Author: Thomas Fleming

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Best Revenge / Feature / Fleming

21 Jan, 2016

Rome AMT 16 Part 2

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Rome AMT 16 Part 2 What do I say about Rome, after a brief visit of three and a half days, that has not been said before by everyone including myself?  What could be more tedious than one of those breathless travel pieces written by visitors to famous places who have faithfully followed their master Rick Steves or The Blue Guide?  If only the gushers would adopt the blank-screen strategy I have recommended, and look at Rome with the fresh eyes of a Martian visitor!  But no, they have to say something significant, which means, in the end, they get...

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Best Revenge / Feature / Fleming

18 Jan, 2016

Rome in the Year 16 AMT

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Rome 2016 I I left Rockford with the best intentions.  I was going to write and post a diary of our six weeks (plus a few days) in Italy, even including the boring details of transatlantic travel post -911 or, as I prefer to call it, in the Age of Muslim Terrorism, as in “we left home on January 7, AMT 16. Our brief escape from the Midwestern Winter and presidential politicking seemed doomed from the start.  Jim Easton was kind enough to take us to the Van Galder bus station, where we soon learned that the departure schedule had...

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FF / Fleming

6 Jan, 2016

Ransom Notes 2

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Dallas Shipp writes in to ask:  “You once wrote that whenever a talking head on television referred to a storm or a shooting as a ‘tragedy,’ their misuse of the word amounted to nihilism. Could you elaborate and explain your point? TJF:  I don’t recall using the word “nihilism,” but I have frequently argued against the trivializing of the word tragedy by applying it to accident victims and people who have suffered in a disaster.  The trivialization works in two directions.  First, it reduces to the word tragedy to meaning something like “terrible misfortune” or “incomprehensible suffering.”   It is...

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Autodidact / Fleming

4 Jan, 2016

Cicero on Duty

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In Book III of De Officiis Cicero poses a dilemma: Suppose a father were robbing a temple or digging tunnels into the treasury; should a son give information to the government?  The philosopher’s answer, according to Cicero, was: No, that would be wrong.  Instead,”he ought to defend his father in court. But, someone would ask, doesn’t one’s country take precedence over other responsibilities?  Yes, indeed, but it is in the country’s interest to have citizens loyal to their parents. Obviously, what the philosopher, Hecaton of Rhodes, had in mind was some notion that a healthy state could not exist without...

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Feature / Fleming / From Under The Rubble

1 Jan, 2016

Without Apology

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This piece is a slightly revised version of a piece I published some 16 years ago in a magazine I was then editing. “States Rights?  You can’t be serious!  What do you want to do–restore Jim Crow or bring back slavery?” Any serious discussion of the American republic always comes aground on this rock, and it does not matter which kind of liberal is expressing the obligatory shock and dismay, whether he is a leftist at the Nation, a neoliberal at the New Republic, or a National Review minicon (or should that be “moneycon”?) looking for ways to pander and slander their way if not...

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FF / Fleming

31 Dec, 2015

Ransom Notes, 1

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Kellen Buckles wrote to TFF Facebook page: A friend gave me a copy of Rebecca West’s “Black Lamb and Grey Falcon” and I was wondering if my time will be well spent negotiating those 1,150 pages.  Her prologue was full of intriguing ideas but I don’t want to be led astray.   TJF:  The simple answer is that it is a wonderful book, certainly the most insightful and entertaining volume on the Balkans that is available in English.  Nothing else comes close.  West does not know the language and makes historical mistakes, but her approach is humble and allows the various...

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Feature / Fleming / From Under The Rubble

29 Dec, 2015

Making War on the War on the War Against Christmas

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Everyone these days seems to have some complaint against the Christmas holiday.  You’ve heard them all by now, Muslims and Jews whining about “inclusiveness,” downtown storeowners complaining about the chainstores in the malls, and chainstores complaining about Amazon.   Small wonder people are so depressed this time of year.  Not only is the sun disappearing—and who knows if the global warmingists will ever let it return?—but everyone and his Buddhist brother has some ax to grind. The late Herbert W. Armstrong of the Worldwide Whacky Church of G-d Knows What used to do an annual radio broadcast denouncing Christmas.  Crazy...

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Autodidact / Feature / Fleming

24 Dec, 2015

Cicero, De Officiis: On Justice

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Cicero divides the pursuit of duty into five  aspects, and, although much of Book I is taken up in explaining the division, he conveniently restates it near the beginning of II (ch. iii), where he proposes five principles.  Two are concerned with what is right and proper; two with convenience; one with the possible conflict between what is morally right and what is convenient or useful.  Book I is concerned, generally, with the morally right, and specifically with the four virtues of wisdom, justice, courage, and temperance–simple terms in English, but quite complex, both in reality and in Cicero’s treatment....

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Feature / Fleming

17 Dec, 2015

Annals of Trebizond IV, Facts and Fictions

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The long reign of Alexios III  (1349-90) marks the beginning of the end of the Empire of Trebizond.   Alexios, as the result of a palace coup,  came to the throne as a boy of 11, and his youth and inexperience were an invitation to challenges of every sort:  warlords in the provinces, his own counselors and bureaucrats, and even from within the church.  The Trapezuntine elite was dominated by factions loyal either to Constantinople or to the more locally centered provincial aristocracy.  The feud between the Genoese and Venetians broke out again, when the latter were once again granted...

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Feature / Fleming / From Under The Rubble

15 Dec, 2015

Climate Change: A Frank Conversation, Part One

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The recent global summit on climate change—inevitably described as “historic”—was discussed and analyzed all over the media-sphere, by bloggers read only by their mothers and friends (if they have any) and  by the the most swollen talking heads on television.  Everyone was interviewed, profiled, and analyzed.  One important participant—an observer really—who escaped their attention was an obscure Italian political analyst, whose work has been studied without understanding for many years.  I had a chance to sit down with this great skeptic, and interview him on condition of anonymity.  Let’s just call him Nick O.  Before the conversation was over, we were...