
 |
|
February 10, 2012
Lisa M. Krieger: Man with defibrillator demands access to his own heart's information
David G. Savage: Why activists may not be in a hurry to have High Court rule on alternative marriage
February 9, 2012
Laura McMullen: 10 Least Expensive Public Schools for Out-of-State Students
Kimberly Palmer: How to actually enjoy -- relaxing, financially -- your vacation
February 8, 2012
Warren Richey: Why momentous Prop. 8 ruling might not satisfy gay-rights groups
Menachem Wecker: Though Controversial, LL.M.'s Can Lead to Specialized Legal Jobs
The Kosher Gourmet byDana Velden: Going to the bother of making soup? You know it better be good. This CREAM OF TOMATO SOUP certainly is! And it's a cinch to make, too (Includes techinques and serving secrets)
February 7, 2012
Frank J. Gaffney, Jr.: Caught off-guard? President's Super Bowl interview with Matt Lauer gives those who need a reason not to vote for him, a darn good one
Suzanne Bohan: Leaping lizards! Tiny reptiles advancing robot design
February 6, 2012
Jonathan Tobin: Iran Threatens Israel With Destruction, But the New York Times Doesn't Hear It
Jeffrey Fleishman: In newly democratic Egypt, tens of democracy activists jailed, to stand trial; their groups are 'threatening the stability of the homeland'
Julie Deardorff : Researchers say antioxidants may not be that effective and could do more harm than good
Mark Clayton: How did Anonymous hackers eavesdrop on FBI and Scotland Yard?
February 3, 2012
Edmund Sanders : Israeli official says Iran is creating missile that could reach East Coast of US
Victoria Kim: Immigrant-smuggling ring used black drivers to avoid racial profiling
February 2, 2012
Jim Carney: Wrong number call may have saved her life
Reza Kahlili : Ex-CIA spy in Iran's Revolutionary Guard: What Obama doesn't grasp about striking deals with Tehran
Tina Susman: For woodchuck rescuer, every day is Groundhog Day
February 1, 2012
Brian Bennett: US officials see increasing threat of domestic attack from Iran
Emily Brandon: How to Take Advantage of New 401(k) Fee Disclosures
January 31, 2012
January 30, 2012
Paul Richter and Ramin Mostaghim: Misreading Teheran's limits -- deadly and economically devastating as they may be -- is a risk administration, Europe seem willing to take
Suzanne Bohan: Warning: Nap-deprived tots missing more than sleep, study finds
Meg Handley: Banks Revamping Rewards Programs to Woo Customers
January 27, 2012
Caroline B. Glick: Obama: Of course I intend to prevent a nuclear holocaust . . . in a few months
Yochonon Donn: In liberal New York City, fervently-Orthodox Jews may soon be getting a district to call their own
Jeannine Stein: An inflated ego and thinking you're 'all that' doesn't just make others sick of you, it can make you ill
Katy Hopkins: New budget rules may affect how much money you get for college
January 26, 2012
Ed Koch: To the New York Times, calling for the murder of Jews by those capable of having their incitement taken seriously isn't news
Jeannine Stein: Mental illness struck one in five U.S. adults in 2010: Report
January 25, 2012
Richard Simon: House passes two bills endorsing the use of religious symbols at military memorials
Fred Weir: Putin: Multiethnic Russia cannot survive as a US-style 'melting pot'; must find its own way
Susan Johnston: 5 Sneaky Coupon Strategies Consumers Should Watch Out For
January 24, 2012
Carol Clark: The price of your soul: How your brain decides whether to 'sell out'
Caroline B. Glick: America lost most in 'Arab Spring'. Sadly, many voters still don't grasp the extent
Warren Richey: Drug criminal scores win in GPS ruling from conservative-leaning high court
Erika Bolstad: Black conservatives gather to talk about gaining strength
January 23, 2012
Melissa Dribben: Jewish voters to play a key role in Florida's Republican primary
Jordan Rau: In quest to grow, Catholic hospital system will announce this morning its break from church
Ali Safi: U.S. envoy gives Taliban terms for peace talks
January 19, 2012
January 18, 2012
January 17, 2012
Frank J. Gaffney Jr.: No-kidding red lines: U.S. response to an Iranian nuke may be bluster, but Israel's won't be
David G. Savage: They sued their principals after slandering them online --- now the cases are headed to the Supreme Court
David Francis: Where to Invest in 2012: With stocks expected to rebound, opportunity abounds for investors
January 13, 2012
Ben Lynfield: Israeli lawmakers move to annex Jewish Judea, one museum at a time
Alexia Elejalde-Ruiz: Thriving through touch: Gentle massage helps older people with low mobility improve in mind and body
January 12, 2012
Warren Richey: Landmark Supreme Court ruling a 'resounding win' for religious groups
Warren Richey: Supreme Court says no to new rule on eyewitness testimony
John Fauber : Statins found to raise diabetes risk in postmenopausal women
Katy Hopkins : Consider This Before You Pay for an Online Degree
The Kosher Gourmet by Joseph Erdos: This mushroom and barley soup has an intense -- almost nutty -- flavor that mixes robust with Middle East. It has creaminess without cream
January 11, 2012
Shari Roan: Millions of atrial fibrillation sufferers at risk for devastating, but preventable, stroke
Tom Hussain: Pakistan -- recipient of more than $21 billion in civilian and military aid -- speeds pursuit of Iranian pipeline, defying US
David G. Savage: High court signals it won't be loosening TV's 'indecency' rules
Stephen Ceasar: Oklahoma's Islamic law amendment can't go into effect, court rules
January 10, 2012
Reza Kahlili: From an ex-CIA spy: US must exploit new split in Iran's Revolutionary Guard
Karen Kaplan: Study: Nicotine replacement products ineffective when used in real-life situations
January 9, 2012
Michael Doyle: Put through legal hell over dream home, couple fought back hard --- all the way to Supreme Court
|
| |
Jewish World Review
Oct. 17, 2007
/ 5 Mar-Cheshvan 5768
Every father should read this book to his son
By
Rod Dreher
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
If Clarence Thomas were a liberal, he'd be widely regarded as an American hero.
The Supreme Court associate justice's new memoir, My Grandfather's Son , is mostly a story about fatherhood and the making of his character. It's a tale so profoundly moving, and so profoundly true to this nation's ideals, that every American father ought to read the first two chapters and then read them aloud to his children. Here is an inheritance of wisdom, a pearl of great price passed from a semi-literate peasant through his grandson, who lifted himself with it out of the direst poverty and became one of the world's most powerful men.
Clarence Thomas was gutbucket poor, beginning his life in rural Pinpoint, Ga., in a shack without running water. Even so, it was a mansion compared with the Savannah tenement into which his mother later moved with him and his brother.
"The only running water in our building was downstairs in the kitchen, where several layers of old linoleum were all that separated us from the ground," Justice Thomas writes. "The toilet was outdoors in the muddy back yard. The metal bowl was cracked and rusty and the wooden seat was rotten. I'll never forget the sickening stench of the raw sewage that seeped and sometimes poured from the broken sewer line."
| BUY THE BOOK … |
| 
at a discount by clicking HERE.
|
|
There wasn't room for 6-year-old Clarence in the room's one bed, so he slept in a chair. He was constantly cold and hungry that winter of 1955. One day, the boys' mother scooped them up, stuffed their belongings into two grocery bags and delivered them to her parents, Myers and Christine Anderson, to raise. And that would be the making of Clarence Thomas.
Myers Clarence called him "Daddy" was a laborer who'd built a small business delivering fuel oil. He and "Aunt Tina" lived in an exceedingly modest but orderly house in a rough neighborhood a haven of comfort and stability to the Thomas boys. Daddy was a rigorous, unsentimental man who believed in God, work, discipline and education, not necessarily in that order. He laid down the law for his grandsons and explained "that there was a connection between what he provided for us and what he required of us."
That is, the ascetic life Daddy provided for his grandsons was not suffering imposed for its own sake, but a series of life lessons that would enable them to escape the poverty, drunkenness and moral disorder they saw all around them. Daddy rode the boys hard, putting them through Catholic school, keeping them from bad influences and driving them through a punishing work regimen on the family farm. "For me," writes Justice Thomas, "it was a place of torment and salvation."
Salvation? Daddy knew a man couldn't count on anyone but himself. And he knew the odds were stacked so high against a poor black boy in the Jim Crow South that the only way those children stood a chance was to master their passions and acquire the knowledge and work ethic with which to better themselves. Years later, after having a son of his own, Justice Thomas finally came to understand the great gift he'd been given: "I had been raised by the greatest man I have ever known."
Later in his memoir, Justice Thomas says his views on affirmative action, which have earned him such contempt from the black establishment, are nothing more than a product of Daddy's uncompromising vision, which the justice fiercely defends as the only morally respectable path to individual betterment. Few people black or otherwise want to hear that these days. But all of us desperately need to.
Myers Anderson was first and foremost a man. Not a punk, a loafer, a sponger or a whiner, but a man who took care of business. And that included accepting responsibility for children. The black illegitimacy rate is catastrophic, with all the individual and social dysfunction that entails. The Hispanic rate of out-of-wedlock births is even higher, and one out of every three white babies in America comes into this world without a traditional father. Men today are forgetting how to be men, turning instead to cowardly self-indulgence.
Yet Clarence Thomas, who for all his self-acknowledged faults comes bearing hard-earned, prophetic insight into how to resist the disorders of the age, is despised by the elites, particularly of his own race. That's beyond tragic.
I did read the first chapter of My Grandfather's Son to my oldest boy. I told him that his Pawpaw, my father, also grew up in Depression-era rural poverty in the Deep South. Having pulled himself into the middle class with callused hands, Pawpaw despises men today who, in his familiar phrase, "expect the world to be handed to them." This book, I told my son, is in a small but important way your family's story too.
We're losing tough country men like the fathers who raised Clarence Thomas and me. It is a comfort, though, to know that Myers Anderson's greatest legacy sits on the Supreme Court and will for a long time whether Jesse Jackson or The New York Times editorial board likes it or not.
Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in the media and Washington consider "must-reading". Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.
| BUY THE BOOK |
| Click HERE to purchase it at a discount. (Sales help fund JWR.). |
|
Comment by clicking here.
Rod Dreher is assistant editorial page editor of the Dallas Morning News and author of "Crunchy Cons" (Crown Forum).
PREVIOUSLY
10/03/07: Not even our parks are safe … And I lay at least part of the blame on the cultural revolution and our obsession with the individual
08/22/07: The Decalogue, dangerous? Advice for a society that cringes at commandments
08/15/07: Playing the anti-science card
08/01/07: How the U.S. can avoid its own version of the fall of the Roman empire
07/24/07: Conservative author: Big business can be as dangerous a threat as big government
07/09/07: All quiet but the doleful pleas of a father who knows
06/28/07: When we let conspiracy theory masquerade as news, we fall prey to much more than deception
06/20/07: Stranded on Delta: They may love to fly, but it certainly doesn't show
06/13/07: When did conservatism start to mean never having to say you're sorry?
05/08/07: PBS darling gets abused by PC police
05/02/07: Impervious to beauty and deadened to depravity
04/20/07: What I know about being a loner
10/28/05: How the conservatives crumble
© 2007, The Dallas Morning News,
Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Information Services.
|
|

Arnold Ahlert
Mitch Albom
Jay Ambrose
Michael Barone
Barrywood
Tony Blankley
Lori Borgman
Stratfor Briefing
Mona Charen
Linda Chavez
Richard Z. Chesnoff
Ann Coulter
Greg Crosby
Alan Douglas
Larry Elder
Suzanne Fields
Frank J. Gaffney
Bernie Goldberg
Jonah Goldberg
Julia Gorin
Jonathan Gurwitz
Paul Greenberg
Argus Hamilton
Victor Davis Hanson
Betsy Hart
Ron Hart
Nat Hentoff
Marybeth Hicks
David Horowitz
Jeff Jacoby
Renee James
Paul Johnson
Jack Kelly
Ed Koch
Ch. Krauthammer
Michael Ledeen
John Leo
David Limbaugh
Kathryn Lopez
Rich Lowry
Michelle Malkin
Jackie Mason
Ann McFeatters
Dale McFeatters
Dana Milbank
Jeanne Moos
Dick Morris
Jim Mullen
Deroy Murdock
Judge A. Napolitano
Bill O'Reilly
Kathleen Parker
Star Parker
Dennis Prager
Wesley Pruden
Tom Purcell
Sharon Randall
Robert Robb
Cokie & Steve Roberts
Heather Robinson
Pat Sajak
Debra J. Saunders
Martin Schram
Culture Shlock
David Shribman
Roger Simon
Michael Smerconish
Thomas Sowell
Ben Stein
Mark Steyn
John Stossel
Cal Thomas
Dan Thomasson
Bob Tyrrell
Ben Wattenberg
Diana West
Dave Weinbaum
George Will
Walter Williams
Byron York
ZeitGeist
Mort Zuckerman

Robert Arial
Chuck Asay
Baloo
Chip Bok
Dry Bones
Lisa Benson
John Branch
John Cole
J. D. Crowe
John Deering
Brian Duffy
Everything's Relative
Mallard Fillmore
Glenn Foden
Jake Fuller
Bob Gorrel
Joe Heller
David Hitch
Jerry Holbert
Lee Judge
Steve Kelley
Jeff Koterba
Dick Locher
Jimmy Margulies
Rick McKee
Michael Ramirez
Kevin Siers
Jeff Stahler
Ed Stein
Danna Summers
John Trever
Gary Varvel
Kirk Walters

Mr. Know-It-All
Dr. Peter Gott
GET A JOB! by Marty Nemko
Richard Lederer
Frugal Living
Tech Maven
On Nutrition
Bookmark These
Bruce Williams
|