March 24, 2023

Outlasting Tyranny

Lately, in a spirit of “know your enemy”, I downloaded Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals.  To my surprise, the first of its three epigraphs comes from a work I have been recommending to people recently – that section of T...

September 2, 2016

The Looking-glass World of Feminist Politics

Ever since the debacle of Geraldine Ferraro’s vice-presidential candidacy in 1984, I had been convinced that the American electorate would never let a woman anywhere near the presidency.  Thus I never doubted that Obama would defeat Hilary...

May 9, 2009

Princes Among Men: Lessons From The Beleaguered

One of the most heartbreaking, yet inspiring, books of recent times is Princes Among Men: Memories of Eight Young Souls, the volume put out by the Mercaz HaRav  yeshiva in Jerusalem after eight students were murdered there last year by an Israel...

January 3, 2009

Hope After 'Hope': A Thought Experiment

Those who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength.- PsalmsIt is January 21, 2009, 7:30 a.m.  Scene:  a coffee house.  Publius sitting at a table, staring into space.  Enter Atticus.Atticus:  Good morning, Publius.  ...

November 22, 2008

After The Debacle: Facing the Next Four Years

The election is over.  We lost.  Now it behooves us to think about how we are going to face the next four years.  For the last couple of weeks a poem has been sounding in my mind.  It is by the seventeenth-century German poet Paul...