Category: Access

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All Paid Subscribers / Feature / Seiler

11 Apr, 2017

Syria Strike Aids Trump’s Enemies, Alienates Friends

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  “I reward my friends and [expletive] my enemies,” was how the noted political philosopher Bill Clinton once explained his governance. It’s pure Machiavellianism, but it worked for him. And while such amorality is an abomination, the kernel of truth is that a politician needs friends, and needs to keep them, because he certainly will gain plenty of enemies whatever he does. I’ll provide some examples in a minute. President Trump seems not to understand that his Syria attack endangers his entire presidency because it repulsed his truest friends, who backed him no matter what during the long and bloody...

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

11 Apr, 2017

Wednesday’s Child: A Blast of Cynicism

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Say what you will, democracy has a responsible side.  Hardly anybody in America believed the findings of the Warren Commission, but you can never argue it was for want of trying on the part of its members, or for that matter on the part of those who had organized the assassination.  In totalitarian countries, by contrast, a lie is thought to be wasted on the populace unless it’s a white lie, and a conspiracy that is convincingly covered up is simply not worth the blood of the victims. So it is with the news of the recent blast in the...

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Free Content

10 Apr, 2017

The Balkans Powder Keg, Again (FREE CONTENT)

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It’s a complete mess! The Balkans are becoming once again the powder keg of the European continent.   In the turbulent nineties, the peninsula experienced the creation of several artificial states, such as Kosovo, Bosnia and FYROM, that became cradles of Islamic terrorism as well as headquarters for criminal organizations.  Now, once again, Balkan governments are undermining the stability of Europe. Everywhere we look, there is trouble. Belgrade is plagued by antigovernment rallies and protests. The population of tiny Montenegro sharply is divided over NATO membership.  In Athens the leftist gang in power has opened the Greek and therefore European border...

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All Paid Subscribers / Feature / Seiler

7 Apr, 2017

War Could End the Trump Administration

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It didn’t take long for President Trump to let the dogs of war bite him. Item: He just attacked Syria with a “targeted military stroke” on an airfield supposedly used by President Assad for chemical attacks. But what if reports the chemical weapons are “fake news”? The reports came from the U.S. intelligence community, which hates Trump and, as we now know, relentlessly spied on him, his family and his campaign, while conjuring up the fake news of his collusion with Russia. Why would Syria use chemical weapons, bringing condemnation on itself, it it’s now winning the war against the...

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

5 Apr, 2017

Wednesday’s Child: The Möbius Syndrome

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The Möbius strip, twisting back on itself in an endless loop, is how most people visualize the past, present, and – consequently – future of civilization. This seamless plane of recurrence is punctuated by popular historical concepts, such as “tyranny,” “slavery,” “war,” “revolution,” “famine,” “torture,” or else by such allegedly universal memes as “family,” “happiness”, or “wealth.”  Even those hysterically optimistic punters who believe that the history of civilization is progressive – which would imply that its topography is less like the closed loop than like an upwardly mobile parabola – cannot escape the pervasive myth of endless recurrence enshrined...

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Free Content

4 Apr, 2017

The Imperial and Momentary We by Clyde Wilson (FREE)

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This piece was originally published in Chronicles Magazine, October 2012.  It has been republished on the website of the Abbeville Institute.  Prof. Wilson has also given permission to put it on Fleming.Foundation in the hope that it will stimulate a lively discussion. “O Fame, O Fame! Many a man ere this Of no account hast thou set up on high.” —Boethius “It is a kind of baby talk, a puerile and wind­blown gibberish. . . . In content it is a vacuum.” —H.L. Mencken on Warren G. Harding’s speeches Americans are a practical people. They don’t want to hear your...

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Fleming / Free Content

4 Apr, 2017

In Memoriam Frank Schier (FREE)

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This is a slightly revised version of my brief tribute delivered on Sunday, April 2, 2017 at a memorial gathering in Rockford the Mendelsohn Club.  Frank Schier was for many years the editor and publisher of the local weekly The Rock River Times.   My name is Tom Fleming, and I was for many years Frank Schier’s friend, sparring partner, and occasionally punching bag.  We once hosted a television show that must hold the record for the smallest audience, and for a brief period, I wrote restaurant reviews for his newspaper.  Perhaps that fact will be recorded on my own...

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Fleming / Free Content

3 Apr, 2017

Samuel Johnson, Our Greatest Moralist, Part D: The Problem of Pain (FREE)

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Rasselas is probably Dr. Johnson’s most accessible piece of moral philosophy.  Since we shall be posting a podcast on the work, the treatment here can be quite limited.  Rasselas is a sort of a picaresque novel that tells the story of a young Abyssinian prince who, with his sister and mentor, leave the Happy Valley, an earthly paradise where the prince, his sisters, and their companions and attendants, enjoy every possible comfort and pleasure.  Rasselas, however, is not happy but is  possessed of what seems to be a romantic delusion that he should desire something.  He imagines that there is...

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

29 Mar, 2017

Wednesday’s Child: The Old and the Reckless

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Last week I mentioned Lampedusa.  Scion of a princely family who wrote his only book aged 58 and did not live to see it published or declared a masterwork of world literature, Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa would have inherited his ancestral palazzo in Palermo – about a hundred yards from my house – had it not been for an Allied bomb that leveled it.  Later he moved to another splendid palazzo nearby, because, as the Serbs say, “caviar is eaten not by those who can afford it, but by those who are used to it,” a wise adage that I...

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Free Content

29 Mar, 2017

Can Trump Repeal and Replace Obamacare? (FREE)

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Obamacare is giving us the worst of both systems: The expense of capitalism and the deadly incompetence of socialism. President Trump’s attempt to fulfill his campaign promise to “repeal and replace” Obamacare – made during the election at every rally before voters – has descended into Cheyne-Stokes. Here’s a reality check. We’ll now see how good President Trump’s deal-making prowess really is. He’s attempting something Republicans never have been able to do: repeal, or at least sharply scale back, an entitlement, in this case Obamacare. The general history of Republicans long was to be the “adult in the room,” paying...