A Time for War by Michael Savage Read Free Book Online

power-mad psychopath after another paraded throughout, with all the details of his or her personal wealth displayed so as to render the averagely successful reader impotent and hopeless by the time the sports page is reached. Can the epic of the Sulzbergers be compared with Ecclesiastes? No.”
    Jack could see Abe building up a head of steam to retaliate. “Deuteronomy 31:6, right?” Jack asked him. “Your earlier quote.”
    â€œYup,” said Abe.
    Jack knew that Abe only quoted the Bible as ammo. In fact, he had once referred to its authors as “a collection of constipated poets, failed jewel hustlers, bankrupt sandal makers, whoremongers past their prime, child molesters, animal torturers, and other biblical age riff-raff.” Jack didn’t want Abe going off on that kind of pageant right now, and he didn’t want Abe and Doc getting into a scrimmage, either. He was about to segue into something safe when the Chinese man at the next table leaned over.
    â€œFrom the Greek, Deuteronomion. It means ‘second law.’” He answered their startled glances by saying, “Excuse me for listening in. I’m a doctor at the clinic. This was one of the more interesting conversations I’ve heard over breakfast.”
    â€œPeople don’t debate the way they used to,” Doc said.
    â€œIt’s true,” said the Chinese man. “That’s why I come to Bruno’s.”
    They all smiled.
    â€œMy family is of the Hui nationality, from China,” the man continued. “We are Muslim Chinese. People forget there were Muslims in China before the People’s Revolution. But after the revolution when mosques and churches were being destroyed indiscriminately, Bibles and Qurans burning in the same piles, the Muslims and Christians in my father’s town helped each other. My father remembers reading the Bible as well as the Quran in secret, and he raised me on both. I wish I could introduce that required reading to the Middle East, and any site of a religious war. I think that if we got to know the people we’re supposed to hate, we’d find a lot in common.”
    Jack and his friends sat for a moment in silence, pondering that—the idea that tolerance and understanding should not only be self-evident but so easily accessible. Then Jack invited the man to join them, but his shift at the clinic was starting and he left after a round of handshakes.
    â€œHey, Doc,” said Abe. “You know that old line ‘Jesus saves, Moses invests?’”
    â€œYes,” Doc said warily.
    â€œHow about this? Jesus saves, Moses invests, Buddha divests, Mohammad digests, and Krishna suggests.”
    â€œYou’re on a wrong tangent, Abe,” Doc said. “Get off it.”
    Luckily the waiter arrived to take their order then, and Abe was easily distracted. Abe then talked about his poster shop—which Doc insisted on calling “a head shop in disguise”—until the waiter returned with sand dabs, risotto, lightly grilled potatoes, some of Bruno’s specially cured Italian bacon from his famous “Prosciutto Room,” and veal for Eddie. Bruno refused to introduce a brunch or lunch menu. It was the same offerings day or night, all served with a bottle of Bruno’s own olive oil from the trees in his Sonoma hillside vineyard. Jack had once mentioned how he loved a particular brand of Spanish olive oil and Bruno had been incensed.
    â€œSpanish olive oil, what are you talking about!” he said. “I have the best olive oil in the world! We brought olive trees from Tuscany and our olive trees, they are Leccino, Pendolino, Moraiolo, Coratina, and Frantoio, the classical Tuscan blend. Olive oil is something sacred, God multiplied the world with olive oil!” Now Bruno gave Jack bottles of olive oil to take with him like a mother packing school lunches.
    The rest of the conversation was relatively benign, except when