Category: Fleming

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FF Podcast, Special Edition Trump

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On this special edition of the podcasts of the Fleming Foundation, our founder, Dr. Thomas Fleming, shares his impressions of the first Presidential Candidates’ Debate of the 2016 Election. If you’re new to the Foundation and our work, please register as a free user and get access to some of our content. Show Sponsor: Members Who Support Our Work Original Air Date: September 27, 2016 Show Run Time: 37 minutes Show Guest(s): Dr. Thomas Fleming Show Host(s): Stephen Heiner The Fleming Foundation · FF Podcast, Special Edition Trump The Fleming Foundation Podcast℗ is a Production of the Fleming Foundation. Copyright...

16

“We Out Like Taliban”

Indeed. Charlotte is burning.  Social media on Tuesday night were  lit up with messages of defiance:  “This ain’t no one day action, ” screamed one rioter, as others were venting their righteous outrage on a conveniently located Walmart.  Still others carried signs saying, “It’s a Book,” which will no doubt eclipse, for the time being, “Don’t Shoot”  and “I Can’t Breathe” as the battle cry of the underprivileged citizens who in pursuit of justice will loot any store, shoot any fireman, tell any lie, do anything but get jobs, support themselves, and lead law-abiding lives. Charlotte Police say that they...

1

Properties of Blood I.7: Dueling for Honor, Part B

Military Duels Frontiers and unsettled times attract reckless men, who are going to shoot it out, one way or another.  The pretense that Abilene after the War Between the states or the Chicago ghetto of today can be run according to the rules of an Oxford College can lead only to anarchy and the death of law-abiding people who are minding their own business.  Where a community maintains a civil order, most men will be content to keep the peace most of time, relying on the forces of the law for protection and redress of injury, except on the exceptional...

12

Hooray for Hollywood!

According to a virtual reality rag called The Hollywood Reporter, both Stephen Spielberg and Harvey Weinstein are planning separately to base one of their schlock movies on “the true story of the kidnapping of Edgardo Mortara.” Their true story is “about a 6-year-old Italian boy who in 1858 was taken from his Jewish parents by police and raised [sic!] Catholic.”  The villain in the piece is Pope Pius IX, who will be played—if Weinstein has his way—by Robert de Niro!   “Are you looking at me?  Are you looking at me?”  It’s too bad the Christophobic Christopher Hitchens has left...

16

Trump:  The Lesser Evil, Episode II

Reading the leftist responses to Hillary’s condemnation of us “deplorables,”  I was struck by the uniformity of tone.  They run the gamut from self-righteous astonishment to self-righteous indignation.  Occasionally, they tip their hand:  People who use “politically correct” as an insult, they say, are bigots, and so is anyone who thinks there might be something amiss with affirmative action, open immigration, same sex marriage, and men in women’s clothing hanging out in the girl’s locker room. There is a curious contradiction in the American “liberal” mind.  On the one hand, they are “all about” (an expression worth a few pages...

8

Jerks I: Land of the Free, Home of the Jerk, Part B

Though they are one of America’s distinctive creations, Jerks have been observed throughout history.  Meet one from 17th century France, described by one of the most acute observers of human folly, Jean de la Bruyère: Gnathon lives for no one but himself, and the rest of the world are to him as if they did not exist. He is not satisfied with occupying the best seat at table, but he must take the seats of two other guests, and forgets that the dinner was not provided for him alone, but for the company as well; he lays hold of every...

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…Who Help Themselves

This piece appeared in the first number of revamped Chronicles, in  May 1985.  Some readers found it alarming at the time.   It now seems quite moderate, though many law-and-order neoconservatives would still deplore the call for self-help.   We take too much for granted in America. Whenever we have a problem, we assume that somebody else is paid to solve it, somebody from the government. All the ancient burdens of the human flesh—poverty and envy, greed and arrogance—have been turned over to one or another bureaucratic agency.  We sleep better at night knowing that somewhere someone is busy making life...

0

Properties of Blood I.7: Dueling For Honor, Part A

Defining the Duel The word duel is often used loosely to mean a fight between two men or even any competitive conflict between men or beasts.  The historian Victor Kiernan has written an entire book on European dueling without ever, apparently, figuring out what a duel actually was.  Let us begin by setting aside such metaphorical usages as “dueling egos,” “dueling banjos,” and “dueling roosters,” and restrict ourselves to violent encounters between two human antagonists, who may or may not ne accompanied by allies who may simply insure fair play or even take part in the action. If we are...

11

Trump: The Lesser Evil

  Hillary Clinton’s take on a large percentage of the American people is drawing fire: “You could put half of Trump’s supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables. Right, The racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic—you name it,” and added, “some of those folks—they are irredeemable, but thankfully they are not America.” The other half of Trump supporters are simply stupid and depressed, and people in Hillaryland should pity them. Let’s do some quick and very rough math.  In round numbers, the country has about 280 million people, about three fourths of whom—or 210 million—are old enough to vote. ...

8

Bullying and Baloney

Bullying is the latest great social craze in the American media. They always have some social pathology with which they terrorize the suckers who watch the news or read websites.  Back in the 1980’s and 90’s they beat the drum for teenage pregnancy and father-daughter incest.  They had to drop the former, after a few dissidents were cruel enough to point out that the term “father” turned out to include the mother’s second husband, live-in boyfriend, and any stranger in the night she happened to entertain. The increase in teenage pregnancies was real enough, but, since the cause was the sexual...