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Thomas Fleming

Thomas Fleming is president of the Fleming Foundation. He is the author of six books, including The Morality of Everyday Life and The Politics of Human Nature, as well as many articles and columns for newspapers, magazines,and learned journals. He holds a Ph.D. in Classics from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill and a B.A. in Greek from the College of Charleston. He served as editor of Chronicles: a Magazine of American Culture from 1984 to 2015 and president of The Rockford Institute from 1997-2014. In a previous life he taught classics at several colleges and served as a school headmaster in South Carolina

4 Responses

  1. Ken Rosenberger says:

    Good podcast, gentlemen. Clarified a lot for me, especially the time preference part of it. Never thought I’d hear a TFF podcast closed by a screeching Neil Young guitar solo. I’ve heard it all now.

  2. Laura Brickman says:

    Laura Brickman, Hi Tom, liked this discussion; especially the examples of why time and laws do not influence corrupt people!
    I might add like Donald J Trump, who continually breaks rules,
    LAWS and seems to get away with it… Also, liked your comment,
    “you might have read a book called the bible. psalms etc”.☺ However, I like the rule of moderation, and alittle of both laws,
    rules, good religious training helps make better citizens. A good
    book and speaker I recently heard is Elaine Pagels, “WHY RELIGION”, try to review it. Loved the song and ending,you should
    be on stage and you’d upstage HAMILTON!

  3. Avatar photo Thomas Fleming says:

    Thanks for the kind words Laura. It makes me happy to know you are enjoying these entertainments.

    I’m afraid Ms Pagels is a bit of a wolf in sheep’s clothing. She came to fame pushing a sort of New Age version of the Church by giving cover to the wacky Gnostic heretics in her nonsensical book “The Gnostic Gospels.” Her treatment of John’s Gospel is a gratuitous spit in the eye to 2000 years of Christian understanding–gratuitous because she appears to have no idea of what she is talking about. If she weren’t so bloody silly, I’d have to call her evil. She’s just a poor sad symptom of a world gone stupid.

    Trump certainly breaks with precedent all the time, though his violations of the law do not seem to exceed the misdeeds of his predecessors. I don’t know of a President in my lifetime who even tried to rule by the Constitution, tell the truth, or show any regard for the lives of others. People today get nostalgic about Truman, the President who fried Japanese civilians twice! Here’s a question: Presidents since 1850 have even made a feeble effort at obeying the law? Franklin Pierce, yes. Maybe Cleveland and Coolidge. I’m not sure about Taft. No one else, it seems to me, is in the running. TR was a monster, Clinton made war on Christian civilians in the Balkans and scorched the Adventist nut jobs in Waco, George W destroyed Iraq and Afghanistan. So far, Trump’s offenses are pretty petty, on par with Gerry Ford, perhaps. He’s a womanizer like JFK but he’s not sending Americans to kill and die for no reason.

    What is offensive about Trump is his lack of tact: He doesn’t even pretend to apologize for the sins he commits with almost as much abandon as Bill Clinton. At his worst, he is the president we deserve; at his best he might have been–but is not and never be–the leader we need. You can’t drain the DC swamp, if you’ve made your living in the Florida/Vegas real estate swamp. It would be interesting to hear a frank conversation between Trump and Harry Reid.

  4. Laura Brickman says:

    Hi Tom, thank you for your PROMPT reply. It is the Jewish new
    year , Rosh Shannah, now so we are busy. However, I will write
    a reply next week. Also, I peaked at the internet and see alot is
    hapenning with the ongoing struggle, WAR, between the democrats and the republicans. SHALOM, LAURA