Category: Fleming

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Fleming / Interviews

11 Oct, 2015

Interview With Polonia Christiana, Part I

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Thomas Fleming was interviewed in August by Mike Krupa of Polonia Christiana.  For readers of Polish, the inteveiw is available here.  For those less fortunate, we have posted the original exchange in English., PC  After almost 8 years of Barack Obama’s presidency, what kind of country is the United States? TJF  When Barack Obama was elected President, reaction was divided along party lines.  Democrats, especially those who belonged to ethnic minorities, expected rapid improvement in their condition and in their opportunities for advancement. They also expected a quick end to the military adventurism that had characterized his predecessor’s administrations.  Republicans, by contrast, feared...

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Fleming / From Under The Rubble

9 Oct, 2015

John Kasich’s Bible

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Governor Kasich has finally got himself into the news.   Falling asleep in the debate did not work.so now he turns to that last refuge of corrupt Republican: religion.  Accused of pandering for votes by supporting socialized medicine, he offers to give his critics free copies of the Bible. Looks like this is one more cause of a good Catholic boy who has followed the papacy into  non-revolutionary socialism. This is one we cannot blame on Pope Francis or Paul VI or even on Leo XIII.  Kasich abandoned  the Catholic Church for materialist hedonism, and when he found he needed some...

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Best Revenge / Fleming

2 Oct, 2015

On Secund Thawt: The Grammar of Dating

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Good grammar is said to be all the rage on dating sites.  This story would be good news, had it been reported anywhere but in the Wall Street Journal, whose columnists and editors do not appear to know the difference between grammar and spelling.  They lead the story with a young man who was put off by a potential date who  wrote him a confirmation of their first meeting: “I’ll see you their.”  Poor Mr. Cohen—a chump more interested in spelling than romance.  The young lady has made a fortunate escape.  One is almost tempted to agree with the Columbia University...

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Autodidact / FF / Fleming / Reading Lists

29 Sep, 2015

The Autodidact’s Reading List, I: The Ancient Greeks

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Part One:  The Greeks Pre-Classical Homer    The  Iliad and the Odyssey   There are many translations and imitations.  For plain prose by good scholars, there is Lang, Leaf, and Myers for the Iliad and Butcher and Lang for the Odyssey.  George Chapman’s translations and Alexander Pope’s Iliad are important works of English verse.  T.E. Lawrence’s Odyssey is a readable narrative. Iliad I: Iliad II There are several Autodidact essays and podcasts on Homer, e.g. https://fleming.foundation/2022/01/the-autodidact-homer/  and  https://fleming.foundation/2016/12/boethius-book-club-episode-10-the-odyssey/. You can find many others simply by searching “Homer.”  Many are free podcasts, and other, more polished lectures, are for sale. The Homeric...

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Autodidact / Fleming

29 Sep, 2015

Sophocles’ Oedipus III

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Jocaste once again reassures Oedipus  that religion is bunk.  Even if the servant changes his story about the number of Laius’s killers, “he will never prove that the killing of Laius was as predicted, namely that he would be killed by my son as Apollo prophesied.”   Thus the second witness is not crucial to the story.  Oedipus here also makes an important slip: It is not just oracle-mongers who are not to be trusted, but the god himself.

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Autodidact / Fleming

22 Sep, 2015

Sophocles’ Oedipus, II

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Oedipus issues an edict against the killer and the blind seer Teiresias is brought in to assist the case and, as members of the audience might suppose, to reprise his role in the Antigone.  It is Teireisias’ fortune, though (unlike Cassandra) not his destiny, to speak plain truth to unbelieving ears.

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Fleming / From Under The Rubble

21 Sep, 2015

In the Name of Obama

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In an earlier piece of internet graffiti, I subjected the name Trump to a somewhat whimsical analysis in which I stuck in this obiter dictum:  “Like so many good old American names, Trump’s grandfather’s name was actually Drumpf—a really significant piece of evidence for leftists who found nothing odd in a name like Barack Obama.” Now that Trump is being attacked for refusing to deny that Mr. Obama is a Muslim, it is time to look more closely  at the President’s name.  Trump’s problem flared up when a questioner in Rochester asked him one of those leading questions most politicians...

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Fleming

18 Sep, 2015

On Second Thought: The Right to Be Disgusting

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  The United States government has decided at long last to use the term “sexual rights” when discussing global development and human rights.  However, this is a less radical move than it might appear.  According to a statement made by Richard Erdman, “deputy ambassador to the UN,”sexual rights are not human rights, and they are not enshrined in human rights law.”  At first sight, then, this change in language is only a meaningless gesture, an accommodation to the leftist rhetoric of the administration. On second thought, however, this little change does signal a shift with long-term consequences.  It was not...

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Autodidact / Fleming

13 Sep, 2015

Sophocles’ Oedipus, Part I

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About a decade after the Antigone Sophocles took up the story of Antigone’s doomed father Oedipus.  The basic story would have been familiar to his readers and to anyone who had gone to see Antigone, but Sophocles also takes a broad perspective on the entire House of Cadmus the Phoenician, their sins and their sufferings.