Thomas Fleming
Thomas Fleming is a traditionalist Catholic writer, president of the Rockford Institute, and editor of Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture, a political commentary periodical, published monthly, and directed at a paleoconservative audience. He received a doctorate in Classics from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, completing his dissertation on Attic lyric poetry, and until joining a series of conservative groups, taught Latin at a small, private middle school in South Carolina.[1] In addition to editing, Fleming writes on topics concerning the literature of ancient Greece as well as on political issues.
Fleming was introduced to the paleoconservative public by Robert W. Whitaker of South Carolina in 1982. At that time, he was invited to contribute to Whitaker's book, The New Right Papers,[2] which put together the ways whereby a conservative Republican president could be elected through an alliance of people from both parties (Whitaker later joined the Reagan administration as a junior member). Now a recognized name in the conservative movement of the region where he lived, Fleming became a founding member and former board member of the League of the South, from which he later resigned, as well as an affiliated scholar of its educational arm, the League of the South Institute.[3] He was the founding editor of the Southern Partisan magazine, started in 1979. In 1985, after the death of Polish-Jewish author Leopold Tyrmand, Fleming became editor of Chronicles Magazine, and in 1988 co-wrote The Conservative Movement with fellow paleoconservative Paul Gottfried.
The Southern Poverty Law Center has listed Fleming as a key intellectual in what it calls the "Neo-Confederate" movement.[4] Recently, Fleming has questioned the future of conservatism, suggesting that none of its major aims may ever succeed.
Publications
• "Old Rights and New Right" in The New Right Papers, Robert W. Whitaker, Ed. (1982) ISBN 0-3125-6927-0
• The Conservative Movement (1988, with Paul Gottfried) ISBN 0-8057-9724-6
• West Point: Blue and Grey (1988) ISBN 1-59687-356-6
• The Politics of Human Nature (1993) ISBN 1-56000-693-5
• Montenegro: The Divided Land (2002) ISBN 0-9619364-9-5
• The Morality of Everyday Life: Rediscovering an Ancient Alternative to the Liberal Tradition (2004) ISBN 0-8262-1509-2
• Socialism (2007) ISBN 0-7614-2632-9