The constitutional guarantee of freedom of religion is not the issue in this situation. It is a Trojan horse that misses the point, either deliberately or by design.

The issue on the Mosque’s location is about sensitivity, empathy and simple decency. There is a compact among civilized people that demands a certain level of regard for the feelings of others. We do not become raucous and loud and impolite during a funeral ceremony. We do not spit on the floors of the homes of our friends. We do not deliberately bump into people when walking in the street and normally say “excuse me” when we accidentally interfere with other people’s movement. We do not throw our garbage out of windows. We have been taught to say “please” and “thank you” and have a special regard for the handicapped and infirm.

Whether you dub such conduct basic etiquette, or regard for the feelings of others or simple compassion, we could not exist as a civilized society without such rules of conduct. Most of us understand the motives behind outreach and forgiveness. And we do understand the meaning of that time honored cliché that “time heals all wounds.”

The idea of building a mosque celebrating the Muslim religion and as a place of worship and a community center seems on the surface benign and forgiving, an outreach that underscores American diversity and good fellowship.

The problem is that the time for healing is not over. For those who lost loved ones in the horror of the Ground Zero attack it is much too soon for forgiveness. Besides, we know who carried out this horror. Their motives are not in doubt. They believed that their Muslim faith commanded them to destroy the infidel, the non-believer, the other, those who do not endorse their orthodox concept that is at the heart of strict adherence to the principles of radical Muslim teachings.

Americans are used to orthodoxy. All religions have strict adherents who believe that their way is the only way to salvation. They proselytize, separate themselves from the mainstream and insist on strict rules of dress, diet and ritual. It is part of the American character to tolerate such conduct, often reluctantly, sometimes loudly disparaging those who practice what seems to them odd, even weird.

They don’t however kill innocent people to make their point.

Not in today’s supposedly enlightened world. Any adherent to a religion who condones, accepts or ignores such a tactic, especially those who worship under a mainstream religious umbrella, run the risk of putting their entire religion under suspicion that it might endorse such practices.

Rather than build a physical plant to worship their God, American Muslims who detest such inhuman acts would be far better served to openly and loudly protest, unambiguously and repetitively, that they reject radicalization of their religion by their opposition to killing apostates, stoning women for adultery, calling Jews “pigs and monkeys”, denying the Holocaust, supporting terrorist organizations like Hamas and Hezbollah, challenging those who cite America for being complicit in causing terrorist acts against it and for declaring war on non-Muslims who refuse to convert and other comments and practices that are not compatible with our American national values like Sharia.

Indeed such refutations should be the mantra of American Muslims in their quest for separation from the actions and horrors of their co-religionists. The idea that Americans are Islamophobes is absurd. We are a welcoming people, mature in our respect for diversity. We have learned many hard lessons in our history about the sins of bias and conformity.

All we ask is that our laws are obeyed and our fellow citizens treat each other with respect, compassion, understanding and dignity, are alert to the sensitivity of others and we do not have to live in fear that if we do not comply with radical Muslim orthodoxies we are in danger of being slaughtered.

Is that too much to ask?

We are fighting two wars in two Muslim countries, where radical Muslims are dedicated to killing and maiming our soldiers who have come to the aid of their fellow Muslims who have been brutalized by their dictatorial rulers. In many of these Muslim countries, including those of our alleged allies, Christians are treated with disdain and persecuted and Jews are, quite literally, prohibited.

Ironically, we are spending billions to protect ourselves from being slaughtered by Muslim fanatics. We, the most tolerant nation on earth, who welcome streams of legal immigrants and naively believe that if we do unto others nicely, they will do the same to us.

The fact is that we are becoming a gullible nation of liars. Mostly, we lie to ourselves. Just think of all the treasure and lives we are expending to prevent Jihadist atrocities within our borders. Muslim fanatics have made us unsafe. All of us, Muslims included, have to be searched at airports, watched by cameras, open to inspection everywhere. Even our domestic military bases are unsafe from trigger happy Jihadist wannabes. We live in what amounts to a virtual barbed wire enclosure to protect us from whom? No answer required. Worse, it is deemed politically incorrect to “profile” the potential perpetrators.

I suppose such remarks will be dubbed offensive, perhaps racist even by those who believe in the golden rule aforementioned. I was brought up in the era when “tolerance” was the operative word and we were taught to be kindly and accepting of all people and all religions in this vast wonderful American melting pot.

There was one virtue most of us believed in implicitly and that was empathy, meaning the ability to identify with and understand another person’s feelings and difficulties. Yes, it is true that not everyone understood nor practiced empathy. Many of our citizens were certainly abused by people who lacked empathy. No need here to list all those of different races, religions and persuasions who were treated badly by fellow citizens who lacked empathy.

There are those among us who continue to have a deficit in this essential characteristic although we have come a long way in our education about the meaning and practice of empathy.

Americans have spent two plus centuries learning to be empathetic. It is the bedrock of our communal enterprise. Indeed, without empathy for others among us, we can hardly lay claim to being a democratic state.

Which brings me to the core of this essay. Those Muslims who are pushing to build a mosque in the shadow of ground zero have no empathy. And those who support this project have no understanding of the meaning of empathy.

This controversy has nothing whatever to do with religious freedom or legality. There are mosques all over America, and lots of them in New York. Nor does it have anything to do with racism or religious discrimination or the separation of church and state. We revel in the constitutional guarantee that we are free to practice whatever faith we choose. And that applies equally to our Muslim citizens.

We assume that most American Muslims must, or should be, embarrassed by their jihadist co-religionists who are currently terrorizing the world as they call for the creation of a religious dictatorship controlled by those who ardently and fanatically practice their version of the Muslim religion.

Surely one can’t support such an outcome if one is truly a dedicated American citizen who believes wholeheartedly in our constitutional democracy. Ask our non-Muslim neighbors if they would like to live under such an arrangement proposed by fanatical Jihadists. Indeed, ask our Muslim neighbors if they would like to live under a Muslim religious dictatorship, including those maintained by our so-called allies among the Muslim nations. To most the answer would be a resounding negative.

The promoters of this mosque near the killing fields of ground zero have no empathy. They do not understand its meaning. It would be like placing a Nazi flag, with its detestable swastika symbol, among the colors displayed in the allied cemeteries of Normandy. Some would attempt to make the case that it would be a gesture of forgiveness. The very idea chills my soul.

Must we surrender to people who lack empathy? Must those who lost loved ones in the brutal attack on the World Trade Center be forced to relive the horror by having their sacred pyre insulted by those whose co-religionist undoubtedly cried Al-Akbar as they deliberately plunged their airplanes into the Trade Center skyscrapers.

One could suspect that the promoters of this travesty have another agenda but that is a suspicion fraught with conspiratorial implications. Where, for example, will the money come from to build this mosque? Is it meant to be a political statement? The promoters argue that this project is an act of apology and reconciliation. If so, it is far far too soon to make such a gesture. Why can’t the grieving of those who lost loved ones in that horror be respected. The wounds are too recent, too raw, too painful. The project insults their loss.

What makes it doubly insensitive is the cackling self-righteousness of our politicians and their coteries of sycophants who, it should be obvious, suffer from an empathy deficit as well.

Can’t these clueless fools imagine the outrage and insult experienced by anyone who lost a loved child, parent or spouse in this horror? Are there any among them who have experienced this loss?

Human decency demands a reversal of this insensitive and indecent proposal. Now, if ever, is not the time.

I’m not talking about my present “me” but my “me” of more than half a century ago when I was writing a column entitled “Pepper on the Side” for a weekly newspaper in Long Island of which I was the editor.

I was in my early twenties, filled up to the brim with my know-it-all self, on a narcissistic binge that pushed me to believe that the sun rose and set on my brilliance, insight and wisdom. I was intoxicated with the power of my words which sailed out weekly to what I believed was a readership that hung on my every word.

What Noonan wrote about in her column was the depressing lack of “adult wisdom” that had been cast aside in recent years by younger people who were now in charge of making all the crucial decisions in government and in every other walk of life.

Her implication was mostly political, since she was despairing of the recent course of depressing events now afflicting the country. But it was her larger message that I took personally.

In the column, for example, she cites the imaginary advice of an older man to a younger man.

“Son,” she wrote in the voice of the older man, “being an enraged, profane, unmoderated, unmediated, hit-loving, trash-talking rage monkey is no way to go through life.” Whack, whack on the exposed tush of the old me.

What Peggy saw was millions upon millions of old “mes” parading around in the government, on the internet, shouting through their technological bullhorns, raging everywhere, on social networking sites, wading in the fetid swamp of the infinite blogosphere, fulminating on op-ed columns, on TV, YouTube and videos and everywhere that talking head pontificators opine in loud and ugly rants as if they truly knew what they were talking about.

What it amounts to is an insane tsunami of bullshit, putrefying the air from the White House, the Halls of Congress, the media, the Internet in a running open sewer of garbage, “unmoderated and unmediated”.

Don’t you just love the way Peggy put it?

The operative word is “change”, change everything, toss away the wise, the good, the proven, bludgeon those grey-haired fools who can be conveniently blamed for all those rotten decisions that have brought us to despair and on the verge of a financial precipice and in the bullseye of a terrorist madness that could atomize us into radioactive dust.

Does one detect the old “me” in this diatribe?

What Peggy means is that the balance between the old and the young is out of sync in every field of endeavor that “change” requires. She implies that intelligent decisions are made not by youthful impatience alone, but tempered with hard experience and historical insight.

Part of the problem may be that the divide between the generations has become too wide to effectively bridge. The speed of technological development has left many of the older generation technologically illiterate, relegated to perceived irrelevance by those brought up on computers who are now leading the charge in the digital revolution.

Therefore in the mind of the younger hotshots those of us without the technological skills are therefore just plain irrelevant and stupid and shunted aside when important life changing decisions must be made.

Of course, it can be argued that it is the young that have brought us these technological advances. Think Google, Microsoft, Apple, Amazon, Twitter, Facebook and on and on.

Have all of these truly amazing technological advances made it a better world? You be the judge? As the argument goes: Aren’t we living longer? You bet. But are we living better?

I believe what Peggy was getting at, perhaps subconsciously, is that technological change does not trump human nature, which has remained constant and consistent throughout the ages. Why not heed the lessons of those who have traveled a long distance on the rocky road of life? This appears to be the central question at the heart of her essay.

Do we simply obliterate the old values altogether and superimpose totally new and untested changes on our society. What do we really want in terms of a future for our progeny?

Yes, my old me deserves the rebuke Peggy has perpetrated through her words. I hope that the old me did not do any terrible harm. Luckily, I self-corrected sometime later when I felt the sting of experience affirm the truth that I was a hot-headed immature semi-idiot at the time. But then, I was a rookie in life. Thankfully, I didn’t have my hands on any of the levers of power.

It is not often that one finds a wise head embedded in our overwrought media. Her column is worth a hard look.

Judging by the lynch mob of nations, commentators and bloggers that have been moved to condemn Israel for its “outrageous, disproportionate, barbaric and savage response” against a gaggle of alleged well-meaning “peace activists” Thomas’s remarks might be characterized as “appropriate, accurate and truthful.”

How dare these pesky Jews protect themselves from the humane, just and peace loving people in Gaza whose founding documents vow to destroy the Jewish state and whose rocket attacks on Israel territory are ignored by the very people who allege their peacemaking activism and support Gaza’s assaults on Israel? Indeed, is this the prevailing opinion of most of the countries of the world? God help us.

Now that the present American administration has shown its not quite subtle disdain for the Jewish state, the world has nothing to fear from displaying what they really feel about those stiff-necked annoying Jews. Imagine, on a planet of six and one half billion people, thirteen million Jews, less than half in Israel, are now cited as the source of all injustice and the major threat to peace everywhere.

If all the Jews of Israel, as Helen Thomas fondly wishes, were to suddenly disappear from Israel and go back to Poland and Germany, the world will be a better place. Wouldn’t it? Peace would reign. And, of course, the Poles and the Germans would welcome them with open arms. Indeed, they are just panting to have their Jews back.

By Helen’s lights, people would then join hands and dance together in peace and prosperity.

Shiites would embrace Sunnis, Turks would no longer murder Kurds, Christian Cyprus would no longer fear for their total island takeover by the Turks, Iran would cease its nuclear ambitions, the Taliban would surrender their arms, Lebanon would allow their Palestinians to leave their isolated camps, Afghans would forego corruption, the Indians and Pakistanis will no longer fight over Kashmir, the refugees of Darfur would return to their villages, the Chechen Muslims and the Russians would kiss and makeup, Somalia would no longer harbor pirates,  combat all over Africa would cease, the Iraqis will unite in brotherhood, North Korea would destroy their atomic bombs and reconcile with South Korea, Taiwan would join peaceably with mainland China, Tibet would be freed from Chinese rule, the Muslim Brotherhood and Mubarak would reconcile, Syria will overturn its Assad dictatorship, Hezbollah will destroy their rockets,  Hamas will reconcile with Fatah, Al Qaeda will disappear, Bin Laden will be welcomed back to Saudi Arabia.

Suicide bombing would cease, beheadings will end. No more bombs in shoes and underwear. No terror watchlists. No screening of visas. No fear of  subway and Times Square bombings. No more bloody bombing in London and Spain.  Airline passengers will no longer have to go through security checks. No baggage will be x-rayed, billions will be saved on eliminating terror surveillance. America can reduce its defense budget.

And on and on.

If only those Jews would leave the Middle East and go back to where they came from. Burn your bibles, brother. Its just a pack of lies.  Who doesn’t know that Moses led the Jews to Poland with a side trip to Berlin?

As for Helen Thomas, maybe her future lies with some high post in the UN. After all, she has the right attitude and represents the prevailing mindset of that august and largely bigoted and clueless body.

Whether a Jew is right-wing or left-wing, extreme or moderate, orthodox, conservative, reformed, atheist, academic, intellectual, poor or rich, whatever gender, whatever orientation, whatever country in which he or she is a citizen, whether he or she hates Israel or loves it, feels empathy or none, whether his name is Chomsky or Rabin or has changed his name from Zimmerman to Dylan, whether he stands cheering on a boat where people are yelling death to the Jews, whether he belongs to J Street, AIPAC or the hundreds of Jewish groups of every persuasion, whether he has changed his religion, his appearance or his underwear, he or she is by international fiat and historical reality, forever and eternally, the “Jew”, the world’s whipping boy, the persecuted and reviled, the loathsome and malevolent, the greedy, grasping and cunning, no matter how much charity, compassion and selflessness he exhibits, no matter how he abides by the rules of law and civilized society, no matter how he professes his love for humanity, no matter his long history of victimization and brutal persecution.

There is no escape from the brand, wherever a Jew resides. He has been branded by destiny and history. No Jew can escape, no matter how hard he tries to lose himself into the vast pool of humanity.  On a planet occupied by six and half billion people why, one wonders, is the miniscule population of 13 million Jews, give or take, singled out for perpetual censure?

History has shown that this blind cruel destructive hatred is beyond denial, beyond rationalization, beyond reason. Whether it is the blood libel of the Protocols of Zion, or the simplistic canard that the Jews killed Jesus, their fellow Jew, or the Muslim massacre of the Jews or Hitler’s horror, or the Spanish Inquisition, or a hundred other bizarre events, the historical record is always the same, isolation, exile or destruction.

The avalanche of opinions, pro or con, the plethora of blogs on the Internet, the parsing of every side of the Flotilla incident misses the essential point. The effort was just another aspect of the grand design of the never ending war against the Jews. Death to the Jews was the cry heard on the boats. The Flotilla was not about Gaza or charity or humanitarian concerns. It was about destroying the state of Israel, a form of “judenrein”, the avowed goal of the terrorist state of Hamas. Apparently the gaggle of so called humanitarians believed it as well. It is no secret aspiration. It is a stated goal.

Of all the peoples of the world, only the Jews are criticized for defending themselves. Everyone with half a brain knows that open sea lanes will be used to arm Hamas in its avowed mission to destroy the Jewish state.

Frankly, I am not at all shocked by the outcry. I have seen enough of it in my long life. Hitler murdered the Jews and no one lifted a finger. Hundreds of thousands of Jews were expelled from Arab lands and no one lifted a finger. If there was no Jewish state who would have accepted them? Does this question need an answer?

Indeed, it is doubtful that this current administration whose pious words talk of one hundred percent support will, when push comes to shove, voluntarily lift a finger if Israel is attacked or threatened with extinction. If they really believed in their piety, why did they not raise any protest to our fellow NATO member Turkey in advance of this scurrilous act of deliberate provocation, and call them to task for aiding and abetting a terrorist group in attempting to run the Israel blockade?

Why did our President and our Secretary of State, alleged Israeli allies remain silent when every one knew that the Flotilla was a clearly a ruse.  Any Jew who holds this administration in high regard should think twice about its sincerity in terms of Israel.  Their conduct on this and most other issues regarding Israel has been less than admirable and I’m being kind.

Every country who is a member of the morally bankrupt United Nations knew the motives of the Flotilla sponsors well in advance. If they were really sincere why didn’t they send their humanitarian aid, for example, to Haiti which is truly suffering and bleeding to death?

Of all nations, Turkey, who had by military conquest divided the island of Cyprus and occupies half of it in a violation of a United Nations resolution seems to be having a major hypocrisy problem, an affliction that is approaching a terminal disease in the halls of the UN. Perhaps it is time to move the UN to another venue, say Yemen or Afghanistan.

Above all I am an American by birth loyalty and love. But I carry the Jewish brand, just as other religions carry their brand. Indeed our brand does not kill people to avenge a cartoon of ridicule of which there have been millions featuring Jews as monsters.

As a Jew I am insulted, deeply insulted, by the tsunami of hatred rolling down on Israel and the Jews. Make no mistake about it, however you confront the issue, the hatred is the old bugaboo of anti-Semitism. We must stop calling it anything else. No Jew is immune. Under Hitler’s master plan Jews all go to the “showers” in lock step. The Nazis did not distinguish by anything other than the brand which went back three generations.

Many well meaning critiques decry Israel for its lack of public relations savvy, a so-called image problem. Are they calling on Israel to contrive a kind of informational mask to paper over its true intent, which is to save itself from extinction. Public Relations is a manipulation, a spin, which implies deception and half truths that deliberately parse the truth and shroud transparency. Our politics are riddled with it.  Image is never the truth. I know. I used to be in Public Relations.

It is not a question of Israel right or wrong. Israel is a sovereign democracy and like us will make its mistakes, but above all it is a free state far freer than all the Arab states combined that surround it.  Jews of all nations have every right to protect their brand through every means necessary. Most Jews know in their gut that if the brand dies in Israel, it will be on a spiral to extinction. Some with the brand will welcome such an outcome.

If this sounds paranoid, over the top and just a routine display of emotional hysterics, so be it. In my opinion it is exactly the moment for such a diatribe.  It is about time we called all this faux high dudgeon by its real name, anti-Semitism.

In a recent issue of the New York Times a chilling story appeared buried on page 15 that, in my opinion, deserved far more prominence than it received. I suppose I should have registered my complaint with the official Times ombudsman, but then if it was heeded at all it would have been relegated to the limbo of a journalistic slush pile.

The story dealt with the disclosure that three naturalized American Muslims who had planned to become suicide bombers and bomb the New York subway system were recruited by Saleh al-Somali and Rashid Rauf, key Al Qaeda operatives killed by a drone attack in Pakistan. The recruited men had been High School buddies in Queens, a borough of New York City who went off to Pakistan for the purposes of being trained by Al Qaeda to carry out their deadly suicide mission.

As a regular user of the New York subway system, the evil purpose of these men is beyond imagining. If one is not in permanent denial, horrific images of death and destruction surely must periodically assail many of the passengers that use this system.

I often observe my fellow passengers, workers, students, executives, parents, children, babies, people of every color, gender and age going about the business of their daily lives in this remarkable city of energy and diversity. For me, it is impossible to avoid a “what if” scenario with a heavy heart and deep anger. Why? It is unthinkable. Can these people be categorized as fellow human beings? Not in my book.

We can be thankful that these monsters have been caught. But one wonders how many other, misguided young men and women are being recruited as we speak to perform such loathsome acts of murder.

One wonders, too, about the enormous costs that must be expended in surveillance and preventive activities required to counter and expose these bloody-minded conspiracies. Indeed, officials continue to warn us that no matter how much money and manpower is expended in surveillance, it is inevitable that an event will fall through the cracks and wreak havoc on vast numbers of innocent victims.
What struck me as going beyond the pale of logic and reason was the motivation that stirred these young man to commit suicide while killing what might have been hundreds of their fellow Americans.

The story in the Times revealed that in pleading guilty one of the co-conspirators Zarein Ahdmedzay, a sad 25 year old, gave his reasons for the bomb plot. He told the court that a Zionist conspiracy represents a greater threat to the United States than Al Qaeda.

“And I believe,” he told the court “that the real enemies of this country are the special group, the Zionist Jews, I believe, who want a permanent shadow government within the government of the United States.”

Was this the befuddled reasoning why this young man was willing to do away with himself and a group of innocent people from every walk of life? Is this tired old false anti-Sematic cliché the reason for his joining Al Qaeda?
Has Al Qaeda co-opted these Nazi ideas to recruit Muslim young men to join its cause and toss away their lives and the lives of others? One sees how the sinister wheels of Bin Laden’s army have co-opted the techniques of the Nazis to fire up its members.

Of all the stories in the New York Times that day, the very idea of blowing up the New York subway system and the mad reasons given would have been my choice for the front page. As much as we hate to confront this issue, stark reminders help put us on our guard and reinforce our determination to resist these monstrous people.

Was there any other story in the Times that day more important than this one? Not to this New Yorker.

Since I have never learned the art of social diplomacy and my tongue sometimes acts independently of my natural sense of caution, I find myself in a perpetual single-issue state of conflict with some of my dearest friends and relations.

Thus, I have learned every single laundry list argument against Sarah, a repetitive drumbeat of invective, most of it emotional, indignant and overwrought and, from my perspective, baffling.

Here are some samples:

She is stupid and uneducated trailer trash. She is a lousy mother, who allowed her daughter to become pregnant. She exploits her children by showing them by her side at public appearances. She should have had an abortion when she learned that she was carrying a Down Syndrome child. She has no experience in governing. Alaska is a rural backwater and being elected Governor is no big deal. Katie Couric showed how dumb she was. She wants to censor books. Her voice is too high pitched. She talks funny, slangy like a teenager. She is an ignorant phony, a dangerous fascist. She likes to hunt. She dresses like a floozy. She is too religious. She is too patriotic. She is not really a supporter of Israel even if she had an Israeli flag in her office and wore crossed flags, Israeli and American, when she addressed those dumb Tea Party morons. She is a far right Neanderthal. She had a ghostwriter for her book. She is money hungry, a racist, shallow, corny. I just don’t like her. Don’t ask me why. God forbid she becomes President. She has no experience.

It goes on and on. No defense is acceptable. If you ask why people from outside my orbit cheer her wildly, they will tell you that the people who are ecstatic supporters are flag waving brain dead far right racists, just like Nazis, ignorant, uninformed and clueless.

Yipes. I am not exaggerating. Sometimes I let the rant just flow. When I try a defense I normally get shouted down by people who, on other issues, profess worshiping the concept of free speech, justice, morality, and fairness.

No rebuttal is acceptable. If I tell them, however softly, that she has a degree in journalism, that her father is a beloved High School English teacher, that she has learned the art of politics, campaigning and governing at the grass roots, having been a member of Wasilla City Council they shrug with disinterest and opine that Wasilla is just a backwater hick town as if real people didn’t live there.

If I tell them that she has earned her political bona fides as a comeback kid after losing her bid for the Lieutenant Governor of Alaska, to beat the heck out of the good old boy network in Alaska to become Governor, they will look at me blankly. If I tell them she has served on a key energy committee of her state and fought and won a battle to run a natural gas pipeline from Alaska through Canada to the American midwest they will turn away in boredom.

If I tell them she has managed to maintain a stable loving marriage, continued to raise her large family as a devoted mother, while managing an astounding career, they will shrug with indifference and point to her daughter’s pregnancy and her temerity in actually giving birth and not aborting her Down Syndrome child after tests revealed the condition.

As an aside, I try to avoid personalizing the discussion since many who criticize Sarah among my cohorts are divorced with serious dysfunctional family issues of their own. Nor do I dare reveal a personal opinion to my female friends, fearing for my life, that Sarah should be a poster girl for the women’s movement having managed to rear a family while pursuing a successful career, the dream of legions of career motivated women with kids.

If I tell them that she is typical of admired women who love the outdoors, many of whom hunt, fish, ride, hike, snowshoe and ski, they will zero in on hunting as a cruel and immoral practice while they prance in their leather shoes and eat their fill of dead animals. Of course, the wrath of vegans is not reserved for Sarah alone, although many consider her an archetype of evil red meat consumers.

Whether or not people think she can hack it as President of the United States is almost beside the point at this stage. Really folks, by any stretch of the imagination and fairness, does she deserve the calumny that is the daily diet of the so-called mainstream media. She seems to be the object of a perpetual roast.

Considering the environment in which I live and work, the very heart of the Big Apple, I am of course broadcasting from inside a bubble where the mindset is rigid and, despite all the heavy-duty yak yak, amazingly provincial.

Indeed, if I had my way, I would sentence all New Yorkers to spend time outside the bubble and visit places in other corners of America, visit the lunchrooms and diners where ordinary people gossip and break bread, visit the High Schools and land grant colleges out of the Ivy League orbit, check in to state fairs, flea markets, day care centers and nursing homes, attend PTA meetings, town councils, July 4th parades, military mess halls and places where cops and fireman, garbage collectors, doctors and nurses congregate.

I would urge them to listen and observe. America is a vast smorgasbord of divergent interests, where the New York Times and the bloviating progressive punditry do not hold sway and people don’t give a damn about what Hollywood actors think about politics.

Don’t get me wrong. I love New York and I love my New York friends, even those who are in the Sarah Palin booing section.

To tell you the truth this essay got a nudge from an odd incident on Central Park West in Manhattan. Every week I attend a Bible and Talmud discussion group of four very opinionated argumentative characters led by a Rabbi who is a human database on the Bible, Judaism and other religions. With the exception of the Rabbi none of us are true believers. We are more like questors who are addicted to dealing with the big questions and consider the Bible one of the greatest works of literature ever written.

As you might have gathered my opinions, for the most part, raise hackles in my fellow questors. We have agreed to disagree, but often find common ground.

After one session, a few weeks ago one of my fellow questors and I walked toward Columbus Circle passing the posh Trump Tower, which stands facing the Circle and Central Park. Passing in front of the entrance, my companion noted a woman in a baseball cap busy on a cell phone standing beside a pretty little girl.

It was Sarah Palin and her daughter Piper. They were alone, out of context for us. In the Big Apple no less. There were no crowds, just a mom and her daughter. You’ve come a long way from Wasilla, I thought, as Sarah stood at the entrance to this plush establishment obviously waiting for a car to pick her up. Good for you, baby. Ignore the slings and arrows and your Big Apple detractors. Enjoy our crazy town.

Then it occurred to me how really lucky this pretty little girl was to travel around with her amazing mother and observe and learn things about people and the world that most kids will never get a chance to do. After all, Sarah could have left the child home as many busy ambitious career crazed moms often do, however reluctantly.

For some reason I felt good about America and the Big Apple, despite its contentiousness, its clashing opinions, its loud and ugly politics, and focused instead on the possibilities and the hopes and dreams of every one of us.

I wanted to say to her: Welcome to New York baby. Stick around. We’re not as bad or tough or heartless as we appear. And one day you might even make it here… and if you make it here you can make it anywhere.

To expect politicians to tell the truth is an exercise in misplaced optimism. At its heart the health care debate, however it was couched, was simply a matter of distorting the perfect science of mathematics since there is absolutely positively no way to pay for it without raising income taxes or cutting spending bloated by entitlements and subsidies created by political manipulators on both sides of the aisle.

Why oh why do they lie to us most of the time, perhaps all of the time? Worse. Why do we believe them?

Of course, most of us want health care for all. We are a compassionate people. We do not want a previous health condition to keep any citizen from getting health insurance.

We are not as stupid as most politicians think. We understand that putting thirty million more people on the health care insurance rolls, whether they want it or not, will cost a fortune in subsidies.
We understand that the concept of health care is based upon “just in case” payments meaning premiums, which are paid in advance of any health problems.

We understand the actuarial calculations that means that the young pay for the old, the healthy pay for the sick, that insurers need maximum participation since they pay the costs based upon keeping the spigot of “just in case” funds open and flowing.

We understand that doctors must practice defensive medicine to protect themselves against those sharp fanged lawyers who work their own wiles to extract more funds in malpractice cases and cause insurance premiums to explode for doctors who can easily be wiped out by a malpractice suit.

We understand that the Medicare program for people over 65 will go broke sooner than later and that the States will have to really trim expenses elsewhere if they are to keep funding Medicaid. We know that if you cut five hundred billion out of Medicare services will diminish. Who are they kidding?

The truth is that there is no way on God’s green earth that the health care bill just passed will not result in a massive, yes massive, upward spiral of taxes unless it is accompanied by an equally massive cut in spending. Forget that last part happening. The current crop of politicians haven’t the courage to slice entitlements and you don’t get votes by taking things away.

You don’t have to be an accountant to figure it out. An eighth grade education in arithmetic will do it. We are on life support financially.

Did you know that nearly fifty percent of Americans pay no income tax? Of course, they will howl like mad if they didn’t get what they deem as their fair share of goodies from the government. Why don’t our politicians tell us that a huge tax increase is looming? Why don’t they tell us that the five hundred billion that will be extracted from Medicare will result in diminished services and still not be enough to fund the thirty million people that will be put on the health insurance rolls.

Why don’t they tell us that few, if any, politicians have the political courage to pare entitlements and that includes agricultural and corporate subsidies as well as union perks and a plethora of double dipping pensions scattered throughout the system.

So where will the money come from to fund this so-called reform? Surely, from higher taxes on the fifty percent who pay income tax and raising of all manner of taxes, from capital gains to estate taxes and beyond. Someday you may have to pay a tax to sit on a park bench or walk a particular path or sidewalk. Expect your public transportation costs to go through the roof and crossing a bridge might cost a mint.

It won’t be long for a push for a national sales tax to gain momentum as well as hundreds of other creative tax gimmicks to help carry the load. It won’t. Politicians will find ways to provide more and more expensive perks and giveaways to buy votes. You can be sure it won’t come from the Social Security pool. That has long been raided and will go broke a lot sooner than we thought possible. And do you really think those who receive their government largesse will take their cuts without ugly protests. Take a look at Greece. How many of Greek workers want to give up their four-day week? Or France or the rest of the European nanny States.

As for the American States, they will be hounding the Federal government for more and more funding while they sink deeper and deeper into the slime of debt created by bad decisions, political chicanery, stupidity and very bad arithmetic. California is on the verge of financial ruin and New York is sliding downhill fast. At least three quarters of the other states are in financial trouble with the new health care bill threatening to impale them further.

Everything is based on postponement. By postponing the moment of truth, meaning when we simply run out of money and taxation gimmicks, the responsibility of keeping the ship afloat will be the job of our grandchildren and their children who will see their taxes go higher and higher to keep up with spending. We are lousy grandparents by bequeathing them such a burden.

This is not to say that those who voted for health reform didn’t have their heart in the right place. Their problem is that they are either illiterate in arithmetic or they want to financially punish those who by their creativity, hard work and risk have been the motivators of prosperity for themselves and a vast chunk of the American people.

From a purely selfish perspective those people of my generation meaning those of us who lived through the Great Depression and the terrible wars of our era and survived, had the best of it and will not suffer as much as our progeny. We were lucky. We got as close to the American dream as possible. We grew up with the old values and verities, before the onslaught of technology and the scattering of our families, before credit cards, consumer excess and drugs.

It was far from a paradise but, even in memory, the good times seem better than the bad. We grew up with Ben Franklin’s proverbs ringing in our ears. A penny saved is a penny earned. God helps those who help themselves. Well done is better than well said. If you would know the value of money go and try to borrow some. When the well is dry they know the worth of water.

And the one that seems to speak for our future:
It is hard for an empty sack to stand upright.
 

Sledge’s account of his ordeal as a nineteen year old combat Marine in the bloody battles against the Imperial Japanese Army while taking the islands of Pelelui and Okinawa in the closing weeks of World War II offers startling insights into the bloody nature of war and the horrific sacrifices required of those we send into battle. The comparison of then and now is essential if we are to make any sense out of what the “new breed” of Marine must face in the baffling revised rules of combat.

“With the Old Breed” was published twenty years after the events took place and republished twice since then, the last time with an impassioned introduction by Victor Davis Hanson which is a mini masterwork in its own right. Known by his Marine buddies as “sledgehammer”, Eugene Bondurant Sledge, this slight 135 pound sensitive and observant young man chose to enlist in 1943 as a Private in the Marine Corps and was assigned to a mortar company that confronted fanatical Japanese defenders with arguably superior weaponry and zealous suicidal tactics that decimated the American invaders.

Both the islands were taken, but at a horrendous price in American lives and the necessity to kill almost all the Japanese defenders. Some Japanese prisoners were taken, much to the chagrin of their comrades who considered capture a humiliating gesture of cowardice. Sledge describes an orgy of barbarism and hatred on both sides on a corpse strewn battlefield where Marines lived in foxholes for long periods of time, often unable to be reinforced and provisioned and slugging it out in circumstances of unbearable hardship and suffering.

Sledge’s descriptions of the battlefield spare no details. One can sense that each observation was carefully chosen by him to graphically illustrate the hellishness and waste he was determined to convey. He described the noxious all pervading and perpetual stink of dead and rotting flesh, the armies of maggots that infested the corpses and spilled over to the living troops, the disgust at living in a swamp of human feces, the rot of disease-inducing rain soaked shoes, socks and clothing, enduring the Japanese strategy of shooting at medical corpsman and stretcher bearers, the night time raids by lone snipers, the sudden gruesome death of a bonded buddy beside you, the screams of pain, the thirst and hunger when it was too dangerous to re-supply food and ammunition, the terror of friendly fire which accidentally killed many of our own, the endless cacophony of bursting shells and bullets, the disgusting mutilation of dead bodies by both sides, the ugly thirst for souvenirs, the savagery of hand to hand combat, the horror of exposed wounds and entrails, the rivers of blood, the agony of mental breakdowns and the devastated, eerie and ghost-like landscape.

How does a good young man like teenager Sledge, religious, moral, honest, loving and decent cope with such sights and smells, such barbarism and brutality? He takes great comfort in the camaraderie of his fellow Marines, the old fashioned sense of friendship and honor towards his fellow warriors to whom he has given his deep trust and loyalty. It is all there in this book which cannot be read without shedding copious tears and knowing that these young men were engaged in a conflict not only for themselves but for all Americans.

There is little mention of civilians caught in the line of fire, except what one must imagine were almost certain casualties caused by the pre-invasion bombardments that gave cover to the invading Marines who stormed the island beaches. There were, after all, native populations on these islands, perhaps less clotted than in the European theater but nevertheless subject to damage which did not have the distinction of being dubbed “collateral.” The objectives were clear and single-minded; destroy the enemy, secure the territory. Winning “hearts and minds” had not yet been factored in as an essential weapon in offensive warfare.

Sledge’s observations are profound and moving and he concludes that “war is brutish, inglorious and a terrible waste. Combat leaves an indelible mark on those who are forced to endure it. The only redeeming factors were my comrade’s incredible bravery and their devotion to each other. Marine Corps training taught us to kill efficiently and try to survive. But it also taught us loyalty to each other…and love. That esprit de corps sustained us.”

Fast forward to modern times and here we are in Afghanistan once more engaged with a fanatical suicidal foe but the combat tactics of our Marines have undergone a radical change. Armed with the most destructive weapons in the history of warfare, our Marines and soldiers must cherry pick their enemy combatants who, knowing the new avoidance tactics employed, use the flesh of civilians to shield them from harm.

It is, of course, obvious that I am looking at this from the point of view of the combat Marine, who has voluntarily put his life on the line to fight what has been declared the “necessary war” by America’s political overseers. He has been ordered not to shoot unless he actually sees a weapon in the hands of an enemy combatant. He must avoid shooting this combatant who, instead of sandbags and barbed wire of previous wars, uses the flesh of women and children to assure his safety from return fire.

What is he to think if the buddy beside him is ripped apart by a bullet that comes from behind these “sandbags” made from the living flesh of civilian men, women and children? Must he hold return fire because the shooter fights and kills behind his human shield? How would Sledge and his buddies have reacted if the Japanese had lined their defenses with island natives?

We are told by the Generals who have created this strategy which has been approved by our political leaders that this tactic is an essential part of the “hearts and mind” strategy that will eventually stabilize Afghanistan and win them over to our side. In Iraq, they tell us, this strategy has worked and we are able to declare victory at last and extract our troops from the country.

I know I have a weak hand in this discussion. Having been trained as an infantryman during the Korean War and never seen combat service in Korea, I have little credibility, except the knowledge that soldiers with my training were thrown into the line in Europe, the Pacific theater and Korea, many as replacements, and quickly killed or maimed by enemy fire. Nor am I second-guessing our political and military leaders. I hope they’re right.

Still, I am conflicted by the ethical dilemma posed by how warfare is to be conducted against an enemy who uses the human flesh of civilians as armor. The Israelis have been paying a heavy propaganda price for their conduct in the Gaza war where the enemy clearly pursued its defense behind forced barriers of civilians. Apparently our Marines in the Helmand province of Afghanistan are being confronted with exactly the same tactic.

I would hate to see a young Marine die because he has been prevented from defending himself from an attack by a murderous combatant hiding behind a wall of civilians.

I’m certain that the issue will be the subject of much debate in the future whether the tactic of “hearts and minds” is successful or not. It will take time to see if the ethical standard was worth the candle.

As for me, I am haunted by Sledge’s final assessment that war is essentially a barbaric enterprise where ethical standards cannot apply. What Sledge and many others have termed the “insanity of war” cannot be subjected to any humane codification. It is a bloody killing enterprise where ethics, mercy and morality are, however rationalized, absent from the equation.

But if our young men and women must be combatants, for whatever reason, it seems cruel and unjust to leave them defenseless against a ruthless enemy on the possibility that any illustration of our compassion and selective offensive tactics will convince them to throw down their arms and join a humane society.

Years ago, I believed in a vast array of professional people. My BQ for politicians, journalists, pill makers, advertisers, doctors, teachers, rabbis, priests, ministers, generals, policemen, college professors, and other traditional authority figures was quite high. It was also high for milk, salt, steaks, liver, butter, cream, peanuts, white bread, fried items, and a long menu of foods my mother deemed essential for a growing boy.

Actually my BQ for my mother’s and father’s advice on most subjects was very very high. Of all losses on my BQ over time the advice of my parents has declined little over the years. Perhaps it was because they gave me so little advice. They never helped me with my homework, nor was it expected. Nor did they proffer advice on the most intimate of subjects about the birds and the bees. My father would have been too embarrassed to broach the subject and my mother would consider such a discussion in the same category as a dirty joke.

I knew, of course, without ever being prompted or told so repeatedly that I was a loved child, which probably saved me thousands of dollars in therapy expenses. I knew, too, that anything I chose to do with my life that was not destructive to my health or welfare would be okay with them. I sensed that they expected me to do pretty well in life and I think I didn’t let them down. My BQ for my parents would figure today at a hefty 95%.
In general, my BQ for advertisements during my formative years was pretty high. I believed that eating Wheaties for breakfast would make me a champion and that more doctors and celebrities like Ronald Reagan chose Chesterfields and that Johnny was calling us all to smoke Philip Morris and that smokers might indeed walk a mile for a Camel. My BQ for that dangerous stupidity went minus forty years ago.

If one were to judge my BQ for advertisements in general, an observation of my use of the mute button on my TV remote will give one some idea of the extent of my skepticism.

As for politicians, I was a depression baby and believed every word I heard from Franklin Delano Roosevelt. He was the only President I knew for more than 12 of my most formative years and I believed him implicitly. History has not been kind to his legacy, but it would be difficult to shake my belief in him. Despite the rise in his negatives I still give him a 90% BQ.

For politicians it has been downhill from there, an ever-declining spiral. I lived in Washington for more than thirty years, knew many politicians and worked in local, state and national campaigns. I watched and helped make the political sausage. Actually, I used to have a fairly high BQ when the Congress was run by Lyndon Johnson and Sam Rayburn. It was high when Harry Truman was President and continued under Eisenhower. Sometime around the late Sixties it began to slip precipitously, although there was some rejuvenation when Reagan became President.

After the days of Johnson and Carter in the White House I was beginning to have serious second thoughts. I think my political BQ dropped to around 50%, then bounced with Reagan to about 60%, dropped again with Clinton to a solid 25% based almost entirely on his contorted definition of oral sex not being sex. I give Bush a BQ of about 50% and have hit a low point with our present occupant of the White House. I think it’s gone to around about 30% now, but that may be because his campaign promises and unrealistic pandering were so blatantly impossible to accomplish that his governing seems inept and clueless. Nevertheless, I will keep an open mind.

As for Congress, their members appear so pitifully petty, partisan and incompetent that I cannot find any reason to bring my Congressional BQ to more than 10%. And considering the corrupt practices employed on the health care bill, I think I might be giving them a higher BQ than they deserve.

Journalists, too, have suffered a disastrous decline in BQ. I used to believe strongly in the reporting of journalists such as Walter Cronkite and Walter Lippmann. Indeed, I used to have a high BQ in the newspapers and TV I read or saw earlier in my life, especially The New York Times. I truly felt I was getting all the news that was fit to print. I also read the late New York Herald Tribune and generally believed what it reported and did not feel manipulated by hidden agendas. In those days, I’d put my BQ for the Times and the Tribune at a cool 90%.

My BQ today for The New York Times and for most, but not all, journalists has bottomed out at about 25%. I can spot their personal and political agendas in a New York minute. Their agendas are so blatant and transparent that I often marvel at their self-righteousness. Their criticism of the personal agendas of others is almost laughable. I would insist that they reveal their book contracts and other outside income spigots before criticizing the hidden agendas of others. Even those who reveal and promote their outside enterprises seem smarmy and sinister. This goes for the left, right and middle.

My BQ for doctors is beginning to decline. The family doctor who came to my house with his black medical bag in tow brought with him a BQ of 100%. Although I do admire their willingness, sincerity and inherent idealism, I think doctors today are so buffeted by Government fiat, overworked and underpaid, that events have transpired to bring their BQ down by half, say about 50%, most of it not their fault. The pill pushing industry insults our intelligence with their television ads urging us to “tell our doctor” about their latest pill when I always believed that it was our doctor who was supposed to tell us what drugs were good for us.

As for foods, I know from my advertising days that the foods you see on TV are doctored by experts to make them look photogenic, although those in the TV studios know these foods are inedible. Warnings abound about various foods that are hazardous to our health like fats that clog our arteries, fruit grown in countries with lax laws, and preservative chemicals that saturate foods to give them longer shelf lives.

My BQ for food products is down about half from when I was a kid and ate my fill of frankfurters, hamburgers, steak, liver, creamy milk, excessive sugar in food and candy and lots and lots of salty stuff. My BQ for food in general might be down by half, but boy do I miss all those great foods of bygone days. Statistics attest to the fact that we are living longer and many experts believe that we do partly because we avoid all those food items that are bad for us. I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt and, on second thought, raise their BQ to 60%.

Actually my BQ for food advice from nutritionists and cardiologists about exercise as a factor has actually increased with each passing year. I know it sounds like a paradox as I meet people in their nineties who imbibe all the no-nos and survive robustly, some into their hundreds. My BQ for so-called healthy foods is about 75% but I do hope that someday, scientists will come up with indisputable evidence that red meat, vegetables like creamed spinach, salty snacks, sugared candy and very very modest exercise are actually longevity enhancing.

In areas inhabited by military people, my BQ might be suspect, but having participated in at least one of the many wars in my lifetime, my BQ has declined somewhat largely because of the restrictions required by our military whose efficiency is inhibited by political considerations in our recent wars. My BQ for Eisenhower and Marshall was 100% until I delved somewhat deeper into the history and military mistakes of that good war.

Nevertheless I maintain a BQ of 75% of military leaders, down from 100%. As for our combat soldiers I have always maintained a solid BQ of 100%.

I admit to being somewhat conflicted about my BQ in the matter of theologians. As a child, I gave my guys, the Rabbis, a BQ of 100%, but less for those of other faiths. In those days tolerance was the watchword and I might have felt some guilt about judging them a few clicks lesser on my BQ scale. As a group, their BQs have gone down by 50% over the years although I will always hold out the possibility that they may have it right and I am admittedly too frightened to give them a lesser score. On the matter of Imam’s, I’ll pass on that one since the reward of 70 virgins in heaven seems more of a giant headache than something to be desired.

As for college Professors, I used to have a very high BQ for most of them, certainly for those that inspired me by their dedication and personal influence on my own life. Because so many of them have been corrupted by political agendas and the desire for celebrity, I give them an aggregate BQ of 60%.

I could, of course, go on and on, but I’m certain the reader gets the point. Having seen, as they say, déjà vu all over again, my skepticism, like my wrinkles, is well earned. I have discovered that a lifetime of keen and deliberate observation increases one’s ability to see through all the bullshit and does, indeed, increase the accuracy of my BQ scores.

Oh yes, for my fantasy life and my happier dreams, I give them a 100% BQ.