Category: Fleming

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Fleming / On the House

1 Aug, 2017

Ben Jonson’s Classical Restraint (Free to all subscribers)

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Classical Restraint Despite his violent temper and conversion (for a time) to the old religion, Jonson was a well-balanced mind with a fondness for the order and beauty of classical literature. In his comedies, he made use of the classical theory of humors in order to promote his own ideas of the balanced temperament, and in his later poems, especially those collected in The Forrest and in The Underwood, the wild young swordsman has transformed himself into an advocate of reason and moderation, both in literature and in morals.  Jonson had tried both the abusive satires of the 90’s, a...

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Feature / Fleming / From Under The Rubble

1 Aug, 2017

Hey Hey, HO HO, Cultural Conservatives Have Got to Go

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This is the revised second part of my opening lecture at the 2017 Summer Symposium To understand the West’s cultural suicide, we might  begin by looking at an historical event, not from ancient Greece or 18th century France or even from the legendary 1960’s, which are now regarded as ancient history.  Let us start, instead, with with an episode in the culture war that has become a legend.  The year is 1987, just 30 years ago, and the place is Stanford University.  There stands “the Rev.”Jesse Jackson leading a group of 500 Stanford students, chanting “Hey Hey Ho Ho.  Western...

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Fleming / On the House

26 Jul, 2017

Get On the Wrong Side of History (Available to All Subscribers)

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This is the first part of my opening shot at the 2017 Summer Symposium. Everyone I know or wish to know is on the wrong side of history.  This is hardly much of a distinction., since,  according to the people who own and operate the United States as a corporate  monopoly, half the country is in the same boat. New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu says the Confederacy was on the wrong side of history; The members of Black Lives Matter say white people are on the wrong side of history; Barak Obama has declared just about anyone who disagrees with...

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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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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...

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Fleming / Free Content

20 Jun, 2017

Question of the Day

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The Media have taken to describing Illinois as a “Banana Republic”?  So today’s question is: How is Illinois not a Banana Republic?  I await  your answers. My first answer is: Because Banana Republics have beaches and warm winters… And, Banana Republics have distinctive cuisines and excellent coffee not sold by greedy Communists who think the sky is falling…