העורך Editor

Check out Kissinger’s Shadow: The Long Reach of America’s Most Controversial Statesman

Amazon blurb:

A new account of America’s most controversial diplomat that moves beyond praise or condemnation to reveal Kissinger as the architect of America’s current imperial stance

In his fascinating new book Kissinger’s Shadow, acclaimed historian Greg Grandin argues that to understand the crisis of contemporary America―its never-ending wars abroad and political polarization at home―we have to understand Henry Kissinger.

Examining Kissinger’s own writings, as well as a wealth of newly declassified documents, Grandin reveals how Richard Nixon’s top foreign policy advisor, even as he was presiding over defeat in Vietnam and a disastrous, secret, and illegal war in Cambodia, was helping to revive a militarized version of American exceptionalism centered on an imperial presidency. Believing that reality could be bent to his will, insisting that intuition is more important in determining policy than hard facts, and vowing that past mistakes should never hinder future bold action, Kissinger anticipated, even enabled, the ascendance of the neoconservative idealists who took America into crippling wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Going beyond accounts focusing either on Kissinger’s crimes or accomplishments, Grandin offers a compelling new interpretation of the diplomat’s continuing influence on how the United States views its role in the world.

Find reviews and more on Amazon here.

Informing your opponent what he really feels is in extremely poor taste, but they sure do it to us, so let’s return the favor!

Right, so the simple explanation of those who refuse to acknowledge momentous, providential changes is something like high time-preference: יען כי מאס העם הזה את מי השלח ההלכים לאט.

But perhaps it’s more than that. Mild-mannered folks prefer matters stay on an even keel. Any excitement is bad for them, per Sarah Imeinu hearing of Akedas Yitzchak.

Kesubos 62a:

אמר רב אנחה שוברת חצי גופו של אדם שנאמר ואתה בן אדם האנח בשברון מתנים ובמרירות תאנח ורבי יוחנן אמר אף כל גופו של אדם שנאמר והיה כי יאמרו אליך על מה אתה נאנח ואמרת אל שמועה כי באה ונמס כל לב ורפו כל ידים וכהתה כל רוח וכל ברכים תלכנה מים ורבי יוחנן נמי הכתיב בשברון מתנים ההיא דכי מתחלא ממתנים מתחלא ורב נמי הכתי’ ונמס כל לב ורפו כל ידים וכהתה כל רוח שאני שמועה דבית המקדש דתקיפא טובא ההוא ישראל ועובד כוכבים דהוו קאזלי באורחא בהדי הדדי לא אימצי עובד כוכבים לסגויי בהדי ישראל אדכריה חורבן בית המקדש נגיד ואיתנח ואפילו הכי לא אימצי עובד כוכבים לסגויי בהדיה אמר ליה לאו אמריתו אנחה שוברת חצי גופו של אדם אמר ליה ה”מ מילתא חדתי אבל הא דשנן בה לא דאמרי אינשי דמלפי תכלי לא בהתה.

Anti-Zionists don’t wish to feel events so close to heart. Better to feel nothing at all.

Collected from Rothbard A to Z:

… government, unlike private enterprise, is not in the business of seeking profits or trying to avoid losses. Far from eager to court the consumer, government officials invariably regard consumers as an annoying intrusion and as “wasteful” users of “their” (government’s) scarce resources. Governments are invariably at war with their consumers.

Businesses are always eager for consumers to buy their product or service. On the free market, the consumer is king or queen and the “providers” are always trying to make profits and gain customers by serving them well. But when government operates a service, the consumer is transmuted into a pain-in-the-neck, a “wasteful” user-up of scarce social resources. Whereas the free market is a peaceful cooperative place where everyone benefits and no one loses; when government supplies the product or service, every consumer is treated as using a resource only at the expense of his fellow men. The “public service” arena, and not the free market, is the dog-eat-dog jungle.

… the private sector will always be more efficient than the governmental because income in the private sector is only a function of efficient service to the consumers. The more efficient that service, the higher the income and profits. In the government sector, in contrast, income is unrelated to efficiency or service to the consumer.

Income is extracted coercively from the taxpayers (or, by inflation, from the pockets of consumers). In the government sector, the consumer is not someone to be served and courted; he or she is an unwelcome “waster” of scarce resources owned or controlled by the bureaucracy.