Category: Feature

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Autodidact / Feature / Fleming

11 Jan, 2018

Adam Smith: The briefest of conclusions

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There is much that is useful in Hutcheson and Hume, who correct many errors of the Enlightenment, and there would be little point to denying the significance of Adam Smith as the first person who comprehensively demonstrated the superiority of the free market over all the deluded wise men who think they can regulate and plan an economic system:  Although we are free to reject the selfish individualism of Mandeville and Smith, their analysis gives us true insight into the way social and economic systems actually work. It is quite another thing to say that it is our human destiny...

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

10 Jan, 2018

Wednesday’s Child: A Truth that Bears Repeating

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I overdid it at Christmas, which for the Russians was this past Sunday, remaining incapacitated – catatonic is the usual term – and incapable of writing anything new this week.  So here are some old jottings.  Through the fog of champagne and grappa there dimly glimmers in them, I trust, a truth that bears repeating in the New Year. Reading all the various, though scarcely varied, opinions on the “crises” that Moscow throws the West’s way – after 100 years of Russian misrule one might think the word would be safely devalued, but no, they use it like St. James’s...

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All Paid Subscribers / Feature / Seiler

3 Jan, 2018

Trump Trolls ‘Climate Change’ Fanatics

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If you don’t know the term, “trolling” on the Internet means “sowing discord… with the intent of provoking readers into an emotional response.” President Trump long has been the master of it. One of his latest is a special New Year’s End gift to us, on Twitter: “In the East, it could be the COLDEST New Year’s Eve on record. Perhaps we could use a little bit of that good old Global Warming that our Country, but not other countries, was going to pay TRILLIONS OF DOLLARS to protect against. Bundle up!” Obviously, one day of record cold temperatures doesn’t tell the...

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

3 Jan, 2018

Wednesday’s Child: The Coffee Mill

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Like many great men, Signor Baldo, whose skills with the ancient San Marco espresso machine recall the illustrious surgeons or perhaps even the famous generals of history, is used to adulation.  The morning bar crowd here is what in marketing is called a quality-conscious clientele, and these people are cognizant and appreciative of the fact that the machine is entirely manual, with nobody but its operator to be either blamed or applauded for the result.  None of that press-the-button stuff for Signor Baldo’s customers. Once in a while a tourist wanders in, and though I can see that the coffee...

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All Paid Subscribers / Feature / Seiler

31 Dec, 2017

Media Misread Trump Foreign Policy Moves

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A good example of how the media are misreading President Trump’s foreign policy comes from the Los Angeles Times. Headlined in the Dec. 26 print edition of the paper, “Trump claims he’s boosting U.S. influence, but many foreign leaders see America in retreat” was pecked out by no less than three top-flight Timesies: Tracy Wilkinson, Alexandra Zavis and Shashank Bengali. This really isn’t “news,” but an opinion piece masquerading as reporting. It gets wrong just about every policy, beginning, “China has now assumed the mantle of fighting climate change, a global crusade that the United States once led. Russia has...

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

27 Dec, 2017

Wednesday’s Child: Zone 2

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I fear the gentle reader may have concluded from my last post, where I confessed to having watched fifty hours of old Russian television in a single week, that my idleness has finally got the better of me. Yet Zone, as I sought to explain, is no ordinary television, but a pivotal historic event, and one, moreover, that presages the latest political developments in Moscow. On the day my post appeared, December 20, a remarkable anniversary was being celebrated by the millions of Russians in the covert or overt employ of the police state.  It was the centenary of the...

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Feature / Fleming

21 Dec, 2017

Donald Trump: Genius or Chump?

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For decades I have opposed the special relationship by which the Israeli tail wags the American dog, but, as I wrote recently on this site, I no longer care very much.  The Muslims of the world hate our guts and are slaughtering innocent people in Europe and the United States.  By any reasonable political standard, they have forfeited the right to be taken seriously. Spear-head by the Palestinians, their friends in the Muslim world, and the terrified Europeans who refuse to resist the ongoing invasion of Muslim enemies, the anti-Christian vermin who control the United Nations have rebuked the the...

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

20 Dec, 2017

Wednesday’s Child: A Zone Too Far

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I just finished watching the last episode of a fifty-episode Russian television series entitled Zone.  This epic series was made ten years ago, and represents a kind of symbolic watershed in Russia’s political progress from the authoritarian horizontal of the 1990’s to the totalitarian vertical of today.  To make such a production in the country’s present climate would be just about unthinkable, as witness the scandal around Zvyagintsev’s 2014 film Leviathan, acclaimed in Cannes yet politically a much weaker statement than Zone. It occurs to me that, having sunk 50 hours of my time into this situation tragedy, I may...

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All Paid Subscribers / Feature / Seiler

19 Dec, 2017

Repeal the 17th Amendment

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The debacle of Alabama’s Senate election shows why the 17th Amendment to the Constitution, electing U.S. senators by a vote of the people, ought to be repealed. Like other “reforms” of the Progressive Era – the Federal Reserve, Prohibition and the dreaded income tax – it made worse what it was supposed to improve. And World War I, the passion of progressive President Woodrow Wilson and ex-President Teddy Roosevelt, instead of “making the world safe for democracy,” paved the way for Lenin and Hitler. The original Constitution established a delicate balance between the more democratic House of Representatives, apportioned by...

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Feature / Fleming / From Under The Rubble

7 Dec, 2017

A Capital Crime? Trump and Jerusalem

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“Trump has sold us out!” ”It’s all the fault of that Jewish son-in-law of his!” “This sets back the Middle East peace process by decades!” These are just a few of the more moderate exclamations I have heard in condemnation of the President’s decision to declare Jerusalem the capital of Israel and to relocate the embassy. Perhaps they are all right, but I doubt it.  While Trump’s manifest trust in his children is a source of possible weakness, it is also one of his strongest qualities.  Jared and Ivanka Kushner have certainly played a major role in this administration, but whether...