Category: Access

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Wednesday’s Child: Cocktails on the Veranda (Free to the Public)

Desmond and I were for a time neighbors when I lived in London, and one really comes to know a person when one’s drains clog up.  We used to lunch together – Desmond was the only acquaintance whom I encouraged to take me to Indian restaurants, as he was born in Ceylon, now Sri Lanka, and knew the best places this side of the Thames – and it was refreshing to have as my vis-à-vis a man who made me feel like an adept of teetotalism.  Before pudding he would finish a bottle of Scotch, of which I had claimed...

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Trifkovic on the Capitulation of Trump: Foreign Affairs, Episode 5 (Free)

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In this episode of Foreign Affairs, Dr. Trifkovic discusses the capitulation of Trump to the establishment and what that means for interactions in North Korea, Venezuela, and Russia. Show Sponsor: Members Who Support Our Work Original Air Date: September 11, 2017 Show Run Time: 40 minutes Show Guest(s): Dr. Srdja Trifkovic Show Host(s): Stephen Heiner The Fleming Foundation · Trifkovic on the Capitulation of Trump: Foreign Affairs, Episode 5: September 2017   The Fleming Foundation Presents Foreign Affairs℗ is a Production of the Fleming Foundation. Copyright 2017. All Rights are Reserved.

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Wednesday’s Child: A Metaphorical Addiction

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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McCain vs. Trump (Free to Everyone)

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

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

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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Wednesday’s Child: A Virtual Mess

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

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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Wednesday’s Child: A Fair Name

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

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...