
 |
|
May 22, 2012
Warren Richey: Can US group challenge overseas surveillance act? Supreme Court to decide
Thomas M. Anderson: Walking Away From a Mortgage
The Kosher Gourmet by Megan Gordon: Enjoy a celebration of the most rich and layered flavors: Black bean, sweet potato and quinoa chili
May 21, 2012
Mark Clayton: Cybersecurity: How US utilities passed up chance to protect their networks
Howard LaFranchi: NATO summit: Who will foot the bill for long-term Afghanistan security?
Chris Farrell : Earn Dividends in Emerging Markets with This WisdomTree ETF
Stephen Whiteside, Ph.D. : Mayo Clinic Medical Edge: Social anxiety disorder --- or just shy?
Guy Jackson : Victim's father regrets death of Lockerbie bomber
The Kosher Gourmet by Mario Batali: Famed chef's veal shoulder farsumagru: A festive meat course for late spring
May 18, 2012
Rabbi Berel Wein: Striving: The People of the Book's Book for (All of) the People
Steven Goldberg: 5 Great Stock Picks and the Exchange-Traded Fund that Owns Them
Mary Pickett, M.D.: Ask the Harvard Experts: Don't be forced into gluten-free lifestyle based merely on a doctor's false-positive test
The Kosher Gourmet by Carolyn Malcoun: DIY healthy lunchbox treats: HOMEMADE FRUIT BARS for kids and brown-bagging adults alike
May 17, 2012
Warren Richey: Teacher fired for being unwed and pregnant can sue religious school, court rules
Josh Mitnick: Netanyahu's 'centrist' coalition is already proving it's anything but
Steven Goldberg: Earn Dividends in Emerging Markets with This WisdomTree ETF
Amina Khan: Research links coffee to lower death rates
The Kosher Gourmet by Faith Duran : Cheesy Potato Breakfast Casserole with Cheddar and Sun-Dried Tomatoes
May 16, 2012
Carmen Terzic, M.D., Ph.D. : Mayo Clinic Medical Edge: A variety of exercises can help improve balance
Melissa Healy: National strategy on Alzheimer's disease aims to halt it by 2025
The Kosher Gourmet by Joyce White : GOODNESS GRACIOUS: GREENS! 4 winning recipes that are no longer just for down-home folks (Includes expert tips & techniques)
May 15, 2012
Kristen Chick: Obama administration resumes arms sales to Bahrain despite serious unresolved human rights issues. Activists feel abandoned
Pat Mertz Esswein: Homes are now affordable again and mortgage rates are low. What you need to know before you buy
Kathy Kristof: Our Practical Investor Fights Inflation with These 6 Investments
Sue Hubbard, M.D.: The Kid's Doctor: Lactose intolerant young child? Check again
The Kosher Gourmet by Kathy Hunt: Spread a Little Excitement with EXOTIC CONDIMENTS (4 RECIPES)
May 14, 2012
Lisa Gerstner: How to Protect Your Identity, Finances If You Lose Your Phone
Harvard Health Letters: Heart disease and dementia
The Kosher Gourmet by Megan Gordon: MANGO COCONUT OAT MORNING MUFFINS are a bright but hearty delight
May 11, 2012
Jessica L. Anderson: Get the Best Deal on a Used Car
Jett Stone: Forget face-lifts and fake knees. Scientists have seen the fountain of youth --- and it's broccoli
The Kosher Gourmet by Chef Mario Batali: The famed chef's vegetable dish that tastes true to the season: FAVAS AND SUGAR SNAP PEAS WITH POTATOES AND TARRAGON
May 10, 2012
Sergei L. Loiko: Putin sends warning to U.S., NATO in Victory Day speech at Red Square
Mary Rourke: How being a 'mentch' got Vidal Sasoon his start and fighting in Israel's War of Independence provided him with confidence and a strong sense of his own identity
Jeff Bertolucci: Get Home Phone Service for Less Than $10 a Month
The Kosher Gourmet by Betty Rosbottom: Gleaming with its golden, crimson, and snowy white hues, this silken smooth and creamy STRAWBERRY ORANGE TRIFLE looks impressive, but is easy to prepare
May 9, 2012
Sharon Palmer, R.D. How you can reduce your risk -- or delay -- chronic diseases associated with aging
|
| |
Jewish World Review
March 31, 2009
/ 6 Nisan 5769
With so many lies, who can we trust?
By
Rod Dreher
| 
|
|
|
|
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
On Meet the Press, Tom Brokaw suggested why so many of us are so nail-spitting angry: "For a year now, for a full year, nothing that the American people have been told about the financial condition of this country has proved to be true."
Would that make what we've been told a what's the word? lie? Not necessarily. It is possible the people we relied on for information and advice were lying to themselves, too.
About a year ago, a Wall Street friend told me that the big banks are insolvent and that financial insiders know this. He cashed out of the market before last fall's crash, saving his fortune. Nearly every one of his investor friends knew how bad the situation was but still got creamed when the bottom fell out which makes an interesting point about the power of psychological denial.
Today, everybody knows the big banks are flat broke, but the government still pretends it's not true. Whether the power elites are deceiving themselves, as well as the rest of us, is in a sense beside the point, which is this: By now, it's hard to trust the judgment or integrity of our financial and governmental elites.
This has not been a good decade for the credibility of institutional leadership. President George W. Bush on Iraq and torture, U.S. Catholic bishops on clerical sexual abuse, professional baseball about steroids the lies go on and on.
We discover only now that our financial system was built on a colossal lie, a belief that its masters and their minions were competent and faithful stewards of the public trust. Instead, these experts Wall Streeters, regulators, ratings agencies, politicians were working not for the common good, but their own.
Conventional left-vs.-right partisanship serves to mask the fault that elites of both parties bear for this catastrophe. Only one political force counts in Washington: the Party of Money.
My Wall Street friend left his investment bank a few years back when, at his firm's retreat for top execs at a five-star resort, he saw colleagues behaving like villains in some lurid Marxist cartoon, guzzling vintage champagne and romping like Babylonian grandees. "I realized then that these people had no sense of responsibility to their clients or to anything else," he told me.
Those men lived by lies. Knowing that these financial giants were making enormously important decisions with no awareness of how detached they were from reality, my friend was frightened by how corrupting vast sums were of their judgment. And he was frightened for our future. Now we know why.
Before we can begin to reform the Wall Street-Washington nexus, we have to reform ourselves. We, too, have been satisfied to live by comforting lies. Yes, demand the truth of leaders, but let's have the self-respect to demand the truth of ourselves, too. There's no going back to a way of life built on the attractive but false idea that we can live as we like, borrowing against the future to satisfy today's wants, and suffer no consequences.
With so many elites discredited, where are the leaders we can trust? Where are the ideas that can renew us?
Here's a simple but radical one: When facing down a system built on lies, Czech anti-communist dissident Vaclav Havel developed what he called "anti-political politics." It was a politics based not on theory but on the conviction that "a single, seemingly powerless person" willing to stand on the truth, no matter the cost, is disproportionately powerful.
Truth and basic morality, Havel wrote in 1984, could be a starting point for the renewal of a discredited order. Referring to labor leader Lech Walesa, Havel wrote, "It is becoming evident that politics by no means need remain the affair of professionals and that one simple electrician with his heart in the right place, honoring something that transcends him and free of fear, can influence the history of his nation."
Present outrage is entirely justified. We need more of it to shake the rotten status quo. But anger cannot rebuild, only destroy, if it's not firmly grounded in an immovable personal commitment to truth and common decency. Our failed politicians have had their day. Stouthearted, truth-loving anti-politicians which is within the power of every one of us to be represent the only change worth believing in.
Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in the media and Washington consider "must-reading". Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.
| BUY THE BOOK |
| Click HERE to purchase it at a discount. (Sales help fund JWR.). |
|
Comment by clicking here.
Rod Dreher is assistant editorial page editor of the Dallas Morning News and author of "Crunchy Cons" (Crown Forum).
PREVIOUSLY
03/26/09: Government's war on farmers' markets may bring their demise
03/04/09: Our silly gods and American idols
02/03/09: My pledge? To know which way the wind blows
01/15/09: A populist prairie fire from the right?
01/05/09: Sam Huntington was plainly correct
11/10/08: Here comes the conservative civil war
10/21/08: Mad men in crazy economic times
10/14/08: The positive act of not voting
10/09/08: The speech John McCain should give
09/30/08: And it was written, our blame
09/22/08: The Beehive buzzes for Sarah Palin
09/08/08: Palin's a fighter and worth fighting for
09/02/08: GOP slouches toward St. Paul
07/18/08: Wall-E Pixar's surprisingly political postmodern masterpiece
06/08/08: Era of cheap airfare is over
05/29/08: What if they're not smart enough?
05/11/08: From horror, a child's loving gift
05/07/08:Will a canary be our last meal?
04/03/08: Economic crisis is of our own making
02/14/08: What child-men need is some tradition
02/05/08: A Republican victory this year could do more long-term damage to the party than a loss
01/22/08: Putting faith in Obama: Do GOPers tempted by him know what they're supporting?
11/20/07: We can't fix the world with The Care Bear Stare
10/17/07: Every father should read this book to his son
10/03/07: Not even our parks are safe … And I lay at least part of the blame on the cultural revolution and our obsession with the individual
08/22/07: The Decalogue, dangerous? Advice for a society that cringes at commandments
08/15/07: Playing the anti-science card
08/01/07: How the U.S. can avoid its own version of the fall of the Roman empire
07/24/07: Conservative author: Big business can be as dangerous a threat as big government
07/09/07: All quiet but the doleful pleas of a father who knows
06/28/07: When we let conspiracy theory masquerade as news, we fall prey to much more than deception
06/20/07: Stranded on Delta: They may love to fly, but it certainly doesn't show
06/13/07: When did conservatism start to mean never having to say you're sorry?
05/08/07: PBS darling gets abused by PC police
05/02/07: Impervious to beauty and deadened to depravity
04/20/07: What I know about being a loner
10/28/05: How the conservatives crumble
© 2007, The Dallas Morning News,
Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Information Services.
|
|

Arnold Ahlert
Mitch Albom
Jay Ambrose
Michael Barone
Barrywood
Lori Borgman
Stratfor Briefing
Mona Charen
Linda Chavez
Richard Z. Chesnoff
Ann Coulter
Greg Crosby
Alan Douglas
Larry Elder
Suzanne Fields
Frank J. Gaffney
Bernie Goldberg
Jonah Goldberg
Julia Gorin
Jonathan Gurwitz
Paul Greenberg
Argus Hamilton
Victor Davis Hanson
Betsy Hart
Ron Hart
Nat Hentoff
Marybeth Hicks
A. Barton Hinkle
David Horowitz
Jeff Jacoby
Renee James
Paul Johnson
Jack Kelly
Ed Koch
Ch. Krauthammer
Michael Ledeen
John Leo
David Limbaugh
Kathryn Lopez
Rich Lowry
Michelle Malkin
Jackie Mason
Ann McFeatters
Dale McFeatters
Dana Milbank
Jeanne Moos
Dick Morris
Jim Mullen
Deroy Murdock
Judge A. Napolitano
Bill O'Reilly
Kathleen Parker
Star Parker
Dennis Prager
Wesley Pruden
Tom Purcell
Sharon Randall
Robert Robb
Cokie & Steve Roberts
Heather Robinson
Pat Sajak
Debra J. Saunders
Martin Schram
Culture Shlock
David Shribman
Roger Simon
Michael Smerconish
Thomas Sowell
Ben Stein
Mark Steyn
John Stossel
Cal Thomas
Dan Thomasson
Bob Tyrrell
Ben Wattenberg
Diana West
Dave Weinbaum
George Will
Walter Williams
Byron York
ZeitGeist
Mort Zuckerman

Robert Arial
Chuck Asay
Baloo
Chip Bok
Dry Bones
Lisa Benson
John Branch
John Cole
J. D. Crowe
John Deering
Brian Duffy
Everything's Relative
Mallard Fillmore
Glenn Foden
Jake Fuller
Bob Gorrel
Walt Handelsman
Joe Heller
David Hitch
Jerry Holbert
David Horsey
Lee Judge
Steve Kelley
Jeff Koterba
Dick Locher
Chan Lowe
Jimmy Margulies
Jack Ohman
Michael Ramirez
Drew Sheneman
Kevin Siers
Jeff Stahler
Scott Stantis
Ed Stein
Danna Summers
John Trever
Gary Varvel
Kirk Walters
Dan Wasserman

Mr. Know-It-All
Ask Doctor K
Richard Lederer
Frugal Living
Tech Maven
On Nutrition
Bookmark These
Bruce Williams
|