On the January issue:

Taylor Sheridan

To the Editor:
I am a major Taylor Sheridan fan (“The Anti-Woke King of Hollywood Lets Loose,” January). I watch most of what he creates, and I enjoy the good writing and the excellent acting at all levels. I don’t, however, care at all about the politics. Sheridan’s drama tracks and is genuinely enjoyable, which is more than one can say about most TV these days.

I am not “anti-woke,” or especially anti-anything except anti-stupid. But stupid and unyielding seem to be the pervasive attitudes everywhere, accompanied by very loud and strident exhortations and badly researched arguments. Sheridan’s scripts, on the other hand, are well researched. What his characters say is hard to factually challenge.

I’m neither a techie nor young. And don’t I fit into any of the expected red-state categories. I’m an elderly art dealer, author, and sometime artist. Which shows how broad is the swath of Sheridan’s brush.
Michelle Gaugy
Santa Fe, New Mexico

To the Editor:
In considering Rick Marin’s article on Taylor Sheridan, it’s useful to think of Sheridan as the Geppetto of Madison Avenue. He brought to life its mythic image of the Marlboro Man and spun it into mainstream being.
George Stoya
Hammond, Indiana

To the Editor:
Taylor Sheridan is successful because everyone has had enough. Here’s how I know: I watched a preview of Landman in non-flyover Manhattan, sitting among an audience of various film and TV Guild members. When Billy Bob Thornton’s character ordered “a club soda for the lady,” her chiding response was, “I’d prefer if you didn’t refer to me as ‘the lady.’” When he responded, “Oh, did I guess wrong? I’m so sorry, Sir. And hats off to the plastic surgeon that shaved that Adam’s apple,” it got a big laugh, along with a smattering of applause and cheers. Even in that audience.
Henry C. Parke
Los Angeles

The Democrats and Israel

To the Editor:
Joshua Muravchik wrote a very well-constructed history of U.S. and Israel relations focusing mostly on the Obama turn to a pro-Iran and anti-Saudi Policy (“The Democrats’ Anti-Israel Future,” January).

Many Democrats who are align-ed with Iran remain in place, but as people become better educated about what Iran and its allies want for Americans (and for their own people), voting for such Democrats will become less appealing. Then again, if the Republicans don’t do a good job—and fail to educate the populace about its enemies—perhaps not.
Jack Barron
Southborough, Massachusetts

To the Editor:
Thank you, Joshua Muravchik, for writing, among other things, an accurate summary of the Gaza-Hamas-Hezbollah-Iran war on Israel as it’s been waged since October 7, 2023.  And thank you for highlighting the bravery of the Jewish state in declining to follow the American imperative about modulating its military response to the terrorist murder and abduction of its citizens.

The article clearly describes the American left’s evolution from Israelophilic to Israelophobic sentiment and the Democratic Party’s excitement over the community politics of Barack Obama. We must not forget the transition of liberal university thinking away from comparative literature and political science toward gender studies, woke cultural considerations, and a misrepresentation of the Jewish people as a powerful force aligned with the military and economic colonialist suppression by Western European empires. Millennia of Jewish suffering at the hands of worldwide anti-Semitism are rarely mentioned as a part of world history.  Neither is Israel’s rebirth out of the Holocaust after 2,000 years of Jewish dispersal and statelessness.

Where is the future headed? On the American left, it’s not toward Arab recognition of Israel’s miraculous defeat of Iran, Hezbollah, and Hamas. The left’s focus is on the perpetual condemnation of Israel’s supposed military excesses. It’s their focus even now, when there has been a near-total cessation of military confrontation and an opportunity for reconstruction and reconciliation in the region—indeed, toward a new regional balance of power.
Robert S. April, M.D.
New York City

To the Editor:
Joshua Muravchik’s article on anti-Israel Democrats is sobering and excellent. Former President Obama has done a grievous disservice to Israel, the U.S., and the Western world with his turn against the Jewish state and his repeated warm pursuits of Iran’s leaders.  What’s more, he seems to have learned nothing from the failures of his worldview.
Sharon L. Greenburg
Wilmette, Illinois

Joshua Muravchik writes:
I thank Jack Barron, Robert April, and Sharon Greenburg for their generous words.  I agree with Dr. April about the importance of the universities as propagators of a credo, a kind of morality play, in which white Westerners embody evil and people of color globally embody good. Sadly and absurdly, the left, even the moderate left represented by the Democratic Party, has buried itself deeply in this ideology.

Obamacare

To the Editor:
I enjoyed Tevi Troy’s article on the Affordable Care Act (“What Obamacare Hath Wrought,” January). It was nice to read something that offered the actual facts about impact of Obamacare, even if what those facts reveal is so disappointing.

It seems as if all government programs end up like the Post Office. I’m a 73-year-old retired engineer, and I’ve always believed that private enterprise was the key to our country’s success.  Which means we must reduce government involvement in our lives. It is ironic that, while lawyers seem to constitute a large portion of our Congress, our laws our frequently so unclear and forever debated or tied up in the courts.
Ron Jackson
Sugar Land, Texas

To the Editor:
Tevi Troy offered an excellent analysis of aspects of the Obama administration, Obamacare, and Barack Obama’s catalytic effect on the massive changes to the regular working order of our government. But perhaps more blame should have been laid at the feet of Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, and Chuck Schumer, as they also acted in bad faith and truly knew better. I appreciate the reanalysis of Obama’s presidency. He was not the incredible president that many in the media make him out to have been. He, too, engaged in a bad-faith deal with the American people.
Stephanie McCleary
Charlotte, North Carolina

Tevi Troy writes:
I thank Ron Jackson and Stephanie McCleary for their kind letters. Mr. Jackson is of course correct that government programs disappoint and that free enterprise is a better pathway. Hayek thought so as well. 

As for Obamacare’s failures being fostered by Pelosi, Reid, and Schumer, there certainly is plenty of blame to go around. Yet the fact remains that it was Obama who centered his presidency on the ACA and his decisions—including the one to have Democrats in Congress take the lead on the details. And that did the most to shape both the ACA’s flawed content and the damaging process that put it into place. 

The Jewish Electorate

To the Editor:
It’s clear from Jay P. Lefkowitz’s article on Jewish voters that if American Jews don’t both embrace their religion to a greater degree and have more children, Jewish support for pro-Israel presidential and congressional candidates will continue to wane (“The Jewish Vote in 2024,” January). The rapidly growing Orthodox community will still be there, but not in the numbers needed to make up for the non-Orthodox shortfall.
Michael Kaufman
North Miami Beach, Florida

Jay P. Lefkowitz writes:
Michael Kaufman accurately captures the political predicament of American Jewry today and its impact on support for pro-Israel politicians. For a vast majority of American Jews, support for Israel is no longer the unifying clarion call it was for my generation and the one that preceded mine. Indeed, outside of the Orthodox Jewish community, Israel has become one of the most divisive issues for American Jews. To be sure, the dangerous rise in anti-Semitism post–October 7 (as well as anti-Semitism masquerading as anti-Zionism) has been a wake-up call for many secular Jews. And this has led to a reawakening of Jewish identity among many secular Jews in the United States.  But as the recent election proved, outside of the Orthodox community, neither of these developments appears to have translated into increased political support for the Jewish state.

Ehrenburg Rediscovered

To the Editor:
What a beautifully written, learned, and timely essay from Leon Aron about Russia, Russian literature, and politics (“The Thaw at 70,” January).  

Like most students of Russian politico-military affairs, presumably, I was unaware of Ilya Ehrenburg’s The Thaw, which Leon Aron so chillingly places in the context of Putin’s creep toward Stalinism. I had, therefore, missed evocative phrases such as Ehrenburg’s “trampled-on yet thinking reed” of humanity and overlooked historic details such as the gallows having been erected on Red Square in 1953 as Stalin launched his purge of Jewish doctors. 

Yet, having read Aron’s brilliant Roads to the Temple: Truth, Memory, Ideas, and Ideals in the Making of the Russian Revolution 1987–1991, I already knew that few authors illuminate the “dark and bloody crossroads” where literature and politics meet as well as Aron.
Derek Leebaert
Washington, D.C.

The Green Old Deal

To the Editor:
Regarding James B. Meigs’s column on Germany’s energy crisis, Angela Merkel and other world leaders—Nicola Sturgeon, Jacinda Ardern, Justin Trudeau—have much in common (“Never Go Full German,” January). Unfortunately, what they share is almost all negative—from green mania to open borders to authoritarianism. Why these figures are revered is beyond my comprehension. But Meigs’s insight that green activists don’t actually care about effective change is certainly the core point. Trying to reason with climate alar-mists means that one has already lost the argument, because trying to reason with them assumes that one has already recognized that they have some legitimacy.

So I say, “Drill, baby, drill.” I’m writing from South Carolina, which has low electricity costs because the power companies here use a combination of nuclear, fossil fuel, and renewable energy. Germany’s shutting down its nuclear reactors to buy Russian gas was a galactically stupid move. No one should be afraid to call out this massive blunder.
Carl Gong
Charleston, South Carolina