The Fleming Foundation Cultural Commentary

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All Paid Subscribers / Feature / Seiler

27 Aug, 2019

Top Unconscious Election Issue Dates to 1949

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Although I can’t prove it, I think an unconscious element in every presidential election is the fear a candidate might get us into a nuclear war. In my long career of voting for president, beginning with Ford/Carter in 1976, I certainly had a “gut loathing” of only two candidates I thought would be unstable and liable to lunge for the Nuclear Football and press the Button: John McCain, a Republican, in 2008, and Hillary Clinton, a Democrat, in 2016. I think a lot of voters shared that fear. There’s even a 1999 book, “The Gift of Fear and Other Survival...

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FF / Podcasts / Season 3

27 Aug, 2019

Dante’s Moral Code, Part II: Christianity and Classical Culture, Episode 31

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Continuing on the previous episode’s discussion of the Commedia as a journey made with “a little help from his friends,” Dr. Fleming expands on the ideas of friendship, whether you can be friends with someone who is not virtuous, whether his relationship with Vergil is considered a “friendship,” and the various “friends” Dante meets throughout his journey. Original Air Date: August 27, 2019 Show Run Time: 27 minutes Show Guest(s): Dr. Thomas Fleming Show Host(s): Stephen Heiner This Podcast is available for Silver subscribers and higher.   Christianity and Classical Culture℗ is a Production of the Fleming Foundation. Copyright 2019....

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Autodidact

26 Aug, 2019

Hesiod and His World

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The name of Hesiod was often coupled with that of Homer, though the two are different expressions of the Greek mind and temperament.  While Homer writes of aristocratic warriors, Hesiod, in his surviving works, is more concerned with expounding  rustic life and its values and with making coherent sense of the gods.  As a Greek writer, he was the first agrarian but also the first theologian and the godfather of philosophy.

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Best Revenge

23 Aug, 2019

Booklog I: The Man in the High Castle, etc.

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In past years, I have from time to time attempted to write and post a diary of my reading.  Unfortunately, I always tried too hard, picking books I thought would either interest or improve my readers.  This time, I am going to note, simply, erratically, and occasionally relevantly, what I am reading and whatever stray thoughts have cropped up.

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All Paid Subscribers / Andrei Navrozov / Wednesday's Child

21 Aug, 2019

Wednesday’s Child: Workers United

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“I hate the working class,” my godfather, an artist who painted dream landscapes and equally apolitical still lifes, liked to say between sips of lukewarm tea, I fear only half in jest.  I thought of him the other day, when a neighbor’s ancient water main – expanding from violent summer heat, or else dislodged by one of the minor earthquakes we get every so often in Palermo – leaked into my ceiling and I rushed out in search of somebody who could stop the flooding. I don’t know, perhaps Switzerland, Holland, or some other kind of Germany is an exception,...

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FF / Podcasts / Season 3

20 Aug, 2019

Dante’s Moral Code, Part I: Christianity and Classical Culture, Episode 30

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In this episode, Dr. Fleming turns to discussing Dante’s Moral Code. Is it Christian? Is it Florentine? What is the overall moral scope (and argument) of the Commedia? Does friendship play a role? How is that seen through classical and Christian eyes? Original Air Date: August 20, 2019 Show Run Time: 24 minutes Show Guest(s): Dr. Thomas Fleming Show Host(s): Stephen Heiner This Podcast is available for Silver subscribers and higher.   Christianity and Classical Culture℗ is a Production of the Fleming Foundation. Copyright 2019. All rights are reserved and any duplication without explicit written permission is forbidden.

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All Paid Subscribers / Feature / Seiler

20 Aug, 2019

The Tech Left, Censorship and the 2020 Election

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Although he’s back on Twitter as of this writing, recently the tech giant locked gun scholar John Lott out of his account. He’s been the main source for my writing on guns and politics for two decades. And when it came out I reviewed his main book, “More Guns, Less Crime” – great title – as well as one of his other books. Lott’s “crime”? He actually read the New Zealand mass killer’s “manifesto” and quoted its socialist and environmentalist sections. That violated New Zealand’s policy of banning all discussion of the killings. But since when do New Zealand’s policies...

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Feature / Podcasts

14 Aug, 2019

Podcast: Urban Blight–The Solution

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Anyone with one eye half open is aware that American cities have become jungles of violence and sewers of vice. Unfortunately, most of the remedies proposed are worse than the disease. The only possible way out lies with changes more radical than Eastern Europe undertook at the end of the Cold War.