Robert Bowers

Wednesday

September 11, 2019

The passion of Bari Weiss

A couple of years ago, I took a shuttle train at London’s Heathrow airport, heading to the medium- and long-haul gates. I was standing at the end of the carriage, and as the ends of the carriages were mostly made of smoked glass, I could see into the carriage behind. A group of Orthodox Jewish men stood on the other side of the glass in full sectarian fig — beards and sidelocks, long coats and vaguely Habsburg Homburgs, the Bronze Age waistcoat of the tallit katan and its knotted fringes. Through the glass, I could see the other passengers staring with curiosity; fair enough, given that almost everyone else in the carriage seemed to be wearing Lycra and sweat-wicking leisurewear.

Sunday

October 28, 2018

Philip Jenkins

The dangerous politics of guilt by association

Pittsburgh is less a city than a loose federation of urban villages, of which Squirrel Hill provides a classic example. A long-thriving heart of Jewish life and culture, an authentically rooted community, Squirrel Hill is now irrevocably scarred by the murderous actions of one monster, whose crimes will leave a legacy of social harm and intimidation for a generation. Robert Bowers’s attributed words about wishing to kill Jews leave no doubt of the explicitly political character of the act. No worthwhile definition of terrorism could fail to include an act like this. But as in any case of terrorism, identifying an act is only the first stage in a much larger process of interpretation and rhetorical expansion.

pittsburgh shooting vigil guilt by association

Daniel McCarthy

Liberals don’t want Donald Trump to be civil. They want him to lose

Independence of mind is nowadays in short supply among the commentariat. Certain big background concepts have been propagated thoroughly enough that everyone knows just what to write as soon as anything happens. If there’s any doubt — or worse, any resistance — wave upon wave of goodthink browbeating will put a quick end to it. And if that fails, a dissenter’s sheer sense of futility may do the trick. What’s the point of insisting that two and two is four when everyone else in the clever class insists it’s five? Edmund Burke never gave up.