Jews Without Mercy: A Lament

...He seems unable to tell the difference between Adam Smith and John Calvin...

...he was, in the Senate to which he belonged, a man of little influence over its proceedings...

...By now the falsity of Mr...

...When it comes to Jewish thought, Mr...

...Shorris's moral s u p e r i o r , having never met him, but I know I loathe much of what he advocates...

...Stripped of its trimmings, the argument of this book emerges as a syllogism...

...Shorris may deserve a modicum of pity...

...By arguing such a thesis, Mr...

...Others are a little weak on religion as a whole, like Sidney Hook, whose work I admire but whose piety I suspect...

...Shorris includes passages that show he really does know his adversaries are really Jews...

...Some are so sensible that one hopes all human beings would assent: "Communism is not good for the Jews...

...Shorris, who calls himself a radical...

...And when one considers the author as a prose stylist one can best leave it at saying that he writes badly, if only because he writes with inadvertent repetitiveness...

...He should be reminded that one can be a neoconservative without being Jewish, a fact he f o r g e t s forty or fifty times in his book, but let that go...

...I f such ignorance cannot excuse everything it might at least suffice simply to dismiss this book, which, contrary to the author's intention, is a thoughtless tirade rather than a lament, though it is surely lamentable...

...Shirley Letwin's The Gentleman in Trollope is, however, a book altogether unlike Maurice Cranston is Professor o f Political Science at the London School of Economics...

...One can surely find Jewish neoconservatives who deserve to be disliked, but that is beside the point...

...Indeed, Mr...

...Dannhauser J u s t i c e demands of a reviewer that he describe a book fairly before judging its worth...

...They are powerful, frightened, vulgar, inauthentic, petulant, and they " l i e awake nights entertaining paranoid fantasies about welfare cheats...

...One might add that Mr...

...I f the book does receive its just deserts, Mr...

...hence, Jewish neoconservatives are not Jewish...

...I cannot claim to be Mr...

...In other words, Judaism is essentially a leftwing phenomenon...

...Jews without mercy are not Jews...

...One hopes, indeed, that this book will be d i s m i s s e d . It merits g e n e r a l oblivion and the specific contempt of those who disagree honorably with the Jewish neoconservatives...

...As a group, they do their best, and one would have to have evidence before one could justly suggest that they are less merciful than a group of, say, liberals, or people of the p e r . suasion of Mr...

...Shorris does not know his Hess from his Albo and when it comes to other things he fares somewhat worse...

...If that is so, then one must go further and say that Mr...

...There have been at least ten good ones in the past ten years: Trollope himself, by producing no less than 47 novels in 35 years in the spare time of a civil service job, seems to have inspired a corresponding zeal for industry in his admirers...

...Thus in l a t e r times a t e a c h e r of U.S...

...He frequently appeals to the "immutable Law" given to the Jews at Mount Sinai, and he thinks of t h a t Law, mirabile dictu, as "the idea of socialism in a democratic political setting...

...Jewish neoconservatives are Jewish indeed...

...When he is not fulminating--a rare occasion-he advocates the practice of mercy among Jews because it helps them to survive...

...It is not literary criticism or commentary or biography...

...Yet I would never try to expel him from any minyan...

...I should therefore declare that I have sometimes been called a neoconservative and have never taken offense...

...Jewish neoconservatives are Jews without mercy...

...an he be forgiven for that...

...Shorris journeyed East he found that Poland looked "like Illinois before the invention of the tractor" and that Soviet land was "even less efficiently used...

...He mistakenly equates Hasidim and East European Jews...

...But what is mercy...

...Jews come in all varieties, like all men...

...A Jew without mercy would seem to be a merciless J e w , and that is that...

...When one turns to this book's minor premise, one must first give some idea of its author's description of Jewish neoconservatives, who are much more for him than simply Jews without mercy...

...rapher, or even a Reeves...

...It is neither to the Left nor to the Right but Above, and it ill behooves Mr...

...Shorris can vent his dislike of the rich, but he must suppress, or at least neglect, a good deal, from the fact that Abraham, the first Jew, happened to be rich, to the fact that the Law of the corners of the field, which he tries to understand as a redistributive measure, actually imposes on the Jews a f l a t - r a t e taxation, usually advocated by conservative economists-and much more...

...THE GENTLEMAN IN TROLLOPE: INDIVIDUALITY AND MORAL CONDUCT Shirley Robin Letwin / Harvard University Press / $20.00 Maurice Cranston Another book about Trollope...

...Briefly, he threatened to debase the coinage of civil discourse in both Senate and nation--but it was for this reason that the Senate, finally, subjected him to its censure, and brought his c a r e e r to an end...

...In such a fashion an American nightmare could be neatly juxtaposed to a Soviet one, a balanced 'correspondence achieved...

...Finally, if one remains determined to show mercy one must insist that when all is said and done ignorance of the law--and the Law--does constitute a kind of excuse...

...Similarly, they look benignly on capitalism not because the latter is sacrosanct, but because of the blessings it has secured for mankind...

...His swinish character assassinations of good men and women may then be forgiven because the author does not know what he is doing...

...He might even agree that one has to be alive before one can be merciful...

...who has chosen to become one, but one can argue that it would be more insightful to define a Jew by what the convert to it accepts explicitly and the born Jew implicitly, the Jewish faith...

...Almost, but not quite, at least not by me...

...Letwin wishes to 34 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR AUGUST 1982...

...He can be wry, but he hardly ever ascends to wit and he always displays a very profound humorlessness...

...What then are his strong points...

...Shorris recognizes as much...

...history could point to a McCarthy era of terror and intimidation-and so, students, there was this time, this era, of the Cold War, when Stalin reigned with fear in Russia and when McCarthyism and fear gripped America, too...

...A few times, Mr...

...Mercy may dictate that one cease to think of this book as an argument a l t o g e t h e r and to r e g a r d it as the work of a poet...

...One can go on to insist that ethics is at the core of that faith and mercy at the core of that core...

...Shorris's strong suit...

...Perhaps one should not take the tenets Mr...

...Some obey most of the 613 commandments--nobody can obey them all...

...He does not understand that Lord Acton--very much akin, by the way, to the thinkers Mr...

...Then, if the verdict must be harsh, mercy dictates that mitigating circumstances be mentioned...

...some are dear friends of mine...

...He confirms that he failed to teach the Law diligently to his son, who did not know about the Jewish holidays when he was twelve, and who preferred a trip THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR AUGUST 1982 33 to the Soviet Union to a Bar Mitzvah, a p r e f e r e n c e Mr...

...But this is a matter for a Thucydides, an honest historian, to cope with, rather than a Plutarch, an honest biog...

...Shorris ascribes to Jewish neoconservatives all that seriously and concentrate on his charge that they pursue the politics of selfinterest at the expense of mercy...

...Shorris's conclusion should be evident...

...Shorris attacks so unscrupulously...

...What can be said for Mr...

...Meanwhile capitalist countries grow the grain to feed the hungry, and feeding the hungry is a form of mercy...

...Most Jewish neoconservatives, then, defend principles of self-interest, not because those principles are holy but because they are useful for securing h i g h e r things...

...Shorris so prodigiously displays his ignorance that he is entitled to much excusing...

...When one considers all the many errors contained in this book one may be tempted to excuse its author on the ground that he must be kidding...

...Structurally flawless, this syllogism suffers only from the falsity of its major premise, minor premise, and conclusion, but let us-not rush to judgment...

...A man who locates Social Darwinism in the e i g h t e e n t h century usually must be taken to signal that he does not wish to be taken seriously...

...the others...

...Letwin writes about Trollope because his novels depict in detail the thoughts and words and actions of a certain type of person whose character Dr...

...Shorris pretends to believe, contains portraits of cruel Jews and kind ones, bright and dull ones...

...It is an essay in moral philosophy which uses the novels of Trollope to illustrate its argument, which is, broadly s p e a k i n g , that morality is not a set of a b s t r a c t p r i n c i p l e s but r a t h e r a concrete way of life...

...It should be noted that Mr...

...Shorris a b e t t e d . What is more, he tells of his experimentation with a Christmas tree in his home, this advocate of True .ludaism...

...But Mr...

...None of which means that the Law is essentially a right-wing phenomenon...

...One can try to excuse him by arguing that the book's argument is more complex than I have suggested...

...Shorris it is more than, say, the Bible's command that one show concern for the lot of widows and orphans...

...He tells us a good deal about his family and he recounts trips he took to the Soviet Union and to Spain...

...Indeed, the Bible, in which Mr...

...Shorris calls " t e n e t s . " He lists over fifty of them...

...These blunders are, sad to say, but a representative sample...

...Now most Jewish neoconservatives do indeed affirm the legitimacy of selfinterest--as does the Bible...

...JEWS WITHOUT MERCY: A LAMENT Earl Shorris / Anchor Press-Doubleday / $14.95 WernerJ...

...What he is doing, of course, is to pollute the atmosphere of public discourse by making it safe for unwarranted attacks on Jews...

...Indeed it is...

...But s e l f - i n t e r e s t need not conflict with decency...

...Since it is not good for anyone, why should it be good for Jews...

...Yet the author may have some kind of point...

...And that was it...

...Thus Mr...

...He also as much as admits that when it comes to charging Jewish neoconservatives with deviating from the immutable Law he is very much a stone-thrower who resides in a glass house...

...Shorris is serious, all too serious...

...he played absolutely no role in a determination of the great policies of those years--policies which he took little interest in...

...I mention myself at this point because I must now turn to the neoconservatives, whom Mr...

...For example, it will not do to insist that powerlessness is the essence of the Jewish fate...

...For Mr...

...The reminiscences can be informative but are almost always overly sentimental...

...At times one s u s p e c t s that the author wishes to contrast his authenticity with the phoniness of his adv e r s a r i e s . But how can one be authentic when one is so ludicrously inaccurate in describing the Judaism one supposedly is defending...

...Some are good Jews and some are bad Jews, but all are Jews...

...What matters in the present context is t h e i r political views, which Mr...

...Earl Shorris was born in 1936...

...the air he describes seems heavy with odors of Chicken fat and pickle-brine...

...The Lord promised Jews that thcy would be a mighty nation and it is safer to view their history as a mysterious experience decreed by a mysterious God...

...Shorris doesn't really like them...

...When Mr...

...Yet it is a t r i b u t e to Reeves that this balanced biography, with no grand historical designs in mind, in i t s e l f r e s t o r e s a c l e a r e r , if incomplete, perspective to those "times," by r e s t o r i n g McCarthy to a more modest place in them...

...He does not appear to know that Smith wrote on moral sentiments as well as economics...

...McCarthy was no totalitarian, as Walter Lippmann once d e s c r i b e d him...

...That, of course, is nonsense...

...Also, I am privileged to know many of the people he slanders...

...Unfortunately he is especially fond of repeating his errors, as when he confuses Jerry Falwell with Bailey Smith not once but three times...

...Shorris sometimes writes as though the Statc of Israel can do nothing right...

...And some can be espoused by nobody in his right mind: "The State o.f Israel can do no wrong...

...Shorris explores - - n e v e r went beyond saying that power tends to corrupt...

...I will try to manifest both justice and mercy in my review of Jews Without Mercy...

...Shorris combines his poisonous remarks about .Jewish neoconservatives with many stories about his own life...

...Some of them compel the consent of Jewish neoconservatives, not because of the l a t t e r ' s politics but because they are true: "Alger Hiss was guilty...

...The time has come to cease being just and to begin to be merciful...

...But evidence is not Mr...

...Shorris and his putrid efforts...

...Common sense defines a Jew as somebody born of a Jewish mother who has not converted, or someone Werner J. Dannhauser is a Fellow at the National Humanities Center...

...it is not, in one s e n s e , a book about Trollope at all...

...The most curious thing about them is that their heavy nostalgia makes it sound as though the author grew up at the turn of the century...

...We are told to love our neighbors as we love ourselves, because only those with a sane self-interest are capable of love...

...Shorris to use it for partisan polemical purposes, just as it ill behooves him to a t t e m p t to read anybody out of Judaism...

...he was no fascist...

...He fails to connect what he saw with the practice of socialist economics...