Chanukah 2009/5770

JERUSALEM — The Jewish holiday of Chanukah begins at sundown today. Here are two past writings of mine on the topic: Is Chanukah a Right-Wing Holiday? and Chanukah and Christopher Hitchens.

I also wanted to post another original writing. This is a short paper I wrote while I was a master’s student in Jewish Studies at Hebrew College in Boston. Enjoy!

When Secular and Religious Sources Conflict: Jewish Assimilation and the Maccabees

The story of Chanukah, detailed in the non-canonical books of Maccabees as well as in the writings of various secular historians, is one example of how different accounts — religious and secular — can cloud the history and memory of what actually occurred. The story related in Maccabees is essentially one of Jewish civil war. One faction wanted to adopt various ancient Greek customs since that culture was the dominant force in the Middle East (particularly when King Antiochus gained control of Judea). The other side viewed those practices as assimilation and heresy.

The writers of 1 Maccabees, when introducing the story, side with the latter group, portraying those who chose to assimilate as “wicked men” (1 Macc. 1:12) who profane the Sabbath and allow Antiochus to defile the Temple. When the Maccabees won, the writers viewed the victory in hindsight as a triumph of the faithful over the wicked. Right at the beginning of this account of the conflict, the pro-assimilation Judeans actively chose to side with Greek culture without any specific prompting or coercion:

In those days certain renegades came out from Israel and misled many, saying, ‘Let us go and make a covenant with the Gentiles around us, for since we separated from them many disasters have come upon us.’ This proposal pleased them, and some of the people eagerly went to the king, who authorized them to observe the ordinances of the Gentiles. So they build a gymnasium in Jerusalem, according to Gentile custom, and removed the marks of circumcision, and abandoned the holy covenant. They joined with the Gentiles and sold themselves to do evil. (1 Macc. 1:11-15)

1 Maccabees paints the conflict in stark, black-and-white, religious terms. The fact that the writers portray the pro-assimilation Judeans as wanting to form a new “covenant” with the Greeks is especially damning since, to the Maccabees, the only covenant Jews should have is the one with God that was formed at Sinai.

The ancient historian Josephus Flavius, however, portrayed the account differently. To him, Antiochus originally treated the Jews well because they sided with him during the king’s war against Ptolemy over who would control Judea. To thank the Jews, Antiochus gave them appropriate animals to sacrifice, along with wine, oil, frankincense, silver, flour, wheat, and salt. More significantly, he wrote to Ptolemy to command that “all of that nation live according to the laws of their own country” (Antiquities, Book XII, Chapter III, Part III).

However, Antiochus eventually decided to invade Jerusalem following a failed effort to take Egypt. Josephus writes that the king, in contrast to his earlier policy of toleration, now wanted to impose Greek culture upon the Jews:

[Antiochus] compelled them to forsake the worship which they paid their own God, and to adore those whom he took to be gods; and made them build temples, and raise idol altars in every city and village, and offer swine upon them every day. He also commanded them not to circumcise their sons, and threatened to punish any that should be found to have transgressed his injunction. He also appointed overseers, who should compel them to do what he commanded. (Antiquities, Book XII, Chapter V, Part IV).

According to Josephus, the punishments for violating Antiochus’ decrees were harsh: “they were whipped with rods, and their bodies were torn to pieces, and were crucified, while they were still alive, and breathed. They also strangled those women and their sons whom they had circumcised, as the king had appointed, hanging their sons about their necks as they were upon the crosses” (ibid).

One of the differences between the accounts in 1 Maccabees and Antiquties is in the motivations they attribute to the Jews who choose to adopt Greek culture. In 1 Maccabees, the Judeans assimilate — for seemingly no other reason than because they were wicked — before Antiochus imposes his harsh rule. In Antiquities, the king forces assimilation onto the Judeans under pain of death, and then some Jews assimilate to save their lives.

This difference is an example of the difficulty in surmising accurate social histories from religious texts. History is written by the victors, and 1 Maccabees is one such case. One of the authors’ purposes was to demonize those Jews who chose to assimilate into Greek culture by adopting some of its practices. Antiochus’ decrees in occupied Jerusalem were of secondary importance. If the writers of 1 Maccabees had stated that the Jews who had adopted Greek customs were coerced, then that statement would have hurt their argument that any Jews who assimilate are inherently wicked.

All writers of history naturally have their personal biases, but authors of religious texts are less interested in communicating objective accounts at all — they want to convince their readers of certain theological points. Persuasion is primary; accuracy is secondary.

Afghanistan

[Keith Burgess-Jackson posted this letter to the editor in the New York Times. I cannot help but wonder: I understood the need to destroy the Taliban after 9/11, but why is the United States still there?]

To the Editor:

Thomas L. Friedman argues that President Obama’s Afghanistan policy will succeed only if we are successful in nation-building (“May It All Come True,” column, Dec. 6). It’s worse than that. There is no nation to build.

Afghanistan is a loosely aligned collection of tribal constituencies. Its people are largely illiterate. The so-called central government does not control the countryside and is corrupt.

How are Americans in a relatively short period of time going to create from this raw material a state capable of ensuring its own security?

We are also fighting the wrong enemy. The Taliban, no matter how alien to our values, pose no threat to the United States. Al Qaeda has no significant current presence in Afghanistan.

In short, we are sending a lot of soldiers at enormous cost to fight an enemy that is somewhere else, with the de facto mission of propping up a narco-state. This makes no sense.

Boyd Hight
Los Angeles, Dec. 6, 2009
The writer was a deputy assistant secretary of state during the Carter administration.

The Lost Generation

The Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development sees the profound problems facing young Americans:

The current major economic downturn has brought about a significant worsening in the labour market performance of US youth. In the two years to September 2009, the employment rate of youth aged 16-24 fell by 7 percentage points to 46% and their unemployment rate rose by 7 percentage points to 18%. Despite talk that the worst of the recession may be over, there is little doubt that its labour market consequences will persist over the coming quarters.

Evidence from the aftermath of the early 2000s slowdown in the United States casts doubts on how quickly the youth labour market is likely to recover from the current deep recession. Indeed, in 2007, the labour market performance of youth still stood significantly below its 2000 level. The youth employment rate was 53% in 2007 compared with 60% in 2000; the youth unemployment rate, at 11%, was about 1 percentage point higher than its 2000 level…

In 2008, the incidence of long-term unemployment among youth in the United States was 7.1% versus an OECD average of 18.5% (Figure 1.7). This incidence increased over the past decade from 4.9% in 1998 whereas it declined for the OECD average. In particular, the incidence of long-term unemployment rose by 0.6 percentage points between 2007 and 2008 as a result of the ongoing economic crisis.

Any young person out of college and in his twenties — and perhaps even in his thirties — can tell you plenty of stories. The entire generation is generally upset, and rightly so. Here is what the OECD recommends that the U.S. government do:

• Temporarily relax unemployment benefit eligibility criteria for youths with some work experience, but apply strict job-search requirements;
• Expand existing early-childhood education programmes and provide more support for parents and children when they go to primary school;
• Extend vocational training by rolling out nationwide Career Academies, small learning establishments within high schools combining academic and technical education;
• Broaden the role of the Office of Apprenticeships to include funding responsibilities and introduce subsidies and sub minimum wages for apprentices in order to promote the use of apprenticeships in SMEs and for teenagers and at risk youths;
• Favour summer jobs programmes for at risk youths who are still at school;
• Expand the Job Corps programme for young adults and encourage teenagers to stay on the programme longer and do more vocational training.

I especially like the recommendation to increase the level of vocational training in the United States. The days when a person can earn a comfortable salary with benefits and a pension by being a cubicle-dweller are over. Those jobs can be outsourced — a plumber or auto mechanic cannot. A liberal-arts education is wonderful for a brain, but it no longer guarantees a good job. (See here, here, and here.)

The Economist’s Free Exchange blog is sympathetic, but it prescribes the wrong solution:

The broader point [of the data], I think, is that sustained, high levels of youth unemployment can lead to serious problems, including rising levels of crime, nationalism and economic populism, and lower growth potential as a generation of underemployed workers makes its way through the workforce. The cost-benefit analysis for generous assistance to young workers would seem to be pretty favourable, particularly if that assistance includes incentives to obtain more education.

The solution is not to send even more people to college — it is to help those who did go to college, took out tens of thousands of dollars in student loans, and are now close to poverty. Canceling or paying off the country’s student-loan debt would cost the government less than the various bailouts, and it would help the economy immediately by freeing up millions or billions of dollars to be spent on items like, well, homes. Two-thirds of America’s GDP is consumer spending, after all.

As Vox Day notes in a post on recent unemployment statistics:

This is also the result of the higher education bubble. I don’t remember who said it, but he was correct in pointing out that expanding higher education to the masses doesn’t mean that you won’t have sales clerks any more, it simply means that you’ll have sales clerks with PhDs.

Supply and demand. Economies of scale. I could enter any Economics 101 buzzword of choice to state what everyone should already know.

If something is not done to help younger people, the Baby Boomers will be facing intergenerational warfare. And with each passing year, their numbers dwindle even more.

Status of Jerusalem

JERUSALEM — The big news of the day — and it is potentially explosive indeed — is the European Union’s reported endorsement of Jerusalem as the capital of a future Palestinian state:

The 27 EU foreign ministers are scheduled to decide Tuesday on the final wording of a statement on the Middle East that may very well include European recognition of east Jerusalem as the capital of a future Palestinian state.

Efforts in Brussels on Monday to get a consensus on the text among the EU ambassadors failed, meaning the foreign ministers themselves will have to delve into the arguments over the text.

One Israeli official said it was very rare for a text this substantial to reach the foreign ministerial level without prior agreement.

The statement, which has just been allegedly passed, somewhat states the obvious since all outside parties have agreed that a two-state solution — Israel and Palestine as two countries next to each other — is the way to peace and have pressed both the Israeli government and the Palestinian Authority towards that end.

But the devil, so to speak, is in the details. Although the Israeli Foreign Ministry is pleased that the statement purportedly recognizes Israel’s claim to east Jerusalem — the territory was annexed following the Six Day War in 1967 –the office also called for the EU to “promote direct negotiations between the parties, while considering Israel’s security needs and understanding that Israel’s Jewish character must be preserved in any future agreement.” This is an important point: The Palestinians have yet to recognize the existence of Israel as a Jewish state.

Moreover, Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat — a secular, former high-tech businessman who leans right politically — bashed the EU proposal:

In response to the Swedish proposal currently being debated by European Union foreign ministers in Belgium that would declare east Jerusalem the capital of a future Palestinian state, Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat on Monday sent an official letter to the EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs, Catherine Ashton, in which he insisted that Jerusalem remain united “as the eternal capital of the State of Israel.”

“Throughout the history of the world, there is not one important city that was divided that functioned successfully,” Barkat wrote. “They either reunited or ceased to function properly. The lesson is too clear. Jerusalem must stay united.”

Barkat added that “division focuses on differences rather than the common denominator that unites people of all faiths,” and identified Jerusalem as “the heart and soul of the Jewish people.”

On a personal note, I can say that the mayor is being consistent. I attended a Q&A with Barkat at a gathering of English-speaking Israelis during the 2008 mayoral campaign, and he said the exact same sentiment. This is also an important point: Can a divided city ever function properly?

It is also hard to imagine the hatred that many Israelis have for Europeans in general, especially following their perceived (rightly or wrongly) support for Hamas during the Gaza conflict late last year:

This [EU statement] is known in the trade as a slap in the face. Since coming to power, Netanyahu’s government eased up on checkpoints and military presence in the West Bank/Judea and Samaria, has supported and protected Mahmoud Abbas and his government, have slowed and now frozen virtually all settlement construction while being far more cautious about construction of Jewish homes in Jerusalem as well as destruction of Palestinian homes. In return, Israel has had to swallow the Goldstone Report, the Swedish “IDF Steals Body Parts” attack with no apology from the government and now this…

Europe should really stay out of it. They have done enough damage with their constant funding for NGOs that oppose Israel, for their blind support of the Palestinians and relative silence over Hamas and Gazan attacks on Israeli civilian targets and the constant pressure presented from their courts over potential arrests of Israeli leaders.

This is also an important point. Both Israel and the Palestinians need to respect those who are trying to mediate the conflict. If even one party does not trust the mediator, then negotiations are useless. Europe — except, perhaps, for France ever since the election of President Nicolas Sarkozy –  is perceived by Israelis as being anti-Israel as much as the United States has been seen as being pro-Israel. Can such outsiders ever implement or even produce a peace agreement, or is it something that Israelis and Palestinians can only reach on their own?

Moreover, if the alleged plans to announce a State of Palestine soon with east Jerusalem as its capital occur — as PA Prime Minister Salam Fayyed might be planning — but produce no real results, will that lead to a third intifada and a return to Square One?

Israeli Settlements

JERUSALEM — Law professor David M. Phillips sets the historical and legal record straight on how Israeli settlements are not a violation of international law:

Though routinely referred to nowadays as “Palestinian” land, at no point in history has Jerusalem or the West Bank been under Palestinian Arab sovereignty in any sense of the term…

The Ottoman Empire contained the area known as Palestine for hundreds of years. The British Empire defeated the Ottomans, took control of the region, gave the land east of the Jordan River to the future kingdom of Jordan, and offered to split the remaining land west of the Jordan between the Jews and Arabs who were living there. The Arabs west of the Jordan rejected the partition, the British withdrew from the area, Israel declared independence, and then the surrounding Arab countries invaded.

By the end of the 1948 war, Jordan had taken control of the West Bank and east Jerusalem. (The so-called “Green Line” has merely been the dividing line between the Israeli and Jordanian armies at the time the cease-fire began.) Most of the Arabs west of the Jordan had moved to the West Bank and Gaza Strip (the latter was held by Egypt). Some of the Arabs had fled for their safety; others had left Israeli territory to make way for the invading armies; and still others had been pushed out by the Israeli army. Many of the Arabs in the West Bank eventually obtained Palestinian passports; Yassir Arafat, of course, was an Egyptian from Gaza. In the 1967 war, the surrounding countries attacked Israel again. In the end, Israel took over the West Bank, west Jerusalem, and Gaza to protect itself against any future attacks by Jordan and Egypt.

So, the only three entities that could possibly have sovereignty over the West Bank are Britain, Israel, and Jordan. England, of course, does not want to retake any possessions in the Middle East. Jordan does not want anything to do with the West Bank anymore because Palestinian terrorists nearly overthrew the monarchy in 1970. This leaves Israel.

The Palestinians, of course, could have a state in the future — but they have never had collective, sovereign authority over the West Bank in the past. As the European Union debates whether to recognize a Palestinian state with east Jerusalem as its capital, it is worth remembering this fact.

Revealing Clothing

JERUSALEM — British researchers have discovered what sensible men have always known:

Striking the right balance between revealing too much and being too conservative in how much skin is on show has long been a dilemma for women when choosing the right outfit for a night out.

However, a study by experts at the University of Leeds has come to the rescue by calculating the exact proportion of the body that should be exposed for optimum allure…

Women who revealed around 40 per cent of their skin attracted twice as many men as those who covered up.

However, those who exposed any more than this also fared worse. Experts believe that showing too much flesh puts men off because it suggests they might be unfaithful.

Psychologist Dr Colin Hendrie, who led the study, told the Daily Mail: “Any more than 40 per cent and the signal changes from ‘allure’ to one indicating general availability and future infidelity.” (emphasis added)

Although I agree with the findings of the study, there are a few issues with the methodology. Of course, it is impossible to control for the hundreds of variables that occur during interpersonal reactions in a club. There are potentially untold numbers of reasons why one woman would be approached more or less often than another. In addition, the intention of the men observed must be taken into account — were they looking for a one-night stand or something meaningful? It would have been impossible for the researchers to discern this. (More on this later.)

Still, the forest is correct even if they were some issues with the trees. Women who wear extremely-revealing clothing can always be categorized as one or more of the following:

• They have low self-esteem and want interest from men to make them feel better about themselves.
• They have low self-esteem and think their looks are the only positive quality they possess.
• They are — for lack of a better term — sluts who are looking for action.
• Service-sector employees like waitresses and bartenders who are looking for good tips.

As I noted in a prior post, women are much more attractive when they dress modestly and conservatively — what is unseen is always more sexy and alluring than what is seen. A sense of mystery creates desire. For example, I have always thought that women in Jerusalem — where I once lived and will shortly live again — are generally much more attractive than the libertine, scantily-clad girls in Tel Aviv. (The picture posted above is an example of the type of clothing that a modern Orthodox woman may wear.)

In addition, a conservatively-attired woman will attract a better class of men. The British researchers in the posted article noted that women in the club who covered up too much were approached less often. The reason is obvious: drunk guys in clubs are looking for one-night stands, and they know subconsciously that a modestly-dressed girl will likely not be interested in meaningless sex. (Not one of my married friends met his or her future spouse in a bar or club.) The researchers would have found that a conservative dress was more beneficial in a dating environment other than a bar or nightclub.

The cited study reports that women should leave forty percent of their skin uncovered if they want to attract attention in a club. I would posit that women should cover more if they want to attract a quality guy anywhere.

Related: The Battle of the Sexes, Fashionable Modesty, and The Return of Modesty.

(Hat tip: Vox Day)

Fatah and Hamas

Spengler posits a reason why the unacknowledged Palestinian civil war is so one-sided:

All the training and arms in the world will not persuade the leaders of the Palestine Authority to fight, because they are extremely wealthy men who live in luxury anywhere in the world. Ahmed al-Meghami, then the PA’s attorney general, estimated in 2006 that billions of dollars may have been stolen by Palestinian officials. Men with London townhouses and villas in the south of France don’t risk their lives. Their Hamas counterparts are quite willing to die and in any case have nowhere to go except safe houses in Damascus. That explains why only one side fights.

Western donors to the PA know this perfectly well; they also know that the putative refugee population is inflated by as many as 1.3 million non-existent souls in order to inflate foreign aid requirements, as I reported on August 18 (Palestine problem hopeless, but not serious). But it is easier to keep the charade going than to admit failure. Cupidity and inertia have produced a criminal enterprise in the guise of a proto-state, vulnerable to liquidation by hard men who are willing to die for what they believe. That is why the Palestinian civil war is a one-sided affair; the other side has no reason to fight.

Hamas seems to be working more for a Palestinian state than Fatah. True, the Palestinian state desired by the terrorist group would take over all the land “the sea to the river,” be void of all Jews, and likely be an Islamic theocracy — but it would still be a state. Fatah, on the other hand, seems to be spinning its wheels.

Paternity Tests

The New York Times Magazine reports on how paternity testing is changing fatherhood in the United States. The feature article, of course, leads with a poignant story:

For four years, Mike had known that the girl he had rocked to sleep and danced with across the living-room floor was not, as they say, “his.” The revelation from a DNA test was devastating and prompted him to leave his wife — but he had not renounced their child. He continued to feel that in all the ways that mattered, she was still his daughter, and he faithfully paid her child support. It was only when he learned that his ex-wife was about to marry the man who she said actually was the girl’s biological father that Mike flipped. Supporting another man’s child suddenly became unbearable.

Two years after filing the suit that sought to end his paternal rights, Mike is still irate about the fix he’s in. “I pay child support to a biologically intact family,” Mike told me, his voice cracking with incredulity. “A father and mother, married, who live with their own child. And I pay support for that child. How ridiculous is that?”…

Mike’s conundrum is increasingly playing out in courts across the country, a result of political, social and technological shifts. Stricter federal rules have pressed states to chase down fathers and hold them responsible for children born outside of marriage, a category that includes 40 percent of all births. At the same time, DNA tests have become easier, cheaper and more reliable. Swiping a few cheek cells and paying a couple hundred dollars can answer the question that has plagued men since the dawn of time: Am I really the father?

This issue has indeed puzzled humanity for thousands of years. As Aristotle reportedly put it (I cannot find the primary source):

Mothers are fonder than fathers of their children because they are more certain they are their own.

Still, is there something happening today that caused the Times to deem this newsworthy? Perhaps there is. As state governments rightfully clamp down on deadbeat dads — of which my late father was one — more and more men want to know for sure whether they are indeed responsible for their child’s upbringing:

Over the last decade, the number of paternity tests taken every year jumped 64 percent, to more than 400,000. That figure counts only a subset of tests — those that are admissible in court and thus require an unbiased tester and a documented chain of possession from test site to lab. Other tests are conducted by men who, like Mike, buy kits from the Internet or at the corner Rite Aid, swab the inside of their cheeks and that of their putative child’s and mail the samples to a lab. Of course, the men who take the tests already question their paternity, and for about 30 percent of them, their hunch is right.

On the surface, this sounds incredibly depressing to someone who, like me, views marriage as a sacred, holy institution. But the sad reality is that eighteen percent of married women in the United States have cheated at least once. (The number is probably even higher since more than a few cheaters probably lied to the pollster.) One in five Americans — men and women — in monogamous relationships have cheated on his or her partner, according to the same survey. With untold thousands of dollars on the line, can men really be blamed for wanting to be sure?

This is yet another reason why American men are increasingly skeptical of marriage. Not only can wives divorce husbands for no reason and take half of their assets, courts can, as the Times article notes, also force husbands to pay for the children of the man with whom the wife cheated. Modern society has deviated so much from the natural order that chaos has resulted.

Related: The Battle of the Sexes

(Hat tip: Roissy in DC)

The Economic Future

Every American should watch this thirty-minute, non-partisan documentary on the financial apocalypse towards which the United States is heading.

Related: Why My Generation is Pissed Off and The Upcoming Generational War

Cultural Nihilism

LONDON and JERUSALEM — The Daily Mail reports on efforts to change British drinking habits (and includes, of course, several tabloid-worthy pictures):

Such scenes are not uncommon, which is why Cardiff – one of the country’s worst cities for binge drinking – has just banned boozing on the streets.

The crackdown is aimed at late night revellers, targeting rowdy hen and stag parties and generally trying to make the streets safer after dark.

Police can use the new powers to confiscate alcohol or arrest anyone who defies them.

The ban has been a success in trials in small areas but will spread across the entire city in time for Christmas and the New Year.

Yesterday it was hailed as a big step towards ‘reclaiming the streets’ from drunken yobs.

Cardiff Central MP Jenny Willott said: ‘Late night alcohol-fuelled crime and anti-social behaviour is a huge problem on the streets.

‘People deserve to have a night out without the fear of intimidation or facing violence as a result of excessive alcohol consumption.

‘This ban should help the law-abiding and responsible majority to reclaim the streets.’

When I lived in London in 2001 and worked as a bartender at the Zetland Arms, I observed that British people drink a lot — a lot more than your average American. But it was still within reasonable limits. Every night, the regulars — a friendly-but-sad bunch — would arrive after work and drink pint after pint while watching sports. Then they would leave for home late at night and return the next evening.

Later in the evening, the young people would arrive. Since pubs had to close at 12:30 a.m., they would drink a lot and then move to a club or hang out on the streets. (It is legal to drink outside in counties including Britain and Israel.) But I rarely saw any problems. The closest I ever got was when I took the drink out of the hand of a drunken Scotsman because I was angry and he refused to leave at closing time. Luckily, the manager came over and calmed him down. (One lesson of bartending in London: If you want to befriend a Scotsman, mention the film “Braveheart” in a positive way.)

But, sadly, it seems that things have become much worse:

…the proportion of women who binge-drink almost doubled between 1998 and 2006 and is now at 15% (men who binge-drink increased by 1% to 23%). However, the proportion of 16- to 24-year-old men binge-drinking decreased by 9% since 2000. Researchers also found that whilst fewer children are drinking, those that do drink are drinking much more than they did in the past.

Violent crime by youths is also an increasing problem. If the reports are credible (I have not been to Britain since 2001), then English cities are dealing with mobs of drunken, violent youths every night.

If you want to see the future of a country, look at its young people. Great Britain, once known as the economic, cultural, and fashion capital of the world, seems to be crumbling. I first realized this when former British Prime Minister Tony Blair started giving speeches several years ago defending the very idea of the country itself.

The still-unanswered question facing Blair in the 1990s was: What does it mean to be “British” as opposed to “English,” “Welsh,” or “Scottish”? The United Kingdom is a political entity created through conquest that has rarely, if ever, had a collective sense of identity. Blair tried, unsuccessfully, to brand the country as “Cool Britannia.”

The British Empire collapsed after World War II, and the British people never quite recovered subconsciously as the United States, a former colony, became the new leader of the free world. Decades leader, the British people viewed Blair as George W. Bush’s lap dog in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq. (In geopolitical terms, Blair could do little else.) It was a confirmation of the global humiliation that the British people have been feeling after centuries of power and influence had disappeared.

In recent years, Scotland and Wales formed their regional parliaments and became more autonomous. The current prime minister, Gordon Brown, is a Scot and now deeply unpopular. It is indeed possible that Great Britain will cease to exist in the coming years. As the country devolves, it might also lose sovereignty to the European Union and the euro.

Cultural divisions and economic conditions are also tearing the country apart. Decades of mass immigration have caused many Brits to feel that their country is no longer “British.” The most-popular, national food is now seen as chicken tikka masala rather than fish ‘n’ chips. (One former coworker here in Israel moved here even though he is not a Jew because he said that his country no longer exists.) Radical Muslims in Britain condemn democracy, want to impose Shari’a law, and have plotted terrorist attacks. Anti-Semitism is skyrocketing (see here and here). Young men are becoming more apathetic and willing to live with their parents as well as on the dole.

The most significant example of the negative feelings held by Britons was the recent inclusion of Nick Griffin, the leader of the far-right British National Party, on the political, panel-discussion show “Question Time.” Both journalism and the free-market are perfect bellwethers of cultural trends. Companies, even media ones, must tailor their products, services, and marketing pitches to pre-existing trends in society. Journalists, who ideally have their fingers on the pulses of people, decide which views are relevant to a the discussion of a given topic. When the BBC, the standard-bearer of British journalism, decides that a person like Griffin is suited to a serious political discussion, that is a clear indicator of what a significant segment of society is feeling.

In the theory of Alexander Fraser Tytler, Great Britain may be nearing towards the end of the life-cycle of all nations and empires as a result of all of these trends and feelings. With all of these cultural, political, and social problems in the subconscious minds of young people, is it any wonder that they seem to have lost hope in the future? Without any optimism, they turn to alcohol and violence out of nihilistic despair.

One of my favorite 1970s-era bands is the Moody Blues, and I think their following pop-rock song from 2000 is an apt description of British malaise:

We’re on a runaway train, rolling down the track / And where it’s take us to, who knows where it’s at / But if we hold together, we can make it back / For an English sunset

And I’ve decided I can live with humility / And the sad decay / ‘Cause that’s the English way

We keep the faith alive in every thing we do / And at the end of the line, we still keep coming through / And though it’s sad and sorry, what else can we do / It’s an English sunset

And I’ve decided they can wait for the requiem / And take it day by day / ‘Cause that’s the English way

As someone who has loved British culture since he was a child, I write this post with extreme sadness. Still, I fear that the same attitudes are affecting behavior in Israel, specifically in Jerusalem. As Jerusalem Post editor David Horovitz notes:

Anyone with more than passing knowledge of the atmosphere in central Jerusalem will be aware that the heart of our capital city is rapidly becoming a late night no-go zone.

Clusters of violent youth rule and roam the streets, armed with knives and with the beer and vodka bottles they’ve emptied, picking fights with unsuspecting victims.

Of course, the police are not solely to blame for the deepening climate of intimidation and violence. As [Public Security Minister Yitzhak] Aharonovitch and Israel Police Insp.-Gen. Dudi Cohen have frequently observed, ours is becoming an increasingly violent society, more and more kids are now carrying knives, and the response needs to be found, at least in part, in better parenting and better educational values.

I travel to Jerusalem several times a week, and I will likely be returning to live there soon. I was walking on the way to a pub with my girlfriend, a born-and-raised Jerusalemite, and we were speaking in English. A man on the street walked up and tried to convince us to come to his bar. (There are dozens of such people in the city center’s streets who try to get English-speaking tourists to visit their restaurant or bar.)

I waved him away and said, “We don’t need [your flier]” in Hebrew. His response? “Your accent sucks!” he yelled in English. I was about to walk over and return the favor when my girlfriend stopped me and said, “Do NOT talk like that here!” Unfortunately, people have been assaulted there for less.

As I have written in my Letters from Israel series, the Jewish state is rife with political, religious, and social divisions that many fear will tear the country apart. This has led to increased anti-social behavior and the possible destruction of the civil society that had developed since the refounding of Israel in 1948. Perhaps young Israelis have developed the same pessimism regarding the future that British youths now have.

As a result of the geographic isolation of the United States — it is separated from the world by two, gigantic oceans — the country is usually the last to receive cultural trends from Europe (as well as technological innovations from eastern Asia). Since young people there are increasing angry and frustrated over their economic and social conditions, I wonder whether the same anti-social behavior will occur in America soon.

Palestinians

RISHON LEZION, Israel — Spengler offers an interesting take on why Palestinian leaders have refused all of Israel’s peace offers:

Palestinian Arabs are highly literate, richer and healthier than people in most other Arab countries, thanks to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency and the blackmail payments of Western as well as Arab governments. As refugees, they live longer and better than their counterparts in adjacent Arab countries. It is not surprising that they do not want to be absorbed into other Arab countries and cease to be refugees.

If the Palestinians ceased to be refugees, moreover, it is not clear how they would maintain their relatively advantaged position…

Why should Western taxpayers subsidize an Arab in Ramallah, when Arabs in Egypt are needier? The answer is that they represent a security concern for Western countries, who believe that they are paying to limit violence. That only makes sense if the threat of violence remains present in the background and flares up frequently enough to be credible.

A Western pundit — I believe it was Thomas Friedman in one of his books — once wrote that Yassir Arafat never really wanted to lead a country. Instead, he merely wanted to maintain his worldwide fame as the leader of an oppressed people.

Perhaps these are the real reasons that the Palestinians — or at least their leaders — do not really seem to want peace.

Western Morality

Evidently there is some American guy named Tucker Max who is a minor celebrity for sleeping with girls and then describing the night on his website. A college student named Courtney slept with him — even though she thought he was a jerk — and then broadcast the story on the Internet. Both their parents must be proud.

The whole story — both unintentionally amusing and downright sickening — is here.

Related: The Battle of the Sexes

Crazy Conservatives

RISHON LEZION, Israel — While Thomas Friedman worries that the political environment in the United States is dangerously similar to the one in which Israeli Prime Minister Yitzak Rabin was assassinated, David Brooks argues otherwise:

Just months after the election and the humiliation, everyone is again convinced that Limbaugh, Beck, Hannity and the rest possess real power. And the saddest thing is that even Republican politicians come to believe it. They mistake media for reality. They pre-emptively surrender to armies that don’t exist.

They pay more attention to Rush’s imaginary millions than to the real voters down the street. The Republican Party is unpopular because it’s more interested in pleasing Rush’s ghosts than actual people. The party is leaderless right now because nobody has the guts to step outside the rigid parameters enforced by the radio jocks and create a new party identity. The party is losing because it has adopted a radio entertainer’s niche-building strategy, while abandoning the politician’s coalition-building strategy.

The rise of Beck, Hannity, Bill O’Reilly and the rest has correlated almost perfectly with the decline of the G.O.P. But it’s not because the talk jocks have real power. It’s because they have illusory power, because Republicans hear the media mythology and fall for it every time.

As I wrote in a prior post, journalists and pundits are extremely powerful because the perceptions they create can sometimes become reality. So I agree both with Friedman and Brooks.

I hope this is obvious to everyone: Every conservative likely watches Fox News at least on a semi-regular basis, but not every Fox News viewer is a conservative. I can watch either CNN or Fox News on Israeli cable, and I usually choose the latter. Fox News is barely journalism and provides only superficial analysis, but at least the channel covers politics. CNN seems to be drifting towards covering celebrity, gossip, and entertainment all the time. (And I get CNN International, which is supposed to carry more hard news than the U.S. one.)

The legions of angry conservatives — who are assumed to exist based solely on the high ratings of Fox News — do not exist today just as Richard Nixon’s “silent majority” did not exist in the 1970s. This is a collective case of a tiny mouse that has the ability to roar.

However, this does not mean that Friedman is wrong to worry about a poisonous political climate. The number of angry conservatives may be far lower than politicians think, but it takes only one nutjob to assassinate a prime minister — or a president.

Related: Maureen Dowd eulogizes the late William Safire, who was a respectable conservative unlike the blowhards of today.

Print Media

Perhaps bloggers can help print media. This is heartening — I still prefer to hold newspapers and magazines in my hands.

When Men Lie

Dr. Helen Smith comments on a recent studying showing that men lie twice as often as women:

I think that often men lie because they will get a very severe response from women if they tell the truth. For example, if a woman says, “What’s wrong?” and rather than reply, “I’m fine,” the man says, “You are driving me crazy and I need some time away from you,” there is a good chance the woman will make him pay dearly for the remark. I don’t know about you, rather than lies, I think many of these quips are more like self-preservation.

I once dated a girl who, after a week, said that I should buy different clothes, get a new pair of shoes, and change hairstyles. (And that was only part of it.) My first instinct was to reply: “You should lose fifteen pounds.” Instead, I mumbled something to change the subject and called her less and less often until she got the hint.

Men are generally more practical and logical while women can be prone to hysterics and emotional outbursts. Men know this, and as a result, they do a subconscious, cost-benefit analysis when deciding how to respond to an uncomfortable question posed by their significant others. In my above example, I decided to hide my true feelings and mumble my way out of the phone call than bother with the Wrath of Hell that would have resulted from my gut, honest reaction.

Men can take hard truths and move on; women are less likely to do so. Many women, it seems, like to live in a fantasy world and become utterly angry when the bubble is shattered. Perhaps this is way so few women — except for ones like this person — are unwilling to admit that feminism has had many negative effects on Western society as well.

(Hat tip: Vox Day)

The Upcoming Generational War

Sixth in a series of essays

Ruben Navarrette recently criticized young Americans who are lobbying the government for financial assistance in these tough times:

Young people usually don’t have mortgages to pay off, or spouses and children to support. That gives them an enormous amount of freedom whether they realize it or not. They also have an advantage in the job market because they can travel the country and go where the jobs are. Or they can simply follow their passions and build careers of their own designs. Instead of seeing obstacles, they should see opportunities.

And yet, when young people ask government to throw them a life preserver and save them from the choppy waters of a rough economy, they’ve all but given up. Even if they get the short-term economic aid they’re seeking, they’ll lose their self-sufficiency in the process and become dependent on an unresponsive bureaucracy. That’s not good. In fact, it’s dangerous.

So you have to wonder where young people picked up this distasteful and destructive behavior. It’s obvious. It was from watching their elders with outstretched palms, a sense of entitlement, and a tendency to see government as the solution to all sorts of problems. And to think there are people who actually believe that.

Navarrette misses the point. As he himself notes earlier in his column, young Americans are more disproportionately unemployed than other demographics. But the problem is much deeper than jobs.

Just like Generation X two decades ago, Generation Y is increasingly bitter and frustrated to the point of losing all hope that they will one day have a life at least as secure — and not even as prosperous — as the Baby Boomers did in their middle-aged lives. (For the record, my birth year — 1980 — is stuck between Generation X and Generation Y, so I can empathize with both.) It is hard to quantify the pessimism and anger that pervades the younger generation, but a writer named Squashed comes close:

The word “entitlement” has picked up a negative connotation it shouldn’t have. If you go to the bank and deposit $20, you are entitled to get your $20 from the bank. If you fulfill your half of a contract, you are entitled to the other party’s performance. Sure, its a problem when you feel you deserve something you don’t deserve—but there is nothing wrong with acknowledging a legitimate debt. So let’s ask why some people in their 20s might feel the older generation hasn’t kept its end of the bargain…

For those who just graduated, there was no job. That’s not technically true. There was a job—but somebody older has it and isn’t letting go. It turns out the whole system is rigged. Education and intelligence and everything we were told was important turn out to be worth nothing next to seniority and experience…

Take health insurance. Decades of pressure to lower wages for new hires and cut benefits means that the employer-provided system means that even if you can find a job, it probably won’t offer health insurance. Paying for insurance out of pocket is prohibitively expensive if you’re healthy and coverage is entirely unavailable if you’re not. And if you have a minimum-wage job serving coffee, you’re still getting a chunk taken out of your paycheck to finance a program that won’t be solvent by the time you’re old enough to use it. But any effort to change this system is met with seniors screaming about communists taking away their medicare. And if 20-somethings back a legislative initiative that would help them obtain coverage, they’re slackers living in their parents basements. And let’s not even get into the individual mandate in the health-reform bill that will require the healthy and young to subsidize the health-care of their older and generally wealthier parents.

Should twenty-somethings who have done everything asked of them their entire lives feel like somebody pulled one over on them? Probably—but bad things happen. And hopefully all those years of education taught us enough empathy not to be vindictive. Call us gullible—but don’t call us lazy or selfish.  If some of us push for a few reforms that could help us succeed even when our parents have dropped the ball—back them, and be thankful that we’re not talking outright revolution.

In an earlier essay, I also described the reasons that people my age are — to put it bluntly — pissed off. Please take a minute to read the post and its comments. Now, for the specific data from the Pew Research Center:

Now, what facts can be determined from this data?

• The percentage of workers who are approaching or older than 65 is increasing while that of younger people is declining or remaining static.
• Most workers who remain on the job past the age of 65 do so out of desire rather than need.
• Still, some older workers have delayed retirement due to the recession.

In a nutshell,  it is the Baby Boomers’ own fault that their children are working at McDonald’s or sleeping in their basements. For the most part, the older generation is refusing to retire simply because they want to work. Those who may need to delay retirement because their portfolios have declined either had idiots for financial advisers, or they made bad investments themselves. (By the age of 60, almost all of your investments should be in stable bonds rather than volatile stocks. And don’t get me started if you flipped houses or bought property during the height of the housing bubble.)

Critics like Navarrette usually say that every generation has had tough times and that younger people should pick themselves up by their bootstraps. Well, here is a secret: My generation has no bootstraps! The most extreme members of my generation feel that there is nothing we can do until the Baby Boomers literally die off.

But even that might pose a problem. Read this insightful — and scary — article in the Atlantic Monthly on how the “longevity boom” will wreak havoc on American society:

In the scientists’ projections, the ongoing increase in average lifespan is about to be joined by something never before seen in human history: a rise in the maximum possible age at death.

Stem-cell banks, telomerase amplifiers, somatic gene therapy—the list of potential longevity treatments incubating in laboratories is startling. Three years ago a multi-institutional scientific team led by Aubrey de Grey, a theoretical geneticist at Cambridge University, argued in a widely noted paper that the first steps toward “engineered negligible senescence”—a rough-and-ready version of immortality—would have “a good chance of success in mice within ten years.” The same techniques, De Grey says, should be ready for human beings a decade or so later. “In ten years we’ll have a pill that will give you twenty years,” says Leonard Guarente, a professor of biology at MIT. “And then there’ll be another pill after that. The first hundred-and-fifty-year-old may have already been born…”

From religion to real estate, from pensions to parent-child dynamics, almost every aspect of society is based on the orderly succession of generations. Every quarter century or so children take over from their parents—a transition as fundamental to human existence as the rotation of the planet about its axis. In tomorrow’s world, if the optimists are correct, grandparents will have living grandparents; children born decades from now will ignore advice from people who watched the Beatles on The Ed Sullivan Show. Intergenerational warfare—the Anna Nicole Smith syndrome—will be but one consequence. Trying to envision such a world, sober social scientists find themselves discussing pregnant seventy-year-olds, offshore organ farms, protracted adolescence, and lifestyles policed by insurance companies. Indeed, if the biologists are right, the coming army of centenarians will be marching into a future so unutterably different that they may well feel nostalgia for the long-ago days of three score and ten.

“[A]lmost every aspect of society is based on the orderly succession of generations.” This is the most important line in the Atlantic article. When an older generation dies off, its wealth, jobs, and responsibilities are transferred, through inheritance and other means, to the younger generation. The next generation uses this capital to obtain jobs, get married, buy homes, raise families, and create more wealth. Then they will die off, and the circle continues. This is how society must function.

Now, however, the circle is broken. Instead of the Baby Boomers transferring their wealth to Generations X and Y, they are getting more money by staying at their jobs and spending their existing wealth on vacations as well as life-extending medicines and procedures (see here and here) rather than passing it onto their children and grandchildren. (I would have added the adverb “selfishly spending,” but I am not sure the natural, inherent desire to prolong one’s life can fairly be described as “selfish.”)

Generations X and Y have yet to have the collective wealth, rights, and responsibilities transferred and assigned to them from the Baby Boomers. As a result, young people are stuck in their often-criticized state of perpetual adolescence because we cannot afford the trappings of so-called maturity: marriage, home, and family. (See here, here, and here.) What else can we do but wait?

Still, Navarrette is correct on one point: My generation has more mobility because most of us do not yet have good jobs, spouses, mortgages, and families even though many of are pushing the age of thirty or beyond. As a result, we may need to start looking elsewhere than the United States.

For example, I moved to Israel and found a wonderful job since international marketing experience and native English are in great demand. I am not paying part of my salary into Social Security, a program whose benefits I will likely never see. The government provides universal health-care. My job provides both an employer-matched pension and a retirement fund along with disability and life insurance. (My standard of living is much higher relative to other Israelis than it was in Boston relative to other Americans.) I write this not to brag but to ask: How many young people in the United States have this today?

It is no wonder than Generations X and Y are so upset.

Related: Cancel Student Loan Debt (to Save the Economy). Hat tip: Anya Kamenetz. Next essay: On the Jewish-Girl Fetish.

Elsewhere: Columnist Dennis Prager apologizes on behalf of the Baby Boomers, though mainly for reasons other than economic ones.

Pat Buchanan

The conservative pundit wonders whether the United States is falling apart. My thoughts are here.

Weekend News Roundup

Eli Kavon revisits the assertation that 9/11 occurred, at least in part, as a result of American support for Israel. Reuven Hammer says Judaism must return the musar, ethical movement following the recent misdeeds of so many rabbis and Jews themselves. Caroline Glick highlights the economic contribution that Israeli gives to the Western world — and could give to the Middle East if Arab countries would recognize the Jewish state. Hamas is looking to rebrand itself following its poor performance against Israel in the recent war. Israel and the United States is partnering on anti-missile defense systems. A Jewish man shoots and wounds two Arabs in east Jerusalem. Two rockets were fired from southern Lebanon into northern Israel. The Jewish state might be moving closer to attacking Iran’s nuclear facilities. Israel’s military chief of staff wants mandatory national service instead for citizens who do not enlist in the army after high school. One in three Holocaust survivors reportedly live in poverty.

Weekend News Roundup

The Jerusalem Post has an interesting feature on the effect that ultra-Orthodox Jews have on neighborhoods when they move into them. In an effort to combat assimilation among American Jews, the Israeli government and Jewish Agency are airing television commercials encouraging Israelis to convice friends and family there to take extended trips to Israel. Caroline Glick argues that Iran is months away from having nuclear weapons. Madonna ends her world tour in Tel Aviv, meets Israeli politicians, is nice to a Jerusalem waitress, wraps an Israeli flag around herself on stage, and faces criticism from Palestinians. Bradley Burston hopes that the Jewish New Year will bring an end to extremist, unrealistic idealism on the far left and right. Sarah Honig argues that the main conflict in the peace process is not Israeli settlements but the refusal of Arabs and Palestinians to recognize the right of the Jewish state to exist. Amotz Asa-El wonders whether the United States is truly in decline. The White House criticized Israel for building additional settlements before a negotiated freeze begins.

Don’t Buy Into Apartheid?

RISHON LEZION, Israel — For the record, I hate extremists of any kind. For every scare-mongering conservative like Glenn Beck, there is a group of useful idiots like the left-wingers in this video.

It seems that June 20 was National Don’t Buy Into Apartheid Day. (Do they make Hallmark cards for that?) A group of aging hippies and a few young wannabees walked into a Trader Joe’s store in San Francisco, started removing all Israeli-made products from the shelves, labeled them with stickers, asked the manager to stop selling them, and tried to convince customers not to purchase them.

My favorite part is the look on the manager’s face when they talk to him. You can just tell that he wants to laugh and say: “Are you f—— crazy?” But to his credit, he kept his composure and did his best not to anger a few crazy customers. I would have done something that would have resulted in a quick firing.

Just a couple of points that are probably obvious:

• Many people who work in low-paid, blue-collar jobs like food-packing in Israel are Arab Israelis and Palestinians. If activist groups decrease demand for these products, they will hurt the people they are supposedly trying to help. But don’t let the facts get in the way of a feel-good act of symbolism that actually does nothing.
• Thriving economies create peace. Countries and peoples that are economically intertwined are far less likely to wage war against each other. One of the best ways to help the Palestinians — whether they will have a state or not — is to help business in the Gaza Strip, Israel proper, and the West Bank. These activists specifically want to target products from the West Bank despite the fact that food produced there, even on settlements, most likely involved capital or labor from Palestinians. Buy more of it! Give them jobs.
• Focus on things that matter. If you want to help the Palestinians, volunteer with or contribute to groups that address abuse by the Israeli Defense Forces (sadly, some individual soldiers do reprehensible things in isolated cases but not as a result of official, military policy); fight in the Israeli Supreme Court for the rule of law in the Occupied Territories rather than the rule of force by settlers; or do other similar actions. Don’t do meaningless, token gestures that just make you look stupid.

On a related note, similar incidents have occurred in France — but with more-sinister results:

One Saturday afternoon a few weeks ago, a group wearing “BOYCOTT ISRAEL” T-shirts entered a French branch of Carrefour, the world’s largest supermarket chain, and announced themselves. They then systematically advanced down every aisle examining every product, seizing all the items made in Israel and piling them into carts to take away and destroy. Judging from the video they made, the protesters were mostly Muslim immigrants and a few French leftists. But more relevant was the passivity of everyone else in the store, both staff and shoppers, all of whom stood idly by as private property was ransacked and smashed, and many of whom when invited to comment expressed support for the destruction. “South Africa started to shake once all countries started to boycott their products,” one elderly lady customer said. “So what you’re doing, I find it good.”

As a supporter of Israel, free markets, and civil liberties, I find this story to be absolutely repugnant. These activists stole and destroyed private property. They had the gumption to decide for themselves what consumers should be allowed to purchase. They were misguided enough to focus only on Israel rather than countries — like, say, China and Iran — whose records of human-rights abuses are among the worst in the world. (Then again, if a group removed everything made in China in many stores, I think nothing would be left.)

The fact that the customers in the store did nothing — and a few even supported the action — is downright scary. It may be a cliche, but it is true: Evil (or a useful idiot) triumphs when good men do nothing. If I had been in the French store, I would have grabbed the nearest blunt object I could find and smashed their video camera. Et ce serait fini.

And that reminds me of a final question: Did the San Francisco activists do what the French ones did? The video does not say. Did they steal the products from the store, pay for and take them, or leave the items on the shelves with the stickers? This inquiring mind wants to know. If it is the first or last, they should be arrested and charged with theft or vandalism; if it is the second, then they are extremely stupid because any purchase, no matter from whom, helps the Israeli companies.

(Hat tip: Jewlicious)

Antichrist Exposed

A far-right, evangelical Christian has discovered the identity of the Antichrist in the Christian Bible. Fifty points if you can guess who.

On a related note, the pastor in question told WorldNetDaily his opinion on the condition that he remain anonymous. This bothers me as well — no matter where a person lies on the political or religious spectrum, he should have the courage of his convictions. I use my real name on this blog. I use my real name whenever I comment online. Why do more people not do so?

And, on a related note: The identity of the Antichrist described by John in the Book of Revelation has been known for years. He is the ancient Roman emperor Nero.

Earlier: Obama’s the Antichrist!

Neda’s Murderer

According to Andrew Sullivan, Iranian doctor Arash Hejazi has identified the man pictured as the person who shot Neda Agha-Soltan during a protest in Tehran. I do not speak Farsi, but Sullivan is a reliable journalist.

I do not know how Dr. Hejazi obtained this information, so any Farsi-speakers are free to translate his blog post and place the information in the comments.

Earlier: Rape and Neda Agha-Soltan

Michael Jackson

The death of the King of Pop has provided fodder for a lot of social commentary. Comedian Bill Mahar (see below at 1:45) says the public has always been fascinated by the artist because “Michael Jackson is America.” Maher says that Jackson, like the United States, was “fragile, over-indulgent, childish, in debt, on drugs, and over the hill.”

The ever-excellent Spengler writes that:

The public’s grief was unfeigned and profound, for Jackson embodied the desire of a generation, that is, never to grow up…

The eternal adolescence that Michael Jackson so ably represented in fantasy turned into the foundation for the great investing wave of the 1990s. The best minds America could train worked hundred-hour-weeks in pizza-box-strewn lofts to launch the next site for web-based greeting cards or virtual-reality sex. Stock analysts valued new issues in proportion to their “burn rate”, assuming that the more money they lost, the more they were worth. The sort of things the world really needed – hardier seeds, safer nuclear energy, more efficient electrical batteries – never turned up on the radar screen…

The Peter Pan syndrome continued to afflict the American economy. Rather than save, as aging people should, they borrowed more to acquire bigger houses. The housing bubble prolonged America’s collective adolescence for a few more years, for it allowed Americans to spend money on toys rather than saving for the retirement that came rushing at the baby boomers like an oncoming express train.

Since I was born in 1980, I missed most of the enthusiasm over Michael Jackson when he had been recording his best music. My first memory was watching the live, first airing of the 1991 video for “Black or White” — until my mother shut off the television when Jackson began destroying cars with a crowbar for no apparent reason. (I think that ending of the video was eventually cut.)

As a result, I was not as distraught as some of my friends over Jackson’s death. I don’t remember any of his music after “Black or White” — all I remember hearing at the time were his increasingly bizarre antics, the allegations of child abuse, and the body-modification surgeries. But even I had learned to appreciate his musical genius even though it was well after the fact.

Although Mahar and Spengler’s arguments have some merit, I think the main reason for the emotional responses to Jackson’s death resulted mainly from the fact that even the American public — long known to celebrate vapid, pop music — knew that a legend had passed without ever having the chance to redeem himself spiritually, musically, and psychologically. The early passing of the King of Pop was a tragedy on many levels. Britney Spears’ “Baby One More Time” may grace a compilation record of the greatest pop hits of the 1990s someday, but Jackson will be remembered in thirty years like the Beatles are today.

People who barely pay attentioned to the meanings in many of Jackson’s most-popular songs could be forgiven because they were usually clouded by amazing dance movies, falsetto singing, and upbeat tempos. But to truly understand the genius behind a hit like “Billie Jean,” listen to the emotional cover by Chris Cornell below. It is rare that a cover surpasses the original.

Is Marriage Worth It?

A divorced mother writes this query to Christian-libertarian blogger Vox Day, and he responds:

Well, I should say it increasingly depends on the sex and religion of the individual. In its present state-dictated form, marriage is very much worth it for women, it is a tolerable and necessary risk for religious men, and it is an incredibly stupid gamble for non-religious men…

I really wish more men and women understood the concept of opportunity cost. Every day you waste with someone who has demonstrated that he is not a potential husband is one less day you have to meet a man who is. Don’t seek to change them, accept and respect their perspective and move on. The other important thing is to refuse to let the ideal become the enemy of the real. The man you marry today will not be the man you are married to in a decade, just as you will not be the same woman. Remember that marriage and love are as much processes as states.

I concur with his point about opportunity cost. (Economic theories can be surprisingly applicable to everyday life.) As commenter Karjala writes:

My mother told me she thought the reason for all the divorces today is women’s unrealistic expectations brought on by Hollywood. She said, “Women now want a man who is attractive, funny, wealthy, hardworking, and romantic. When I was in high school all my friends and I were just looking for a guy who would be a good father, was willing to work, and wouldn’t beat us.”

As I wrote in a lengthy essay, one of the unintended consequence of feminism was to make women pickier. Women, in general, want to date “up” — in several senses of the word. The more educated and successful a woman becomes, the smaller the pool of acceptable dating candidates becomes. The longer that a woman intentionally or subconsciously delays having a serious relationship or getting married (whether to pursue education, career, or Mr. Absolutely Perfect), the greater the chance that she will be disappointed at her resulting options in her thirties or later. See game theory in addition to opportunity cost.

Marriage is indeed worthwhile; it can just be hard to reach in the modern, secular West.

Right-Wing Extremism

Paul Krugman notes that predictions of increasing extremist activity were indeed accurate:

Back in April, there was a huge fuss over an internal report by the Department of Homeland Security warning that current conditions resemble those in the early 1990s — a time marked by an upsurge of right-wing extremism that culminated in the Oklahoma City bombing.

Conservatives were outraged. The chairman of the Republican National Committee denounced the report as an attempt to “segment out conservatives in this country who have a different philosophy or view from this administration” and label them as terrorists.

But with the murder of Dr. George Tiller by an anti-abortion fanatic, closely followed by a shooting by a white supremacist at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, the analysis looks prescient.

There is, however, one important thing that the D.H.S. report didn’t say: Today, as in the early years of the Clinton administration but to an even greater extent, right-wing extremism is being systematically fed by the conservative media and political establishment.

In Salon, Joan Walsh looks at the issue as well:

The range of crazy ideas about Obama is broad and wide: He’s a secret Muslim, he’s going to take our guns, he’s even the anti-Christ! James von Brunn just happened to be a “birther,” one of the nuts who believe that Obama wasn’t born here, his birth certificate is fake, and he thus isn’t eligible to be president. I thought it was strange and maybe a little ominous last summer when suddenly Obama was labeled a “socialist” and a “Marxist”; Hillary Clinton and John Kerry are arguably more liberal than Obama; why did he get tagged with that sinister, subversive, alien ideology? It seemed linked to the fact that he’s just so … different from other politicians, so easy to marginalize and, frankly, demonize…

If there’s a through-line between any of these acts of terrorism and the right-wing rhetoric that abets it, of course, it’s the one linking Bill O’Reilly to Scott Roeder, the man who murdered Tiller. O’Reilly more than demonized Tiller; night after night he called him a baby killer, compared him to the Nazis, and suggested that he must be stopped. Roeder stopped him, all right. If I were O’Reilly I’d feel terrible for putting a private figure in my public sights night after night, simply for doing his lawful job. But O’Reilly has no conscience, so he’s proud of it.

While O’Reilly might have indirect blood on his hands, Fox News anchor Shephard Smith brought views back to reality when he said that the DHS report should be reviewed again. (See the above YouTube video.) In a related issue, Smith also spoke for millions of sane Americans when he poked fun at fellow anchor Glenn Beck.

Whenever a controversial politician gains power, those in the opposition become increasingly angry and bitter. But this tendency has reached new heights with the last two presidents. Liberals hated George W. Bush, and conservatives have nothing but disdain for Barack Obama. After Bush invaded Iraq and Afghanistan, several people opposed to him became extremists including converts to Islam who joined the Taliban and U.S. citizens who started plotting terrorist attacks. Now, the Obama administration has stirred up similar feelings among conservatives, and so far we have seen one doctor murdered and one Holocaust memorial attacked.

But there is an important difference: The Bush administration manipulated intelligence to wage a war of choice in Iraq and bankrupted the federal government through reckless spending. The Obama administration can only deal with the consequences of Bush’s actions. Liberals who opposed Bush had legitimate points (even though the extremists were sadly misguided), but angry conservatives are merely looking for a target for their rage. Fox News is the perfect medium for these feelings, but it seems that at least once anchor may realize the damage the network is doing.