The Fleming Foundation Cultural Commentary
My impression is that 99.99% of all contemporary cinematic output falls into one of two categories. The first, by far the larger of the two, consists of brazenly exploitative commercial products, the medium’s equivalent of the Twinkie Cake or White Cheddar Cheetos, which are made by Hollywood’s lascivious Shylocks to fleece the common man. The second category is unlike the first in that a commercial return on the products of which it is comprised is somewhat less certain, and the reason for this is that they contain artistic pretension as a separate ingredient rather than the way a particular junk...
You turn on the radio for the weather report: “Sunny and warm today, with a high near 80. Light breeze out of the South at five miles per hour. Chance of rain less than 10%.” Outside your window, you watch the winds rage and the rains pour. Which are you going to believe, your senses or government-backed science reported in the government-controled media? Coming away from the window, you pick a modern history textbook off the shelf, and you read that modern times are marked by progress. The past was a sewer of racism, sexism, bigotry and ethnic oppression, but...
TJF: What do you think of arming teachers? What qualifications would you impose? What other approaches might be taken, apart from saving the family and destroying consolidated schools. Finally, what went wrong with the sheriff’s deputies? Should Sheriff Israel be forced to resign? It’s unfortunate that it has come to arming teachers, but I suppose that before we can remake our society I think that certain qualified personnel on school grounds be permitted concealed carry. Probably most of the faculty, administrators, and staff wouldn’t want to do so, and that’s fine because if only a few were armed, rigorously trained, and...
TJF: In the wake of the recent school shooting in Florida, the Soros-funded campaign to disarm Americans and make them incapable of defending themselves from criminals and predators has fixated on demands for banning assault weapons, automatics, and semi-automatics. Could you help us understand what these terms mean? Roger McGrath: I asked the same question of the city council of a town here locally when they proposed a ban on “assault rifles” about 30 years ago. They all sat there with stupid looks on their faces. One of them turned to the city attorney, and he started reading to...
The most recent offense against the religion and morality of the World Controllers was perpetrated by a German figure skater named Nicole Schott, who had the unmitigated gall to use the theme song of Schindler’s List for her routine at the Olympics. In the report I read, the writer was so busy quoting the horrified tweets that the poor dear did not even mention Ms Schott’s actual performance, the score and/or medals it received. Outrage over the cultural appropriation of Hollywood junk music was trumped by a West Coast crime writer, who was simply horrified to see someone in her...
North Against South, written by the venerable Dr. Ludwell Johnson of William and Mary, is a concise history of “the War” and Reconstruction. It is a unique work of enduring value. The most recent edition, published in 2002, contains several valuable prefaces. Johnson writes there that the nationalist myth of the War commonly simplifies the conflict, condemns the Southern section, and transforms a complex tale into a morality play. Reflecting on his own early education in Richmond, Virginia, Johnson notes that this myth left him dissatisfied, and early planted in him a desire to know the story of his own...
Chapter One (Part A) Out of a misty dream Our path emerges for a while, then closes Within a dream. He came to with a jolt, like someone regaining consciousness after being knocked on the head, but he kept his eyes shut, trying to remember what he had witnessed in the night. He had overslept again. Worn out from too much traveling in dreams, he was not ready to face another day. The visions of the night had exhausted him, but he could not recall any details. In the part of his mind that held the what, where, and...
Ched P. Rayson writes from the Iron Range. He is largely a recluse, who has published nothing under his own name. The first section of chapter one of this “fantasy” is being posted with open access to everyone. The next section will be restricted to subscribers, the third to paying subscribers. We have not decided how to treat the rest of it, but there may be additional fees. Eventually, the plan is to produce an ebook with possibly a print edition.
In some perverse way I’m hoping that our editor will put up today’s post without reading it, because few things are more irritating to a savant than a layman on the prowl in his field of expertise. Instinctively he reaches for the shotgun loaded with rock salt to teach the trespasser a lesson. I’ve only ever had a year of Latin in adolescence, but living as I do in a country whose language, in Byron’s phrase, is “that soft bastard Latin, / Which melts like kisses from a female mouth / And sounds as if it should be writ on...
The media are speculating that Mitt Romney will become the “next” John McCain, a thorn in President Trump’s side, assuming the former Massachusetts governor is elected to the U.S. Senate from Utah this November. It may seem so. Although Trump contributed to Romney’s 2012 presidential bid, and just endorsed his Senate bid, Romney blasted Trump during the 2016 presidential campaign, and has done so recently as well. “With McCain’s retreat, some turn to Romney to carry his torch,” intoned the Washington Post on February 15. “Romney took to Twitter, for instance, to lash out at Trump last month after The...
