Letters to the Editor
jprfrog
Published Letters: 44 Editor's Choice: 1
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Rich and poor
[Read the article: Why did Clinton wait to release her tax return?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I am no fan of Hillary (although I thought Bill did a reasonably good job under the circumstances, e.g. a hostile Congress and the endless scandal-mongering which in the end turned up nothing more than a BJ or two, unlike say, torture and a war of questionable legality, morality, efficacy, and strategy) but in the interest of fairness: Probably the US President most sensitive to the situation of the poor was Franklin Roosevelt, whose ancestry traces back to the Dutch patroons of New Amsterdam and whose personal fortune was such that he would never have had to work a day in his life. (Visit Hyde Park sometime and see for yourself.)
Yet this is the man who led the New Deal,created Social Security, helped and legitimatize the great trade union movement,which did as much as anything for the post-war general prosperity and the demise of which is a major component of the fantastic and yet-growing income inequality we now suffer.
And, not to forget his wife, who also came from very old money (the Delano family) who championed the oppressed all over the world. It's fitting on the anniversary of the death of MLK to recall that when the DAR refused to allow Marian Anderson, the great AFrican-American contralto, to sing a recital in Constitution Hall (fearing I suppose to offend those Daughters of Confederacy who were also in the DAR), Mrs. Roosevelt arranged to have the concert broadcast from the steps of the White House in 1939, and also resigned from the DAR in protest.
A small gesture perhaps, but avalanches can be caused by the movement of a few stones.
Being rich does not disqualify a person from having empathy and social conscience. We can criticize Hillary for more substantive reasons.
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Crusade
[Read the article: "Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week" kicks off]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]And on the way to the Holy Land, the Crusaders managed to beat up (not to say murder) a lot of Jews and also did a number on Byzantium from which it never recovered. Doesn't this sound familiar: Creating oceans of blood while crying "Deus lo vult!" ("God wills it!")?
Monotheism is a terrible mistake.
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A point missed
[Read the article: John McCain's bid for American Jewish votes]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I am an American Jew (non-practicing) who cares about Israel. That doesn't mean that I identify Israel with Likud, with brutalizing Palestinians,or am fooled by right-wing dispensationalists who embrace Israel because of some loon's apocalyptic 1st century ranting (I mean John of Patmos, whose book seems to be the only one that certain self-proclaimed "saved" Christians have read).
I care about Israel as I care about America...I am afraid that the leaders of both countries are seriously damaging the best long-term interests of their supposed constituents because of either self-deluded beliefs in dangerous and abstract absolute ideological positions, or cynical plays for power. Which is the case for this individual or that is beyond my ability to decide (although in a few cases, e.g. Cheney, it seems pretty clear) , but it's beside the point.
The point is that I, and many others including Israelis, oppose these disastrous policies precisely because they care a lot.
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@Retired Military patriot
[Read the article: John McCain's bid for American Jewish votes]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Yours is a reasonable question.
I think the main reason for the relative ineffectiveness of Jewish dissent is that the dissenters (e. g. Josh Marshall, Sy Hersh) don't make an issue of their Jewishness, as do the poobahs of AIPAC. So we are dissenters and critics on the general grounds of (what we perceive) as logic, ethics, practicality, what-have-you, rather than positions rooted in identity. Thata a number of the most deranged neocons (say F. Kagan, Feith, Perle, Kristol) are Jewish is neither here nor there, at least to me. Jews have been disputing (and fighting) Jews since before there were Jews as such (check out the Book of Kings, for example it's ironic that the name "Israel" for a state refers to the Northern KIngdom which split off from the South --- or Judah --- after Solomon's death and was utterly destroyed by the Assyrians whose geographical base was in what is now Iraq). And to at least understand a "momser" (a Yiddish expletive) like Joe Lieberman (D. - Likud), I think you have to acknowledge that he --- like me --- came of age when the Holocaust was a raw, bleeding wound to which the State of Israel promised relief, and that his course has been driven by that perception ever since.
In the Talmudic fashion, I'll add an answer to your question with a question: Who else has managed to be effective in challenging the misguided (that's being generous!) policies of this administration? And we are responsible as American citizens only for our own idiocies. You should also be aware that most Israelis (at least those that I have known, which is several dozen) tend to regard American Jews with some degree of disdain --- even though, and perhaps because -- it was American Jewish financial support that made Israel's early existence even possible. Thus it's not very likely that the opinions of American Jews could have influence on Israeli policy.
Finally, I have to say that it is my intuition, based on a long history, that the destruction of Israel as a political entity with the inevitable large-scale death and uprooting of its Jewish population would have severe negative effects on the rest of the world's Jews. I'm too old to expect much in that way personally, but I do have a year-old granddaughter, and in the way of human beings, I care about her future passionately. That is another dimension to why I care about what my country does.
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@hikkerguy
[Read the article: John McCain's bid for American Jewish votes]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]And how does this answer the question? That Jews control the Federal Reserve? (Is this a modern addendum to "The Protocols of Zion"?)