Author: Thomas Fleming

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Feature / Fleming

30 Nov, 2017

Stupid Thoughts

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This is a country where Joe Scarborough, who is so fake he has to lie about his Thanksgiving day, is accusing Donald Trump of insanity.  If it hadn’t been Morning Joe, it might have been Matt Laurer.  What a country. The only clever thing I have ever heard from John Podhoretz (Full disclosure: I have never met the pizza man though I did have dealings with his parents) is his remark that Trump should be impeached for forcing on our attention the moronic Lavar  Ball, who single-handedly has done more to explode the idea of racial equality than anyone since...

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Fleming / From Under The Rubble

30 Nov, 2017

City-State Rights, Part II: Conclusion

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The city-state is the seed-bed of civilization, but the concept seems alien to the American tradition.  Nonetheless, our cities once did possess, at least before the revolution, many of the same chartered rights enjoyed by English and European burgs.  In the Anglo-American world, the liberties of cities was defined by the charters they received either from the Crown itself or from the Royal Governor and legislature: Williamsburg, for example, was chartered in 1695, Wilmington in 1763.  Many of the older cities and towns of the Eastern Seaboard had been chartered municipal corporations, though in the decades following the revolution, the...

Fleming / On the House

27 Nov, 2017

City States Rights, Part IB (Free to all registered subscribers)

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There have been many press accounts, including Ambrose Evans-Pritchard’s series of articles for the London Telegraph, on the increasingly strict censorship of opinion in Europe.  Public criticism is usually taken to be the sign of a robust society, but it is increasingly difficult to describe Islamic attacks on Jews and, in the aftermath of the recent Islamic invasion, information on the robbery, assault, rape, and murder committed by immigrants has been rigorously suppressed.  In 1995 the EU sacked economist Bernard Conolly for criticizing monetary union, and it took six years for the European Court to act on the case.  When...

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Fleming / Free Content

25 Nov, 2017

City-States Rights, Part I A (FREE)

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A version of this was presented some years ago at a meeting in Charleston, South Carolina Cities like Charleston and Siena and Edinburgh are a great deal like nations: They have their own identity celebrated in songs and stories and a peculiar slant on history.  These real cities are not merely aggregations of aliens who “dwell together, in Eliot’s phrase, “to make money from each other.”  They are enduring communities, with a common  faith and identity, that have a future only because they have a past. I have come to see that in this respect Charleston has been throughout its...

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Film / Fleming

18 Nov, 2017

Movie of the Week: Frank Capra’s Rain or Shine (1930)

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Rain or Shine (1930), directed by Frank Capra, starring Joe Cook, with Dave Chasen.  This zany classic is based on a Broadway show co-written by Maurice Marks and the character actor James Gleason.  Jo Swerling adapted it for the movies; the biggest change, apparently, being elimination of the musical numbers that the cheap producer did not wish to pay for.  (Capra went along, arguing that any film with the greatest comedian in the world had to be good.)  The film has more of a premise than a plot:  Smiley Johnson, experienced circus performer and manager, is trying to save the...

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Feature / Fleming / From Under The Rubble

14 Nov, 2017

Judge Roy Moore: Is It Time to Go?

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Judge Roy Moore is probably not going to be governor of Alabama.  The case against Moore is growing more serious with each passing day as more women come forward to charge him with indecent behavior and as people who knew him in Gadsden are backing their claims. That none of the claims is politically motivated is difficult to believe, and the justification that the accusers are Republicans who voted for Trump proves little.  Many Trump voters are not especially conservative and few, probably, would approve Judge Moore’s conflation of Scriptures and the American Constitution.  HL Mencken might have held his...

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Fleming / Free Content

13 Nov, 2017

We’re a Lot Smarter Than We Used to Be.. (FREE)

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“We’re a lot smarter than we used to be.”   I almost wish I had heard what led up to this extraordinary declaration on NPR’s Morning Edition, but I was too busy making breakfast.  Perhaps it had something to with Global Warming or lead in the water or the cholera plague brought into Haiti by the UN’s humanitarian mission.   Almost wish.  Perhaps the poor geek only meant our increased knowledge in certain technical areas enables us to screw things up more royally than in previous generations.  But it is far more likely that he seriously meant that the wisdom...

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Fleming / From Under The Rubble

11 Nov, 2017

Simple Simon on Traditionalism, Conclusion

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II From any point of view that could reasonably be described as “conservative,” respect for Tradition is incumbent on people who are not hell-bent on destroying the social order.  But, it is not just self-described conservatives and Tories who understand the importance of Tradition.  Old Whigs like Burke took their stand on what they regarded as traditional liberties, and later in the 19th century even Whig Liberals were hardly advocates of revolution.  In his political novels, Trollope lambasts Disraeli and the Tories for subverting the British constitution, and Tradition has never been better defended than by Sir Henry Sumner Maine...

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Best Revenge / Fleming

9 Nov, 2017

A Belated Letter of (if not exactly from) Italy

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Dear Fellow Travelers and Readers: We finally returned from Europe Monday afternoon.  The flight was uneventful and, mirabile dictu, so was our entry into the United States.  They finally have the ID processing machines in working order so all the zeks can get through the system with less trouble.  As I looked at the line, I wondered if Purgatory entailed as much rigmarole and waiting. We spent three days in Holland, in a village outside of Amsterdam, visiting our friends Michael and Koosje Guravage.  Michael, as some of you may recall, has traveled several times with us and is now...

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Feature / Fleming / From Under The Rubble

7 Nov, 2017

Conservatism: Traditionalism

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Conservatism is a very elastic term, so big that it was stretched, by rent-seeking leaders of Conservative organizations in the 1990’s, into a big tent.  There are liberal Conservatives who care only about the illusion of free markets and freedom of choice, Neoconservatives who are democratist Jacobins and soft-core Marxists, and even “traditionalist” Conservatives, who do not entirely reject the classical tradition, the works of Shakespeare and Milton, and the wisdom of the past. If the word “conservative” were to mean anything—these days, it really doesn’t—it would have to include a healthy respect for tradition. Otherwise, the accusation that Conservatives...