Author: Thomas Fleming

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Feature / Fleming / From Under The Rubble

21 Apr, 2016

The Face on the Barroom Coin

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The Good News [from Matthew 22]: And they sent out unto him their disciples with the Herodians, saying…Tell us therefore, What thinkest thou? Is it lawful to give tribute unto Caesar, or not?  But Jesus perceived their wickedness, and said, Why tempt ye me, ye hypocrites?  Shew me the tribute money. And they brought unto him a penny. And he saith unto them, Whose is this image and superscription?  They say unto him, Caesar’s. Then saith he unto them, Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s; and unto God the things that are God’s.  When they had heard...

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Feature / Fleming

19 Apr, 2016

Live Until You Die (on the house)

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This is an improved version of an essay first published in 1999 “I grow old learning many things,” said Solon, a poet well-known for his wisdom and for his longevity: He lived to be almost 80.  Although, as my old teacher Douglas Young pointed out, Solon’s statement might be interpreted to mean “too much education makes one prematurely old,” the point is clear enough and as true today as it was 2400 years ago when the Athenian poet-statesman lived long enough to see his beloved city acquiesce in the rule of a tyrant: A wise man never ceases to learn new...

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Autodidact / Fleming / On the House

13 Apr, 2016

Aristotle III: Ethics, the Foundation of Politics

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Aristotle’s most important observations on human life are found in his Eudemian and Nicomachean Ethics, the Politics and Constitution of Athens, the Rhetoric, and the Poetics.  Because ethics, politics, rhetoric, and poetry are all concerned with human behavior (ethos), he seems to have lumped them together generically as ethica.  In all these works, Aristotle says many invaluably true things about human behavior, politics, and art, but what is essential is not the specific truths or even his system itself, which may strike us moderns as entirely too teleological (that is, predicated on the assumption that all natural processes have a...

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On the House

11 Apr, 2016

Tom Fleming’s Complainte On the House

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This was my swan song, published last June (2015) George Garret used to tell the story of a young writer who visited him in York Harbor, Maine,  The writer, who had worked in a prison, wore a cap emblazoned with the letters SCUP, which stood for something like South Carolina Union of Prisons.  Sharing some of George’s sense of humor–which bordered on the wicked–he went through the streets of the resort town and stopped ill-dressed vacationers  and said in his most polite Southern manner, “Excuse me, sir, but I am with the South Carolina Ugly Patrol, and it is my...

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Feature / Fleming / From Under The Rubble

4 Apr, 2016

We’ll Hang Donald Trump From a Sour Apple Tree

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The irrepressible Donald Trump has once again embarrassed his supporters by blurting out the first silly response that floated through what passes for his mind.  When Chris Matthews asked the candidate who would be punished if abortion were recriminalized, Trump did not–as he should have–refuse to discuss any hypothetical question; he did not even use the rabbinical trick of turning the tables on Matthews, asking what the hack “thought” about the matter.  No, without giving the subject a moment’s thought, Trump blurted out the gaffe that has gone round the world.  If abortion were made a crime, then the perpetrators—including the pregnant...

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Best Revenge / Feature / Fleming

27 Mar, 2016

Christ Is Risen

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Anything I might have to say on this most blessed day of the year would be at best superfluous.  I do, however,  want to draw attention to the beautiful collect in the Old Mass.  Many of these prayers are capable of inspiring a good deal of reflection, if we pause a moment to consider them: Deus qui hodierna die per Unigenitum tuum, aeternitatis nobis aditum, devincta morte reserasti,  vota nostra, quae praeveniendo aspiras, etiam adjuvando prosequere.  Per eundem Dominum etc.  This is  Englished in various ways, but this version, drawn from the Father Lasance Missal, puts the gist of it...

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Autodidact / Feature / Fleming

26 Mar, 2016

The Autodidact on Aristotle, Part II

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Aristotle and Plato Although it is fair to describe Aristotle as the most important Platonist of all time, he parted company with his teacher on many important points.  This is a difficult topic, complicated both by Plato’s dialectical methods that sometimes make it hard to know what his position was and by his changing positions.  Plato’s first attempt to find a divine and enduring basis for our ever-changing realities is his theory of ideas or forms, which he either later or alternatively reconceived more in terms of number.  Aristotle fully acknowledges the truth of Plato’s insight into the problem—that for...

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Feature / Fleming / On the House

26 Mar, 2016

The Tower of Skulls On the House

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The day before the Easter we celebrate in the West, my thoughts go out to Christians in the East who once endured the horror of Islamic rule.  I wrote this piece in September 2001, and it was published  n December.   “You’ve never been to Nish?!”  My friend was incredulous.  How can someone who has traveled, it sometimes seems, every inch of Montenegro, Bosnia, and Kosovo, not have found the time to go to Nish?  The lady is far from being a local chauvinist, but when I first met her and asked (as I had been taught by a Belgrader) if...

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Feature / Fleming / On the House

22 Mar, 2016

Muslims Must Go

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Here is Hillary Clinton’s response to the terrorist attacks on Brussels: “Calling for 12 million immigrants to be rounded up and deported.  Demanding we turn away refugees because of their religion, and proposing a ban on all Muslims entering the United States…America should be better than this, and I believe it’s our responsibility as citizens to say so…If you see bigotry, oppose it. If you see violence, condemn it. If you see a bully, stand up to him.” Ms Clinton actually made her remarks at an AIPAC meeting where she spent most of her time attacking the Republican front-runner, but...

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Articles / Autodidact / Fleming

19 Mar, 2016

The Autodidact on Aristotle

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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...