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Oct. 13, 2008

Rabbi Yonason Goldson: The Happiness Quotient

Jonathan Rosenblum: Ignore the Grandchildren

Oct. 10, 2008

Rabbi Abraham J. Twerski: The limitations of scientific miracles

Caroline B. Glick: Lebanon on the brink --- and why it matters

Oct. 8, 2008

Rabbi Berel Wein: The day when the sane talk to themselves

Ana Veciana-Suarez: Many nonobservant Jews are finding religion

Oct. 7, 2008

Gary Rosenblatt: Of politics and prayer

Caroline B. Glick: The ironies of the West's collusion with the Arabs and Iran

Oct. 6, 2008

Rabbi Yitzchok R. Rubin: Mamma to the masses

Jonathan Tobin: Ahmadinejad Isn't Too Impressed

Oct. 3, 2008

Rabbi A. Henach Leibowitz: The 'living dead' are all around us

Caroline B. Glick: Olmert's parting blows

Oct. 2, 2008

The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Q: Often customers looking for our competitor accidentally enter our store. Can we just serve them without comment?

Jonathan Tobin: Jewish pundit quiz on next year's news

Sept. 29, 2008

Rabbi Eli Gewirtz: Lehman Brothers and the Day of Judgment

Rabbi Leiby Burnham: Apples, Honey and You

Sept. 26, 2008

Rabbi Yonason Goldson: The shofar and the Echo of Sinai

Caroline B. Glick: A road paved on reality

Sept. 24, 2008

Greg Crosby: Home for the Holy Days

Ethel G. Hofman: Rosh Hashanah Favorites: Old-fashioned taste, reduced calories

Sept. 23, 2008

Caroline Glick: Liberalism or lives!?

Michael Ledeen: Dear President Ahmadinejad

Sept. 22, 2008

The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Q: I gave a check to a local merchant, but it hasn't been cashed in months. Probably they lost it. Do I have to tell them?

Diana West: We are losing Europe to Islam

Sept. 19, 2008

Rabbi Berel Wein: On harvesting success

Caroline B. Glick: It is time to act

Sept. 18, 2008

Rabbi Hillel Goldberg: Is camping the panacea to save Jewry from self-destruction?

Craig Gordon: Was SNL hilarity too much for Hillary?

Sept. 17, 2008

Jonathan Tobin: The Whole World Is Watching

The Kosher Gourmet By Linda Gassenheimer: East meets Southwest in this quick meal: MEXICAN-ASIAN TOSTADOS

Sept. 16, 2008

Frank J. Gaffney, Jr. : Into the fire

Everything's Relative : Your Official Jewish Guide to the 2008 USA Presidential Election

Sept. 15, 2008

The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Enabling risky behavior

Diana West: A day that will live in ... accommodating Islam

Sept. 11, 2008

Rabbi Yonason Goldson: The skeleton in my closet

Rabbi Yechiel Eckstein: Persecution and systematic destruction of Christians in the Middle East must be stopped

Sept. 10, 2008

Jonathan Tobin: There's Something About Sarah

The Kosher Gourmet by Kathy Manweiler: Who needs Chili's when you have these? Recipes for Mexican that taste great and are dietetic! Our commitment to freedom

Sept. 9, 2008

Daniel Pipes: Must counterinsurgency wars fail?

Frank J. Gaffney, Jr.:

Sept. 8, 2008

The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: How far must one go to help somebody out of a contract?

Barry Rubin: Waiting For Something

Sept. 8, 2008

The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir : How far must one go to help somebody out of a contract?

Barry Rubin: Waiting For Something

March 22, 2007

J-Rhythms with Avraham Rosenblum: JWR's cutting-edge music program showcasing performers -- singers, song writers, musicians, and bands -- who learn and live the Torah lifestyle (OUR NEWEST IGODCAST !)

Oct. 29, 2003
Mortimer B. Zuckerman: Graffiti On History's Walls (MUST-READ!)

Jewish World Review March 8, 2007 / 18 Adar, 5767

Bipartisan hypocrisy

By Victor Davis Hanson


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http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | Recently, several conservative politicians, moralists and evangelicals have been embroiled in scandal. As congressmen, Tom Delay and Duke Cunningham had publicized brushes with ethics laws, while their former colleague Mark Foley and Ted Haggard, who was pastor of a large evangelical church, were implicated in embarrassing sexual affairs.


In the past, scandal has hit other prominent conservative commentators who preach public virtue while indulging their private appetites, whether for gambling, drug use or other vices.


But moralist Republicans don't have the market cornered on hypocrisy. If giving into excess embarrasses some of them, for a number of Democrats — supposedly the party of the people — hypocrisy arises from enjoying elite privileges while alleging that America bestows favors unduly on the few.


In today's Roman circus, talking populist while enjoying the high life mixes no better for the left than mouthing old-fashioned virtue and living the low life do for the right.


Billionaire liberal George Soros has harangued the Bush administration for its supposed amorality in Iraq. But he's bought into it — literally. Capitalist profit seems always to trump his loud leftist ideology. That might explain why Soros' management company just purchased nearly 2 million stock shares of Halliburton, the contractor formerly run by hobgoblin to the left Dick Cheney and now demonized by liberals as a war profiteer.


Al Gore has preached to millions about the dangers of climate change caused by profligate carbon emissions. But his mansion and the private jets he has often used burn up far more fossil fuels than what the average citizens whom Gore browbeats to change their wasteful lifestyles consume.


Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi promised to end the privilege of Republican elites. Well and good. But as speaker of the House, she requested a gas-guzzling outsized jet for her personal trips back to San Francisco — at a cost that far surpassed that accorded to her predecessor.


Presidential candidate John Edwards serially laments the "two Americas," one wealthy, one poor. But this multimillionaire trial lawyer just finished building a new 28,000 square-foot mansion. His palace is beyond the means even of most people belonging to Edwards' rich nation who supposedly benefit at the expense of poorer Americans.


For both liberals and conservatives, the days of the simple-living Harry Truman and clean-living Dwight Eisenhower are apparently long gone — and for two reasons.


First, the country has changed. Globalization, high technology and billions in borrowed money have made Americans in general materially wealthy beyond our parents' wildest imagination.


All that money and leisure have brought constant temptations for indulgence. For all the rhetoric of "family values" and "two nations," Americans from all walks of life gobble up everything from video games to luxury cars on nearly unlimited easy credit.


Debt, drink, drugs, gambling, lotteries and sex all happen without much restraint or rebuke — and our most prominent are often the most susceptible to these new appetites. In modern American life, "do you own thing" on a charge card is the new national gospel. Despite the nostalgic rhetoric of morality and populism, few Democrats or Republicans have constituents in bib overalls plowing alone till dusk out on the south 40 acres.


Second, in our world of celebrity sound bites and media saturation, talk, not reality, is what counts. Multimillionaires lecture us about fairness, while sinners rail about sin. In politics, hundreds of millions of dollars are spent each election year on campaigning. Image-makers, pollsters and media advisers shape every election. Fluffy candidates are removed enough from the electorate that the old idea that their own actions should match their rhetoric is seen as hopelessly old-fashioned.


The political leaders of this country are essentially too often homogenous. Republicans may represent constituents of traditional values; Democrats may champion the underprivileged. But their similar lifestyles reflect more a political class's shared privilege than the inherent differences of their respective constituents' beliefs. National figures may talk conservative or liberal, but they both are more likely to act like libertines.

Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in in the media and Washington consider "must-reading". Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.

Victor Davis Hanson is a classicist and military historian at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University. Comment by clicking here.


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