-
Envy of the Rich is the Core of the American Left
I have to tell you that I neither have envy for the rich, including the really rich, nor do I think they have political power. The core thinking of the Left is the idea that the distance between the rich and poor is unjust. I have personally never had that view. Early on it
-
Civil War Problem
I agree with many people that we have the right emotional conditions for a civil war. Personally, there are many times in the past 5 years I would have gone out with a rifle and pistol to shoot the ‘woke’ media and government people. Elon Musk and others are right; we have been ripe for
-
Who Can You Trust?
The Internet has changed our world in the most fundamental fashion. We no longer have trust in any of the large cacophony of information that we receive. The most authoritative sources are widely distrusted. My son calls this the ‘collapse of narrative.’ How can you trust anything when contradictory information is just a click away
-
In the New Revolution, Teach Commerce
The revolution in higher education is coming. There will soon be several new and very high quality universities that will protect and appreciate Jews. It will be important to teach the realities of commerce. There is no such thing as ‘capitalism.’ There is only ‘commerce.’ ‘Capitalism’ is a term that comes from Karl Marx who
-
PEOPLES Temple and Jim Jones
Most people in the world don’t know that Jim Jones, of the famous ‘Drink the Kool-Aid’ and Guyana mass suicide of over 900 people, was a communist. I knew Jim Jones, personally, and interacted with him over the years he was in San Francisco. I heard one or two of his sermons. Jim Jones was
-
Does America Always Lose the War?
We may have a very distorted view of our own history. Do we always lose our wars? Independence Start with our War of Independence. Did we win? Britain gave up. Really France won. The Treaty of Paris 1783 makes it clear. France as the winner was given Senegal and Tobago by Britain. The Colonies agreed
-
For the Record
When Republicans controlled the Presidency and Congress we celebrated the 50th anniversary of the end of the Civil War. I tried to get the nation to celebrate the 100th and 150th anniversary of the Civil War and the 14th Amendment but nothing happened because Democrats controlled both the Presidency and Congress. Sorry folks I contacted
-
We Vibrate
Humans vibrate. There appears to be two types of vibration. One is the vibration that is the speed at which one lives one’s life. I know this from the large number of women I have dated and spent intimate time with. This type of vibration is very subtle but very real. If it were measured
-
The Real Nakba and Colonialism
Somehow the world needs a good lesson in Middle Eastern history. Palestinians and a million other misinformed people think that when the newly founded state of Israel was forced to fight off five well-established and well-armed Arab enemy nations, that the Arabs living in the new state of Israel were driven out. Absolutely false. The
-
What Destroyed California and San Francisco?
Term limits and small districts. I’ve watched California go from a Republican state to a super-majority Democrat one. I was close to politics all that time. I finally figured out what happened. I watched the change in the legislatures as Assemblyman Jesse Unruh took over the Democrat Party from 1961. In those days I was
-
Don’t Do What You Love
There has been a recent flurry of articles on the subject ‘Don’t do what you love.’ This is pretty much in response to an unattributed popular phrase ‘Follow your passion’ or its earlier version ‘Do what you love and the money will follow.’ As the father of this idea, I feel compelled to comment. I
-
What I KNOW and Most Don’t
Why don’t we have flying cars or jet packs? What was the surface temperature of the earth in 1950? Why did inflation begin on 1/20/21? What single man created the modern world? Did the Dutch army ever completely defeat Britain? Why don’t we have flying cars or jet packs? Anyone who can watch a
-
Our Constitution Fails on Factions
The issue of factions is discussed by James Madison in Federalist Papers 10. It will take you ten minutes to read. Worth every minute. Madison covers this critical issue completely and brilliantly. He presented the issue early in the Constitutional Convention and it shaped the form of our government. There is no way to summarize
-
We are in a Luddite Era
The reason I can see what is happening in society is because I have a class analysis. I call it Social Thought but it is not far from standard class analysis. The academic world had transformed class analysis from a Marxist version to a racist one over the past 35 years because there was no
-
Another Jewish Divide
The Jewish Nation has divided many times in the past. Part of it has always become the mainstream after a few centuries. It is happening today with a vengeance. One of the first major divisions were the Pharisees and the Sadducees. This occurred shortly after the Maccabees won the war celebrated on Hanukkah, about 160
-
Democrats Don’t Understand America
This blog will be hard for many readers to accept. The Democrat Party as a whole does not understand the unique political nature of America. The best evidence is from the constitution of Japan which was created by the American State Department staff after WWII who were all Democrats. It is modeled on the British
-
I Only Made Phone Calls
Two things its hard to give me credit for: tilapia and Kite Hill. I’ll start with tilapia, a rather bland tasting small fish. We have it in the U.S. because of me. But what I did was to use my phone and my networks which are not visible to the world. Here is how it
-
Commerce and Technology
I am amazed by Abu Dhabi and Dubai. I know about these two because a relative of mine and her family live in one of them. These are modern cities with every fully developed aspect of commerce and technology. How is this possible, when the leaders are first generation, live in tents, desert Arabs? The
-
Celebrity-hood: Ignore It or Fight Back
America created the celebrity sometime around the first World War. There was Edison, Ford, Lindbergh, Einstein and Rockefeller, Carnegie, Chaplin and many more. Just from looking at that list you can see that some were treated as positive and some as negative. I want to make a simple point. If you are treated as negative
-
Hippy Successes and Failures
One of the hippy successes was the Whole Earth Catalog. It was a masterpiece of a new form of encyclopedia and was the first version of the future Google. I’ve written about many of the hippy successes and of the great social changes that hippies invented. They include the modern universal bicycle, hang gliders and
-
Simple Livers
Harold Geneen, Coco Chanel, Peter Sellers, Tennessee Williams, Oscar Wilde, and Cole Porter lived in hotels for many years of their lives. Harold Geneen, the CEO of International Telephone and Telegraph in the 1960s and 70s lived in many hotels and kept a complete set of clothes in each one. I wrote a book called
-
Why Employment Law Worked
My biggest and most famous lawsuit was about employment discrimination against women and minorities; it was an immediate societal success. I have since figured out why it succeeded. The case was brought in 1971 by Bob Gnaida of the law firm Public Advocates against the Bank of California. We won and the decision demanded an
-
New York Jews Are Responsible
I’ve spent time around the world with influential people. One thing is clear and very important: They get their news from the New York Times. Journalists, around the world, also get their news from the N.Y. Times. The two things in the headline to this blog that need explaining: ‘Jews’ and ‘Responsible.’ Jews. The New
-
I am Guilty Too
The civil rights movement failed. That is why the wokies say America is racist. I was on both sides in 1964. On the one hand, I was made president of the San Francisco organization that was created to save Lowell High School, the merit-based high school that the school board wanted to make open to
-
Finding the Truth in 2024
At our recent Thanksgiving dinner I asked two family members what they think of Wikipedia. One ‘loves it so much’ he sends money monthly. The other considers it ‘a truly reliable source.’ I personally approach Wikipedia with caution. If an entry can be slanted in a Lefty direction it will be. I am an expert
-
Biological Commerce
I just finished reading Merlin Sheldrake’s book on mycelia. I didn’t read it for months because my daughter (a PhD in biology) kept recommending it and I kept saying, “I knew him, I don’t need to read it.” I was wrong. I knew his father in hippy days as everyone did, Rupert Sheldrake. The book
-
The Problem of Public Transportation
I’ve stopped riding most public transportation. The reason I’ve stopped riding most public transportation in San Francisco is that the street people ride it often and their smell, in an enclosed space, can be unbearable to me. I find many people have the same reaction as I. Since I don’t expect the street people problem
-
Not Tokyo First
A friend took a tour of Japan with a prestigious tour company and the first stop, for a few days, was Tokyo. I screamed in disbelief. I spent the first ten years studying Japan by visiting Kyoto. In the following three decades, I took all new friends with me to a small beach town for
-
Reconsidering Social Thought
In my early 40s I came to realize the nature of human thought. Thanks to Mary Douglas for her book How Institutions Think. I created a half-hour national public radio interview program on that subject called Social Thought. The program ran for nine years and remains on the Internet. Human beings organize their thoughts and
-
Wall Street Journal Friday 11/14/2023
Get this issue of the Wall Street Journal right away. Four articles that will shape your mind. How a Philosophy Split Silicon Valley by McMillan and Seetharaman explains the split in Open AI that was caused by a core difference in the view of human beings. The people who kicked out Sam Altman believe in
-
Documentary Film on the History of Earth
Netflix is running a documentary on the history of the earth called Life on Our Planet. It is an eight-part series with gorgeous CGI. I recommend it to anyone. I have one serious problem with the story line. The same problem I have with the consensus view of commerce. The presumption in both cases is
-
Our Time Has Come
This article needs to be read by everyone. That is why I have put it in my blog. RUTH R. WISSE NOV. 9 2023 About Ruth Ruth R. Wisse is professor emerita of Yiddish and comparative literatures at Harvard and a distinguished senior fellow at the Tikvah Fund. —————————————————————————— I intended to begin with