When you're an ideolog, money is a liquid and the Palestinians just want a hug

Recently, two equally appalling letters from either end of the political spectrum sat side by side. I couldn’t pick just one.

The letter “What we really need to do in Iraq” disregards both culture and history, or worse, begins history at an arbitrary but convenient point in the middle of the muddle. The suggestion that if we just disengage from Iraq and Afghanistan, the Moslem world will forget all about it ignores the fact that revenge is considered a virtue in those cultures.

The violence there today was ignited by centuries-old insults burning in perpetuity. Moreover, the history of Moslem-Western relations is one of continuous violence. It only seemed calm for a while because the Middle East was successfully colonized.

The egregious suggestion that “Israel would learn to live and cooperate…instead of bullying and terrorizing” betrays unfamiliarity with the history of Israeli-Arab relations and the original need for a State of Israel as well as the fact that US support of Israel is fundamentally pragmatic. The ease with which the Left scapegoats Israel demonstrates that the need for a Jewish Sate is not in the past tense, rather an ever-renewing one.

The letter “Socialist ideologists just don’t get it” just doesn’t get it. Trickle-down economics, which the writer promotes without naming, never works and the term is now in deserved disrepute. Moreover, the argument itself has been “rendered quaint.”

Business no longer provides jobs for Americans unless they absolutely can’t outsource. Leftover jobs are not the ones we went to college for and their pay and benefits are shrinking.

The letter goes on to promote Social Darwinism…until the victims are wealthy. Then, suddenly, the free market is not the cure-all Conservatives claim; pain is not cleansing; and we need government intervention.

The point is, government has a place in keeping things – markets, mines, bridges – from collapsing, but it has to be applied evenhandedly. When the market turns on the rich and needs a hand, don’t just change the terminology to disguise the hypocrisy.

Anna Hochman