The American Spectator

Jay Homnick suggests, “If a rabbi is wrong about politics, that does not make him a fool.” What it makes the rabbi is not so much a fool as an impostor. The fool is probably the student still listening to the rabbi once he ventures from Talmud to politics.

Experts who claim the cover of credentials, while straying from their field of expertise, are deceivers and should be confronted. Nowhere is it more egregious than with men of the cloth, whether rabbi, minister, bishop, lama, swami, or ayatollah. Abusing one’s spiritual commission to flog a political agenda goes beyond foolish into sinful. When Jeremiah Wright, or Homnick’s rabbi, purports that his religious scholarship makes him an authority on politics (or economics, history, medicine, literature, biology, statistics, etc.), it compounds his foolishness with deception. He is now a charlatan. All honest folk ought to castigate him.

p>The same goes for Mr. Homnick’s friends “of high intellect and moral probity who believe conspiracy theories,” of whom he notes, “It takes an effort of will to overlook these craters of bad judgment.” Instead of overlooking them, making the same error that Barack Obama did with Wright, Homnick might consider politely inviting his friends to put up or shut up. He may not convince them they are wrong, but allowing them to go unchallenged is enabling behavior, which carries its own burden of responsibility. That Obama is paying a political price for his own enabling role should arouse not empathy, but scorn. He isn’t a victim, he’s a fool. br> — James Bono /p>

THINGS HAVE CHANGED

p> em>I wish in time I could go back br> To before I elevated Barack. br> I caucused for him. br> He made my heart spin. br> Of self assurance I had no lack. /em> /p>