It is questionable that there were many Americans in 1942 raising the question as to why the allies were attacking French soldiers who at the time were still under Vichy [Hitler’s French puppet fascist rule] before the free French army was fully mobilized. Germany declared war on the United States; Pearl Harbor was never entertained as the thrust to do battle in North Africa. To use this extraneous illustration in conjunction with a 9/11 tie-in with Iraq would seem to be ...well,...devious...

 Borosage’s article “Kerry: Fill in the Blanks” [this week’s “The Nation”] is precisely the kind of attitude that has bugged me over the years concerning presidential elections — ever since Adlai. The attitude is that pundits in general either reflect or engender the reactions of what they perceive as the street smarts of registered voters who seldom go beyond slogans and sound bites. As Jay Rockefeller criticized Bush on the Charlie Rose show recently: that the president is “liked” because...

Ronald Reagan’s finest moment was his solemn meeting at Dover Airforce base of the nearly 250 flag-draped coffins of Marines who lost their lives at the Embassy bombing in Beirut. This honorable moment in history was televised as an expression of national grief. War heroes who make the ultimate sacrifice for the nation belong to all of us, not just the families, until they are given private honors at their final resting place. Untold tens of thousands of our war heroes are buried round the w...

Uncertain World There is scarcely any certainty in the world. The best that can be expected is the mental impressions upon things an events. When we infer that Saddam is Saddam [S=S] there is certainty since the subject and predicate are the same. When we state S=M, the predicate adds to the subject, even though the subject itself is not changed: Saddam is a Murderer. However, the statement is an assertion and not true unless followed with contingent predicates or sufficient reasons, such ...

Columnist Thomas Sowell, the guru of some of our bloggers, is typical of the extreme right. He had this to say the other day: “People who send me letters or e-mail containing belligerent personal attacks probably have no idea how reassuring their messages are, for they show that critics seldom have any rational arguments to offer.” Why, this could be right out of some of the comments section of JU! How about this gem of a strain on ratiocination? “Many people who are for stricter go...

I don’t know about you, but I’m willing to accept a 25¢ tax on gasoline if all the tolls on our highways, bridges and tunnels were shut down. Tolls do not unduly affect tourists and weekend drivers as much as the daily working stiff wanting a better route to work — and might just get rid of that SUV unless used to pool. Toll gates not only tie up traffic but just imagine putting together all the idling consumption waiting to pay, not to mention the fumes in the air. All the jobs lost will be p...

There was a time in my day that the dating game was a perilous and costly venture. First, if you met — certainly not at bar — a girl of your liking you first had to prepare yourself for a meeting with the parents, especially the father; if approved, you had to have quite a few bucks in you wallet because the girl expected you take her to at least a palatial theater showing an early release of her choosing and then to an ice cream parlor for a rather costly sundae or banana split, or at a clea...

  How is it anything goes in advertising and entertainment, but when it comes to news there is hedging? Newsweek was criticized for its gory cover on Madrid. Cartoonists are forbidden to use a pencil with an erasure on top because of the penis factor. Television is encouraged to display dead bodies of the enemy but not those of civilian Iraqis or our soldiers. Obviously there is the concern for the surviving families of the dead, but identities in grisly scenes after a skirmish or explosion...

Putting aside my recent blog wherein I disputed the degree of power attributed to God, I am a Catholic, non-practicing, because it was in the main responsible for allowing the great artists of the Renaissance to flourish, giving pictorial grandeur to a religion the mostly illiterate faithful could finally understand why they had embraced it unwittingly. Though I disagree with its unwieldy authoritarianism, there is no disputing the symbolic beauty of Catholicism. In paraphrasing James Joyce, i...

From the vantage point of al Qaeda its members are freedom fighters: free, that is, to chase the enemy from Islamic territory so the organization can in turn build a fascist theocracy controlled by a fundamentalist clergy, underpinned by permanent mercenaries bent on ethnic cleansing on behalf of Islamic uncompromising purity. Even if it succeeded in chasing the infidels from the Middle East, sub Sahara regions and parts of Asia it would not stop there because Islam is earth’s only true religi...

  Multiculturalism is rapidly becoming questionable as a positive value. Witness France’s overwhelming support to ban conspicuous religious articles in its schools. Though motivated by Muslim girls wearing the hijab, it also bans the yarmulke and the crucifix. What with the French paranoia over the Catholic heritage that brought about their own separation of church and state a century ago [Laïcité], it is perhaps understandable if not forgivable. Still, I wonder if before 7% Muslims and on ...

  Nietzsche’s inquiry into the nature of God as omnipotent and omniscient, concluded that He could not be goodness but rather cruel if “being himself in possession of the truth, he could calmly contemplate mankind , in a state of miserable torment, worrying its mind as to what was the truth?” Believers would immediately counter that humankind is not privy to truth except when God wishes to reveal it, and in the meantime faith is tentative knowledge. However, it is not as simple as eithe...

There has always been controversy concerning the separation of church and state which grew out of the First Amendment and seems to be partial to the religious side, rather than emphasis on religion should make no laws infringing on the laws of the land. Before the ecumenical council the Catholic Church did just that by discriminating against women, insisting they cover their heads while in church to symbolize the original sin of Eve. This was a direct violation of human dignity implied in the ...

  Islam has now become an imminent danger; no longer can the West continue to overlook its basic principle of jihad, whether violent or non-violent: the clear fact is that it professes an unmitigated surrender to the will of God by an authoritarian clergy that does the thinking for the masses, thereby reducing the value of the individual to having no rights whatsoever and living for an afterlife only. That it is in competition or outright intolerance of other world religions is of no conseq...

Agnostics and those of faith are not far apart. Generally agnosticism means that one cannot be sure that a deity exists; on the other hand a worshiper may claim the existence of God or gods, but the implication is in virtue of faith which by its very definition cannot be certain, though denying lingering doubt. Agnosticism is in reality skepticism — not able to hold a tangential divinity in the palm of a hand and therefore in all probability does not exist or at least unprovable. Yet many agno...