For Memorial Day: on nationalism and patriotism

The New Neo Posted on by

[NOTE: The following is a repeat of a previous post, slightly edited and updated.]

The story “The Man Without a Country” used to be standard reading matter for seventh graders. In fact, it was the first “real” book – as opposed to those tedious Dick and Jane readers – that I was assigned in school.

It was exciting compared to Dick and Jane and the rest, since it dealt with an actual story with some actual drama to it. It struck me as terribly sad – and unfair, too – that Philip Nolan was forced to wander the world, exiled, for one moment of cursing the United States. “The Man Without a Country” was the sort of paean to patriotism that I would guess is rarely or never assigned nowadays to students – au contraire.

Patriotism has gotten a very bad name during the last few decades.

I think this feeling gathered more adherents (at least in this country) during the Vietnam era, and certainly the same is true lately. But patriotism and nationalism seem to have been rejected by a large segment of Europeans even earlier, as a result of the devastation both sentiments were thought to have wrought on that continent during WWI and WWII. Of course, WWII in Europe was a result mainly of German nationalism run amok, coupled with a lot more than nationalism itself. But the experience seemed to have given nationalism as a whole a very bad name.

Here’s author Thomas Mann on the subject, writing in 1947 in the introduction to the American edition of Herman Hesse’s Demian:

If today, when national individualism lies dying, when no single problem can any longer be solved from a purely national point of view, when everything connected with the “fatherland” has become stifling provincialism and no spirit that does not represent the European tradition as a whole any longer merits consideration…

A strong statement of the post-WWII idea of nationalism as a dangerous force, mercifully dead or dying, to be replaced (hopefully) by a pan-national (or, rather, anational) Europeanism. Mann was a German exile from his own country who had learned to his bitter regret the excesses to which a particular type of amoral nationalism can lead. His was an understandable and common response at the time, one that many decades later helped lead to the formation of the EU. The waning but still relatively strong nationalism of the US (as shown by the election of Donald Trump, for example) has been seen by those who agree with Mann as a relic of those dangerous days of nationalism gone mad without any curb of morality or consideration for others.

But the US is not Nazi Germany or anything like it, however much the far left may try to make that analogy. There’s a place for nationalism, and for love of country. Not a nationalism that ignores or tramples on human rights (like that of the Nazis), but one that embraces and strives for and tries to preserve them here and abroad, keeping in mind that—human nature being what it is—no nation on earth can be perfect or anywhere near perfect. The US is far from perfect, but has been a good country nevertheless, always working to be better, with a nationalism that traditionally recognizes that sometimes liberty must be fought for, and that the struggle involves some sacrifice.

So, I’ll echo the verse that figured so prominently in “The Man Without a Country,” and say (corny, but true): …this is my own, my native land. And I’ll also echo Francis Scott Key and add: …the star-spangled banner, O long may it wave, O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave. Those lines from the anthem express a hope that has been fading. But even though things had been looking dim for both liberty and courage in recent years, it is not over.

When I looked back at my original, longer version of this post, I saw that it was written on Memorial Day in 2005, not that long after I began blogging. Seems longer ago than that. This is another portion of what I wrote then, and although I was describing my post-9/11 thoughts, I think it’s especially appropriate now [updates in brackets]:

I’d known the words to [our national anthem] for [over sixty years], and even had to learn about Francis Scott Key and the circumstances under which he wrote them. But I never really thought much about those words. It was just a song that was difficult to sing, and not as pretty as America the Beautiful or God Bless America (the latter, in those very un-PC days of my youth, we used to sing as we marched out of assembly).

The whole first stanza of the national anthem is a protracted version of a question: does the American flag still wave over the fort? Has the US been successful in the battle? As a child, the answer seemed to me to have been a foregone conclusion–of course it waved, of course the US prevailed in the battle; how could it be otherwise? America rah-rah. America always was the winner. Even our withdrawal from Vietnam, so many years later, seemed to me to be an act of choice. Our very existence as a nation had never for a moment felt threatened.

The only threat I’d ever faced to this country was the nightmarish threat of nuclear war. But that seemed more a threat to the entire planet, to humankind itself, rather than to this country specifically. And so I never really heard or felt the vulnerability and fear expressed in Key’s question, which he asked during the War of 1812, so shortly after the birth of the country itself: does that star-spangled banner yet wave, o’er the land of the free and the home of the brave?

But now I heard his doubt, and I felt it, too. I saw quite suddenly that there was no “given” in the existence of this country–its continuance, and its preciousness, began to seem to me to be as important and as precarious as they must have seemed to Key during that night in 1814.

And then other memorized writings came to me as well–the Gettysburg Address, whose words those crabby old teachers of mine had made us memorize in their entirety: and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth. Here it was again, the sense of the nation as an experiment in democracy and freedom, and inherently special but vulnerable to destruction, an idea I had never until that moment grasped. But now I did, on a visceral level.

A song for Memorial Day

The New Neo Posted on by

I’ve posted this song before, but I think it bears repeating, especially on Memorial Day.

It’s Tim McGraw’s extraordinarily moving song “If You’re Reading This“:

If you’re readin’ this
My momma’s sittin’ there
Looks like I only got a one way ticket over here.
I sure wish I could give you one more kiss
War was just a game we played when we were kids
Well I’m layin’ down my gun
I’m hanging up my boots
I’m up here with God and we’re both watchin’ over you

So lay me down
In that open field out on the edge of town
And know my soul
Is where my momma always prayed that it would go.
If you’re readin’ this I’m already home…

The first time I ever heard the song I got the chills as the lyrics unfolded and I realized what it was about, and then again and again as the heartstrings were jerked harder and harder as the song went on.

Most of us do, or should, feel a very strong gratitude to the men and women who sacrificed their lives to defend liberty here and abroad, and a very strong sorrow that it was necessary. On Memorial Day, we thank them.

The birds

The New Neo Posted on by

The other day I read this article:

Fox News’ Peter Doucy hilariously dodged another bird attack outside the White House after being attacked by another feathered friend in April and we are with him in asking, “What’s going on?”

It’s not really a rerun of the Hitchcock movie. But it brought up a memory for me.

My ex-husband and I used to have a very good friend who lived in Paris. Unfortunately and sadly, he’s been deceased for many years. But way back when we had some good times visiting him in France. We’d stay with him in Paris, and sometimes we’d do side trips with him as well. It was great, and of course he spoke very fluent French, having been born there although he grew up mostly in the US.

On one of those trips we were in Aix-en-Provence, on that beautiful street with the tall arching trees. Suddenly, a bird unloaded on our friend’s head and shirt – a direct hit. Must have been a large bird, too, because this was an epic deposit. Fortunately, we had our luggage in the car, and he was able to change his shirt and wash off in the public mensroom.

Then we drove to Les Baux, one of those beautiful although touristy cities on a hill. Back then there were fewer tourists, and we had a lovely although tiring time strolling around. My ex went on ahead after a few hours, but our friend and I sat down on a low wall to rest As we sat there – yes, you guessed it – boom! Another bird (or perhaps the same one, who followed us there – it’s only an hour’s drive, and this was many hours later) took an enormous dump on our friend’s head and shirt.

Different shirt, of course; same head.

We found the car and he went through the entire ritual again.

My ex has another story that takes place in Europe and involves birds – but I’ll save that for another time. Always keep them wanting more.

Ethnic Jews, religious Jews, and “Messianic Jews”

The New Neo Posted on by

As I’ve written before somewhere in this voluminous blog, the definition of “Jew” is complex because Jews are both a religion and an ethnic group. They are also a people, which is somewhat harder to define.

Often there’s overlap, but often there’s not. For example, you can be a secular ethnic Jew who doesn’t practice Judaism at all – or even is against it – and much of the world will still consider you Jewish. You can also be a convert to Judaism and not ethnically related at all, but you automatically become Jewish on conversion. Your DNA may not show it, but you’re a Jew by Judaism’s definition, and you are also considered part of the Jewish people.

So an ethnic Jew who’s an atheist remains an ethnic Jew. And an ethnic Jew who converts to Christianity, or embraces what’s called “Messianic Judaism” by its practitioners, remains an ethnic Jew as well. He or she may consider himself or herself to be a religious Jew as well, but many religious Jews (not all) would beg to differ. Judaism excludes belief in the divinity of Jesus. A basic tenet is that the deity is unknowable and unnameable and unpersoned. Once you believe in the divinity of Jesus you’re not practicing Judaism even if you think you are, but you remain an ethnic Jew. Judaism differs from Christianity in many ways, but this is one of the most basic.

But what, you might ask, about Jewish belief in the Messiah? It’s quite different from the Christian belief. The Jewish messiah is a mortal person, a “a fully human non-deity Jewish leader, physically descended via a human genetic father of an unbroken paternal Davidic line through King David and King Solomon.” References to being the “Son of God” are metaphoric rather than literal. Nor is belief in a Messiah of any type universally true even of religious, believing Jews.

The definition of being a Jew is complicated somewhat by the fact that different strains of Judaism believe that being ethnically Jewish – or part of the Jewish people – is inherited in different ways. The more Orthodox believe that Jewishness involves having a Jewish mother and even if the father is not Jewish the offspring are Jewish (part of the Jewish people) as long as the mother is Jewish. Reform Jews believe Jewishness is passed through either parent.

The legal system of Israel reflects some of this, but Jews outside of Israel aren’t bound by it in any way unless they happen to agree with it anyway. All Jewish denominations around the world reject Messianic Judaism as a form of Judaism in the religious sense. However, Messianic Jews can become Israelis under the right of return – but only if they qualify in terms of ancestry.

There were several Israeli court rulings that are relevant to this; they concern the narrow issue of the right to return. Earlier law had allowed ethnic Jews to return unless they converted to another religion (atheists were okay). But a newer ruling allowed Messianic Jews to return if they qualified as ethnic Jews, but only if the inheritance was through the paternal line and not the maternal line. To me, it seems that this somewhat mixes up the definitions of what is a Jew and blurs distinctions between the religious definition, the legal one for the right of return, and the ethnic one. After all, ethnically, someone with only a Jewish father who then converts to Messianic Judaism is no different from someone with only a Jewish mother who then converts to Messianic Judaism. But the law in Israel treats them differently. Anyway, here’s a description of the case:

The state of Israel grants Aliyah (right of return) and citizenship to Jews, and to those with Jewish parents or grandparents who are not considered Jews according to halakha [traditional Jewish law], such as people who have a Jewish father but a non-Jewish mother. The old law had excluded any “person who has been a Jew and has voluntarily changed his religion”, and an Israeli Supreme Court decision in 1989 had ruled that Messianic Judaism constituted another religion. However, on April 16, 2008, the Supreme Court of Israel ruled in a case brought by a number of Messianic Jews with Jewish fathers and grandfathers. Their applications for Aliyah had been rejected on the grounds that they were Messianic Jews. The argument was made by the applicants that they had never been Jews according to halakha, and were not therefore excluded by the conversion clause. This argument was upheld in the ruling.

I hope this post clears up some questions – although I have my doubts.

DeSantis proposes property tax relief

The New Neo Posted on by

Interesting idea:

DeSantis has proposed providing one-time, $1,000 property-tax rebates this year to homeowners as a prelude to asking voters in 2026 to cut property taxes.

“The homestead (exemption) is great, but the homestead is limited in terms of how much benefits you get, and so your property goes up three times, you’re paying more, no question about it,” DeSantis said. “So how does it work where you’re having to pay $10,000 a year just in property taxes?”

Florida’s Homestead Exemption removes $25,000 off the assessed value of an owner-occupied home, condominium, co-op apartment or certain mobile home lots. It also provides up to another $25,000 of additional exemption off any assessed value over $50,000.

While that relief helps, DeSantis said, it’s not enough for many in the current real estate climate.

“You’re paying tax, you’re paying insurance, and then principal and interest is less than those two combined. And so this is difficult for people,” DeSantis said. “You should not be in a situation where you ever have to give up your home because you can’t afford the taxes.”

DeSantis argued that homes should function the same as other purchases, with a tax at the point of sale and no continued payments to the government after.

Of course, there’s that pesky problem of how to raise revenue for services. DeSantis is a practical sort of guy, so I assume he’s thought about that. I doubt property taxes will be abolished altogether, but perhaps for seniors and/or those who have owned their homes for a certain number of years? Or, introduce some alternative form of taxation not based on property ownership?

The dawn of a new age for nuclear power?

The New Neo Posted on by

I’ve long been in favor of nuclear power. Maybe more of the world is now going in that direction, having discovered that the green alternatives don’t work very well.

For example:

Over the past few days, the politics and policies around nuclear energy have shifted faster than at any other period in the post-Chernobyl era. Here are a few examples:

Germany, the world’s long-time anti-nuclear poster child, just did a screeching U-turn. Under its new chancellor, Friedrich Merz, Germany will cooperate with France and treat nuclear as a “green” power source under EU regulations. The move comes just 25 months after Germany took its last three nuclear plants offline. As one German official said, the move is a “sea-change policy shift.”

The announcement from Berlin came just days after Belgium’s federal parliament voted by a large majority to repeal a 2003 law mandating the phase out of nuclear energy and banning the construction of new reactors.

The article lists more in that vein.

Plus of course we have Trump, who yesterday issued a new EO on the subject:

Instead of efficiently promoting safe, abundant nuclear energy, the NRC has instead tried to insulate Americans from the most remote risks without appropriate regard for the severe domestic and geopolitical costs of such risk aversion. The NRC utilizes safety models that posit there is no safe threshold of radiation exposure and that harm is directly proportional to the amount of exposure. …

Recent events in Europe, such as the nationwide blackouts in Spain and Portugal, underscore the importance of my Administration’s focus on dispatchable power generation –including nuclear power — over intermittent power. Beginning today, my Administration will reform the NRC, including its structure, personnel, regulations, and basic operations. In so doing, we will produce lasting American dominance in the global nuclear energy market, create tens of thousands of high-paying jobs, and generate American-led prosperity and resilience.

Sec. 2. Policy. It is the policy of the United States to:
(a) Reestablish the United States as the global leader in nuclear energy;
(b) Facilitate increased deployment of new nuclear reactor technologies, such as Generation III+ and IV reactors, modular reactors, and microreactors, including by lowering regulatory and cost barriers to entry;
(c) Facilitate the expansion of American nuclear energy capacity from approximately 100 GW in 2024 to 400 GW by 2050;
(d) Employ emerging technologies to safely accelerate the modeling, simulation, testing, and approval of new reactor designs;
(e) Support the continued operation of, and facilitate appropriate operational extensions for, the current nuclear fleet, as well as the reactivation of prematurely shuttered or partially completed nuclear facilities; and
(f) Maintain the United States’ leading reputation for nuclear safety.

Much more at the link.

When I’ve discussed these issues for the past few decades with Democrat friends and family members, two patterns have emerged. One is of the non-scientifically-inclined person who is afraid of nuclear power and has exaggerated the bad effects of nuclear accidents in the past, and does not credit safety advances since – for example – Chernobyl. The other is of the scientifically-inclined person who is in favor of nuclear power, considering it a relatively “green” form of energy that could solve some of the problems of fossil fuels.

Trump against Harvard; judges against Trump

The New Neo Posted on by

Here we go again.

Trump issued an order “revoking Harvard’s participation in F-1 and J-1 visa programs, under which foreign students attend Harvard.” The administration had asked Harvard to provide information on its foreign students’ participation in “illegal and violent activities,” and Harvard’s reply was not considered adequate. Harvard sued, and an injunction was issued against the administration.

John Hinderaker, who wrote the post I just linked, believes that the administration will lose this particular case, and even that they probably expect to lose it because they have arbitrarily dispensed with certain statutory requirements. He considers this particular action against Harvard to be more political than legal.

On the other hand – as pointed out at Legal Insurrection:

The judge made the ruling without a Trump lawyer present. As I stated in my blog yesterday and today, DHS gave Harvard 72 hours to respond to requests.

As Margot Cleveland pointed out, there is “no reason the court couldn’t have set [an] afternoon hearing.”

I suppose this one may end up going to SCOTUS as well.

One particularly interesting aspect of this case is how it highlights the extreme dependence a university such as Harvard has on foreign students. They pay full tuition for the most part, unlike many of Harvard’s regular students. The percentage of foreign students is twenty-seven percent of Harvard’s enrollment.

Lies beget murder: “blood on their hands”

The New Neo Posted on by

In the aftermath of the DC killing by Elias Rodriguez, there are many articles (for example, this) featuring the phrase “blood on their hands” and blaming various entities for stirring up such murderous hatred: the universities, the online influencers, leftist organizations, the UN, international courts, and the press – all of which have been busy churning out anti-Jewish anti-Israel venom, a regular “Protocols of Zion” and/or blood libel a day.

Much of this anti-Jewish propaganda takes the form of an ancient Jew-hating lie: the blood libel, which accuses Jews of being baby-killers. Now, it’s certainly true (and tragic) that in modern wars, babies are killed at times. But the IDF goes out of its way to avoid that, whereas Hamas puts its children in harm’s way in order to encourage it and use it to demonize Israel and Jews. Hamas also lies constantly about the number of casualties, especially of young people, and the press dutifully spreads the lies without question. Accusations of “genocide” are hurled at Israel and accentuated by the farce of international courts.

In my early blogging days, I wrote at length about one of these blood libels, the Mohammed al Durah case. Palestinians faked a child’s death at Israeli hands, filmed it in an early example of what became known as Pallywood, and spread the lie around the world. It was used as justification for the Second Intifada, a series of bloody terrorist attacks on Israel.

Now the cry around the world is “Globalize the Intifada!” and we have the very predictable murder at the hands of the non-Arab activist leftist American-born Rodriguez.

Melanie Phillips describes the process in a piece entitled “Blood on their hands,” with the subtitle “Horrifyingly, antisemitism has become a moral obligation for liberals.” An excerpt:

The murderer pulled the trigger. But many others have the blood of these two innocents, who were reported to have soon become engaged, on their hands.

The university principals who have allowed hate mobs on campus to incite the murder of Jews and destruction of Israel, week in, week out; the politicians who have allowed the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas and Iranian extremists to spread their influence throughout western civil society; the media and all those who relentlessly demonize Israel with blood libels and murderous lies, including the British, French and Canadian governments that this week threatened to punish Israel for defending itself—these all bear responsibility for what happened in Washington.

This week, another falsehood about Israel’s war in Gaza was added to the relentless incitement against the Jewish state. This one came from the U.N.’s emergency coordinator, Tom Fletcher, who told the BBC that “14,000 babies will die in 48 hours” from malnutrition.

A moment’s thought would suggest that such a synchronized mass mortality event was simply incredible.

The media, however, parroted it as valid. It duly spread like wildfire. Countless Israel-haters leapt upon it to validate their loathing. In a poisonous debate about Gaza in Britain’s House of Commons, members of parliament referred to it no fewer than 13 times.

It soon turned out, however, that it was indeed nonsense. As the BBC later clarified, Fletcher had misrepresented a claim made on May 12 by the U.N.’s IPC food classification system—a claim that was itself highly questionable—that an estimated 14,100 severe cases of acute malnutrition were expected to occur among Gazan children aged between 6 and 59 months from April 2025 to March 2026.

So two days actually turned out to be one year, and 14,000 certain deaths turned out to be 14,000 possible cases of malnutrition.

We don’t know whether Fletcher can’t read, was feeling the worse for wear that day or maliciously misrepresented what the IPC had said. What we do know is that the United Nations and the entire global humanitarian establishment constitute a bubbling sewer of anti-Israel and anti-Jewish hatred.

False claims of imminent famine and starvation in Gaza have been made on a regular basis since the very start of the war. It’s an emotive blood libel that has incited a murderous hysteria of the kind that led to the gunning down of the young couple on Wednesday night.

The famine and starvation never materialized.

Those aren’t the only lies about Israel and the Gazans, of course. But accusations of baby killing and baby starvation are especially potent and emotional ones with an ancient lineage. They’ve been sparking the murder of Jews for centuries.

Rodriguez is a leftist clearly motivated by the left and its propaganda. But don’t think there aren’t people on the right – or supposedly on the right – who spread the same and/or different lies, although there are far fewer of them then on the left. I’m thinking of Candace Owens, to take one prominent example (the following are from her “X” account):

Live with Ian Carroll today discussing Zionists wasting no time using a tragedy to try to score points.

Or:

There is nothing more fake, gay, and obvious than the“you have blood on your hands” aimed at people who have nothing to do with a crime that has taken place, because they hold a reasonable opinion about something else.

What is happening in Gaza is still wrong, psychos.

Her use of the phrase “what is happening in Gaza” does not refer to anything the Palestinians are doing; it refers to Israel.

By highlighting Owens, I most definitely do not mean to suggest that the left isn’t much much worse in this regard. I’ve written about that many times before. I merely want to illustrate that Jew-hatred is growing on the right as well, mostly online and due to Owens and a few others who have gained many many followers.

NOTE: Here are some posts you get when you do a search on this blog for “blood libel.”

AI: is it real or is it Memorex?

The New Neo Posted on by

We can still tell the difference – kind of. But soon, it may be impossible:

The possible ramifications are huge, and not just (as is obvious) for the movie business. For video proof of truth itself. Some of this change has already happened, but there’s much more to come.

From the replies to that tweet:

So basically we can’t trust anything from a screen or a speaker ever again.

Also:

I don’t know man it looks like it doesn’t have a soul.

Every now and then I play a game on my phone. Those things are rife with AI ads featuring “people” who look 99.99% like real people but somehow don’t quite make it. There’s a very slight disconnect among gestures, expressions, and speech, as well as a slight offness (very slight) to the faces. But how long will that last before they perfect it?

Will there always be a sort of Turing test for AI-generated content? Or will they finally get the “soul” thing right?

Here I am – a bit late to the party today

The New Neo Posted on by

I’ve mentioned before that I have quite a few close friends with serious health problems. Every now and then I get called on to help with a doctor visit or procedure, and today was one of those days.

The whole episode lasted longer than I thought and kept me away from the computer longer than expected. But here I am.

I guess this is one of the perks of getting older.