
 |
|
May 24, 2013
May 22, 2013
John Thorne:
They launched the 'Arab Spring' but now yearn for the good old days of a strongman
May 20, 2013
Richard A. Serrano: Is Meir Kahane's assassin now a changed man?
Melissa Healy: Genetic copies of living people from embryos no longer science fiction
Jewz in the Newz by Nate Bloom : Jews Inducted into Rock Hall of Fame; Anton Yelchin co-stars in New "Trek" film; Kutcher (but not Kunis) visits Israel; Jewish TV Star Praises Jewish Rap Star
The Kosher Gourmet by Cathy Pollak: WARNING: This WALNUT CAKE WITH PRALINE FROSTING, perfect for afternoon coffee, is addicting
May 13, 2013
Rabbi Nathan Lopes Cardozo: Why the giving of the document that would permanently change the world could only be done in desolation
David G. Savage: Church-state, literally? Supreme Court weighing public school graduation in a church
May 10, 2013
Rabbi Berel Wein: Be all that you should be
May 8, 2013
Peter Ford: Why China is welcoming both Israel's Netanyahu and Palestinians' Abbas
Warren Richey: Obama administration quietly backs out of appeal over new contraceptive mandate
Fred Weir: At Kerry-Putin meeting, US-Russia relations thaw --- a tad
The Kosher Gourmet by Leela Cyd Ross : Almost too pretty to eat, this colorful salad with Sicilian inspiration will tickle the taste buds and delight your visual sensibility
May 6, 2013
May 3, 2013
Kids, kittens the Same? With employee perks at struggling Internet pioneer Yahoo! it's hard to tell
Sandy Kleffman: Artificial kidney offers hope to patients tethered to a dialysis machine
April 29, 2013
Roy Gutman: Poland's new Jewish museum celebrates life, doesn't revisit Holocaust
Mark Clayton: Terrorism in America: Is US missing a chance to learn from failed plots?
Kim Murphy: Boston Bomber's 'Svengali' Revealed
Pete Spotts: Tiny satellites + cellphones = cheaper 'eyes in the sky' for NASA
April 26, 2013
Clifford D. May: Defense in the Age of Jihadist Terrorism
Sharon Palmer, R.D.: How to feel your best -- with plenty of energy, a healthy weight and optimal mental and physical function -- without driving yourself batty
April 24, 2013
|
| |
Jewish World Review
January 2, 2009
/6 Teves 5769
Oh, woe is us: A new year ahead
By
Wesley Pruden
| 
|
|
|
|
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
Welcome to 2009, the year when it's suddenly unpatriotic, or at least ill-mannered, to be an optimist. Franklin D. Roosevelt told us that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself (cribbing Stonewall Jackson's warning to "never take counsel with your fears"), and Ronald Reagan reassured us that despite discouraging times, it's still "morning in America."
Optimism has always been the engine driving the American dream, but in the wake of bad news, the peddlers of gloom, doom and drear carry the day. The Baltimore Sun greeted the new year with the headline that these are the worst times since the '30s, and The Washington Post offered its usual menu of victim stories - five of the seven headlines were about bad things happening to good people - the first among them the news that $6.9 trillion dollars in wealth was wiped out on Wall Street in 2008. It's true that Wall Street laid a rotten egg, proving once again the adage once heard on the street that "bulls make money, even bears make money, but pigs rarely make money." Most of the $6.9 trillion were paper profits, profits not taken, and many of us can dine out, if only on cornbread and beans, with horror stories. A pot of beans and a skillet of cornbread hot from the oven is not a bad supper, by the way.
Perhaps Barack Obama will lift the gloom on Inauguration Day, when he walks across the Reflecting Pool without getting his feet wet, and his aides and acolytes walk among the throng with a hot lunch for the multitudes, abundance transformed from five barley loaves and two small fishes just taken from the Potomac. (It's what real Messiahs do.) But if the peddlers of gloom, doom and drear are correct, we expect too much of a mere president, even of Mr. Obama. Underneath that handsome façade he's probably only human.
Many, perhaps most, of the doomcriers don't actually know America very well. James Fallows, writing in the Atlantic, channels someone in the year 2016 looking back on what happened to "the city on the hill." He sees an America where no one would want to live (or die): bankruptcies of dozens of state and local governments, a shutdown of colleges and universities, legalized prostitution (what's a girl to do?), the Chinese takeover of the physics, computer-science and biology laboratories at the University of California at Berkeley, and for only 51 percent of the patent royalties. Half of American families will live on less than $50,000 a year, but a year in a private college (this won't surprise vainglorious parents who know no better than to send their kids to Harvard and Yale) will cost $83,000 a year. The American disease, he writes, is "the sense of sunset, decline, hopelessness."
If you have an appetite for such fantasies, the result of too much late-night pepperoni pizza, there's more, from a Russian academic sure that the United States will break up by next year. He even has a map of the boundaries of the four surviving states: the California Republic (including six Western states), the Texas Republic (including everything between Albuquerque and Atlanta), the Central North American Republic and Atlantic America. The prudent among us are pleased that we saved our Confederate money, but this is bad news for both Barack Obama and Sarah Palin.
Alaska goes back to Russia, Hawaii goes to either Japan or China, robbing Mrs. Palin of her base and casting doubt on a second term for Mr. Obama. He would no longer be a natural born son of America. The news from Moscow gets worse. "California" will be part of China, "Texas" a part of Mexico, "Central North America" will be part of Canada and "Atlantic America" will be part of the European Union, no more important than France or Luxembourg. This sounds like the parlor game it is, but the author of it, Igor Panarin, is an academic once an officer of the KGB, the dean of the Russian Foreign Ministry's school for diplomats. The Wall Street Journal says he's taken seriously in Moscow and frequently lectures on how America will soon disintegrate.
The polite word for all of this is, of course, bullshine, peddled before in days of yore. On hearing the news of Pearl Harbor, Winston Churchill, who really did know a lot about America, observed that many "silly people" thought America would soon be but "a vague blur on the horizon," weak, indecisive and inconsequential. "But I had studied the American Civil War, fought out to the last desperate inch. American blood flowed in my veins. [I knew] that the United States is like a gigantic boiler. Once the fire is lighted under it there is no limit to the power it can generate." And that's no fantasy.
Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in in the media and Washington consider "must-reading". Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.
JWR contributor Wesley Pruden is editor in chief of The Washington Times. Comment by clicking here.
Wesley Pruden Archives
© 2007 Wesley Pruden
|
|

Arnold Ahlert
Mitch Albom
Jay Ambrose
Michael Barone
Barrywood
Lori Borgman
Stratfor Briefing
Mona Charen
Linda Chavez
Richard Z. Chesnoff
Ann Coulter
Greg Crosby
Larry Elder
Suzanne Fields
Christine Flowers
Frank J. Gaffney
Bernie Goldberg
Jonah Goldberg
Julia Gorin
Jonathan Gurwitz
Paul Greenberg
Argus Hamilton
Victor Davis Hanson
Betsy Hart
Ron Hart
Nat Hentoff
A. Barton Hinkle
Jeff Jacoby
Paul Johnson
Jack Kelly
Ch. Krauthammer
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
Clarence Page
Kathleen Parker
Star Parker
Dennis Prager
Wesley Pruden
Tom Purcell
Sharon Randall
Robert Robb
Cokie & Steve Roberts
Heather Robinson
Debra J. Saunders
Martin Schram
Greg Schwem
Culture Shlock
David Shribman
Roger Simon
Lenore Skenazy
Michael Smerconish
Thomas Sowell
Ben Stein
Mark Steyn
John Stossel
Cal Thomas
Dan Thomasson
Bob Tyrrell
Diana West
Dave Weinbaum
George Will
Walter Williams
Byron York
ZeitGeist
Mort Zuckerman

Robert Arial
Chuck Asay
Baloo
Lisa Benson
Chip Bok
Dry Bones
John Branch
John Cole
J. D. Crowe
Matt Davies
John Deering
Brian Duffy
Everything's Relative
Mallard Fillmore
Glenn Foden
Jake Fuller
Bob Gorrel
Walt Handelsman
Joe Heller
David Hitch
Jerry Holbert
David Horsey
Lee Judge
Steve Kelley
Jeff Koterba
Dick Locher
Chan Lowe
Jimmy Margulies
Jack Ohman
Michael Ramirez
Rob Rogers
Drew Sheneman
Kevin Siers
Jeff Stahler
Scott Stantis
Danna Summers
Gary Varvel
Kirk Walters
Dan Wasserman

Tech Q&A
Mr. Know-It-All
Ask Doctor K
Richard Lederer
Frugal Living
On Nutrition
Bookmark These
Bruce Williams
|