Non-prophet

November 3, 2003 By

From Avishai Margalit's essay in The New York Review of Books on Norman Podhoretz's The Prophets: Who They Were, What They Are: There is true greatness, I believe, in the prophets. Their writings should not be treated as relevant "lessons" for our times, whether the lesson is for the left, the right, or the center. [...]

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Tilting at Windmills

November 1, 2003 By

The first of the month brings bad news (rent is due), and good — Charles Peters' new "Tilting at Windmills" column is online at The Washington Monthly. Last week, Salon thawed out Camille Paglia — the worst thing to come out of Philadelphia since Mannequin II — for an interview. Paglia made the bizarre claim [...]

Filed Under: class warfare

Flip ‘em off

October 27, 2003 By

Let me say, first of all, that giving "the finger" is extremely rude. (I prefer, in traffic, instead to give people the hand — this exasperated, "What the …?!?" gesture conveys a broader displeasure that I think makes its point without the phallic imagery.) One should never, ever, "flip the bird." Unless, that is, it's [...]

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Punishing the exploited

October 24, 2003 By

I think we'll all sleep better tonight, knowing that our government is vigilantly protecting us from sneaky foreigners who enter this country illegally and clean our Wal-Marts. Federal investigators raided two Delaware Wal-Mart stores early Thursday, arresting six undocumented cleaning workers in Seaford and four in New Castle as part of a national sweep of [...]

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The Health Care Deficit

October 23, 2003 By

Former Philadelphia Steve Lopez crosses the supermarket picket lines in Los Angeles to go shopping with a self-employed fellow named Jim Chavez. Like most of us who are self-employed, Chavez has a lousy, expensive deal for health insurance. This makes him less than sympathetic to the striking grocery workers who are having to pay more [...]

Filed Under: class warfare

Back to the Future

October 20, 2003 By

I stumbled into a time warp this weekend over in the comments section at Calpundit. In this post Kevin Drum merely echoed words spoken by every bar band and lounge act in America every night: "Hey folks, take care of your waitresses and bartenders." He was responding to the effort by some chain McRestaurants to [...]

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Incivility and class warfare (cont’d.)

October 14, 2003 By

In light of the discussions below of civlity vs. incivility and justice vs. jealousy, the following seemed appropriate. This aggressively impolite rant is from St. John Chrysostom (347 – 407), from his ninth homily on 1 Corinthians. Here Chrysostom turns his wrath on the "covetous and rapacious" wealthy man who does not do all he [...]

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