Tag: editorial board

Is nothing sacred?

Well, yes — even in these often irreligious days, places of worship are sacred. You don’t have to be an adherent of a particular faith to be quiet and respectful when visiting a church, to follow the protocol when entering a mosque, to go by the rules inside — or outside — of a temple. It doesn’t take much effort. It’s the least that you can do. If you can’t do it, then please stay home.

And yet, some young protesters in the current and seemingly endless fray over the war in Gaza conflate the current Israeli government with the ancient faith of Judaism, and in so doing take their politics very much into the realm of sheer, shameful antisemitism.

That’s what happened Sunday at the Adas Torah synagogue in Los Angeles’s very Jewish Pico-Robertson neighborhood when pro-Palestinian demonstrators who said they were protesting an event there that they believed promoted the sale of stolen Palestinian land provoked fights with synagogue members and supporters of Israel.

Americans have the right to protest — protest whatever they like. They do not have anything like the moral or ethical high ground when they, as Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass said in the aftermath, to “cast a shadow of fear” in “the heart of one of our Jewish communities” as well as “regionally and nationally.”

“Yesterday was abhorrent, and blocking access to a place of worship is absolutely unacceptable,” Bass said at a news conference after the horrific event. “This violence was designed to stoke fear. It was designed to divide. But hear me loud and clear: It will fail.”

Such an obnoxious occurrence at a place of worship is bound to create an over-the-top reaction, and one of those reactionary responses is the call by many to ban the covering of faces — many of the pro-Palestinian protesters wore masks — at public demonstrations.

The idea of such a ban is pure hokum, civil-liberties wise, and probably unenforceable. At the same time, the call for it is sadly understandable. The very idea that the mask-wearers are doing so, whether with a keffiyeh or an N95, out of fear of COVID infection is absurd. They’re hiding their faces for other reasons.

The synagogue-attackers should be masking up out of shame.

This editorial board has long been critical of Donald Trump’s stances on immigration policy. However, the former president recently described a policy idea that makes perfect sense.

During a discussion with the business and technology-focused All-In podcast, Trump expressed perhaps his most pro-immigration idea to date.

“What I want to do and what I will do is, you graduate from a college, I think you should get automatically, as part of your diploma, a green card to be able to stay in this country,” he said. “And that includes junior colleges, too. Anybody graduates from a college, you go in there for two years or four years. If you graduate or you get a doctorate degree from a college, you should be able to stay in this country.”

He continued, “I know of stories where people graduated … from a college, and they desperately wanted to stay here. They had a plan for a company, or a concept, and they can’t. They go back to India, they go back to China. They do the same basic company in those places, and they become multi-billionaires, employing thousands and thousands of people. And it could have been done here.”

What Trump said is a perfectly reasonable idea. The fact is that America needs more immigrants. Population growth is essential to economic prosperity and population growth is projected to slow for decades to come. Immigrants who are willing and able to do the right thing and invest in skills and knowledge at American schools should be able to stay and make something of themselves here in the United States. Educating immigrants only to make it hard for them to stay legally is economically counterproductive.

What Trump said would of course be a very streamlined and efficient way of doing things. Which  is precisely why many in his own political base reacted so negatively to his remarks in the time that followed.

One of his campaign spokespeople, Karoline Leavitt issued a clunky and uninspired statement trying to walk back Trump’s remarks, saying there would be an “aggressive vetting process.”

“He believes, only after such vetting has taken place, we ought to keep the most skilled graduates who can make significant contributions to America,” she said. “This would only apply to the most thoroughly vetted college graduates who would never undercut American wages or workers.”

The repetitive use of “vetting” — in other words, throwing bureaucratic hoops in the way of immigrants in hopes most can’t make it or don’t bother trying in the first place  — is exactly what immigration restrictionists want. But that’s not what Trump focused on. He focused on the practical need for more immigrants and outlined a sensible way of “vetting” them.

As far as we’re concerned, Trump had it right. Those concerned about illegal immigration need to realize that the key to a more ordered immigration system is to make it easier for people to become legal immigrants.  Trump’s proposal of making educational attainment a way to fast-track the process is a sound one.

On Memorial Day, according to the United States Code, the nation’s flag is to be displayed at half-staff until noon, when it is raised to full-staff.

The sentiment, it is said, is meant first to give reverence to the more than 1 million people who have died under arms in service to the country and then to the living who continue in their stead in defense of liberty.

Perhaps for some that notion has been lost, as Memorial Day has become a three-day weekend gateway to summer vacation, barbecues and road trips. But as we travel the flag-draped neighborhoods this weekend, the knowledge that our fellow Americans remain in harm’s way this Memorial Day should never be far from our minds. Nor the reasons they are there.

Those who carry on for their fallen predecessors take a sacred oath to “defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic.” Ordering America’s youth into harm’s way in defense of that mandate is a solemn undertaking; volunteering to defend it even more so.

The siren song of war is but a drumbeat away. With conflict continuing in Ukraine, America is seemingly always involved in a war or military conflict somewhere on the planet. Many of the same people lamenting U.S. withdrawal from the pointless forever war in Afghanistan are now agitating for military action against drug cartels in Mexico or greater interventions on the other side of the planet. The allure of solutions via military violence remains sadly popular.

That is why it is so important to be sure that conflicts abroad really do involve the core interests of the United States — that they are not undertaken for reasons of petty pride or moralistic goading. There are reasons to doubt that some of the engagements Americans have been sent to in recent years fit these criteria. But there is no reason to doubt the bravery and devotion of those sent to fight those battles or the sacrifice of those who will not return to their loved ones.

Some call for a return of Memorial Day to its original date of observance, May 30, the day chosen when it was called Decoration Day, in 1868. They believe the change would restore the historical and solemn reflection to the holiday that for some has become simply the tail end of a three-day weekend.

The origins of the first Memorial Day are hard to place, though. After the Civil War, at different times in different places, it became customary to decorate the graves of Union and Confederate war dead. The practice itself is an ancient one, and was done in smaller settings across the country long before the War Between the States.

However, whatever the day, whatever it is called, and whenever or wherever it started, the reason remains the same. Each human life is precious, and each young person who makes the ultimate sacrifice deserves respect and honor, however wise or foolish the decisions of his or her superiors, this Memorial Day.

A version of this editorial was originally published in 2018.