Dr. James Patrick, “The Fortunes of Reason in the Age of the Abassids” Fleming Foundation Summer Symposium 1000 Years of Jihad Conference Date: July 13, 2016 Location: Rockford, IL Run Time: 57 minutes Guest: Dr. James Patrick Original Air Date: August 5, 2016
Everyday the media spring a surprise on the public. This morning we learn that a knife-wielding Norwegian in London killed an American and wounded several other people. While British police are not ruling out terrorism, they are saying at this point that mental health issues are involved. Oh, and by the way, the Norwegian is of “Somali descent.” What percentage of Somalis are Muslims, you ask. Just about 99%, but that is irrelevant. In one sense the cops are right: Islam would appear to be dangerous to a believer’s mental health. Just a day or two ago, Somalis in Minneapolis-St. Paul...
I was digging through some old correspondence files the other day when this letter jumped out at me, a photocopy of one I mailed from Venice some sixteen years ago, on April 2, 2000. It is on headed paper, with my address at the time, “Palazzo Mocenigo, San Marco 3348, Venezia,” up on top. Occasionally one comes across relics from one’s past which, in the light of subsequent events, seem portentous. This letter is such a relic, and straightaway it occurred to me that I ought to publish it in its entirety, without, however, revealing the addressee. For this, my...
February’s book selection is a bit different from previous choices: The Glass Key, a hardboiled mystery novel by Dashiel Hammett. Hammet is best known for The Maltese Falcon and The Thin Man, both of which were turned into popular films, but the author’s personal favorite was The Glass Key, a very readable novel that takes up themes of friendship and loyalty, deception and betrayal. It was made into two American films. An early version starring George Raft and a later and better film with Alan Ladd and Veronica Lake. The great Japanese director, Akira Kurosawa, so liked this movie that...
Liechtenstein is the 6th smallest country in the world, larger than San Marino but smaller than the Marshall Islands, and is roughly twice the size of the island of Manhattan. The Principality is ruled by a stable royal family that is so popular that when in 2002 a referendum was put to the people to increase the executive power of the prince, including giving him the right to dissolve Parliament, it passed by a 64% margin. Snuggled in between Austria and Switzerland, it enjoys a prosperous existence, profiting from a close cooperation with the Swiss, whose money they use via a currency union....
In April of 1945 as the Red Army penetrated deep into the German Reich, as the British Army raced across the German low country and as the American Army plowed through Bavaria and into Austria and the Czech Protectorate, Adolph Hitler-ensconced in his bunker under the ruins of the Reichskanzlei, his French SS Division Charlemagne fighting his last battle-unleashed his scorn, his anger and his wrath, not against the agents of his coming doom-the Red Army, the British Army and the American Army-but against his own people, the Germans, in whose name without their consent he had unleashed war on...
The Return of Revenge If we admit to harboring the dark and primitive impulse to take revenge, a priest or minister or professor of ethics, will probably tell us it is an evil desire that ought to be resisted. We should forgive our enemies and get on with our lives. After all, living well is said to be the best revenge. It is not always that easy. Consider the situation in which the hero of Hank Williams, Jr.’s song, “I Got Rights,” finds himself. The song tells the story of a husband and father who buys a handgun and goes...
The book is the classic written by our inspiration and patron, Boethius: On the Consolation of Philosophy. For well over 1000 years, this book—the reflections of a condemned man on what makes life worth living—was required reading for anyone who pretended to the smallest degree of literacy. It was translated by two English monarchs (Alfred and Elizabeth I) and represented the introduction to philosophy that people in the Medieval period received. It is that rare gift of literature—a profound book addressed not to specialists and geniuses but to everyday men and women. As luck would have it, our discussion will...
This is another review essay published in 1983, the year before I came to Rockford, Arnold Toynbee: The Greeks and Their Heritages; Oxford University Press; New York. Mary Renault: Funeral Games; Pantheon Books; New York. by Thomas Fleming Modern man seems haunted by the specter of Greece. Like memories of childhood, the visions of ancient Athens and Sparta hold a place in our minds, forever green. It does not matter how we first formed the image—a translation of Homer, the illustrations in Bullfinch, the tales we had to translate in first-year Latin. However we were struck, the Greeks inevitably become...
The unangelic Angela Merkel is the worst German chancellor after Hitler. Neither believed in borders. He erased borders by sending his panzers across them and absorbing the lebensraum into a Großgermanisches Reich. She erased borders by welcoming millions of “rapefugees” into her dissolving country. It’s not surprising she’s a “former” communist youth leader from Honecker’s East Germany. Unlike Vladimir Putin, who started out performing his “internationalist duty” as a KGB agent, but has become a Russian patriot, Merkel remains stuck in the borderless Marxist rhetoric of the 1969 DDR. According to the Daily Mail, “Angela Merkel’s open door policy to...
