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In this issue
Nov. 6, 2009
Rabbi Berel Wein: Choosing to hear
JWisdom.com Zero to 1/60th: How to Empower An Hour with Gavriel Aryeh Sande (7 minutes)
Caroline B. Glick The mullahs' big week
Suzanne Fields A Fallen Wall for Fallen Man
Nov. 5, 2009
The Kosher Gourmet: Three scrumptious -- but simple -- butternut squash dishes
JWisdom.com Hidden Hints: Unlocking Faith & Prayer with Rabbi Jay Yaacov Schwartz (10 minutes)
Nov. 4, 2009
Tom Hamburger and Kim Geiger: Should prayers be covered?
JWisdom.com When God played peacemaker With Rabbi Sroy Levitansky (5 minutes)
Nov. 3, 2009
Martin Peretz: Beware, Barack. Beware, Rahm. Beware, Axelrod
JWisdom.com Are you are closet idolater? With Sara Yoheved Rigler (10 minutes)
Nov. 2, 2009
Paul Greenberg: The Holocaust is now on Facebook
JWisdom.com Abraham's Strange Change With Rabbi Yitzchok Fingerer (5 minutes)
Oct. 30, 2009
Rabbi David Aaron: Secret to Immortality
Caroline B. Glick Silencing dissent in America
Oct. 29, 2009
Lini S. Kadaba: Do tactics avert flu or reduce humanity?
JWisdom.com We Must Revamp our Religious Vocabulary With Gavriel Aryeh Sanders ( 10 minutes)
Oct. 28, 2009
Rabbi Yonason Goldson: Atheists in Bubbleland
JWisdom.com Why what we wear impacts who we are With Rabbis Mordechai Becher, Menachem Golberger and Aliza Bulow ( 10 minutes)
Oct. 27, 2009
Paul Greenberg: The United Nations Is Outraged Again, Or: Department of Mideast Static
JWisdom.com The Science of Love With Rabbi Jonathan Rietti ( 7 minutes)
Oct. 26, 2009
The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Damaging disclosures with a twist
JWisdom.com Wisdom and Wonks With Rabbi Eytan Feiner ( 7 minutes)
Oct. 23, 2009
Rabbi David Aaron: Are you ready for the ultimate pleasure?
JWisdom.com Watermark and oneness with Rabbi Sroy Levitansky ( 4 minutes)
Caroline B. Glick Stop using limited powers in a way that expands our enemies' advantages over us
Oct. 22, 2009
Steven Emerson: Terror Cases Share Desire to Kill Americans
JWisdom.com No More More Family Fights --- Really? By Sarah Chana Radcliffe ( 5 minutes)
Oct. 21, 2009
Tonya Alanez: Holocaust denier sues survivor, calling Auschwitz memoir 'vicious lies'
JWisdom.com Meditating Jewishly: A Panacea for Success by Sarah Yoheved Rigler ( 7 minutes)
Oct. 20, 2009
Dennis Prager: Obama and Dalai Lama: Why Israel Worries about U.S. President
JWisdom.com Abraham was not religious By Rabbi Yitzchok Fingerer ( 6 minutes)
Oct. 19, 2009
JWisdom.comWhy Good People Do Bad Things By Rabbi Eytan Feiner ( 7 minutes)
Oct. 16, 2009
Rabbi Yonason Goldson: The Perfect Number
JWisdom.com Hearing Voices By Rabbi Sroy Levitansky ( 5 minutes)
Caroline B. Glick How Turkey was lost
Oct. 15, 2009
Jeff Jacoby: Peace vs. the 'peace process'
JWisdom.com: Former MTV producer and stand-up comedian Rabbi Lawrence Hajioff: Taming a Control Freak (A VERY fast 15 minutes)
Oct. 29, 2003
Mortimer B. Zuckerman: Graffiti On History's Walls (MUST-READ!)

Jewish World Review Feb. 24, 2009 / 30 Shevat 5769

Changing nation

By Cal Thomas


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http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | "Always pay the bank" was my father's economic advice. In good times and in bad, whether I had low, moderate or high income, I always paid the bank. The bank now offers me loans.


That fatherly advice, though, was not about making the bankers feel good. He wished to instill in me a sense of responsibility and moral integrity. Dad knew such an attitude would help make for a successful life.


Things are rapidly changing. Once, we honored and encouraged hard work, individual responsibility, integrity and achievement. The fruits of success were our reward. Today, we discourage such things by rewarding failure, mediocrity, incompetence and envy. If one does succeed using the old values, the government imposes penalties of higher taxes and more regulations to subsidize those who won't embrace the virtues that built and sustained the nation through truly hard times.


The financial adviser Ric Edelman said on his syndicated radio show last Saturday that the reason many are panicking during the current recession is because they have only lived in prosperous times. Edelman noted that 30 years ago, just 20 percent of the country was invested in the stock market. Now, he says, about 70 percent of Americans are invested and most have only lived during periods when the market (and home values) always increased.


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The Obama administration is taking political advantage by promising to deliver us, if not from evil, than from anxiety. Instead of encouraging independence, government will now encourage dependence. John F. Kennedy's oration has been turned on its head. Today, it isn't, "Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country." It is, "Ask not what you can do for your country; ask what your country can do for you." No one can say we weren't warned. Obama promised to "spread the wealth around," rather than create conditions that would offer opportunities for more people to become wealthy.


An economic truism is that you don't raise taxes in a recession, but that's what the Obama administration plans to do. They won't call it a tax increase. They'll let the Bush tax cuts expire, jacking up the top rate to 39 percent again, as it was in the Clinton years, a period in which even Bill Clinton was forced to admit he raised taxes "too much." Who believes government needs more of our money, when it already wastes so much of it?


Do we want to replace this great country with all the opportunities it affords to people who play by the rules, work hard and make right decisions, with a country that doesn't care what rules you live by because government will take care of you? And what does this say about people who have played by the rules? They have paid the bank, but now see people who did not getting a handout from government for their mortgages, as if paying and not paying are morally equivalent.


Each generation must renew the principles delivered by the preceding one. I fear this generation may be dropping the baton, seduced by the flattering words of politicians who promise not to let us fail, or suffer, or even feel bad. That is a fool's bargain because it is through failure (or the threat of it) and suffering that we grow stronger as individuals and become more self-reliant.


For a clue to what liberal politicians are trying to foist on the country, visit http://www.despair.com/viewall.html. There you will find anti-motivational posters, the antithesis of the motivational ones found in Sky Mall magazine. These anti-motivational posters are for people who prefer despair to optimism and see government as their only hope. The posters sell "de-motivation: increasing success by lowering expectations." Of government, it says, "If you think the problems we create are bad, just wait until you see our solutions."


We face a future of ever-bigger and intrusive government and the punishing of achievement unless this generation realizes it has dropped the baton it was handed and returns to pick it up.

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Cal Thomas Archives

JWR contributor Cal Thomas is co-author with Bob Beckel, a liberal Democratic Party strategist, of "Common Ground: How to Stop the Partisan War That is Destroying America". Comment by clicking here.

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