The Fleming Foundation Cultural Commentary

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All Paid Subscribers / Seiler

22 Oct, 2016

Truth-slinging Through the 2016 Campaign

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When someone attacked “mud-slinging” in political campaigns, Mike Royko replied, “Well,  you can call it mud-slinging. But to me, all the rotten stuff they say about each other sounds true, so I call it truth-slinging.” He wrote that in 1992, during the first Clinton national campaign. That obviously has happened in this election which, I dearly hope, is the last one ever conducted by a Clinton. This time, while we really haven’t learned anything new about Donald Trump and Hillary Gorgon, what we have known has been emphasized with a thousand exclamation points. Donald Trump has been shown to be...

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FF / Podcasts / TBR

22 Oct, 2016

The Best Revenge, Episode 5: Spaghetti All’ Amatriciana

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Dr. Fleming and Chef Garret discuss this Italian classic and how it can be adapted to American ingredients. Please send in questions and reports of the results when you try your hand. Original Air Date: October 22, 2016 Show Run Time: 43 minutes Show Guest(s): Chef Garret Fleming Show Host(s): Dr. Thomas Fleming The Fleming Foundation · The Best Revenge, Episode 5: Spaghetti All’ Amatriciana   The Best Revenge℗ is a Production of the Fleming Foundation. Copyright 2016. All rights are reserved and any duplication without explicit written permission is forbidden.

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

19 Oct, 2016

Wednesday’s Child:  Letter from Paris

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Oh, how it made me wish that our late friend Curtis Cate were still here, living in the Rue des Saints-Pères and gesticulating awkwardly when lamenting this or that Soviet ploy.  I went into a tobacconist’s under the windows of his old apartment and asked the lady at the counter if she remembered Monsieur Cate, the American writer.  She said she did, supplying me with a sour smile, a packet of unfiltered Gitanes, and an English newspaper. The news was that Putin had cancelled his visit to Paris, where the new Russian “Spiritual and Cultural Center” – an almost unimaginably...

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Feature / Fleming / From Under The Rubble

17 Oct, 2016

One Reason to Vote for Trump and 9 Not To…

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Supposing that all the criticisms of Donald Trump are true–and there is at least a grain of truth in most of them–then what? Cons Starting at the bottom of the negatives, Donald Trump is 9  As rude as Hillary Clinton 8 As ignorant as Barack Obama. 7 He has the command of English typical of an NPR newsreader and 6  The social and political philosophy of a baboon in heat. 5  He love women the way a Japanese winner of a hotdog eating contest loves wieners and 4  Actually thinks he is a great man because he has gamed a crooked system...

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All Paid Subscribers / Seiler

14 Oct, 2016

American Devils

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“But one or two generations of vice are essential now; monstrous, abject vice by which a man is transformed into a loathsome, cruel, egoistic reptile. That’s what we need! And what’s more, a little ‘fresh blood’ that we may get accustomed to it…. Though the Russian people use foul language, there’s nothing cynical about them so far.” That’s Peter Verkhovensky, the revolutionary in Dostoevsky’s great novel, “The Devils.” It was published in 1871-2 and, sure enough, the communist revolution followed in 1917, 45 years later, two generations. Sure sounds like America over the past 50 years, doesn’t it? Our two...

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FF / Podcasts

14 Oct, 2016

Christianity and Classical Culture, Episode 7: Seneca and Stoicism Part II

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In this second part of a two part mini-series on Seneca and Stoicism, Dr. Fleming takes a closer look at five letters from the first volume of Moral Letters to Lucillius. Feel free to reference the following letters during our discussion today: On Saving Time On the Philosopher’s Mean On Quibbling as Unworthy of the Philosopher On the Reasons from Withdrawing from the World On Philosophy and Friendship We examine threads that very much mirror a development in moral thinking as “revolutionary” as the New Testament’s completion of the admonitions and philosophy of the Old Testament. Original Air Date: October...

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Feature / Fleming / From Under The Rubble

13 Oct, 2016

The Long Awaited Death of the Noble Prizes

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The Swedish Academy has announced that the 2016 Nobel Prize for Literature goes to Robert Zimmerman, aka “Bob Dylan.”  Although the announcement left several hundred literate readers in USA—there are at least that many—scratching their heads, the award should be understood as the latest move in a struggle between the Dumb Swede Academy and the Dumb Norwegian Academy. In their campaigns to make the entire world as dumb as Scandinavia, the two confederacies of dunces have pulled off many coups.  In recent decades, the Dumb Swedes have scored a string of successes, hunting up obscure Third World writers, unknown in...

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

12 Oct, 2016

Wednesday’s Child:  Time of Troubles

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Attentive readers may recall my post back in April, “Just Don’t Call it Praetorian,” in which I compared the newly formed National Guard, Russia’s president’s 350,000-strong personal army, to Himmler’s Schutzstaffel (SS) in Nazi Germany.  One reason for its creation, I argued, was to counterbalance the army of Ramzan Kadyrov’s Kremlin loyalists, historically a clone of Röhm’s Sturmabteilung (SA). Now another reason has come to the fore, and it deserves a separate post – especially in view of the fact that I first broached the subject with an article in the June 2011 issue of a magazine that the founder...

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Feature / Fleming

11 Oct, 2016

Rabbi Jacob Neusner, R.I.P.

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My friend Marco Respinti just wrote to ask me about Jacob Neusner, who died (so I learned) on October 8.   Perhaps my readers will bear with me, if I share a few thoughts on an old friend. How did I recruit Neusner for Chronicles?  I had read several of his popular articles in a number of places, including (as I recall) The National Review.  Finding writers is a large part of an editor’s job, and that means reading a lot of often uninteresting articles and books.  While Neusner wrote too much and too quickly to become much of a prose...

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Feature / Fleming / From Under The Rubble

10 Oct, 2016

Hating Trump for Fun and Profit

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Yes, we watched the debate, though it seemed a wretched way to spend a Sunday evening.  I won’t pretend that we had planned to say the Rosary before reading Scripture.  I was thinking more along lines of listening to a Gilbert and Sullivan recording—perhaps The Pinafore or Patience in the old D’Oyly Carte versions I grew up with—or a Charlie Chan movie.  I allowed myself to be outvoted by wife and son.  And, while  Donald Trump is by no means as clever as Charlie or as funny as Mantan Moreland, Hillary is far nastier than any of the murderous villains Charlie...