Author: Thomas Fleming

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Fleming / Free Content

8 May, 2017

Filmer’s Patriarcha II and III

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Filmer begins his detailed argument with an attack on Robert Cardinal Bellarmine, one of the greatest of the Jesuits and a doctor of the Church.  Bellarmine was a widely respected thinker, a man of sound judgment and excellent reason, whose arguments against Protestantism were credited with saving some parts of Europe from the Reformation and restoring many doubting souls.  He played a creditable role in the controversy over Galileo and deserves to be better appreciated today. Like several other Jesuits, Bellarmine wanted to protect the power of the Church (and its earthly head) from the ambitions of the nation states...

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A Life / Feature / Fleming

8 May, 2017

Diary of a Nobody: Sunday in the Octave of Cinco de Mayo 

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It was Sunday after lunch.  My wife had already gone out to inspect her flowers, while I was tying the laces of my walking shoes and fiddling with our little bluetooth speaker in preparation for the two-miler with Italian lesson. Finally, shoes tied, the Linguaphone lesson discovered, speaker connected, I walked out into the yard to find my wife chatting with a rather queer duck, dressed as if he were a recently retired member of the Sweet Adelines or the Buffalo Bills (once-famous Barbershop quartets).  He was wearing an alarmingly striped jacket, with sweater vest, blue shirt and—I believe—a paisley...

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Fleming / Free Content

5 May, 2017

Hoisting the Donkey, Conclusion (FREE)

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Americans sometimes think theirs is the only “nation of immigrants” beset by ethnic conflicts and bound together only by the flimsy cords of a national ideology.  According to our official propaganda, America is a nation “dedicated to the proposition” and unified by the war to end slavery and republican government.  The Italian state, however, has its own mythology.  According to official Italian propaganda, the varied regions and cultures of Italy were unified in the Risorgimento, a glorious uprising that unified Italy and culminated (after a few disgraceful decades in the middle of the 20th century) in a universal nation more...

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Articles / Autodidact / Fleming / Free Content

3 May, 2017

Autodidact: Filmer’s Patriarcha

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I have been asked, many times, to explain my objections to John Locke and his  theory of natural rights and the social contract.   One way to address that question is the discussion of Sir Robert Filmer Patriarcha I undertook some years ago.  I am revising and condensing those pieces for our newer and better project.  Patriarcha was actually written before Locke’s Treatises, which effectively debunks the mythology.  During the month of June, I will be posting paragraphs of the work, making comments, taking questions and comments from participants in the discussion.  The book is available online at http://www.constitution.org/eng/patriarcha but...

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Fleming / From Under The Rubble

3 May, 2017

Hoisting the Donkey, Part One of Two

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  In a country where patriotism is a thought-crime, nothing could be more radical than an immigration reform proposal that recognizes a nation’s right to exist and to control its own destiny. This perspective on Italian politics was first published in August 2000. In troubled times we look for something to hold onto as the dangerous currents are sweeping us downstream to destruction. Some will have the clear sight (or unthinking prejudice) to grab onto some rooted feature of the landscape–the overhanging limb of an oak tree, the steeple of a church, the arm of a brother— while others make...

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Fleming / Free Content

1 May, 2017

Join the Counter-Revolution Against 500 Years of Treason

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Revolution & Resistance   Dear Friend and Fellow-Reader: “The lamps are going out all over Europe, we shall not see them lit again in our life-time.”   Sir Edward Grey’s famous remark was inspired by the outbreak of World War I, the European civil war that was the beginning of the end of our civilization.  Now that we are closer to the end than to the beginning of our descent into the abyss, it is more vitally important than ever to understand what has happened, or rather, what we have done to ourselves.   At our first Summer School, we...

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A Life / Fleming

30 Apr, 2017

The Return of the Alien, Finale.

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The alien found the good old rebels still making merry in the Elbo Room, and, for the sake of health and sanity, they ordered a pizza.  Nursing their drinks as they waited for their food, they listened to the thunder overhead and watched the people, giggling and wet to the skin, bustling in for dinner.  More rain meant high water and bad fishing, but it had also broken the back of the heatwave.  They repeated the Finlander jokes they had heard, and then moved on to Polish jokes and redneck jokes.  Mississippi did  not blink at the usual changes rung...

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A Life / Fleming

24 Apr, 2017

The Return of the Alien, Part C

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He leaves the two storytellers drinking their lunch and walks five blocks up Tower Avenue to the offices of the Tyomies Society.  He had written to a dozen newspapers in Northern Wisconsin and received only two responses: one, from Joan Melchild who writes for the paper in Shell Lake (population 1300), and one from the Finnish American Reporter, published by the socialist/communist Tyomies Society. The history of Tyomies is an American saga.  The newspaper, which was founded in Massachusetts in 1903, and moved first to Hancock, Michigan, and then in 1913 to Superior, was generally known as the second largest...

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A Life / Fleming

21 Apr, 2017

Return of the Alien, Part B

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In the morning they headed toward the Brule to check out the water, which was very high.  It was also very hot, especially once he had got into his neoprene waders.   He was still hot, walking waist deep against the strong current that sweeps past Winneboujou landing.  There was no sign of a tricho hatch that morning; nothing broke the water’s surface.  He tied on a nymph and cast out the line, watching it collapse helplessly in wrinkled coils.  It had been two years since he had waded a stream, and subsequent casts were hardly better than the first. ...

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A Life / Fleming

19 Apr, 2017

A Life in Shreds and Patches: Excursus, “The Return of the Alien,” Part A (FREE)

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This is a slightly revised version of a Perspective published in 1999.   John Lukacs was kind enough to send me a note complimenting the prose. His father used to say that the country was good; it was the people that made it intolerable.  Now his father’s son was headed up to that North country, where he had not lived for forty years.  He had been back, several times over the years, fishing for trout on the Brule River or trolling for walleye on the Chippewa Flowage.  He had visited the desolate city of his birth several times, and once...