It’s my one-year blog anniversary. Sort of. Kind of. Why the asterisk? Although the first day I ever posted on this blog was nominally almost exactly a year ago–September 16, 2004–I wrote very little for the first five months. To … Continue reading →
I know Bush must have given an excellent speech last night because a liberal friend of mine pronounced it “moving” and “inspiring” in somewhat awed and surprised tones. Something he said, or perhaps the way he said it, touched her … Continue reading →
I had no idea David Brooks was a comedian, but this column of his is pretty funny stuff (of course, he had some awfully good material to work with). Is it possible that David is any relation to Albert or … Continue reading →
A reader recently alerted me to an astounding article by Martha Gellhorn which appeared in the Atlantic Monthly in October of 1961, forty-four years ago. Gellhorn was quite a story in herself. Beautiful, brilliant, brave, she was the third wife … Continue reading →
There’s a world of difference between skepticism and cynicism. Skeptics doubt and question in an attempt to get at the truth. Cynics doubt because they think that, by definition, every player has bad (or at least selfish) motives. What happens … Continue reading →
The Israeli withdrawal from Gaza (which I supported, by the way, as the best alternative among all the lousy “choices among crazinesses” available to the Israelis at the time) has had some disheartening results. First we had the inevitable but … Continue reading →
Here’s a movie dealing with the subject of the departure of the Jews from Arab and Moslem lands in which they had lived for centuries–and, in some cases, millennia. If you scroll down, you will read an interesting piece by … Continue reading →
Just recently I received an e-mail from a thoughtful reader who asked: For most of my friends, being progressive is part of their identity. Changing their minds requires reevaluating who they are…Why do you think identity is so tied up … Continue reading →
I’m not particularly conversant with Japanese politics, but this seems like an important story. Japanese voters answered the call of Prime Minister Koizumi with a strong vote to return him to power on a platform of reforming and streamlining the … Continue reading →
[On this fourth anniversary of 9/11, I am offering the following post. It represents part A of a projected two-part segment about 9/11. Parts A and B together will be the sixth entry in my ongoing series about intrapersonal political … Continue reading →
There are so many excellent blogs and bloggers that I can’t even begin to keep up with all the ones I want to read, and still continue to do any writing myself. But every now and then I find a … Continue reading →
A while back, in the course of doing some research on World War II and the Holocaust, I came across a statistic that absolutely stunned me: the percentage of Jews in the population of Germany immediately prior to World War … Continue reading →