The Fleming Foundation Cultural Commentary
Wednesday’s Child: Of Means and Motives
In at least one respect the gentle reader must give Wednesday’s Child his due. In nearly 200 posts in this space, no mention has ever been made of “Mueller” or “Mueller’s investigation.” That is because I seek to protect the gentle reader from inconsequential twaddle, political banality, and useless names as I myself dream of being protected by some supernatural entity from all such unwelcome intrusion. However, grand jury indictments resulting from the investigation so incautiously mentioned above are unlike the investigation itself, in that they are not, as the Russians say, just “grinding water in a mortar.” Some world-class...
Yes, Andrew Yang Has a $12,000 Yearly Bonanza for You
One of the benefits of the presidential primaries is ideas sometimes percolate to the surface. That’s the case with Andrew Yang and his $1,000 monthly Universal Income. Every citizen, from Jeff Bezos, worth $100 billion (after the divorce), and the homeless guy on the street corner would get a bank deposit of $1,000 a month. This is an old idea. Back in 1972, Democratic Nominee George McGovern promised $1,000 a year to everybody. According to the government’s inflation calculator, that comes to $6,218, about half Yang’s amount. But if you go by the price of gold, it was $72 in...
Two War Poems by John Streeter Manifold
John Manifold was an Australian poet who fought in the European theater during World War II. I read the first long ago in an anthology, and it has always served to remind me that fine and vigorous formal verse could still be written in the middle of the 20th century. It is a pity that he is not read more outside of Australia, where is or was something of a hero.
Rights to Public Education?
The discussion of human rights limps along on the Forum: Political theories are often too abstract–too etherial to stand fast in the high winds of everyday life. Let us turn to some everyday topics where human rights might be invoked. I’ll put a simple one on the table, and others, I hope, will up the ante. Once upon a time it was assumed that parents were obligated to provide for their children’s education, either by teaching them at home, paying for the private schools they sent them to, or, by the later 19th century in some parts of the US,...
The Jaundiced Eye, # 1
Boris Johnson may be the next Prime Minister of the UK. I wish I hated Britain, because if I did, Boris’s elevation would be a reason for drinking in the morning.
Cicero 2018 The Movie! Join Us This Year for Shakespeare
Check out last year’s Summer School ad and you’ll be signing up for 2019.
Wednesday’s Child:Jacques and the Beanstalk
That Jacques the peasant, whom I had occasion to recall the other week as the emblem of all spontaneous popular unrest, is indeed in fine fettle is further corroborated by news stories from the city of Yekaterinburg, the capital of the Urals region, infamous for the cellar in which the Russian royal family was executed. It occurred to the spawn of the Antichrist who now control the Moscow Patriarchate that coming to terms with the city’s ignominious past in time for its tercentenary would make a good pretext for building a new cathedral, meanwhile keeping under wraps the news that...
Trash Celebrities versus the State of Alabama
Alabama defies Hollywood–but will it make a difference?
Romantic Nationalism, I: The Humanity of Herder
Herder approached the nations of the world much as a radical environmentalist today regards endangered species. Each nation is precious because it reflects some quality within the human type, and when an imperial nation eliminates another nation, it is committing a crime against humanity.
