Author: Thomas Fleming

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Feature / Fleming / From Under The Rubble

25 Oct, 2016

The Truth From Donald’s Big Mouth

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Donald Trump is the bull in the Republican china shop—or, considering who pays our politicians,  should that be China shop?  Whatever passes before his eyes or between his ears can inspire speculations—usually presented as self-evident truths—so outrageous that they offend the official media and embarrass even loyal supporters. To make matters worse, Donald’s most ridiculous proclamations typically have not just a grain of truth but whole boulders of the stuff, bigger than the land mass of Eurasia on a map of the world.  Truth makes Trump’s pronouncements more wicked in the same way that St. Thomas says a true detraction...

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Feature / Fleming / From Under The Rubble

17 Oct, 2016

One Reason to Vote for Trump and 9 Not To…

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Supposing that all the criticisms of Donald Trump are true–and there is at least a grain of truth in most of them–then what? Cons Starting at the bottom of the negatives, Donald Trump is 9  As rude as Hillary Clinton 8 As ignorant as Barack Obama. 7 He has the command of English typical of an NPR newsreader and 6  The social and political philosophy of a baboon in heat. 5  He love women the way a Japanese winner of a hotdog eating contest loves wieners and 4  Actually thinks he is a great man because he has gamed a crooked system...

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Feature / Fleming / From Under The Rubble

13 Oct, 2016

The Long Awaited Death of the Noble Prizes

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The Swedish Academy has announced that the 2016 Nobel Prize for Literature goes to Robert Zimmerman, aka “Bob Dylan.”  Although the announcement left several hundred literate readers in USA—there are at least that many—scratching their heads, the award should be understood as the latest move in a struggle between the Dumb Swede Academy and the Dumb Norwegian Academy. In their campaigns to make the entire world as dumb as Scandinavia, the two confederacies of dunces have pulled off many coups.  In recent decades, the Dumb Swedes have scored a string of successes, hunting up obscure Third World writers, unknown in...

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Feature / Fleming

11 Oct, 2016

Rabbi Jacob Neusner, R.I.P.

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My friend Marco Respinti just wrote to ask me about Jacob Neusner, who died (so I learned) on October 8.   Perhaps my readers will bear with me, if I share a few thoughts on an old friend. How did I recruit Neusner for Chronicles?  I had read several of his popular articles in a number of places, including (as I recall) The National Review.  Finding writers is a large part of an editor’s job, and that means reading a lot of often uninteresting articles and books.  While Neusner wrote too much and too quickly to become much of a prose...

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Feature / Fleming / From Under The Rubble

10 Oct, 2016

Hating Trump for Fun and Profit

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Yes, we watched the debate, though it seemed a wretched way to spend a Sunday evening.  I won’t pretend that we had planned to say the Rosary before reading Scripture.  I was thinking more along lines of listening to a Gilbert and Sullivan recording—perhaps The Pinafore or Patience in the old D’Oyly Carte versions I grew up with—or a Charlie Chan movie.  I allowed myself to be outvoted by wife and son.  And, while  Donald Trump is by no means as clever as Charlie or as funny as Mantan Moreland, Hillary is far nastier than any of the murderous villains Charlie...

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Diary of a Jerk-Hunter / Feature / Fleming

7 Oct, 2016

Jerks 1, Part D

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Greeks and Romans viewed moderation and seld-restraint as an important ideal.  Our own barbarian ancestors were cut from a different cloth from the.  Celts, Germans, and Slaves were boasters who gloried in victory and were disconsolate in defeat.  For them, self-restraint meant passing up an opportunity to get drunk or have a good time pillaging and raping.  But under the influences exerted by Roman law, the Church, and classical  literature, the upper classes developed rules of conduct that forbade mistreatment of women, children, and the poor, and encouraged an air of self-possession.  As time went on the long forgotten code of the...

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Fleming / On the House

3 Oct, 2016

Friends of the Family

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  Slightly corrected Perspective from July 1985 Everyone wants to save the American family. Not a day goes by, it seems, without some politician or professor issuing a call to arms or an invitation to a congressional hearing. For a long time the family had been a conservative/Republican issue, but last fall both Mr. Mondale and Ms. Ferraro made a great show of their own wholesome domestic life—it worked better with the Mondales than with the Zaccaros. What a world. We are back to the old political slogans of mom and apple pie, and they have even less substance than...

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Feature / Fleming

3 Oct, 2016

Properties of Blood I.7: Dueling for Honor, Part C

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I have some work to do on the conclusion of Chapter 6–a discussion of Faulkner’s “An Odor of Verbena” delayed because I can’t see to find my copy of the book.  I am therefore moving forward with Chapter 7. From Judicial Combat to the Private Duel It took many centuries for Germans to begin to accept some of the more humane traditions of Roman law, which would, in any event, be interpreted by kings and their courtiers as justification for ever expanding the royal prerogative and diminishing the primitive liberties of their subjects. Judicial combat, while a far cry from a...

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Fleming / On the House

30 Sep, 2016

Shine, Perishing Republic  

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This was my second Perspective in Chronicles, June 1985 Murray Rothbard, [with a nod to Milton and Pope] described American conservatism as “chaos and old night.”  Apart from the nasty implication that we are all dunces, there is something to what he says. It is getting harder every year to figure out just what it is that makes a conservative. Consider Newt Gingrich—the Carl Sagan of politics.  He wants to colonize the stars, mine the galaxies for precious minerals, and open up the entire universe to free trade and economic opportunity.  In between star treks, Gingrich plans to overthrow the...

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Diary of a Jerk-Hunter / Feature / Fleming

29 Sep, 2016

Jerks I: Home of the Free, Land of the Jerk, Part C–

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Overgrown Children The exaggerated display of emotions is not limited to children.  Adults who throw temper tantrums are no longer despised, as they once were.  They are often celebrated for their spontaneity or, in the case of successful athletes, adored for getting away with doing as they please.  There was a time when tennis was a gentleman’s game, when the loser congratulated his victorious player and did not blame  the umpires.  Even in the 1970’s, when crybabies like Jimmy Connors and John McEnroe were staging their amateur theatricals on the court, Arthur Ashe was still acting like a grownup, on...