If Only We Had Better Citizens… (yeah, right)

W. F. Buckley said:

“The best defense against usurpatory government is an assertive citizenry.”

We hear the same sentiment uttered countless times by countless individuals.

I would change it to this, instead:

“The best psychological defense against grasping the hard fact all government is ever more usurpatory, as known from all of history, is pretending the solution is one which has (almost) never existed in known history: an assertive citizenry”

Don’t Push Kabbalah for Everyone!

Chok Yaakov O.C. 489:11 regarding Sefiras Ha’omer applies year round: כבוד אלקים הסתר דבר
Here are the two relevant pages from the most readable edition on HebrewBooks:

I’m Removing the FaceBook ‘Share’ Button – And Why

I’m sorry if this causes FaceBook’s shares to drop (get it?), but I’m removing the nifty button to “share” and “like” our articles on readers’ FaceBook accounts.

But why?

Yes, readers were using it, but I realized FaceBook can’t be effectively filtered from obscenities. The user has no control over what pictures he is shown, and if he blocks all photos, he misses the overlaid text, which is half of the text. So, I don’t want to have any part of that service.