The Fleming Foundation Cultural Commentary

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FF / Heiner

16 Feb, 2016

Sickness and Technology

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Dear Readers Technology is supposed to be a tool we use.  If it’s reliable, sometimes we can be shocked at its letting us down.  Last week Dr. Fleming and I spent 45 minutes trying to get him properly and digitally into our virtual studio so we could record a podcast.  We had performed the exact same actions just a few days earlier with absolutely zero trouble.  Ah, the idiosyncrasies of our digital masters. Dr. Fleming showed remarkable patience throughout and while we could have persevered on that afternoon to try for a makeshift solution, he wisely relented, and planned a...

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Feature / Fleming / From Under The Rubble

13 Feb, 2016

The Media Masseurs, Part I

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Here in Rome I read Midwestern news stories many hours late or, if the events took place at night, seven hours early.   In the morning, while my distant neighbors were still asleep, I read about the machete-wielding maniac in Columbus, Ohio, who attacked the diners in a Middle Eastern restaurant.  It was hard to get any hard facts.  The one fact that stuck out was the image of the Israeli flag in the window of a restaurant named Nazareth, along with other symbols and words in Arabic.  Some report did either report or conjecture that the owner had tried...

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

11 Feb, 2016

Wednesday’s Child: The Way to Malibu

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“Centuries after Great Schism”–well, some ten of them, to be more precise–“Pope and Patriarch are to Meet.”  So a headline in the Financial Times.  It makes me wonder if, in their editors’ and reporters’ view, all news with only a remote historical precedent is ipso facto grounds for optimism.  Now, seeing as God isn’t really these people’s beat, let’s poke around for an example closer to their hearts to illustrate my misgivings.  What about “Corporate Tax in France without Parallel at 99%”?  Or “Germany: Banks Nationalized Overnight”?  Or “All Private Property Abolished in Britain”? “Ah,” I may be told, “but...

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Feature / Fleming / On the House

4 Feb, 2016

On the House: The End of the American Century

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About On the House.  From time to time I am posting free pieces, many of this old (this one dates back to 1999), partly to remind people that the truth has been “out there” for more than a two years and partly to entice casual readers into subscribing.  A Silver level subscription costs nothing per month–two packs of cigarettes, a bottle of cheap wine, a month of Netflix.  This is a non-profit operation, believe me, but I am no longer convinced of the wisdom of giving things away.  I recall hearing something about casting pearls before swine.  Then, come on, do not...

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Feature / Fleming / From Under The Rubble

4 Feb, 2016

Cruz Unchained

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I used to try to understand Italian politics.  This meant I had to read the newspapers, no easy task back in the primitive times before anyone had heard of the Internet.    By the late 90’s I could keep up by looking at La Repubblica online, watching RAI television broadcasts, and checking up on the new faces entering the arena in the aftermath of the communist coup known as the “Mani Pulite” (Clean Hands) investigation of “Tangentopoli” (bribe city). After a while, it got to be more trouble than it was worth.  Who could really care which lying scoundrel beat...

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All Paid Subscribers / Andrei Navrozov / Wednesday's Child

3 Feb, 2016

Wednesday’s Child: Another Statistic

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  “Don’t be a statistic!” was, as I recall it, a didactic phrase widely used by our elders to check a youthful tendency to irresponsible behavior of various kinds, such as driving while under the influence of cheap alcohol or crossing the road without having first looked both ways.  What this meant to communicate was something like “33.000 people will die in motor vehicle traffic crashes this year in the United States alone, and if you aren’t going to be careful you may be one of them.” As a sometime compulsive gambler, now long cured though as ever unrepentant, I...

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FF / LAT / Podcasts

3 Feb, 2016

Latin, Episode 2

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On this episode Dr Fleming starts with an excerpt from the Gospel of St. Matthew. He uses the passage as a teaching device to look at endings of words. This discussion segues into nouns and verbs, declensions and conjugations, and hints and tips for learning and studying. We also address some listener feedback from Episode Zero, before finishing with our “Latin Word of the Month” in which Dr. Fleming discusses English words and their Latin ancestors. The text of the second passage that Stephen reads is: “In diebus autem illis venit Johannes Baptista praedicans in desert Iudaeae et dickens penitential...

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Best Revenge / Feature / Fleming

2 Feb, 2016

Rome, In the Age of Muslim Terrorism, Year 16, Part 6:  Scenes from a Life

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Kenneth Patchen, in his novel Memoirs of a Shy Pornographer, created a hapless character whose greatest ambition in life was to write a Perry Mason novel.  Although an extremely ordinary man from nowheresville—Bivalve, New Jersey—and although endowed with  a quintessentially nondescript name:  Alfred Budd, it was his name that kept on landing him in bizarre adventures.  Walking down the street, some shifty character would say, “Hey bud, come here, and, thinking he was being called by name, he stopped to listen to the con.  I know how he felt.  I lived like this for decades, and when I ended up...

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Best Revenge / Feature / Fleming

28 Jan, 2016

Rome, In the Age of Muslim Terrorism 16, Part 5

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After a bit more than a week, we are beginning to feel ourselves comfortable, if not exactly at home on the Viale Glorioso.  The neighborhood was already somewhat familiar but from the perspective, first, of the Piazza dell Scala (not far from Santa Maria in Trastevere), where we had the tinies and, as we thought, worst apartment in Trastevere, second, from walking down from the Gianicolo.  My favorite goat-paths often  landed me at San Cosimato, where they have the open market a few blocks from our apartment. Our little two-bedroom apartment is not far from the Scalea del Tamburino—several flights...

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

27 Jan, 2016

Wednesday’s Child: National Characterlessness

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  It is by now evident, indeed rather a platitude, that globalism, with all its associated political and social tendencies, is destroying national character, but recently I found myself wondering whether there remains anything to destroy.  If, in the twenty-first century, an individual’s character , as I have had occasion to remark on numerous occasions, harbors more exceptions than rules – and occasions, as it were, more dilemmas than lemmas–what of the national character?  Can it be that the French are no longer duplicitous lechers and the British upper lip has long lost its stiffness? It is fanciful, yet not...