Category: Access

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

6 Sep, 2017

Wednesday’s Child: A Metaphorical Addiction

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Last week a reader complimented my parody of “preternaturally American” English, a patois favored not only by gum-chewing schoolgirls and their future husbands, but also by demagogues of every persuasion, notably Russian propagandists broadcasting to the West.  A key element of its sentence structure is the word “like,” at times roughly equivalent to the traditional locution “that is to say,” but most often an interjection signaling approximation, relation, or equivalence. It occurs to me that the almost universal acceptance of this word in its neologistic role has a significance that runs deeper than mere misuse of language.  It is to...

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Free Content

6 Sep, 2017

McCain vs. Trump (Free to Everyone)

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  There have been two times when I though a presidential nominee by one of the two major parties was so hawkish America could be pushed into a war of annihilation with Russia. One was last fall with Hillary Clinton, who by all accounts was the most hawkish member of the Obama administration, plumping hard for the Afghan “surge,” the 2011 attack on Libya that destroyed that country and sent millions of refugees streaming into Europe, the destabilization of Syria, etc. The other was in 2008 with John McCain, a man obsessed with pushing wars almost everywhere, in particular in...

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Fleming / Free Content

4 Sep, 2017

The Nature of the Beast: Simple Simon’s Political Lexicon, “Conservatism” Part III

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Most political/ideological movements are defined more by what the movement opposes than by what it supports.  Jacobins were a bit fuzzy about their Golden Age vision of a restored Roman Republic, but they were pretty clear about whom they wanted to kill.    (By the way, one easy way of distinguishing a wholesome religion or religious movement from a mere sect is that sectarians tend to define and name themselves according to their leaders and spend an enormous amount of time destroying what previous generations have created.  Iconoclasts and progressives  act more or less like ISIS and the Communist Party.) Conservatives...

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Fleming / On the House

31 Aug, 2017

What is Truth? Part II of Simple Simon’s Definition of Conservatism (Free to Subscribers)

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What is truth, asked jesting Thomas, who stayed for an answer. Let us suppose, for the sake of argument, that it is possible to tease out some fundamental principles that undergird all or most conservative movements and sentiments.  Let us further suppose that the most basic principles are not specifically American, Anglo-American, or even Christian-European but could be revealed not only in Sophocles, Aristotle, and Cicero but, perhaps, even in Confucius and/or Lao Tsu.  Once the more general principles were established, we could then see how they develop more particular attributes and requirements as part of Christendom and even Anglo-American...

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All Paid Subscribers / Andrei Navrozov / Wednesday's Child

30 Aug, 2017

Wednesday’s Child: A Virtual Mess

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A couple of weeks ago, in Moscow, about a thousand people gathered in Pushkin Square to demonstrate against internet censorship.  Conceptually, of course, I saw their action as flawed, if only because, given the internet’s intangible and mercurial nature, it would have been truer to genre if they had marched only virtually, made virtually inflammatory speeches, and in the end got themselves virtually arrested by the virtually secret police. A less spurious reason why that march was misconceived is that, as the Russian proverb goes, “having lost the head, no sense crying about the hair.”  The proverb is wise in...

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Free Content

27 Aug, 2017

What’s the Good and the Bad of Trump in Afghanistan and Venezuela?

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The past week saw President Trump step even farther away from his campaign pledge of America First, of getting involved less in foreign quarrels. But how far? His actions took off the front page the bad press he keeps getting from his response to the death and disaster of the Charlottesville protest. Probably anything he said would have been blasted by the fake-news media. The New York Times’ op-ed page has been even more apoplectic than usual. In Venezuela, Trump’s sanctions make no sense at all. The White House Reads blog for Aug. 25 began with this: “The Miami Herald reports the...

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

23 Aug, 2017

Wednesday’s Child: A Fair Name

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In Italy, a sagra is a local fair, festival, or fête, usually – oh, but let us be truthful, invariably – dedicated to food, and sometimes accompanied by a historical pageant, a sporting event, a marionette show, or some other spectacle that may aid digestion. There is a Frog Festival at Casteldilago near Arrone, an Onion Festival at Cannara, a Stuffed Eggplant Festival in Savona, a Lattarino Festival on Lake Bolsena, in homage to a local fish by that name and now in its forty-second year, a Frico Festival in Friuli, involving an italianized cheese-and-potato rösti, and an almost infinite...

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Autodidact / Free Content

22 Aug, 2017

Ask the Autodidact:  “How Bad are the Harry Potter Books?”

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After having read or listened to so many of the books on your Auto-Didact list, my daughter Annie has grown to trust my literary judgment.  If Dad says a book is worth reading, it is.  If Dad says it isn’t, it isn’t. Well, my daughter is of an age where all her peers have read or are reading the Harry Potter books.  I’ve told her the Harry Potter books aren’t worth her time.  While that answer is good enough for Annie, many of her friends and classmates press Annie to explain why her dad––who is also the pastor of the...

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Free Content

21 Aug, 2017

Ukraine in the Cross Hairs?  (FREE)

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With Steve Bannon now out of the White House, will the generals surrounding Donald Trump push the president into a confrontation with Russia over Ukraine? According to Military.com, “Defense Secretary Jim Mattis is set to travel to Ukraine, becoming the first U.S. defense secretary to visit the country since Robert Gates, the Pentagon announced Friday. “Mattis will meet with Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko and Defense Minister Stepan Poltorak on Aug. 24, Ukraine’s independence day. “ ‘During these engagements, the secretary will reassure our Ukrainian partners that the U.S. remains firmly committed to the goal of restoring Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial...

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

16 Aug, 2017

Wednesday’s Child: A Portrait of the President as a Young Man

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As a young jobbing journalist in London I used to do a lot of book reviewing for The Times, then still the pre-eminent paper in Britain.  They paid me £1 a word, which meant that even at the rate of two or three pieces a month body and soul could be kept together, with a bob or two left over for cigarettes and booze.  Last week I was trawling through old photocopies of some of my clippings and found one that made me giggle, dated April 8, 1989 and entitled “Diary of a Nobody.”  I’m quite sure that Rupert Murdoch,...