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Oct. 13, 2008
Rabbi Yonason Goldson: The Happiness Quotient
Jonathan Rosenblum: Ignore the Grandchildren
Oct. 10, 2008
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Caroline B. Glick:
Lebanon on the brink --- and why it matters
Oct. 8, 2008
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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!)
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Jewish World Review
June 13, 2008
/ 10 Sivan 5768
Search for one-eyed man
By
Wesley Pruden
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http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
In the land of the blind, so the ancient philosopher reminds us, the one-eyed man is king. In our own time, the ignorant, the unaware and the witless ride high.
This is largely the intimidating work of a runaway media, taken over by untutored consultants, marketing men armed only with ignorance and Powerpoint presentations. Every dunce with a laptop computer feels empowered to snuff out the dying light.
This is making it difficult for the search committees, both Democratic and Republican, assigned to find suitable running mates for Barack Obama and John McCain. Nearly every prospect has something in his past - a little learning, accomplishment in the arts, an example of religious faith - that demands disqualification.
The Internet is buzzing with the "news" that Bobby Jindal, the fresh governor of Louisiana, observed an exorcism as a student at Brown University and wrote about it without mockery. This is supposed to consign the governor, born into a Hindu family from his parents' native India and later a devout convert to Roman Catholicism, to irrelevance. (A believing Christian is the scariest figure in the secular pantheon of horror, hate and fear.) Mr. Jindal wrote about his experience for the New Oxford Review, which one blogger describes as "a serious right-wing Catholic journal" (irony not intended) and not only did he not make fun of the participants in the exercise but described his own experience as possibly "a personal encounter with a demon."
Such credulity is embarrassing, and probably disqualifying, particularly for a graduate of Brown University (which is trying mightily to live down its Baptist origins) and for a callow Rhodes Scholar who had been accepted at both Yale Law School and Harvard Medical School when he wrote the essay. "Reading the article leaves no doubt that Jindal ... was completely serious about the encounter," reports the Web site Talking Points Memo. "He even said the experience 'reaffirmed' his faith." Didn't the boy learn anything in the Ivy League?
On the Democratic side, Jim Webb, the junior senator from Virginia, is a hot prospect for sharing the ticket with Barack Obama. A decorated Marine in Vietnam, the father of a Marine in Iraq, Mr. Webb would give Mr. Obama, who consorts with an unrepentant terrorist who plotted to plant bombs in America while Mr. Webb was taking fire in Vietnam, a little cover with the ordinary working-stiff Americans who are so suspicious of what Sen. Obama, with or without a flag pin, may be up to. But Mr. Webb, a literate man with a knowledge and actual appreciation of the history of his country, has some 'splainin' to do to the Obamaniacs, many of whom would have to hold their noses to vote for a soldier.
Jim Webb, the proud descendant of Confederate soldiers, makes no apology for his inheritance, an inheritance that has been a guiding light for the American military since the founding of the republic. The dull and the ignorant, ignorant of what they rail against, see only evil and treason where there was gallantry, bravery and sacrifice. Those examples survive among the highest American traditions of military service. The dull and the ignorant, incapable of understanding complicated history, defame gallantry, bravery and love of kith and kin as a defense of slavery, "the peculiar institution" first brought to these shores by New England sailing families. (Gen. P.G.T. Beauregard, who commanded the Confederate line at First Manassas and wrote well-regarded battle histories after the war, estimated that only 1 in 20 Confederate soldiers owned slaves.)
But the ignorant demand stereotypes and history reduced to fantasy. The revisionist Robert E. Lee, Mr. Webb observed in his 2004 book, "Born Fighting: How the Scots-Irish Shaped America," is typical of the uninformed calumny heaped on the memory of the Southern soldier. "The greatest disservice on this count has been the attempt by these revisionist politicians and academics to defame the entire Confederate army in a move than can only be termed the Nazification of the Confederacy."
The vice presidency may be "the most insignificant office ever the invention of man contrived" (John Adams) and "not worth a pitcher of warm spit" (John Nance Garner). Or it may not. But interesting scholars certainly need not apply.
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.
JWR contributor Wesley Pruden is editor in chief of The Washington Times. Comment by clicking here.
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© 2007 Wesley Pruden
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