The Fleming Foundation Cultural Commentary
“Two paradises ’twere in one To live in paradise alone” Reading those lines from “the Garden,” an incautious reader might imagine that the poet—Andrew Marvell—did not limit his Puritan tendencies to theology and politics but hated womankind with the fury of a John Knox. In fact, Marvell was a woman-loving man who wrote several of the best erotic (I don’t mean dirty!) poems in English. God bless him: He was only a hypocrite. Marvell’s lines came to mind when I read news of the feminist plans to mark today’s international celebration of women by refusing to go to work. At first...
Was that biography ever going to work? I honestly don’t know. Even if I had been writing the book not in a foreign tongue but in my own, and not for foreign readers but for those familiar with my subject since childhood, even then, insofar as it ran contrary to the Pasternak myth, an explanation of feeling might run into outraged silence. The explanation I actually attempted, in these strange circumstances, was still more improbable. To focus on a single episode of Russian culture, its most blinding moment, and to develop it against the fuzzy background of certain historical events...
Here’s what President Trump should do to deal with the Deep State that, with the connivance of ex-President Obama, is attacking the new presidency: Trump should ask for letters of resignation the top military officers and intelligence officials, then accept all the resignations. And the ex-officers and officials should be banned for life from getting jobs anywhere in the military-industrial complex, or in anything even close to the military. Let them take their plush pensions and leave us alone. Would some worthy officers get thrown in with the bad ones? Yes, but no government job should be a sinecure. Fired...
As I noted in my recent article here, “The Supreme Court: The Most Dangerous Branch,” the third branch of government has aggrandized central power beyond that even imagined by the most fevered early Hamiltonians. The country will be revisiting the court’s history and makeup as Neil Gorsuch, President Trump’s nominee for the open space, begins confirmation hearings on March 20. Now is a great time to ask the question: Would there be a better way to structure the court, assuming the rest of the Constitution remained intact? I submit the following reform. The idea is to restore to the several...
In short, in the professional view of a gossip columnist on an evening paper, it was bizarre that the tug of war over Second Nature – a difficult book by an obscure author brought out by a small publisher – should attract public notice. And the truth is, it was those who so improbably saw the obscure author crying out de profundis as a threat to themselves and their own departmental peace of mind who made the ensuing imbroglio what it was. Thus, in the Observer, ancient Anthony Burgess had been given half a page to deal with four centenary...
Students at the University of Michigan have taken the lead in the Left’s campaign to criminalize White People. Following a string of student movements at other leading institutions devoted to the debasement of learning, non-white students at Michigan are demanding their own “permanent designated space on central campus for Black students and students of color to organize and do social justice work.” This comes on the heels of the construction of a $10 million Black Student Center, which is insufficient proof of Michigan’s commitment to genocide. With the predictable knee-jerk that is the hallmark of their movement, American conservatives are...
The Conservative Political Action Conference, better known as CPAC, starts this week. For those who are unfamiliar with CPAC, it is an annual event that takes place in Washington, DC that brings together conservative activists with conservative elected officials, leaders, journalists and celebrities. It is likely the largest and most prominent event of its kind within the conservative universe. The event is sponsored by the American Conservative Union (ACU), a venerable conservative organization. The ACU, as would be expected for a long established movement conservative institution, generally represents orthodox “three-legs-of-the-stool” type conservatism – fiscally conservative, socially conservative and hawkish on...
In the first episode of this new series Dr. Fleming takes on the issue of slavery. Is it a “moral issue?” How do we look at slavery both historically and within the context of “slavery” that most Americans think about, which is to say what existed prior to 1860? Is there a value to paternalism, to hierarchy, to obedience? What did St. Paul say? What about modern day wage slavery? Dr. Fleming discusses all this and more to help you possibly have a more productive conversation with friends should you dare to broach this topic sometime. Original Air Date: February...
It hasn’t been easy, but Trump has put in a great first month as president. As he said, he “inherited a mess.” The mess goes back not just through the whole eight years of the Obama regime, but at least through the Bushes and Clintons. We can stop there, because the end of the Cold War, 1989-91, marked a time when America could have used a “peace dividend” to regroup, heal domestic wounds and develop a sensible foreign policy. Instead, in foreign affairs, America’s unique power of the 1990s was wasted on establishing first President George H.W. Bush’s New...
Watching what the Guardian last week rather wittily dubbed the president’s anti-press conference, I reflected on the extent to which the survival of our culture depends on syntax. As I have a stepmother tongue, English, in addition to my mother tongue, I am constantly reminded of ways in which much less syntactically evolved Russian allows the speaker or writer to obscure his meaning – sometimes intentionally, when he is lying, sometimes despite himself, when he is telling the truth. To be sure, Russian has strengths that English does not possess – a wealth of inflections, for instance, keeps our rhyming...
