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Is it too late to let freedom ring once more?
Facebook has confessed that stories appearing on its supposedly-unbiased “Trending Topics” were manipulated. Rather than risk allowing its one billion active users exposure to the corrosive influence of conservative commentators, Facebook’s “news curators” decided to doctor the list of headline stories to favor left-wing political leanings.
In other breaking news, the sky is still blue, the grass is still green, and the loudest proponents of freedom are still laboring mightily to impose their vision of freedom on others.
Freedom of speech has been on life-support for decades already, wracked by the infectious scourge of groupthink, political correctness, and moral equivalence. College newspapers have routinely been stolen by students and even administrators for espousing politically incorrect views. Speakers of all ideological stripes have been shouted down, sometimes even by groups they support. Recently, a petition circulated among Yale students to repeal the First Amendment (including, ironically, the right to petition) collected 50 signatures in one hour.
The real death of free speech stems from the death of credibility. News organizations have abandoned even the pretense of objectivity or accuracy. The line between reporting and editorializing is consciously and persistently blurred. Elected officials and presidential candidates show such utter disregard for the truth that they don’t even attempt to disguise their prevarications, much less apologize when caught in the act.
But it’s the corruption of language itself that may pose the greatest danger to what remains of the institution once called Truth.
Profile of Terror
Whether or not the cause of the EgyptAir disaster turns out to be terrorism — and regardless of whether Donald Trump was right or wrong to call it terrorism before any information was in — that was and is everyone’s first thought in these dangerous times. We don’t believe in accidents anymore; experience has been too stern a teacher and the lessons of fanaticism have been too painful.
Presumably, such incidents will only make TSA lines move slower and slower. Which wouldn’t matter if that actually made us safer and safer.
My neighbor told me recently that his son flew to Australia by way of Istanbul and Qatar. Changing planes in Qatar’s Hamad International Airport, he was ushered through customs without even breaking stride — along with every other Caucasian on his flight — while every single Middle-Easterner was detained, searched, and questioned at length.
Interesting that the Qataris have no qualms about profiling their own people, while here in the open-minded West cling desperately to the illusion that every passenger poses an equal threat to our security.
Is it possible that the Qataris know something we haven’t figured out yet?
If terrorists were dressing up as Orthodox rabbis, I would want TSA to profile me and those who look like me. Instead of taking it personally, I would be grateful for their common sense and conscientiousness.
But I guess that’s just me.
The Danger of Democracy
The prospect of a presidential race between the two most unpopular candidates in American electoral history should give us serious pause to reflect upon the inherent precariousness of any democratic system.
On the one hand, democracy protects a people from the whims and excesses of despotism by creating a system of accountability and popular will. On the other, it places power in the hands of the masses, who may be uninformed and easily manipulated; as Robert A. Heinlein once wrote, does history record any case in which the majority was right?
A lot of people seem to agree. Even now that the outcome appears inevitable in both primary races , opposition to the status quo has grown so intense that, in both parties, the voices of pragmatism are being drowned out by the battle cry of revolution.
Each rebel camp is a bizarre mirror-image of the other. On the Republican side, the party orthodoxy is rejecting the presumptive nominee for being indifferent to its values and unfit to lead. On the Democratic side, a surging upstart movement rallies around an untethered independent while decrying the corruption of the party orthodoxy itself.
Both insurgent groups are threatening to turn to third-party candidates. Leaders on both sides are warning that such a move would be political suicide, and history supports their fears. Third-party campaigns backfired for Teddy Roosevelt in 1912, Strom Thurmond (nearly) in 1948, Ross Perot in 1992, and Ralph Nader in 2000. So isn’t it better to vote for the lesser of two evils than to give away the election by grasping at straws?
That’s a good question.
Spitting Image 3:3 — Never having to say you’re sorry
I can almost feel sorry for J. K. Rowling. By age 40 she had published the most successful literature series in history, become the richest woman in England and, according to Forbes, was the first person ever to become a billionaire by writing books.
By any accounts, 40 is too young to retire. So what does one do for a second act?
Ms. Rowling tried turning her hand to crime novel writing, but the glare of Harry Potter washes out anything else connected with her name. After claiming she would never add to the series, now it seems that she is doing precisely that with a forthcoming sequel.
And why not? Better than the sad attempts to stir up controversy with her post-publication commentaries, which seem aimed at no goal other that remaining relevant after her book sales ceased to make headlines. First she told us that Albus Dumbledore is gay, an assessment that cooled the enthusiasm of many fans and met with incredulity from many others.
Then she began apologizing for killing off her characters, first Remus Lupin then, most recently, Fred Weasely.
If Leo Tolstoy were still alive, would we expect him to apologize for killing off Anna Karenina? Did William Shakespeare go too far by killing off Romeo and Juliet? Should Arthur Miller have re-imagined the saga of Willy Loman as Life of a Salesman? And is there anybody with more blood on his hands than Nicholas Sparks?
Ms. Rowling’s gift for making the fantastic seem believable depended upon lacing her stories with the kind of harsh and painful twists that are inevitable in the real world. Without these, her novels would never have struck such a resonant chord with readers who could be captivated by impossible flights of fancy while finding within the narrative a wealth of down-to-earth lessons and insights for every day living.
Of course, maybe Ms. Rowling didn’t mean any of it, like the April Fool’s joke of Harry being a figment of Ron’s imagination.
We can hope, while suggesting that the author remember the words of King Solomon: Do not say, “How is it that times gone by were better than these?” For that is not a question prompted by wisdom.
With a talent for storytelling like yours, Ms. Rowling, no apologies are necessary.
A Day of Remembrance Soon Forgotten
So what was the point of last week’s Holocaust Memorial Day?
Once upon a time, the commemoration served as a warning against the consequences of unbridled nationalism. But in this generation, the memory of Nazi atrocities has mutated into a political football tossed about to score points for one ideological cause or against another.
IDF Major General Yair Golan made the most egregious fumble when he suggested last Wednesday that events in pre-war Germany are repeating themselves in modern-day Israel. Like all public figures who talk first and think later, the deputy chief of staff was soon scurrying to revise his comments, pleading that he hadn’t meant what he said and hadn’t said what he meant.
More likely, General Golan meant exactly what he said. And it’s likely that his heart was in the right place, even if his brain was out to lunch.
Your dog doesn’t love you — get over it
Okay, I’m guilty.
As a high school teacher, I strive to maintain a persona of impeccable professionalism every moment of every day. Almost.
On rare occasions, however, when I can no longer resist the impulse to really get under my students’ skin, I indulge a streak of sadism and utter those few words guaranteed to enrage even the most mild-mannered teenager.
Are you ready? This is what I say:
“Your dog doesn’t love you.”
And I don’t stop there. Pausing a few seconds to allow the full measure of indignation to begin boiling over, I follow up with:
“And you don’t love your dog.”
I have plenty of ammunition in my arsenal to defend my point. But in addition to the logic of my argument, I now have a current study that supports my claim.
Giving offense vs. taking offense
The political correctness police were out in force recently, correctly censuring Larry Wilmore for his use of the N-word and insanely condemning Hillary Clinton for uttering the words “off the reservation,” perceived as demeaning to Native Americans.
Starting with Mrs. Clinton’s turn of phrase, we might as well excise from the the lexicon of acceptability words such as “nosy” because it might offend people with large noses, “insightful” as insulting to myopics, “high-minded” as defamatory of marijuana users, and “thin skinned” for denigrating hemophiliacs. If we want to find reason for taking offense, we can find it everywhere.
The more noteworthy incident was Larry Wilmore’s use of the N-word at the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner, and his directing it toward the President of the United States, no less. Clearly the remark was intended to be affectionate and laudatory, which is how it was taken — without offense.
But that’s not really the point. In a society that is growing simultaneously disrespectful and intolerant of disrespectful speech, we need to elevate public discourse, not sink deeper into the gutter. If the N-word is too offensive to be broadcast — even news anchors reporting the story weren’t permitted to repeat it in quotation marks — then it is certainly unacceptable to be used in the presence of our president or, even worse, said to him.
Frankly, I’m more concerned by the use of President Obama’s first name, and his nickname at that. Maybe Mr. Obama and Mr. Wilmore are on a first-name basis. But in a formal context, such familiarity is utterly disrespectful from anyone other than a spouse, parent, or sibling.
This is the real threat of political correctness. It’s not just that we take offense in all the wrong places. It’s that we lose all sensitivity for the difference between what is respectful and what is disrespectful, we lose all sense of priorities, and we forget that refinement is a value. Nothing matters except the applause, the laugh, the ratings, and the votes.
This is why the same people who took offense at Mrs. Clinton’s use of “off the reservation” have no reservations about her pathological pattern of telling lies and misrepresenting political adversaries.
This is why our political and social institutions are in chaos.
And this is what we are teaching our children.
Passover, Freedom, and the War on Culture
The responsibilities of freedom, the history of freedom, and the culture wars that threaten the values and the foundations of civilization.
Listen to my interview on the Bill Martinez show (interview begins at 33:00).
Passover and the price of freedom
This Passover, let us all reflect upon the value of freedom, the price of freedom, the responsibilities of freedom, and the cost of taking freedom for granted. Only by standing strong against the forces within and without that never stop trying to enslave us will we remain free.
The Five Cups of Passover Wine?
As everyone knows, on the first night of Passover we eat matzah and bitter herbs, we recline at the table, and we drink five cups of wine.
Five cups of wine? We drink four cups of wine, don’t we?
Well, that depends whom you ask.
Of course, it really is only four cups that we drink at the Passover seder. Acceptance of this practice, however, has not always been universal. Rather, it evolved as the best possible compromise between two contradictory Talmudic traditions. And only by going back to the root of the custom can we fully appreciate the relevance of our annual reenactment of the Exodus from Egypt.
The four cups of wine reflect four separate phases that concluded with the Jewish people’s transformation from Egyptian slaves into a free and autonomous nation. Within the narrative of the Exodus itself, four different expressions of redemption allude to the process through which the Jews attained their freedom — a freedom that was not born in an instant, but only as the culmination of four distinct and imperative stages.
Vehotzeisi. And I will take you out from the burdens of Egypt. Although Pharaoh endured ten plagues before he sent the Jews forth from Egypt, only half that many persuaded him to release them from their labors. This enabled the Jews to adjust to independence, to learn what it meant to make their own decisions before the time when they would be held accountable for the choices they would make.
Vehitzalti. And I will rescue you from their service. A slave whose master makes no demands upon him is still a slave. Having already been exempted from their labors, now the Jews were prepared to face the challenges of real freedom.
Vegoalti. And I will redeem you with an outstretched arm. History teaches us that freed slaves often fail to make the adjustment from slavery to freedom. The culture of slavery may be so deeply rooted in their psyches that they cannot succeed as free people. Similarly, the Jews needed divine assistance to purge their hearts and minds of the corrupt values of Egyptian culture, foreshadowing the way Jews all through history have had to struggle against the corrosive influence of foreign ideologies.
Velokachti. And I will take you to Me as a people. Once liberated from the physical and psychological bondage of Egypt, the Jews still faced the subtle dangers of unrestricted freedom. Only with a sense of identity and purpose, only with a clearly defined national mission, could the Jews emerge from cultural anarchy to embrace true freedom.
But there remains one final expression in the narrative of our collective transformation from slaves to free people: Veheiveisi. And I will bring you into the land. As a free and sovereign nation, could the Jewish people begin to fulfill their mission even before they established themselves in their land, in Israel? Or is it impossible for us as Jews to consider ourselves truly free while we remain exiled from our ancestral homeland? This is the essence of the debate whether we drink four or five cups of wine.
What is our conclusion? We have none. We simply don’t know. However, we do know that we have to drink at least four cups. So that is what we do, then wait for Elijah the Prophet to come, not to drink the fifth cup, but to tell us whether or not we should drink it ourselves.
But some of us refuse to wait for Elijah to affirm our commitment to the Holy Land. This year, like every year, hundreds of Jewish high school graduates from around the country will defer their first year in college to study Jewish tradition and Jewish law in the land from which we are exiled. No threat of terrorist violence has been able to dissuade these young men and women from renewing their connection to the the heritage and land of their ancestors.
And, perhaps even more impressive, their parents have set aside their own fears and their own worst nightmares to encourage their children to travel half way around the world to pursue their highest calling: to rise to the challenge of Jewish freedom.
Yonason Goldson 