The Sea-tac Airport Flap

This past week, there was considerable editorial comment here and in Israel on the outpouring of virulent and anti-Semitic hate mail pouring into newspapers as a result of the "Christmas Tree Incident" at the airport. What is clear from the comments is that as a result of some complaint, presumably from representative members of the Jewish community, the Christmas Tree was taken down. An Israeli editorial mentions that there was no specific request for this to be done, but rather a request that a Hannukah menorah be placed side-by-side with the tree. Curiously, it neglects to mention that the Christmas Tree was removed.

In his editorial in a Seattle paper, Robert Jacobs, the regional direcor of the ADL does say the following:

"The Port of Seattle commissioners who agreed to pull the trees from the airport were misguided. The darker elements in our community who blamed this action on "the Jews" were more than misguided"

To whose influence, pray tell, is the community supposedly expected to direct its condemnation? The Buddists?

I quite agree that unbridled anti-Semitism is not a measured response; and the Commissioners decision was another example of odious Political Correctness, which, characteristically, is democratic and even-handed in antagonizing everybody. And there are many Jews--me among them--that would have been quite content to see a Christmas Tree at the airport.

In these troubled times, the unqualified love and good-will that is clearly reflected in the idea of Christmas and of the Christmas tree in particular is so poignantly clear and is so desperately needed that it is nothing less than unkind bordering on cruel and insensitive to oppose it.

There are enough cases of legitimate anti-Semitism to preoccupy these do-gooder organizations. The Jewish community does not have to compete in the Good-Will department

"It Can't Happen Here"

In the 1935 book by Upton Sinclair the possibility of a dictatorship in America is entertained--and I use the term in it's generic sense.

This past day, a student at the library of UCLA was repeatedly tortured with a taser, while a security guard repeatedly said, "stand up!" You have to see this to believe it: click here.

What is important to note is the relative self-righteousness and high-handed nature of the guard. It's terribly important, because this is exactly the way in which such activity started in Germany. Thanks to the "Patriot Act," that hypocrisy of euphemism, we have such disgusting activities as this encouraged.

The law enforcement agencies have blended in indistinguishably from those in totalitarian countries; whereas our uniqueness has been in perceiving a right to dissent, one which actually regards such as patriotism, in its truest sense, not the sense in which Dubya declares.

As this kind of behavior increases under government sanction, will our citizenry recall the generic courage, a natural and normal capacity, nutured and grown out of our Declaration of Independence and that sincere and mature although youthful state of mind that was and is the very finest of the attributes of us Americans? Will the response be truly a call to arms in every and any sense of the term, as it was truly meant to be?

Thomas Jefferson once said that every so often a revolution would be needed to keep us free. Now this is a truly remarkable statement, coming, as it does, from one of the founders of our form of government. He was not advocating revolution for revolution's sake. He was speaking of a healthy counterbalance to those forces inherent in human nature, those tendancies which have been understood since time began.

He was showing us a new idea, a new way to ride the horse of the tempestuous human soul: to go along with the ebb and flow of human behavior, seen against the backdrop of the freedom to petition for acceptance of new ideas, whatever they might be; and in a manner parallel to that of its economic counterpart, the free market, to allow, literally, human nature to express itself so long as human rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness was held sacrosanct.

Now, for the first time in our age, we have the challange of the Old Nature and the New Vision in conflict, once again. Will we win the War Against the People?

There is a story in which Ralph Walso Emerson visited Henry David Thoreau in jail:

"What are you doing in there?" queried Emerson.

"No David. What are you doing out there?" was the response.

I don't know if we will win it; but I can say with resignation to the fact: Whether before, during, after, or as a consequence, I hope to die finding out.