Thane Rosenbaum

March 2023:If a marketplace of ideas truly exists with rational actors serving as discerning consumers, then, as we have been assured by free speech absolutists, good ideas will cancel out bad ones. If that’s true of how this marketplace works in practice, then how can the resurgence of Nazism be explained? These ideas should have been flushed away with the Fuhrer. And yet pernicious attitudes about racial superiority and Jewish sub-humanity are still being peddled in far too many circles.

February 2023:Half of America is happy to wrap itself in the flag; the other half simply wants to take a knee. Something has to give, because such stark and cavernous divisions are simply not sustainable.

September 2022:There never has been an Arab nation-state called Palestine. At the time of Israel’s founding, in 1948, the word Palestinian did not describe a distinct Arab people. In fact, the word itself was created by the Ancient Romans, and they were referring to Jews, not Arabs.

January 2022:When it comes to Jews, apparently, it’s nearly impossible to draw the right conclusions about why so many of them end up dead.

February 2022:Has #MeToo set feminism back, infantilized women, and obliterated the difference between being “lucky” and being a responsible adult?

May 2022:Jewish advocacy has gone corporate, answerable to a Board of Directors, fearful of fickle consumers, and obsessed with product placement. Calling attention to African-Americans or Muslims assaulting Jews will lead to accusations of racism or Islamophobia. And that would be bad for their brand.

July 2021:What has become obvious in this new era of truth decay is that the press is more interested in shaping stories than telling truths. News stories are now simply "narratives," in which readers and viewers are directed what to think. Best practices now include moralizing. The distinction between news and editorial is now forever blurred.

May 2021:Words are anything but harmless. There are always consequences to choosing them. The stakes can be high—even lethal. A figure of speech is easily weaponized.

October 2021:Nearly two years living with the threat of COVID-19 drove us mad. Those crown-headed microbes reigned over our capacity to breathe, and think.

September 2021:It’s not a good sign when a nation must rely on its comic books as a show of strength. Nowadays, when Americans think “superpower” only one thing comes to mind: Marvel superhero movies. Captain America is “the bomb”; actual America is where you might drop one—or casually leave it at the finish line of the […]

April 2021:When a youthful but electric Barack Obama was running for president in 2008, there was much talk about what it would mean to America to elect its first black president. The very prospect of it was exhilarating. It tapped into our truest democratic ideals, a major national milestone and giant leap in rectifying our racist […]

February 2021:The great irony—if not outright fraud—of the internet is that it is a digital highway without speed limits. That’s true, of course, until the summonses show up. Users then learn of restricted access and banned accounts. Some receive lifetime sanctions, others mere probation.  The digital highway actually has unseen speed traps that operate with all […]