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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 June 19, 2008 / 16 Sivan 5768

CAN'T do spirit

By Cal Thomas


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http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | "Life is a banquet, and most poor suckers are starving to death." — Auntie Mame


In today's political climate, a liberal Auntie Mame might say that life is a banquet, which the government must pay for, and that those who can't afford a place at the table should behave like it was an all-you-can eat buffet.


This is the view of Barack Obama. In an interview with The Wall Street Journal, Obama expounded on the economic policies he would pursue as president. Among other things, he is concerned about the "winner-take-all" economy where, he says, "the gains from economic growth skew heavily toward the wealthy." Actually, the gains from economic growth can skew toward anyone willing to work hard and make personal and family decisions that improve their chances for success.


This is boilerplate wealth redistribution, an economic philosophy at the center of the former Soviet Union. Obama and Democrats wish to embrace it now in order to make more people dependent on government, rather than encourage people to rely on themselves and the opportunity America offers to most citizens, even illegal aliens. Guaranteed equal outcome is socialism.


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America was built on and sustained by a "can do" spirit. Today, too many are taught a "can't do" spirit. They are told that because of factors over which they have no control — race, class, poverty — it is impossible for them to do anything for themselves and so they must increasingly rely on government. Government doesn't cure poverty. It merely sets up barriers that ensure that too many poor people will remain locked in poverty. They are encouraged to vote for Democrats, if they want to keep receiving "benefits."


In his classic work "Self-Reliance," Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote, "There is a time in every man's education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better, for worse, as his portion; that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given to him to till."


How many read Emerson today in schools that graduate multitudes who can't read, write, or do basic math? Who teaches self-reliance? It's all about relying on government as our keeper.


America once was a country of overcomers. Today, we are not about overcoming. The successful are not studied to see how they succeeded. Their stories of overcoming obstacles are not told, at least in their totality. If they are told at all, it is just the success and wealth part, not the part about how they got there. And then because they studied hard, didn't take drugs, developed character, learned business principles and succeeded, they are told their wealth must be taken from them by Barack Obama and his legion of envious thieves to spread around to those who made wrong decisions. Obama's economic doctrine subsidizes people who make wrong decisions and does little to encourage them to make right ones. Failure becomes an option, the flip side of success. One can make money either way.


Two observations from another era in which the word "entitlement" referred more to liberty than to someone else's earnings, ring true today. Both are from Calvin Coolidge. First, "Don't expect to build up the weak by pulling down the strong" and "The wise and correct course to follow in taxation and in all other economic legislation is not to destroy those who have already secured success, but to create conditions under which everyone will have a better chance to be successful."


Or, if you prefer, John F. Kennedy at a Nov. 20, 1962 news conference: "It is a paradoxical truth that tax rates are too high and tax revenues are too low and the soundest way to raise the revenues in the long run is to cut the rates now. ... Cutting taxes now is not to incur a budget deficit, but to achieve the more prosperous, expanding economy which can bring a budget surplus."


Several members of the Kennedy family have endorsed Obama. Maybe someone will remind him of JFK's decidedly different approach to taxation, prosperity and a "can do" spirit.

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Cal Thomas Archives

JWR contributor Cal Thomas is co-author with Bob Beckel, a liberal Democratic Party strategist, of "Common Ground: How to Stop the Partisan War That is Destroying America". Comment by clicking here.

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