Secure Borders? Not a Chance, Senator
Ah, the fantasy of “secure borders.” For millennia, economic pressures have forced people to move toward more prosperous lands. Nothing has ever stopped that flow, and nothing ever will.
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Gun Ownership as Sin—A Strategic, Secular Proposal for Gun Reform
Logic is the key to the story. In this case, once we know how many thousands of Americans are killed by guns each year and know that places with the fewest guns have the fewest murders, it’s only logical to regulate gun ownership and possession. But even the most convincing logic can rarely defeat a rich, emotionally powerfully, historically deep-rooted myth. And the gun control advocates’ progressive myth is depressingly thin and emotionally weak compared to the thick, potent store of myth wielded by their opponents.
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Reading Beinart and Lerner as Gaza Burns
I know it sounds strange but it’s a great time to be an Jewish American activist working for Middle East peace. After all these years in the closet there’s hope that the Beinartians and the Lernerites have begun a critical dialogue for Jewish Americans.
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The General’s Son Recounts Very Different Israeli-Palestinian Conflict
A new memoir by Israeli peace activist Miko Peled, the son an honored general, details a far different history from the one most Americans are familiar (or comfortable) with.
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“Religious Freedom” and the Conservative Quest for Absolute Truth
But the demand for hierarchy has a larger impact on politics. In Bill Clinton’s often-quoted words: “When times are uncertain, the American people would rather have a leader who is wrong but strong than one who is right but weak.” Just as the father must rule to keep the home in order, and the Father in Heaven must be obeyed to keep the universe in order, so the “great white father” in the White House must have firm control to keep order in the political realm.
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Patriotism and Piety—Not For Conservatives Only
Haidt’s primary point is actually a good one: people on all sides of the political debate ought to listen more carefully, and try harder to understand one another. He correctly identifies a cardinal sin of so many liberals and lefties: failing to give conservatives an honest hearing. But it’s lousy strategy. If you want to win, you’ve got to have the best possible intelligence about what the other side is up to.
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State of the Union Stuck in that Olde-Time Semi-Niebuhrianism
Obama’s SOTU was a deft combination of centuries-old American exceptionalism and a decades-old consensus that can best be called “semi-Niebuhrianism.”
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A Neoconservative Jesus, Certified Kosher
After some perfunctory praise of the last three popes, Boteach gets down to his Glenn Beck-ish business: “The American Evangelical community has proven the most stalwart and reliable friend of Israel in the United States.” Christians and Jews are now “brothers” because “together they confront the implacable foe of Islamist terrorism.”
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Would Gandhi Disband Occupy?
The Times managed to find a Gandhi scholar who would argue that the greatest hero of radical resistance would endorse the critics of Occupy Wall Street.
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Original Spin: Progressives Dismiss Conservative Theology at Their Peril
It’s not outlandish to see theological meaning in the drive to slash government spending for human services if we accept some version (no matter how secularized) of the concept of original sin.
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