Category: Feature

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All Paid Subscribers / Feature / Seiler

28 Mar, 2016

Paul Ryan Gets Jack Kemp Wrong–and Donald Trump, Too

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I try to find the amusing in politics, and there was a lot of unintentional humor in House Speaker Paul Ryan’s March 23 speech before interns on Capitol Hill on the state of American politics. As commentators have noted, although not mentioning Donald Trump by name, the blathering was directly aimed at the real estate baron. Salon asked, “Can he really endorse Trump after a speech like this?” Of course he can, assuming the rt. hon. gentleman doesn’t join other Establishment pols in swiping the Republican nomination for himself or another hack. This is politics; there’s no honor. Ryan well...

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Best Revenge / Feature / Fleming

27 Mar, 2016

Christ Is Risen

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Anything I might have to say on this most blessed day of the year would be at best superfluous.  I do, however,  want to draw attention to the beautiful collect in the Old Mass.  Many of these prayers are capable of inspiring a good deal of reflection, if we pause a moment to consider them: Deus qui hodierna die per Unigenitum tuum, aeternitatis nobis aditum, devincta morte reserasti,  vota nostra, quae praeveniendo aspiras, etiam adjuvando prosequere.  Per eundem Dominum etc.  This is  Englished in various ways, but this version, drawn from the Father Lasance Missal, puts the gist of it...

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Feature / Fleming / On the House

26 Mar, 2016

The Tower of Skulls On the House

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The day before the Easter we celebrate in the West, my thoughts go out to Christians in the East who once endured the horror of Islamic rule.  I wrote this piece in September 2001, and it was published  n December.   “You’ve never been to Nish?!”  My friend was incredulous.  How can someone who has traveled, it sometimes seems, every inch of Montenegro, Bosnia, and Kosovo, not have found the time to go to Nish?  The lady is far from being a local chauvinist, but when I first met her and asked (as I had been taught by a Belgrader) if...

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

23 Mar, 2016

Wednesday’s Child: Flesh by the Pound

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Last week Alfredo, my closest friend here in Sicily, was arrested on charges of mafia association.  Manlio, a friend Alfredo and I have in common, had suffered exactly the same fate some twenty years ago; after a year in jail awaiting trial, and many another of a ruined life, he was in the end acquitted of all charges imputed to him; by then, however, this former mayor of Palermo was a broken man.  Now it’s Alfredo’s turn to serve as a film extra in a political production known as the war against the mafia. When Mussolini wanted to wipe out...

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Feature / Fleming / On the House

22 Mar, 2016

Muslims Must Go

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Here is Hillary Clinton’s response to the terrorist attacks on Brussels: “Calling for 12 million immigrants to be rounded up and deported.  Demanding we turn away refugees because of their religion, and proposing a ban on all Muslims entering the United States…America should be better than this, and I believe it’s our responsibility as citizens to say so…If you see bigotry, oppose it. If you see violence, condemn it. If you see a bully, stand up to him.” Ms Clinton actually made her remarks at an AIPAC meeting where she spent most of her time attacking the Republican front-runner, but...

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Feature / Fleming / On the House

19 Mar, 2016

The Religion of Sodom, Conclusion

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In Genoa I spent several hours talking with the philosopher Pier Luigi Zampetti.  In his book His book La Sfida Del Duemila (1988), Zampetti blames our spiritual malaise as well as environmental catastrophe on modern consumerism.      Materialism has become the dominant philosophy both in the West and in the East…. Capitalism, as we know, is the economic system of the entire contemporary world.  East and West are worlds bound by capitalistic systems, even if of different types.  But, how is man considered in these systems?  Can he express himself, his free and responsible choices; in other words is...

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Feature / Fleming / On the House

18 Mar, 2016

The Religion of Sodom, Part I

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This is the revised first part of an essay I published in 2000 in a magazine I used to edit. I cannot remember a time when I was not what would be called an environmentalist.  I spent much of my childhood walking on an earth unconstricted by concrete streets and unburdened by the weight of buildings.  I was never happier than when I was out fishing with my father or picking berries with my sister, or helping friends with their traps.  Until we moved near Charleston, I had never seen a city that did not deface the landscape, and to...

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

16 Mar, 2016

Wednesday’s Child: Colonialism Blues

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  My son is in his last year at Oxford – drinking, mostly, as far as I understand from his sporadic communications–and so, when I see a news story with the university’s name in it, I take note.  There was one just the other day. “Serial Killer Uses European Human Rights Law to Sue for Compensation Because Prison Makes her Tearful and Upset.”  Oh no, sorry, wrong headline. The right one was no less absurd, and the gist of it was that a bunch of students… We pretty much know who they are, because for the last fifty years, in...

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Feature / Fleming

12 Mar, 2016

Ransom Notes: Who Asked You?

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Although nobody asked for my opinion on these bits of news, I have a few things to say. First.  Finally, the head of a major Christian denomination with a grain of sense!  The bleeding-heart-liberal Archbishop of Canterbury has informed the world that it is not racist to oppose mass migration. http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-35781613.  While calling upon England to do more than it is doing to help so-called Syrian so-called refugees, he said that it was “outrageous” to describe fears about the migrant crisis as racism.  Archbishop Welby is as leftwing as most English and North American bishops and ministers of the Anglican communion, but unlike too many...