Jerks 01.C: Immoderation in All Things
The ancient pagan ideal was not Christian humility, which pagans found puzzling if not degrading, but the proper self-respect that encourages to do the right thing and not make fools of ourselves.
The Fleming Foundation Cultural Commentary
The Silents–The Final Installment
Everybody interested in movies has heard of Leni Riefenstahl. She made the famous, though now quite dull, film of the spectacular 1934 Nuremberg Nazi Party rally, Triumph des Willens (1935), and Olympia (1938), a far more durable record of the 1936 Berlin Olympics.
Biden’s Democracy Shindig
The picture of President Biden presiding over his Summit for Democracy showed him sitting in front of a giant screen featuring 66 small pictures of the invitee heads of state.
Wednesday’s Child: A House of Sand
There’s a lot of dust in the house, visitors from abroad have on occasion admonished us, don’t we ever vacuum? Now, with the newborn child on hand, I fear the criticisms will sound yet more insistent and the excuses ever more feeble. Cleanliness is next to godliness, and by the way when are you planning to get the baby vaccinated?
America: The Decrepit Empire
America is like an old business family in which the patriarch has gone senile, and the heirs are just plain stupid, competent only at blowing the inheritance. The enterprise is collapsing inexorably.
Juveniles Tried as Adults for Murder, Right or Wrong?
Dr. Fleming explains to Rex, the criteria of the insanity of children who kill.
Poems for December 6
Claudel, one of the great Christian poets of the last century, was subject to the crudest vilification from the communist and surrealist enemies of all things European, Christian, and civilized, in other words, the literary intellectual class that has destroyed literature and learning.
Challenge of the Week (Belated): Ghislaine Maxwell, Political Prisoner
We have heard much too much, in the past few years, about Jeffrey Epstein, Ghislaine Maxwell, Prince Andrew and Virginia Roberts. I wonder how people would respond to the argument that these cases are more in the nature of a public ritual or show trials than they are actual legal procedures?
Wednesday’s Child: An Old New Order
A university friend of mine, Peter Baldwin, whose book on the pandemic I mentioned here some months back, has just come out with another. The title is Command and Persuade: Crime, Law, and the State across History. Were I a libertarian, it would always sit on my bedside table, next to a tome of Ayn Rand and a sepia print of the Unibomber in a silver frame.
Utopias Unlimited, Conclusion
Gilbert was himself, a man of no particular party. He was as suspicious of progressive levelers as he was contemptuous of the conservative defenders of entrenched interests.
