At the tea party which Alice attended, though an uninvited guest, she became, unintentionally, embroiled in a debate with the the March Hare, the Mad Hatter and the Dormouse. At one point, you may remember, there was a discussion of the use of language in order to divine its correct meaning and, in particular, about…

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Jewish, Judaism, Hebrew

My middle son, Hillel, sent me a text message, asking if his namesake was the first to express the ‘Golden Rule.’ I texted him back this answer: “Boychik, this rule, often called the ‘the ethic of reciprocity’ is found in many cultures/religions reaching as far back as the Code of Hammurabi during this Babylonian king’s…

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I have been fascinated lately by how easily politics in general, and Right Wing politics in particular, can pervert and destroy language, even reduce the most decent words to something genuinely quite vile. Take “patriot” for instance. To be a patriot is, I think, a good thing. To defend your nation against enemies, and advance…

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animated GIF of flaming gun

By K. Thomas Ross “[The NRA’s] promotional and propaganda … constitute its major reasons for existence. It does not … relieve the government of its burden of [gun safety and military gun training] education. If [the NRA] should succeed to any large extent in teaching the youth of the nation to shoot, without at the…

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As far as I understand it, a couple of years ago, a bunch of good, hard workin’, Bud Light drinkin’, God fearin’, book mistrustin’, bumper sticker ownin’ ‘Muricans got tired of all those Mexicans coming into the US and taking everyone’s jobs, so they elected a two-bit orange con man to build a big wall…

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LR Net’s home office is (at the moment) in New Mexico. That means we tend to pay lots of attention to border-related stories. One of those that has been in the news lately is that of the ultra-right wing militia group that was patrolling the border and holding “illegal” immigrants (some of whom weren’t illegal…

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