are many and various, and it is enough to mention just a couple of common vices, such as envy and jealousy, to appreciate that the number of their objects is only limited by the range of our acquaintance.  Add...

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Free Content

14 Nov, 2017

Virginia: California on the Atlantic (FREE)

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The NeverTrumpers over at National Review blame Ed Gillespie’s defeat for governor of Virginia on – this is a surprise! – Donald Trump: “If the American electorate continues to have a low opinion of the president, then Republicans should calculate that drag into their electoral expectations.” Actually, Gillespie, an establishment Bush Republican, only scored as well as he did, losing 54% to 45%, after closing his campaign with Trumpian themes. But even totally embracing Trump and campaigning like him likely would not have won it for Gillespie, as a year earlier Trump himself lost the state, 50% to 44%. The...

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Fleming / Free Content

13 Nov, 2017

We’re a Lot Smarter Than We Used to Be.. (FREE)

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“We’re a lot smarter than we used to be.”   I almost wish I had heard what led up to this extraordinary declaration on NPR’s Morning Edition, but I was too busy making breakfast.  Perhaps it had something to with Global Warming or lead in the water or the cholera plague brought into Haiti by the UN’s humanitarian mission.   Almost wish.  Perhaps the poor geek only meant our increased knowledge in certain technical areas enables us to screw things up more royally than in previous generations.  But it is far more likely that he seriously meant that the wisdom...

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Free Content

10 Nov, 2017

Transcripts

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As Dr. Fleming has noted to you already, there have been some technological mishaps that prevented episode recording while he was in Italy.  We are back to recording this week and will get caught up, but we also wanted you to know about a benefit that is available to Charter Members for free and a la carte to those of other membership levels: transcripts. If you look at the drop down menu for podcasts on the main page you will see “Transcripts.”  Click there to find some selected transcripts to various episodes.  Charter Members receive one new transcript per month...

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All Paid Subscribers / Andrei Navrozov / Wednesday's Child

8 Nov, 2017

Wednesday’s Child: Salem Alaikum

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The Salem witch trials of the 1690’s have entered school textbooks as an episode of mass hysteria, an instance of the sort of fundamentalist extremism that today we associate with militant Islam.  The very fact that this episode – culminating as it did in a modest score of hangings – so stands out in the landscape of history as to have become a byword for vengeful ignorance only underscores the abiding tolerance of European civilization and its North American dilation. This does not mean, however, that the civilization in question was ever free from the herd instinct, which in the...

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Free Content

7 Nov, 2017

Why Not Repeat Reagan’s Tax Cuts? (FREE)

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Why doesn’t the Trump Administration just repeat Ronald Reagan’s 1981 tax cuts? The Gipper proposed a 33% tax cut on practically all taxes. He negotiated with Tip O’Neill, the Democratic speaker of the House of Representatives, and settled for 29%. The top rate dropped to 50% from 70% of income, with lower incomes given similar cuts. Reagan made one mistake: Most of the tax cuts were delayed until 1983, supposedly to grab more from taxpayers for a year to “pay” for the tax cuts. But all that did was delay economic investment for a year, as companies and persons waited...

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All Paid Subscribers / Andrei Navrozov / Feature / Wednesday's Child

2 Nov, 2017

Wednesday’s Child: Moral Borderlands

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I was under the weather last week, and besides I thought the gentle reader might use a week’s rest from my compulsive ratiocination, so I did not post.  Weather is a big factor the closer one gets to Africa.  The sirocco arrives here bearing a fine sand dust from the Sahara that gets in everywhere, but worse than that, it makes one feel like a lemon squeezed dry, moscio, as the locals say, meaning flaccid, limp, flabby.  After a day or two, one finds oneself yearning for Siberia and the bracing touch of the bora. Sirocco makes people grumpy, irritable,...

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All Paid Subscribers / Andrei Navrozov / Feature / Wednesday's Child

21 Oct, 2017

Wednesday’s Child: Chinsoc

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“Ingsoc,” as the gentle reader may recall, was Newspeak for “English Socialism,” the ruling ideology in Orwell’s nightmare.  A modern version of that nightmare is already up and running in real time throughout mainland China under the official name of “System of Social Credit.”  Before long all mankind is expected to see the advantages of such a system, with most developed countries following China in implementing their own national versions of digital totalitarianism.  As I have written here on several occasions in the past, Russia, while behind China in this area of technology, is scheduled to launch a homespun analogue...

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All Paid Subscribers / Feature / Seiler

21 Oct, 2017

End of the McCain Doctrine

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Call it the McCain Doctrine. It’s the foreign policy the U.S. government pursued from the 1999 attack on Serbia to pry away Kosovo, until President Trump’s 2017 occupation of the oval office. Through three presidents – Clinton, Bush II and Obama – the McCain Doctrine has meant constant, pointless intervention around the world. In 1999, McCain was the major force in Congress behind the attack on Serbia, which killed 5,000 Christian Serbs to put the terrorist Kosovo Liberation Army in charge. The KLA then drove most Serbs out of their ancient homeland in Kosovo, blowing up their churches, and turning...

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All Paid Subscribers / Andrei Navrozov / Feature / Wednesday's Child

11 Oct, 2017

Wednesday’s Child: A Man of the Future

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Last week a 51-year-old man was briefly in police custody in the northwest of England for passing leaflets to shoppers of the fair sex in a town square. “No offence intended,” read the culprit’s appeal. “You are simply a female that caught my eye, and I don’t have the time to talk right now.” “I am not looking for a girlfriend or relationship,” ran his argument. “I am looking for a possible private arrangement.” This was followed, in case any of his readers might mistake his intentions in some unexpected way – for instance, spitefully misconstruing them as honorable –...