Thought for the Day
November 22, 2023 — Steven Hayward
Short answer: No. The idea of free speech is that it is a means toward the main end of securing all of our natural rights by promoting political deliberation, and promoting the search for truth. I argued in the latest podcast that it is perfectly reasonable to shut down Students for Justice in Palestine chapters on college campuses purely on the grounds that they abuse the principle of free speech
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November 20, 2023 — Scott Johnson
Michael Oren is the prominent historian and Israeli ambassador to the United States. His 2015 memoir Ally: My Journey Across the American-Israeli Divide remains timely and illuminating. He writes in his Free column “A war against the Jews” (November 20): This war is not simply between Hamas terrorists and Israelis. It is a war against the Jews. The insight began with the international media’s coverage of the conflict. Again, it
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November 19, 2023 — Steven Hayward
From Angelo Codevilla and Paul Seabury’s 1989 classic, War: Ends and Means: Discrimination means that armed forces should fight armed forces and not ravage the enemy’s countryside, cities, or economy. While it is permitted to “starve out” an army, blockades of whole countries, such as the ones that kept food from Germany in World Wars I and II, have traditionally been considered unjust means of warfare because they do not
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November 16, 2023 — Scott Johnson
My teacher Rabbi Joshua “J.B.” Borenstein attended the March for Israel rally at the National Mall in Washington on Tuesday. He advises that the best speaker among those who addressed the nearly 300,000 at the Mall was Mijal Bitton. John Podhoretz agrees in his brief Commentary post “The wonderful gathering.” Bitton’s remarks are posted in the video below via her Twitter feed. The truth quotient here approximates 100 percent. “We
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November 13, 2023 — Scott Johnson
Jonathan Martin is Politico’s senior political columnist and politics bureau chief. He wrote This Will Not Pass with Alexander Burns on the 2020 election. He ardently believes that Joe Biden must be reelected to save the republic from Donald Trump, or vice versa. He is full of advice for how Biden can pull it off. Martin observes that “2024 will be an extraordinary election, and it demands extraordinary measures.” Why
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November 9, 2023 — Scott Johnson
Steve Hayward takes up “The Hamas wing of the ‘climate’ cult” in a column for The Pipeline. This is his conclusion: The open embrace of authoritarianism makes evident that climate change is only a pretext for their real object, which is revolution and the drive for power to achieve it. If climate change didn’t exist as a cause to be exploited, the deep left would find something else—any cause will
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November 8, 2023 — Scott Johnson
In “The mindset of our anti-Semites” Victor Davis Hanson undertakes to critique each of the charges hurled at Israel — “Refugees,” “Apartheid,” “Disproportionate,” “Civilian casualties,” and “Genocide” — as it defends itself from mass slaughter. Each section could stand alone as a Thought of the Day. Here is his conclusion on “Genocide”: Genocide is now the most popular charge in the general damnation of Israel, a false smear aimed at
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November 7, 2023 — Scott Johnson
Liel Leibovitz comments on Barack Obama’s “we’re all complicit” shtick regarding the Hamas massacre of Israeli Jews (see Steve Hayward’s post here): Study the 44th president’s record, to say nothing of his extensive writing and speeches, and a clear ideology emerges, the sort of gauzy anti-Imperialist fantasy so trendy in graduate seminar rooms that eschews American power and dreams that the wretched of the earth will rise up to the
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November 6, 2023 — Scott Johnson
Steve Cohen is an author, attorney, former publisher, and former member of the board of the U.S. Naval Institute. In the City Journal column “The few, the fat, the fatigued,” he addresses the recruiting shortfalls of the military branches other then the Marines: “Last year, the Army missed its recruiting goal by 25 percent—some 15,000 soldiers short of its target. This year’s numbers may be worse. Other branches of the
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November 5, 2023 — Scott Johnson
John Tierney is the former long-time New York Times reporter and columnist. He is now a contributing editor to the Manhattan Institute’s City Journal and can therefore say things like this: Harvard’s abysmal [FIRE free-speech ranking] is based partly on a series of censorship incidents at the school and partly on its students’ answers to questions in a national survey of 55,000 students. At Harvard, three-quarters of students didn’t feel
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November 4, 2023 — Scott Johnson
Kelly Jane Torrance was my editor when she worked for the great Richard Starr at the Weekly Standard. Now serving as commentary editor at the New York Post, Kelly Jane stepped out from behind the curtain to report on “Hamas horrors you luckily won’t see — glimpse of terror too sick for Israel to air.” Here is one section of her column: It was hard to watch. Harder still for
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November 3, 2023 — Scott Johnson
Matt Continetti’s weekly column for the Washington Free Beacon is “Let Israel win.” It couldn’t be more timely. He writes: Less than a week has passed since Israel launched a ground campaign in the Gaza Strip, and already there are calls for a ceasefire. Not only should these calls be ignored. They should be denounced. Why? Because calls for a ceasefire reward barbarism. The usual double standard is hard at
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November 2, 2023 — Scott Johnson
Saul Bellow’s To Jerusalem and Back was published in 1976, but it is full of observations that bear on Israel’s current war. One line in the book has even become somewhat famous. I’m winding up this series of excerpts with a passage from pages 126-127 of the original hard cover edition: What is “known” in civilized countries, what people may be assumed to “know,” is a great mystery. Recently, a
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November 1, 2023 — Scott Johnson
Saul Bellow wrote To Jerusalem and Back after a visit of several months’ duration in 1975. Published in 1976 and still in print, it is full of observations that remain on point as Israel fights for its survival today. This passage is from pages 135-136 of the original hard cover edition: The 1973 war badly damaged their [i.e., the Israelis’] confidence. The Egyptians crossed the Suez Canal. Suddenly the abyss
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October 31, 2023 — Scott Johnson
Saul Bellow’s To Jerusalem and Back was published in 1976, but it is still in print and full of observations that bear on Israel’s current war. I quoted one passage from page 15 of the original hard cover edition here yesterday. This is from pages 25-26: Here in Jerusalem, when you shut your apartment door behind you you fall into a gale of conversation – exposition, argument, harangue, analysis, theory,
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October 30, 2023 — Scott Johnson
Saul Bellow visited Israel for several months in 1975. During his visit he kept a journal of his observations, his meetings, his conversations. Drawing on the journal, he published To Jerusalem and Back: A Personal Account in 1976. Having read it at the time, I have found one passage in particular to have stuck in my mind: And what is it that has led the Jews to place themselves, after
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October 26, 2023 — Scott Johnson
Liel Leibovitz is editor at large for Tablet. Having emigrated from Israel to New York, he draws on his experience to ask what accounts for the marches, riots, and demonstrations supporting Hamas in the urban centers of the United States. He calls it the banlieueization of American cities and college campuses in his City Journal column “American Banlieue.” As for the rioters, he observes: “Most are young, and most are
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