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February 13, 2012
Binyamin Rose: Back to the Bunker: How a life-risking act by a Christian family during the Holocaust saved a family and built a thriving community a world away
Menachem Wecker: Business Schools Teach Real Estate Despite Troubled Housing Market
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
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Jewish World Review
January 14, 2009
/ 18 Teves 5769
A life in and beyond politics
By
Paul Greenberg
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http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
In 1937, when Whittaker Chambers left the party that had been his life his robot existence for so long, he told his wife and partner, Esther, "You know, we are leaving the winning world for the losing world."
Yet he felt an almost unutterable elation, like that of a man who with his last gasp somehow breaks free of the watery depths and emerges to breathe free again. The same impulse that leads some men to join a parade, or even head it, will lead them at some point to go their own way, no matter what, and take the road less traveled. Or even see the futility of all parades.
Such men are given a kind of double vision, for they are now able to see not just what led them to break with their old comrades, but the fault lines that separate them from their new ones. Such a man was Richard John Neuhaus, and his own journey through ideas would give almost everything he would write an uncommon interest and authority. Another word for it is wisdom.
The young Rev. Richard John Neuhaus, minister of the social gospel, had been a rising star of the liberal firmament, marching with Martin Luther King Jr. and Abraham Joshua Heschel for civil rights and against the Vietnam War. There was no conventional liberal piety of the time, sound or flawed, that he did not embody. But soon enough he would begin drifting away from the winning side, or what appeared to be at the time.
Why did he switch? Maybe it was the appearance of a whole new system of racial and ethnic discrimination called Affirmative Action. Behind all its euphemisms, he realized, it was just a mirror image of the racial discrimination he had once marched against. Or maybe what turned him was Roe v. Wade, which was delivered in 1973 like a seductive overture to the coming culture of death. Maybe it was just the whole mounting edifice of Babel erected to cover a host of no longer morally sustainable positions. Maybe it was a loss of faith in social panaceas. Or just the American left's continuing offenses against both logic and language. For he preferred plain words first things. And questions gnawed at him.
So he left the liberal ranks. But he remained the public intellectual he was fated to be. In 1984, his critique of the attempt to banish religious ideas from public discourse indeed, from public view was published. "The Naked Public Square" would become one of the more influential books of the time.
That same year, the Rev. Neuhaus found a home started one, actually called the Center for Religion and Society as part of the Rockford Institute, a once respected think tank. But his double vision persisted, and he could see where the organization's publication, Chronicles, was headed even then in its rightward drift over the ideological falls into the dark waters below. He was preparing to leave when he and his whole staff were unceremoniously thrown out. To their great jubilation.
So it came to pass that in 1990, he would start his own magazine, with his own bright young group of acolytes and wry older contributors just as dissatisfied with the same thin gruel of perfectly sanitized, anesthetized, secularized ideas. Naturally it would be called First Things. His own indispensable back-of-the-book section, "The Public Square," a monthly collection of and reflection on of the follies and insights of contemporary thought and the absence of same, would became indispensable reading.
Inevitably he would go from Lutheran minister to Catholic priest ordained by John Cardinal O'Connor in 1991. For him it was a natural development, a return to roots. Eventually he would become a public face of the church and compiler of a pope's ideas on a subject dear indeed, essential to him: reverence for life. But his major contribution to American intellectual life remains his small magazine with no small ideas, whose vision far exceeds its circulation. His death at 72 is a grievous blow, for the ideas and items in his monthly column of snippets had a way of percolating through the rest of American conservative thought. In a kind of church-and-state division, First Things would become the spiritual version of William F. Buckley's National Review. What a strange political arc he followed: What other leading American intellectual would be a Gene McCarthy delegate to the riotous Democratic Convention in 1968 and, 40 years later in 2008, an adviser to George W. Bush?
A friend was saying the other day that what American conservatism needs is another Buckley. Now it will need another Neuhaus, too. Yet both leave behind new voices. One thinks of Joseph Bottom, who took over as editor of First Things as the Rev. Neuhaus grew frail only physically. Richard John Neuhaus' influence and saving instinct, particularly for criticizing any kind of crowd mentality, even the one that celebrated him, remains strong, waiting to be strengthened again.
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