Friday, August 27, 2010
Choices
In a few hundred years, when the history of our time will be written from a long-term perspective, it is likely that the most important event historians will see is not technology, not the Internet, not e-commerce. It is an unprecedented change in the human condition. For the first time - literally - substantial and rapidly growing numbers of people have choices. For the first time, they will have to manage themselves. And society is totally unprepared for it. - Peter Drucker
Tuesday, August 17, 2010
Holocaust Denial
I take Holocaust denial as Holocaust affirmation. People who say it didn't happen are people who wish it would happen again. I don't think there are any exceptions to that. This is not a fit person [Ahmadinejad] to be in command of nuclear weapons. - Christopher Hitchens
The Father of Us All
Reading The Father of Us All by Victor Davis Hanson, its a fascinating read, one quote I pulled out:
To suggest that Hezbollah and Israel, Hamas and Israel, or Syria and Israel, when the next Middle East war breaks out, be allowed to fight each other until one side wins and the other loses, and thus the source of their conflict be adjudicated by the verdict of the battlefield, is now seen not only as passé but also amoral altogether. Who would wish a no-holds-barred showdown? And would not the loser simply try to reconstitute his forces for a second round? We should remember that both victory and clear-cut defeat often put an end to a power struggles in a way armistices and timeouts do not. - p.118
To suggest that Hezbollah and Israel, Hamas and Israel, or Syria and Israel, when the next Middle East war breaks out, be allowed to fight each other until one side wins and the other loses, and thus the source of their conflict be adjudicated by the verdict of the battlefield, is now seen not only as passé but also amoral altogether. Who would wish a no-holds-barred showdown? And would not the loser simply try to reconstitute his forces for a second round? We should remember that both victory and clear-cut defeat often put an end to a power struggles in a way armistices and timeouts do not. - p.118
Tuesday, August 3, 2010
What Would Brandeis Do?
From Jeffery Goldberg's interview with Jeffery Rosen.
Did he get into trouble as a result? Brandeis's embrace of Zionism came only a few years before his Supreme Court nomination, and anti-Semitism certainly played some role in the opposition his nomination... Why are there no figures of Brandeis's stature who embrace Zionism with similar bravery today? ...perhaps the moral and political stakes seemed clearer in Brandeis's day than they do in ours. Brandeis thought that for Jews to be indifferent to Israel's right to exist also meant denying their own identity as Americans and Jews, and perhaps we need to remember his challenge today.
Did he get into trouble as a result? Brandeis's embrace of Zionism came only a few years before his Supreme Court nomination, and anti-Semitism certainly played some role in the opposition his nomination... Why are there no figures of Brandeis's stature who embrace Zionism with similar bravery today? ...perhaps the moral and political stakes seemed clearer in Brandeis's day than they do in ours. Brandeis thought that for Jews to be indifferent to Israel's right to exist also meant denying their own identity as Americans and Jews, and perhaps we need to remember his challenge today.
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