Daily Verse | Philemon 20
I do wish, brother, that I may have some benefit from you in the Lord; refresh my heart in Christ.
Tuesday’s Reading: Hebrews 1-2
It’s Tuesday and less than three weeks left in the year 2022. Only this many days, hours and minutes to Christmas! Have you gotten your Christmas shopping done?
Bari Weiss, who resigned from The New York Times in July 2020 after becoming “the subject of constant bullying by colleagues who disagree with my views,” recently started a new media company called, The Free Press (thefp.com). I found it because I had subscribed to her newsletter, “Common Sense,” whose readership grew to a quarter-million, and a few days ago she announced that the newsletter now has a permanent home as The Free Press.
I haven’t become a paid subscriber, yet, but am thinking this may be a new source of independent reporting that seeks to include a variety of viewpoints. Here’s how they describe the company:
The Free Press is a media company built on the ideals that were once the bedrock of great American journalism: honesty, doggedness, and fierce independence. We publish investigative stories and provocative commentary about the world as it actually is—with the quality once expected from the legacy press, but with the fearlessness of the new.
We place a special emphasis on subjects and stories that others ignore or misrepresent. We always aim to highlight multiple perspectives on complicated subjects. And we don’t allow ideology to stand in the way of searching for the truth.
Still to be seen, I think, but I like the premise.
I was impressed with an interview Weiss did with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who’s just been reelected to a third term. Bibi, as he’s called, had some interesting things to say about the United States in his comments, and I wanted to call those out and share them with you (emphases mine).
I believe in democracy, not only within my own party, but also in the public. My views of democracy are informed by the basic texts of American democracy. I read the Federalist Papers, all 80 of them. I’m a Hamiltonian in many ways, but also a Madisonian. And these two basically set the ground rules. John Locke and Montesquieu are my heroes because I think there have to be checks and balances.
You do not have a proper democracy by having self-chosen moral people who are above the public, above national interests. That’s ridiculous. If you want to look at an instance in history where you had exceptional people who were above the plebeians, look at the founding fathers of the United States. Geniuses, one after the other. But if you told them the way you’re going to secure democracy is by giving the power to the anointed few who will decide for the unwashed many? They’d say that’s ridiculous. But that’s a view of democracy that is penetrating Western democracies and is very, very dangerous. It’s not going to sustain them. I’m the opposite of a strongman. I believe in democracy, obviously, in the balance of between the three branches of government but also in a basic bill of rights. You can have a majority, but you can’t decapitate all redheaded people, and neither can the courts say that you can decapitate all redheaded people. There has to be a balance between the three branches of government. That balance has been in many ways impaired in Israel by the rise of unchecked judicial power. Correcting it is not destroying democracy, it’s protecting it.
I suspected but had not heard Bibi give credit to America’s Founding Fathers as his mentors in democracy. (He speaks of democracy, of course, but a reminder that we are a not a pure democracy but a representative republic.) And he puts his finger on exactly what is going wrong in the U.S. right now: an elite cabal of political, educational, business and media leaders who are determining what we can and cannot see, hear or say.
I have to say that I think America is an indispensable ally. I think America, the rise of America, made all the difference in Jewish history—it’s not merely the rise of Israel in the first half of the 20th century. America became the leader of the world, and it protected liberty, protected democracy, and protected human rights. It would be a tragedy if the United States abandons its role and stops believing in its mission to be the beacon of liberty and the world…
…With the United States in particular, there is a deep bond. It’s really a deep bond. It’s not just something I’m saying or just a figure of speech. There is a deep bond. We are the original Jerusalem. Americans are the new Jerusalem, the new promised land, and we’re the original promised land. There’s a deep bond there, and the same is true to a lesser extent with other Western democracies, however critical I am occasionally of their vacillating positions. I think that common bond is important.
I think it’s true that there has developed a deep bond between Israel and America, but it also seems to be true that the Left (again) is working overtime to weaken that bond. (It actually doesn’t matter what it is in our history; if it was part of American life under democracy, the progressive bullies want to destroy it.)
I like Netanyahu and think he’s the right leader for Israel, and I’m pleased he has such a positive view of the United States. I’m a supporter of Israel and reject out of hand the efforts to demonize the Israelis.