On Houseguests, Holidays, And Homosexual Rights

Business, Homosexuality, Labor, libertarianism, Media, Republicans

My house guests have left for a precious week. At long last some respite. So far The Occupation has lasted six weeks. Another three to go. The first order of the day was to scrub down the house. Olfactory restoration was followed by auditory revival: music is the best antidote to the aftereffects of non-stop carping. And who better than Brahms—the maestro’s Sextets, in particular. So on went the Sextets, and out gushed the tears. Perfection makes me cry, and String Sextet No. 1 in B Flat op 18 is achingly sublime. I’m now almost as good as new, ready with a few updates:
First up: the presenters of Connected Coast to Coast have a message for overworked Americans battling to keep their professional edge in the age of inflation, taxation, never-ending government deficits and wars, and the threat of outsourcing: Don’t Worry, Be Happy. Befitting the season, the convivial—and deeply connected—pundits urged Americans to follow the Commander-in-Chief’s lead and go on holiday—lots of them. Contra the CIC, Americans on average take only 12 vacation days, admonished our TV personalities. Don’t you know that it takes a toll on your health?
One of Connected’s hosts is Ronald Reagan’s son, no less. A liberal, Ron Reagan’s sense of the working world is as sound as his grasp of free market economics. The other presenter is a woman who has always worshipped at the GOP altar, devotion which tends to be very well-rewarded. The commentariat, of course, is a mirror image of the political class, reflecting and reinforcing the opinions—and the reality—of the elites. More often than not, the chattering classes are as privileged—and protected—as their masters.
No wonder, then, that the hosts of Connected Coast to Coast can jest about what compulsive workers Americans are. For your information Monica and Ron, most corporations give their workers ten working days off a year! Americans take so few days off because they get so few days off. If they took more, they’d probably be fired. The market place is competitive. While conformity (“team player” is the private-sector synonym) is as prized, say, in high-tech companies as it is among the punditocracy, ultimately, staying ahead of the game boils down to being capable of producing the goods. Politicians, however, create their own employment conditions, from job description down to the exorbitant pay they extract from taxpayers. The media talking heads are props to the politicos. As long as they play to the “Demopublican Monopolists,” and sustain the respective parties’ constituencies, media “mavens” will retain their perches, their pensions, and their sizable salaries. Connected? Disconnected is more like it.
Next: Did Supreme Court nominee John G. Roberts Jr help the “gay-rights” movement win its most important legal victory? The case was “Romer vs. Evans,” and it “struck down a voter-approved 1992 Colorado initiative that would have allowed employers and landlords to exclude gays from jobs and housing.” That’s The Los Angles Times’ take on a state law that denied special rights and protections to homosexuals. To be fair, Roberts was, at the time, in private practice. He’d have had a hard time refusing his employers. Yes, he offered his services pro bono, but the firm, Hogan & Hartson, expected “partners to volunteer time in community service.” Gay activists consider the decision Roberts helped them win the “single most important positive ruling in the history of the gay rights movement.” Libertarians should consider it in the tradition of 14th-Amendment jurisprudence—a violation of private property and freedom of association and of Coloradans and their constitution. I suspect Roberts would dissent.

Many thanks to Dr. Daniel Pipes. He has posted More Fatwa Fibs on his exceedingly popular and highly regarded website, DanielPipes.org

Neocon Tales Of The Arabian Nights

Foreign Policy, Islam, Neoconservatism

Curiously, those who advocate aggressive and futile wars against Muslims are equally devoted to promoting the Religion-of-Peace pie-in-the-sky, and the attendant misconceptions about Islam. Yes, neoconservatives, led by the Bush/Blair pair, have managed to anesthetize their subjects to a faith that defies sanitation. As you know, neoconservatives implicate “Radical Islam” in our woes, by which they mean a splinter of Islam. Indeed, an estimated 100 to 300 million Muslims are active adherents of Islamism: small potatoes, right? Yet to listen to our globalists, you’d think that Jihadists are as alien to Islam as edelweiss is to the Kalahari.
Ad nauseam we hear it chanted that the Religion-of-Peace was doing what it does best–inspire serenity and prosperity–when suddenly, ex nihilo, radicals materialized and derailed it. Of course, this nonsensical incantation is both ahistorical and illiterate–it’s easily corrected with the aid of a good history book and a Quran.
The first will show that the sword has always been integral to Islam, and that conversion has invariably meant conquest and untold carnage. The second will prove that, to be fair to Islam’s alleged hijackers, the’ve done no more than act on the dictates of their faith. Bin Laden is an obedient Muslim. He has obeyed the Quran. The Call to Jihad instructs Muslims that, “When you meet those who disbelieve smite at their necks till when you have killed and wounded many of them.” Holy war, which is demanded in Islamic law, is not defensive war as the Western students of Islam would like to tell us, warns Serge Trifkovic, foreign affairs editor of the paleoconservative magazine Chronicles, and author of The Sword of the Prophet.
Islam, moreover, has changed little over 1,400 years. Unlike the Jewish (and no doubt Christian) holy texts which have been reinterpreted by the sages over the centuries, the Quran has not; ”its decrees are not debatable and are to be taken literally.” Bin Laden may not be a perfect Muslim–he prefers bombing to beheading. But the times they have changed. Allowances must be made for technological advances and expediency.
A geopolitical blind spot tops the historical and textual deficiencies characteristic of the administration’s approach to terrorism and Islam. Agree or disagree with it, an aggressive war, launched against a sovereign Muslim nation–Iraq–was bound to serve as a catalyst for Jihadists. But the policy pinheads who extol Islam refuse to factor American foreign policy into the terrorism equation. Supporters of Bush’s foreign policy would do well to remember that, even if they believe, as Bush expects them to, that war in Iraq and terrorism in America are mutually exclusive conditions, they must at least concede that the president’s domestic positions on immigration, border security, and the imperative to be “minimally observant” about America’s enemies (comedian Dennis Miller’s term for racial profiling), amount to a reckless indifference to the sovereignty and safety of Americans.
But as I’ve previously observed, “Inviting an invasion by foreigners and instigating one against them are two sides of the same neoconservative coin.”

The Torah And The TLS

Critique, English, Hebrew Testament, Ilana Mercer, Judaism & Jews, Literature

Leave a reply

Here’s a Letter-to-the-Editor of the British Times Literary Supplement. They wanted to publish it; I knew they would; Britons like a pedant. But they want private information about me, which I’m unwilling to disclose. What is it about so many private organizations these days that they act like government? On making a purchase, salesclerks will routinely ask for one’s address. Are they nuts? And most people comply. My husband takes cover whenever a salesperson dares to so pry.

Dear Editor,

In his review of Robert Alter’s The Five Books of Moses (TLS, June 24, 2005), John Barton praises the author’s translation of the Torah for “brilliantly imitating the Hebrew without sacrificing intelligibility.”
As someone who greatly admires the biblical narrator, I certainly agree that “welter and waste” does justice to “tohu vavohu” (Genesis 1:1), which Barton or the author transliterated to read “tohu wabohu.” Whence does that bowdlerization come? There’s no “wabohu” in Genesis 1:1—there’s no “wabohu” in the Hebrew language!
The first letter in vavohu is a “vav,” which is never a “w,” and here it’s pronounced “va.” The next Barton or Alter-bungled letter is an unpunctuated “Bet” (B), pronounced “v” too. Its enunciation here is “vo.” Hence, “vavohu.” I’m not sure how better to denote an unpunctuated “Bet” in English, but it’s certainly not a “b.”
So many scholarly writers, who profess to know Hebrew, habitually muck up the English transliteration of Hebrew words. Why?

Just Deserts For Judith Miller

Iraq, Neoconservatism, War, WMD

At least one good thing has come of Karl Rovegate: Judith Miller is in jail. Yes, the Gray Lady’s prized reporter has been incarcerated, albeit for the wrong offense. She’s being held in criminal contempt for failing to cooperate in “the investigation of who may have unlawfully leaked the name of undercover CIA operative Valerie Plame to the media.” But, as I said to talk-show host Robby Noel two weeks back, I’ll take justice when and where I can get it. Ahmad Chalabi and the White House fed the voracious birdbrain with misinformation and lies about WMD. And in response (presumably), Miller shilled for the Iraq war like there was no tomorrow. No tale was too tall for her and no fabrication too fantastic. Clearly, she’s in the business of cultivating sources—a conduit for government propaganda, not for the truth, whose reporting about the dangers Iraq posed to America had the veracity of Sheherazade’s Tales of the Arabian Nights. Maybe justice does, on occasion, work in mysterious ways. In any event, I’m not the least bit sorry that Miller, the sycophantic face of American journalism, is being punished… for something.