The Fleming Foundation Cultural Commentary

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Autodidact

4 Nov, 2016

Political Lessons from Polybius: Introduction

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Dull-witted and lethargic from a touch of gastroenteritis courtesy of the fine food we consumed last week in Dayton, Ohio–we couldn’t make it to Greece but did we really have to spend time in a Dayton Holiday Inn?–I got tired of reading early 20th century espionage novels and poorly written Welsh history.  I happened to open up my little leather travel bag from Florence and found the first  volume of the Loeb edition of Polybius. I have never been a fan of Polybius–his Greek is wooden and repetitious–but he was a wise historian.  I picked up where I had left...

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All Paid Subscribers / Feature / Seiler

4 Nov, 2016

Fed Up: Why Trump Will Win

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“Barnes was at the eye of our rage – and through him, our Captain Ahab – we would set things right again. That day we loved him.” – Chris in the Movie “Platoon.” “I’m fed up,” a friend told me last Sunday after church about why she’s voting for Donald Trump. That sums up the election for me. It’s why I’ve been saying for months that Trump will win big. Americans are fed up with: idiot foreign wars, political correctness, crony capitalism, the Clintons, the Bushes, economic stagnation, moral putrescence, repressive leftist professors, the Main Sleaze Media, “Pay to Play” politics, the Clinton Foundation,...

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Feature / Phillips Red

4 Nov, 2016

It’s Past Time for TAC to Get on Board the Trump Train

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It’s Past Time for TAC to Get on Board the Trump Train Rare recently published this article by Daniel McCarthy, Editor of The American Conservative (TAC) magazine. It is a thoughtful defense of a vote for Trump that I largely agree with. I will not say I’m completely surprised. I could have seen McCarthy going either way. I will say that I am pleased. Some background is in order for those who may not be familiar with the intricate details of certain intra-right dynamics. TAC began as a project of Pat Buchanan, Taki Theodoracopulos and Scott McConnell. It was an...

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Diary of a Jerk-Hunter / Fleming

2 Nov, 2016

Jerks, Chapter I, Part D

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Most of us would agree that bad manners are a small thing, when set beside murder, mayhem, and abortion.  Sometimes, though, I wonder.  Thomas De Quincey, in his second lecture on “Murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts,” may have been on the right track when he warned, tongue-in-cheek, against the negative consequences of committing murder. For if once a man indulges himself in murder, very soon he comes to think little of robbing; and from robbing he comes next to drinking and Sabbath-breaking, and from that to incivility and procrastination. De Quincey could take it for granted that...

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Autodidact / Fleming

2 Nov, 2016

Aristotle’s Politics, Book VI

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Book VI By now Aristotle has taught us to distinguish among the different forms of government according to the characteristics of their sovereigns and to see how one form, through decay or revolution, slips into another or turns into an illegal form.  With this in mind, we need, says Aristotle, to give some attention to the different varieties of democracy, aristocracy, and monarchy.  For us modern Americans, of course, the most interesting discussion concerns democracy, because that is the form of government we say we have. The root principle of democracy is eleutheria, political liberty, both in the sense that...

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

2 Nov, 2016

Wednesday’s Child:  This Way Up (1)

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A provincial painter of eclectic pictures, of the sort immortalised by Saki under the title “Dying Hyenas in Trafalgar Square,” wrote in to a Sunday newspaper recently to announce his resignation from the world of art.  There was no critical milieu in Britain, he lamented, sensitive enough to save him from oblivion.  “No matter what I paint, or how good or bad my works are,” he wrote in his letter, “no newspaper, magazine or gallery has shown the slightest interest.” “I am not saying that I am right and they are wrong,” the gentle creature from Stonebroom, near Alfreton, Derbyshire,...

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All Paid Subscribers / Feature / Seiler

1 Nov, 2016

Jail Hillary to Prevent More Security Breaches

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Back in my infancy I joined the U.S. Army, 1978-82, and became a Russian linguist in the National Security Agency for the last three years of that, stationed in West Germany. During boot camp and while learning Russian for a year at the Defense Language Institute in idyllic Monterey, Calif., the FBI performed a background check on me, interviewing family, friends and neighbors back in Michigan. They wanted to make sure I wasn’t a Soviet agent. I was given a Top Secret security clearance with Special Intelligence Access. I then received two months of cryptographic training at Goodfellow Air Force...

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

26 Oct, 2016

Wednesday’s Child:  More from Paris

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An absurdly generous friend put us up in a hotel new to the city, The Peninsula, where a bottle of mineral water from room service would set you back $28.  Back in Palermo, that would buy me a whole roast lamb – dinner for eight to ten guests, or a wild sea bass of mammoth proportions. One of the functions I was to attend in Paris was a meeting of expat Republicans – “Republicans” as in the GOP, not in the European sense of cowardly regicides – and, when I got there, the contrast could not have been more striking. ...

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Free Content / FUTR / Podcasts

25 Oct, 2016

From Under the Rubble, Episode 8: The Last Presidential Debate

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Thomas Fleming and his former radio partner Paul Youngblood scrutinize the last presidential debate and the toxic nuclear fallout in the media. If you’re new to the Foundation and our work, please register as a free user and get access to some of our content. Show Sponsor: Members Who Support Our Work Original Air Date: October 25, 2016 Show Run Time: 38 minutes Show Guest(s): Dr. Thomas Fleming Show Host(s): Paul Youngblood The Fleming Foundation · From Under the Rubble, Episode 8: The Last Presidential Debate   From Under the Rubble℗ is a Production of the Fleming Foundation. Copyright 2016....

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Feature / Fleming / From Under The Rubble

25 Oct, 2016

The Truth From Donald’s Big Mouth

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Donald Trump is the bull in the Republican china shop—or, considering who pays our politicians,  should that be China shop?  Whatever passes before his eyes or between his ears can inspire speculations—usually presented as self-evident truths—so outrageous that they offend the official media and embarrass even loyal supporters. To make matters worse, Donald’s most ridiculous proclamations typically have not just a grain of truth but whole boulders of the stuff, bigger than the land mass of Eurasia on a map of the world.  Truth makes Trump’s pronouncements more wicked in the same way that St. Thomas says a true detraction...