Author: Thomas Fleming (Thomas Fleming)

  3. Reason, Sentiment, and Tradition Skeptical of propaganda and the sentimentalism of human rights and progress, palaeoconservatives might be attacked for their cold-blooded rationality.  Instead, they are more typically criticized for their supposedly romantic attachment to tradition and for their rejection of the “science” of politics preached by the highly unscientific followers of Leo Strauss...

  Some Themes in Palaeoconservative Thought In subsequent chapters I will take up, one by one, some of the main principles and arguments of palaeoconservatism, but in concluding this preface I should, if only to entice readers to continue, sketch out some of the principle themes to be found in palaeoconservative writers.   1) Objective Anthropology....

  If we can believe most pollsters, President Obama has the election sewn up and in the bag. He is leading in most of the crucial swing states, and, insiders are saying, Governor Romney’s only chance is a knock-out blow in one of the debates.  Given Romney’s rhetorical clumsiness, this is unlikely. Obama is not...

  That afternoon, as Paul and I were gassing on about the evil neocons, one of us said something like, “”If they are neoonservatives, what are we then, paleolithic conservatives or palaeocons?”  In my recollection, I was the first to utter the word, though I believe Paul also claims credit.  I won’t dispute the point....

  Chapter One: Some Basic Concepts, Part One I have never been very good with dates, but it was some time in the mid 1980’s.  Paul Gottfried, who was teaching at Rockford College, had come to my office, and we were discussing, as was our wont, the sad state of conservatism.  (I do not recall...

  Chronicles‘ distinguished foreign affairs editor has a way of exciting controversy. Often the cause is his view of Islam.  Despite the fact that he has declared, over and over, that he opposes the aggressive policies and measures taken by the US against Iraq and Afghanistan, his historical critique has been sufficiently on-target to create...

  Anti-American protests have continued to spread across the globe, though the fires of passion are predictably burning out.  People do have jobs to go to, children to feed, lives to lead. Even violence-prone jihadists can’t always be breaching embassies or murdering diplomats. Note: This is a slightly improved version of my latest Daily Mail column....

Breaking news from CBS.  A study of 2000 American teens revealed the astonishing news that kids who sext are more likely to be having real sex than kids who don’t send obscene photos of themselves to their friends.  What’s next?  A study revealing that people who eat three meals at McDonalds are more likely to...

  Christian conservatives in Florida are all het up over remarks made by Mark Alan Siegel, the Palm Beach County chairman of the Democratic Party.  Siegel, it appears, was not happy with his party’s decision to reinsert the word “God” into the platform.  Evangelical Republicans had spent a good 24 hours damning the godless Democrats...

  Poor Clint Eastwood.  Like most film actors, the man is a fool, and like most entertainment celebrities, he has no idea how foolish he is.  I suppose few of us could resist the temptation to believe the praise that is lavished on our every grunt or belch, and it is no reflection, personally, on...

  Sometimes I don’t know why I bother.  What, after all, is the point to entering into any public discussion of controversial matters?  Each side of the question has made up its mind before the facts are in, and the respective champions of the issue or debate are, depending on who has washed your brain,...

  The shooting of  Sikhs at a temple in Milwaukee is generating the usual blather about senseless violence, the paranoid racialist right, and the patriotism of Sikh immigrants.  I finally heard, this morning, the inevitable, “Today, we are  all Sikhs.” Excuse me, but no, I am not now and shall never be a Sikh. Sikhs,...

  The long wait is over, and President Obama can start packing his bags.  Clint Eastwood has endorsed Governor Romney, and that, as they say, is that.   Since the 2012 Superbowl, there had been speculation that the actor famous for playing Dirty Harry and The Man With No Name might actually come out for...

  Years ago, during the First Gulf War, I asked one of our editors whether he objected to the protestors who burned American flags.  He replied, “It’s not my flag, it’s not my country.”   I respected his opinion, though I wondered at the time if it was not a bit extreme.  But every day...

  Among the least remembered poets of World War I was Edmund Blunden, who lived to a miraculously ripe old age, spending some of it in Japan teaching English literature.  His verse is quiet, patient, descriptive, often taking a side look at what might have been the cause of terror and grief.  Here’s a poem...

Today we are planning to talk about the Aurora shootings.  If you don’t have time read my offensive screed on the Daily Mail, you can listen to the show.  We may also–and this is not at all an unrelated topic–discuss the significance of the campaign rhetoric being used by both sides.  Meanwhile, the DOD has made...

  I have nothing personal against Nora Ephron, but I do not understand why all the news outlets are pretending that her death is in any way significant.  A sometimes amusing satirist–though the frequent comparison with Dorothy Parker is ludicrous–and a writer of really terrible fiction and screenplays, Ephron may have been best known for...

  A.E. Housman was one of the finest Latin scholars of the 20th century and one of the most distinguished classicists of the Anglo-American world.  He is better known, however, as a poet.  He had suffered disappointments in life, and his response was the melancholy stoicism that permeates so much of his work.  His poems...

  An Epitaph Enough: and leave the rest to Fame. ‘Tis to commend her but to name. Courtship, which living she declin’d, When dead to offer were unkind… Where never any could speak ill, Who would officious Praises spill? Nor can the truest Wit or Friend, Without Detracting, her commend. To say she liv’d a Virgin chast,...

Scott, the only question about Facebook is not whether or not it is evil–it most certainly is–but whether or not it is an unmitigated evil like video poker and kiddie porn or a mitigated evil like the automobile.  Overall, the automobile does enormously more harm than good but it has become, for most Americans, an...

At last night’s gala ceremony, President Obama handed out the Presidential Medal of Freedom to what is inevitably described as a diverse group, though most of the winners run to a predictable type:  Toni Morrison, an incompetent and dirty writer of anti-American fictions, Madeline Albright an incompetent and brutally savage statesgirl, John Glenn the showboating...

  Scott, I think you we are talking about two different things.  I admit the possibility, though I have not seen any proof, that Facebook might  be used as a helpful tool to survive in an increasingly inhuman world, despite the obvious reality that it is, by its very nature, diminishing the users’ grasp on...

  Derek, I have a silly but not irrelevant question.  Is the SNP and its allies seeking total independence or merely separation?  In other words, is one possibility that Scotland could revert to it status before the Act of Union?  In which case Sir Sean would have be entitled to a knighthood granted by Elizabeth...

  Before our prudent webmaster carried out our long ago agreed upon plan to disable comments on this section, I received an insightful message from W.C. Taquiya.  Old friends and some regular commenters are being invited to contribute to this section, and, in the future, if I wish to stimulate debate it will be in...

  To add insult upon injury–and injury upon insult–the Feds are once again threatening to crack down on Foodstamp fraud. Wait a minute.  Foodstamps are by their very nature fraud, a way of stealing the wealth of working people and giving it to non-workers who use their stamps and cards and allowances to buy luxury...

  There is another way of applying Aaron’s argument that welfare is a job’s program.  Once, not long after we had moved to Rockford, I was taking my family to the Oriental Institute at the University of Chicago.  We had to drive through some interesting neighborhoods.  We looked at block after block of neglected houses,...

  I posted a response from one Robert–not our friend Robert–and replied to it, but despite the manifest silliness, I’l put it and my reply so that our intentions are not misunderstood. It is a good example of the incompatibility of Christianity and Marxism. “Good grief. Do you not know any poor people? Have none...

I’ve just posted a Daily Mail piece on the treason of the Pakistani physician who collaborated with the CIA.  While I strongly encourage anyone who has anything to say to post a comment over there–it can only improve my standing there–we can also have a different sort of discussion here.  I do urge everyone, if...

Aaron actually got it right.  While Latin docilis was used in a special sense  by St. Thomas, the word has always been used far more broadly to mean trainable or teachable.  Ovid even applies it to hair.  In English we are most likely to think of animals, like horses, subject to control by their masters, and I...

  Toma Nikolic’s victory in the Serbian presidential election has panicked the boys of the press.  The Washington Post has  particularly hysterical account, typical of the Post’s purely ideological coverage of foreign affairs.   Both the headline and the lead sentence get in the key-word “ultra-nationalist,” while Nikolic’s moderate strategy is described as “claims to have transformed himself into...

Scott, yes, I anticipated the flop for exactly the same reason.  What appears not to bother anyone is the obvious fact that Zuckerberg and his friends have flimflammed a lot of people.  It seems to me that one of the more obvious ways in which the new Facebook world is significant is that it allows...

    Andrew Marvell wrote masterpieces in several genres of verse, from satire to love poems to the most ambitious ode in the language.  While it is foolish to use words like “the greatest” of any one poet, the worth of this libidinous Puritan is beyond question.  Some of Marvell’s satires are quite amusing, particularly...

  Try not to be so negative, Clyde, and look on  the bright side.  Increased diversity enriches our lives.  If you want really authentic Chinese food, go to Bangkok, where a Chinese from Taiwan was arrested for his exotic taste in food and religion.  He had roasted six unborn babies and covered them with gold...

  Bill Clinton gleefully predicted this development.  I know he was technically the first black president, but did Bill ever look in the mirror?   Or perhaps he is like the man described by James: “ For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man observing his...

  Tom, I heard on the radio some of the greeting Sebelius received–a gratifying round of jeers, boos, and anti-abortion outbursts.  Ordinarily, I am in favor of maintaining respectful silence on these occasions, but when an advocate for homicide is invited to a Catholic school, the students have some obligation–within limits of course–to make their...

  Manny Pacquiao is apparently a boxing legend and a member of Congress in the Philippines. According to a recent story on Breitbart.com, Mr. Pacquiao has been banned from making an appearance at an Los Angeles area shopping mall.  The sin that led to his excommunication was a statement, given in an interview, that one should “obey God’s law...

  I have always been fond of the English decadents.  In an age of blustering nationalism, industrialism, and ideological zaniness, poets like Lionel Johnson and Ernest Dowson preserved some little corner of beauty.  Yes, they drank too much, experimented too much, affected too much, but they wrote poems worth remembering.  I’ve already presented some Johnson,...

  Hartley Coleridge (1796-1849) was the oldest son of Samuel Taylor Coleridge.  He inherited much of his father’s talent and brilliance but also some of his lack of discipline, which resulted in the forfeiture for intemperance of his Oriel fellowship.  He wrote biography for money and is often felt to have largely squandered his considerable...

  Here is a somewhat conversational masterpiece by the great Ben.  It’s a bit long but very vivid, funny, and, while self-serving, not hypocritical.  What a man he must have been!  Small wonder younger poets loved him, and not simply because he helped them.  His poem on Shakespeare, so often misunderstood as carping or envious,...

  This is a big topic.  Conversational verse includes satires, dramatic dialogues, and homey little poems of the Robert Frost type.  To achieve a conversational tone, one has to lower the diction a bit and work somewhat against the metrical rules.  I’m going to stick mostly to iambic pentameter lines.  Let’s start with an example...