All my life, said Voltaire, I have had but one prayer: “O Lord, make my enemies look ridiculous. And God granted it.” In awarding the Nobel Prize for Peace to Barack Obama, the Nobel committee has just made itself look ridiculous. Consider. Though they had lead roles in ending a Cold War lasting half a century, between a nuclear-armed Soviet Empire … [Read More]

The announcement that Barack Obama had been awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace took many people by surprise. Note that Obama was given this award on February 1, 2009, eleven days after he had acceded to the office of president. At the time he had done nothing significant to promote world peace, and one would be stumped to find anything noteworthy … [Read More]

When former president Jimmy Carter criticized the treatment of Palestinians by the Israeli government in his 2006 book Palestine Peace Not Apartheid, he was immediately denounced as an “anti-Semite.” To his critics, Carter’s actual argument seemed less important than the fact that he would dare make it. Carter was apparently not aware of the longstanding, unwritten rule that merely criticizing Israel … [Read More]