Says Lieberman not a moral voice - The Jewish Standard

If Sen. Joseph Lieberman is “the moral voice of the Senate,” as Ben Chouake seems to think (Letters, Aug. 22), this country is in real trouble.

When he was running for vice president with Al Gore in the 2000 election, and simultaneously running to keep his seat in the Senate, his Senate campaign staff telephoned my husband, a Jew living in New Jersey, for a contribution to his campaign. Several years later, when my husband wrote to ask Sen. Lieberman for an explanation of a Senate vote, he received a form response saying that the senator does not reply to mail from residents of other states.

It may be legal to run for executive and legislative offices simultaneously, but is it really moral? Is it possible to split one’s loyalty so as to be true to the implied commitment to give one’s all to each?

It may be legal to ask Jews in other states to support the run of a fellow Jew for office, but is it moral to treat anyone from any state not one’s own as if he is not worth one’s time?

As for fomenting, urging, and supporting aggression against any sovereign nation that does not threaten our country, there is no question in my mind: This is not moral.

Poor Joe Lieberman parades his Orthodoxy as morality, but he comes across as one of those fearful Jews who will do anything, say anything, and support even those whose actions that conflict with moral stands he has claimed as his own, just so the anti-Semites will think of him as “one of the good ones.”

The “moral voice of the Senate,” indeed! I can name several who might lay claim to that title, but Joe Lieberman doesn’t make the list.

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