Some of the folks who voted for Tzipi Livni or the luckless candidates to her left – whose electoral prospects she greedily devoured – are inveterate “Kumbaya” singers. No matter how hard and insensitively reality slaps them in the face, they still naively prefer the pose of pious believers in the honorable intentions of a genocidal enemy whose openly declared and entirely unconcealed aim is to obliterate them. The world may be a tad unkind, but the optimistic sham of unwavering trust in human goodness is too good to give up. Continue reading →

Argumentum ad hominem (Latin for “argument against the man”) is an insidiously effective and widespread polemical technique. Its essence consists of attacking a given person in order to discredit his message. There may be no objective fault with said message – indeed, it may be cogent and excellent – but it’s never properly evaluated because the messenger is spitefully trashed. Continue reading →

Frustrating as these pages’ preelection deadline may be, it does allow us to look back and revisit what the past news-packed weeks somewhat swept aside. Perhaps most galling is how Israel’s self-defense in the South invigorated the most radical elements of Israel’s far-out far-left.
Next time we carp about knee-jerk Israel-demonization abroad, we might ponder what weeds our democracy nourishes in our own overlooked backyard. Continue reading →

She wasn’t at all aware of Proverbs 26:11 and had no idea how Bing Crosby’s 1944 Academy Award-winning song “Swinging on a Star” remotely pertained to her pseudo-intellectual angst. The complexities of life were overwhelming enough without additional bewilderment. Continue reading →