Category: Feature

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Feature / FF

23 Sep, 2018

Road To Damascus, Part II Conclusion

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In this primitive period of East-West unity, Rome established its preeminence above all in the context of theological controversies, where it took on the role of unflinching champion of orthodoxy.  The Councils of Nicaea and Constantinople had formulated a creed that became the universal bedrock of faith, but in a certain sense they did not go far enough, for they did not speak explicitly to the different theories about Jesus Christ, His personhood and natures, that arose and clashed in the fifth century.  This was a matter of special concern for the emperors in Constantinople, who looked with anxiety to...

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All Paid Subscribers / Feature / Seiler

5 Sep, 2018

How Did Ex-CIA Czar John Brennan Get Into The Company?

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I laughed when I read ex-CIA Czar John Brennan’s gripe that taking away his security clearance was “part of a broader effort by Mr. Trump to suppress freedom of speech & punish critics.” I once had a security clearance. Although not as high as his, it was pretty high, Top Secret-Special Intelligence. When I was training to be a Russian linguist and radio intercept operator, 1978-89, the FBI talked to everybody in my background, asking such questions as: Did you ever vote for the Communist Party-USA? They talked to my next door neighbor, and receive a glowing report. “He’s been...

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Clyde Wilson / Feature

3 Sep, 2018

Looking for Mr. Jefferson, Conclusion

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I have always thought that Jefferson’s   advocacy of the separation of church and state was in part inspired by his distaste for the political power of the Yankee clergy.  Remember, the  famous letter  about “the wall of separation” was addressed to a group of Baptists in Connecticut, who were independent of that State’s established Puritan church.  One can still find die-hard Calvinists who denounce Jefferson as an atheist.  For some reason they never mention that John Adams became a Unitarian. Through the 19th century Jefferson remained a very popular symbol among the people and occasionally among writers, but  New...

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Feature / Podcasts / Take Five

3 Sep, 2018

Take Five: The Scandalous Pope

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Then said he unto the disciples, It is impossible but that offences [that is, scandals, stumbling blocks] will come: but woe unto him, through whom they come! It were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and he cast into the sea, than that he should offend one of these little ones.

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Clyde Wilson / Feature

1 Sep, 2018

Looking for Mr. Jefferson, Part I

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[Jefferson] thought  that Americans had a unique opportunity to preserve free institutions if they were wise and virtuous.   He did not believe that  Americans were a Chosen People with a  divine mission to spread freedom to all mankind.  That idea was invented by the New Englanders who hated him and whom he despised.

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Feature / Fleming

30 Aug, 2018

Sweatshops of the Mind, Part II: The Schooling We Have Lost

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During the 1990’s, in Rockford, Illinois, an appointed federal magistrate usurped the authority to  decide what schools should be opened or closed or built, how much tax money should be spent on which programs in which schools, and how many white children could be admitted to the gifted programs.  I was among those who condemned the magistrate’s power-grab as both unconstitutional and immoral, and, although the local powers-that-be–including the newspaper and big business interests–condemned the magistrate’s critics as racists, a federal judge ruled in our favor.  

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Feature / Fleming

28 Aug, 2018

Sweatshops of the Mind: The American School Bureaucracy, Part I

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The most significant conclusions of the National Education Goals Panel was the familiar complaint: Further study is needed.  More data needs to be collected in every area… and most of the panel members agreed that the main emphasis in the ongoing crusade to improve our schools should be on assembling data and devising new instruments for testing and measuring progress.  This has been the burden of that same old song that was sung before John Dewey had ever corrupted the first mind of a student.

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All Paid Subscribers / Feature / Seiler

27 Aug, 2018

October Surprises Coming

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In American political parlance, an October Surprise is something launched to affect an election just before voters go to the polls, this year on November 6. There also are run-ups to the October Surprises, such as Vyshinsky’s – I mean Mueller’s – witch hunts against President Trump’s associates, which have had nothing to do with Mueller’s portfolio to look into non-existent Russian rigging of the 2016 election.