Author: Thomas Fleming
Chesterton the Prophet
I have reposted this piece from four years ago and made it free to everyone at the request of a friend who is now reading The Napoleon of Notting Hill.
Ancient Vengeance
It is a main thrust of philosophical Liberalism (and of ancient Stoicism) that human beings have a duty to rise above not only animal but parochial and sectarian passions. Any attempt to justify revenge must therefore represent a step back toward the jungle from which we escaped all too recently.
Two Poems by Lionel Johnson
These two poems of Lionel Johnson, included by his friend William Butler Yeats in a little volume of 20 Poems of Lionel Johnson, attest to Johnson’s deep sense of the sacred.
Happy Thanksgiving, and All Praise to John Smith!
Happy Thanksgiving to you all. We are having a simple dinner: vegetables a la grecque–leeks, mushrooms, cucumbers; fresh turkey with corn bread , apple, onion, sage, and sausage stuffing; Southern green beans with bacon and onion cooked in broth; rice of course to honor South Carolina; and pecan pie.
Modern Philosophers Against Revenge
No argument drawn from biological necessity would impress philosophers who, since the Enlightenment, have often written as if man were either naturally good or was only weakly endowed with a bundle of propensities known by philosophers as human nature or, by Christians, as “the old Adam.”
War Poems of Thomas Hardy
Thomas Hardy, though best known for his novels, was a poet who exercised significant influence on the next generation.
Gone to Texas
As we drove south out of Rockford, the blowing snow and freezing rain threatened to accompany us like bad news all the way to Texas. The snow stopped just beyond Bloomington-SubNormal, Illinois, and we made it to Rolla, Missouri without incident.
Revenge is Natural Justice
Revenge and marriage, as the institutionalized means of expressing love and hate, have much in common: Both are found in a variety of forms, but the forms and tendencies that converge in societies around the globe encourage us to think of them as generically human phenomena
Cheerful News of the Election
On the morning of the first day of the Republican restoration of America, Americans should be waking up to the reality that roughly half the voting population is still so devoted to the devices and desires of their hearts that they cannot break free of their delusions.
