The Fleming Foundation Cultural Commentary
Kellen Buckles wrote to TFF Facebook page: A friend gave me a copy of Rebecca West’s “Black Lamb and Grey Falcon” and I was wondering if my time will be well spent negotiating those 1,150 pages. Her prologue was full of intriguing ideas but I don’t want to be led astray. TJF: The simple answer is that it is a wonderful book, certainly the most insightful and entertaining volume on the Balkans that is available in English. Nothing else comes close. West does not know the language and makes historical mistakes, but her approach is humble and allows the various...
An extraordinary episode set Moscow’s beau monde on its ear last week–extraordinary in the sense that, if a cannibal, instead of boiling an Englishman in the nude, were to eat him together with his bowler hat, silk umbrella, and brogues by John Lobb of St. James’s Street, this might be considered outrageous cannibal behavior. “What an extraordinary way to act at table,” other, more fastidious cannibals would be heard muttering. A veteran journalist by the name of Viktor Shenderovich was interviewed on “Moscow Echo”–supposedly the last oasis of dissent yet extant in the Russian media mainstream–and made some remarks about...
Everyone these days seems to have some complaint against the Christmas holiday. You’ve heard them all by now, Muslims and Jews whining about “inclusiveness,” downtown storeowners complaining about the chainstores in the malls, and chainstores complaining about Amazon. Small wonder people are so depressed this time of year. Not only is the sun disappearing—and who knows if the global warmingists will ever let it return?—but everyone and his Buddhist brother has some ax to grind. The late Herbert W. Armstrong of the Worldwide Whacky Church of G-d Knows What used to do an annual radio broadcast denouncing Christmas. Crazy...
Book I is concerned, generally, with the morally right, and specifically with the four virtues of wisdom, justice, courage, and temperance–simple terms in English, but quite complex, both in reality and in Cicero’s treatment.
Gentle reader may remember that I was in London last week in aid of a friend charged with racism for calling a Negro cabdriver an ape. Fine arguments marshaled by the defense came to naught once the female judge had had a good look at the defendant’s shoes. These were polished to a high shine, and clean shoes are, as the defendant ought to have known at his age, a telltale sign of racist attitudes in white males. He was found guilty and fined. Lest my reader think I am being facetious, I draw his attention to this post’s...
Twenty years before Rascal (1963), one of the true masterpieces of American children’s literature–heck, of American literature, period–Sterling North gave us Midnight and Jeremiah, a beautifully illustrated (by Kurt Wiese; I’m trying to figure out the media, guessing pastel crayon and brush and ink on textured paper) novella that I suppose would be called a “chapter book” for young readers in today’s market. It’s a honey of a story, about an orphaned little boy in rural southern Indiana, circa 1903, who persuades his grandmother to let him bottle-raise a black lamb rejected by its dam. The boy is Jeremiah Kincaid,...
The long reign of Alexios III (1349-90) marks the beginning of the end of the Empire of Trebizond. Alexios, as the result of a palace coup, came to the throne as a boy of 11, and his youth and inexperience were an invitation to challenges of every sort: warlords in the provinces, his own counselors and bureaucrats, and even from within the church. The Trapezuntine elite was dominated by factions loyal either to Constantinople or to the more locally centered provincial aristocracy. The feud between the Genoese and Venetians broke out again, when the latter were once again granted...
A funny story, this, but it also kind of makes you want to cry, a perfect combination for a Wednesday’s child broadside– especially in Advent, with its heritage of Dickensian, bittersweet tales of moral instruction. I am in London this week to help out a friend who got himself in trouble. A few months ago, returning from a dinner party in a state of more than slight inebriation, he hailed a black cab – you know the kind, the retro thingie with a doorframe high enough to accommodate a man wearing a top hat, the legendary vehicle that makes...
The recent global summit on climate change—inevitably described as “historic”—was discussed and analyzed all over the media-sphere, by bloggers read only by their mothers and friends (if they have any) and by the the most swollen talking heads on television. Everyone was interviewed, profiled, and analyzed. One important participant—an observer really—who escaped their attention was an obscure Italian political analyst, whose work has been studied without understanding for many years. I had a chance to sit down with this great skeptic, and interview him on condition of anonymity. Let’s just call him Nick O. Before the conversation was over, we were...
In this first episode of Foreign Affairs, Dr. Srdja Trifkovic and Dr. Tom Fleming discuss the downing of Russian jets by the Turkish military. Was the US involved? What does this mean for Erdogan? for Putin? They also discuss what the UK’s contribution will be now that they have joined the “coalition.” In the second part of the episode Dr. Trifkovic says that Donald Trump is saying the “unsayable” and while not having a true grasp of the issues, is expressing a visceral reaction that is causing people to look seriously at the idea of immigration – either via economic...
