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May 20, 2013

Richard A. Serrano: Is Meir Kahane's assassin now a changed man?

Hannan Adely: Town raises Palestinian flag at City Hall

Melissa Healy: Genetic copies of living people from embryos no longer science fiction
Morgan Housel: When smart investors do stupid things

Sharon Saloman, M.S., R.D.: Hunger games: Eat more, weigh less, without starving

Jewz in the Newz by Nate Bloom : Jews Inducted into Rock Hall of Fame; Anton Yelchin co-stars in New "Trek" film; Kutcher (but not Kunis) visits Israel; Jewish TV Star Praises Jewish Rap Star

The Kosher Gourmet by Cathy Pollak: WARNING: This WALNUT CAKE WITH PRALINE FROSTING, perfect for afternoon coffee, is addicting
May 13, 2013

Rabbi Nathan Lopes Cardozo: Why the giving of the document that would permanently change the world could only be done in desolation

David G. Savage: Church-state, literally? Supreme Court weighing public school graduation in a church

Emily Alpert: Recession dragged down birth rates for less-educated women
Morgan Housel: The deep downside of home ownership

Peter Teffer: Will Dutch police soon be stalking cybercriminals on your computer?

Heidi McIndoo, M.S., R.D.: Meatless 'meat' can have its own set of problems

The Kosher Gourmet by Diane Rossen Worthington: Celebrate! This must-try appetizer is delicate yet has depth of flavor: Corn-Leek Cakes with Caviar, Smoked Salmon and Creme Fraiche

May 10, 2013

Rabbi Berel Wein: Be all that you should be

Caroline B. Glick: The dirty little secret about Israel's Arabs

Mona Charen: Hawking's Moral Calculus: The man and the movement he embraces
Morgan Housel: The biggest retirement myth ever told

Sandi Doughton: Eyes may provide new insight into brain problems

Jewz in the Newz by Nate Bloom : The Great Gatsby's Jewish Ties; Jews in the "Time 100 list" List; People's Most Beautiful Women

The Kosher Gourmet by Linda Gassenheimer: A sweet-hot meal: Pear salsa spices up salmon

May 8, 2013

Peter Ford: Why China is welcoming both Israel's Netanyahu and Palestinians' Abbas

Warren Richey: Obama administration quietly backs out of appeal over new contraceptive mandate

Fred Weir: At Kerry-Putin meeting, US-Russia relations thaw --- a tad
Amanda Paulson: Study reveals sad truths about community colleges

Harvard Health Letters: Evidence weak that zinc, echinacea are beneficial

The Kosher Gourmet by Leela Cyd Ross : Almost too pretty to eat, this colorful salad with Sicilian inspiration will tickle the taste buds and delight your visual sensibility

May 6, 2013

Edmund Sanders and Patrick J. McDonnell: Think Israel's objective in Syria is to weaken Assad or embolden the rebels? Think again

Brian Bennett: Israeli airstrikes may show weakness in Syrian defense

Michael Ollove: Millions of ex-felons, parolees and those on probation are about to be entitled to tax-payer paid health coverage
Karen Kaplan: Most men can skip PSA test for prostate cancer, urologists say

Kimberly Lankford: How to track down a lost life insurance policy

Dream of Mars exploration achievable, experts say

The Kosher Gourmet by Susan M. Selasky: EGGPLANT WRAPS are an easy, sumptuous and scrumptious meal

May 3, 2013

Rabbi Nathan Lopes Cardozo: Human Courage and the Unavoidable, Disturbing Text

Steven Emerson: Attorney General Fights CAIR in Court, Lauds it in Public

Mediterranean diet helps beat dementia: study
Harvard Health Letters: When to be screened for a hearing problem

Jewz in the Newz by Nate Bloom : Iron Man's Jewish Connections; Marc Maron's New TV Show; Martin Landau Grows Up with Israel; Shalom, Allan Arbus

The Kosher Gourmet by Diane Rossen Worthington: A sweet surprise for Mother's Day dessert

May 1, 2013

Jonathan Rosenblum: An Improbable Journey to Orthodoxy

Jonathan Tobin: Blame Obama, Not Israel for Syria Push

Kids, kittens the Same? With employee perks at struggling Internet pioneer Yahoo! it's hard to tell
Halena M. Gazelka, M.D.: Mayo Clinic Medical Edge: What you need to know about implanted pain relief devices

Sandy Kleffman: Artificial kidney offers hope to patients tethered to a dialysis machine

Jessica Shugart: When it comes to math, MRIs may be better than IQs

The Kosher Gourmet by Mario Batali: The celebrated chef on how high-maintenance ASPARAGUS RISOTTO need not be

April 29, 2013

Roy Gutman: Poland's new Jewish museum celebrates life, doesn't revisit Holocaust

Mark Clayton: Terrorism in America: Is US missing a chance to learn from failed plots?

Kim Murphy: Boston Bomber's 'Svengali' Revealed
Morgan Housel: He's rich, smart and old: Listen to him

Thomas Salinas, D.D.S.: Mayo Clinic Medical Edge: The safety of amalgam fillings

Harvard Health Letters: Tomatoes and stroke protection

Pete Spotts: Tiny satellites + cellphones = cheaper 'eyes in the sky' for NASA

The Kosher Gourmet by Diane Rossen Worthington: Swing into spring with lemon cream pie

April 26, 2013

Rabbi Abraham J. Twerski: The world is a mirror

Caroline B. Glick: Time to confront Obama

Clifford D. May: Defense in the Age of Jihadist Terrorism
Kimberly Lankford: New strategies ease pain of paying for long-term care insurance

Howard LeWine, M.D.: Ask the Harvard Experts: Too much ibuprofen?

Sharon Palmer, R.D.: How to feel your best -- with plenty of energy, a healthy weight and optimal mental and physical function -- without driving yourself batty

Jewz in the Newz by Nate Bloom: Jewish Major Leaguers, 2013; New Movies and Comedy Show; Shalom, 'Lumpy' (Leave it to Beaver)

The Kosher Gourmet by Emily Ho : A bright and cheerful salad to herald the warmer months ahead

April 24, 2013

Steven Emerson: Boston Bomber Exposes Islamist Secret

Morgan Housel Admit it: No one has any idea what's going on
Harvard Health Letters: Can you get headaches from headache medication?

Kerri-Ann Jennings, M.S., R.D.: How to easily get more Omega-3s in your diet

Melissa Healy: Pot in a pill: All the pain relief without the smoke

The Kosher Gourmet by Susan Russo: Chipotle Chili Butternut Squash Soup is bold, zesty, hot

April 22, 2013

Ken Dilanian: Counterterrorism's future is unclear

US man departing country arrested on terror charges
Barbara Williams: An unorthodox but growing treatment in a 9-year-old's battle against cancer

P.J. Skerrett, M.D.: How to recognize a good whole grain product

Jewz in the Newz by Nate Bloom: Teen actor Jonah Bobo in New Flick: Hunky James Wolk on Mad Men; Erich Segal's Daughter Writes Prize-Winning Jewish Novel


Jewish World Review March 3, 2008 / 26 Adar I 5768

A conservative for all seasons

By Paul Greenberg


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http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | Today's America has quite a different political climate from the one into which William Frank Buckley was born November 24, 1925, mainly because he made the difference.


It was an America in which the conservative philosophy could scarcely be called a philosophy; it was more like a relic under glass, its skeletal remains rolled out now and then for an occasional autopsy by Walter Lippmann or a funeral mass under the direction of George Santayana. Any distinction between conservative thought and right-wing nuttism, the holy and profane, had long ago blurred into inconsequentiality. Those bones had about as much chance of living again as Robert A. Taft had of being elected president of the United States.


By 1950, the cultivated Lionel Trilling, one of the few members of the professoriate who had some reverence for the old ways, could observe: "In the United States at this time liberalism is not only the dominant but even the sole intellectual tradition. For it is the plain fact that there are no conservative or reactionary ideas in general circulation."


Professor Trilling's diagnosis was all too accurate. Oh, there was still a conservative impulse in American politics after the second Great War — "perhaps even stronger than some of us know," the professor admitted. But there was no extant conservative thought, he opined, only "irritable mental gestures which seek to resemble ideas." That comment was more than a diagnosis; it could have been an epitaph.


That was the valley of dry bones into which strode a young student at Yale — Buckley, Wm. F. Jr., of the Connecticut and oil Buckleys — and which he proceeded to bring to life despite the best efforts of academe to discourage him. It's not that Bill Buckley was present at the creation of the conservative revival; he pretty much created it, beginning at Yale.


This obstreperous young Edwardian, complete with the manners and accent of his rarefied class, outpointed Yale's stultified bureaucracy at every opportunity. This snooty caricature of all that Yale was solemnly dedicated to extirpating reacted to its solemn efforts by compiling a best-selling catalogue of its dull gray sins. Instead of being cowed like a proper undergraduate eager for the system's approval, young Buckley fought back with surprising zest. The result was his "God and Man at Yale: The Superstitions of 'Academic Freedom.' "


The title said it all, but Buckley being Buckley even then, he expounded on his theme at a sesquipedalian length. Which was enough to reduce Yale's McGeorge Bundy, who would go on to become the architect of the Vietnam War and other disasters, to the sputtering rage of all capital-L Liberals when they're pinned like butterflies to a board, or rather like drab moths. It was just the sort of reaction Buckley thrived on throughout his career. (Years later, he would orchestrate the excommunication of the John Birch Society from the respectable right with the same touch.)


Buckley would go on to many another triumph, from his founding of National Review to his innumerable columns, essays, novels, books, travels, grand adventures and grander spoofs. My favorite among his book titles was the one he gave his history of the National Review. It's enough to warm the heart, and gut, of any editorial page editor: "Cancel Your Own Goddam Subscription." As one of his critics noted, he had a talent unusual in someone of deep political convictions; he was unlikely to "ruin a dinner party." Quite the contrary. Where Buckley was, there was festivity.


If you seek his monument today, just look around. Conservatism is now the dominant American political philosophy, and liberalism the series of irritable mental gestures. But nothing disorganizes an army or cause like victory. Conservatism's intellectual dominance now shows in its smug self-satisfaction, its various cracks and fault lines, its slow subsidence from fighting idea to just reflex, its progression from courage to hubris. And there is no new Buckley in sight, someone who could both mobilize and re-invigorate the old true ideas, even while entertaining us all. But the sea change i American ideas that he presided over is unmistakable.


Between them, William F. Buckley in "G-d and Man at Yale," and his friend, mentor and conscience, Whittaker Chambers in "Witness," made a revolution in American political thought and action even if few could see it coming. It was Buckley's National Review that midwifed the intellectual revolution that preceded the popular one, as intellectual revolutions do. His wit, promise and general lilt overlay a steely mind and will that was Roman in the sense of both the Republic and the Church. What a rarity he was, unfortunately. Something tells me we have only begun to miss William F. Buckley Jr.

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