America: The Decrepit Empire
America is like an old business family in which the patriarch has gone senile, and the heirs are just plain stupid, competent only at blowing the inheritance. The enterprise is collapsing inexorably.
Tagged: Conservative
Challenge of the Week: What Was Kyle Thinking?
You’ve just been hired as PR agent for Kyle Rittenhouse. Evil-minded reporters on Left and Right seem to be asking the same question: Rittenhouse went to Kenosha with an AR15 to take a stand for law and order in a riot orchestrated in part by Black Lives Matter, whose leaders have been threatening mayors and police departments across the country. As one BLM spokesman just declared, when asked about the killing of five people at a Waukesha Christmas Parade, “It sounds like the revolution has started.” How do you squareKyle’s support for lawfulness with his support for an organization inciting...
The New Index, Part III: Adam Smith
Adam Smith is one of the heroes of Anglo-American conservatism. Some years ago, movement conservatives used to sport an Adam Smith tie to tell the world of their allegiance.
Rittenhouse Verdict Small Light During Garland Injustice
Only a brave jury stood between Kyle Rittenhouse and Garland Injustice. I’ve written before on Fleming Foundation about AG Merrick Garland’s persecution of the Jan. 6 protesters, Steve Bannon and others.
Kangaroo Courts Galore
As I write, in the background on my computer plays YouTube with Judge Bruce Schroeder giving the jury its final instructions in the Kyle Rittenhouse trial in Wisconsin. If we still had the rule of law in America, the trial never would have occurred and the prosecutors would be in the clink for prosecutorial misconduct.
All Dressed Up and Nowhere to Invade
One of the benefits of Joe Biden in the White House is he can’t give long speeches. I suggest watching all of his Sept. 21 address to the United Nations. It’s half an hour and features the usual hesitations and mispronunciations.
Jerks 0.C: Diversity
Diversity breeds moral confusion, which is aggravated by the high population density that encourages a comfortable sense of anonymity. Anyone who has lived 50 or 60 years in North America can understand what has happened
Resisting Evil III
The admonition to resist not evil is not aimed at army commanders, kings, and emperors, much less at settlers in a violent wilderness or urban homesteaders, but at members of a face-to-face community of the sort that Jesus had experienced in Galilee and in which Christians are going to live as members of a parish and diocese.
Resisting Evil, Part II
Christians have interpreted Christ’s injunction to turn the other cheek in different ways. Over the centuries Catholic authorities have generally and consistently upheld the righteousness of self-defense, just war, and capital punishment, while the Orthodox have been more prone to view all war, just and necessary as they may be, as nonetheless sinful and requiring absolution. When a Byzantine emperor asked his Patriarch to proclaim as martyrs all the soldiers who died fighting Islam, he was refused. Neither Church, it goes without saying, instructed its followers not to resist the aggression of evil men…. The injunction to turn the...
Autodidact: Filmer’s Patriarcha
I have been asked, many times, to explain my objections to John Locke and his theory of natural rights and the social contract. One way to address that question is the discussion of Sir Robert Filmer Patriarcha I undertook some years ago. I am revising and condensing those pieces for our newer and better project. Patriarcha was actually written before Locke’s Treatises, which effectively debunks the mythology. During the month of June, I will be posting paragraphs of the work, making comments, taking questions and comments from participants in the discussion. The book is available online at http://www.constitution.org/eng/patriarcha but...
The Wrongs of Rights