Meta Removing Fact-Checkers and Its DEI Initiative Are Welcomed Steps Towards Freedom and Sanity

As we approach the inauguration of Donald Trump for his second term, the tech company Meta is making the news. Meta is famous for such products and services as Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram, and Threads. The reason for the hullabaloo around Meta is because last week, Meta made a major announcement about how it will approach content moderation. You can read analysis from the Cato Institute about what the changes entail.  

In response to the 2016 election, Zuckerberg hired fact-checkers to give users better information and combat misinformation. In reality, it ended up destroying more trust than it created because the fact-checkers were too politically biased, as Zuckerberg declared on The Joe Rogan Experience last week. In light of Meta's fact-checkers backfiring, Zuckerberg decided to replace fact-checkers with a Community Notes function similar to X (formerly Twitter). 

Barring extreme exceptions, the Community Notes option allows user to flag posts and add notes to it rather than downright censorship. While imperfect, studies examining Community Notes has been shown to mitigate the spread of misinformation while still preserving freedom of speech. It beats the inconsistency and frequent biases (typically those Left-of-center) that come with fact-checkers. 

I think this freedom of speech aspect of this policy change is important. Zuckerberg admitted that during the pandemic, the Biden administration would call to pressure Meta employees to suppress various COVID information that it deemed "misinformation." Given how off the mark the government was with providing accurate COVID-related information, a topic that I have covered extensively since the beginning of the pandemic, I can hardly blame people for feeling hoodwinked. 

While I think in part it was a decision to curry favor with President-Elect Donald Trump, it was also a good business move.Why? Because for-profit businesses care about their bottom line. They are not in business for charity, but to maximize the amount of business they conduct. When market demands shift, businesses need to change with those demands if they want to remain in business. As Zuckerberg recognized, there has been a shift in demanding reliability, transparency, and freedom of speech. 

Not only are they demanding greater freedom of speech, they are demanding an end to the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) insanity. That market trend would explain why Meta announced last week, a few days after the announcement about content moderation, that it would discontinue its DEI program.

I would argue that the trend against DEI started when the Supreme Court rightfully affirmed that the Fourteenth Amendment prohibits racial discrimination except in the most narrow of circumstances, which would include affirmative action. Since then, a number of major companies have discontinued or scaled back considerably their DEI initiatives, including Ford, Walmart, McDonald's, John Deere, and Toyota. I hardly blame these companies. 

DEI perpetuates racism, not to mention that it is a narrow-minded worldview that harms people of all races. As a formidable study from Rutgers concluded last year, mainstream modern-day DEI initiatives unsurprisingly increase hostility, racial tensions, and left-winged authoritarianism. This sort of toxicity is bad for the workplace and bad for business, which is why I would surmise that Zuckerberg realized the extent to which people have had it with DEI, especially when he said that the election was a cultural tipping point for free expression.  

The ones that are upset with Zuckerberg's decision are the ones that were happy with the censorship and DEI reigning supreme, mainly those on the Far Left who have loved controlling the narrative. They are upset because it is a potent sign that the people are fed up with Left-wing, woke authoritarianism and yearn to be free. Between the results of the 2024 elections and the increasing anti-woke sentiments, the Left is losing both its political power and cultural clout. Regardless of the reason for Meta's policy changes or how the political Left reacts to these cultural and political changes, I hope that we continue to see greater freedom of speech on social media instead of treating freedom of speech as something optional and conditional that can be swept aside when the government declares an emergency, much like it did during the pandemic. 

"Islamophobia" Is a Guise to Silence Legitimate Criticism of Islam That a Free Society Cannot Afford

Last week was the ten-year anniversary of the Charlie Hebdo attacks. Charlie Hebdo is a French satirical magazine. In the 2010s, Charlie Hebdo published a number of cartoons criticizing Islam. This included satirizing the Islamic prophet Mohammad in cartoon form. While not explicitly banned in the Quran, it is commonly considered verboten in Islamic society to make an image of Mohammad. Some even consider it blasphemy in Islamic law, and therefore punishable by death. On January 7, 2015, two French-born Algerian brothers thought precisely that and targeted Charlie Hebdo employees. They killed 12 people and injured an additional 11 people. 

Unfortunately, this was not the first nor the last Islamist attack in world history. More recently, there was the attack in New Orleans earlier this month and the attack on the Christmas market in Magdeburg, Germany last month. This also is part of a much larger trend of increased Islamist attacks. As the French think tank Fondation pour l'innovation politique shows in its database, there were 66,872 Islamist terrorist attacks between 1979 and April 2024, 84.4 percent of them having occurred within the last decade. 

I can imagine someone pointing out this reality and calling it "Islamophobic," much like those on the Woke Left like to call almost everything racist. The term "Islamophobia" is a confusing term. There are people who sadly discriminate based on the color of skin. We use such terms as "racism" or "xenophobia" to describe the problem. There is no race of Muslim people.  There are nearly two billion Muslims belonging to various ethnic groups across the planet.

Islam refers to a religion, a faith, a system of ideas. Criticizing Islam means criticizing various ideas, not a racial demographic. We do not use the term "Christophobia" or talk about anti-Christian sentiment in that way. Nor do we use such terms as "Marxophobia" or "Free-market-phobia" to describe antipathy towards given ideologies. To quote philosopher and author Sam Harris:

Honestly criticizing the doctrine of Islam does not entail bigotry against Arabs or any other group of people. It is not an expression of hatred to notice that specific Islamic ideas--in particular, beliefs about martyrdom, and jihad, and blasphemy, and apostasy--inspire terrible acts of violence. And it's not an expression of phobia--that is, irrational-fear--to notice that violent religious fanatics don't make good neighbors.

Per the suffix "-phobia," it implies that there is an irrational fear. Rational fears exist and the problem in this instance is that there are rational fears to be had. It is precisely the ideas and the implementation of said ideas that Islam's critics, myself included, have found to be so problematic. So what is there to fear? 

If you are gay, I would say there is plenty to legitimately fear. There are nine Muslim-majority countries in which a gay man can be executed for consensual gay sex, not to mention additional Muslim-majority countries that use the law to punish and incarcerate gay people.  What about women in Iran or Afghanistan who have to worry about the morality police, women in Sudan who can be punished for talking to a man who is not her husband, or the female genital mutilation that is all too common in Somalia? And what about a Muslim who loses their faith? Apostasy is punishable by death in Islamic law. I am sure that author Salman Rushdie felt (and very well might still do) when people threaten his life or try to kill him. Or how about those who kill those who mock Islam, as we saw with the Charlie Hebdo attack? 

While Islam could theoretically undergo a Reformation much like Christianity began its Reformation when Martin Luther nailed the 95 Theses on the door of Castle Church in 1517, there are no signs of Islam undergoing a Reformation or Enlightenment. That might have something to do with the fact that whatever faction of moderate Muslims might exist are dealing with their own legitimate fear of being attacked or murdered by Islamists. What people in the Western world consider to be radical and authoritarian is normalized in the Muslim world. 

I know these survey data are dated, but I went back to 2013 survey data from Pew Research. Pew asked Muslims across the world about sharia law and what they consider to be immoral. It is not simply that most Muslims want sharia law implemented. Most Muslims also take issue with homosexuality, sex outside of marriage, and drinking alcohol while a significant minority support honor killings. If you look at the Freedom House rankings for the fifty-plus Muslim-majority nations, you will see that none of them are considered "Free" in terms of political freedom or civil liberties. They do not fare much better under the Heritage Foundation's Index of Economic Freedom. 

Like with the Far Left's use of other "phobias," whether it is homophobia, xenophobia, or transphobia, Islamophobia is a linguistic shift to silent dissent by conflating race with belief. Media outlet Spiked Online explains that "Islamophobia" is used as a cudgel to stigmatize or criminalize any critique of Islam as racist. To show where things stand, the Islamic Human Rights Commission gave its "Islamophobe of the Year" to the editorial staff at Charlie Hebdo only a few weeks after terrorists massacred them for publishing cartoons of Islam's prophet Muhammad. And it is amazing how many in the West go along with the "Islamophobia" trope.  

Yes, there is legitimate fear that gay people, women, apostates, and non-Muslims can have for being punished under Islamic society. There is legitimate fear that Islam is not here to coexist with people of religious persuasions, but rather to dominate and subjugate, as Muslim political entities have done since Muhammad became a warlord in the seventh century. 

Denmark banning Quran burning to shield Muslims from being offended is but one example of how they are shaping the Western world to be as oppressive and authoritarian as the Muslim-majority countries. But if you criticize how sharia law is implemented in Muslim-majority countries or what a significant faction of Muslims living in Europe and other parts of the Western world would like to implement, you are wrongfully branded an "Islamophobe." To quote Sam Harris again:

And while every religion has its fanatics, there is only one religion on Earth where even its mainstream members of the faith seek to impose their religious taboos on everyone else. There is only one religion that has made it unsafe for people to criticize it, or indeed, for its own members to leave it. Only Muslims routinely fear for their lives when they decide to leave their  religion--and this is true, even in the West. If you doubt this, just read some books or listen to podcasts by ex-Muslims. 

As I brought up ten years ago, criticizing Islam is not Islamophobic and practitioners of Islam are not entitled to a life free of offense, criticism, or downright mockery. Being in a free society means that we can criticize, and by extension, offend others with what we believe or say. Those who silence criticism of Islam are committing an egregious linguistic sleight of hand that is eroding democracy and pluralism. At the end of the day, mimicking the intolerance of Islamists with censorship is not the way to go if we want to ultimately avoid being subjugated under authoritarian rule. 

Did the European Union Really Need to Mandate USB-C Chargers?

As millions across the world were enjoying their time off for the Christmas holiday, the European Commission had something else in mind. On December 28, which is under two weeks ago, the European Commission announced that a mandate stating that USB-C charger is the standard charger for charging electronic devices in Europe is now in force. The law will cover laptops starting in 2026, whereas it covers such devices as cell phones, tablets, keyboards, mice, and earbuds. This is not exactly news since the European Parliament adopted the law in April 2022. 

Why did the Commission implement this law? According to a European Commission report released in June 2022, the two goals were to a) save €250 million ($258 million) on "unnecessary charger purchases" and b) reduce e-waste by 1,000 tonnes annually since proprietary chargers (such as those from Apple) will no longer be legal. In short, the justification of the EU mandate was to benefit consumers and the environment. While this might sound like a lovely win, it forgets one of the basic rules of public policy, mainly that there are not any silver-bullet solutions, only tradeoffs. 

The biggest tradeoff of concern is that this mandate would stifle innovation. The reality is that smartphone chargers and ports went through multiple iterations and stages of evolution. In the early stages of smartphones, Apple was using annoying 30-pin chargers for their iPhones. Other companies were using micro- and mini-USB. Companies eventually reached the point of creating the Lightning charger, followed by the USB-C. As Cato Institute fellow Jennifer Huddleston rightfully points out, "a more regulated marketplace might have stopped this development in its tracks, letting bureaucrats who prioritize uniformity over all else decide on a single standard rather than letting the market evolve." It does not make sense to lock a fast-paced, innovative market into a single standard. It would be predictable to see the roll-out of newer technologies delayed, whether that is faster wireless charging or advanced power delivery systems.

There is the environmental cost to transitioning to the USB-C charger. While the Commission anticipates that it will reduce e-waste, I doubt their optimism. The EU's estimate was made based on data from a decade prior when there were 30 chargers in the market (as opposed to the current three, thereby less likely to reduce waste). Many phone makers separate the charging block from the charging cable, thereby creating less waste. Since only 29 percent of phones had USB-C chargers prior to the mandate, this will force many to throw out and replace their existing chargers, thereby offsetting the reductions in e-waste this mandate was meant to generate. 

I think the EU is trying to appear like it's addressing e-waste, although a 2020 report from the United Nations, chargers represent 0.1 percent of the 53.6 million tons of tech garbage created each year. It is an example of feel-good environmentalism that does not address the broader issue of electronic waster created by non-recyclable components. And it is not only the environmental aspect that is suspect. While it makes the selection process easier for consumers, it does not help consumers. According to a December 2019 report from Copenhagen Economics, this law would create €1.2 billion in consumer loss, which exceeds the estimated €13 million in environmental benefits. 

At least when it comes to chargers, the European market is now at the mercy of bureaucrats to decide that better technology has been developed and the current mandate would no longer be required. I would not hold my breath for bureaucrats to move quick when it comes to innovation. Take Japan as an example. It was in 2022 when Japan's Minister of Digital Affairs finally launched an initiative to eliminate mandates that still require the use of floppy disks and CDs for business filings. 

Instead of using heavy-handed regulations to force product harmonization and disincentivize innovation, the EU should encourage voluntary industry-led practices and market-driven standards to reduce e-waste. But the European Commission has developed a habit of watching mostly foreign companies develop innovative products and the Commission stepping in to pass laws that are typically counterproductive. I would hardly consider this the most egregious example of government regulation, but it does serve as another case study as to why regulatory standards lower the quality of our lives. 

Biden Blocking Nippon's Acquisition of U.S. Steel Undermined National Security Instead of Improving It

In December 2023, Japanese steelmaker Nippon Steel offered to buy U.S. steelmaker U.S. Steel at a 40 percent premium on its stock price. Nippon Steel even offered unprecedented veto power over the merged entity's future U.S. plant closure decisions to allay Biden's concerns, but it was not enough. It also did not matter that 98 percent of the U.S. Steel shareholders approved the $14.9 billion deal in April 2024 or that Biden's Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) could not find a national security threat from the acquisition.  Biden decided to block the proposed acquisition last week anyway. Why? Biden believes "there is credible evidence" that Nippon Steel "might take action to impair the national security of the United States." Biden does not actually state what credible evidence might exist. That reason for that is because there is no credible evidence. 

As I pointed out in my April 2024 analysis on the acquisition, the acquisition would not have harmed the United States' national security. Forget for a moment that Japan has been a military ally to the U.S. since the 1960s or that Nippon Steel already operates numerous steel plants in the United States. The Pentagon only needs about 3 percent of domestic steel production. Rather than looking to hinder steel production, Nippon Steel was looking to inject money into capital investments ($2.7 billion, to be precise) to produce steel in the United States. The steel industry needs new technology and innovation, which the U.S. has now been deprived of due to Biden's decision. 

Third, the Pentagon does not procure steel from U.S. Steel, making the national security argument all the more tenuous. More to the point, I illustrated how the acquisition could actually help with national security. By making U.S. Steel more efficient, the acquisition could have bolstered the U.S.-Japanese alliance. Here are a few additional points to consider on how Biden actually made matters worse:

• U.S. Steel was unprofitable for most of the past fifteen years. Even if the Pentagon procured steel from U.S. Steel, how exactly does allowing for a steel producer to continue flailing help national security?
• The Right-leaning Hudson Institute, which is known for its national security expertise, concluded in its report on the Nippon Steel-U.S. Steel proposal "that this proposed transaction would advance American economic, national security, and political interests at a time when the needs for secure domestic steel production and supply chains are paramount."
• As the authors pointed out, Japan is the leading foreign direct investor in the United States. The Nippon Steel acquisition was meant to be a sign of goodwill to bolster that alliance. 
• Nippon Steel's injection of capital would have better empowered the United States to withstand the dumping of excess Chinese steel into U.S. markets. 
• Economic and industrial competitiveness is what has historically been helpful to U.S. national security. Strengthening the U.S. steel in the capacity, quality, and cost-effectiveness that would have come with the U.S. Steel acquisition would have put the U.S.' national security on better footing in the future. 
• In December 2023, the bipartisan Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party recommended that Japan be added to a whitelist of allies to received fast-track investment approval precisely because Japan has been such a good ally (see page 32 of the report). That hardly sounds like the consideration one would give a national security threat. 
• Blocking the acquisition contradicts the Biden administration's own articulation of national security assessments. As the Atlantic Council brings up, this precedent could "justify interventions into transactions for broader economic competitiveness reasons or to favor domestic political allies." No kidding! Biden caved into the influences of steelmaker Cleveland Cliffs, much like Biden acquiesced to the American Federation of Teachers with school closures in the pandemic era (see p. 415 of this House Oversight Committee report). This sort of politicization has the real potential to undermine national security in the future.
• The acquisition could have helped advance such elements of national security as friend shoring and de-risking from China. 

The aforementioned arguments should make it evidently clear that Nippon Steel acquiring U.S. Steel is not a national security threat. By Biden erroneously labeling it one, it makes it more difficult for allies and partners to trust the United States, which also undermines national security because it erodes trust in the U.S.' allies while abusing the law out of political gain. Giving into these protectionist instincts to prohibit the investment and operation in the U.S. also means less foreign investment which, you guessed it, undermines national security. Economic logic are legal arguments go to the back burner when politicking is involved. Biden has tarnished his political career and made his reputation more disgraceful by making the national security of the United States worse off with his decision to block the acquisition. 

Why Amnesty International Accusing Israel of Genocide Is Pure Rubbish (Pt. III)

Since October 2023, Israel has been fighting a war it did not start. It is fighting an enemy in Gaza that neither has respect for international law nor for the wellbeing of its civilians. Aside from the military war happening in the Middle East, Israel has been fighting against misinformation. Israel has been called an apartheid state, an occupier, a colonizer, and most egregiously, a state hellbent on committing genocide. The problem with all these charges, but especially the genocide charge, is that they are patently false. The supposed human rights organization Amnesty International recently released a report on the bogus charge of Israel committing genocide. It has raised my ire enough where we are on Part III of this blog series refuting the charge of genocide. 

In Part I, I outlined the legal definition of genocide under international law and how Israel's actions do not constitute genocide. In a predetermined fashion, Amnesty International assumed Israel's guilt, which included complaining that international law does not conform to their predetermined conclusions, ignoring Hamas' genocidal intent, and taking Israel's actions out of context. The genocide charge also ignores Gaza's growing population. News flash: if there's actual genocide, the population notably declines; it does not increase. 

In Part II, I pointed out that Israel would not have a multiethnic society with 1.8 million Muslims if it was intent on wiping out Arab Muslims. I then mention how a genocidal regime would not try for "land for peace" for seven decades; it would simply wipe out the intended target. Afterwards, I detail how Israel has done its way to avoid civilian harm in a manner unprecedented in military history. I want to start Part III today by showing how Hamas' action by illustrating that Hamas has no disregard for civilian life. 

Hamas' actions towards its civilians during wartime needlessly increases casualties. In contrast to the IDF doing its best in urban warfare conditions, Hamas hides its weapons in civilian infrastructure and has been using its citizens as human shields since 2007. Why? Such a strategy means that either the IDF's operations are undermined or there will be higher civilian casualties. In either way, Hamas wins because it does not care about civilians dying. 

Combined with the fact that this war is happening in one of the most densely populated areas on the planet, I find it impressive that the IDF can keep the civilian to combatant ratio as low as it has. The United Nations has found that civilians have accounted for 90 percent of modern-day wartime casualties, which has been corroborated by other research. 

I do not trust Hamas' claim that 46,000 Palestinians have died in the Israel-Hamas war because they have been guilty of fatality data manipulation. This December 2024 report from the Henry Jackson Society sheds some light on the matter. But let us assume that the 46,000 figure is correct, as well as the IDF's estimate that 17,000 of those deaths were Hamas militants (although it's an undercount since the figure is from October). Even if some claimed correctly that the number of dead militants is actually only 8,500 dead, that 18.5 percent of the deaths being combatants would still be below the civilian-to-combatant ratio for modern-day warfare. It would be all the more impressive if the "17,000 dead militants" figure is correct (meaning 37 percent were combatants).

Amnesty International is not a trustworthy source. For one, let us start with the fact that Amnesty International's own employees in Israel disagree with the assessment. Do the employees at Amnesty Israel think that the IDF's actions are problematic? Yes. Do they amount to genocide? Not according to Amnesty Israel. In terms of the assessment itself, much of the citations are either self-referencing or a referencing the terrorist organization Hamas in a one-sided fashion. 

Amnesty International has never accused another nation of committing genocide in recent history. That includes the 580,000 dead Muslims under Bashar al-Assad's regime in Syria, ISIS' attacks on the Yezidi minority in Syria, the 233,000 Muslims killed in the Yemeni Civil War, the 150,000 murdered in the current civil war in Sudan, or the Chinese government's persecution of the Muslim Uyghur population. There are multiple countries riddled with war and conflict that have higher death tolls than the highest estimates than the current Israel-Hamas War, and AI alleges that only one country -- Israel -- is committing genocide? It is the similar bias with which the United Nations passes more resolutions against Israel than it does any other nations, including the aforementioned nations killing thousands of their own citizens.

Also, notice what there is not coming from AI, which is reporting on Hamas' dehumanizing racist rhetoric. It is not exactly a secret that Gazan society is full of Jew hatred. After all, UNRWA teachers have been teaching this anti-Jewish bigotry at UNRWA schools for years. In spite of the genocidal intentions that Hamas has explicitly expressed since its founding in 1988, AI manufactures the bogus case that only Israel is guilty. AI took a similar potshot its 2022 report lobbing the false accusation of apartheid against Israel, not to mention the number of other times AI has exhibited a blatant anti-Israel bias over the years. 

Postscript. Israel's actions in Gaza are not genocide, either in demonstrable, moral, or legal terms. Hamas initiated an unjust war with mass attacks on noncombatants and population centers. There is a difference between fighting a just war jus ad bellum that the other side started versus committing a genocide. It is not genocide when the Palestinians are losing a war that they started with a blatant human rights violation. Instead of intentionally killing civilians, the IDF has tried its utmost to save Palestinian civilians, even in spite of Hamas' best efforts to use their citizens as human shields and maximize casualties. Put the blame where it rightfully belongs: Hamas, the de facto ruling government of Gaza. 

Amnesty International pre-determined that Israel was guilty before it wrote the report. Having found no actual genocide, Amnesty International dismisses international law and attempts to redefine genocide while taking quotes out of context to make Israel look worse than it is. What has become clear is that Amnesty International is more interested in smearing Jews than it is in actual human rights advocacy. AI's bias reminds us that the anti-Semites believe that "if there are no Jews, it is not news." That is how messed up this latest form of anti-Semitism is, especially when the anti-Semites declared Hamas' actions on October 7 as resistance. Judging Israel by a different legal and moral standard than everyone else while judging the terrorist Hamas regime by zero standards is "undiluted bigotry."

By accusing Israel of genocide, Amnesty International attempts to neuter Jewish trauma in order to wage political war against Israel. It is the positing of this false moral equivalency that has permitted anti-Semitism to fester and explode across the world since October 7, 2023. It also diminishes the meaning of genocide and those who were brutally murdered in past genocides. The accusation of genocide against Israel is not only wrong, but it is morally reprehensible. We should muster the courage to push back against such a fallacious libel that is not only causing harm to the Jewish people, but making it that much more difficult to do real work for human rights.

Top "Libertarian Jew" Blog Entries of 2024 and Reflecting on the Politics of 2024

No matter how many years pass, I can say that there has never been a dull moment in the wonderful world of politics. That is especially true during a presidential election as crazy as this one. Upon it being apparent to the entire nation during a presidential debate that President Biden was not mentally fit to run for a second term, Vice President Kamala Harris stepped in at the eleventh hour to run for office. Rather than showing she could appease the center, she decided to go to the Left of Biden with such policy recommendations as price controls on groceries, a corporate tax hike, Medicare expansion to long-term care, a tax on unrealized capital gains, and payment assistance for first-time homebuyers. 

Barring the criminal court cases that Trump was fighting this year, Trump did not fare much better in recommending crazy policy ideas: mass deportation, a credit card interest rate cap, excessive tariffs, a tax exemption on overtime, removing the SALT deduction cap, and subsidizing in-vitro fertilization. Since Trump won the election, how Trump wants to direct public policy matters way more than how Harris would have ran the White House. 

Although economy tends to dominate in an election cycle, I found myself covering the culture war a fair bit this year. Social conservatives were on the warpath about online pornography (see here and here). Another disappointment for social conservatives is that same-sex marriage did not harm the fabric of society. If anything, a meta-study from the RAND Corporation shows that allowing for same-sex marriage strengthened the institution of marriage. 

It was not only the social conservatives I scrutinized, but also the Woke Left. Abandoning free speech and opining that exercise is fascism was shocking and blog-worthy. Covering a meta-study showing that "systemic racism" does not exist in U.S. criminal sentencing was also a great day because it shows we are getting closer to a more perfect union, in spite of woke people going on about the unfalsifiable concept of "systemic racism."  I also had a blast covering Matt Walsh's documentary Am I Racist because his documentary hilariously exposed the pernicious and divisive practice of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, or DEI (see here and here). In that vein, a study from Rutgers University showed how mainstream, modern-day DEI initiatives increase hostility, racial tensions, and Left-leaning authoritarianism. 

Another election topic was covered on my blog: transgender activist extremism. It was not only male-to-female transgender individuals competing in women's sports that got people riled up during the election cycle. There were studies about gender affirming "care," whether it was the Cass Review that showed it is nowhere near as safe as proponents purported or a Dutch study showing that most adolescents grow out of gender dysphoria by adulthood without any medical or psychological intervention. This bad news could explain why England rightfully banned puberty blockers for minors. And then there was a two-part series I wrote about why the lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB) community should divorce from the transgender activists (see here and here). One thing I can say with cautious optimism is that the American people are fed up with woke ideology. While there is still a ways to go in reversing the woke damage done to American culture, I would surmise that we already reached peak wokeness. 

Israel has not only been fighting a military battle in Gaza, but a public relations battle across the world. I would have thought that Hamas attacking Israel on October 7, 2023 would have garnered global sympathy for Israel being attacked in such a brutal matter. At least that is what would have happened if it were almost any other country. Instead, October 7 ushered a spike in anti-Semitism we have not witnessed since shortly before World War II. I have written on Israel more times that I would care to, if nothing else to refute the slander slung at Israel. Gaza is not an open-air prison (see here and here). Fatality numbers coming out of Gaza were false and exaggerated. I ended up writing a three-parter about how Palestine needs to stop playing the victim and take responsibility for the mess in the Middle East (see here, here, and here). I illustrated how the pro-Palestine side would like to become the horrific things they falsely accuse Israel of doing. I specifically had to detail the accusations of settler colonizer (see here and here) and genocide (see here and here).

Not all was bad news. I enjoyed covering Argentinean President Javier Milei completing his first year in office. Given the Peronist protectionism, economic repression, and government largesse he had to face, he has had quite the successful first year by reducing inflation and poverty, removing regulations, lowering housing prices, and ending a recession. If Milei is allowed to successfully implement his liberalization of the Argentinean market, Argentina's economy can experience the prowess it once had before Peronism got its claws on the economy and suffocated it with regulations, taxes, and government bureaucracy. The optimism I have with Milei is that he will be successful and that success will inspire other world leaders to choose freedom over coercion and a market-based economy over government largesse. If Milei could have that spillover effect for 2025, I would say that would be a great improvement over 2024. Regardless of what happens, I look forward to see what 2025 has in store for all of us. 

Life Lessons from Not Using the Menorah Light for Personal Benefit

After I lit my candles for the first night of Chanukah yesterday, I sat here to begin writing this blog as I admire the beauty of lighting the menorah candles. Considering that Chanukah is considered a minor holiday on the Jewish calendar, you would think I would run out of Chanukah topics to write about, but here we are. I meditate on the light itself and ask myself about a particular bit of Jewish law related to lighting the menorah. Based on a conversation between the Rabbis in the Talmud (Shabbat 21a-b), the consensus is that we are not to derive personal benefit from the light of the menorah. After reading a Chanukah insight from Aish HaTorah, I had to ask myself why and delve into the topic. 

I think a major reason is that not everything in life is meant for our personal, physical gain. This reinforces the notion that the world does not revolve around us. In Pirkei Avot (1:14), it says "If I'm not for myself, who will be," but also says "If I am only for myself, what am I?" Part of why we publicize lighting the menorah is because we are meant to bring light to the world. We are meant to inspire other people because the Jews as a people have historically been in that darkness. The menorah is the testimony of the resilience and triumph of a continuous tradition spanning over more than three millennia. In Tractate Shabbat, the Rabbis emphasize that the menorah is about commemorating the miracle that took place, not personal benefit. 

This segues into the idea of boundaries. There is a place and a time for physical benefit and other moments for spiritual benefit. We ought to value spiritual growth as an ends unto itself, to have it elevate the soul and guide us.  It also teaches us to be in the moment and focus on the miracle of Chanukah instead of ancillary benefits or multitasking. We are constantly on the move. Taking a moment to stop from the hustle and bustle to appreciate the dancing flames can lift us up. Given the major motif of thanksgiving in Chanukah, it gives us a time to stop and be thankful and think about our own personal miracles in life. That gratitude gives us a chance to pull ourselves out of whatever darkness we might be feeling in the moment and bask in the light.  

In short, this particular piece of Jewish law is meant to be a sacred beacon to inculcate hope and gratitude, inspire us to elevate ourselves and others one day at a time, and to better connect us to the divine and the world around us.