Dr. Fleming explains to Rex why grammar and communication are a lost art. Podcast
Knowing good grammar and understanding the words you use is no laughing matter…
Knowing good grammar and understanding the words you use is no laughing matter…
Diversity breeds moral confusion, which is aggravated by the high population density that encourages a comfortable sense of anonymity. Anyone who has lived 50 or 60 years in North America can understand what has happened
The admonition to resist not evil is not aimed at army commanders, kings, and emperors, much less at settlers in a violent wilderness or urban homesteaders, but at members of a face-to-face community of the sort that Jesus had experienced in Galilee and in which Christians are going to live as members of a parish and diocese.
Christians have interpreted Christ’s injunction to turn the other cheek in different ways. Over the centuries Catholic authorities have generally and consistently upheld the righteousness of self-defense, just war, and capital punishment, while the Orthodox have been more prone to view all war, just and necessary as they may be, as nonetheless sinful and requiring absolution. When a Byzantine emperor asked his Patriarch to proclaim as martyrs all the soldiers who died fighting Islam, he was refused. Neither Church, it goes without saying, instructed its followers not to resist the aggression of evil men…. The injunction to turn the...
This is a revised version of a piece first published in 2014. Once upon a time I decided to learn Japanese. I had none of the usual practical reasons: no business interests that would take me to Japan nor even an academic project comparing Noh plays with Attic tragedy. I knew next to nothing of Japan, though as a child my imagination had been stirred by the Mikado, and later, when a college friend persuaded me to read the Tale of Genjii, my mind was haunted by images of beautiful men and women spending languorous evenings composing allusive verses to...
One of the minor annoyances of growing old is the uncomfortable feeling that that less time we have left, the faster it seems to be going by. In a dying civilization the annoyance is aggravated by the constant awareness of how rapidly downhill everything is headed.
The one figure who defines modern thought is Aristotle, not of course because modern thinkers have followed him, but because since Galileo and Descartes and Bacon, scientists and philosophers have defined themselves by their opposition to Aristotle. That is my first introductory point, as obvious as it is true. Let me add a second point, no less true but more controversial: In all that is most important, Aristotle is more often right than wrong, and consistently right on those points where he has been most attacked. Life Aristotle was born in 384, an Ionian Greek in Stagira in Chalcidice. His...
See full text of complete series here: https://fleming.foundation/2022/01/the-autodidact-homer/
The Best Revenge 3: A Party for Boethius Thursday we held our first little get-together. It was too modest to be called an “event.” About 20 friends came for a glass or two of wine to our crumbling stuccoed shack on Highcrest Road. We cannot afford expensive stuff for this many people, but we did serve a decent Merlot from Mirassou and a better Portuguese Douro (Altano). I don’t remember which pinot grigio we served, but one of the guests in a misguided gesture of friendship brought a bottle of E.B. (Ezra Brooks contribution to single barrel Bourbon). After...