The Fleming Foundation Cultural Commentary

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Feature / Fleming / From Under The Rubble

10 May, 2017

Feeding the Monster:  Macron and the Propaganda War

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The new French president claims that opponents tried to sabotage his campaign by claiming that he is homosexual.  The claims were based, on the one hand,  in  “misogyny because they say it’s not possible to be with a woman who’s 24 years older, and “on the other side, it’s homophobic.” Emmanuel Macron is in a bit of a bind, because when any public figure denies allegations of  homosexuality, his denials are taken, in some quarters at least, as evidence of anti-homosexual bigotry.  He is quick, therefore, to insist that he would cheerfully admit to being homosexual, if he were, though I...

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Fleming / Free Content

9 May, 2017

Coulda Woulda Shoulda: If Wishes Were Horses, Hillary Would Win the Derby

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Barbara Streisand, at a recent performance in Brooklyn, paid tribute to Hillary Clinton and shared her dreams of the New Camelot that would have replaced the Evil America being rebuilt by Donald Trump and his legions of straight white males.  Speaking of a recent interview with Hillary, Streisand added that it “makes us yearn for what could have been, what should have been. I was thrilled to hear yourself describe yourself as an activist citizen and part of the resistance.” Streisand as political commentator is a satirist’s dream come true.  At the age of 75, herself, she actually had the...

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Fleming / Free Content

8 May, 2017

Filmer’s Patriarcha II and III

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Filmer begins his detailed argument with an attack on Robert Cardinal Bellarmine, one of the greatest of the Jesuits and a doctor of the Church.  Bellarmine was a widely respected thinker, a man of sound judgment and excellent reason, whose arguments against Protestantism were credited with saving some parts of Europe from the Reformation and restoring many doubting souls.  He played a creditable role in the controversy over Galileo and deserves to be better appreciated today. Like several other Jesuits, Bellarmine wanted to protect the power of the Church (and its earthly head) from the ambitions of the nation states...

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A Life / Feature / Fleming

8 May, 2017

Diary of a Nobody: Sunday in the Octave of Cinco de Mayo 

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It was Sunday after lunch.  My wife had already gone out to inspect her flowers, while I was tying the laces of my walking shoes and fiddling with our little bluetooth speaker in preparation for the two-miler with Italian lesson. Finally, shoes tied, the Linguaphone lesson discovered, speaker connected, I walked out into the yard to find my wife chatting with a rather queer duck, dressed as if he were a recently retired member of the Sweet Adelines or the Buffalo Bills (once-famous Barbershop quartets).  He was wearing an alarmingly striped jacket, with sweater vest, blue shirt and—I believe—a paisley...

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Fleming / Free Content

5 May, 2017

Hoisting the Donkey, Conclusion (FREE)

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Americans sometimes think theirs is the only “nation of immigrants” beset by ethnic conflicts and bound together only by the flimsy cords of a national ideology.  According to our official propaganda, America is a nation “dedicated to the proposition” and unified by the war to end slavery and republican government.  The Italian state, however, has its own mythology.  According to official Italian propaganda, the varied regions and cultures of Italy were unified in the Risorgimento, a glorious uprising that unified Italy and culminated (after a few disgraceful decades in the middle of the 20th century) in a universal nation more...

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All Paid Subscribers / Seiler

4 May, 2017

Andrew Sullivan’s Reactionary Nightmare

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One of the worst commentators anywhere is Andrew Sullivan. Even though he edited the left-liberal New Republic, and hasn’t changed his views, he sometimes fashions himself a “conservative.” Granted, “conservative” doesn’t mean much nowadays – or maybe means so many contradictory things the word has become meaningless. Yet, although he took back his massive support for the Iraq War, his major lack of judgment in that murderous folly should have pushed him from the field of opinion-making and into a monastery to do penance for the rest of his life. Even with his mea culpa, in 2008 Sullivan excused himself...

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Articles / Autodidact / Fleming / Free Content

3 May, 2017

Autodidact: Filmer’s Patriarcha

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I have been asked, many times, to explain my objections to John Locke and his  theory of natural rights and the social contract.   One way to address that question is the discussion of Sir Robert Filmer Patriarcha I undertook some years ago.  I am revising and condensing those pieces for our newer and better project.  Patriarcha was actually written before Locke’s Treatises, which effectively debunks the mythology.  During the month of June, I will be posting paragraphs of the work, making comments, taking questions and comments from participants in the discussion.  The book is available online at http://www.constitution.org/eng/patriarcha but...

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Fleming / From Under The Rubble

3 May, 2017

Hoisting the Donkey, Part One of Two

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  In a country where patriotism is a thought-crime, nothing could be more radical than an immigration reform proposal that recognizes a nation’s right to exist and to control its own destiny. This perspective on Italian politics was first published in August 2000. In troubled times we look for something to hold onto as the dangerous currents are sweeping us downstream to destruction. Some will have the clear sight (or unthinking prejudice) to grab onto some rooted feature of the landscape–the overhanging limb of an oak tree, the steeple of a church, the arm of a brother— while others make...

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

3 May, 2017

Wednesday’s Child: “Class A” Democracy

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We have municipal elections coming up in Palermo, a feast of democratic disingenuousness that happens every five years when a raft of corpulent men with moustaches gets replaced, from the mayor on downwards, with another raft of corpulent men with moustaches.  There are posters of these hopefuls all about town, and my wife says the men in the photographs look like actors who have been asked to portray the Seven Deadly Sins – except, of course, there are many more than that number in the race, so every sin has about a dozen understudies. Some wear glasses, I’ve noticed, which...

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Fleming / Free Content

1 May, 2017

Join the Counter-Revolution Against 500 Years of Treason

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Revolution & Resistance   Dear Friend and Fellow-Reader: “The lamps are going out all over Europe, we shall not see them lit again in our life-time.”   Sir Edward Grey’s famous remark was inspired by the outbreak of World War I, the European civil war that was the beginning of the end of our civilization.  Now that we are closer to the end than to the beginning of our descent into the abyss, it is more vitally important than ever to understand what has happened, or rather, what we have done to ourselves.   At our first Summer School, we...