Author: Thomas Fleming

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Uncategorized

23 Aug, 2017

Chesterton Conclusion–Go Back to Being Roman

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But Rome endures in more places than the seven hills on the Tiber.  The civilization of Europe and its colonies is only an extension of the Roman world, from which we have never been really cut off. Where world- historians such as Spengler have seen ages and cycles severed from each other by cataclysmic events, Chesterton sees continuity. We do not understand, to be sure, the few monuments left by our distant neolithic ancestors; but the Greek gods have never died in that fashion; and the Roman empire has never died at all. Of the most modem industrial cities in...

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Autodidact / Feature / Fleming

23 Aug, 2017

The Counter-Revolution–Back to Square One (Conclusion)

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Then what are we to do with the Great Books of the revolutionary tradition?  They are to a great extent a poisoned chalice which is fatal to those who drink from it.  There is a sense in which the system of American education is taking care of at least some of the problem.  Apart from Great Books colleges and Western Civ courses, no one actually reads Montaigne or Voltaire.  They are simply dead white males that only a conservative fuddy-duddy would read. But suppose we confine the question only to people we care about, our children and students.  Do we...

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Autodidact / Free Content

22 Aug, 2017

Ask the Autodidact:  “How Bad are the Harry Potter Books?”

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After having read or listened to so many of the books on your Auto-Didact list, my daughter Annie has grown to trust my literary judgment.  If Dad says a book is worth reading, it is.  If Dad says it isn’t, it isn’t. Well, my daughter is of an age where all her peers have read or are reading the Harry Potter books.  I’ve told her the Harry Potter books aren’t worth her time.  While that answer is good enough for Annie, many of her friends and classmates press Annie to explain why her dad––who is also the pastor of the...

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Autodidact / Feature / Fleming

19 Aug, 2017

The War of Gods and Demons: Chesterton, Part II

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Chesterton was certainly not alone in treating the Romans fairly, but he is among the few who saw the conflict in the proper civilizational terms, as a conflict between decent paganism that prepared the world for the Incarnation and the filthy sort of paganism that instead of adoring the Christ child would have joined Herod in seeking to kill him.  Chesterton begins his essay “The War of  Gods and Demons,” a chapter in The Everlasting Man, with a deep reflection on the failure of so much academic history on Rome: Merely political histories of Rome may be right enough in...

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Feature / Fleming

19 Aug, 2017

I HATE TRUMP, 2:  08-19-17, 9:00 AM CDT

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I have always hated Trump, even when he was a star on reality TV.  Even before.  To me, The Art of the Deal is really The Art of the Steal.   That is what all businessmen are, fundamentally, especially big businessmen:  thieves.  One of my professors (Harvard Law, 1987!) told the class that someone—I guess it was JFK—once said that property is theft.  He was so right!  I absolutely hate the rich.  A little guy like me, worth only a couple hundred million, can’t get justice in this country.  Look at poor Bernie Sanders’ wife, the way she is being...

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Feature / Fleming

18 Aug, 2017

I HATE TRUMP: 08-18-17, 9:00 AM CDT

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This is a President?  Instead of issuing  high-minded moral diatribes against racism, when some minor incident develops in  Kankakee or Charlottesville, this big-haired moron wastes his time on forcing North Korea to back down.  Then, as was noted on NPR so correctly, even his religious advisors–men who are supposed to be of high moral character–refuse to resign in protest. What planet do these so-called Christians live on? Why doesn’t this moron admit the truth?  The South is evil, except for the African Americans and Mexicans who live there.  American Slavery was the worst moral evil in the history of the human race, worse...

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Fleming / Free Content

16 Aug, 2017

The Very Bad Great Books (FREE)

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Then, let us begin, not as Rousseau does (In his “Essay on Inequality”), by setting aside the facts, but by looking the truth in the face.  Multi-culturalism is a particularly virulent movement of cultural genocide designed to eliminate European Christian culture and its traditions. It was not invented in the 1960’s or even in the 1920’s when French communists and surrealists “forged” all the arguments that have been repeated ad nauseam by Frantz Fanon, Edward Said and the current promoters of multi-culturalism. The creators of this multi-cultural revolution were, in fact, among the writers included in any list of the...

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Autodidact / Fleming

14 Aug, 2017

G.K. Chesterton: Ancient Historian, Part I

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This is a revised version of a talk given recently at the US Chesterton Society Conference in Colorado Springs. Anyone who does not know and love Chesterton will find my title preposterous.  For them, Chesterton is a fanciful writer who framed clever paradoxes. Such a man could scarcely be considered any kind of historian.  History is, after all, a sober undertaking, the dry sifting of facts coupled with a cautious reluctance to draw sweeping conclusions.  No kind of historian would say something so fanciful and preposterous as: Before the Roman came to Rye or out to Severn strode, The rolling...

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Feature / Fleming

14 Aug, 2017

Simple Simon’s Political Lexicon: Liberal

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  In one of our discussions, I hinted that our conversations might be expedited by agreeing to use certain words, e.g., liberal, conservative, radical,  Marxist, traditionalist, culture/cultural, republican, democratic, in a precise manner that takes account of historical reality.  The most obvious term with which to begin is the almost universally abused word “Iiberal.” Political Liberal:  Someone who advocates liberty and individual autonomy as the ultimate good and seeks to weaken or eliminate all barriers and impediments that stand in the way of an individual’s quest for fulfillment.  At different periods Liberals have opposed monarchy, established churches, aristocracy, tradition, and...

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Fleming / Free Content

10 Aug, 2017

The New Phase of the Korean War–a possible explanation

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The United States has had difficult relations with North Korea, ever since Harry Truman refused to permit the American military to end the Korean War in victory.  Truman’s lack of resolve, coupled with the American elite’s obsession with global Americanization, has meant a long string of failures:  Cuba, Vietnam, Nicaragua, Iran, and Iraq.  Ever since I grew old enough to think I had the right to answer questions of such scope, I have given the same answer, whenever anyone has asked me what to do:  Fish or Cut Bait!  Either leave other people alone or, if we have to fight,...