The Fleming Foundation Cultural Commentary

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A Life / Feature / Fleming

24 Dec, 2016

Keeping Christmas, Part I: Even Atheists Can Celebrate

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This is a detached fragment of A Life in Shreds and Patches. As a cynical youth, I used to listen to Herbert W. Armstrong on the radio.  Armstrong was a bona fide American kook: an anti-sabbatarian British Israelite—from Iowa, naturally—and an autodidact who read copiously and recklessly to find evidence to fit his surrealistic theories about the Bible and human history.  Armstrong hated Christmas, so every Christmas he devoted one of the episodes of his radio program, The World Tomorrow, to the evils of Christmas—the crimes, depressions, drug overdoses, and—above all suicides—that he would cite and recite with glee to...

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FF / Podcasts

21 Dec, 2016

Boethius Book Club, Episode 10: The Odyssey

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This month’s selection is The Odyssey. Our first discussion one year ago, you will recall, took up the books devoted to Telemachus. The discussion was quite good but limited. Although everyone probably has read the Odyssey more than once, and I know that many reread the whole thing for last August’s meeting, we shall be concentrating mainly on the opening of Book I, Books V-VIII, XI, and XIII-XXIV. In this next installment, we shall take up the character and homecoming of Odysseus and explore more deeply the Homeric view of man, the gods, and justice. We might even engage in...

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All Paid Subscribers / Andrei Navrozov / Free Content

21 Dec, 2016

Wednesday’s Child:  Wheat of the Saracen (Free)

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“Idiot!” exclaims the driver of the car I’m in, referring to the man ahead who has just pulled out, or cut him up, or whatever it is that motorists do to each other which they oughtn’t.  In exclaiming thus he pronounces judgment on his fellow man where the verdict is shorter than a sentence.  It’s called an insult. An insult is different from a slur in that no inferences are drawn about the person apart from those suggested by his behavior of the moment. He was cursed, yet remains a stranger.  Calling the erratic driver in front a “bastard” would...

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Feature / Fleming

20 Dec, 2016

A Humble Request for Support

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2016 was a pretty good year for The Fleming Foundation.  We managed to post, on average, about one piece a day on the website and we added a number of new writers, who contributed articles, editorial columns, written interviews, and podcasts. Our list of contributors now includes, in addition to Andrei Navrozov, Frank Brownlow, and myself:  John Seiler, Clyde Wilson, Roger McGrath, Srdja Trifkovic, Marco Bassani, E. Christian Kopff, Red Phillips, and Stephen Heiner.  Until November, certain complications made it difficult to publish as many other writers as I wanted, but, now that this obstacle has been eliminated, Fleming.Foundation is...

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All Paid Subscribers / Feature / Seiler

20 Dec, 2016

Nyuk! Nyuk! Nyuk! Our Delusional Opponents

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“If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles.” Sun Tzu The great Chinese strategist’s words explain why Hillary and the Left lost, and still are losing. They didn’t know their enemy, nor themselves. They had no idea Trump would trounce them. And they continue to live in a world of delusion – or, as we say in psychotherapeutic America, they’re “in denial.” On the Fleming Foundation site, I wrote about the Left’s obsession with Russia here and here. Not the atheist, communist Russia of 1917-91, which the Left commonly defended, or at...

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Feature / Fleming

19 Dec, 2016

A Life in Shreds and Patches, Chapter 1: In Search of a Vocation, Part E

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Movies and radio programs furnished the structure and raw materials for the games we played, day after day throughout the Summer.  Somewhere we got hold of some building materials and, with a few nails and a bit of rope, constructed “horses.”  I had a particular favorite that had a red streak of heartwood which I imagined to be the mane.  We “rode” all over the neighborhood in gangs of rustlers and sheriff’s posses, endlessly forming, dissolving, and reforming alliances, each one of us imagining we were Roy or Gene or Hoppy.  And if we were not acting out our cowboy...

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Fleming / Free Content

17 Dec, 2016

The Fleming Foundation Wants You

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Wanted:  A Few Good Men and Women Dear Subscribers and Readers: The Fleming Foundation needs help.  We have virtually no staff but the broken-down old editor plus some part-time help from volunteers, and, if we are going to thrive and grow, we need more. If you have any useful skills—beyond talking a good game or thinking great thoughts —please consider joining our dedicated band of volunteers.  What sorts of skills?  Computer and internet experience, for example, secretarial skills, business administration, book editing and publishing, writing and editing…  We are deficient in every area. And compensation?  Initially, nothing but good will. ...

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Fleming / On the House

17 Dec, 2016

Jerks 2: Taxonomy, Part D

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Self-made millionaires set the tone for this class, and any scholar or man of letters who has had to raise money among men of wealth and influence will see himself in Eliot’s Prufrock.  These poor fools have to listen, hour after hour, to Dives’ tales of victories on the golf course and of his personal prowess in beating down less competent or less ruthless rivals.  I have friends who used to know a Georgia business tycoon—let’s call him Ted—and they regaled me with tales of how the buccaneering plutocrat boasted of besting not just his enemies but his friends.  Once,...

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FF / Podcasts

17 Dec, 2016

Christianity and Classical Culture, Episode 9: Oresteia Part II

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In this second part of a two part mini series on the Oresteia, Dr. Fleming explores themes and characters in the second and third plays in the cycle, the Libation Bearers and the Eumenides. He examines the role of fate in what Orestes does, the horror of blood guilt in relation to justice, how Athena tames the Furies eventually, and how she began this process using the conceit of a legal proceeding, in a courtroom. Original Air Date: December 17, 2016 Show Run Time: 52 minutes Show Guest(s): Dr. Thomas Fleming Show Host(s): Stephen Heiner The Fleming Foundation · Christianity and Classical...

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All Paid Subscribers / Feature / Seiler

16 Dec, 2016

Why the Russians Couldn’t POSSIBLY Have Helped Trump

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  “If your opponents are digging a hole for themselves, let them,” advises “Debate, Student Edition,” a guide for high schoolers. I also remember Franklin Roosevelt said something similar, “If you opponent is committing suicide, don’t interfere.” But I can’t find the reference online. Perhaps the Russkies deleted it to sabotage the reputation of Uncle Joe’s old Yalta pal. That’s the best reason the Russkies actually didn’t interfere in our election to help Trump: They knew Hillary’s campaign was a loser and didn’t want to interfere with her slide toward oblivion. Only Hillary and her brainwashed Main Sleaze Media worshippers...