Author: Thomas Fleming

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Fleming / Free Content

1 May, 2019

The Enlightenment Against Nations and Peoples

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When a French intellectual looked in the mirror in 1600, he saw a Frenchman and a Christian where he would have liked to have seen a Greek pagan.  Since the Church was still powerful, few intellectuals were as mad as Giordano Bruno, who was justly burned at the stake in 1600, for his neopagan notions.  Instead, the intellectuals became sly and ironic.  From Montaigne on, intellectuals began subjecting Catholic France to imaginary visitors from Latin America, Persia, and China, all of whom expressed astonishment at the silly religion, false reverence to the king, and loyalty to the great nation.  

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Fleming / Free Content

26 Apr, 2019

Heresies in the Mirror: The Cancer of Globalism

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At this point in the argument, I want to make it plain that I am not trying to write even a brief history of political universalism.  My basic intent is to show some of the more important influences—influences, I wish to emphasize, that I do not necessarily criticize much less condemn.  So far, I have briefly mentioned the Stoic ideal of world-citizenship, which was transformed into a more restrained celebration of the Imperium Romanum as an ideal of human community rooted in justice.  The disintegration of the Empire, rather than discrediting the imperial ideal, invested it with spiritual significance. I...

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Feature / Fleming

18 Apr, 2019

The Middlebury College Inquisition

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Conservatives are upset that Middlebury College has cancelled a conservative speaker, allegedly out of concern for safety. The safety angle shows how utterly degradingly stupid college officials have become. Of course, any rational person despises Middlebury for this and a thousand other crimes. But, let us take a breath and reflect.

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FF

18 Apr, 2019

Poems: Ecclesiastical Sonnets of Wordsworth

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While Wordsworth was something of a radical in his early years, he settled down into a comfortable but apparently sincere Anglican faith.  His Ecclesiastical Sonnets are not, it goes without saying, among his best read works, but they are carefully, even elegantly written.

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Feature / Fleming

16 Apr, 2019

Heresies in the Mirror: The Genesis of Globalism

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If family ties and local patriotism mean little, then the Stoic should regard all men as his fellow-citizens.  He should be a cosmopolites—a citizen of the world.  Like most of the harsher teachings of the Stoics, cosmopolitanism is easier to mouth than to practice.  So austere a Stoic as Cato the younger was able to hand off his wife to a friend, but he could not cease to be a Roman patriot who preferred death to living under a dictator who, among other sins, cultivated the friendship of foreigners.

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Feature / Fleming

11 Apr, 2019

Roger Scruton: Purged

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I see Prof. Sir Roger Scruton has been sacked by the Conservative government for saying George Soros is bad, Islamophobia is an imaginary problem, the sky is blue, water freezes at O centigrade, and a host of other offense notions. I never met Scruton, though I used to have some dealings with the Salisbury Review. I read some of his essays and his book on Sexual Desire, which had some good things in it but comes out of a philosophical tradition that has done far more harm than good. In this sense he is a real conservative, clinging to rationalism...