The Fleming Foundation Cultural Commentary

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FF / Heiner

6 May, 2016

40 Days Later: They still didn’t understand

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“Domine, si in tempore hoc restitues regnum Israel?” “Lord, wilt Thou at this time restore again the Kingdom to Israel?” Acts I: vi “…apparuit illis Iesus: et exprobravit incredulitatem eorum, et duritiam cordis: quia iis qui viderant eum resurrexisse, non crediderunt.” “…and He appeared to them and He upbraided them for their incredulity and hardness of heart, because they did not believe them who had seen Him after He was risen again.” St. Mark XVI: xiv They had spent years with Him.  Lived with Him.  Watched Him work miracles.  Watched Him raise people from the dead.  Watched Him die.  Watched...

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Fleming

6 May, 2016

Ransom Notes, Cinco de Mayo Plus One: GOP Deserters

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Why are so many Republicans shying away from Trump and promising to boycott the convention? Whatever the answer is, we know it has nothing to do with principles, because they don’t have any.  What they do have are paymasters. In picking a side, e.g., the global war machine to which Maddog John McCain bends the knee, or the Megachurch pseudo-Christian pastors bloated on greed and ignorance that Ted Cruz adores, or the transnational business interests that force the Republican Party to stiff the American people by bringing in cheap labor and shipping jobs off to Chinese slave-masters.  Even the hint...

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Autodidact / Fleming

4 May, 2016

Aristotle: Politics I, chapters 3-5 On the House

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The subject of the third and fourth chapters is the acquisition of  property (ktesis) and the gaining of wealth (chremastike).  Possession of property  is natural because it is necessary to our existence (and even of animals’ existence) to secure food, shelter, etc.  Wealth-getting per se is a more narrowly specialized and morally circumscribed activity.  To the extent it serves the needs of the household it can be regarded as natural; to the extent wealth become an object in itself, it is unnatural.  Aristotle distinguishes between two uses of a piece of property such as a shoe: Its proper and natural use in...

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Feature / Fleming / From Under The Rubble

4 May, 2016

Donald Trump’s Paper Moon

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“All’s Over then.  Does truth sound bitter as one at first believes?” Yes, it must sound very bitter indeed to the leaders of the TedCruzJohnKasicMarcoRubioCarlyFiorinaJebBush Party—which is neither very old nor very grand.  They played the game according to its well-established and well-known rules, which can be boiled down to “Lie, Cheat, and Steal,” and they went down in a defeat untouched by honor or dignity.  What a pill it must have been for the Bible-thumping Cruz to take, listening to the vulgarian Trump verbally pat little Teddy on the head, predicting big things for the kid when he grows...

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All Paid Subscribers / Andrei Navrozov / Feature / Wednesday's Child

4 May, 2016

Wednesday’s Child: But ah, my Foes, and oh, my Friends

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Vladimir Bukovsky, whom I became friends with while living in Cambridge in the late 80’s, was born in 1942.  In 1963, while a student in Moscow, he was arrested and charged with possession of forbidden literature. As it was thought more convenient to pronounce a lad of 20 insane than to bother with a trial, he was committed to a special psychiatric hospital.  He was released in February 1965 and arrested again in December of that year for organizing a street demonstration.  This time he was committed to a psychiatric hospital of the ordinary type. Released in July 1966, in...

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FF / Heiner

3 May, 2016

Programming schedule for 2016

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I just wanted to take a moment to thank our Gold and Charter members for their patience as Dr. Fleming and I caught up on our podcasts.  The promise of last year was one per week, four per month, but in February and March Dr. Fleming and I both had travel schedules that contrived to tinker with that plan.  I’m happy to say now at the end of April/beginning of May that we are mostly caught up, and will be regularly delivering at least one podcast per week. We will have two season breaks in 2016, which will include the...

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FF / Heiner

3 May, 2016

Why I don’t “support the troops”

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Some weeks back one of the speakers at a conference I was attending told me over a meal that his son was heading into the Marines via ROTC, and he wanted to know what I, as a former Marine and as someone who had attended Officer Candidates’ School, thought about his son’s military aspirations.  I did not have encouraging words for him. I had a conversation about this subject with one of my former students some months ago. I have taught hundreds of young men and women, but only a few students become friends and keep in touch with me...

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Fleming / From Under The Rubble / On the House

2 May, 2016

Racism–and the Rose by Any Other Name OTH

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This a revision of three old pieces on the same subject: Thucydides observed, in his famous depiction of the civil war on Corfu, that political partisans change the meanings of words.   Dictionaries have become instruments of ideological oppression.  The movement began long before the end of the millennium. “We very clearly had made a mistake,” said the marketing director of Merriam-Webster, explaining her company’s decision to pull an on-line thesaurus that included “faggot” and “fruit” as synonymns for “homosexual.” While many homophiles freely use expressions like “faggot” and “fruity,” and “butch,” they reserve the right to dictate polite usage...

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Autodidact / Fleming / On the House / Poetry

30 Apr, 2016

Mr. Autodidact’s Poem(s) of the Week

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First is a sonnet by Tennyson, not one of his best, perhaps, but indicating his distaste for professional critics and men of letters: Poets and Their Bibliographies Old poets foster’d under friendlier skies, Old Virgil who would write ten lines, they say, At dawn, and lavish all the golden day To make them wealthier in the readers’ eyes; And you, old popular Horace, you the wise Adviser of the nine-years-ponder’d lay, And you, that wear a wreath of sweeter bay, Catullus, whose dead songster never dies; If, glancing downward on the kindly sphere That once had roll’d you round and round...

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Autodidact / Fleming / Reading Lists

30 Apr, 2016

Mr. Autodidact’s Reading List: English Literature (Update 2 May)

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Absolutely Essential Classics of English and American Literature for Readers from 12 to…. These works have been chosen partly for their literary excellence but even more because they were, until recently, taken for granted, as part of our common Anglo-American heritage.  This first version, which will be expanded from time to time, is only a sketch, and the omission of some beloved classic may be due to an oversight or a decision to include the work in a subsequent list.  If the list is somewhat boring and predictable, it is because I have left off many of my favorite writers,...