Author: Thomas Fleming

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Best Revenge / Fleming

11 Apr, 2017

An Ancient Ploughman’s Breakfast

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Here is a description of a hungry farmer who has to grind his own flour to make bread and then slathers it with a pungent cheese spread. ….Then immediately He piles it on a board that’s smooth, and pours Upon it tepid water, now he brought Together flour and fluid intermixed, With hardened hand he turns it o’er and o’er And having worked the liquid in, the heap He in the meantime strews with salt, and now His kneaded work he lifts, and flattens it With palms of hand to rounded cake, and it With squares at equal distance pressed...

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Autodidact / Feature / Fleming

8 Apr, 2017

Samuel Johnson, Our Greatest Moralist: Conclusion

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In his moral writings, Dr. Johnson showed himself a devotee to  duty almost on the level with Robert E. Lee’s, who described it as “the sublimest word in the English language, adding,  “You should do your duty in all things. You can never do more, you should never wish to do less.”   The concept of duty has been somewhat tarnished by Victorian moralists who too often seem to be advocating the virtue of prigs, and, worse, by  philosophers who, since the 18th century,  have got into the habit of regarding all duties as abstract, universal, and rational. A locus classicus for this approach...

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Fleming / From Under The Rubble

7 Apr, 2017

Trump–Chump or Caesar?

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The Russians have rightly condemned the US missile attack on Syria as a criminal act of aggression against a sovereign state.  I italicized the last phrase because it indicates a certain mental clarity on the part of Putin and his advisors:  Their own acts of criminal aggression are justifiable, apparently, so long as they are not directed against a state that holds undisputed sovereignty over a country or region.  John Seiler has made an excellent case that this may be the beginning of the end of the Trump administration.  He is probably right, but as a lifelong contrarian, I am going...

2

Feature / Fleming

4 Apr, 2017

Mat Rarey, RIP

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I learned today, from several sources, that my former assistant Matthew Rarey has died.  Mat was still a young man.  I have no idea, at this point, what happened, but he had been very troubled in recent years. He yearned for the best, and if he often fell short, he was hardly different from the rest of us.  I’ll write more later, perhaps, since Mat kept in constant touch with me.

3

Feature / Fleming / From Under The Rubble

4 Apr, 2017

The O’ Reilly–Rotten from the Beginning

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In the current tempest in a teapot over Bill O’Reilly’s allegedly indecent behavior toward women, no one seems willing to state the obvious:  The fellow–by no means a man–is both a bully and a toady, the embodiment of the lying conservative journalism at FOX.  This is a corrected and improved version of a Perspective published long long ago in 2001.   Some celebrities seem born with a natural star-power that radiates from them like an angelic halo.  Alcibiades, so it is said, had this kind of “charisma,” to make himself adored even by people who disliked him.  To be a...

2

Fleming / Free Content

4 Apr, 2017

In Memoriam Frank Schier (FREE)

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This is a slightly revised version of my brief tribute delivered on Sunday, April 2, 2017 at a memorial gathering in Rockford the Mendelsohn Club.  Frank Schier was for many years the editor and publisher of the local weekly The Rock River Times.   My name is Tom Fleming, and I was for many years Frank Schier’s friend, sparring partner, and occasionally punching bag.  We once hosted a television show that must hold the record for the smallest audience, and for a brief period, I wrote restaurant reviews for his newspaper.  Perhaps that fact will be recorded on my own...

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Fleming / Free Content

3 Apr, 2017

Samuel Johnson, Our Greatest Moralist, Part D: The Problem of Pain (FREE)

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Rasselas is probably Dr. Johnson’s most accessible piece of moral philosophy.  Since we shall be posting a podcast on the work, the treatment here can be quite limited.  Rasselas is a sort of a picaresque novel that tells the story of a young Abyssinian prince who, with his sister and mentor, leave the Happy Valley, an earthly paradise where the prince, his sisters, and their companions and attendants, enjoy every possible comfort and pleasure.  Rasselas, however, is not happy but is  possessed of what seems to be a romantic delusion that he should desire something.  He imagines that there is...

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Autodidact / Fleming

27 Mar, 2017

Samuel Johnson, Our Greatest Moralist, Part C

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To understand what Johnson was doing in his moral essays, we have to know something of the revolution he was opposing: the philosophies of abstraction that were taking hold in his lifetime.  Since the 18th century at least, we have been asked to identify ourselves and our duty with all of humanity and its needs, and to take a dim view of any lesser loyalties to kith and kin, religion and country.  Although these ideas of universal charity and duty are usually identified with Christianity, they derive not from the Bible directly or from Christian theology, but from the attempts...

2

Autodidact / Fleming

24 Mar, 2017

Samuel Johnson, Our Greatest Moralist,Part B

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In recent times, Samuel Johnson is remembered primarily for his quips, retorts, and for Boswell’s portrayal of his ferocious character.  Johnson’s prose style and flashes of brilliance are enough to win over most readers who take any pleasure in English literature.  My own particular interest, however, is in this moral philosophy, which can be traced in essays that appeared in The Rambler, The Idler, his review of Soame Jennyings, and in his one novel, Rasselas.  To anticipate my general conclusion, I should say at the beginning that, although he developed his ethical thought in occasional essays and fiction,  he was...

2

Autodidact

23 Mar, 2017

Samuel Johnson, Our Greatest Moralist, Part A

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The modern tradition of thought–whether expressed in verse or history or philosophy–has been essentially liberal and anti-Christian.  So much so that we take it for granted and are grateful when we can find some particle of decency and sense in writers like Hemingway or John Updike.  Anti-Christian liberalism was not always so dominant.  England and France were largely Christian nations down to early 18th century, and the Enlightenment only reached its position of supremacy, in the years leading up to the French Revolution, in the works of Diderot, Rousseau, and above all Voltaire.  But it is not difficult to find...