FDR | Reflections on Morality, Philosophy, and History

FDR’s Inaugural Address and St John Climacus, Ladder of Divine Ascent, on Fear & Cowardice, Step 21

FDR’s First Inaugural Address and St John Climacus, Ladder of Divine Ascent, on Fear & Cowardice, Step 21

08/06/2026 Bruce Strom 0

The chapter on fear is both one of the shortest and one of the most puzzling chapters of St John Climacus’ Ladder of Divine Ascent. In part, that is because there are many flavors of fears that spring from our most basal fears: the fear of the dark, the distressing, the dangerous.
More common are those fears that cause us to hesitate. Perhaps we fear what others think of us when we champion the good others do not see. Perhaps we fear rejection and failure. Perhaps we fear that past failures will rob us of future success. Perhaps we fear to do good when we are not encouraged. […]

Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s Prayer For Allied Soldiers Landing on the Beaches of Normandy

08/05/2026 Bruce Strom 0

We now assume that our victory over the Nazis in this invasion of France was inevitable, but like many military battles, the battle could have gone either way. How were the Allies able to land enough troops and tanks, plus sufficient food, water, gasoline, and ammunition, on the Normandy beaches to overwhelm the German forces and push forward, first to Paris, and then to Germany itself? Why were the Allied forces not thrown back into the sea?
The historian William Manchester tells us that “Hitler’s intuition had told him from the first that the landings would come in Normandy. Then he listened to his advisors and changed his mind.” They advised him that the Allies would land in Calais in Northern France, which was a short distance from Dover in England. “The main force will land near Calais; Normandy was just a feint.” […]

Pope Leo XIV Encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas, on Artificial Intelligence and Social Justice

06/16/2026 Bruce Strom 0

Artificial intelligence both causes and enables varying types of theft. Surprisingly, when you do a word search on the encyclical, the words PLAGIARISM and THEFT are not found at all, while the word STEAL is used once. In a few sections, there are some euphemistic phrases that hint at theft, but it does not explicitly name the sin.
Winding through the courts are many lawsuits alleging plagiarism filed against the companies who created the various chatbots. Should these companies copy text into their databases without permission, and without paying royalties? Why can’t these companies always list their sources, with the option to show the original content? […]

Roman Stoic Philosopher Seneca on Aging, Death, and Suicide

09/17/2025 Bruce Strom 5

Seneca reminds us: “There is indeed a limit fixed to us,” “but none of us knows how near he is to this limit. Therefore, let us so order our minds as if we had come to the very end. Let us postpone nothing. Let us balance life’s account every day.” “Let us begin at once to live and count each separate day as a separate life.” What is important is “not how long you live, but how nobly you live. And often living nobly means that you cannot live long.” […]

Pope Leo XIII: Catholic Social Justice and Rerum Novarum, Confronting the Modern World

07/27/2025 Bruce Strom 4

O’Malley writes: “Rerum Novarum is a long encyclical. It reaffirms previous papal condemnations of socialism and communism. But its tone throughout is serene, and free from rant.” “While it proclaimed private property as a natural right, it insisted it had its limits. If private property was a right, so was the right of the worker to a just wage and to humane working conditions. Most remarkably, the encyclical endorsed the right of workers to organize in order to obtain and secure their rights.”
Pope Leo XXIII was labeled the Social Pope and the Pope of Workers since he endorsed the necessity of paying workers a living wage that enables the worker to feed, clothe, and house his family with dignity. Rerum Novarum encouraged the formulation of social justice doctrine, leading to the Catholic concept of the preferential option for the poor. Subsequent popes endorsed the theology of this encyclical: Pope Pius XI issued the encyclical Quadragesimo Anno, Pope Pius VI issued Octagesima Adveniens, and Pope John Paul II issued Centesimus Annus on the fortieth, eightieth, and hundredth anniversary of Rerum Novarum. In addition, Pope John XXIII issued Mater Et Magistra on social justice. […]

Jimmy Carter: Christmas in Plains Compared to Christmas in the White House and Afterwards

01/14/2025 Bruce Strom 4

Jimmy Carter grew up on his family farm in Archery, Georgia, several miles from Plains. He remembers: “In those earlier days, all my close neighbors were black families.” Their children “were my intimate friends with whom I played, fought, fished, hunted, and worked with in the cotton and peanut fields that were owned by my father.” When he went into town to sell peanuts, and when he started school, he felt that he “was in an alien environment in Plains, away from my black friends.”
Jimmy Carter continues: “The Great Depression was a time of almost incredible poverty, not only in rural Georgia but all over the country. Although my father was a landowner, cash money was scarce for us and for everyone else. Land seemed to have the only permanent economic value, and hard work was the key to survival. The celebration of Christmas during these times was quite different from what we know today: much more frugal, but with a degree of personal intimacy that brings back warm recollections.” […]

Did Kamala Win the Debate? Did Trump Win the Debate? Compared to the JFK-Nixon 1960 Debate

09/18/2024 Bruce Strom 2

There is no debate that Kamala Harris won the debate.
But liberal pundits are bashing Trump when he claimed that he also won the debate. These pundits are wrong, because Trump also won the debate. He said what he wanted to say, he shouted what he wanted us to hear, and he repeated what got him elected in 2016. […]

Trump-Biden Debate Compared to Kennedy-Nixon 1960 Debates: the First Televised Debates

Trump-Biden Debate, Compared to Kennedy-Nixon 1960 TV Debates, With David Frum Editorial

07/01/2024 Bruce Strom 0

Often when you catch Trump with his hand in the cookie jar, he first denies the existence of the cookie jar, then denies the existence of the cookies, and then says it was perfectly fine to steal the cookies!
When reminded how he said that US servicemen who are captured in war, like John McCain, or who die in war, are suckers and losers, Trump simply denies he said such things!
TRUMP: “First of all, that was a made-up quote, suckers and losers. They made it up. It was in a third-rate magazine that’s failing, like many of these magazines. He made that up.” “We had nineteen people that said I didn’t say it.” Maybe Trump is referring to nineteen right wingnut anchors on Fox News and Newsmax. […]

Lyndon Baines Johnson: Youth, Schooling, and Rise to Power

02/07/2024 Bruce Strom 3

Lyndon wrote in the school paper: “What you accomplish in life depends almost completely upon what you make yourself do.” “Perfect concentration and a great desire will bring a person success in any field of work he chooses. The very first thing one should do is to train the mind to concentrate upon the essentials and discard the frivolous and unimportant.” […]

Loving God in Deuteronomy, and a Gentile’s Defense of Judaism, Part 2

12/29/2023 Bruce Strom 2

When studying the rabbinical commentaries on Deuteronomy, I was struck by the number of times the commandment to Love God was repeated in various forms, including the commandment to Fear God, which is roughly equivalent, so I decided to count them, there are about twenty repetitions. This was surprising to me as a Christian, for as St Paul exhorts, “the letter” of the law “kills, but the Spirit gives life.” […]

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