General Topics

Politics & Religion

Several things are clear to me from the US midterm elections. Only a minority care enough to vote. Most people do not trust politicians. Most people are not wedded to any particular political party, even if there might be a family tradition of loyalty to one. Voters are pragmatists. If it works they’ll stick to it, and if not they’ll…

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Soros

George Soros is, like me, an admirer of Karl Popper’s The Open Society and its Enemies. I completely agree with Soros on almost every issue, except that he has no interest at all in anything spiritual. When I met him briefly at a conference in Vienna many years ago, his disconnect from anything Jewish reminded me of a man who…

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Der Judenstaat

In 1896 Herzl published Der Judenstaat, in which he set out a vision of a Jewish state. It would be a state in which all citizens, of whatever religion or race, would have equal rights and be encouraged to participate as fully as Jews could (in theory) in other modern states of Christian or Muslim character and origin. I have…

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Statistics, Lies, and the New York Times

An op-ed appeared in the New York Times on October 9th pointing out how much murder actually costs a country. It quoted research at Iowa State University that calculated that each murder costs society $17.25 million in victim’s costs, loss of earnings, and the justice, punitive, and prevention systems. Sounds like a lot, but I’m prepared to believe it. The…

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Oaths

I have never liked oaths. There is so much swearing nowadays. Oaths are taken in vain and used as common currency. Criminals swear their innocence on the Bible. Politicians swear their probity on their words of honor. Every drunk and lout speaks a language that uses more swear words than civilized language. I am ashamed to say that I allow…

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Paranoia

The furor over the mosque in New York is very healthy. It has illustrated paranoia. Screams of the dreaded Islamophobia are heard daily on the “liberal” media. America lacerates itself over its intolerance. Its leadership is fearful that now Muslims around the world will no longer love the USA as much as they used to. I am all in favor…

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