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.
Category: Fleming
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...
Political Realism: A Greek Primer
My second law of presidential elections is that the best liar wins (usually). This law goes a long way toward explaining why it took so long for the result of the 2000 election to be declared: Both parties were working round the clock, not only in the lower courts but also in the ultimate TV court of appeal, to spin flax into flannel. In this never-ending period of what everyone seems to be calling a political crisis, no one is willing to talk about the underlying problems which have nothing to do with the electoral college or voting machines but with the basic legitimacy–or rather the lack thereof–of the American regime.
Learning to Appreciate Poetry: A Simple Ode of Horace
I have, as promised, added two sections, the first on the metrical shape of the lines with some small effort to show a parallel effect in English, and, second, on the tightness of syntax and word order that makes the first stanza one complete thought expressed in a complete sentence–something we simply cannot do, at least not very well, in English.
New in the Forum
At last we can agree with Alec Baldwin on something. He recently tweeted: “I don’t think anyone involved in the college fraud cases should go to prison. That includes past cases as well. Community service, fines, yes. But prison time, no. My heart goes out to Felicity, Bill Macy and their family,’ the actor said in a tweet Wednesday.”…………….
Where’s Anterus Smith?
This is not the title of a new game to replace “Where’s Waldo?” but a chance to interrogate Chad Rayson, the August Derleth of the Iron Range. TFF: So, Chad, what happened to Anterus Smith or by whatever name he wishes to be called? CR: So what is this? You’re Aeschylus writing an ode to Zeus? You want to know what the trouble with you classicists is? TFF; Not especially, in fact, definitely no. CR: I’ll tell you anyway. You’re so tied up in some other word, going in quest of Ulysses or sailing with Jason and the...
