The Fleming Foundation Cultural Commentary
The first four books of the Odyssey can be read as the tale of Odysseus’ troubled son, Telemachus, a young man brought up without a father and treated with contempt by his mother’s suitors. In his travels in search of information about his father, Telemachus learns how to be a man. Dr. Fleming’s introductory comments and the group discussion make an insightful and entertaining introduction to this early masterpiece of Western literature. Recorded: August 13, 2015 Original Air Date: December 7, 2015 Show Run Time: 1 hour 20 minutes Show Guest(s): Dr. Thomas Fleming Show Host(s): James Easton The Fleming...
This is a slightly modified version of a piece originally published in The Spectator under the title “Tories Back Wrong Philosopher.” It is being made available “On the House” for five days. TWO hundred years ago, the career of Edmund Burke was drawing to a close under a cloud of accusations. The Duke of Bedford and his friends had denounced the one-time budget-cutting reformer and enemy of the royal prerogative for accepting a pension from the Crown. In his ‘Letter to a Noble Lord’, published in February 1796, Burke rebutted the charges of inconsistency and hypocrisy. It was Burke’s last stand,...
As Americans went to bed on December 2, they knew little of what happened in San Bernardino, where mysterious “white” assailants murdered 14 people at a “social services center.” Like most people, probably, we were otherwise occupied. We were watching an old episode of Comissario Montalbano. Even this morning on NPR, which featured an interview with two “experts” on mass shootings, I only accidentally learned that one of the shooters had a Pakistani Muslim name. Checking out the stories in the Washington Post, LA Times, and New York Times, I was able to glean only a few facts: a...
“This would be a great target to hit.” It was Tuesday, and I closed my eyes and pictured an explosion ripping through the Eurostar that was taking me from Paris to London. Done at the right time, with the proper amount of explosives, such an act could destroy or severely cripple the Chunnel, kill hundreds of travelers of dozens of nationalities, and chill rail travel for months, if not years. I opened my eyes again, and gazed at the lovely French countryside. I’m not morbid by nature, but wars, and rumors of wars, have been on my mind since November 13th....
This show tells you everything you ever wanted to know about–what else?–Bacon. Dr. Fleming interviews his son, Chef Garret Fleming (former head chef of Pig and now of Barrel in Washington DC) on the art of raising pigs, smoking and curing bacon. If only we could capture the smell on the website! He concludes with a humorous pig on the lighthearted subject of how not to kill a pig. Original Air Date: December 3, 2015 Show Run Time: 50 minutes Show Guest(s): Dr. Thomas Fleming, Garret Fleming Show Host(s): James Easton The Fleming Foundation · The Best Revenge, Episode 1:...
Greece IV We had brief interchange, four hours into the trip. We stopped for lunch at Menidi on the Ambracian Gulf. We were not expecting much from Menidi. The morning had been spent on the endless drive along the superhighway, every mile under repair, from Athens to Corinth and then along the northern coast of the Peloponnesus. It is true that the road got worse and the landscape better, after we crossed the bridge across the Gulf of Corinth at Rhio. I thought about stopping at Missolonghi, where Byron had died in 1824, raising money for Greek independence...
I realize that visual observation alone, whether at its focus is human illness or social mores, is rarely conclusive when it comes to diagnostics, but that, ladies and gentlemen, is all I’ve got. Parting with $100 in a café here is a foregone conclusion, while in the food halls of the Galleries Lafayette two bucks will buy you a piece of chocolate measuring one cubic centimetre. And yet this city eats like Rome, with the diners, like Olympic swimmers in the final yards of the race, twisting their apoplectically speckled necks this way and that, as though coming up...
Recorded in the week following the Supreme Court “ruling” in America which was said to show that #lovewins Dr. Fleming discusses marriage from the very beginning of societal relationships, through the age of Christendom, to our present day, and how the Protestant Revolt changed the dynamic of the state’s involvement in marriage, and all that we have reaped (and continue to reap to this day) as a result. Original Air Date: December 1, 2015 Show Run Time: 1 hour 1 minute Show Guest(s): Dr. Thomas Fleming Show Host(s): Stephen Heiner Christianity and Classical Culture℗ is a Production of the...
The attack on Southern symbols has nothing to do with opposing slavery or helping black Americans. It is an attempt to eliminate an important cultural and political tradition that goes back to Washington, Jefferson, and Madison. Such campaigns to eliminate historic identities are defined–and condemned–in international law as “cultural genocide.” Cultural genocide is not a technique used by free republics but by totalitarian ideological states. Even northerners who have little interest in the South should begin to understand that this attack on the South and its flag-bearing cross will inevitably be followed by overt attacks on Christianity and on America...
Cicero Cicero was one of the most important men of the Roman world. Although he ultimately failed as a statesman, as virtually every statesman does, but he only increased in stature as the years went on. Cicero’s style has been rightly held up as the standard for Latin prose, and his writings on rhetoric and philosophy—as well as his speeches and letters—became the basis of Roman education. Cicero was the model for Christian orators like St. Jerome and Augustine, and his works were taught and read throughout the Middle Ages. The Renaissance, to a considerable extent, began with the Italian...
