By now you have probably read the remarkable story of Jaycee Lee Dugard, a twenty-nine-year-old woman who was kidnapped eighteen years ago by a couple named Phillip and Nancy Garrido. Jaycee was eleven at the time, and has been held … Continue reading →
The other evening I turned on the TV and came across this CNN documentary entitled “Escape from Jonestown.” I watched for the next two hours, because to my surprise it turned out to be riveting. Even though I recall Jonestown … Continue reading →
We may not be able to define evil, but most of us think we know it when we see it. Unfortunately, that leads to equations such as Bush=Hitler, or the bumper sticker I saw on a car yesterday that said, … Continue reading →
Over two years ago I wrote a post about Mohammed Atta’s eyes. In it, I quoted an airline employee who waited on Mohammed Atta early on the morning of 9/11, and described him thusly: It was just the look on … Continue reading →
As more details emerge on the background of the Virginia Tech shooter, it turns out that his history was one long, loud warning sign that something extremely bad was about to happen. So how is it that this young man—who … Continue reading →
[Part I here.] By early 1943, the time of the Rosenstrasse Protest, the Final Solution were well underway. The Nazis had been very careful about their policy of extermination of the Jews; one can view the entire operation as a … Continue reading →
Nonviolent resistance to totalitarian governments can be very difficult because of Draconian retaliation against such efforts and the resulting climate of fear among the populace, as well as the constant propaganda designed to reduce dissent to a minimum. But not … Continue reading →
[This is the second of two parts. Part I can be found here.] Goebbels was an extraordinarily intelligent and even learned man who had earned a doctorate in literature and philosophy from the University of Heidelberg. Here is a description … Continue reading →
[This is the first of a two-part series. Part II will appear tomorrow.] Every now and then I read about a person whose life seems so strangely compelling that I can’t help but write about it. In telling such a … Continue reading →
As promised, I’ve got more to say about Moby Dick. Just think of it as that essay I struggled with in high school, redux (and, by the way, I’m still struggling). I prefer to state the question about the symbolism … Continue reading →
Norman Geras is a man who has thought long and hard about the Holocaust. Recently, he tackled the controversial question of whether the Holocaust was, “in some significant moral sense, singular or unique in the long catalogue of calamities that … Continue reading →
In the comments section of my Reagan post, an interesting question came up. How responsible are politicians (or, as they used to be called, statesmen–now we’d have to say “statespeople” instead) for the consequences of their actions? Are they responsible … Continue reading →