Free Republic

<p>Two young Berlin friends of mine, a Jewish woman and her German husband, a nominal Christian, are expecting twins. They were delighted to learn the other day that both twins will be girls. That eliminates any argument over circumcision.</p> <p>There's a legitimate medical debate over whether circumcision is good or bad, but the matter takes on a darker dimension in Germany, where circumcision was not so long ago the mark of the damned. Because it was a Jewish ritual, it was evidence that could cost a Jewish man his life. This would be a private matter of no consequence today but for a growing fear over religious identity in Europe. It's not a far-fetched fear for Jews.</p>

We must wish Al Franken well. Heaven knows the left needs all the help it can get in its search for a place on the radio dial, but Al is going unarmed into a battle of wits and humor against Rush Limbaugh. "We're trying to give people an alternative," he told The Washington Post. "We want to provide a change in the political landscape and a beacon of hope for ordinary Americans who work hard and play by the rules." That sounds like an appeal to the dittoheads, and they've already got Rush. Conservatives have been winning the culture war...

<p>If you can't accuse a television producer of being an intellectual, you certainly can't describe a newspaper columnist as being one. Nevertheless, the Chutzpah Award for the year that just died must go to Polly Toynbee of London's daily Guardian for an enlightened rationalization and demonization that boils over like volcanic lava. Ms. Toynbee fell for the infamous Nigerian scam, and she had to find somebody to be mad at, and it couldn't be herself.</p>

American medicine is the best in the world, but the best medical advice is this: Don't get sick. We've got Medicare and Medicaid, pay-for-visit and managed care, and a prescription-drug benefit on the way to seniors, but actually getting delivery of the pills and potions can be more difficult than getting the legislation through Congress. The delivery system of American medicine is overwhelmed. Getting through to the doctor is not easy, and after you finally get his attention there's the minefield of insurance claims, office bureaucrats, the pharmacists and sometimes the calico cat. This is not exactly stop-press news, but...

<p>War is hell, as William Tecumseh Sherman famously said, and postwar peace can be far from heaven, too. The noblest intentions go awry on the battlefield. The idealism that starts the fight does not always filter down to those who must do the fighting.</p>

The man makes his times, or is it the other way around? Philosophers have argued over this conundrum for centuries. But in the heat of partisan debate, we have to sort it out the best we can. Thomas Friedman of the New York Times, not the most consistent cheerleader for George W. Bush, makes the provocative suggestion that the president, like his predecessor Abraham Lincoln, has discovered a higher moral purpose in the midst of war, and has changed the emphasis from finding and destroying weapons of mass destruction to liberating Iraq in pursuit of democracy in a miserable part...

Too young or too oldBy Suzanne Fields     It's not very hip to consider the plight of single women who yearn for something so old-fashioned as men, all male and very virile. The plight of homosexual men and women who can't get a marriage license will no doubt occupy us through next year's elections and beyond. Frank Loesser's 1943 hit song, for the movie "Thank YourLucky Stars," is hopelessly politically incorrect for our times:     "They're either too young, or too old,     "They're either too gray or too grassy green,     "The pickings are poor and the crop is lean."         Back then, of...

Thanksgiving is a holiday stirring mixed emotions. We rejoice in friends and family, mourn the memory of those no longer at the table. We endure the tiresome bores at the table because they qualify as family. Not all the turkeys at table are full of egg-bread stuffing. We bless the new babes, admire the growth of the tweens and indulge the adolescents who think they shock us with their discovery that adults belong to an inferior breed. We welcome college friends whose families live far away and invite those in our community without kith and kin to share a meal....

<p>The most troubling example of racial inequality in America today is the inner-city school. Civil-rights iniquities begin here.</p> <p>You don't hear the two loudest ecclesiastical divines, the Revs. Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, complaining about self-indulgent, self-aggrandizing teachers whose unions supportthe cozy status quo. You don't hear the educationist bureaucrats in the big cities, who pull down salaries wildly disproportionate to their talents and responsibilities, crying for the pain of what the schools are doing to black children. White liberals usually don't want to clean up the wreckage, because if they did, they wouldn't have convenient objects to pity to prove how compassionate they are.</p>

It's hard to recognize history, the significance of a leader or the rise of a successful ideology when you're living in the middle of it. The polarities of partisanship are so severe that enemies and uncritical idolaters ride a seesaw of justification and denigration. Clear thinking is hard to do. That doesn't mean we shouldn't try. Fortunately, time, events and awareness have a way of sorting the wheat from the chaff. Heroes emerge, ideas flower. When Winston Churchill urged Britain to re-arm and recognize the menace rising to power in Germany in the 1930s, many of his countrymen called him...

NEW YORK CITY. — The buzz among the oh-so-hip in Gotham is about a new play called "Omnium Gatherum," translated with ironic understatement to mean "a collection of peculiar souls." An assorted group of fashionable men and women gather at a chic dinner party to discuss the latest "ins" and "outs," "ups" and "downs," rites and wrongs in the post-September 11 world. The characters are the smug and arrogant elite who care more about what they say than what they hear. Imaginea Martha Stewart-like figure as hostess for a party of ideologues where isms are tossed about like the different...

I weep for the dead in Haifa. I weep for the three generations of the Zer-Aviv family who are with us no more: Bruria, 54; Bezalel, 30; Keren, 29; Liran 4; and Noya, 1. I weep for the idiocy of Hanadi Jaradat, 27, who blew herself up in a restaurant operated by both Israeli Arabs and Israeli Jews. The Maxim restaurant was a comfortable beachfront meeting place where men, women and children of different religions casually testifiedto friendship. The destruction of Maxim's will be recalled years from now asanother tragedy punctuating the Jewish New Year, comingbetween Rosh Hashanah and Yom...

The news from the schoolhouse is running from bad to worse. First the bad news: American high school students trail teenagers from 14 European and Asian countries in reading, math and science. We're even trailing France. It gets worse: The collapse of standards has plunged many of our public schools further into depths of "know-nothingness." And it's not a matter of money. On average, the high school student in the United States ranks 14th, behind Britain, France, Canada, New Zealand, Australia, South Korea and Japan, among other nations, according to "Education at a Glance 2003," a report compiled for the...

Johnny Cash was plenty good enough to fool his fans. They believed he felt it in his soul when he sang the Gospel while stoned on drugs. He had listened to those hymns with taking his mother's milk, in brush-arbor revival meetingsinthe Arkansas backwoods, but it was the drugs that took the message public. Whenhe straightened up and kicked amphetamines, he confessed to the earlier hypocrisy in praising the Lord. He hated it that he sang of the serenity of peace with God when he didn't feel a word of it. But perhaps it was the gap between public performance...

Johnny Cash was plenty good enough to fool his fans. They believed he felt it in his soul when he sang the Gospel while stoned on drugs. He had listened to those hymns with taking his mother's milk, in brush-arbor Pentecostal revival meetings in the Arkansas backwoods, but it was the drugs that took the message public.When he straightened up and kicked amphetamines, he confessed to the earlier hypocrisy in praising the Lord. He hated it that he sang of the serenity of peace with God when he didn't feel a word of it. But perhaps it was the...

Collective mourning is difficult in a secular culture. How we commemorate September 11, a date imprinted in the national psyche with Dec. 7 as dates to live in infamy, is idiosyncratic and individual. Many find solace in faith, in reading the Bible, others in prayer or poetry. Still others join friendstorememberthose we knew who are no longer alive because vicious men from another civilization made killing innocents in the name of their god ariteofbenighted faith. My friend was a literary man who sought his solace in poetry, literature and art. At his memorial service the other day, another friend quoted...

You have gall, but I have Town Hall Mike S. Adams (archive) September 10, 2003 Dear University Advancement Office: I just went down the hall to check my mail and noticed that you sent me a letter today asking for an “employee contribution” to help the university in this time of budgetary crisis. I put the letter on top of the one from human resources reminding me that my $172 parking fee was due next week. Below that, there is a letter informing me that my health insurance costs are going up next month. At the bottom of the stack,...

Mick Jagger is 60. He's still a Rolling Stone, but his audience has gathered more than a little moss. Some of them are still pondering the Beatles' famous questions: "Will you still love me when I'm 64? Will you still need me? Will you still feed me?" The lyrics no longer sound quite so funny to the aging boomers, for whom thelyricshave taken on an edge of chillingseriousness. Congressdebates how to get less expensive medications to the elderly, a growing population divided by statisticians as the "young-old" (ages 55 to 75) and the "old-old" (over 75). The boomers, a segment...

<p>Summer in Savannah means tourists, and most of them arrive looking for the garden, or the evidence of it as outlined in the famous (or infamous) book by John Berendt. Sex sells in Savannah (unlike other places) and "Lady Chablis," the drag queen featured in "Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil" continues to play to sellout audiences in a Savannah club.</p>

Once upon a time Literature, with the capital L, was "la creme de la creme" of college courses. Young men and women longed to read the great books that addressed the universal spirit, as clothed in the particular narratives and fashions of different ages. The college years were about personal, philosophical and political contemplation of many different subjects, but literature offered the promise of knowledge that was fun to read. The great books became the touchstone for sophomore angst. Students courted each other with lines from "Romeo and Juliet." They argued over personal morality and the public conventions in novels...