Conservative Conversation and Community
The left thrives on euphemisms. Here’s the latest from the Left Coast: https://www.foxnews.com/politics/san-francisco-board-adopts-new-language-for-criminals-turning-convicted-felon-into-justice-involved-person More
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Throughout millennia, suffering and sacrifice have always been respected. For example, Simeon the Stylite lived on ever increasingly high pillars alone in the desert to devote himself to G-d. Hindus have a long tradition of torturing their body to advance the strength of their soul. Buddhists have similar traditions of starving themselves to death. (though that’s controversial in Buddhism.)* Shia Islam seems to focus on flagellation and hitting yourself on the head with a sword (Grisly imagery contained in this link.
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Abandon is a pretty strong word; I could have worded my title differently, but I believe that most of modern Jewry have, for all intents and purposes, left the fold. Only a small number of Jews are observant Jews, and I am not one of them. I decided to explore this question, and hopefully clarify for myself not just what it means to be a Jew, but what it means for me to be Jew. As you look at the lives of Jews whom you know, you might want to explore some of these issues with them. I am including some of my personal experiences as a Jew, and I will leave you to determine the legitimacy of my claims.
First, I was raised in a nearly secular family. We rarely if ever discussed G-d. I don’t even know if my father believed in G-d. Although my mother occasionally mentioned G-d, her level of belief (if at all) was unclear. Both my parents were raised in broken homes, with some version of Judaism that might have included keeping kosher, but I honestly don’t know if they observed any of the holidays. I know that my father read Hebrew, but I just now realize that I don’t know if he was a bar mitzvah. And both my parents have died. When I asked my father why he grudgingly went to synagogue on the High Holidays, he said he didn’t need to go there to experience G-d. Whether he experienced G-d elsewhere I’ll never know.
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Remember not so long ago when companies, with their advertisements and television commercials, just wanted to sell you some laundry detergent, or some aspirin, or a car, or any of a multitude of various and sundry products which most Americans needed or simply wanted? Oftentimes they would employ humor or even (gasp!) pretty girls to […]
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Portugese-born writer Sarah Hoyt:
MoreI didn’t grow up in a South American country, but the culture rhymes. I think I told before of the father of a friend who, when I was fourteen, informed me that the Portuguese would have invented/produced much better computers than IBM if “the US let us.” I tried to figure out what the US was doing to hold back this powerhouse of Portuguese computing and got a confused story about not being allowed to grow rice and if Portugal did something or other (search me. It made no sense then, and I have trouble remembering insane ramblings) the US would cut aid. Thereby making it impossible for Portugal to have a computer industry.
We are now living in the post-Kavanaugh confirmation hearing era. The hard left gallery of rogues – Democrat senators, including “Spartacus” and that Hawaiian man-hater– lost the battle they so desperately and shamelessly waged. What will be the fall-out? Hopefully, Republicans will hang onto the House in the midterms, though that still remains a long […]
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I am continually dismayed by the level of fear, contempt, and anger that many educated/urban/upper-middle-class people demonstrate toward Christians and rural people (especially southerners). This complex of negative emotions often greatly exceeds anything that these same people feel toward radical Islamists or dangerous rogue-state governments. I’m not a Christian myself, but I’d think that one would be a lot more worried about people who want to cut your head off, blow you up, or at a bare minimum shut down your freedom of speech than about people who want to talk to you about Jesus (or Nascar!)
It seems that there are quite a few people who vote Democratic, even when their domestic and foreign-policy views are not closely aligned with those of the Democratic Party, because they view the Republican Party and its candidates as being dominated by Christians and “rednecks.” This phenomenon has become even more noticeable of late, with the vitriolic attitude of certain prominent “conservatives” toward Trump supporters as a class.
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For this week’s Big Ideas with Ben Weingarten podcast, I had nationally syndicated radio host, columnist, author of numerous books, teacher, film producer and co-founder of PragerU, Dennis Prager, on the podcast to discuss among other things:
You can find the episode on iTunes, everywhere else podcasts are found, download the episode directly here or read the transcript here.
MoreThere’s been a lot of reflection in 2018 about the year 1968, a half century past. Generally regarded as one of the most disquieting years in American history, there were assassinations, urban race riots, the ongoing and controversial war in Viet Nam, all the campus protests and unrest, the Democratic National Convention which descended into […]
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Welcome to the Harvard Lunch Club Political podcast number 161 it’s the Devin Nunes, Man of Steele edition of the show with your humble hosts, radio guy Todd Feinburg and nanophysicist Mike Stopa. In this week’s edition we dissect, trisect, septasect the Nunes memo, the Steele dossier (yichh!) and the FBI cabal that is working night and day to take Trump down.
This is a serious discussion. Of course the legacy media on the left (did I repeat myself?) are doing nothin but “debunking.” They call it fact checking but they set out with the clear and unvarnished objective to cut the Nunes memo down to size. Newsweek’s treatment is particularly egregious in its one-sidedness. But is the right a bit unhinged as well? Stopa thinks so, Todd is unconvinced. Is there really a conspiracy in the FBI? or is it simply partisanship that has gotten excessive? We will discuss.
MoreSeriously, Colin Kaepernick? You’re really doing this?
Yep, he’s filed a grievance against the NFL owners under their collective bargaining agreement, alleging that they have colluded to “deprive Mr. Kaepernick of employment rights in retaliation for Mr. Kaepernick’s leadership and advocacy for equality and social justice and his bringing awareness to peculiar institutions still undermining racial equality in the United States.”
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Facilitated by media manipulation and exploitation, people have lost perspective trying to outdo one another in their moral condemnation of racial supremacy witnessed in Charlottesville, Virginia.
(Because the media finally found actual white racists to cover, rather than smearing white people who reject their coercive, politicized agenda as racists, this was a big story.)
MoreOn August 12, people in Chicago gathered to honor a murderer, terrorist and liar. Jonathan Greenberg in The Federalist explained: More
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Dennis Prager sits down with Dave at #Politicon to discuss Jews on the Left, free speech on the college campus, why it’s not enough to prevent conservatives from speaking; it is now necessary to prevent conservatives from appearing even when not speaking (the Left’s effort to not allow Dennis to make music in Los Angeles). We also discuss how Leftist intellectuals are in fact not intellectual and Dennis responds to the young ‘man’ who called him a “Nazi” right before our interview. Follow Dennis on Facebook, Twitter and PragerU for their must see videos (500 million viewers can’t be wrong!)
If you are enjoying the series, please subscribe to Whiskey Politics at YouTube and our audio podcasts at iTunes, Stitcher or GooglePlay where your 5-star rating would be appreciated (iTunes especially!) as it helps others find us. In: Little Green Bag, George Baker Selection. Out: Take Five, Dave Brubeck. Produced by Praemonitus Communications, pictures by Thompson Clicks Photos.
A week ago the Israeli Knesset froze implementing a plan to open a new mixed-gender prayer area at Jerusalem’s Western Wall. Originally the change had been endorsed, even by the ultra-Orthodox Jews, but the effort was shut down at the last minute. Not only was Israel’s political Left furious, but our American Jewish Left was, too, making subtle threats over financial support of Israel.
What’s the fight about?
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I came across a very interesting article at Watts Up With That (a great site with lots of information, facts, and perspective on global warming from a skeptical point of view). Anthony Watts, proprietor at WUWT posted an article originally from AmericanThinker.com but now lost to a server error.
The article is a description written by Dr. Danusha V. Goska in 2014 of why she left behind a lifetime of being a hard core leftist. She lists 10 reasons she is no longer a leftist. I urge you to read the whole thing, but here is a brief synopsis of her points.
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I have a friend, a dear and kind man. He’s not an intellectual, neither atheist nor agnostic; in fact, I’m sure he does not even know what an agnostic is. (I’m not sure I do either, except that I think I’m one.) He’s Christian and accomplished, but not highly educated. He’s hardcore blue collar, the son of a farmer. Yet despite all this, he’s of the Left. It seems incongruous, but that’s what he is. He doesn’t hate conservatives, he just believes that the Left shows a more empathetic way; a kinder way. In his world, life is hard, and harder for some than for others. Government, to him, seems the best and most efficient way to soften life’s edges and help those who have it tough. To him, that is progress. Republicans impede that progression in his view: they oppose funding; they oppose welfare programs; they oppose everything. In his mind, it’s always about money for the Right. Dirty pieces of paper with pictures of dead men on them.
So, this morning, I was relaying the fact that I had promised a second essay for Ricochet on health care reform. I explained how I struggled to put my thoughts together, having earlier tweaked my back. Vicodin was clouding my mind, but I got it done. He asked about the details and I gave him my “unleashing the uncanny ability of American consumers to find a bargain” speech. He was following the logic when he stopped me, and asked “Why don’t we just nationalize health care? They do it in Canada, and in Britain. People say it’s great.”
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Radical academia strikes again at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, and an angry Republican state assemblyman has had enough.
We are all aware that the curriculum of many universities has little to do with education, and everything to do with Leftist propaganda. This course is part of a long list of attacks on undergraduate education, and yet little has been done to stop the damage.
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There was a time when the rate of crimes committed by blacks was within two percentage points as those committed by whites. And both were below 15 percent. There was a time when the murder rate among blacks was almost identical to that of whites and they were both below 14 percent. Likewise, there was a time when the percentage of children born out of wedlock among blacks was almost identical to that of whites. And they were both under 16 percent.
During this entire time (roughly 90 years), blacks really did have to be aware of targeting by some law enforcement. It was standard police procedure in towns large and small in every corner of the nation to have “dragnets” where several likely suspects were just rounded up and questioned with the hope of pinning it on one of them regardless of color. Real lynching of blacks took place all over the United States. Jim Crow and segregation laws were in place in every state.
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Growing up, my South African father used to remind us American kids that “There are only two types of people in the world: Jews and anti-semites.” This used to upset us terribly. It’s patently false, we would think. Our experience shows our society to be tolerant and kind. Where in the United States is friendlier and more welcoming than suburban Atlanta? Of course, the specter of Leo Frank’s lynching always hung like a shadow in the backs of our minds. But that was a long time ago. Surely, that old hatred is dead.
But it’s starting to look like dad was right after all. From Islamists, to progressive Europe, to the dregs of the Alt-Right on Twitter, we Jews are surrounded by a resurgent tide of anti-Semitism.Which leads to the question my progressive neighbor likes to constantly ask: “Why do they hate us?”
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