The Fleming Foundation Cultural Commentary

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Fleming / Free Content

4 Apr, 2017

In Memoriam Frank Schier (FREE)

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This is a slightly revised version of my brief tribute delivered on Sunday, April 2, 2017 at a memorial gathering in Rockford the Mendelsohn Club.  Frank Schier was for many years the editor and publisher of the local weekly The Rock River Times.   My name is Tom Fleming, and I was for many years Frank Schier’s friend, sparring partner, and occasionally punching bag.  We once hosted a television show that must hold the record for the smallest audience, and for a brief period, I wrote restaurant reviews for his newspaper.  Perhaps that fact will be recorded on my own...

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FF / Podcasts / Season 1

4 Apr, 2017

Christianity and Classical Culture, Episode 11: Marcus, Stoicism, and Christianity

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In this episode of Christianity and Classical Culture, Dr. Fleming discusses Marcus Aurelius, his life and times, and his adaptation of Greek Stoicism to the Roman mindset. We examine areas of agreement…and disagreement with Christian teaching. Dr. Fleming also explains why Marcus didn’t take Christianity very seriously as a religion, movement, or belief system. Original Air Date: April 4, 2017 Show Run Time: 52 minutes Show Guest(s): Dr. Thomas Fleming Show Host(s): Stephen Heiner Christianity and Classical Culture℗ is a Production of the Fleming Foundation. Copyright 2017. All rights are reserved and any duplication without explicit written permission is forbidden.

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Fleming / Free Content

3 Apr, 2017

Samuel Johnson, Our Greatest Moralist, Part D: The Problem of Pain (FREE)

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Rasselas is probably Dr. Johnson’s most accessible piece of moral philosophy.  Since we shall be posting a podcast on the work, the treatment here can be quite limited.  Rasselas is a sort of a picaresque novel that tells the story of a young Abyssinian prince who, with his sister and mentor, leave the Happy Valley, an earthly paradise where the prince, his sisters, and their companions and attendants, enjoy every possible comfort and pleasure.  Rasselas, however, is not happy but is  possessed of what seems to be a romantic delusion that he should desire something.  He imagines that there is...

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All Paid Subscribers / Andrei Navrozov / Feature / Wednesday's Child

29 Mar, 2017

Wednesday’s Child: The Old and the Reckless

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Last week I mentioned Lampedusa.  Scion of a princely family who wrote his only book aged 58 and did not live to see it published or declared a masterwork of world literature, Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa would have inherited his ancestral palazzo in Palermo – about a hundred yards from my house – had it not been for an Allied bomb that leveled it.  Later he moved to another splendid palazzo nearby, because, as the Serbs say, “caviar is eaten not by those who can afford it, but by those who are used to it,” a wise adage that I...

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Free Content

29 Mar, 2017

Can Trump Repeal and Replace Obamacare? (FREE)

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Obamacare is giving us the worst of both systems: The expense of capitalism and the deadly incompetence of socialism. President Trump’s attempt to fulfill his campaign promise to “repeal and replace” Obamacare – made during the election at every rally before voters – has descended into Cheyne-Stokes. Here’s a reality check. We’ll now see how good President Trump’s deal-making prowess really is. He’s attempting something Republicans never have been able to do: repeal, or at least sharply scale back, an entitlement, in this case Obamacare. The general history of Republicans long was to be the “adult in the room,” paying...

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Autodidact / Fleming

27 Mar, 2017

Samuel Johnson, Our Greatest Moralist, Part C

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To understand what Johnson was doing in his moral essays, we have to know something of the revolution he was opposing: the philosophies of abstraction that were taking hold in his lifetime.  Since the 18th century at least, we have been asked to identify ourselves and our duty with all of humanity and its needs, and to take a dim view of any lesser loyalties to kith and kin, religion and country.  Although these ideas of universal charity and duty are usually identified with Christianity, they derive not from the Bible directly or from Christian theology, but from the attempts...

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Autodidact / Fleming

24 Mar, 2017

Samuel Johnson, Our Greatest Moralist,Part B

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In recent times, Samuel Johnson is remembered primarily for his quips, retorts, and for Boswell’s portrayal of his ferocious character.  Johnson’s prose style and flashes of brilliance are enough to win over most readers who take any pleasure in English literature.  My own particular interest, however, is in this moral philosophy, which can be traced in essays that appeared in The Rambler, The Idler, his review of Soame Jennyings, and in his one novel, Rasselas.  To anticipate my general conclusion, I should say at the beginning that, although he developed his ethical thought in occasional essays and fiction,  he was...

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Autodidact

23 Mar, 2017

Samuel Johnson, Our Greatest Moralist, Part A

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The modern tradition of thought–whether expressed in verse or history or philosophy–has been essentially liberal and anti-Christian.  So much so that we take it for granted and are grateful when we can find some particle of decency and sense in writers like Hemingway or John Updike.  Anti-Christian liberalism was not always so dominant.  England and France were largely Christian nations down to early 18th century, and the Enlightenment only reached its position of supremacy, in the years leading up to the French Revolution, in the works of Diderot, Rousseau, and above all Voltaire.  But it is not difficult to find...

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All Paid Subscribers / Andrei Navrozov / Wednesday's Child

22 Mar, 2017

Wednesday’s Child: A Magic Mountain

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Our precious Mount Etna, which happens to be the tallest volcano in Europe, has been exploding, with streams of molten lava descending into the Valle del Bove from elevations of some three kilometers at the crater’s rim.  A BBC team of reporters nearly didn’t make it down, which showed them that nature could be as violent as the teenage drug lords and tattooed single mothers they had been used to interviewing in their line of duty. ‘“a Muntagna,” the locals call it in dialect – the Mountain with a capital M – as attested by a man named Gaetano Perricone,...

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FF / FUTR / Podcasts / Season 1

22 Mar, 2017

From Under the Rubble, Episode 10: I Hate the Constitution

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In this episode of From Under the Rubble, Dr. Fleming examines the idea of “Hating the Constitution” via the well-known song, “I’m a good ol’ Rebel.” What does it mean to love and worship and protect the Constitution? Is this something that traditionalists and conservatives should be engaged in? Original Air Date: March 22, 2017 Show Run Time: 37 minutes Show Guest(s): Dr. Thomas Fleming Show Host(s): Stephen Heiner The Fleming Foundation · From Under the Rubble, Episode 10: I Hate the Constitution   From Under the Rubble℗ is a Production of the Fleming Foundation. Copyright 2017. All Rights are...