Comments on: Ridiculous

by: Roach

Fri, 25 Jan 2008 21:17:53 +0000

Bsebe, you would be right if you said that about Lieberman and lots of other Jews, who make no bones about their unique loyalty to Israel, that is, their superior loyalty to Israel (the people and the state) versus their own country and putative countrymen. This is not just an American phenomenon but a worldwide one, and Jews have had an uneasy relationship to every nation-state on Earth since the emergence of nationalism in the 19th Century. Just ask the Poles and the Russians and the Spanish.

by: Daniel Larison

Fri, 25 Jan 2008 20:03:05 +0000

Thanks very much. I really appreciate that. I do want to try to get back to more writing on non-political and especially non-election topics. The frenetic pace of the primaries has pulled me in, but I look forward to moving out of that mode in about two weeks.

by: Charles Curtis

Fri, 25 Jan 2008 19:59:55 +0000

Daniel, I have to say that this post confirms me in my respect of you. Heroic. Really admirable. I regret that we will probably never have a beer (or few) together, I’m pretty sure there’s a better than even chance we’d get along. My ribbing you on the Patriots, and Orthodoxy aside, there are few people that I have as much intuitively in common with.. which sucks, honestly. So just keep blogging, I can use all the sanity I can get. Only know that if you wrote less on politics and more on religion, history & philosophy, you’d be far more edifying than merely informative.. Anyhow, carry on. Carry on. You remain in my prayers.

by: bsebse

Fri, 25 Jan 2008 19:04:45 +0000

This is nothing short of anti-islamic bigotry. It really leaves me speachless.

As his example illustrates, you could easily use this logic for any Jew and there is a much longer history of Jews doing just that (Pollack!). In fact, when anyone does use this type of logic they receive the anti-semite blast like a ton of bricks coming down on them.

You would have about 1000 more reasons to suspect joe lieberman of putting the interests of Israel over his own country than you would of obama putting muslim interets in front of jewish interests.

by: Elvis Elvisberg

Fri, 25 Jan 2008 17:48:19 +0000

I had stopped thinking of foreign policy as a morality play in which other countries could be simplistically portrayed as incarnate evil. Indeed, perhaps this kind of thinking only really works for thoroughly secular people who must find their great moral struggles in politics rather than in asceticism and worship.

Geez, Daniel. Just because you’re frustrated with people calling Obama a stealth Muslim doesn’t mean you have to come out and say that George Bush isn’t really a Christian.

(Kidding).

Interesting post. And, while I don’t always share your non-interventionist views, I agree about the need for humility, rather than the emotionally pleasing, always wrong effort to seek out good guys and bad guys.

Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein have been both Good and Evil, from a US policy perspective, at different times in the past 20-25 years. It just might be that neither of them was ever actually that nice a guy.

As a person interested in Christianity, raised in a post-religious environment, I’d be interested to read more about your experiences in that regard, if that isn’t too far afield for your blog.