Life and Death In The House Divided
I have been asked to post this 1989 essay on the false leftist arguments used by the pro-life movement. In addition, I shall soon be posting part of a chapter from Book III of “Properties of Blood.”
The Fleming Foundation Cultural Commentary
You Heard It First From…..by Jerry Salyer
I am almost blushing as I post this piece by Jerry Salyer.
WFB, JR: De Sociis Mortuis, nihil nisi bonum
A FB friend of mind sent me a link to an exchange he had with a movement conservative type on the subject of William Buckley. I was never close to WFB and, while I wrote for NR on several occasions, I was never an admirer of the shallowness and partisan bullying of much of what was written there, though I did respect many NR’s editors and writers, e.g., James Burnham, Ralph Toledano, Ernest Van den Haag, Thomas Molnar, Jeffrey Hart, Robert Nisbet, Russell Kirk, Mel Bradford, and Clyde Wilson, most of whom I published as NR began to be less receptive to their points of view.
Biden Is Destroying the U.S. Military
President Joe Biden is destroying the U.S. military in several ways. The first one you probably heard about: calling up 3,000 reservists. That might not seem like a lot, but it will have repercussions throughout all the military services.
Wednesday’s Child: The Leibniz Barbie
When the mathematician Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz, a pioneer in the field of differential and integral calculus among his other accomplishments, stuck his impressively large nose into metaphysics, we all remember what a ridiculous result this produced. He assured his contemporaries that the world approaches – tends is the term used by his fellow mathematicians and designated in calculus with a horizontal arrow – perfection, a state that, logically enough, the world’s first optimist named the optimum.
Dog Bites Men
The media is agog over stories that the First Dog is a menace to Secret Service agents assigned to protect the President and his family.
Podcast: Prof. E.C. Kopff Podcast with John Yost, 13 Min.
This podcast on the importance of humane studies was recorded during the Fleming Foundation’s 2023 Summer School on The Wrong of Rights. In a week or so, the lectures will be on sale.
“I Got Rights,” Conclusion
Most talk of morality and law is now reduced to a question of rights. Leftists talk about rights to privacy, gender equality, and minority rights, and—more recently—of the right not to be offended by other people’s prejudices, while Libertarians talk about the right of labor and goods to pass unhindered over borders—to say nothing of rights to life and property and the right to say or publish or film anything you like, no matter whom it offends or what moral harm it causes.
Poems by Patrick Kavanagh
“Epic,” published in 1960, is one of my favorite poems published in my lifetime.
“I Got Rights,” Part III (of IV)
Educated Americans believe, for the most part, that revenge–even when it can be excused or mitigated–is always wrong. In legal terms, right—by which I mean the principle of rightness in good behavior—almost always involves the assertion and protection of rights, which are something like the 10 Commandments or Plato’s Ideas or the Natural Law of the Stoics:
