Thomas Fleming

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

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Feature / FF

21 Jul, 2017

The Summer Symposium, Days Three and Four

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Thursday 9:00 Thomas Fleming: “Renaissance of Conspiracy” 10:45 E.C. Kopff: “From Classical Christian Natural Philosophy to      Enlightenment Science” Lunch 2:00 Christopher Check: “The Cristero War” 3:45 Srdja Trifkovic: “The Russian Counter-Revolution” 6:15 Dinner at Mary’s Market Friday 9:00 E.C. Kopff: “The Rise, Decline, and Triumph of Deism” 10:45 James Patrick: “Skepticism and Common Sense: David Hume and Thomas Reid” Lunch 2:00 Frank Brownlow: “Othello: Iago Takes  a Hint from Pico.” 3:30 Thomas Fleming:  “In Search of the Noble Savage” 4:30 Brief Dibattito 6:30 Dinner at The Hope and Anchor

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Feature / FF

19 Jul, 2017

Summer Symposium, Day Two

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Wednesday 9:00 E. Christian Kopff: “Ockham and Nominalism: The crucial event in the history of Western culture?” 10:45 James Patrick: “The Fortunes of Rationalism: Unitarianism, Latitudinarianism, and Dissent” Lunch 2:00 Thomas Fleming:  “The Ancient Roots of the Conspiracy” 3:30 Frank Brownlow:  “King Lear: Nature’s Reformation” 4:30 Brief Dibattito 6:30 Dinner at The Irish Rose First night dinner at Deli Italia    

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Feature / FF

18 Jul, 2017

Summer Symposium 2017, Day 1

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Summer Symposium 2017, Day 1 Tuesday July 17, 2017 4:00-4:45          Registration at Cliffbreakers 5:00                    Thomas Fleming, “Ouverture to the Suicide of the West” 6:30                     Dinner is served at Deli Italia II on East State Street The Fleming Foundation’s Second Annual Summer Symposium opens today.  Speakers include Prof. Frank Brownlow, Prof. E. Christian Kopff,  Dr. James Patrick, Prof. Srdja Trifkovic, Captain Christopher Check, and Dr. Thomas Fleming Fleming Foundation Headquarters, aka the crumbling Villa Pipistrelli, getting a facelift.

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Feature / Fleming / From Under The Rubble

17 Jul, 2017

Take a Load off Annie

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Not long ago, I poked fun at Ann Coulter as a professionally dumb blond who acted out like an adolescent.  The response on this website and on Facebook was mixed.  Many who read the piece thought it sound overall but found it a bit unfair to Ms Coulter. After reading Ann’s tweets attacking Delta Airlines, ridiculing its employees, and and insulting chance passengers whose legs are not up to Ann’s standards (“dachshund legs”) all for being deprived of a $30  upgrade to economy plus,   I want to take this opportunity to say I am sorry for ever doubting that she is the model of wisdom...

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Feature / Fleming

12 Jul, 2017

Do Androids Sleep With Electric Sheep?

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One of the best developments of the first six months of America Under Trump is the growing discontent with the media.  Why anyone has ever paid any attention to the New York Times or Washington Post or Fox or CNN is something I have never been able to figure out.  The editors are poorly educated liars, and the reporters, columnists and commentators cannot even manage to tell their lies in standard English There is only one reason to pay any attention to the news, and that is to find out what bizarre forms of snake oil the ruling class is forcing...

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Autodidact / Fleming

4 Jul, 2017

Ben Jonson, Disgruntled Dramatist

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Volpone was followed by an equal triumph, The Alchemist.  This play is once again a comedy about a scam-artist from the Elizabethan underworld.  The Alchemist reflects Jonson’s general contempt for superstition and irrationality, though, as he later confessed (to Drummond of Hawthornden), he once took part in a similar magic scam: “He had once cousened a lady, with whom he had made an appointment to meet an old astrologer in the suburbs, which she keeped and it was himself disguised in a Longe Gowne and a white beard.” Jonson’s method is to take stock plot devices from Roman comedy, e.g.,...

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Fleming / POB II

4 Jul, 2017

Where the Heart is: Properties of Blood, II.1

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In his contribution to I’ll Take My Stand, Andrew Lytle told Southerners to detach themselves from mass-produced culture and return to their own traditions:  “Throw out the radio and take down the fiddle from the wall.”  In Protestant countries, the reading of Scriptures and family prayers, until fairly recently, were a normal part of family life.  Robert Burns, in his poem “Cotters’ Saturday Night,” paints a picture of a poor  family in Calvinist Scotland gathered round to read Bible: They, round the ingle, form a circle wide; The sire turns o’er, wi patriarchal grace, The big ha’-Bible, ance his father’s...

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Feature / Fleming

29 Jun, 2017

Chesterton

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Dear Friends and Readers: I have been asked to speak at the 36th annual The American Chesterton Conference being held in Colorado Springs, Colorado, July 27-29. https://www.chesterton.org/36th-annual-chesterton-conference/ The title of this year’s conference is “The Tyranny of the Learned,” and I’ll be speaking on Chesterton as an amateur ancient historian who often got the details wrong but had a deeper insight than many scholars who have devoted their lives to the study of ancient history. Other speakers include Dale Ahlquist, founder and president of the American Chesterton Society, my former colleague Christopher Check, who is now president of Catholic Answers, Joseph...

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Fleming

25 Jun, 2017

Religio Philologi: Social Justice

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  In March 2010, I put online an earlier version of this piece: In all the political debates over nationalized welfare and health care, both anti-Christian socialists and Catholics frequently the term “social justice” in their arguments for  guaranteed incomes, social welfare, and socialized medicine.  In fact, the expression “social justice” is frequently heard from the lips of Catholic traditionalists (including distributists), Marxists, and Greens.  Are they talking about the same principle or different principles?  Does the expression have any usable meaning?  Before going on to sketch out some basic principles of a Christian’s duties  to his fellows, we might begin by examining...

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Fleming / Free Content

21 Jun, 2017

Rome, the Long Way Round, Part II

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Part II The several days we spent at Ulivello vibrate in the memory like an hallucination.  Our friend Navrozov has written a beautiful piece about his visit to Ulivello.  The reality was a bit grittier and decayed than he described it—less the odor of jasmine than of hay and manure—but no less magical.  The food was almost a revelation:  pasta, of course, but followed by farm-raised pork, roasted with apples and served with potatoes deep-fried in olive oil. Ulivello had been a sort of farm, worked by share-croppers, and when the Italian government ended share-cropping, the former croppers stayed on...