Category: Fleming
A Happy Real American Thanksgiving
how, once upon a time, some footloose Englishmen came to the New World seeking easy gold, free land, and the right to spit tobacco when and where they wanted. As good Anglicans, these adventurers, roughnecks, and proto-cavaliers were too busy minding their business to worry to much about minding yours. The few who who survived the initial attempts to settle various spots in Virginia, beginning with Jamestown, were reminded of their own weakness and from time to time their leaders decided it was time to give thanks to the Almighty for letting them survive in this savage land. So, with one accord, the men brought what game they could shoot, along with their jugs of corn-squeezings and stashes of tobacco, whipped out their fiddles, and had themselves a great time
Politics of Human Nature, Part III
A 24 minute podcast on how modern ideologies–Marxist, Freudian, feminist, Classical Liberal–have fragmented and undermined our understanding of human nature. The Soviet experiment ended in complete failure, and the American and European experiment in democratic hedonism is going faster into ruin than communism.
Politics of Human Nature 30 Years Later, Part II
A 27 minute podcast: putting the American suicide in an historical context.
The Honest Journalist, Part One (of Two)
Mankind does not need to be taught to lie: Adam told his first lie in the Garden, but it is disconcerting to realize that the talk radio listeners, in modeling themselves on Mark Levin and Shawn Hannity, have learned to be as one-dimensional and misinformed as their heroes. I suppose, in defense of the American people, we should concede that the best people do not listen to talk radio or read the newspapers.
The Fifth of November–and Other Anniversaries
In this 11 minute podcast, Dr. Fleming and Rex take up some famous people born in early November.
Forget “The Great Books”: Read the Classics
Stop drinking the Kool Aid and brush up on your Shakespeare, Homer, and Tolkien.
Political Realism: A Greek Primer, Conclusion
Every society has its hypocrites, since most of us, to secure what we want, will sometimes pretend to be better than we are, but the Greeks were generally frank about everyday realities. Dr. Johnson was being very Greek when he told Boswell that “No man is a hypocrite in his pleasures.”
Humpty Dumpty on the “Liberal” Arts
The “liberal arts” have come to mean the arts that turn students into liberals.
Paleoconservatism, Part Six: Three Cheers for Free Markets, Zero for Capitalism
The family is not the only natural social institution that is being undermined by the modern state. Men are by nature competitive, and they created war and games, politics and the marketplace, to satisfy their need to contend for status, wealth and power. One of leftism’s greatest successes has been to adopt the social language of Christianity and to transfer it from enclosed households (which are naturally communal and socialist) to the open fields where men do battle with each other. This is a point I made briefly in The Morality of Everyday Life and which has been expanded...
