מי מתנדב לכתוב ‘פירוש’ על חזון איש – אמונה ובטחון?

“לב אליהו” – הרב אליהו לופיאן על בראשית, שנת תשס”ה עמוד 38:

“רבנו זלה”ה לא הרשה לבחורים ללמוד בספר אמונה ובטחון של מרן בעל ה”חזון איש” זלה”ה, בטענה שיש שם קטעים שאין מפרשים אותם כראוי, וזה עלול להביא רפיון בלימוד המוסר.”

אם גם הרב בנימין זילבר זצ”ל, מחבר ספר “תורת היראה”, לא הבין, איזה בחור יצליח לפרש “כראוי”…?

Yay! Jews Abandoning Their Faith in Israeli Politicians!

Hamodia delivers the wonderful news:

As the Knesset prepares to return to work for its winter session, a new poll on politics by the University of Haifa shows that Israelis have less faith in their legislators in more than half a decade. Fifty-six percent of Israelis have “little faith” in Knesset members, while only 6 percent believe that MKs can be relied upon to carry out their promises.

The poll, part of the University’s 18th annual measure of the effectiveness of public servants, included 666 participants, representative of the country’s population. The poll asked participants to rate politicians, policies, parties and institutions on a measure of 1 to 5, with 1 indicating a poor opinion of the individual or institution. The ratings indicated an increasing dissatisfaction with politics in general. The “faith rating” this year was 2.05, down from 2.21 in 2016, and 2.45 in 2013. Overall, 56 percent of Israelis said they were dissatisfied with politics in general and had little faith in the process, while 38 percent said they had “moderate faith” in the process. Only 6 percent gave the process high ratings.

The same result held for Israelis’ opinions of political parties in general. Faith in parties to fulfill their promises is at an all-time low of 1.99, with again only 6 percent of Israelis expressing the belief that parties can be relied upon to keep their word.

Why Does the State of Israel Both Encourage Smartphones for Youth and Campaign Against Their Use? Simple.

Sounds schizophrenic. Does the right hand not know what the left hand is doing?

But let’s go back in history: Is literacy because of public schooling?

The evidence shows … that the majority of people in the first half of the nineteenth century did become literate (in the technical sense) largely by their own efforts. Moreover, if the government played any role at all in this sphere it was one of saboteur!

As long as the first few years of the nineteenth century it was a subject for government complaint that the ordinary people had become literate. For the government feared that too many people were developing the “wrong” uses of literacy by belonging to secret “corresponding societies” and by reading seditious pamphlets. Far from subsidising literacy, the early nineteenth-century English governments placed severe taxes on paper in order to discourage the exercise of the public’s reading and writing abilities.

— E.G. West, Education and the State [1965]

Gary North:

For over 200 years, the U.S. government has imposed quotas on the import of sugar into the United States. This has allowed domestic sugar producers the ability to charge more for sugar. Americans consume less sugar.

Don’t think of this as cronyism. Don’t think of this as crony capitalism. Think of this as a government program to fight tooth decay.

Then the government provides subsidies to the sugar industry. Think of this as a way to keep the industry healthy, and dentists, too.

…

One estimate of what Americans pay extra to keep the sugar industry happy is $2.4 billion a year. Maybe $1.4 billion goes to the sugar barons.

Sugar farmers donate $3.6 million to campaigns.

When you can buy $1.4 billion in benefits for $3.6 million in payoffs — excuse me, democratic donations — you have a sweetheart deal.

Murray Rothbard, For a New Liberty chapter 5:

It is characteristic of our statist trend that, when general indignation against unions led to the Taft-Hartley Act of 1947, the government did not repeal any of these special privileges. Instead, it added special restrictions upon unions to limit the power which the government itself had created.

Given a choice, the natural tendency of the State is to add to its power, not to cut it down; and so we have the peculiar situation of the government first building up unions and then howling for restrictions against their power. This is reminiscent of the American farm programs, in which one branch of the Department of Agriculture pays farmers to restrict their production, while another branch of the same agency pays them to increase their productivity. Irrational, surely, from the point of view of the consumers and the taxpayers, but perfectly rational from the point of view of the subsidized farmers and of the growing power of the bureaucracy. Similarly, the government’s seemingly contradictory policy on unions serves, first, to aggrandize the power of government over labor relations, and second, to foster a suitably integrated and Establishment-minded unionism as junior partner in government’s role over the economy.

You get the point.