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Political Correctness: the root of all evil

April 8, 2016 2:24 pm / 2 Comments on Political Correctness: the root of all evil

Dear Future President:

If you want to fix the country, you can start with the root cause of all that ails our country:

Political Correctness.

The truth is that political correctness is not a new idea at all; it is simply the new label for an old, established moral postulate once accepted by all.

The word civility shares its linguistic root with the word civilization. It means taking into consideration the comfort of others before expressing what I think or doing what I want. It means remembering that other people have rights before I assert my own. It means reflecting upon how my actions are going to affect my community and recognizing that I have a responsibility to a society that is more than the sum of autonomous individuals.

So what was wrong with the term civility that the concept needed rebranding as political correctness? Most likely, it was the connotation of political ideology that spawned this illegitimate offspring of cultural nobility.

Read the whole article here.

In this series, professionals provide advice for the next U.S. president.
#nextpresident

Marriage of Convenience

April 5, 2016 2:28 pm / 8 Comments on Marriage of Convenience

We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.
― Kurt Vonnegut

The orderly rolled my gurney to a stop before an imposing double doorway. “Okay,” he said, “This is where you get your kiss.” I couldn’t tell if he was speaking to me or to my wife. In any case, my wife kissed me and laughed and cried all at once. Then I was rolling again.

I arrived in surgery and scooted over onto the operating table. I joked with the anesthesiologist. He found my vein on the first try. I recited Psalms to myself and wondered distantly why I wasn’t scared out of my wits.

They sliced me open, broke my sternum, compressed my lungs like empty sugar bags, and stopped my heart to patch the hole between its upper chambers with a piece of my pericardium while redirecting the blood that flowed through an anomalous vein.

I don’t remember that part.

I also don’t remember my hands clawing the air, straining against nylon straps, struggling to tear the ventilator mask from my face and the dressing from my chest. My wife stifled a cry when she saw me in recovery. Apart from the convolutions of my fingers, the pallor of my face starkly mirrored the countenance of death.

“He looks so good,” the nurse told her.

When I did regain consciousness the next day, numbed by morphine and dazed by the residue of anesthesia, I asked my cardiologist if he could release me that afternoon. “I have to catch a flight to Jacksonville this evening,” I said.

I was trying to be funny. He thought I was delirious.

EXPECT THE UNEXPECTED

Lacking prescience, however, I had no excuse for the cavalier attitude with which I approached this whole business. No matter how distinguished my surgeon’s credentials, and no matter how casually he explained away the operation as routine (with the probability of success better than 99%), cardiac surgery remains as heart-stopping as it sounds: they carve open your chest and, during an extended period of clinical death, cut and paste around your most vital organ before sewing you back together.

Call it what you like; it hardly ranks among the more attractive forms of elective surgery.

Yet “elective surgery” was how the doctor had described it. After all, I had virtually no symptoms, and my condition might not advance for twenty years. Then again, deterioration could begin within months, or even weeks. And so, at my cardiologist’s insistence, I opted to exchange the distant prospect of lingering death for the immediate promise of physical pain followed by months-long recovery.

That was what I expected. Instead, from beginning to end, while my wife and children and parents were dealing with their respective emotional traumas, the greatest discomfort I suffered throughout the entire episode came not from the incision, not from anesthesia withdrawal, not even from the mild pneumonia I contracted during recovery, but from a persistent hangnail that nagged me from the day after surgery until I returned home and exorcised it with my cuticle clippers.

THERE IS A LESSON

The great tennis player Arthur Ashe, after contracting AIDS via blood transfusion, was reported to have said, “If I ask why this has happened to me, then I must also ask concerning all the good that I have had in my life.”

Indeed, Mister Ashe, may you rest in peace — you should have asked both questions, as should we all.

If life is all One Great Accident, then there is no why. But the exquisitely textured fabric of our universe, the elegant design of our world, and the transcendent nobility of Man when he listens to the calling of his soul — all these testify to the genius of an invisible Conductor who guides the symphony of Creation.

And if there is a plan behind the apparent chaos, then whatever happens for good or for bad should prompt us to ask, “Why?”

Click here to read the whole essay, from my column in the inaugural issue of The Wagon Magazine

Spitting Image 2:6 — The FBI vs. Apple: Lessons Learned

March 29, 2016 4:40 pm / Leave a comment

Good news, everybody! The FBI has found a workaround to break into the iPhone of suspected San Bernardino terrorist Syed Rizwan Farook, and the Department of Justice is backing down from Defcon 1. So now that the crisis is averted, what are some practical lessons we can learn about confrontation and conflict resolution?

Here are a few suggestions:

Both sides might be right. The FBI and Apple each claimed national security as its top concern. The FBI was thinking short-term — stop more terrorist attacks now; Apple was thinking long-term — don’t make ourselves vulnerable later. It’s entirely possible that both parties were sincere and correct.

So here’s the first takeaway. Until evidence proves otherwise, assume positive intent. Your adversary is not necessarily evil; he may just be looking at things from a different angle. Trying to understand his position before going into attack mode may avert conflict and promote mutually beneficial cooperation.

Go around roadblocks, not through them. Apple refused to cooperate. The FBI refused to back down. But as each party dug in and the deadlock stretched out, government officials did something that should renew our hope in government officials: they looked for another way of solving the problem. When the most straightforward plan of action isn’t panning out, don’t give up on finding a detour.

There might already be a solution. After arguing for months that it was impossible to break the phone’s encryption without Apple’s help, the government apparently found hackers who did what hackers said they could do from the beginning: find a way in. So if you don’t know what to do, ask someone who knows more than you do.

Nothing is foolproof. It’s a cliche, but cliches are usually true. Anything that can be protected can be broken into; and any plan can be thwarted. Or, as Yogi Berra used to say: Good pitching will always beat good hitting; and vice versa.

There are no perfect fixes. Although the Department of Justice isn’t releasing details, some believe that breaking into the phone may have caused some of its data to be irretrievably lost. A win doesn’t have to be 100%. In business, in diplomacy, and in most of life, it rarely is. If you end up with most of what you want, don’t let what you had to give up spoil your victory dance.

Save litigation as a last resort. Law suits cost everybody; except the lawyers. So if you’re not a lawyer, try everything else before you push the nuclear button.

Working together makes you look better. Black eyes and bloody noses are painful and unattractive, even when you win. I’m reminded of the Karate master who was accosted by hoods as he was leaving his dojo. “Do you want to beat me?” he asked. “Yeah, we want to beat you,” their leader replied.

The master could easily have dispatched the young miscreants without breaking a sweat. Instead, he took of his jacket and laid down on the sidewalk. “Now you have beaten me,” he said. The hoods looked at him in confusion, then drifted away.

Maybe cooperating means giving up a little more now. But you will almost certainly come out ahead in the end.

Spitting Image 2:5 — Keeping within the lines

March 28, 2016 3:12 pm / 2 Comments on Spitting Image 2:5 — Keeping within the lines

What’s wrong with this picture?

Well, that really depends; if there is no shortage of available parking spaces, or no handicapped spots open, perhaps nothing at all; if it is a one-time, careless indiscretion, it might be dismissed; if it is an expression of neurotic fear that others will damage the paint job by carelessly throwing open their doors, it might be understood, if not condoned.

But if it is symptomatic of indifference to the conventions of parking and the potential inconvenience to others, then it becomes something else entirely.

There is a good reason why lines are painted in parking lots. And there is more than one good reason to park one’s car between them.

We can apply the same principle to other conventions, some within the formal dictates of the law and others simply defined by custom and culture. Rolling stops at intersections, or disregarding stop signs altogether on a lonely road in the middle of the night. Changing lanes without signaling, or disturbing passengers on the subway with loud voices or offensive speech. Pushing into an elevator without waiting for its occupants to exit first, or cutting the line at the ticket booth. Setting the knife on the dinner table with blade turned outward, or not using cutlery at all.

Are there worse things? Of course there are. Should these things be legislated? For the most part, definitely not.

But is there something lost when we lose respect for these “trivial” conventions? Undeniably there is.

In his insightful book Civility, Stephen L. Carter explains the common root that turns “civility” into “civilization.” Of course we have to be a nation of laws; that’s a given. But just as important is being a nation of respectfulness, consideration, and self-reflection. Taking into account how our actions will affect others is not a matter for legislation; it is the symptom of a morally healthy world view, and of an awareness that what others expect from me is inseparable from what I can expect from others.

Like the proven “broken windows” theory of urban renewal, the respect I show for convention will serve as a model for others, making it easier for them to retain their own respect for the minutiae of personal conduct that produces a more pleasant society for everyone.

Even if we want to indulge our selfishness, respect for convention benefits us as well. The same discipline that makes me complete my set of 15 reps in the gym when I really want to stop after 12, that makes me finish my peas before I serve myself dessert, that makes me vacuum under the sofa even though no one is going to see the accumulated dust there — all these little concessions to doing things right reinforces our commitment to doing good and doing right on a grander scale by reminding us that there is a higher ideal in the world than our own individual comfort and convenience.

So there is good reason to park between the lines even when the parking lot is empty. Because you never know what other lines you may be tempted to cross, and you may not recognize the danger of crossing them until you’ve already gone over the edge.

Spitting Image 2:4 — Don’t say “Cheese!” Really?

March 22, 2016 2:25 pm / Leave a comment

ISIS threatens to bring terror to our shores. Iran and North Korea threaten to launch nuclear missiles against our cities. The national debt soars out of control. The divisions of ideology and race widen inexorably, as does the gap between rich and poor. The structure of the family continues to disintegrate, along with the core values that once gave us a sense of higher purpose and national identity.

So what is the one issue that really gets people’s blood boiling? Apparently, it’s the suggestion that Hillary Clinton doesn’t smile enough.

I’ve never paid any attention to MSNBC host Joe Scarborough, so I have no preconceived notions, although he seems to be a surprising voice of moderation on that most immoderate network. And I wasn’t watching the news on election night, so I can’t comment on whether Hillary Clinton should or should not have been smiling more when Mr. Scarborough tweeted:

Smile. You just had a big night. #PrimaryDay

This was too much for many women. Of all the belittling, misogynistic comments that Mr. Scarborough might have made, this one crossed the line of lines.

As the Washington Post explains: Being told to “smile” may be the ultimate nails-on-the-chalkboard comment for women.

Sorry, ladies, but I’m with Mr. Scarborough on this one. Because the truth is that we all need to learn to lighten up and smile more.

Like almost everything else in our society, our view on humor is completely backwards. The most caustic personal attacks are the standard fare of light-night television, while innocent quips and casual banter are condemned as “microaggressions.” Biting sarcasm is seen as the pinnacle of wit, while self-effacing irony is misconstrued as condescension.

This has nothing to do with Hillary, and it’s not just about women. If we really want to do something about the rise of violence and the demise of civility, the answer is right here:

Smile more, take pleasure in the company of friends and strangers alike, find joy in good-natured wordplay, laugh at your own shortcomings and inconsistencies, and look for ways to connect with others instead of staking out claims and drawing battle lines.

Indeed, the sages of the Talmud urged us relentlessly to draw others into our sphere of happy influence. Here are a few examples:

Rabbi Masya ben Charash said: Initiate a greeting to every person.

Rabbi Yishmoel said: Be respectful toward a superior, be pleasant to the young, and receive every person with joy.

Shammai said: Receive every person with a cheerful countenance.

Hillel said: Be like the disciples of Aaron — loving peace and pursuing peace, loving others and bringing them closer to the ways of wisdom.

Rabbi Chanina ben Dosa said: If the spirit of one’s fellows is pleased with him, the spirit of the Almighty is pleased with him as well.

So stop whining and start smiling.

The Second Amendment and the Oral Law

January 6, 2016 3:51 pm / Leave a comment

As president Obama embarks upon his latest unilateral campaign to repair the world, this time by expanding restrictions on gun ownership, it’s worth revisiting my article on the Second Amendment from 2010.

Perhaps the greatest danger to the Constitution is manipulating its words to validate predetermined conclusions. By doing so, we violate the talmudic admonition against making the law “a spade for digging,” i.e., a tool to advance our own ends.

To preserve constitutional integrity, we have to familiarize ourselves with the context of its times, then apply those observations to the times in which we live. That only works when we are committed to honoring the system, rather than exploiting the system to fit our own agenda.

Last month’s Supreme Court ruling affirming Second Amendment states’ rights (and coinciding with the predictable Republican grilling of Supreme Court nominee Elana Kagan over the same issue) has brought back into the spotlight the constitutional ambiguity regarding gun ownership in the U.S. of A.

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed. So states the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution. At first glance, the stipulation seems clear enough. American citizens may own guns, plain and simple.

Or maybe not. The qualifying phrase that introduces the amendment appears to restrict constitutional protection to dependence upon a militia, or citizen army, to defend the nation. Accordingly, in times such as ours, when a standing army has assumed responsibility for the common defense, there may be no constitutional guarantee at all. And so, on second thought, the amendment seems to clearly limit the extent of private gun ownership.

Or, again, maybe not.

Perhaps the Founding Fathers meant that, since every citizen ultimately owns an equal share of the responsibility to defend his country, the right to bear arms is part and parcel of each person’s national duty to fight for the public welfare should the need ever arise. This would explain why the authors of the amendment might have mentioned a militia even if they never meant to restrict said right.

So what was the original intent of the Framers? If they were here, we could ask them. Since they are not, each side seems to have a fair and reasoned claim to support its respective position.

Is there any way to resolve the question of what was intended by men who passed away long before our grandfathers were born?

In fact, there may be.

THE REST OF THE STORY

Imagine that, as you pass by a window, you see a man wearing a mask raise a knife and plunge it into the chest of another man lying prone beneath him. You scream for the police, certain that you have just witnessed a murder.

Or, yet again, maybe not.

Now imagine that you were unfamiliar with the concept of open-heart surgery. Only after the police arrive and explain that the man in the mask is a surgeon working to repair the heart of the man on the table beside him will you understand that he is in fact saving a life and not taking one.

Context is everything. It orients us in time, space, and circumstance, transforms isolated acts into links in a chain of connected events, none of which can be understood in isolation. And so, if the words of our forebears sometimes appear to us muddled or imprecise, the surest way to achieve clarity is to examine comments and opinions from the same thinkers and the same era.

Here are a few examples to provide historical context:

James Madison, on the principle of individual rights: [A bill of rights] should more especially comprise a doctrine in favour of the equality of human rights; of the liberty of conscience in matters of religious faith, of speech and of the press; of the trial by jury… of the writ of habeas corpus; of the right to keep and bear arms.

Massachusetts Representative Fisher Ames: The rights of conscience, of bearing arms, of changing the government, are declared to be inherent in the people.

Supreme Court Justice James Wilson, contributor to the drafting of the Constitution:The defense of one’s self, justly called the primary law of nature, is not, nor can it be abrogated by any regulation of municipal law.

Vice President Elbridge Gerry, signatory to the Declaration of Independence, on national defense: What, sir, is the use of militia? It is to prevent the establishment of a standing army, the bane of liberty.

In the context of the times, the intention of the Framers becomes difficult to debate. Only in relatively recent times, when the concept of a militia has become an anachronism, has it become possible to question the true meaning of the Second Amendment.

PRESERVING THE INTEGRITY OF THE LAW

Is there any way for words to retain their clarity despite the persistent evolution of cultural references and values? Is there any method for protecting ideas from the ravages of changing times and sensitivities?

Indeed there is. It predates the United States Constitution by 31 centuries, and it is called the Oral Law of the Torah.

Consider these biblical commandments:

Remember the Sabbath Day and keep it holy… And this will be a sign upon your arm and a remembrance between your eyes … Slaughter your [livestock] in the manner that I have prescribed… Do not seethe a kid in its mother’s milk.

These precepts, as they are written in the Torah, are impossible to observe. What does it mean to keep the Sabbath “holy,” and what actions — if any — are required to “remember” it? What kind of sign are we to place upon our arms, if elsewhere the Torah prohibits the application of any tattoo, and how do we place a “remembrance” between our eyes? Nowhere does the Torah outline any prescription for ritual slaughter, nor does it imply what is commonly understood, that that the prohibition against cooking a baby goat in its mother’s milk extends to every mixture of meat and dairy products.

In spite of these and many other ambiguities, the basic practices of the Torah observant community have remained essentially unchanged for over 3300 years. The explanation is simple. Unlike the family encyclopedia which once gathered dust on the shelf and now gathers dust on the CD rack, the Oral Torah forces every committed Jew to see himself as custodian of a living tradition that connects him with the origins of his identity and enables him to live in the modern world without compromising the values of his ancestors.

No longer purely oral, the discussions and debates of past authorities have been recorded for their children in the writings of the Talmud and the commentaries that elucidate them. Unlike the records left behind by the Framers of the Constitution, however, these records have become canonized as part of the structure and process through which Jewish law is determined in each and every generation. Even when questions and disagreements arise, there is no debate within the Torah community over the methods through which answers and solutions are to be found.

Society changes, technology changes, and the values of human beings twist in the winds of time like a weather vane spinning before a storm. Electricity, automobiles, computers, cloning, and in vitro fertilization may have once been unimagined, but we have inherited a legacy that teaches us how those earlier generations would have resolved the problems of our changing world if they were here themselves today. And so the Torah Jew never loses his bearings, for he is guided by the words of his forefathers and finds comfort in the knowledge that the ancient wisdom of the Torah will never become stagnant, corrupted, or out of date.

As my teacher Rabbi Nota Schiller often says, the Oral Torah allows the Jews to change enough to stay the same.

Originally published by Jewish World Review

Justice in Oregon — Color Blind and 20/20

January 5, 2016 3:41 pm / 1 Comment on Justice in Oregon — Color Blind and 20/20

A broken clock is right twice a day and, gratefully, the justice department has found the sweet spot — at least for the moment — in Oregon.

Certainly, the armed occupation of a national wildlife refuge is cause for concern. But it is not cause for panic and, in light of past notorious government interventions, definitely not cause for military confrontation.

In both the 1992 Ruby Ridge, Idaho, incident and the 1993 Branch Davidian raid in Waco, Texas, the level of intervention was clearly disproportionate to the danger posed and the resulting bloodshed largely indefensible. This is not to say that the government did not have just cause; rather, it failed to employ that resource that is more endangered than any other: common sense.

3 people died at Ruby Ridge; 76 died at Waco.

It’s heartening, therefore, that authorities are approaching the current crisis near Burns, Oregon, with circumspection. Of course, they can’t ignore the occupation. But with no one in danger, a wait-and-see strategy is the best of all available options.

The broader relevance of the story arises from the inevitable accusations of racism by leaders in the black and Muslim communities. It’s only because the so-called Citizens for Constitutional Freedom are white, they say, that the government has not charged in with guns blazing.

Which is, of course, pure nonsense. Two dozen right-wing trespassers in the middle of nowhere is hardly comparable to Ferguson, Missouri, or San Bernardino, California.

The response is different because the situations are different. And in this case, stuck between the real fears that inaction will embolden extremists to further acts of defiance while over-reaction will provide the opportunity for martyrdom, wait-and-see offers the best possible compromise between unattractive alternatives.

It’s also arguable that the occupiers have legitimate grievances against government overreach, which has grown into a systemic malady, evidenced by a rash of executive orders and a culture of bureaucratic strong-arming. Compared with the nebulous jeremiads of the Occupy Wall Street crowd and, more recently, students at Yale and the University of Missouri, the very real plaints of the Oregon occupiers appear level-headed and downright mainstream.

Competent leadership is characterized by the ability to gauge every situation according to its unique combination of factors, risks, and potential consequences. One-size-fits-all solutions rarely prove effective, and accusations of inconsistency are childish at best, opportunistic at worst. What we need most in these troubled times is cool-headed calculation that looks to strike the sanest balance between principled action and pragmatic compromise.

When we start demanding that level of aptitude and integrity from our leaders, maybe we will find ourselves with leaders worthy of our confidence and trust.

Spiritual Gridlock

November 30, 2015 4:15 pm / Leave a comment

With congress increasing paralyzed by gridlock and our president usurping monarchic power by executive fiat, it seems appropriate to revisit this essay from 2008, originally published by Jewish World Review and adapted in my book Proverbial Beauty.

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg wants to end traffic congestion in Manhattan. However, as sympathetic as New Yorkers may be to Mr. Bloomberg’s vision, his proposed method is most likely to produce madness.

To curb the number of vehicles entering downtown (which has grown annually by an average of 8000 per day since the 1920s, according to U. S. News and World Report), the proposed law would encourage (or coerce) commuters to rely on public transportation by imposing a daytime tax of $8 per car and $21 per truck traveling onto the island. City officials believe that this “congestion pricing” would reduce traffic by as much as 12 ½ percent.

Whether or not commuters can be persuaded to practice even occasional abstinence in their love affairs with their cars makes for interesting speculation. However, the concept itself is sound. In fact, it has been used for some time on a much larger scale, implemented throughout every borough of the world by the Mayor of the Universe.

EXPRESS LANES TO FREEDOM

The most the dramatic experiment in mass transit came over 3300 years ago when the Almighty split the Sea of Reeds, allowing the Jews to pass through and escape their Egyptian pursuers. In contrast to Cecil B. DeMille’s famous recreation, the sages teach that the sea opened up into twelve distinct passageways, one for each of the Tribes of Israel. As they passed through, the water separating the passages turned clear like glass, so that each tribe could see its fellow tribesmen traveling alongside them.

The design of this miracle teaches three lessons. First, the division of the sea into separate passageways demonstrates that there is more than one way to have a relationship with G-d. The Almighty does not want us to be automatons or clones, sheepishly following whoever is in front of us. Each individual is unique, and his divine service should be tailored to the nature of his singular soul.

Second, the water turning clear like glass reveals the lengths to which we must go to master the human ego. Had the walls of each passageway remained opaque, each tribe would have thought that it alone had discovered the correct avenue to reach the other side, and that it alone was traveling in the right direction to serve G-d. When they saw the other tribes traveling along side them, the Jews of each tribe recognized that they were not the only ones who had discerned the proper path.

The final lesson can be learned from recognizing that there were a limited number of paths. Anyone who did not follow one of the twelve passageways was, literally and figuratively, under water. Every spiritual movement does not become legitimate simply because it declares itself so, no matter how sincere its leaders or followers may be. Every self-proclaimed “holy man” is not genuine simply because he hangs out his shingle or attracts parishioners. Natural laws govern the operation of the spiritual universe just as they govern the workings of the physical world. One cannot render those rules null and void simply by wishing them out of existence or declaring them defunct, any more than congress can annul the force of gravity.

THE PRICE OF PRIDE

There is yet one more insight to be gained from the illustration of the Jews’ passage through the sea, one that is echoed by the New York mayor’s effort to cure his city’s traffic woes.

Consider the car as an allegory for personal autonomy. In a very real sense, we are all control freaks. We want to control our destiny, to chart our own heading, to have our hands on the wheel. Often the greatest demonstration of inner strength comes through humbling ourselves, giving up control and placing our fate in the hands of another. Often this is a concession we are either unwilling or unable to make.

But do we consider the cost? For car owners, the cost is rolled up in the price of the vehicle itself, of gas, insurance, repairs, parking fees, tolls and, perhaps, congestion tax. Public transportation is far cheaper and often more efficient. But still we refuse to relinquish control.

In business, the most efficient workers are those who work as part of a team, who coordinate their efforts with the efforts of others and trust their coworkers to get their own jobs done. Those who try to do everything themselves, or to micromanage others at their work, create confusion, inefficiency, and frustration.

Our relationships, marriages, and families function best when the individuals within them tend to their own responsibilities and allow others to look after theirs. Hovering, ordering, or criticizing before a spouse or child has even had a chance to complete an assigned task breeds resentment and destroys trust.

Spirituality is much the same. We like to think that we are in control of defining our own relationship with the Almighty. We strike out in whatever direction seems right to us, often without any roadmap or compass to guide us in distinguishing good from bad, right from wrong, moral from immoral. We believe that intuition alone will get us to our goal, when we have only the faintest notion of where we are trying to get.

Worst of all, there is available transportation ready to take us to our final destination in the most efficient way. By keeping G-d’s laws and following in His ways, we guarantee ourselves the smoothest possible journey through this world until we arrive at the World to Come.

THE FAST TRACK

But still many of us won’t give up control. So the Almighty levies His “taxes,” creating obstacles that make the paths of personal autonomy increasingly difficult. We feel stifled in our jobs, unhappy with our families, and discontented with the direction of our lives. So we seek out “detours,” looking for fulfillment in the least likely places: alcohol, drugs, gambling, or extramarital affairs. We think change will make us feel better, but we usually find ourselves worse off than before.

Rabbi Elyahu Dessler explains that we find ourselves in emotional or spiritual darkness at those times when we have cut ourselves off from the source of spirituality in the world. But when we “look into the darkness,” when we recognize that we have created the darkness for ourselves by distancing ourselves from the ways of the Creator, then and only then will we begin to find our way back to the light. By giving up control over our destiny, we regain mastery over our soul.

Whether taxing drivers will solve New York’s traffic problems remains a mystery. But it is in our hands to solve the mysteries of the spirit by following the well-trodden path of the generations that have gone before us. By retracing their steps, we can have confidence that we are not solely dependent upon our own devices to chart our way out of the darkness of confusion, but that we have a clearly marked path to follow toward the light of true meaning.

The Great Divide: Ignorance and Insecurity

November 12, 2015 6:25 pm / 1 Comment on The Great Divide: Ignorance and Insecurity

Conor Friedersdorf writes in the Atlantic:

[At Yale University, one] resident declared in a campus publication, “I have had to watch my friends defend their right to this institution. This email and the subsequent reaction to it have interrupted their lives. I have friends who are not going to class, who are not doing their homework, who are losing sleep, who are skipping meals, and who are having breakdowns.” One feels for these students. But if an email about Halloween costumes has them skipping class and suffering breakdowns, either they need help from mental-health professionals or they’ve been grievously ill-served by debilitating ideological notions they’ve acquired about what ought to cause them pain.

This is the reaction of Ivy League students, the best and the brightest, the cream of the crop, the hope for the future, the movers and shakers of the next generation, the political, social, and economic leaders of tomorrow. Their entire world collapses because someone, somewhere disagrees with them.

The depressing irony of the episode is that Erika Christakis’ noble attempt to accord students a greater measure of personal and moral responsibility resulted in the students themselves protesting for — and thereby demonstrating — their own incapacity to take responsibility for their actions on any level at all. Without a trace of embarrassment, academe’s most elite sons and daughters dissolved into a collective hissy-fit because one of their instructors suggested they should be treated as adults.

Read the whole article here.

When Monsters Lurk in Every Shadow

October 29, 2015 2:44 pm / Leave a comment

Originally published by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and Aish.com.

Every year at Halloween, my wife and I lay in a supply of candy for the trick-or-treaters who come knocking at our door, even though neither we nor our children observe the rituals of the day. Only once did we fail in our preparations: that was the year we forgot to brief our four-year-old son on the creepy customs of this curious festival.

Shortly after dark, I watched from the window as the first of our nocturnal visitors arrived, alighting from a minivan that idled beside the curb and swiftly approaching our front door. The doorbell rang, and my son raced to answer it, excited only by the prospect of an unexpected visitor.

Imagine his surprise, upon throwing open the door, to find himself face to face with a 4-foot-high Frankenstein’s monster complete with rubbery green skin, oozing stitches, and bolts protruding from its neck. Imagine further the surprise of our gruesome little guest when he stepped forward with his bag held open, only to receive a two handed shove in the chest and have the door slammed in his face by a ferocious four-year-old shrieking, “Monsters!”

Young Frankenstein took off toward his car at full flight, also screaming, “Monsters!”

We sorted the matter out and little Frankenstein got his Milk Duds, but it was a long time before my son was willing to answer the door again. That’s a normal response, for a four-year-old. I have to wonder, however, if we aren’t all spending far too much time peering out from behind our curtains and seeing monsters lurking in every shadow.

The simple minds of children sort out the dichotomy of their worlds in the most rudimentary fashion: us and them, superheroes and monsters, good guys and bad guys. And the good guys always wear white.

As we grow up, however, we should come to appreciate that the world is considerably more complex, that the good guys don’t always look like us and the bad guys sometimes do. Unfortunately, by longing for the simplicity of childhood, many adults cling to an either/or view of the world as unsophisticated as a child’s. And although childishness in children may be cute, in adults it is not only embarrassing, but dangerous.

The desire for a return to simplicity is easily understood. As technology and social evolution spin our world around faster and faster, people are seeking common belief, common culture, and common interest to steady them against the storm. Indeed, cultural continuity and a sense of community are among the most stabilizing factors within families and society. But when we begin to feel threatened in our own beliefs and insecure in our own cultures simply because others are expressing their beliefs and cultures in their own way, then culture becomes a battlefront across which enemies stand ready to attack.

One response to this kind of uneasiness is to become a universalist. “I’m okay, you’re okay, and everyone else is okay, too.” The only one not okay is the one who passes judgment on others. This is a comforting philosophy, which may explain its popularity. It also explains a report last year that teachers in high school and college failed to persuade a large percentage of their students to take a stand in condemnation of Hitler’s Nazis: by refusing to concede that one ideology is better or worse than any other, the students eliminated the need of ever having to defend their own.

A second response calls for a good offense as the best defense. By attacking the shortcomings of others, I deflect attention away from my own. It doesn’t take much imagination, either, since virtually every religion and culture has enough dirty laundry to provide any supermarket-aisle tabloid with a supply of juicy banner headlines. But all that soiled laundry, aired in the light of day, only feeds our mistrust and paranoia, without providing any direction toward cleaning up the messes that we have made ourselves.

The only reasoned response to cultural insecurity and, as such, the most difficult, is for all of us to study and learn about our respective cultures and ideologies well enough that we immunize ourselves against the xenophobia that results from ambivalence in our convictions. When I truly understanding my own identity, my heritage, and my beliefs, when I take responsibility for my faults and begin working to correct them, only then can I move toward confidently separating attitudes that are wrongheaded from those that merely differ from my own.

“Know how to answer a heretic,” the Talmud says. You don’t necessarily have to engage him in debate, but you do have to know, for your own peace of mind, why his beliefs differ from yours. Without such knowledge, we are helpless to discern what hides behind the masks all around us, helpless to recognize the difference between dangerous fanatics and simple neighbors, between real monsters and children whose only wish is that we add a little sweetness to their lives.

Yonason Goldson