Thursday, May 04, 2006

Where we come from

Anyone who is interested in some of the American sources for us anti-totalitarian religious liberals might read the article by Peter Beinert in last Sunday's New York Times:

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/30/magazine/30liberal.htm

Rev. Reinhold Niebuhr, mentioned often in the article, was a tremendous supporter of Israel. He also was a scathing critic of injustice in 20th century America.

Of course, there are also the mandates from the Torah and Prophets....

8 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

I'm not sure I disagree with your sentiments here (although, let's face it, liberals seem much more hesitant to criticize Castro than the Saudis), but how consistent is your insistence on the application of Torah-based rules to contemporary society? Is the traditional take on mishkav zachar also relevant? What about Amalek?

Love always,
Moishe Potemkin

4:17 PM  
Blogger Charlie Hall said...

Moshe,

Thank you for your comment; you have offered a number of themes that are worthy of future posts and I hope to get to them soon. (I've already posted on homosexuality, though, and don't have a lot more to say about it.)
I appreciate your thoughts.

Charlie

7:50 PM  
Blogger Charlie Hall said...

Moshe,

Just wanted to add that I agree with you regarding Castro. He is a brutal dictator and his persistance is probably the greatest single US foreign policy failure of the last 100 years (although not the one with the greatest consequences).

Charlie

7:54 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Castro is nothing compared to sudan, iran, china, saudi arabia, north korea, some of these are considered allies or business partners. Once america boycotted russia because of it's human rights record, today we have made the chinese dictatorship a superpower, in order to help our business men become filthy rich while destroying american jobs. We will reap what we sow.

9:29 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Malachai -

I think you are confusing two issues. The U.S. government's inconsistency is worthy of criticism, to be sure. (I think you are overstating the case against capitalism, though.) But in terms of the relative culpability of various dictators, Castro is not "nothing compared to" whomever. That was my point - he's not more noble because the U.S. opposes him, although there this opposition does create some unwarranted measure of empathy for him from the (oversimplified) "left." That was my point.

- Moishe Potemkin.

P.S. Charlie, in mis-spelling my first name, you are ignoring the important aphorism that instructs us that "The man with one "I" is king." (There might be more to that idiom - the balance has slipped my mind.)

10:30 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

This is good - although the chair may have been better...

Moussaoui Gets Last Chance to Speak Before Going to Jail

1:36 PM  
Blogger Charlie Hall said...

Moishe,

My apologies.

Charlie

2:57 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

No worres.

8:06 PM  

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