A few (apparently, a very few) secular types protested yesterday against Israel's moving the clock back last night. Of course, the US and other countries have being steadily extending Summer Time, so that Israel has now done so about a month and a half before then.
Being in sync with other Western nations (kind of an odd thing to assert, considering that Israel is in the same time zone as none of them) seems to be a major point for the protestors, to which I respond, so what? If the rest of the world is going to be ridiculous, must Israel follow along? Mostly unmentioned, of course, is how inconvenient the late change is to those who daven every morning. Call me parochial, but yes, I think Israel should care about such things.
Of course, that's another sore point for the protestors: The fact that Yom Kippur figures into these calculations. Well, again, tough. Israel is a Jewish state. There are lots of compromises on all sides; this (and even allowing for Pesach, as is currently not the case) seems like a trifle compared to others. (And yes, I know it's still 25 hours. But the early end has at least a psychological effect.)
But really, I have one irony to comment on: If I had to bet, I'd say that most if not all of these protestors are the usual suspect leftist "Occupy Rothschild" types, the types that are just fine with government intervention. Well, they've got their government intervention, in the form of regulating time itself. Now they can have it, as the man (Kingsley Amis?) said to the woman on the bus. (Of course, being good leftists, they think that government is the one perfect thing and are thus quite frustrated without really knowing why. You put your very time in the hands of an imperfect institution, you see what happens.)
I, as a mostly-good libertarian, think the whole thing is nonsense and should be abolished. So I can complain as much as I want, except I don't have cause to here specifically. Smiles for me, no violins at all for them. (Little-known fact: Timezones, as opposed to daylight time, were a
private initiative. They weren't needed before the telegraph and
railroad were invented; the train companies needed them and instituted
them.)
One more thing: When the Pope removed ten days from the calendar in 1582, lots of ignorant peasants were upset, as they actually believed he'd taken ten days off their lives. (The accountants were upset for more rational reasons.) Newsflash: He didn't, and he government isn't taking an hour of your sunlight- especially when, as here, they are restoring "normal" time.
Marc Shapiro, mentioned in the early days of this blog, just sent me a book. He's the best!
