Pleasant Memories
I was stunned and saddened to see the article “Shloshim for My Father, Sheldon Hirsch,” by Dr. Chani (Hirsch) Miller on the Aug. 2 In Memoriam page.
The picture of Captain Hirsch, circa 1965, immediately caught my attention as that’s how I remember him.
I saw him often in the summer of 1964 at Fort Dix, New Jersey, where he was a chaplain and I was assigned as a chaplain’s assistant.
He was a great guy and I’m sorry I never had the pleasure of meeting him again.
Irwin Cohen
Oak Park, MI
Editor’s Note: Mr. Cohen is The Jewish Press’s Baseball Insider writer; his column appears in the third issue of each month.
Unconvinced By Prager
I found Dennis Prager’s analysis of liberal and conservative ideologies to be rather muddled and unhelpful (“What’s Morally Right? How Liberals and Conservatives Differ,” op-ed, Aug. 21). This is partly due to his intentional conflation of liberalism and secularism, but it reflects other misconceptions as well.
Mr. Prager claims that many liberal parents and teachers “do not tell their children what is right and wrong,” but only ask them to follow their feelings. This is not even remotely accurate in my experience. Liberals, like conservatives, teach their children principles of right and wrong and how to live a moral life. It is rather uncharitable for Mr. Prager to say otherwise.
He also suggests that conservative principles are more objective than liberal principles because conservative principles are grounded in religion. This obviously ignores the reality that many liberals also derive their principles from religion, a fact that Mr. Prager waves away without explanation. Even so, he is surely aware that there are thousands of diverse religions teaching a wide variety of often contradictory moral principles.
When an individual chooses to follow (or to continue following) a religion, that individual is clearly choosing to adopt a particular set of moral principles. How is this choice any more “objective” than the choice the secular liberal makes to adopt a particular set of moral principles?
Mr. Prager’s example of polygamy only highlights this confusion. He says that based on liberal principles of fairness and compassion, “liberals will find it difficult to oppose polygamy.” Perhaps. But polygamy was practiced in many very conservative religious cultures, including ancient Israel. So is polygamy right or wrong by conservative standards? Do conservative standards vary from time to time and place to place? If so, in what sense can they be considered objective? Mr. Prager’s analysis explains none of this.
David Fass
Teaneck, NJ
The Ugly Iran Debate
It was highly predictable that the Iran nuclear deal debate would get very ugly, and it has. Devoid of serious supportive arguments, the administration has resorted to smear and scare tactics. Particularly offensive has been its attempts to splinter the American Jewish community. Opponents have been tarred with insinuations of double loyalty and accusations of serial warmongering. Undecided legislators have been plied with the usual empty assurances about safeguarding Israel’s security.
It should be painfully obvious, though, that this wretched agreement existentially endangers Israel. With or without nuclear weapons, Iran’s terrorist tentacles encircle Israel’s borders. Beyond ensuring Iran’s status as a nuclear threshold state, the deal’s enormous concessions – including a $100-150 billion windfall “signing bonus,” front-loaded near-total sanctions relief, and near-term removal of restrictions on arms trafficking and ballistic missile technology transfers – raise that threat immeasurably.
But this is far from just a Jewish question. “Death to America; death to Israel” pinpoints America as Iran’s ultimate target. Iran is responsible for the murder or maiming of thousands of Americans, whether on the battlefield or via terrorism. Hardly mentioned, that windfall bonus includes a summarily voided $45 billion American court award to families of American victims of Iran-sponsored attacks.
The administration has turned this into a hyper-partisan issue. Democrats love America as much as Republicans, and now they are being bullied into having to choose between country and president. How shameful and how tragic. This issue is of such enormous importance, and its consequences potentially so grave, that it ought to be beyond partisanship and decided solely on its merits.
Democratic legislators need to summon the courage to cast the most important votes of their political lives toward rejecting an extraordinarily dangerous deal for this nation, the Middle East, and the world.
Richard D. Wilkins
Syracuse, NY
Age Of Extremes
We live in an age of extremes. Those on the Right think those on the Left are the devil incarnate, and vice versa.
A few weeks ago I was waiting to be called in to an appointment when I saw a copy of The New York Times on a chair next to where a man was sitting. I asked if it was his paper. He said it was and that I could read it.
When I was finished with the paper I thanked him and we got into a conversation about the Times. He said he reads it to get his blood boiling. He doesn’t agree with the liberal slant of the paper. I said I thought all newspapers have a slant, either liberal or conservative, and that the truth was somewhere in the middle.
“No,” he insisted, “the truth is with the conservatives. I like watching Fox News. They give the truth. The Left is a bunch of swindlers. The Right has integrity.”
He talked about other issues he was concerned with that the Left champions and then he said that conservatives have the right priorities. “We care about our wives and our families,” he declared. “And we want our neighborhoods to be safe.”
There’s a lot that’s good in what he said. But he also left a lot out.
How about seeing the world beyond our families and our safety? How about seeing the need for social justice, for helping those less fortunate? That’s where the Left comes in.
I like a lot of what the Right has to say about keeping our country and our allies safe. And I like how those on the Right want more accountability on expenditures.
But I also like what the Left has to say about social issues, about fairness and kindness to those in need. I believe we need some kind of fusion of both. I believe we need responsible elected officials who can hammer out compromises and great leaders who can find effective solutions to problems beyond just championing the causes of conservatives or liberals.
Politics run in cycles. For a while the Republicans ruled the White House. Now the Democrats are having their turn. The party on the outs usually tries to change something about its approach to get enough voters to give one of its own the highest office in the land. I saw the Republicans making great progress. With their last two presidential defeats a number of them realized they needed to reach out and offer real solutions to a wider swath of the nation.
And now Donald Trump has come along. Despite his strong rhetoric, which has alienated some of the groups the Republicans were trying to attract, he holds an early (very early) lead. If that lead holds, I’m concerned that other less confrontational candidates will feel the need to heat up their rhetoric to get the attention of the electorate.
What we may end up getting as a result is not a presidential campaign that inspires people to think through who would be the best person to lead this country and the world for the next four years, but rather a superficial reality show where the “fun” comes in seeing which contestants are voted off the island or hear the verdict “You’re fired.”
America deserves better.
Alan Howard
(Via E-Mail)