1 2025
   1.1 2025 January
       1.1.1 2025 January 1 - Happy New Year
       1.1.2 2025 January 1 - The Big Recession
       1.1.3 2025 January 4 - World View
       1.1.4 2025 January 5 - Fancy Colleges
       1.1.5 2025 January 8 - The Greater Good
       1.1.6 2025 January 10 - Los Angeles Fire
       1.1.7 2025 January 13 - Eric Cohen talk
       1.1.8 2025 January 20 - Two Republican Icons
       1.1.9 2025 January 26 - Good Start
       1.1.10 2025 January 27 - Character vs. Values
       1.1.11 2025 January 27 - Holocaust Remembrance Day
       1.1.12 2025 January 30 - The Rice-Paper Thin Barrier

1 2025

   1.1 2025 January

       1.1.1 2025 January 1 - Happy New Year

   A Happy New Year to all my web-page readers. I'm told the fitness gyms are packed wall to wall for the first two weeks in January with people who swear that this year they're going to stay in shape.

   My New Year Resolution is going to be keeping up my weblog pages. Time will tell how well I do with it.

   Here is a link directly to the most-recent entry.

   I still maintain my list of essays for my political readers.

       1.1.2 2025 January 1 - The Big Recession

   A politically-similarly-minded buddy of mine suggested that we're in for a big economic crash if the government gets smaller. Government shrinking will lead to massive unemployment of the former government workers. This massive unemployment will lead to an economic crash of some sort. The only way, he says, or at least the best way, he says, to fend off the crash is with a surge of inflation.

   I don't see it that way. I'm not sure he's wrong, but I'm not sure he's right either. I see things a different way. He sees things in a more Twentieth-Century Kenseyan view where things like jobs and income are nature's constants. I'm looking at the underlying flow of wealth and productivity.

   Before I go further, while there may or not be "legitimate" government functions, depending on what form of Constitutional or libertarian thinking one subscribes to, there is a significant fraction of our government that is doing useful, productive, positive stuff. I may not like that tax money is being collected to do work that would otherwise (and better in my opinion) through private enterprise, roads are being paved, schools are teaching students, mail is being delivered, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. The government that I hope is going to be swiftly eliminated by the new Trump administration is not the visible, useful, productive ten percent of the iceberg, but the invisible ninety percent below the waterline that has been so destructive in our country for the past century.

   If approximately half the United States works for the government and produces nothing of any positive value for anybody, then the immediate cessation of their jobs (with the similarly-immediate cessation of taxes to pay for those jobs) will immediately end a transfer of wealth from useful, productive people to useless, unproductive people. I believe there will not only be an immediate, massive "first-order" improvement in standard of living stateside, but also that the "second-order" economic hurt will be a minor effect as these formerly-unproductive people will waste little time looking for work and finding productive, useful jobs. Once that half of the country is also creating wealth, a matter of days after the reduction in government, we should see a surge in every measure of the economy and no bone-crushing recession.

   That's my take on the state of the United States.

       1.1.3 2025 January 4 - World View

   The world is a messed up place, we've known it, there is no "world peace" option, just a little less war and pain and suffering and extermination. I have my own suggestions how to get there and yours may be different. In the meantime, we can find pride in what we do, beauty in the world around us, and joy in our friends, forever and always.

       1.1.4 2025 January 5 - Fancy Colleges

   It's hard to argue that Ivy-League and other fancy colleges were anti-semitic when they were one-fifth Jewish and I had one or two spirited conversations on the subject with classmates in my college years 1974-1978. Princeton not only was more than one-fifth Jewish, they had a Jewish Hillel center mid-campus and a kosher eating club. It's kind of hard to argue such a place harbors ill will towards Jewish people.

   Today's story is different. Not only do the big-name Ivy-style colleges support Hamas and other kill-all-the-Jews organizations, they've been strong Democrats for a while. The Democrats have been ANTIFA, BDS, and BLM, all strongly anti-Jewish, at least since Obama.

   So when I get Class-of-1978 emails and see Class-of-1978 Facebook posts, I have to remember that the Princeton I went to and the Princeton that still supports the slaughter in Gaza on 2003 October 7 really aren't the same college, just geographically co-located with the same name.

   Jews are going to have to figure out how to have presige in their college choice without supporting the colleges that were prestigious fifty years ago.

       1.1.5 2025 January 8 - The Greater Good

   Hundreds of millions of people have died at the hands of their own socialist governments, including Hitler's Holocaust that killed six million Jews. I don't think anybody disputes that.

   Hundreds of millions of people died who wouldn't have died had those governments not been socialist. The concentration of power made it practical to carry out their genocidal agenda. I don't think many people would dispute that.

   Presumably those on the American left who support socialism know and understand their support cost hundreds of millions their lives. Presumably they rationalize those deaths with the notion that it was for some greater good. So my question is this: What is the greater good that made hundreds of millions of people killed by their own governments worthwhile?

   It's kind of like the answer I got from a liberal Facebook friend when it became clear the Obama presidency was costing tens of millions of Americans their livelihood. I asked that question: What is the greater good that makes it worth so many people suffering such economic hardship. His answer was "hope." When people were productive and prosperous, presumably they had less hope than they had now that they were out of work and scavenging for whatever they could find to pay for shelter and food. I didn't believe it then and I don't think I would believe anything they tell me that justifies all the socialist holocausts in the last hundred years.

       1.1.6 2025 January 10 - Los Angeles Fire

   I have a question to ask about the fires in Los Angeles. When I was last there, a few years ago, there was a big ocean right nearby with plenty of water. Fires are a continuous threat in that part of the world. Shouldn't somebody have been more prepared than they were?

   Of course I remember New Orleans and Hurricane Katrina. Lots of money was allocated for building sand-bag barricades to protect the city. Of course politicians figured there wouldn't really be a hurricane, so they kept the money for themselves and no barricades were built.

   I think it was Bob Dylan who wrote, "When will they ever learn? When will they ever learn?"

       1.1.7 2025 January 13 - Eric Cohen talk

   A long-time conservative friend sent me a talk by Eric Cohen representing a new Jewish organization called Tikvah. I found text of the talk. This is my reply:

   Thank you for sending this along. I get occasional YouTube links from conservative friends that I mean to watch someday after I see about five minutes. Well, this one was different.

   First, never mind the content. Given my upbringing, preferences, and intelligence, I guess I'm one of the "effete intellectual snobs" of another time. The use of language, the emphases of rhetoric, and the precision of meaning are astounding here. Usually nit-picking the specifics of working and inference of a more-or-less-political speech is fraught with peril, but Eric Cohen's meaning and content hold true down to the details.

   "This mission ... expanded to prepare young men and, eventually, women of myriad faiths" deals directly with the one-time all-male colleges without pandering to any feminist issue while making his much-broader, more-important point.

   "The purpose of a great American university is the perpetuation of the best of our Judeo-Christian civilizational inheritance and the formation of young men and women who seek to preserve and renew our way of life." At how many levels is this statement right on point? I think it hits half a dozen of my own and it's right on point on all.

   I'll point out I actively aspire in my own political essays to Eric Cohen's standard of using the English language.

   Second, I agree with most of what he says, again on many levels. While nothing struck me as disagreement, I'm hedging my bets here. For example, I believe a lot of Jews took greater insult from the National Socialists in Germany than Hamas, more than he gives credit. On the other hand, Jews in 2022 seemed as complacent as he says. So, at the end of the discussion I believe he's right in many ways.

   Although I can read Hebrew and cite historical significance of Jewish holidays, events, and traditions when called upon to do so, I'm not a practicing Jew. I don't fast on the Yom Kippur, hell, I don't even take Saturdays off. I don't engage in any Jewish rituals I can think of and it 's been years since I went to a seder. Yet my sincere Jewish friends tell me I'm definitely a "Member of the Tribe" in my values, principles, vision, outlook, and judgment. I agree with Eric Cohen that America needs what I am and, upon reflection, much of what it needs from me is what makes me a Jew.

   I don't mean that in a divisive way, by the way. One satiric author pointing out that much of what is Jewish is also American said, with tongue only partway in cheek, you don't have to be Jewish to be Jewish.

   By the way, I don't interpret his "Judeo-Christian civilizational inheritance" to be in any way religious. Religion is the medium of Judaism and Christianity, but by no means required to be part of it.

       1.1.8 2025 January 20 - Two Republican Icons

   Today we celebrate two dominant Republican figures in American history. The first is The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King who stood on the civil-rights, right-wing, Republican side promoting equal treatment under the law for all races. The Democrats at that time were represented by George Wallace who felt that segregation of the races was the best plan for America then and in the future. I believe a young Joe Biden was part of that crowd. From the famous video where he goes from one white fan to another and ignores the Black woman in between, it appears he hasn't changed his attitude about Black people.

   The other, of course, is Donald John Trump who is having his second Presidental inauguration today. His first Presidency was a bright beacon during a dark time in America and we're hoping he will continue to do good things. I'm hoping, this time around, he will shrink the government, maybe drastically, and he will "drain the swamp" and get criminal liberals in prison cells where they belong.

   It should be a good day for us.

       1.1.9 2025 January 26 - Good Start

   I don't know how much good stuff is going to happen, how much the government will shrink or how much the Democrat swamp will be drained, but I'm in a good mood with what I'm seeing.

   I have many doubts about tariffs as a policy and I have some doubts about tariffs as a negotiating tactic. Still, if President Trump can get factories built here and illegal immigrants sent elsewhere using them as leverage, well, maybe he has a point. I've learned that deciding to be squeaky clean in a dirty game doesn't make the game cleaner. Instead it just gives the advantage to the dirty players.

   In the face of Hamas in 2023 October and an impending holocaust here in the United States (patterned after Germany in 1933) and the serious economic woes of the Biden years, I pooh-poohed the rising tide of woke, DEI, and anti-white racist hate. I may have been wrong as these were terrible forces that may have been the fuel behind the anti-Jewish hate and the economic issues (from hiring so many less-qualified people for jobs). Seeing the Trump pushback on these social issues is also joy to my heart.

   I'm also concerned how many liberals, even those who perceive enough to know the daytime sun is brighter than the full moon, see 2021 January 6 as some kind of "insurrection." When ten or more Democrats were together outside in 2020 buildings were burned, cars were bombed, stores were looted, and people were hurt and killed. That's just what Democrats do and what they are. So when hundreds of thousands gathered for Trump in city after city I suppose liberas would assume they were equally likely to be violent. As I understand and recall, 2021 January 6 was about peacefully gathering outside the Capitol building trying to convince Congress not to certify an obviously-stolen election. There wasn't even a littering problem. Instead of having Congress meet and vote, they stayed home while the outside people were gently admitted into the Capitol where videos show them gawking at the sights and marveling at being inside the Capitol itself.

   A couple of Democrat-ANTIFA infiltrators did some nasty stuff, but I believe the very-few deaths came later and were blamed on the event. Of course a Democrat victory meant those who were there were subject to retribution for the patriotism. What else is new?

       1.1.10 2025 January 27 - Character vs. Values

   I keep hearing about what a horrible person Donald Trump is, that he got rich and had sex as opposed to pure-as-driven-snow Democrats like Joe Biden who was, I'm told, one of the youngest of the George-Wallace segregationists and a supporter of nasty anti-Jewish and otherwise-racist organizations like ANTIFA, BDS, and BLM.

   While it doesn't take a lot to see that Donald Trump, flaws and all, is of enormously higher character than the Clintons, Obamas, Bidens, and Harrises out there, that's not the point.

   The party platform that started with slavery, that went from lashings and lynchings to gulags and gas chambers represented, represents, and will continue to represent values that should horrify us all. The kind of value that says that somebody who has earned more somehow owes more should scare the shit out of all of us, past, present, and future. The people who wrote Article One with its equal-vote-equal-tax rule knew what they were doing.

   Let me ask it this way. If we're going to follow the moral imperative that rich people should pay more, and the true-value edict that more pay should get more votes, do we really want our rich people to count more at the voting polls? If we're going to believe in any tax system that taxes wealth more than poverty, then shouldn't we believe those higher taxes should get more votes? That's not someplace I want to go.

   It isn't just about wealth where Democrat values suffer. Their policies haven't just put tens of millions into a never-ending cycle of poverty. They have created racial strife and family destruction, not to mention socialist holocausts throughout the world that have killed hundreds of millions.

   So, Republican-President Trump, you can have all the sex you want with your beautiful wife, even with porn stars, and you can be rich, even if much of that was inherited rather than earned, and you'll still have my vote.

       1.1.11 2025 January 27 - Holocaust Remembrance Day

   There are several matters of perspective we should remember on Holocaust Remembrance Day and every other day as well.

   First, Hitler's Holocaust was very real and very terrifying. 40% of the world's Jewish population was wiped out, enough so there are still fewer Jews in the world today than there were in 1935, ninety years ago. One in four Jewish deaths in the past century were from Herr Hitler's National Socialism movement. The rest of the world population has multiplied almost fourfold during that time.

   Second, there is a notion that Hitler's Holocaust was a singular, terrible incident in history. We hear cries of "Never Again" as if, somehow, this is something that hasn't happened elsewhere or again and, with proper vigilance, will never happen anywhere again. I'll point out that 262 million have been killed in the same fashion with the same hate by the same political, economic, and social forces. That makes our holocaust just 2.5%, one fortieth, of the total world holocaust carnage in the past century. Another way of looking at it is that one in twenty human deaths in the past century were from their own socialist governments.

   I still believe our Jewish holocaust is twice more than proportionally important. Once because it came so close to a worldwide extinction of Judaism which is historically and present-day the cornerstone of Judeo-Christian, western civilization, not to mention an astonishing fraction of the Nobel-Laureate-caliber intellectual population. Again because we are so frighteningly close to a repeat performance specifically involving the Jewish people over there in Europe and right here in the United States. I don't believe I was especially paranoid last summer to assess my chance of seeing 2025 as three out of four.

   It may be narrowminded for Jews only to remember our own pain, but we're not silly to be concerned about protecting ourselves and we're not silly to be concerned that we are still singled out for a special brand of hate. Today we light candles for six million Jews who died but we must remember it has happened again to others and, without vigilance, it will happen again to us.

       1.1.12 2025 January 30 - The Rice-Paper Thin Barrier

   In my heart I'm an anarchist. I believe that ultimately we have the technology and social tools to do everything good government does for us without the "legitimized coersion" of actual government. I also concede that it's probably easier to have limited government following, for example, Thomas Jefferson's vision in our Constitution, where the big, central, federal government defends our country, protects our borders, and arbitrates interstate issues. It is a small and reasonable leap that there should be machinery in that government to pass limited, national-scope laws and to have a high court whose job it is to make sure people follow the national laws and to make sure government stays limited. That's the vision of our Constitution in 1789.

   I'll go the next step and suggest I support the idea that specific personal and political rights and privileges be instutitionally defended in our first ten amendments in 1791. A few years ago I stood in the room on the second floor of Independence Hall in Philadelphia where that Bill of Rights was passed by twenty-six senators.

   The most important notion I carry away from all this history is the defense of five values of decency, human life, liberty, livelihood, property. and contract and that we don't mess with them.

   Life on this blue-ball planet is neither fair nor just and the temptation to make it fairer or more just is irresistable. It's laudable to do this through our own efforts, doing good works and giving to charity are two good examples. The fundamental, Jewish, Old-Testament views on charity articulate eight levels, kind of like the computer-science layers of communication, but the basic message is a good person is one who does good things and causes good things to happen. The best kind of good-person behavior is to put others in a better position to live better, especially others who are otherwise living badly.

   All that having been said, the place where I get all bent out of shape in this desire to do good things and to institutionalize doing good things is when people decide government is a good tool to use. After all, our government already collected taxes, equal amounts from everyone who can vote in Article I, and it already distributes various services and payments. Why not tweak the dial a little bit to make the world fairer and more just?

   Well, I'll answer that question. The point where goodness in the form of religious virtue became nastiness in the form of Crusades, Inquititions, and Jihads was rice-paper thin. Similarly, the point where socially-sound-seeming sustenance from government and income redistribution to help "the poor" became socialism that killed 262 million of its own citizens (including Herr Hitler's Holocaust) is similarly rice-paper thin.

   In the story William Tell is forced to shoot an apple off his son's head as punishment for not bowing to the Austrian Hapsburg authorities. Being an expert with bow and arrow he makes the shot, but he's not exactly happy facing the consequences of missing. He didn't willingly and happily set up the circumstance and its consequences.

   Once we set up government redistributing income in the Sixteenth Amendment and continuing on a path where government tells us whom we can hire and whom we have to rent and sell to, and can do this artibrarily and capriciously, it's only a hair's breadth to government rounding up people of the wrong culture or color as Adolf Hitler and Franklin Roosevelt did and disposing of those people as so many socialist states have done.

   I believe the only way to approach the "Never Again" status so many Jews claim to seek is never to allow the state to violate the basic-decency rights of human life, liberty, livelihood, property. and contract. Today's liberalism ultimately creates and supports genocide as it did for Stalin, Hitler, Castro, and Mao.

   The image in my mind is a challenge where you're driving a car and you have to touch a piece of rice paper with your bumper and your favorite, most-loved person is touching that piece of rice paper on the other side. Oh, yes, mirroring the blindness of the political process, you have to do this at night with your headlights off. If you're comfortable with this, then, by all means, go forward with liberal progressivism. Just don't get mad at me when millions of your dearest relative and friends get mowed down in mass graves and burned in gas ovens.

   For my own politics, I choose severely-limited government, I choose decency.