Category: Fleming

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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...

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Feature / Fleming / From Under The Rubble

17 Mar, 2017

Down With “the Arts”!

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Art is a noble human attempt to make beauty and sense out of human experience.  “The Arts” are an ignoble scam by which no-talent bums force the taxpayers to subsidize their indolence.  I received an email today from a friend who has done good work in one of the more popular arts.  He is an enthusiastic Trump supporter, but he was calling upon his friends to “do what we can to reverse this ill advised decision before it is too late.” My distinguished friend’s argument is that the Trump administration will be “throwing away an opportunity to move the culture and...

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Fleming / From Under The Rubble

15 Mar, 2017

The Modern Constitution–Blueprint for Revolution

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I hates the Constitution, This Great Republic too “That’s unconstitutional!”  Hardly a day goes by that we do not hear some proposal of the Trump administration denounced as a violation of the Constitution.  It is beginning to appear that NPR and other organs of the revolutionary left cannot invoke Trump’s name without throwing in “unconstitutional,” something in the way that “swift-footed” always precedes Achilles. A good example of this rhetorical tactic is the headline Unamericans for Disunity (or is it Americans United ?) put on their latest propaganda screed: “AU Continues The Legal Fight Against President Trump’s Unconstitutional Muslim Ban.”  Counting...

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Feature / Fleming / From Under The Rubble

8 Mar, 2017

Women of the World Unite:  You Have Nothing to Lose but Your Freedom and Dignity.

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“Two paradises ’twere in one To live in paradise alone” Reading those lines from “the Garden,” an incautious reader might imagine that the poet—Andrew Marvell—did not limit his Puritan tendencies to theology and politics but hated womankind with the fury of a John Knox.  In fact, Marvell was a woman-loving man who wrote several of the best erotic (I don’t mean dirty!) poems in English.  God bless him: He was only a hypocrite. Marvell’s lines came to mind when I read news of the feminist plans to mark today’s international celebration of women by refusing to go to work.  At first...

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Feature / Fleming / From Under The Rubble

25 Feb, 2017

“Neo-Segregation” and the Suicide of the American Right

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Students at the University of Michigan have taken the lead in the Left’s campaign to criminalize White People.  Following a string of student movements at other leading institutions devoted to the debasement of learning, non-white students at Michigan are demanding their own “permanent designated space on central campus for Black students and students of color to organize and do social justice work.”  This comes on the heels of the construction of a $10 million Black Student Center, which is insufficient proof of Michigan’s commitment to genocide. With the predictable knee-jerk that is the hallmark of their movement, American conservatives are...

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Fleming

18 Feb, 2017

The Xanthippe, Part 5

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In the last installment we heard Xanthippe as she refuted Plato’s argument for a society run by experts Xanthippe: Do you really want to live in a world made in the image of Plato and run by his mirror-images.  We should all be slaves or those mechanical servants that waited on King Alcinous in Phaeacia.  Surely, you remember the Odyssey ? Pheidippides:  That’s giving it to him, auntie! Part 5 Xanthippe:  And you think the same argument doesn’t apply to you? Pheidippides:  Not me, I believe in free markets, remember? Xanthippe: I don’t want to go through all of this...

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Fleming

8 Feb, 2017

Looking Back to Glory

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Looking Back to Glory A Brief Presentation to the Abbeville Institute Hopswee Plantation,  21 January 2017 When Don Livingston told me that participants in this seminar were supposed to celebrate some aspect of the Southern tradition, my mind—a lint-trap for useless facts that occlude my consciousness like floaters on the surface of the eye—churned up from its turgid depths a song popular the year I was born, though it was written much earlier. It’s a way way down where the cane grows tall Down where they say “you all” Walk on in with that southern drawl ‘Cause that’s what I...

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Feature / Fleming / From Under The Rubble

7 Feb, 2017

Trump and the Killers

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In recent weeks, there have been so many tempests in teapots, there is no room for tea.  (Hint to readers who are no good at metaphors:  tea = actual news.)  All Trump has to do is make an off-the-cuff but substantially true observation, and everyone goes wild—not just the official press of the Democratic Party, which is virtually all the major media outlets—but the Republican leadership. Case in point:  When the preposterous O’Reilly objected to Donald Trump’s polite words about Vladimir Putin, saying “But he’s a killer,” the President replied, “There are a lot of killers. You think our country’s...

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Fleming

6 Feb, 2017

The Left’s Right to Silence Dissent

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Trump’s first two weeks have been, if not especially interesting, predictably exciting.   A pattern has already begun to emerge:  Trump attempts to carry out one of the promises on which he successfully campaigned for the White House, and his measures are met with criticism, abuse, and public rioting.  It will be some time before we can know whether this pattern is merely a temporary panic attack or one that  holds for the duration of his term in office. By now my readers probably do not need to be told that the Bill of Rights does not protect people who...

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Fleming

2 Feb, 2017

The Xanthippe, Part 4: The Tyranny of Expertise

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Socrates:  Then where does this leave us? Xanthippe:  Why ask me?  You’re the philosopher in the family.  I have no idea where we are or even when we are.  Can this really be  Athens in the archonship of Diocles? Socrates: But even if you don’t know the time of day, you know where we stand in the argument.  First, we are agreed that Pheidippides’ philosophy, which he got third hand from the Scythian she-wolf, is false. We cannot simply dismiss our obligation to fellow-citizens by saying that everyone is master of himself. Xanthippe: :  Certainly we cannot. Socrates: So we...