Tuesday, January 4, 2011
This is just a quick link to follow -- an "aside." These are links to interesting things that, for one reason or another, I didn't place into a full posting. Click the link to visit the full article. Go to the blog index for a regular listing of posts.
Do Russian, Middle Eastern and Observant Jews Hate Democracy? - '...Even after cursory evaluation, then, the Jewish sub-groups Jeffery Goldberg highlights as potentially problematic in preserving a democratic society are in fact ardent practitioners of consensus-based democratic processes. To label them as somehow secretly opposed to democratic life or majority-rule runs contrary to the evidence available. Nor can it be said that their intentions going forward are anything but the preservation of a political system which enables their political representation, but also that of other Israeli citizens. The basic principles of tolerant intellectual pluralism are ingrained in Jewish history, culture and identity, and form the basis of a social contract among the different groupings within Jewish Israeli society. There is no indication that this basic adherence to democratic norms is headed for change.'
