When Trump Blasted Reagan
Jonathan Tobin painted an all too accurate – and frightening – picture of the kind of campaign Donald Trump has been conducting (‘Trump’s Very Loud Dog Whistle,” op-ed, March 4).
What really upsets me is the way Trump repeatedly praises Ronald Reagan to the high heavens. First of all, Reagan was a classy gentleman who never spoke in the angry, divisive tone we’ve come to expect from Trump. He was also a man with a consistent conservative ideology, unlike Trump who changes his views from one day to the next and who was an ardent Democrat for most of his adult life.
But what really underscores Trump’s insincere opportunism in praising Reagan is that Trump held quite a different view of Reagan while Reagan was president. In his 1987 book The Art of the Deal, Trump lamented that Reagan had been “so smooth, so effective a performer” and that “only now, seven years later, are people beginning to question whether there’s anything beneath that smile.”
And as Trump biographer Michael D’Antonio notes, “to promote the book, Trump launched a political campaign that tore into Reagan’s record, including his willingness to stand up to the Soviet Union, [taking out] took out full-page ads in The New York Times, the Boston Globe and the Washington Post blasting Reagan and his team.”
Does Trump stand for anything other than narcissistic self-aggrandizement?
Jordan Greenberg
(Via E-Mail)
Orthodox Jews Benefit From Church-State Separation
Re Rabbi Berel Wein’s March 4 op-ed, “Scalia’s Passing Will Affect Orthodox Jews”:
Orthodox Judaism might well share some of the specific social values of the religious right of American Christianity, but we don’t believe in government’s right to coerce such values or to impose them on a diverse civil society.
If we did, we’d wind up being the “coerced” rather than the “coercing” in those many instances where religious practice and belief among Jews is highly divergent from that which is believed and practiced by mainstream Christianity.
Better we should be allowed to practice our faith voluntarily and not seek to impose our value on others, lest others – more numerous – seek to impose their values, beliefs, and practices on us.
Charles Hoffman
(Via JewishPress.com)
Fig Leaves For Islam
In its desperate mission to atone for the past, Germany is corrupting the present (“Germany’s Conspiracy Of Silence,” op-ed, March 4).
Sadly, we have had the same story in Britain where police, social services, and other local authorities deliberately suppressed clear evidence of Muslim sexual exploitation of hundreds of women (rape, enforced prostitution, etc.) across many cities.
Thankfully, those cases eventually came to light, thanks to the press, and are now going through the courts. It does however, remain strange that the authorities work so hard to provide fig leaves for Islam. This religion should be held to account.
Mike Martin
(Via E-Mail)
Israel’s Anti-Jewish Apartheid (I)
Mark Cohen’s “Yes, Israel Is an Apartheid State” (op-ed, March 11) was excellent. The Arabs in Israel have nothing to complain about. They live better than any other Arabs in the world.. I suggest we give them all a free trip to Syria for a few months so they will know how good they have it here.
How I wish Jews in Israel were able to go everywhere without fear as Arabs do.
How I wish Jews could build without permits and do whatever we want on land, including saying “no” to certain people staying there.
How I wish Jews didn’t have to give up years of life for army or other service, while the Arabs don’t and yet still cry about how hard their lives are.