Oh my God, where am I? Am I in Oz? Fifty-plus years as a liberal (how embarrassing to admit) and it was all propaganda! Where’s the Kool-Aid?

Howard Dean: “In contradistinction to the Republicans, Democrats care if children go to bed hungry.” Of course when I was a lib I fell for this line: “Republicans’ concern for children begins at conception and ends at birth.” Now who is it exactly who is aborting all those babies so they can fit into that fancy dress for the party and who are the ones who are adopting babies that the more responsible of the irresponsible give birth to and then abandon? Those wonderful folks at PETA, who compare a chicken being roasted to a Jew being gassed in Auschwitz, have a fit if you swat a fly, but if you ask them about abortion, they say they don’t take a position on that! A PETA person actually wrote a letter to Mr. Terrorist, Yasser Arafat, after a donkey had been used in a suicide bombing to ask him to please spare the animals. Where did these people come from?

Howard Dean again: “The only Blacks you see at a Republican meeting are the hotel staff.” Excuse me, but who is it that thinks that hotels hire all black staffs because blacks can’t get jobs anywhere else? And he said this while Colin Powell, who I believe is black, Howard, isn’t he? – was Secretary of State. See, Howard, in contradistinction to the Democrats, Republicans actually judge people by the content of their character and not by the color of their skin. GW Bush appointed the first black Secretary of State and then the first black woman Secretary of State, not to mention the first Hispanic Attorney General, followed by the first Orthodox Jewish Attorney General.

When Ken Blackwell and Michael Steele, two conservative black men, ran for state-wide office and lost, why exactly was that? Republicans voted for them, so it must have been that the Democrats did not vote for them. So according to the Democrats themselves, who see everything in terms of race, the Democrats are racist. Why else would they not vote for two very qualified black men? What? Ideological differences? But you guys said the only reason anyone could have for not voting for the least qualified, most inexperienced, most leftist candidate ever to run for president was the color of his skin!

I forget which black comic it was who said that if Barack Obama lost the election, blacks should take the day off. So, he said, if you go to the airport, don’t expect to have anyone carry your bag for you. Am I missing something, or is he implying, once again, that airports only hire blacks because blacks can’t get any other job? Was he implying that all the black lawyers, doctors, teachers, judges, etc. also take the day off? Of course not, because most successful blacks are conservatives! Once a member of a minority breaks out of the victim mentality and attains professional and financial success, how could they remain in a party that insists they are still a victim? A victim of what? Of the Democratic party, that’s what!

“High taxes help poor people,” said a woman I know. Like a robot. No, handouts don’t help poor people – becoming self-sufficient helps poor people. Keeping a person dependent on charity should never be the goal for someone who is able to work. It breaks the spirit and makes the person feel worthless and a burden. If taxes are so important to the libs, why aren’t they trying to put everyone to work so they can also pay taxes? They’ve made it clear that a woman staying home with her children is wasting her time, so why don’t they try to get her into the workforce?

The Dems have trained their blinders-wearing followers to think that higher taxes actually go to poor people, when we all know they go to special interests. It’s called pork, remember? You know, like a study to measure to amount of methane put into the air by cow farts, or a brilliant study to show that depressed people watch more TV. That one takes a rocket scientist, doesn’t it? When I was in college, we used to like to say that we were against taxes because we didn’t want our tax dollars, which none of us was paying yet, to go for the war in Vietnam. On that same note, I’d prefer to decide for myself where my charity dollars go.

If we went into Iraq for oil, why didn’t we take it? You guys really need to come up with a new slogan. You haven’t changed this one in 40 years.

Global warming. I have fibromyalgia which affects my memory, but even I remember when I was in college (’68-’72) and was a good little liberal robot that the hysteria at the time was global COOLING. What happened to that? If you’re really into recycling, look at the Democrats’ hysterias – global cooling in the 70’s, global warming in the 40’s, global cooling at the turn of the century, according to the leading magazines of the time. And at the same time people were crying that mass starvation was just around the corner unless we immediately went to zero population growth. Any of you guys remember that?

A former friend once asked me, “Don’t you get tired of being so religious?” No, don’t you get tired of believing in nothing?

A friend of mine was getting interested in Judaism and becoming more observant. I warned her that she might find her politics changing too. Her response was, “Oh, no, I’m not going right – I’m not gonna hate blacks!” Well, she continues to learn and has yet to meet a religious, politically conservative Jew who fit her prior stereotype, and the last time I talked to her she told me she is no longer left.

Typical liberal responses to a challenge to one of their positions — Go away and leave me alone! My favorite responses are from a former friend. She sent a cartoon of GW Bush at Chanukah asking, “If they needed more oil, why didn’t they just take it?” So I replied to everyone that she had sent it to said, “If we went into Iraq for oil, why didn’t we take it?” Her response: “Please don’t write to people you don’t know.” Whenever I asked her to explain her position on something (by e-mail), she would ignore the question. When I was becoming more religious again she thought I was nuts but we still got along. It wasn’t until she realized I was a conservative that she became downright hostile to me. I wrote her and suggested we discuss our political views because, I reminded her, I used to think just like her, and I thought she should try to understand how the other side thinks. Her response: “I don’t want to discuss anything with some narrow-minded conservative.” I wrote back and asked how she could say that I was narrow-minded when I actually looked at other opinions and came to the conclusion that my beliefs were wrong and changed them, and she by her own admission hadn’t changed a single opinion of hers in 40 years. Her response? No response at all.

Are you a liberal? Are you sure? Even though my opinions were changing, I still considered myself a liberal. After all, everyone around me was liberal. But I was having trouble justifying my opposition for school vouchers. I distinctly remember thinking that I knew I had to be against them but I didn’t know why. Now, of course, it’s obvious that the left wants control of the schools so they can propagandize the kids who are stuck there, starting in kindergarten. How many rich liberals do you know who send their kids to public schools?

I started listening to Dennis Prager’s show after 9-11 because he talked about good and evil, while the liberals were whining, “Why do they hate us?” Because they’re terrorists, you idiot! Some woman actually called in and said that the way they handled a bully at her son’s school was to invite him over for a play date and that’s what we should do with bin Laden. (I”ll pause for that to sink in.)

How can people live so long and be so stupid?

No school vouchers. After all, why should parents have the right to choose their child’s school? They might actually get an education that doesn’t include political indoctrination. Maybe they would learn math instead of being told that homosexuality is just as good as heterosexuality and how can they say it’s not unless they try it? I guess pro-choice” doesn’t extend to other people’s choices. Do as I say, not as I do.

No responsibility for anything. Why should gays use condoms or stop sharing needles or be monogamous? Those things just might save their life. But that would require some advance thinking, and one things libs are not known for is thinking. No, if you get sick, the government will fix you, free. If you get pregnant because you were too stupid to use birth control, the government will provide you with an abortion. If your party decides that it wants to reroute the levees around New Orleans to save an obscure sea creature from extinction and as a result Katrina does more damage that it would have, well, you just go ahead and blame everyone in sight if it makes you feel better. Meanwhile, those primitive religious people were gathering food and essentials and inviting victims into their homes to, you know, actually HELP. All the mainstream media could do was make up stories about cannibalism and murder in the Superdome and snipers in the streets, which kept real rescue crews from getting there earlier.

Yes, I do believe in choice, and the first choice is whether or not to have sex. Is sex just as casual to you as having a cup of coffee? If it is, then skip no. 1 and go straight to no. 2 – whether or not to use birth control. Those are your choices. It’s not like you wake up in the morning and discover you’re pregnant and have no idea how it happened. No matter – just go to your friendly neighborhood abortion clinic and let them fix you up.

AIDS is one disease that could virtually be wiped out by a change in behavior. No shared needles, no risky sex, no promiscuity = no AIDS! But why should anybody actually take responsibility for their own actions? If you get sick, make the government fix you!

Three religious laws would do away with all sexual harassment – tzniut, yikhud, negiya. Tzniut means dressing (and acting) modestly, the way women used to dress before the feminist movement took the position that freedom meant dressing in skimpy clothes and flaunting their bodies, even in the workplace. Was this in order to entrap men into making improper comments so that the woman could then sue them for harassment? Well, there are an awful lot of lawyers today, and they all have to make a living, so this was a whole field just waiting for them to cultivate. I actually used to think that a woman had the right to walk down the street naked not only without being harassed, but without so much as a whistle from a spectator, who might now find himself being sued. Yep, just look at these women yelling about being “empowered” – is this really what Betty Friedan had in mind?

Yikhud means that an unrelated man and woman cannot be alone in a room with the door closed, unless, say in an office setting, it is understood that anyone is free to walk in at any time. Simple as that.

Negiya means hands off. No touching. That’s it.

How many hundreds of sexual harassment laws could be done away with if women only had the respect for themselves that they demand from others.

Real feminists are conservative – respect yourself enough not to “hook up,” don’t dress like you’re on display, don’t be afraid to be interdependent and part of a relationship and family. Sarah Palin is a real feminist, and that’s why the left was so scared of her that they spent the entire campaign personally attacking her and her family. Here is a woman who got where she is by herself – no family money, no connections, just pure determination. She has a wonderfully supportive husband that any of you pseudo-feminists would kill for. She is also not afraid to let him be the head of the household while she is head of the state – much like Margaret Thatcher’s husband, who was head of their household while she ran the country. AND she’s not afraid to be feminine. No mousy pantsuits for her. Oh, and one other tiny detail – she worked her way through school. Exactly which of your democratic saviors did that, and I’m not talking about a summer job to make spending money.

Money is their goal in life. Be single and childless so you can make more money! And because single, childless people are more often liberal because they have no one else to care about but themselves.

Don’t libs always say conservatives are only interested in money? Who gives more charity? Who volunteers more? Who are the ones who actually help after natural disasters? My family gives about 12-13% of our income every month. When we were secular we gave a small check twice a year. We are retired, but we don’t spend our days lounging around. Before we moved to Israel I volunteered weekly for two local Jewish agencies and was in the Bikur Cholim (visiting the sick) and Chevra Kadisha (preparing bodies for burial). My husband spent two mornings each week at the food bank gathering food to make packages for people who needed extra help. He was always available to help whenever anyone needed anything. The Jewish concept of tzedaka means giving charity individually. You don’t develop the feeling of responsibility for your fellow man by having the government do your job for you.

The individual is supreme, so if there’s a disaster like a hurricane, it must be someone’s fault. Libs can’t afford to admit that they can’t control the weather, so they have to blame it on someone.

Libs only associate with other libs, so they don’t understand that not everyone thinks like them. As a former lib, I understand how they think. “The way I think is reasonable, everyone should think like me, anyone who doesn’t is just wrong. The way I think is mainstream, and anyone else is on the fringe.” But there’s only a right-wing fringe, never a left-wing fringe. “How did he win? I don’t know anyone who voted for him!” What does that say about their circle of acquaintances? Thank G-d when I was changing my opinions I was also becoming more religious, so I knew other conservatives. That made it much easier for me. If you’re surrounded only by liberals, it’s much harder to change.

Doing teshuva for being in the Democratic Party. Thinking of all the things I did and believed in during my 30 years as an eligible-to-vote Democratic. The two most celebrated actions in Democratic America are the two worst in Judaism – adultery and abortion.

My sons were both in the gifted program all the way through school; that is, until the School Board decided that a program for gifted kids would hurt the self-esteem of the other kids. When my older son was in the 8th grade, his accelerated math class was dropped because the Board decided that every kid who didn’t get into the program was probably having a bad day or didn’t have a good breakfast, and so everyone should be in the gifted program. So the answer is not to raise the level of the kids who need help, but rather to lower the level of the smarter kids. Brilliant. The parents of the slower kids even complained about this and said they didn’t want their kids to be with the smarter kids because they couldn’t keep up, but the Board didn’t care what worked, only what felt good.

When the boys were in Little League in the early 90’s I saw that everyone on every team got a trophy at the end of the year. I thought that was a little strange, but cute. Then they started doing things like changing the score if one team was losing by a lot, and eventually they stopped keeping score altogether so the kids who lost wouldn’t feel bad. I heard a young man in his 20’s call in to Dennis Prager’s show and say that during all his years in school he was never allowed to lose, and now that he was out in the real world, he didn’t know what to do when things didn’t go his way, and he was always depressed.

I used to think most people kept most of the Big Ten (Commandments), but that’s not true. Just look:

1. I am the Lord your G-d who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. This means you have faith in God’s existence and that He is eternal and has complete power. Liberals believe that nobody has power over the individual.

2. You shall have no other gods before me. Prohibition of idolatry. What liberal doesn’t worship at the altar of money?

3. Do not take the name of the Lord in vain. Prohibition of blasphemy and vain oaths. G D this and G D that all the time. I swear to God…..

4. Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. Yeah, right.

5. Honor your father and mother. How many non-religious people do you know who respect their parents? I can think of four non-religious Jewish friends off the top of my head who have at least one child who doesn’t speak to them. My two boys call me every day or every other day and make sure to visit at least once a week. They are the most respectful young men you’ll ever meet.

6. Prohibition against murder. No, it does not say “Do not kill.” It says “Do not murder.” Big difference.

7. Prohibition against adultery. Yeah, right, again. Adultery and abortion are the most celebrated sins in American society.

8. Prohibition against kidnapping. This applies to one who kidnaps someone and then forces that person to work for him or sells him into slavery. OK, maybe this one qualifies.

9. Prohibition against bearing false witness. I worked in court for 17 years, so don’t try to tell me that people tell the truth in court.

10. Prohibition against coveting. This means don’t be jealous of what someone else has. How many libs follow this commandment? One? Two?

John Hawkins: February 16, 2007, www.townhall.com. Going to war is mean, so we shouldn’t do it. That person is poor and it would be nice to give him money, so the government should do it. Somebody wants to have an abortion, have a gay marriage, or wants to come into the U.S. illegally and it would be mean to say, “no,” so we should let them. I am nice because I care about global warming! Those people want to kill us? But, don’t they know we’re nice? If they did, they would like us! Bill has more toys, money than Harry, so take half of Bill’s money and give it to Harry.
The only exception to this rule is for people who aren’t liberals. They’re racists, bigots, homophobes, Nazis, fascists, etc., etc., etc. They might as well just say that conservatives have “cooties” for disagreeing with them, because there really isn’t any more thought or reasoning that goes into it than that.

Burt Prelutsky, www.townhall.com, August 20, 2007. A question that constantly plagues me is: why are there still people who long to see Communism prevail? Even back in the 1930s, when America was suffering through the Great Depression, very few American leftists packed their bags and moved to the Soviet Union. They certainly paid lip service to the so-called worker’s paradise, the Communist Eden, trying to peddle it to the masses, but they themselves, Stalin’s “useful idiots,” chose to remain here, in Chicago and New York, Philadelphia and Detroit. A few of them went over there, but they didn’t stay long. All in all, they seemed to think it was a nice place to visit, but they didn’t want to die there. So why do so many people continue to promote the vile system?
Perhaps way back in the old days when Marx and Engels were kicking ideas around, people could be excused for seeing something nice in their theories. But ever since then, wherever societies have attempted to turn theory into reality, the earth has been bathed in blood, whether it was in Russia, China, East Germany, Cambodia, Cuba, Venezuela, Hungary or North Korea; brutal tyrannies, each and every one. In none of those countries, not too surprisingly, has art, literature or science, flourished. Aside from various forms of torture, these regimes have contributed absolutely nothing to mankind, and yet the yahoos of the Left continue their incessant cheerleading.
Such extremely successful capitalists as Oliver Stone, Steven Spielberg and Michael Moore, pay court to Fidel Castro, in spite of the fact that Castro censors the Cuban press, persecutes homosexuals, imprisons AIDS victims, and executes his political foes. But, then, what else would you expect in a world in which Che Guevara posters continue to sell in the millions?

www.townhall.com, Daniel J. Flynn, June 6, 2008. Look for African Americans in the book that helped launch the sexual revolution, Alfred Kinsey’s Sexual Behavior in the Human Male. They’re not there. Look for black officers of the Students for a Democratic Society. They’re not there. Look for African Americans among Democrats in Congress. Up until Pearl Harbor, there’s one there.

Yes, that Democratic Party, whose congressional delegation voted in greater percentages against the Civil Rights Act of 1965 than its Republican counterpart. The Democratic Party, that was so transformed by the civil rights movement that, by 1972, it had to write racial quotas into its rules governing the selection of convention delegates. Bilbo, Faubus, Wallace — all the memorable political bigots were Democrats, not Republicans.

Today, a remnant of that Democratic Party survives in West Virginia Senator Robert Byrd, who can boast of having served as both Majority Leader in the Senate and Exalted Cyclops in the Ku Klux Klan. Given the long history of white supremacist attitudes harbored by so many of its officeholders and its more recent history of supporting racial preferences and quotas, the Democratic Party’s claim to Martin Luther King’s legacy of judging people by the content of their character, rather than the color of their skin, is simply absurd.

Bill Lind, an Accuracy in Academia address: If we look at it analytically, if we look at it historically, we quickly find out exactly what it is. Political Correctness is cultural Marxism. It is Marxism translated from economic into cultural terms. It is an effort that goes back not to the 1960s and the hippies and the peace movement, but back to World War I. If we compare the basic tenets of Political Correctness with classical Marxism the parallels are very obvious.
First of all, both are totalitarian ideologies. The totalitarian nature of Political Correctness is revealed nowhere more clearly than on college campuses, many of which at this point are small ivy covered North Koreas, where the student or faculty member who dares to cross any of the lines set up by the gender feminist or the homosexual-rights activists, or the local black or Hispanic group, or any of the other sainted “victims” groups that PC revolves around, quickly find themselves in judicial trouble. Within the small legal system of the college, they face formal charges – some star-chamber proceeding – and punishment. That is a little look into the future that Political Correctness intends for the nation as a whole.
Indeed, all ideologies are totalitarian because the essence of an ideology (I would note that conservatism correctly understood is not an ideology) is to take some philosophy and say on the basis of this philosophy certain things must be true – such as the whole of the history of our culture is the history of the oppression of women. Since reality contradicts that, reality must be forbidden. It must become forbidden to acknowledge the reality of our history. People must be forced to live a lie, and since people are naturally reluctant to live a lie, they naturally use their ears and eyes to look out and say, “Wait a minute. This isn’t true. I can see it isn’t true,” the power of the state must be put behind the demand to live a lie. That is why ideology invariably creates a totalitarian state.
Second, the cultural Marxism of Political Correctness, like economic Marxism, has a single factor explanation of history. Economic Marxism says that all of history is determined by ownership of means of production. Cultural Marxism, or Political Correctness, says that all history is determined by power, by which groups defined in terms of race, sex, etc., have power over which other groups. Nothing else matters. All literature, indeed, is about that. Everything in the past is about that one thing.

Third, just as in classical economic Marxism certain groups, i.e. workers and peasants, are a priori good, and other groups, i.e., the bourgeoisie and capital owners, are evil. In the cultural Marxism of Political Correctness certain groups are good – feminist women, (only feminist women, non-feminist women are deemed not to exist) blacks, Hispanics, homosexuals. These groups are determined to be “victims,” and therefore automatically good regardless of what any of them do. Similarly, white males are determined automatically to be evil, thereby becoming the equivalent of the bourgeoisie in economic Marxism.
Fourth, both economic and cultural Marxism rely on expropriation. When the classical Marxists, the communists, took over a country like Russia, they expropriated the bourgeoisie, they took away their property. Similarly, when the cultural Marxists take over a university campus, they expropriate through things like quotas for admissions. When a white student with superior qualifications is denied admittance to a college in favor of a black or Hispanic who isn’t as well qualified, the white student is expropriated. And indeed, affirmative action, in our whole society today, is a system of expropriation. White owned companies don’t get a contract because the contract is reserved for a company owned by, say, Hispanics or women. So expropriation is a principle tool for both forms of Marxism.
And finally, both have a method of analysis that automatically gives the answers they want. For the classical Marxist, it’s Marxist economics. For the cultural Marxist, it’s deconstruction. Deconstruction essentially takes any text, removes all meaning from it and re-inserts any meaning desired. So we find, for example, that all of Shakespeare is about the suppression of women, or the Bible is really about race and gender. All of these texts simply become grist for the mill, which proves that “all history is about which groups have power over which other groups.” So the parallels are very evident between the classical Marxism that we’re familiar with in the old Soviet Union and the cultural Marxism that we see today as Political Correctness.
Third, just as in classical economic Marxism certain groups, i.e. workers and peasants, are a priori good, and other groups, i.e., the bourgeoisie and capital owners, are evil. In the cultural Marxism of Political Correctness certain groups are good – feminist women, (only feminist women, non-feminist women are deemed not to exist) blacks, Hispanics, homosexuals. These groups are determined to be “victims,” and therefore automatically good regardless of what any of them do. Similarly, white males are determined automatically to be evil, thereby becoming the equivalent of the bourgeoisie in economic Marxism.

Shira again: I was a die-hard Democrat until after 9/11, when I started listening to conservative talk radio, because they were the only ones talking about good and evil and responsibility for the attacks, while the leftists (not to be confused with liberals, who are usually moderates) were asking “Why do they hate us?” as if finding an answer to that question would excuse the terrorists from killing us. I mostly listened to Dennis Prager, who is very knowledgeable Jewishly but not orthodox, and I thought he was wrong on many things. But I started looking at liberal positions and realized that I was no longer a Democrat. Since my days as an anti-Vietnam was protestor the party has moved so far to the left that I don’t even recognize it any more. I have moved slightly to the right, but basically I have the same standards I always had, but today it’s the conservatives who are closest to the way I believe. I think that most Democrats vote that way reflexively, not even thinking about why they’re doing it. This is especially true of non-religious Jews, who often raise their political beliefs to the level of a religion. Dennis Prager says – correctly — (the man is brilliant, and everything he says is in line with Jewish values) that our parents’ generation still votes for FDR, and our generation still votes against Vietnam. You know how true that is from the Vietnam debate in the last election, more than 30 years after the end of the war.

The last straw for me was in the spring of 2003, right before the war in Iraq started. There was an anti-war demonstration at San Francisco State University, which, as usual, degenerated into an anti-Israel demonstration, and then into an anti-Jewish demonstration. Some students at the Hillel there were physically attacked, and the police did nothing to stop it. I bet you didn’t read that or see it on the network news. I realized that these people want to kill me! Yes, I know what that sounds like, but the left wing that controls the party is virulently not only anti-Israel, but also anti-Semitic, They may be a minority in the party, but they make the most noise and actually have a lot of influence. Did you notice that Michael Moore sat in the seat of honor at the 2004 Democratic National Convention right next to Jimmy Carter? Do you think he’s a moderate? Go to his web site and you’ll see how moderate he is. After Joe Lieberman’s defeat in the Connecticut primary MM said that was just the beginning of payback for those Dems who don’t toe the party line, and that it was too late for John Kerry to make up for it and that Hillary better change her tune if she wants to win again. He also says that Israel is solely responsible for any problems in the Middle East. The most popular left-wing blogger, the Daily Kos, said that Lieberman can’t “get away” from his Judaism because his wife’s name is “Haggadah or Diaspora or something you eat at the Passover seder.” He also said that we should all remember that Jews only care about other Jews. Does this sound like someone who cares about human rights? Jimmy Carter is also very anti-Israel and believes that the poor Palestinians have nothing to do with their own problems.

These are not extremists who believe this – these are mainstream Democrats.

I won’t go into other details about the Democrats’ lies about the war and Bush because they’re irrelevant. All you have to know is that the terrorists want to kill us, and we don’t want them to. The Dems actually want you to believe that there were no terrorists before 2003, and they know that a great majority of Americans are either too apathetic to care what they say or are stupid enough to believe anything they see on TV. Terrorists have been killing Jews in Palestine (which, by the way, before its name was changed to Israel, was always considered the homeland of the Jewish people, never any Arabs), since we started coming back here 150 years ago. I used to take classes on the Hebrew language (very cool stuff!) at the Center for Biblical Hebrew in Scottsdale, and one night the instructor, an Israeli, was talking about a suicide bombing that had happened the week before in Turkey. He asked, what does that have to do with Israel? He said the Moslems have a plan to take over the world – they “infiltrate” (his word) into every country and set up communities, and when they’re ready, they’ll attack. Guess when he said this? It was on September 10, 2001. I called him the next day and asked him if he was clairvoyant.

The main difference between liberals and conservatives is that conservatives believe in personal responsibility and liberals believe in governmental handouts. Dems believe, why should I use birth control? If I get pregnant, I’ll have an abortion. If I want a “morning-after” pill, you should be forced (forced!) to sell it to me, regardless of your own moral beliefs. Why should I use a condom or refuse to share my needles? If I get AIDS, you fix me! Why should I bother to get a job? All you taxpayers, you support me and my 9 kids from 7 different fathers. Do you know why Katrina was such a disaster? Not just because the mayor of New Orleans and the governor of Louisiana sat on their hands and did nothing (which they did because they didn’t believe they actually had to govern – that’s the Federal government’s job), but because those who depend on welfare, which apparently was a good percentage, waited for someone else to save them. Everyone knew what was coming, and the smart ones, which also means those without their own transportation, found a way to get out. People want to forget that there were two other hurricanes at the same time, including one in the deep south, in Mississippi, because the people there took care of things themselves. (By the way, people in hurricane- and earthquake-prone areas are taught to be prepared to go at least four days without governmental help.) The left believes that if someone commits a crime, it’s never their fault. They had a bad childhood, they don’t have enough money, someone hurt their self-esteem, or whatever. Even murderers are never responsible for their crimes. Murder victims always “provoke” their killer, and rape victims “asked for it.”

There’s a new book out called Party of Death about the Dems, and that’s how I’ve been referring to them for years. Just think about it – abortion on demand, almost up to the day of delivery, euthanasia, assisted suicide. The judge in the Terry Schiavo case didn’t care about any of the legalities – he had already decided that her life just wasn’t worth living. There are some hospitals now that refuse critical care to those it considers not worth the cost. At the extreme end of the abortion debate, but quickly becoming mainstream, is a biologist – Jewish, of course – named Jeffrey Singer who believes that during the first 30 days after birth the parents should have the right to have the baby killed, for any reason.

I’ll just briefly touch on the Dems’ claim that religious people don’t believe in science. It’s actually the Dems themselves who refuse to accept scientific proof that conflicts with their agenda. The stem-cell debate is nothing more than an attack on religion, and it’s very simple to prove. The facts are that embryonic stem-cell research so far has shown no positive results in curing any disease. All the progress is being made in research using adult stem cells. There is no “ban” on any kind of research – the only ban is on federal funding for embryonic stem-cell research. Private researchers can do what they want, but they’re only working with adult stem cells because that’s what shows the most promise. So the Dems are demanding that Congress fund embryonic stem-cell research because that’s the only way they can get any money for it. But why specifically do they want embryonic stem cells, which can only be used if embryos are destroyed? Because their real agenda is doing whatever will work toward destroying religion. And here’s the latest proof of that: Scientists found a way to make use of embryonic stem cells without actually harming the embryo (Sorry; my brain fog makes me forget some of the details). A couple of Senators introduced a bill that would allow government funding for this kind of research, which seemed like a compromise everyone could live it, and it passed unanimously. But by the time it got to the House, Democratic loudmouths had talked enough of their spineless followers into voting against it, and it failed. So why were the Dems against this? Because religious people have no problem with this research! There’s also the fact that the Dems wanted this to fail so they could blame Bush, because most people don’t pay close enough attention to know what really happened.

They also fail in their claim that, as Al Gore put it, the “debate on global warming is over.” All he means is that it’s over in his mind, and anyone who disagrees with him should be shouted down. I’m sure you can look on Google under “global warming” and you’ll see that this story goes in cycles. Thirty years ago, when I was in college, the scare was global cooling, and I remember all the hysteria about the coming ice age. Thirty years before that it was global warming, and 30 years before that, global cooling again.

Just to digress a little bit, here is something interesting. A research paper that won a Hebrew University teachers’ committee prize finds that the lack of IDF rapes of Palestinian women is designed to serve a political purpose.
The abstract of the paper, authored by doctoral candidate Tal Nitzan, notes that the paper shows that “the lack of organized military rape is an alternate way of realizing [particular] political goals.”
The next sentence delineates the particular goals that are realized in this manner: “In the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, it can be seen that the lack of military rape merely strengthens the ethnic boundaries and clarifies the inter-ethnic differences – just as organized military rape would have done.”
The paper further theorizes that Arab women in Judea and Samaria are not raped by IDF soldiers because the women are de-humanized in the soldiers’ eyes. (And other rape victims are humanized?)
The paper was published by the Hebrew University’s Shaine Center, based on the recommendation of a Hebrew University professors’ committee headed by Dr. Zali Gurevitch.
“I do not have the entire text in front of me,” Gurevitch said, when contacted by Arutz-7, “and I don’t think we can jump to conclusions based on partial sentences, but I can say the following: This was a very serious paper that asked two important questions: Is the relative lack of IDF rapes a noteworthy phenomenon, and if so, why is it that there are so few IDF rapes when in similar situations around the world, rape is much more common?”
Observers and Academia
Arutz-7: “Can’t it just be that Israeli soldiers come from a culture that very much condemns rape? And why not mention the much-touted ‘purity of arms,’ i.e., the high moral conduct, of the Israeli Army?”
Gurevitch said that observers do not have the right to demand a particular explanation to a given phenomenon. He said that the researcher had done a serious job, based on interviews with 25 soldiers and other accounts, and that the right-wing should not jump to the conclusion that this was simply another “secular, left-wing” generality.
Makor Rishon editor Amnon Lord, who first publicized the story, wrote that not only did researcher Nitzan not consider Jewish tradition as an explanation, but neither did she “raise the possibility that her initial assumption – namely, that the situation in Judea and Samaria is just like any other situation of conquest – may be wrong.”
Demographic Fears
Nitzan’s paper did, however, give much space to the explanation that the Israeli soldiers refrained from rape out of demographic considerations. She explained at length how fearful the Jewish population is of the growing Arab population, and how in cases of wartime rape, the baby is generally assumed to be of the mother’s nationality.
“It is noteworthy,” Lord concludes, “that Palestinian propaganda around the world frequently accuses Israelis of murder and rape. Such that this situation is unique: An army is found blameworthy of rape, and is also blameworthy of not raping.”

Shira again: Jewish women did not participate in the sin of the Golden Calf. They did not offer their jewelry to be used to make the idol; their husbands ripped their earrings out of their ears. Because of their loyalty to Hashem, they were given Rosh Hodesh as a women’s holiday. They also did not support the spies (Numbers, chapter 13) who were sent to scout out the land and came back with a report that said that the inhabitants were too strong to conquer. This was the reason that every man over 20 years old had to die in the desert and was not allowed to enter the land. This punishment did not apply to the women. They lived out their natural life span, and those who were alive when the Israelites crossed over into the Promised Land were able to enter the land.

The daughters of Zelophehad (Numbers, chapter 27) wanted their father’s portion of the land, not because they were feminists, but because they didn’t want their father’s name to be lost when the inheritance was handed out. They were eager to enter the land so they could do the mitzvahs that can only be done in the land, while the men wanted to stay in the desert where everything was given to them. When Hashem told Moshe to send the spies, He said almost sarcastically that men would fail the mission, but if he had sent women they would succeed. In the Talmud the daughters of Zelophehad are called wise and righteous women.

The Talmud says that if a man desires a son, the woman must contribute seed first, which could mean that after ovulation the chances of a son being born are greater, but the Zohar implies that it means that the man must sexually satisfy his wife first. (!)

The Talmud also says that physical contact is necessary during sexual intercourse and that if a man refuses to disrobe, his wife has grounds for divorce. It says, “After all, we are not Persians.” (This for my cousin who’s married to an Iranian.)

The Talmud says (quoted in Let’s Face It by Zipporah Heller), “What is a wife for? A man brings home wheat, but he can’t eat wheat. He brings home flax, but he can’t wear flax. A woman turns wheat into bread, flax into a garment. She stands him on his feet and brings light into his eyes.”

There are many references in the Talmud and Zohar about the spiritual superiority of women. Men MUST be reincarnated (reincarnation is a central Jewish belief) because they always have things to correct from past lives, while women only have to come back if they want to help the man make his correction. Men have to do so many more mitzvahs than women because every mitzvah helps the man get up to the level he needs to be at to make his tikun (correction). Women are naturally at that level from the beginning. Think of it like a mother and young son. He struggles in school to get good grades, and all she does is direct him because she already knows what he’s first learning. (I actually do tell my husband when he gets into a habit that interferes with him getting where I know he wants to go spiritually, and sometimes he even makes adjustments.)

This is also the reason that some of the morning blessings might seem offensive to the uninformed. We say “Blessed are you, Lord our G-d, who has not made me a gentile” because gentiles are only required to keep seven mitzvahs (The Seven Mitzvahs of the Sons of Noah) which are those necessary for a basic civilization – don’t murder, no sexual immorality, don’t tear a limb from a living animal, set up courts of law, don’t steal, no blasphemy and no idol worship. The next blessing thanks G-d for “not making me a slave,” referring to Jewish indentured servants who are required to do more mitzvahs than gentiles but less than free Jews. The next one men say to thank G-d “for not making me a woman” (women say “who has made me according to his will”) since women are exempt from any mitzvah that has to be done at a particular time, because their responsibilities in the home are more important.

Pay attention to that last point. Praying to G-d is pretty important, right? Yet women are exempt from regular prayers that need to be done at a particular time because keeping a Jewish home and raising Jewish children are MORE IMPORTANT than speaking to G-d.

Being counted in a minyan and getting an aliyah are not honors, they are obligations, which men need and women don’t. Wearing tefillin is obligatory for men. Women can wear them if they want to. Most orthodox women pray every day, but I’ve only met one who puts on tefillin.

Judaism is a family-centered religion, so raising children and running a home are not worthless tasks; they are the things without which Judaism would not survive. A single man may have a place to live, but he doesn’t have a home until he marries. A man can learn Torah all day, but without a wife to keep a Jewish home and raise Jewish children, he has nothing that will last.

There are many references in the Talmud and the writings of the sages to the fact that the only reason the Jews have survived this long is because of the merit of the righteous Jewish women, and it is also the merit of the righteous women that will bring the Messiah.

When my husband went to Israel in March 2006 to study with his rabbi, who is a kabbalist (a real one), I asked him to ask the rabbi to do something to help my friend, who has been dealing with her vicious ex-husband for years. I was thinking in terms of an amulet or some kind of kabbalistic thing. I was surprised when the rabbi said to get ten or more women together to pray for her. He said there is nothing more powerful than a minyan (prayer group of ten) of women praying together.

People like to say that Judaism treats women like second-class citizens, but these people are sadly misinformed, to say the least. Notice how secular women dress compared to how religious women dress, and you’ll see this is ridiculous. Secular women dress to show off their bodies – does this cause men to look at them with respect? If a woman truly wants to be appreciated for her mind, why would she put herself on display?

My yeshiva-bochur son and I were walking in the Old City and passed a women’s yeshiva, Machon Roni. He said that’s one of the places where women learn Gemara. He also said that women get it right away, much easier than men, and it’s actually documented. There is a spiritual reason for this, and that is that men have a mitzvah to learn Gemara, so the yetzer hara (evil inclination) tries to keep them from learning, but since women have the option but not the obligation to learn, the yetzer hara doesn’t bother them about it and they are able to rely on their natural intelligence.

None of this is to say that women don’t have to keep working on themselves too, but I think it just comes naturally to us. Many of the things that my husband learns about character improvement are things that I already knew just from life. Women are created with the temperament to raise a family, so they already know about things like patience and tact. (Whether they use that knowledge is something else.)

By the way, I think this is the main argument against same-sex marriage. Men and woman ARE different, no matter what the left thinks, and children need the influence of both. G-d is part justice and part mercy, and the world couldn’t exist if He was all of one and none of the other, and in the same way a child is better off with both feminine and masculine influences. (Of course this doesn’t apply in every single case.)

Everyone has a mission to accomplish here on earth, which can only be completed when we have perfected our souls by refining our character traits. In traditional Judaism this is called Mussar, and it’s also what’s necessary to study kabbalah. This means things like learning to control your anger; not speaking lashon hara (evil speech, or gossip); being humble; treating people with dignity; giving tzedakah (charity); being honest in both personal and business affairs. Everything that happens is a test, and you pass or fail, so to speak, by how you react. It’s very important to learn to be proactive and not reactive. All these things also make your life better, improve your relationships and give you inner peace and security. Completing your mission is called tikun ha’nefesh, or correction of the soul.

If at the end of your physical life you haven’t quite done the job, you get another chance to come back and try again, and again, until you get it right. The kabbalists say that before you come back down here, you actually plan your own life, complete with “wake-up calls” that alert you if you’re going down the wrong path. The first wake-up call could be mild, like a minor car accident with no injuries or an annoying but not serious illness like I have (fibromyalgia, and I know many people have it worse than I do), and you would hopefully recognize it as a wake-up call and make any necessary changes. (I am always trying to improve myself, and my fibro has been consistently improving). If you don’t get the message, the next wake-up call will be harsher. You pick your own parents and siblings and set your life up to give you the best chance to make your tikun. Your birthdate also has to do with tikun, because each sign has certain traits that you’re born with; not positive or negative, just things that you have to deal with. (Of course, when you come down here you don’t remember any of that.) Men have to come back, but women can choose to give it another try either to help the men in their life make their own tikun or to see if they can reach a higher level, or they can stay where they are. (Do you want to take your prize now or try for the next level?)

This made so much sense to me when I heard it, because even though I think I’m a pretty good mother, my two sons are so much farther along spiritually than I could have hoped. I told them both that I think they picked the parents they did because they just needed a safe place to grow up in, and then they would be ready to go on and do their own thing. (They liked that a lot, and sometimes when they thank me for being a good mother I thank them for picking me.)

Sometimes people are taken out of the “game” of life early if they are so far off the path that staying here longer would harm their neshama (higher soul), or sometimes their neshama is so unhappy being down here that they have to leave.

Everyone is judged when they get to the next level, not so much by Hashem (G-d) as by their own actions, which are all reviewed for you. Nearly everyone has to go through a cleansing for anywhere up to 12 months. The reason we say kaddish (prayer for the dead) for a parent for 11 months after their death is that we want to believe that they were not so bad as to need a full 12-month cleansing. After that your reward waits for you. The most evil people cannot be cleansed; they are punished with “karais” or being completely cut off from spiritual existence. Other evil people get their whole reward in this life and none in the next, which can explain why you might see rich, successful bad guys and wonder why they have it so good.

Before you start worrying about a future punishment, you should also know that every difficulty you go through here on earth takes away from your punishment in the next world. The sages say that if you reach into your pocket looking for a dime and pull out a nickel instead and have to reach in your pocket again, even that is a kapparah (atonement). I hear this all the time. A friend of mine went shopping with three of her children, bought several things for them and for her, gave some of the bags to the older kids with her, and when she got home noticed that those bags had gotten lost. Instead of bitching and moaning or getting mad at the kids, she just shrugged her shoulders and said, “Kapparah,” and then she didn’t think about it any more. I think this view is a tremendous gift to those who have faith.

Sometimes a neshama might only need to come back for a short time to finish their tikun, which could explain why babies and young children die or why they have serious health problems. My nephew and his wife had a baby with profound cerebral palsy. He couldn’t do anything except follow you with his eyes. He required 24-hour care, including being fed through a tube and having his lungs suctioned several times a day, and he died when he was 8. These parents never said, Why us? They just said, He’s here, and accepted everything. Neither of them was exactly a mother’s dream when they were younger, but they turned into wonderful parents. I was explaining some of this to my niece and I said that a child like this would be born to parents who needed to learn caring and compassion, and she said that that was exactly her brother and sister-in-law. The child may have had to make up for a previous life filled with lashon hara and slander, so he spent this life unable to talk. Everything works as a package.

I heard a homosexual call into a radio show and ask, “Why would G-d make me gay and then not allow me to act on it?” I believe the religious answer would be that he needs to make up for some sexual immorality in a previous life, so he needs to overcome this temptation, just as other unhealthy inclinations need to be controlled or overcome. There are actually programs in Israel that have succeeded in “reorienting,” for lack of a better word, gays to become straight and get married. This only works, though, if the person knows being gay is not the right way to be. This of course would not work in America, where the left starts indoctrinating children as early as kindergarten that being gay is actually superior to being straight. Lesbianism is not looked at the same way because the sin with gay men is known as “spilling seed,” but nevertheless it’s not the way to be. And though the Torah calls homosexual sex an abomination, that doesn’t apply to the people themselves. If a gay man could not bring himself to marry a woman and decided to remain celibate, he would not be violating this commandment.

Explain why it’s not necessary to be religious “in this day and age” with a reason that doesn’t boil down to “I don’t want to do it.”

Since we believe that the soul continues its existence in another dimension, it follows that they can contact us at times. Generally the recipient has to be in a frame of mind suitable to receive a message, which I am not and never have been, but I have had contact with my late husband and my parents through a clairvoyant. Her descriptions were so specific and the messages so clear that I know they were real. They are all happy and feel like a kid in a candy store because of all the possibilities. You can be in more than one place at a time – just think it, and there you are. Believing in this makes my life so much less stressful. I think life without reincarnation just doesn’t make sense, especially if you believe in G-d. What would be the reason to just have one life to live, without having to answer for your actions? As Albert Einstein said once he finally had run out of excuses not to believe in a Creator, “G-d does not play dice with the universe.”