The Modern-Day Wisemen of Chelm
Harley Schlanger
President, The LaRouche Organization
Transcription of TLO Video Update from Dec. 19, 2025
Chelm is a town in southeastern Poland, known for the oft-repeated tales of foolishness of the town's elders. The village's population was largely Jewish, and the stories about them were a major staple of folk entertainment from the 16th or 17th century forward.
What makes the elders especially foolish is that they believe themselves to be wise -- replete with a repository of axioms which shape an inability to face reality, and a lack of critical thinking that makes them captive to the wildest self-delusions when confronting a problem. As one who grew up among them, Tevye the Dairyman, might say, "Oy, such schmendricks, it's a wonder they could find their way home for the Sabbath dinner."
The stories about them are a central feature of Jewish folklore, an example of the self-reflective irony inherent in the great tradition of Yiddishkeit. An ability to poke fun at the often self-defeating response to problems -- big or small, real or imagined -- facing the Jewish population of the shtetl, and to laugh at their sometimes self-defeating solutions, helped sustain them during times of harsh, oppressive conditions.
This ironic humor helped shape the identity of eastern European Jews, giving them what one scholar of the Yiddish tradition described as "an ability to laugh through one's tears."
Let me provide one simple example, not from Chelm, but from the great writer Sholom Aleichem. writing of how Tevye the Dairyman dealt with the most difficult and intense discussions of family problems around the dinner table. With tempers flaring over a seemingly unsolvable dilemma, he used a rare moment of silence to change the subject.
"Any news," he asked, "about the cholera epidemic in Odessa?"
In the interest of self-disclosure, I should note that there are some in my extended family who believe that we are descended from the Wise Men of Chelm. I don't know, it could be true -- perhaps that explains why, in reporting each day on the absurd policies from a modern-day Chelm -- Brussels -- I am able to sustain a stubborn optimism, believing that one glorious day -- hopefully before the arrival of the Messiah -- such self-important mavens will blush at their Chutzpah in asserting they are "leaders of the Coalition of the Willing", and be able to laugh at their foolishness -- before they provoke World War III.
Maybe events in Brussels yesterday will shatter their self-consoling beliefs that they represent the pinnacle of "western democracy"! Their outright thievery of Russian sovereign assets was prevented by determined opposition from Belgium, Hungary, Slovakia and the Czech Republic in the course of 16 hours of wrangling. The best they could get is a questionable arrangement for a $90 billion loan, backed by what? Who knows?
This face-saving agreement allowed them to posture that they are courageously fighting the "new Hitler", Putin; that they have the right to violate international law by seizing sovereign Russian assets; and their bankrupt economies can afford a massive, hyperinflationary military build-up, and the captive populations of Europe will cheer their bold brilliance, as the continent's infrastructure, health care and education systems collapse -- at least the 10% of their people that still support them will strut over what will be, at best, a momentary Pyrrhic victory!! \
There was a saving grace to the story of the Wise Men of Chelm -- no one was hurt by their silly hubris -- except those who tumbled off their chairs laughing! The same cannot be said of the effects of the actions of Princess Ursula and her coterie of Dybbuks, who assign those they are supposed to govern to the "peace of the grave."
Perhaps in their arrogant contempt for those they have been appointed to govern, von der Leyen, Kallas, Starmer, Macron and Merz can cling to the delusion that the mounting dead of the Ukrainian military will salute them as saviors, on their way to the grave.
And they may feel protected by a final Trump Card they hold -- that due to the censorship and Fake News they control, those who suffer from their actions may not hear about what they have done.
Those of us who appreciate the legacy of the stories of the Wise Men of Chelm must solemnly swear that the grisly tales of the Wise Men of Brussels become known, so they will not be able to disappear into the night!
To conclude with a bit of genuine insight, I call your attention to the solution to a Yiddish proverb -- "The truth never dies," the wise men say, "but it lives a terrible life." The solution: It is up to us to protect the truth, from those who in their inflated egos believe themselves to be the Masters of the Universe.
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Link to three short stories of the Wise Men of Chelm