Category Archives: Machshava/Jewish Thought

     Before Jared Loughner, the Tucson shooter, had even finished pumping his bullets into the bodies of his innocent victims, the unctuous oracles of the left had already determined motive, cause and effect. The solons of simplicity immediately trumpeted that the “nasty, political climate” of the recent elections, the vociferous voices of talk radio and cable news, or even Sarah Palin herself had laid the foundation for the killer and his heinous deed.

   Of course, there was not a shred of evidence to support this theory, which is both shameless and tendentious. The murderer has already clammed up, and by all accounts he was a misfit who was mentally unbalanced and did not bear within him a coherent thought. His writings revealed contempt for government, which he claimed exercises mind control through “grammar” and he also demanded a new “currency.” He doesn’t sound like any Conservative I know, but none the matter. It has been decreed from on high that the rhetoric of right-wingers engendered the dastardly deed. Where have we heard this before, and where have we not heard it ?

     Fifteen years ago, the assassination of Yitzchak Rabin was immediately – and I mean, immediately – attributed to right-wing incitement, vitriolic rhetoric, hate speech, etc. Despite the fact that this was never proven; despite the fact that it was specifically renounced by Israel’s Attorney-General (see http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3125350,00.html); despite the fact that the apparent shooter, Yigal Amir, had consulted Rabbinic authorities who had told him that his intentions were both morally repugnant as well as counterproductive to the cause (Rabin was always perceived as more sensible and cautious than his successor, Shimon Peres); despite the fact that Amir, himself a government agent, was egged on in his crime by another government agent (Shin Bet operative Avishai Raviv); despite all this – and more – the die was cast. The motive was established and carved in stone: right-wing rhetoric. It became morally reprehensible even to deny that rhetoric was the cause, and abominable to continue to oppose the Oslo sellout of the late prime minister. His death was exploited – and is until today – for crass political purposes.

     Interestingly, when President Reagan was shot by John Hinckley in 1981, there was no instantaneous rush to left-wing judgment – that the rhetoric about Reagan causing a nuclear war with the Soviet Union, or the threat to freedom entailed by his anti-abortion stance, or his desire to cut taxes and thereby entitlements had inspired Hinckley. There could have been, but there was no such suggestion made even from staunch Reaganites . Instead, we were fed this pap about Hinckley trying to impress the actress Jody Foster by shooting the president. Sounds reasonable, doesn’t it ? (Well, why didn’t it work ? Why was Jodie Foster not impressed by Hinckley’s attempted assassination ? Perhaps because Hinckley was…nuts ?  Bingo.)

    The attempts to attribute rational reasoning and decision-making to insane people is itself a distortion of reality, and to use the ranting – and crimes – of a lunatic, for audacious and obvious political gain, is beyond the pale of decency. The political danger lies in the ability of the mass media to carve its version of events into the public domain, never to be erased. It is done by repeated references to the “rhetoric,” without any specifics, of course, and winking allusions to this or that right-wing talking head. All of which creates the “impression” that the wingnut was motivated by a reason-based discontent with the American government – as if he was upset about the stimulus, and Obamacare, and the insanely-high deficit. The only way to counter these mendacious accusations is to, literally, fight back – with words, of course – challenging every allegation, confronting every accuser with the need for proof, and making sure that every single act of finger-pointing boomerangs.

    The world has always had a nut problem. There have been misfits in every era, but until 30 years ago, the mentally-ill were usually housed in facilities that kept the public safe from them. That changed 30 years ago, and now it is illegal to institutionalize a moonstruck adult against his will. Some will argue that we need laws to prevent guns from falling into the hands of nuts – all true, but those laws already exist. (And, not to alarm anyone, there are plenty of illegal guns for purchase as well.) The problem lies in the difficulty of adjudicating someone a nut when he hasn’t yet done anything but act strange. These nuts fall through the cracks, and there is no foolproof way to thwart them.

     There have been very few political assassinations (or attempted assassinations) in the United States not carried out by nuts. Lincoln’s assassination was politically motivated, as was the attempt on the life of Harry Truman by Puerto Rican nationalists. But Garfield, McKinley, FDR and Gerald Ford (and Reagan) all encountered a crackpot of one type or another. Gerald Ford, in fact, was shot at by two lunatics within three weeks; no one attributed the shootings to Ford’s unpopular pardoning of Richard Nixon. When JFK was shot, the same tedious refrain was also heard (“right-wing, right-wing…”) until the chorus realized that Oswald was a left-winger – a Communist at that. His sanity was never fully explored.

    When these tragedies occur, we are left grasping for reasons, because it never makes sense. We especially hate to conclude that good people (a decent liberal congresswoman, a dedicated, conservative federal judge, a nine-year child) all had their lives shattered – in some cases ended – by the acts of a deranged and useless human being. We can only pray for the souls of the murdered, and the full recovery of the injured, and hope that the madman is executed in a swift and just fashion. (McKinley’s killer was tried, convicted, sentenced, and electrocuted in about seven weeks. That is swift justice.)  The legal definition of insanity is an inability to distinguish between right and wrong; Loughner apparently knew that what he was doing was wrong, whatever alternate universe he was otherwise living on. He should be tried, convicted and executed.

     History teaches us that the exploitation of assassinations for political ends is almost always a tactic of the left. (Strangely, the PC crowd does back flips to avoiding ascribing the terror of Muslims to Islam; we are told, for example, that the motives of the Fort Hood shooter are too mysterious to discern.) One reason might be that conservatives emphasize the notion of personal responsibility, and hold an individual solely accountable for his actions. Liberals are more inclined to ascribe responsibility and guilt to the collective, and therefore always seek motivation not in the miscreant himself but in society, or parents, or teachers, or the police, et al. The individual, according to this way of thinking, is almost absolved of any guilt, because the “real” causes of crime lie in the influences of others, rather than in the choices made by the criminal. Conservatives do not generally suffer from this illusion, because the influences of others do not eradicate the free choice of the criminal – a fundamental Torah concept as well. The narrative of societal responsibility resonates more with liberals than with conservatives, so it is almost natural – even absent the tawdry political motives – that liberals would seek answers in every place but the aggressor himself.

      Those who are liberally-inclined should resist the temptation to look for genuine motives from a kook. We can bring no proof from the acts of a psychotic, nor should we try to do so.  The attempt itself is not only outrageous, misguided and duplicitous, but also downright nutty. And we are all better than that. Normal people can have even vibrant and passionate political dialogue – and disagreements –  without fear of provoking the nuts; they do not require any provocation. We need not stifle democracy in order to save it, and we certainly cannot mute the opposition to destructive policies on the specious grounds of the alleged motivations of the irrational.

    “Life and language are alike sacred. Homicide and verbicide –that is, violent treatment of a word with fatal results to its legitimate meaning, which is its life –are alike forbidden.”  So wrote Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809-1894), the American author and poet and father of the better-known and similarly named Supreme Court Justice. Words are the “signs of ideas” (Samuel Johnson), both shaping and heralding the coming attractions of intellectual, cultural and moral life, and the subtlety with which words change meanings – forego old ones and embrace new one – can define the very society in which those changes occur.

     In other forums, I’ve addressed the political uses of language – how whether one terms the heartland of Israel “Judea and Samaria” (the biblical and historic names) or “the West Bank” (a concoction from 1950, which also induced the [mythical] Kingdom of Transjordan to become the [mythical] Kingdom of Jordan) speaks volumes about one’s political views on Israel’s “possession” (or “occupation;” same point) of that part of the Holy Land. Examples are legion and these days affect every area of life. Part of the asymmetrical warfare waged today against the civilized is the use by the Muslim terrorists of the language and values of Western civilization – human rights, liberty, freedom, self-determination, etc. – as weapons in the battle for public opinion, and in order to demoralize the civilized societies. No Muslim society grants to its citizens the rights that terrorists claim is being deprived to them by the “evil” West.

      Alexis de Tocqueville noted that “the genius of democracies is seen not only in the great number of new words introduced but even more in the new ideas they express,” or sometimes in the ways that words are used to misinform or mislead rather that enlighten or educate.

      For example, Congress is now debating whether to “make permanent the Bush tax cuts of 2002.” I certainly hope they do, not because government doesn’t need the money but rather because government cannot be trusted to spend most of it in any rational or productive way. People who recklessly run deficits in the trillions of dollars – and then boast about providing great “constituent service” – should not be trusted to run a newspaper stand, much less a government. Our governor, Chris Christie, who acts like the only adult in a room of whiny children, is gaining popularity by preaching the obvious: don’t spend more than you have, and don’t commit to buy things you can’t afford. What novel concepts, so jarring to his contemporaries that he is considered in this liberal state wildly popular with a 52% (!) approval rating.

     The point here, though, is that even if the tax cuts are made “permanent,” there is nothing permanent about them. These reductions will not be “everlasting, eternal, undeviating, etc.” – they are “permanent”…until some other Congress decides to change them, in other words, not permanent at all, but just permanent enough to quell the uprising brewing in the circles where people actually think trillion dollar deficits are unsustainable. So “permanent” here does not mean “permanent” – except in the sense that it is no longer temporary. (Another example of the inherent distrust of elites addicted to spending other people’s money: the Deficit Commission is recommending lower tax rates in exchange for elimination of certain common deductions or exemptions. The problem is that, invariably at some point, the rates will be raised again – but those deductions will never return.) So now the talk is of “extending” the Bush tax cuts; good, they’re catching on.

     Holmes’ comment about the fatal treatment of certain words is readily apparent in groups that describe themselves euphemistically in order to promote a political agenda. For example, the cheery English word “gay” has been hijacked already for decades by the homosexuals, to the extent that its original meaning is almost extinct and cannot be uttered in a sentence without provoking snickers. I am always suspicious of people who characterize themselves by an adjective when a noun is much more appropriate. (Atheists, following this pattern, have taken to calling themselves, somewhat wishfully, “brights,” but that has not yet caught on.) And “gay,” meaning “merry or carefree” hardly fits the description of a sexual inclination, whether homosexual or heterosexual. It is also a mystery how and why heterosexuality came to be known as “straight,” the opposite of which would be “crooked,” although, not knowing any heterosexuals who call themselves “straight,” I sense the term came as well from the homosexuals. “Gay” does project a positive, upbeat, buoyant spin to a lifestyle fraught with challenges, to say the least; but who else self-defines using an adjective that is unrelated to the group’s practices, interests, lifestyle or cause? And why must the rest of society be bound by that self-definition?

      The word “queer” has also been derailed by the same group, although it still retained its customary usage even 25 years ago. Once upon a time, “queer” was a faintly amusing description of something that was unexpected, odd, or curious. Nowadays, it clearly has pejorative connotations, and its use by social convention is limited to the homosexual community.

   Speaking of which, it is indeed queer, in the sense of perplexing, that some words are seemingly licensed for use by certain groups and prohibited to others. I once publicly, and innocuously, used the common term “yekke,” – an endearing reference to German Jews (likely origin: the yekkes, or jackets, they kept wearing in pre-State Israel, defying the more relaxed sartorial conventions of the day) – and was accosted later by a German Jew offended by my use of the term, saying that since I am not a German Jew, I do not have the right to use it. That was the first and only time that reference elicited such a response, which I have heard used thousands of times. This particular gentleman told me that my use of the term stung him, as “if I had used the N-word.”

     Indeed, some words are so sensitive today that they can only be referred to by a letter, and the N-word is at the top of that list. It is another of those words that only members of the group are allowed to use, and blacks routinely call each other  – in print, in lyrics, and in idle conversation – the N-word with little consequence. I have a hard time with the notion that some words are permissible to some people and prohibited to others; something which is offensive should always be offensive. It doesn’t become less offensive if an insider uses them, unless to begin with the offense is contrived. Yet, Dr. Laura Schlessinger recently resigned her radio program (she has since re-surfaced on satellite radio) because she mimicked the use of the “N-word” by blacks, something that, as a white woman, she was not allowed to do by the authorities who decide such things. 

     The sensitivity towards the N-word has led to the death of a word that I regularly used in the 1980s and 1990s – the word “niggardly,” meaning “miserly or cheap.” Its etymology has no connection at all to the N-word; yet, the phonetic similarity, I seem to recall, led to the resignation of a DC bureaucrat in 1999 who made the mistake of using it as an intelligent person would and not as the hyper-sensitive simpletons in his office understood it. He was later returned to his job;  the word itself has been discontinued.

     Then there are the words that play on ethnic stereotypes that the PC-crowd – and each offended group – has long sought to eradicate. Some verbs, like “to jew” (meaning to cheat, or to bargain down), have been banned from polite discourse, even as others, lacking the organizational muscle (or perhaps just the interest) to bring about their repudiation, still linger in the public domain. The truth is that the use of “jew” as a verb is just as offensive as the use of “gyp” (swindle, from Gypsy), or “welsh” (cheat, go back on one’s word, which the English perceived as a problem among natives of Wales). Curiously, or perhaps not, most of these ethnic verbs (or nouns, like Indian giver) involve some sort of deceptive practice from which victims generalized to the nationality of the deceiver, rather than the trickster himself, or herself. For sure, all these words (and there are others) are colorful, but they should be given a disrespectful funeral and be buried once and for all.

     Our Sages always reminded us of the power of words – to inspire, to educate, to challenge, to intimidate, to sanctify, to profane, to comfort, or to uplift. “Death and life are in the power of the tongue” (Proverbs 18:21). Indeed, the Talmud (Arachin 15b) states that man is given a number of safeguards to ensure that he only speaks when appropriate and only says what is appropriate; after all, his tongue is shielded by teeth and lips (“a wall of bone and a wall of flesh”) and must advance beyond those fences in order to talk. We are to think first and speak second, and then recognize that our speech reflects our thinking – but influences it also. As Samuel Coleridge, the 19^th century British philosopher said, “language is the armory of the human mind, and at once contains the trophies of its past and the weapons of its future conquests.” Among those “future conquests,” or at least battlefields, will be the realm of morality, the war against terror and the struggle for decency and kindness towards all groups and all peoples.