Thought for Today

"From the beginning of our history the country has been afflicted with compromise. It is by compromise that human rights have been abandoned."

~~~~~ Charles Sumner

Thought for Today

"My reading of history convinces me that most bad government has grown out of too much government."

~~~~~ John Sharp Williams

Thought for Today

"History shows how feeble are barriers of paper."

~~~~~ John Lothrop Motley

Thought for Today

"Man seems to insist on ignoring the lessons available from history."

~~~~~ Norman Borlaug

Thought for Today

"From the beginning of our history the country has been afflicted with compromise. It is by compromise that human rights have been abandoned."

~~~~~ Charles Sumner

Thought for Today

"All the lessons of history in four sentences: Whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad with power. The mills of God grind slowly, but they grind exceedingly small. The bee fertilizes the flower it robs. When it is dark enough, you can see the stars."

~~~~~ Charles A. Beard

Thought for Today

"Throughout history, it has been the inaction of those who could have acted; the indifference of those who should have known better; the silence of the voice of justice when it mattered most; that has made it possible for evil to triumph."

~~~~~ Haile Selassie

Thought for Today

"My reading of history convinces me that most bad government has grown out of too much government."

~~~~~ John Sharp Williams

Thought for Today

"Difficulty is the excuse history never accepts."

~~~~~ Edward R. Murrow

Thought for Today

"Man seems to insist on ignoring the lessons available from history."

~~~~~ Norman Borlaug

Thought for Today

"The state can be and has often been in the course of history the main source of mischief and disaster."

~~~~~ Ludwig von Mises

Thought for Today

"My reading of history convinces me that most bad government has grown out of too much government."

~~~~~ John Sharp Williams

Thought for Today

The more things change ...  

"When I was in Philadelphia during the Depression in 1930 or '31, I got a very sad job as a night watchman in a garage. The cars in the garage had been abandoned by their owners, since they had lost their jobs and couldn't keep up the payments."

~~~~~ Tom Glazer

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

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

"All the lessons of history in four sentences: Whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad with power. The mills of God grind slowly, but they grind exceedingly small. The bee fertilizes the flower it robs. When it is dark enough, you can see the stars."

~~~~~ Charles A. Beard

Thought for Today

"Governments have never learned anything from history, or acted on principles deduced from it."

~~~~ Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

Thought for Today

"It is my duty to leave nothing undone that I may lawfully do, to pull down this administration... They who, from indifference, or with their eyes open, persist in hugging the traitor to their bosom, deserve to be insulted... deserve to be slaves, with no other music to soothe them but the clank of the chains which they have put on themselves and given to their offspring."

~~~~~ John Randolph (in reference to President John Quincy Adams [1826])

Thought for Today

"Man seems to insist on ignoring the lessons available from history."

~~~~~ Norman Borlaug

Census Humor: "Come and Be My POSSLQ"

For the 1980 census, the bureaucrats of the U.S. Census Bureau came up with an acronym to describe the increasingly frequent arrangement of unmarried males and females living together. The acronym was "POSSLQ," which stood for "Persons of Opposite Sex Sharing Living Quarters."

CBS's irrepressible Charles Osgood managed to find the humor in this bit of seemingly unpronounceable government gobbledygook. He decided that it could be pronounced in three syllables – as "POSS-ul-kyoo," then wrote this whimsical bit of verse around it:

Come and Be My POSSLQ

Come live with me and be my love,
And we will some new pleasures prove
Of golden sands and crystal brooks
With silken lines, and silver hooks.
There's nothing that I wouldn't do
If you would be my POSSLQ.

You live with me, and I with you,
And you will be my POSSLQ.
I'll be your friend and so much more;
That's what a POSSLQ is for.

And everything we will confess;
Yes, even to the IRS.
Some day on what we both may earn,
Perhaps we'll file a joint return.

You'll share my pad, my taxes, joint;
You'll share my life – up to a point!
And that you'll be so glad to do,
Because you'll be my POSSLQ.

Needless to add, since 1980, the phenomenon of unmarried males and females living together has become so ubiquitous that the Census Bureau discarded the POSSLQ acronym years ago. Apparently, they're now using the plain vanilla term "unmarried partners." It's difficult to find any humor in that.