is one of those semireligious/semisecular holidays in the jewish faith that very few people understand- hell, I didn’t understand it myself for many years, though I had many close Jewish friends. Turns out they were what Daniel Greenfield calls “New Age Jews”

This column is over a year old, I think he resurrected it for Purim’s sake, and I’m glad he did so Pascal could point me to it. It’s another example of how renfields exist everywhere (Pardon the link. I am among those who feel strongly that the more your links reference yourself as a source, the further down the rabbit hole of insanity you have gone).

Anyway, read the whole thing. The point of Purim, the Whole Megillah, as it were, is that sometimes there is no choice to be had except the change involving total annihilation of your enemy, because the alternative is your enemy totally annihilating YOU.

Deeply faithful people understand this. It is a HUGE burden to bear. Those lacking faith will always tell you there is another way- Craigie, Chamberlain, Wilson were all born appeasers and this post, also by Greenfield, talks clearly about how these situations should be handled, and what should be avoided.

Even Hale, G-d bless him, touches on the subject in his essay “America’s Hitler” about how sometimes you have the opportunity to kill something while it is small instead of waiting for it to get big.

No, I’m not warmongering. Frankly, in the technological age the idea of conventional war disgusts me. We have the ability without hardly spending a dime (Relatively speaking) to take out anyone on earth we desire, and we lack only a commander in chief with the spine to do so.