Author: Thomas Fleming

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Autodidact / Fleming

31 Oct, 2015

Cicero, Part II: Enter Cicero, Stage Left.

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The most notable event of the consulship of Pompey and Crassus, however, was the political trial of Gaius Verres. As governor of Sicily (73-71) Verres had outdone all his predecessors and rivals in corruption and theft, and he could afford to retain the greatest legal and political talent of the day, the former consul and arch-conservative, Q. Hortensius Hortalus. The desperate Sicilians turned to M. Tullius Cicero, a young orator with great political ambitions. Cicero was a well-to-do novus homo (a new man, that is, someone with no ancestors who had reached high office) from the sticks, Arpinum, in fact,...

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Fleming / Interviews

30 Oct, 2015

An Interview With Misa Djurkovic: Serbia–and Europe–Under Siege

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An Interview with Misa Djurkovic, a writer and political analyst with the Institute of European Studies, Belgrade. Part I:  Τhe Immigration Crisis and Serbia 1. How has the Inundation of Islamic refugees affected Serbia?   How many have actually crossed into Serbia?  Do many stay or are they just passing through on the way to Hungary. For the time being more than 200, 000 of immigrants, mostly from Syria, Afghanistan, and Iraq have entered Serbia. Not all of them should be regarded as refugees or asylum seekers. Huge number of them are economic immigrants. At this point, all of them...

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Best Revenge / Fleming

29 Oct, 2015

Back to the Past, Part I: Athens

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International travel has always been a chore, but in recent decades that chore has begun to equal one of the labors of Hercules. The blame lies in part to pointless security regulations and the TSA goons culled from the prisons, asylums, and housing projects from which they were recruited, in part to the airlines who, in packing fatter and fatter Americans into tighter and tighter places, have defied the laws of solid geometry, but in larger part to the travelers themselves. What people! Unwashed bodies bulging out of unwashed jeans, aging fat ladies whose decibels rise with the alcohol content...

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Fleming

26 Oct, 2015

Properties of Blood, I: J

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Light Unto the Nations Christians and Jews have always believed that the Jews of the Old Testament were an instrument by which salvation came to the human race.  This does not mean that gentiles and all their works were uniformly despised even in the Old Testament.  Throughout the Old Testament we meet with many decent or righteous gentiles: the pharaoh who befriended Joseph, the benevolent Persian king (Cyrus) whom some rabbis regarded as the Messiah, because he returned the Jews to the Holy Land, and Job, the man of Uz.  The gentile Job is the most righteous man of the...

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Autodidact / Fleming

22 Oct, 2015

Preface to Cicero

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Part I Some years ago, at a weekend meeting of The Rockford Institute’s executives, Richard Neuhaus chattered endlessly about what he called “Public Philosophy” and recommended that the Institute draw up a public philosophy of its own.  He had borrowed the phrase from  Walter Lippmann, a columnist who had spent a long career trivializing important questions.  After the meeting, John Howard asked me if I would have a crack at drawing up the TRI Public Philosophy.  This is exactly the sort of thing I hate, but I accepted the task, albeit grudgingly, and explained to John that the most successful...

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Uncategorized

21 Oct, 2015

Dog Latin

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Habemus Oratorum Domum? Can Paul Ryan win the support of the House Freedom Caucus, the Republican Study Committee, and the Tuesday Group? If he can, forget the speakership, let’s talk sainthood, because unifying House Republicans counts as his first miracle. E.  Christian Kopff sent me this gem, written by one Jim Geraghty from the NR website.  I don’t read National Review in any form, print, internet, or the original crayon, so I don’t know who Mr. Geraghty is or if he has a whimsical turn of mind or if he is possibly fond of ridiculing the ignorance of learned languages...

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Uncategorized

20 Oct, 2015

Properties of Blood I H: Augustine at the End of an Era

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When Alaric the Visigoth sacked Rome in 410, therefore, it came a as terrible shock to the world, almost inconceivable to us.  The most recent parallel is the fall of Constantinople to the Turks in 1453, but that catastrophe had been universally anticipated for decades and preceded by the Crusaders’ sack of the city in the Fourth Crusade.  The fall of Rome was inconceivable. Pagans like the poet Claudian echoed the conservative arguments of Symmachus, a Roman senator of ancient stock: In abandoning the old gods Romans had invited disaster.  Claudian gleefully mocked a Christian general, telling him to trust...

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Fleming

13 Oct, 2015

Properties of Blood, Chapter I, Part G: Rome, Urbs Aeterna

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In addressing himself to the Jews (and the stray Gentiles who may have been in the crowd), Jesus was able to take for granted certain customs and traditions of moral law, whose inner and original meaning He now revealed.  Although modern Christians make much of the Ten Commandments, the moral injunctions it contains, against blasphemy, theft, perjury, adultery, murder, and filial impiety were hardly unique in the Mediterranean world.  Such prohibitions were the common stock of ancient moral and legal traditions.  Greeks and Romans (going beyond the Egyptians and Sumerians, whose moral codes were similar to that of the Jews)...

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Fleming / Interviews

12 Oct, 2015

Interview With Polonia Christiana, Part II

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PC     Do you believe the neoconservative dominance of mainstream discourse of US foreign policy is slowly coming to an end or we simply seeing a generational shift? Also, have the neoconservatives in your judgement played a role in instigating the current crisis in Ukraine? TJF    The neoconservatives in themselves are of little or no importance.  They do not formuulate policy, they merely repeat the slogans of the Cold War Democratic Party and put a slight conservative spin.  Their great success was in making an alliance with American Evangelical Zionists, who have been taught to see the world...

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Fleming / Interviews

11 Oct, 2015

Interview With Polonia Christiana, Part I

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Thomas Fleming was interviewed in August by Mike Krupa of Polonia Christiana.  For readers of Polish, the inteveiw is available here.  For those less fortunate, we have posted the original exchange in English., PC  After almost 8 years of Barack Obama’s presidency, what kind of country is the United States? TJF  When Barack Obama was elected President, reaction was divided along party lines.  Democrats, especially those who belonged to ethnic minorities, expected rapid improvement in their condition and in their opportunities for advancement. They also expected a quick end to the military adventurism that had characterized his predecessor’s administrations.  Republicans, by contrast, feared...