The Fleming Foundation Cultural Commentary
This is the revised second part of my opening lecture at the 2017 Summer Symposium To understand the West’s cultural suicide, we might begin by looking at an historical event, not from ancient Greece or 18th century France or even from the legendary 1960’s, which are now regarded as ancient history. Let us start, instead, with with an episode in the culture war that has become a legend. The year is 1987, just 30 years ago, and the place is Stanford University. There stands “the Rev.”Jesse Jackson leading a group of 500 Stanford students, chanting “Hey Hey Ho Ho. Western...
“The task of the civilized intelligence is perpetual salvage.” Why has Western man lost his nerve and his sense? That is really the only important question of the day. Everything else that is happening in the world is merely a by-product of forces occupying the space made by the shrinking of the West. Or I should say “HOW has Western man lost his nerve and his sense?” The Why is always in the deep mystery of God’s time. The only way we can approach it is in describing the How. We might then hope to understand a little or...
This is the first part of my opening shot at the 2017 Summer Symposium. Everyone I know or wish to know is on the wrong side of history. This is hardly much of a distinction., since, according to the people who own and operate the United States as a corporate monopoly, half the country is in the same boat. New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu says the Confederacy was on the wrong side of history; The members of Black Lives Matter say white people are on the wrong side of history; Barak Obama has declared just about anyone who disagrees with...
I have in my library a dictionary of Russian criminal and jailhouse slang, an evolved argot that retains the syntax and grammar of conventional speech, but replaces many verbs and most of the nouns with occult formations based on a number of European languages and dialects, from Lithuanian to Yiddish. When one flips through this dictionary, one is struck by the fact that a good quarter of the nouns, even if their primary significance is to do with the business of thieving or fencing, have the derogatory meaning of “passive homosexual.” This, of reflection, is hardly surprising. The environment of...
Most people, especially left-wingers and neocons, still don’t “get” President Trump. Yet the clues are right before our eyes, if you just look. Numerous books and articles describe who he is, and how he operates. A big problem for left-wingers, neocons and others is that they expect politicians to be a certain way, even though they know Trump never has held elective office. They expect him to be like one of the Bushes, or the Clintons, or Obama, or even Reagan or Jimmy Carter. They expect him to be someone who “plays the game” of politics. And they expect...
What’s With Republicans and Taxes? By John Seiler Why haven’t Republicans cut our taxes? It’s their signature issue. And now that they control both Congress and the White House for only the third time in a century, why haven’t they enacted their signature issue? Their past actions in this situation aren’t all that good, either. In the 1920s, the Harding-Coolidge Administration and Republican congresses certainly cut taxes, putting the roar into the Roaring Twenties. But that’s it. Nothing during times when Republicans controlled both the Oval Office and the Capitol Dome. Only split government has brought decent tax reform. Republicans...
Thursday 9:00 Thomas Fleming: “Renaissance of Conspiracy” 10:45 E.C. Kopff: “From Classical Christian Natural Philosophy to Enlightenment Science” Lunch 2:00 Christopher Check: “The Cristero War” 3:45 Srdja Trifkovic: “The Russian Counter-Revolution” 6:15 Dinner at Mary’s Market Friday 9:00 E.C. Kopff: “The Rise, Decline, and Triumph of Deism” 10:45 James Patrick: “Skepticism and Common Sense: David Hume and Thomas Reid” Lunch 2:00 Frank Brownlow: “Othello: Iago Takes a Hint from Pico.” 3:30 Thomas Fleming: “In Search of the Noble Savage” 4:30 Brief Dibattito 6:30 Dinner at The Hope and Anchor
Wednesday 9:00 E. Christian Kopff: “Ockham and Nominalism: The crucial event in the history of Western culture?” 10:45 James Patrick: “The Fortunes of Rationalism: Unitarianism, Latitudinarianism, and Dissent” Lunch 2:00 Thomas Fleming: “The Ancient Roots of the Conspiracy” 3:30 Frank Brownlow: “King Lear: Nature’s Reformation” 4:30 Brief Dibattito 6:30 Dinner at The Irish Rose First night dinner at Deli Italia
Summer Symposium 2017, Day 1 Tuesday July 17, 2017 4:00-4:45 Registration at Cliffbreakers 5:00 Thomas Fleming, “Ouverture to the Suicide of the West” 6:30 Dinner is served at Deli Italia II on East State Street The Fleming Foundation’s Second Annual Summer Symposium opens today. Speakers include Prof. Frank Brownlow, Prof. E. Christian Kopff, Dr. James Patrick, Prof. Srdja Trifkovic, Captain Christopher Check, and Dr. Thomas Fleming Fleming Foundation Headquarters, aka the crumbling Villa Pipistrelli, getting a facelift.
Last week a sympathetic soul had written to me from London, urging me to pitch a book, or at the very least a proposal for one, to a publisher in his circle of acquaintance. I was grateful for the attention and did not want to be uncivil, so I muttered some generalities of a philosophical sort by way of reply and left it at that. In hindsight, however, it occurs to me that my response could have run along the following lines. Me, pitch? No, my dear fellow, let them pitch. Because the question is not – and I’m now...
