The Fleming Foundation Cultural Commentary

5

Crazy Town

In Fear, the latest spasm of gossip and fear-mongering by the infamous (among people of sense and decency) Bob Woodward, the gullible American public is given a portrait of the Trump White House as a cross between Bedlam and the palace of Caligula.  Trump supporters are outraged.  

1

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

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...

5

Looking for Mr. Jefferson, Conclusion

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...

10

Take Five: The Scandalous Pope

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.

3

Looking for Mr. Jefferson, Part I

[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.

4

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

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.