The Fleming Foundation Cultural Commentary

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All Paid Subscribers / Feature / Seiler

14 Aug, 2017

Actually, North Korea Can’t Hit the U.S., or Guam, With a Nuke

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Americans sure get in a tizzy these days. What happened to the people that methodically destroyed Hitler and Tojo in less than four years, then calmly faced down the Soviets in the Cold War? The latest “threat” is from the ridiculous Kim Jong Un of North Korea. This time, supposedly, he’s years or months away from launching a nuclear-tipped ICBM at the American mainland, or at least Guam and its U.S. military bases. The Bezos-Amazon-Washington Post headlined, “North Korea now making missile-ready nuclear weapons, U.S. analysts say.” But as Justin Raimondo noted, the Post quoted only a single sentence from...

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Feature / Fleming

14 Aug, 2017

Simple Simon’s Political Lexicon: Liberal

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  In one of our discussions, I hinted that our conversations might be expedited by agreeing to use certain words, e.g., liberal, conservative, radical,  Marxist, traditionalist, culture/cultural, republican, democratic, in a precise manner that takes account of historical reality.  The most obvious term with which to begin is the almost universally abused word “Iiberal.” Political Liberal:  Someone who advocates liberty and individual autonomy as the ultimate good and seeks to weaken or eliminate all barriers and impediments that stand in the way of an individual’s quest for fulfillment.  At different periods Liberals have opposed monarchy, established churches, aristocracy, tradition, and...

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Fleming / Free Content

10 Aug, 2017

The New Phase of the Korean War–a possible explanation

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The United States has had difficult relations with North Korea, ever since Harry Truman refused to permit the American military to end the Korean War in victory.  Truman’s lack of resolve, coupled with the American elite’s obsession with global Americanization, has meant a long string of failures:  Cuba, Vietnam, Nicaragua, Iran, and Iraq.  Ever since I grew old enough to think I had the right to answer questions of such scope, I have given the same answer, whenever anyone has asked me what to do:  Fish or Cut Bait!  Either leave other people alone or, if we have to fight,...

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

9 Aug, 2017

Wednesday’s Child: Letter from Sardinia

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A capital delusion of the rich, to the effect that money can be transmuted into beauty, is dwarfed by a mass delusion of the poor, to the effect that beauty can be transmuted into money.  As in the case of nuclear transmutation in physics, neither of the two processes is an impossibility. Yet scientists warn that while particle bombardment can easily turn gold into a base metal like lead, the reverse, though possible in theory, is far too costly and time-consuming to be of any practical benefit to the avaricious. An alchemist, or for that matter anybody who’s got his...

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All Paid Subscribers / Feature / Seiler

8 Aug, 2017

Bring Back the Spoils System!

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  Nowadays American history in high school consists of unrelenting attacks on our country as a racist, sexist, etc., hellhole. But back when I took the class at Wayne Memorial High School back in 1971, we learned about how horrible the old spoils system was, and why our country leaped into the progressive future with Civil Service Reform. Although he didn’t use the term, the spoils system largely was instituted by the great President Andrew Jackson. It was a way to get an unresponsive bureaucracy to perform its duties. If a functionary treated citizens badly, he knew they could vote...

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Fleming / Free Content

7 Aug, 2017

On the Wings of a Snow White Dove–Killing Time in Rome

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This was one of the last pieces published in a magazine I used to write for.   You know how it is when you have over an hour to kill downtown in a major city?  How time seems to slow to a stop?  Fortunately, the Roman houses beneath the Palazzo Valentini, which we were waiting to visit, are a stone’s throw from the column of Trajan.  On that warm and sunny day in February, we took over an empty bench facing the imperial fora and soaked in the sun we should not be seeing, when we returned, for months.  Before...

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Feature / Fleming

7 Aug, 2017

Rome and Back

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I am frequently asked questions about travel, and now that we have announced our Fall convivial program in Italy, I expect to be inundated by requests for information, to which I shall cheerfully and gratefully respond.  Nondimeno, I think it will be helpful if I put together some anticipatory observations. Passport Before you do anything, you should check your passport and determine that your passport is valid beyond several months of your return date.  You may, of course, check out various travel websites as well as the US State Department, and you will find as many answers as there are...

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Fleming / On the House

7 Aug, 2017

The Myth of the Culture War

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More from “Overture to the Suicide of the West” The older advocates of multi-culturalism used to say that they were, like Jesse Jackson, arguing simply for the inclusion of non-Western cultures into the curriculum of an increasingly diversified student population.  Like Bill Clinton, the multi-culturalists believe that the real America only began to come into existence with the liberation of women, blacks, and children.  America may have been founded by straight white European Christian males, but with the emancipation of women, the granting of civil rights to African Americans, and the incorporation of large numbers of Asians and Latin American...

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All Paid Subscribers / Andrei Navrozov / Wednesday's Child

2 Aug, 2017

Wednesday’s Child: Letter from Tuscany

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  I am hardly revealing a secret when I say that, despite the century-long attempt at imposing federalism on Italy – with law, education, and mass communications among the means at the central government’s disposal – this, thankfully, remains a uniquely fragmented European country.  Time and again the visitor is reminded that it is regional autonomy, de facto if not de jure, that makes this so tolerable a place to live or even, provided one speaks some Italian, to visit, to swim, to suntan, and to eat.  An American may well reflect that his own United States, had history played...

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Fleming / On the House

1 Aug, 2017

Ben Jonson’s Classical Restraint (Free to all subscribers)

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Classical Restraint Despite his violent temper and conversion (for a time) to the old religion, Jonson was a well-balanced mind with a fondness for the order and beauty of classical literature. In his comedies, he made use of the classical theory of humors in order to promote his own ideas of the balanced temperament, and in his later poems, especially those collected in The Forrest and in The Underwood, the wild young swordsman has transformed himself into an advocate of reason and moderation, both in literature and in morals.  Jonson had tried both the abusive satires of the 90’s, a...