Nitzakhon: A Guest Blogger Introduction

First Meetings Require Introductions

Dave in PB has kindly said he’d be willing to let me post guest essays, and I am grateful for the chance. I’d like to start my own blog, but my current blog is already falling into slow mode as I start a new full-time job. I cannot devote myself to starting and building another… but I do believe I have constructive things to say so, again, thank you Dave!

First, about my pseudonym. Nitzakhon is Hebrew for victory. This is a word we on the Right, whether in America, in Israel, or across the world need to not only say, but strive for – and achieve! (Or, we’re toast!)

So let me introduce myself. I am an American, having won the lottery and been born into the greatest, most exceptional country ever to have been in the history of mankind. My birthplace is the state where the “Shot Heard Round the World” happened, but unlike the majority of people there today I bleed red-white-and-blue; the sense of awe that I felt when I saw the Constitution in the National Archives was palpable. I never served in the military, something that – looking back – I regret, but would probably have gone into the U.S. Navy (Navy Warrior Song here) and if I could start over, say at my first year of college, being who I am and knowing what I know, I would do it without hesitation. But I have the deepest respect for all military members, in both America and Israel… and make a point of thanking military members, active and retired, whenever I can. And I am teaching my children to do the same.

To one of my co-workers I stated that I am to the right of the Tea Party, and he scoffed – then I took a very substantive (50-60 questions!) online political quiz. Here’s the result:

Told ya! So I will touch on many topics from that hard-core right point of view, with a few Libertarian dashes thrown in for flavor.

I am also a Conservative Jew and a Zionist. Israel is where my soul lives. I have been before, I will go again. I will walk through Ammunition Hill’s trenches; I will climb Masada and swear “Masada will not fall again!”; I will go to the Kotel, climb onto the Temple Mount and look at our Holy City; I will find the house where my mother grew up, find her parents’ gravesite, and eventually – G-d* willing – walk the Israel Trail to see the land from south to north. Or north to south, depending.

I believe deeply that faith in G-d is critical to a free people, and that before The People can govern themselves, people must govern themselves. The John Adams quote applies:

“Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”


I am a husband and father; I have two children and wish I could have more. I work for a living, using the thing Ayn Rand discussed – the mind – to generate wealth for my employer and myself; I find many, but not all, of her philosophy’s ideas quite moving. Atlas Shrugged had been on my bookshelves for years unread; then, serendipitously, I encountered Francisco’s Money Speech. The next day I started reading. And I have a business idea I am slowly developing.

I am the son, on one side, of a natural-born American whose lineage goes back to the American Revolution and before. On the other side I am the son of a first-generation Israeli immigrant. More, I am the husband of another immigrant, with whom I have two interracial children. I absolutely believe in immigration – legal immigration of people who assimilate into American culture.

Lastly, lest I get too long, let me absolutely clear in my last point: I live my life by Martin Luther King Jr.’s dictum to judge people, not by the color of their skin [or sex, or anything else] but by the content of their character [as individuals].

I hope my introduction intrigues you, that as I start up sending in essays that meet Dave’s standards, and you find them informative and provocative as well. I am fond of asking what I call “penetrating questions” and attempting to find the golden nugget inside a topic.

Shalom.

* As a believing Jew, I cannot write out that whole word.