Author: Thomas Fleming

40

The Epiphany MAGA-Style

I don’t have much to say about what happened yesterday.  The people who organized the demonstration and those, like the President, who merely agitated for it, must have known that whatever took place would play into the hands of the incoming administration and the media that represents them.  Even if not a single law had been broken, they would have been portrayed as sore losers who cannot accept the results of  a free and fair election.

2

Two Strains of Violence, Part One of Two

For over 20 years, whenever  the US Congress is debating a stricter immigration law, hundreds of thousands Mexican-Americans take to the streets.  The demonstrators, often waving Mexican flags, demand rights for the illegals and accuse conservative Republicans of racism.  The substance of much of their complaint is that Mexicans, illegal as well as legal, have made an indispensable contribution to the American economy, and yet they are treated with disrespect and hostility. 

5

A Christmas Story of Anterus Smith as told to Ched Rayson, Conclusion

Coming out of his seclusion, Mickey  announced a monster meeting in a field outside of Chequamegon.  He did not have time to build a stage, but there was a nice little stream flowing through the field.  One side of the ground  was flat with room for hundreds of people to stand or spread out picnic blankets, and on the other side, there was a steep bank, which Mickey mounted, to make his pitch, which is why his speech has gone down in history as the “Sermon of the Mountebank.”  

16

Lincoln: A Lying Duplicitous Bigot

This review of David Donald’s Lincoln ( New York and London: Simon & Schuster, 1996)  was commissioned and published by the Spectator (London),  for which I wrote with some frequency, once upon a time before the world ceased pretending to exist.

27

A Humble and Modest Search for Clarity

I do not believe that I am the only American who has been put off by hysterical rants about the end of the American way of life.   Almost everything I have come across, from articles in so-called conservative publications to blogposts to conversations with friends strikes me as based on very limited understanding, not just of history but of the basic meaning of words.  

2

Announcement: Return to Work

My absence from Fleming.Foundation was initially due to Christmas and the arrival of two our our children, but the prolongation of inertia was the result of an intestinal disease that left most of the family fairly wasted.  It matches pretty well the classic symptoms of a noro-virus.  The departure of the virus–and the children–has made it possible to return to my labors

3

A Christmas Story from Anterus Smith, as told to Chad Rayson, Part II

My father used to say, always with a note of sadness in his voice, that the curse of politics had even come between the two Sons of Zebedee.  Their father—who would be my great-grandfather—had been strongly influenced by his mother, a Scottish woman from Canada, who had communicated some of her reverence for the British Empire to her older son.  She had died when James was only eight, and all the boy could recall of his mother was a sickly old woman who complained of the noise he made.  When his wife died, her husband lost his loyalty to the...