Author: Thomas Fleming

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Lackeys of the Regime Unite!

“Conservatives are waxing wroth over a New York City high school principal who sent anti-white racist materials to parents in which a scale of “whiteness was outlined ranging from Uncle Tom Whiteys labelled “White Abolitionists” to the downright evil  “White Supremacists” by way of varying shades of collaboration or resistance to America’s entrenched racist regime. 

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More Book Log

In selecting books to read, many people  are content to employ  The Random Walk method of my childhood, when I was set loose, without guidance, in a library to prowl on my own. This method has the advantage of finding hidden treasures, but it’s a bit like digging for gold, without any knowledge of what gold is and where it can be found, in a vacant lot. You’re more likely to find old soup cans, dog excrement, and sodden rotting copies of the shopper insert in the daily newspaper.

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Poem: Now Winter Nights Enlarge by Thomas Campion

Thomas Campion was a great song-writer of the 16th and 17th centuries. Now winter nights enlarge The number of their hours; And clouds their storms discharge Upon the airy towers. Let now the chimneys blaze And cups o’erflow with wine, Let well-turned words amaze With harmony divine. Now yellow waxen lights Shall wait on honey love While youthful revels, masques, and courtly sights Sleep’s leaden spells remove. This time doth well dispense With lovers’ long discourse; Much speech hath some defense, Though beauty no remorse. All do not all things well; Some measures comely tread, Some knotted riddles tell, Some...

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Booklog

On a previous website, I used to list, periodically, what I happened to have been reading.  I think it is worth reviving, but this time, I invite others to comment on the books listed and to share their own recent adventures in literacy. I am not including With Fire and Sword.

8

Fire and Sword, II

I am not sensing a great deal of interest in this great novel, but I shall raise one question to see if it receives a response.  If readers have got at least a fourth of the way through the work, they will have read the account of Pan Jan’s diplomatic journey, his capture, and his trials.

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The Impossibility of Democracy, Part IV: The End of Private Life

There are countless books and articles on the press: its history, its role in defining democracy, its problems, its scandals.  What is hard to find is a serious discussion of the fundamental dishonesty, the trivial huckstering that characterizes even the best newspapers.  I once had dinner with a distinguished European scholar, who, with a little encouragement, asked me why there was so little freedom of discussion in the United States.  Was it due to the village mentality described by Tocqueville?  Or was it merely the effect of the tight grip of the media oligarchy?  If the latter was true, how...