Monthly Archive: April 2016

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FF / FUTR / Podcasts

20 Apr, 2016

From Under the Rubble, Episode 3: The Unborn Don’t Have Rights

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Two political gaffes—one by Donald Trump and one by Hillary Clinton—injected pre-partum infanticide, known euphemistically as abortion, into the current presidential campaign. Ironically, both Trump and Clinton told the truth more or less, and the uproar they caused is a sign that the pro-life movement is headed in the wrong direction. Original Air Date: April 20, 2016 Show Run Time: 31 minutes Show Guest(s): Dr. Thomas Fleming Show Host(s): James Easton The Fleming Foundation · From Under the Rubble, Episode 3: The Unborn Don’t Have Rights   From Under the Rubble℗ is a Production of the Fleming Foundation. Copyright 2016....

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FF / Heiner

19 Apr, 2016

The Web, Our Brains, and You

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I recently had the chance to read The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains.  The author of this 2010 book is Nicholas Carr, who originally penned a 2008 article for The Atlantic entitled, “Is Google making us stupid?” The title of that article can be off-putting to those who are, like myself, steeped in the hot bath of the digital universe.  Surely this is some Luddite ranting, one might think at first.  But on second glance … 200 pages of ranting? Unlikely. It might be because I conducted the vast majority of my schooling and created many of...

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All Paid Subscribers / Feature / Seiler

19 Apr, 2016

Trump Begins New Phase of Campaign

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Donald Trump’s easy victory in his home state of New York rockets him into the next phase of his campaign: The long march taken by the Okies to California. Albeit in a custom-built 747. Some pundits have criticized Trump for not having a “ground game” and not “knowing the rules” of the nominating process, especially in Colorado. But the process was rigged from the beginning against somebody like him – somebody like Ron Paul, whose 2008 campaign sparked GOP convention rules that prevented his name being put in nomination at the 2012 convention. If the rules are rigged, why play...

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Feature / Fleming

19 Apr, 2016

Live Until You Die (on the house)

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This is an improved version of an essay first published in 1999 “I grow old learning many things,” said Solon, a poet well-known for his wisdom and for his longevity: He lived to be almost 80.  Although, as my old teacher Douglas Young pointed out, Solon’s statement might be interpreted to mean “too much education makes one prematurely old,” the point is clear enough and as true today as it was 2400 years ago when the Athenian poet-statesman lived long enough to see his beloved city acquiesce in the rule of a tyrant: A wise man never ceases to learn new...

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FF / Podcasts

15 Apr, 2016

Christianity and Classical Culture, Episode 4: Sophocles Part I

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This month our exploration into the links between Christianity and Classical culture take us into the world of Greek tragedy, specifically the world of Sophocles. Dr. Thomas Fleming explains how Greek tragedy was delivered and acted, how it was composed, and how the seven plays we do have of Sophocles may have managed to survive for 2,500 years. In the second half of the episode we explore Oedipus Rex, the first in the cycle of the Theban plays. How do the Greeks view this tension between free will and divine foreknowledge? How can we compare the Greek view to the...

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FF / Podcasts / TBR

14 Apr, 2016

The Best Revenge, Episode 3: Why Poetry Matters Part I

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In this episode of our regular series, The Best Revenge, Dr. Fleming makes the case for poetry. Not just the “poetry” that is the affectation of the dirty hippie, but the poetry that yearns to breathe deep within our souls. Dr. Fleming prescribes poetry as a “mental health remedy” and points out that there is indeed such a thing as “good poetry” that goes beyond a matter of subjective taste. If you are what you eat, so too poetry can enrich the rational animal that we are. Listen too if you wish to hear one of the rare times that...

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Autodidact / Fleming / On the House

13 Apr, 2016

Aristotle III: Ethics, the Foundation of Politics

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Aristotle’s most important observations on human life are found in his Eudemian and Nicomachean Ethics, the Politics and Constitution of Athens, the Rhetoric, and the Poetics.  Because ethics, politics, rhetoric, and poetry are all concerned with human behavior (ethos), he seems to have lumped them together generically as ethica.  In all these works, Aristotle says many invaluably true things about human behavior, politics, and art, but what is essential is not the specific truths or even his system itself, which may strike us moderns as entirely too teleological (that is, predicated on the assumption that all natural processes have a...

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FF / Heiner

13 Apr, 2016

Book Review: Return to Order

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Part of restoring the best of what has passed is understanding where we came from.  Only then can we start to put together commonsense solutions for how to go forward.  Few books in today’s publishing world do this better than John Horvat II’s Return to Order: From a Frenzied Economy to an Organic Christian Society. I’m a bit embarrassed to say that I only read this book recently, even though it has been in print since 2013.  The impetus?  I recently traveled to the United States to visit my parents and there were two books they had bought and sent me since...

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

13 Apr, 2016

Wednesday’s Child: Just Don’t Call It Praetorian

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A physiognomic peculiarity of Viktor Zolotov, who until last week and for the past 13 years had been head of Russia’s presidential bodyguard, is that he is a Doppelgänger of the man he was charged with protecting from enemies foreign and domestic.  Dogs sometimes grow to look like their owners, and evidently this applies not only to old ladies’ poodles, but to guard dogs as well.  The German word I’m using, incidentally, meaning a body double, is not so much pretentiousness on my part as consciousness of an historical rhyme. If Zolotov is a Putin clone, what used to be...

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FF / Heiner

13 Apr, 2016

Palio

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On an intercontinental flight these days one has dozens of options.  Not only do they have the most recent movies available for your enjoyment, but classics as well.  They even have classic television.  I pulled up an episode from the original Man from U.N.C.L.E. (I gave it at least 15 minutes of my time). There was a documentary section that offered a film that I was particularly interested in: Palio.  It’s shot mostly in Italian (with subtitles, of course) and is about the annual horse races that occur in Siena during July and August.  It’s beautifully filmed and follows two different riders...