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"Tradition?? The only good traditions are food traditions. The rest are repressive."

"There are two ways to think. The first is to trust to your ancestors, your religious leaders, or your charismatic professors. The second is to question, to challenge, to explore history for meanings, and to analyze issues. This latter is called Critical Thinking, and it is this that is the mission of my web site. "

Dr. Laina Farhat-Holzman  

June 2016

It Ain't Necessarily So.

Summertime is here, and I find myself humming the song: "It ain't necessarily so." There are some stupid beliefs out there. As a devout centrist, I may make many of my readers unhappy today. But, I suspect there are many more who share my political position: in the thinking middle.

Left-Wing Baloney
? Black Lives Matter. Believers focus on how many police shootings of Black perpetrators there are. However 6,000 blacks are murdered each year, six times the rate of whites ad Hispanics combined. Yet the police kill only a fraction of these; the rest are black-on-black killings. Blacks males of all ages commit homicide 8 times the rate of whites and Hispanics combined, and 22 times the rate of whites alone. Police patrol where crime is, in the inner cities, where they are trying to protect ordinary citizens against this violence. Innocent Black victims? lives matter too!
? Israel is evil. The defund Israel movement is today's stupid academic fad, ignoring the unhappy truth that Israel lives among neighbors with values and culture that the Israelis know all too well. This defund campaign is scarcely veiled anti-Semitism.
? Palestinians are victims. Gaza and the West Bank are occupied because the Palestinians have never wanted their own country; they wanted Israel destroyed so that they could occupy its ruins. If they had wanted their own country, side by side with Israel, they would have had it long ago. Every time this possibility came up, they scuttled it.
? Islam is a religion of peace. Every time a Christian commits an atrocity, he is violating the doctrine of his faith?s founder; every time a Muslim commits an atrocity, he is following the model of his founder.

Right Wing Baloney
? Every Word Out of Trump?s Mouth. If people were to really pay attention to what he says, they would abandon the illusion that just because he "talks like an ordinary person" he can be believed. His promises ignore the fact that a president is not a dictator; he cannot just do what he wants, a constant Trump promise. Do you want brain surgery done by a person who "talks like you do," or do you want a brain surgeon? Talk softly and carry a big stick is better.
? This Country is a Loser. Trump (as dictator) can make it Great Again. A recent poll has turned up surprising news: the majority of Americans say they are doing all right or better economically; the recovery from the disastrous recession is slow, but steady. Without intelligent government intervention, we could have been in a worldwide depression!
? Shrink Government (Starve It of Funds). What shall we give up? Defense, education grants, national highways, health, clean air and water, clean food and drugs, dams and the power grid, national security? Do you prefer supporting government in the bedroom (prosecute abortion, defund contraception, and jail homosexuals)? Hating government is hating yourself.

Baloney Shared by Left and Right
? Conspiracy Theories. That 9/11 was a US (and Israeli) government plot; that our government hides space aliens in Rossmoor; that the moon shot was staged in Hollywood; conspiracy theories are flourishing. Outrage over the election of a biracial president has produced reams of garbage on the Internet, including Mr. Trump?s "birther" belief, that our president was not born in the US and is thus "illegitimate." The left wing is convinced that there is a conspiracy between big money, White men, and "the government," without specifying which branch of government. All wing nuts are convinced that unnamed forces are out to get them.

I, and many of you, might like to have a political party that does not want money wasted on silly things (fiscal conservatism) but does not want a party that involves itself with social prohibitions that are dead in the water. We are fiscal conservatives, social liberals, and international realists. We recognize evil, and believe that we must deal with it wisely and sometimes forcefully. And with all of our faults and human frailty (and sometimes mistakes), the world is a far better place because of our values and our system of government.

681 words
Dr. Laina Farhat-Holzman is a historian, lecturer, and author of God's Law or Man's Law. You may contact her at Lfarhat102@aol.com or www.globalthink.net.

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