There has been little inspirational about the U.S. presidential race, especially on the Republican side where insults have replaced argument and bigotry has become a cheap currency for winning over voters, but there are also significant lessons in this debased…Read more →
Brushing aside the free-speech rights of Americans, Sen. Mark Kirk and other members of the U.S. Congress are pushing Zionist-demanded legislation to stifle a boycott movement aimed at pressuring Israel to stop oppressing Palestinians, as Lawrence Davidson explains. By Lawrence Davidson It was bound to happen – an attempt by the U.S. Congress to support…
Some of our special stories in January focused on the worsening crisis in relations between the United States and Russia, the danger of a wider war around Syria, the triumph of propaganda over reason in American foreign policy, and developments in Campaign 2016. “Hearing the Russian Perspective” by Gilbert Doctorow, Jan. 2, 2016 “How Obama…
Since Ronald Reagan, the Republicans have rallied many Americans around the notion that “government is the problem.” And, despite disasters for the middle and working classes, right-wing intellectuals like Charles Krauthammer continue to sell the same message, as Lawrence Davidson describes. By Lawrence Davidson Charles Krauthammer is the most celebrated contemporary conservative thinker in the…
Ideology, in the hands of true-believers, tends to reject facts in favor of some grander “truth,” an especially dangerous tendency when mixed with religious conviction and certainty, as Lawrence Davidson explains. By Lawrence Davidson Ideologies are pre-set forms of thinking that shape people’s worldviews and, supposedly, help to order and simplify reality. While this supposition is…
Rabbi Rick Jacobs, president of the Union for Reform Judaism
by Lawrence Davidson
Part I – Culture for Coexistence
You simply cannot adhere to the principle of universal civil and political rights and, at the same time, support a Zionist state. To do so is to involve oneself in a contradiction. The liberals are being forced to face this fact. And, as this happens, they will have to make a real choice: cease being Zionist or cease adhering to the liberal ideal. I suspect that, along with Ari Shavit, most of them will decide to “stand with the damned.”
Part I – An Aggressive Anachronism
Saudi Arabia is one of a handful of Middle East anachronisms: a family-based monarchy that believes it sits at the right hand of God. The Saud clan that rules in Saudi Arabia is both insular and fanatic. It is devoted to the Wahhabi sect of Sunni Islam, perhaps the most strict and intolerant manifestation of the religion.
Part I – Norman Finkelstein’s Predictions
