Archive for August 24th, 2009
Are Times A-Changing?
Posted by Yonason Goldson in Politics on August 24, 2009
Tony Blankley thinks they are. Or maybe he’s indulging the same kind of starry-eyed optimism that swept into office the current purveyors of irrational exuberance that threaten to bankrupt the country and enable terrorists through Chamberlainesque appeasement policies.
If you’re not bored with the futility of it all, you can decide for yourself here. Otherwise, be content with the musings of Bob Dylan, who probably has political credentials no worse than most of our so-called pundits. One way or another his words are likely to prove prophetic:
Come senators, congressmen
Please heed the call
Don’t stand in the doorway
Don’t block up the hall
For he that gets hurt
Will be he who has stalled
There’s a battle outside
And it is ragin’.
It’ll soon shake your windows
And rattle your walls
For the times they are a-changin’.
Slipping the Leash
Posted by Yonason Goldson in Culture on August 24, 2009
Rabbi Moshe Eisemann remarks — only slightly tongue in cheek, I believe — that the most destructive invention of modern times is the electric light bulb. Rabbi Eisemann is neither reactionary nor waxing nostalgic. He argues, with his characteristic elegance, that the blurring of the natural boundaries between day and night gave human society an indelicate shove down a slippery slope whereby all moral and cultural boundaries have become irretrievably eroded.
Historian Paul Johnson makes a similar point in the introduction of his History of Modern Times, wherein he observes that Albert Einstein unwittingly unleashed the forces of moral relativism with his theory of relativity. If the natural rules of the universe are malleable, why not the rules of right and wrong as well?
Now columnist George will reviews a book that illustrates how relatively small cultural phenomena either cause or signal a radical change in the course of human events. It’s worth a look.
Torah Ideals 
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