Thought for Today

"Find fault with thyself rather than with others."

~~~~~ Ieyasu Tokugawa

Thought for Today

"The rate at which a person can mature is directly proportional to the embarrassment he can tolerate."

~~~~~ Douglas Engelbart

Thought for Today

"A good upbringing means not that you won't spill sauce on the tablecloth, but that you won't notice it when someone else does."

~~~~ Anton Chekhov

Thought for Today

"It's too bad I'm not as wonderful a person as people say I am, because the world could use a few people like that."

~~~~~ Alan Alda

Thought for Today

"No one has any idea what's next... the uncertainty of the business climate in America is frightening, frightening to everybody, and it's delaying the recovery."

~~~~~ Steve Wynn

Thought for Today

"I am concerned for the security of our great Nation; not so much because of any threat from without, but because of the insidious forces working from within."

~~~~~ Gen. Douglas MacArthur

Thought for Today

"Firmness in enduring and exertion is a character I always wish to possess. I have always despised the whining yelp of complaint and cowardly resolve."

~~~~~ Robert Burns

Thought for Today

"Biologically speaking, if something bites you it's more likely to be female."

~~~~~ Desmond Morris

Thought for Today

"The shepherd always tries to persuade the sheep that their interests and his own are the same."

~~~~~ Stendhal

Thought for Today

"A tax-supported, compulsory educational system is the complete model of the totalitarian state."

~~~~~ Isabel Paterson

Thought for Today

"There is no comparison between that which is lost by not succeeding and that which is lost by not trying."

~~~~~ Francis Bacon

Thought for Today

"The ideas which now pass for brilliant innovations and advances are in fact mere revivals of ancient errors, and a further proof of the dictum that those who are ignorant of the past are condemned to repeat it."

~~~~~ Henry Hazlitt

Thought for Today

"The trite saying that honesty is the best policy has met with the just criticism that honesty is not policy. The real honest man is honest from conviction of what is right, not from policy."

~~~~~ Robert E. Lee

Thought for Today

"The contest for ages has been to rescue liberty from the grasp of executive power."

~~~~~ Daniel Webster

Thought for Today

"One may know how to gain a victory, and know not how to use it."

~~~~~ Pedro Calderon de la Barca

Thought for Today

"Be master of your petty annoyances and conserve your energies for the big, worthwhile things. It isn't the mountain ahead that wears you out – it's the grain of sand in your shoe."

~~~~~ Robert W. Service

Thought for Today

"Of all follies there is none greater than wanting to make the world a better place."

~~~~~ Moliere

Thought for Today

"There are two means of refuge from the miseries of life: music and cats."

~~~~~ Albert Schweitzer

"This nation will remain the land of the free only so long as it is the home of the brave."

~~~~~ Elmer Davis

Thought for Today

"The true danger is when liberty is nibbled away, for expedience, and by parts."

~~~~~ Edmund Burke

Blacks and Jews – A Picture Worth 1000 Words

The birthday of Martin Luther King, Jr. is approaching, so I think it's appropriate to reflect a moment on his legacy. 

For decades, most of the so-called black leaders – the Jacksons, the Sharptons, the Farrakhans, the Reverend Wrights – have been doing all they can to demonize Jews. Their efforts have borne bitter fruit, even (Freddie's Fashion Mart; Crown Heights) including the murders of innocent people by young black men incited to mob violence by the words of those self-appointed leaders. 

Yet all of those leaders claim to follow in the footsteps of Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. 

How can that be? I'm old enough to have met Dr. King in person, when he came to WKCR-FM, the Columbia University radio station, for an interview:

I'm not in the picture because I was a broadcast engineer, not a newsman, but all of us were honored to meet him and shake his hand. 

At that time, it was common knowledge that Dr. King, unlike some other prominent black leaders of the time (Elijah Muhammad; Malcolm X) held both Jews and Israel in the highest regard, and had zero tolerance for anti-Semitism either overt or covert, as, say, "anti-Zionism." Consider, for instance, these authenticated quotes assembled by Robert Spencer in Martin Luther King, Jr.: supporter of Israel:

"I cannot stand idly by, even though I happen to live in the United States and even though I happen to be an American Negro and not be concerned about what happens to the Jews in Soviet Russia. For what happens to them happens to me and you, and we must be concerned."

"Israel's right to exist as a state in security is uncontestable."

"Peace for Israel means security, and we must stand with all our might to protect its right to exist, its territorial integrity. I see Israel as one of the great outposts of democracy in the world, and a marvelous example of what can be done, how desert land can be transformed into an oasis of brotherhood and democracy. Peace for Israel means security and that security must be a reality."

"I solemnly pledge to do my utmost to uphold the fair name of the Jews -- because bigotry in any form is an affront to us all."

"When people criticize Zionists they mean Jews, you are talking anti-Semitism."

Not surprisingly, then, when the time came that Dr. King needed the support of prominent Jewish leaders, it was always given generously and unstintingly. Here, for instance, is a picture of the famous march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama four years after that radio interview. In the front rank, marching between Ralph Bunche and Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth, is one of the most learned and respected rabbis of the time, Abraham Joshua Heschel. Directly behind Dr. King in the second rank is another prominent American rabbi, Maurice Davis.

Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, second from right, participating in the civil rights march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, on March 21, 1965.

First row, from far left: John Lewis, an unidentified nun, Ralph Abernathy, Martin Luther King, Jr., Ralph Bunche, Abraham Joshua Heschel, Fred Shuttlesworth.

Second row: Visible behind (and between) Martin Luther King, Jr. and Ralph Bunche is Rabbi Maurice Davis.

Why were these rabbis there? For one reason: because it was the right thing to do. Here are a few of Rabbi Heschel's thoughts on racism, Dr. King and his movement, and the duty of Jews to help defeat the evil in any way they could:

"Racism is man's gravest threat to man - the maximum of hatred for a minimum of reason."

"When I marched in Selma, my legs were praying."

"All it takes is one person… and another… and another… and another… to start a movement."

"A Jew is asked to take a leap of action rather than a leap of thought."

"Speech has power. Words do not fade. What starts out as a sound, ends in a deed."

Isn't it long past time to honor Dr. King's memory by boldly disavowing those who have made careers out of inducing us to hate one another? I hope that the day will come that self-aggrandizing hatemongers like Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, Jeremiah Wright, and Louis Farrakhan will rant in vain in near-empty halls. Of course, in a country as large and diverse as ours, they'll always have a few deluded followers. But we'll know we have arrived when their congregations have diminished to Westboro Baptist Church proportions.

Until that time comes, though, the majority of honorable, upstanding black Americans should be doing everything in its power to neutralize the poison being fed to the young by the minority of hate-spewing scoundrels. No one else can do the job. After all, those who have been led to believe that all of their troubles are the fault of the whites and the Jews are unlikely to listen to those of us who are both white and Jewish.

Thought for Today

"The rat stops gnawing in the wood, the dungeon walls withdraw, the weight is lifted, your pulse steadies and the sun has found your heart, the day was not bad, the season has not been bad, there is sense and even promise in going on."

~~~~~ Bernard De Voto

Thought for Today

"Ninety-nine percent of the failures come from people who have the habit of making excuses."

~~~~~ George Washington Carver

Thought(s) for Today

"The chief executive who knows his strengths and weaknesses as a leader is likely to be far more effective than the one who remains blind to them."

~~~~~ John Adair

"As you said yourself, Steve, you know, I would put our legislative and foreign policy accomplishments in our first two years against any president – with the possible exceptions of Johnson, F.D.R., and Lincoln – just in terms of what we've gotten done in modern history."

~~~~~ Barack Hussein Obama

Thought for Today

"Never open the door to a lesser evil, for other and greater ones invariably slink in after it."

~~~~~ Baltasar Gracian

Thought for Today

"He who does not bellow the truth when he knows the truth makes himself the accomplice of liars and forgers."

~~~~~ Charles Peguy

Thought for Today

"When a nation goes down, or a society perishes, one condition may always be found; they forgot where they came from. They lost sight of what had brought them along."

~~~~~ Carl Sandburg

Thought for Today

"I cannot give you the formula for success, but I can give you the formula for failure – which is: Try to please everybody."

~~~~ Herbert Bayard Swope

Thought for Today

"The worst enemy of human hope is not brute facts, but men of brains who will not face them."

~~~~~ Max Eastman

Thought for Today

"Faithless is he that says farewell when the road darkens."

~~~~ J. R. R. Tolkien

Thought for Today

"You can be deprived of your money, your job and your home by someone else, but remember that no one can ever take away your honor."

~~~~~ William Lyon Phelps

Thought for Today

"America is rather like life. You can usually find in it what you look for. It will probably be interesting, and it is sure to be large."

~~~~~ E. M. Forster