RUTHFULLY YOURS

http://www.stolinsky.com/

We guard what we value. Our political leaders? Of course. Our money? Absolutely. Our children or our houses of worship? Not so much.

My wife and I often visit a nearby mall. The Rolex store and the Louis Vuitton store have very large men in dark suits standing near the door to inhibit shoplifting. The mall is large enough to require three armored-car services to remove the cash. We see the armored-car guards walking briskly, with the money bag in one hand and the other hand hovering near their holstered pistol.

When we go to the bank, we see the tellers behind thick sheets of bullet-resistant glass. Other banks employ armed guards. Money is obviously valuable, and we go to great pains to protect it. Perhaps that is why Los Angeles no longer has the distinction of being the bank-robbery capital of America.

But when we pass schools – elementary, middle, or high schools – we see young people and teachers, and an occasional elderly crossing guard. But we never, literally never, see an armed guard, much less a police officer. Yes, we know that Los Angeles, like many cities, has a school police force. We know that there may be an officer somewhere in the high school. But we also know that he or she is there to try to enforce some semblance of discipline, which teachers and principals are no longer willing or able to do. But protect the young people from attackers? Not really.

Similarly, when we pass synagogues, we see no security officers. The only exception is that on the High Holidays, we may see traffic officers to help with the congestion and parking. The same is true for churches on Christmas and Easter. But protect worshippers from attackers? No, not really.

http://www.renewamerica.com/columns/swirsky/181030

This past Saturday morning, 11 Jews were shot to death in a Pittsburgh synagogue by one of the millions of Jew haters who contaminate our world.

To Jews like me, who know and appreciate Jewish history as I do, this is no surprise. Tragic, yes; shocking, no.

We are a tiny, indeed microscopic, people, only 15 million in a world of nearly eight billion. That ratio equals the proverbial grain of sand on the vast beaches of life, only one drop in the immense oceans that cover most of our globe.

But Jew hatred is very powerful, written about in thousands of books and articles by erudite scholars who posit theories ranging from resentment that God selected Jews as his “chosen people,” to the myth that the Jews killed Jesus, to the accusation that Jews are either greedy capitalists or cruel communists, to the grievance that Jews run the world.

My own take is that when you peel back every layer of the onion of anti-Semitism, the root cause is that the anti-Semites among us are obsessively jealous. How can it be, they wonder, that this tiny people – dispersed in a diaspora for the last 5,000 years to far-flung communities all over the world where they landed with no language skills, no money, no resources, no nothing and in the process survived the Jew-targeting Inquisition, Crusades, pogroms, concentration camps, and pandemic outbreaks of anti-Semitism – managed to flourish and rise to prominence wherever they went?

Here in America, we have living proof that the green-eyed monster is alive and well, Exhibit No. One being the execrable “Reverend” Louis Farrakhan – one of Barack Obama’s buds – who little more than a week ago spoke before a smiling, nodding, applauding audience as he called Jews “termites” and “stupid.”

Did I mention his glowing admiration for Hitler? “The Jews don’t like Farrakhan,” he said some years ago, “so they call me Hitler. Well, that’s a good name. Hitler was a very great man.” Last May, this Nation of Islam leader – who has been manically obsessed with Jews his entire life – spoke of “Satanic Jews who have infected the whole world with poison and deceit.”

America is the sunniest corner of the Jewish Diaspora, and every single President, including previous ones who did not esteem Jews has adhered to this principle set forth by our magnificent first President George Washington. It is assiduously upheld by President Trump and arguments to the contrary are pure partisan rot….rsk

Thanks to e-pal Laz for reminding me of this.

On August 17th, 1790, Moses Seixas warden of the Hebrew Congregation of Rhode Island wrote a letter to our magnificent first President George Washington welcoming him to Newport: Excerpt:

Sir:

Permit the children of the stock of Abraham to approach you with the most cordial affection and esteem for your person and merits — and to join with our fellow citizens in welcoming you to Newport……..Deprived as we heretofore have been of the invaluable rights of free Citizens, we now with a deep sense of gratitude to the Almighty disposer of all events behold a Government, erected by the Majesty of the People — a Government, which to bigotry gives no sanction, to persecution no assistance — but generously affording to all Liberty of conscience, and immunities of Citizenship: deeming every one, of whatever Nation, tongue, or language equal parts of the great governmental Machine……”

On the very next day, President Washington responded, quoting Seixas…..Excerpt.

Gentlemen:

“It is now no more that toleration is spoken of as if it were the indulgence of one class of people that another enjoyed the exercise of their inherent natural rights, for, happily, the Government of the United States, which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance, requires only that they who live under its protection should demean themselves as good citizens in giving it on all occasions their effectual support…”…..“May the children of the stock of Abraham who dwell in this land continue to merit and enjoy the good will of the other inhabitants—while every one shall sit in safety under his own vine and fig tree and there shall be none to make him afraid.”

http://www.israelhayom.com/2018/10/29/accusing-trump-of-fostering-violence-is-incitement/

If you believe President Trump’s “discourse of hate” is to blame for the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting, then you must also believe that the absolute silence over the many anti-Semitic incidents under the previous president also played a significant role.

A hate crime is a despicable thing. That is why accusing someone of being responsible for a hate crime (like saying U.S. President Donald Trump may not have been the shooter, but he created an atmosphere that was conducive to the shooting) is a very serious thing. In fact, it is incitement.

The bodies strewn across the floor of the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh’s Squirrel Hill neighborhood were still warm when my colleagues here in Israel began to suggest that this heinous murder, committed by the vile neo-Nazi Robert Bowers, was carried out under the auspices of Trump. Revolting.

There were even those who broadcast out loud, on their microphones, their theories that the massacre perpetrated by Bowers was inspired by the “spirit of the times” in the United States since Nov. 9, 2016 – in other words, the day after the man the media believes was the wrong candidate won the presidential elections. The public doesn’t feel that way, but what does the public know, right?

The media is certainly not responsible for what happened in Pittsburgh on Saturday. But neither is Trump. Bowers is responsible. He is the murderer. He is the criminal. Those looking for the root cause can find it in the sick ideology that has already taken millions of Jewish, black, Romani, Christian and Muslim lives. Faced with racism, we are all brothers.

As for Bowers, he actually viewed Trump as being too soft, and worse, he hated him for maintaining close ties with the Jews. But the media chose to focus on Trump’s war on illegal immigration and his fight against violence and anti-Semitism, from the left end of the political spectrum too. That’s what he was trying to do last year, when he made that controversial remark after the neo-Nazi attack in Charlottesville. He did not come out in defense of neo-Nazis. He just wanted to point out that incitement and instigation of violence were not exclusive to the Right – there are also instigators on the Left.

https://bit.ly/2PxdSU6, https://bit.ly/2hQ8sow

The October 27, 2018 massacre at the Tree of Life Synagogue, in Pittsburgh, PA, was an egregious reminder that since the early 17th century, anti-Semitism has been a systematic feature of – yet an abhorrent aberration in – the US. At the same time, the US society has demonstrated 400 years of respect for Judaism, Judeo-Christian values and the Jewish State.

For instance, Peter Stuyvesant, the first Dutch Governor of New York/New Netherland (1647-1664), failed in his attempt to block the immigration of Jews to the colony, but prohibited them from constructing a synagogue and serving in the local militia. Moreover, he confiscated Jewish property and levied a special tax solely on Jews, claiming that they were “deceitful and enemies of Jesus Christ.”

The state of the Jewish community improved in the aftermath of the 1664 British conquest of New York and the introduction of a series of civil covenants in the various colonies (e.g., the 1641 Massachusetts Body of Liberties). It was further improved as a result of the 1789 ratification of the US Constitution, which enhanced civil liberties – in a drastic departure from the state of mind of the European Churches and monarchies – also inspired by the Five Books of Moses, and especially by the concept of the Jubilee (Leviticus, 25:10).

Still, European-imported anti-Semitism established itself in the US, although as a significantly lower profile in the newly-created society and governance. The latter have expanded liberty over and beyond the European standards, while severely restricting the playing field of potential anti-Semitism.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/10/rage-makes-you-stupid/

People have the strongest feelings about the things they know the least about.

What are we supposed to think about political rage?

Before and after the arrest of Cesar Sayoc, the suspect in the recent string of bombs sent to prominent Democrats and media figures, we were treated to any number of homilies about “rage” and its origins in “toxic” political rhetoric. Many of these homilies were pointed directly or indirectly at President Donald Trump and his immoderate Twitter habits. That political rage is necessarily linked to political violence was assumed, and sometimes asserted, but rarely argued.

Five minutes before that, rage was all the rage. Rebecca Traister, an editor for New York magazine, has just published a book celebrating the “revolutionary power” of anger, which was celebrated at The Atlantic on 4 October under a headline noting the “seismic power” of “rage.” On 21 September, the Washington Post affirmed that “rage is healthy, rational, and necessary for America.” On Friday, NBC news praised a television show for depicting “anger as righteous and necessary.” Before that, it ran a segment encouraging certain political partisans to “embrace their rage.”

Earlier in the year, Leslie Jamison wrote a very interesting and intelligent essay for The New York Times Magazine exploring anger as a “tool to be used, part of a well-stocked arsenal.” Right as the bombing suspect was being arrested in Florida, Rewire shared “All the Rage That’s Fit To Print,” its assessment of four books on “fury.”

I’ve omitted the word “women” in several instances above, on the theory that we’re all adults here, and that we would recognize the obvious hypocrisy and illogic of any “my rage good, your rage bad, bad, bad,” construct.

Except . . .

https://amgreatness.com/2018/10/26/the-eternal

The eternal return—Friedrich Nietzsche thought the idea was horrifying. Life as an endless merry-go-round in which the same things keep recurring, forever. That prospect, Nietzsche thought, was the hardest, weightiest, most depressing idea mankind could ever confront. It was part of Nietzsche’s blustering nihilism that he should first conjure the most unpleasant idea he could think of and then announce that true heroism lay in embracing it.

The rest of us may be less enthusiastic about the prospect of ceaseless repetition. After all, we’ve all had a foretaste of what it entails in the remarkable career of socialism. Like the fabled hydra, socialism is an evil that suffers decapitation after decapitation only to spring back to life, its blood—or, rather, the blood of its victims—somehow sprouting ever new heads of credulousness.

The Soviet Union was “really existing communism,” under whose aegis millions were impoverished, tortured, and murdered (but, according to the New York Times, the sex was great). Western intellectuals, gullible creatures that they are, adulated that steaming tyranny. Eventually morons like Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, and Pope John Paul II brought to an end that horrible “experiment in living.”

Chairman Mao probably has the distinction of having murdered more people than any other single human being. His efforts to bring compulsory fraternity to China has yet to be definitively repealed; indeed, China seems to be slipping backwards towards a new embrace of centralized tyranny.

Where else have we seen socialism on the march? In Cuba, of course, an island paradise that the Castro brothers transformed into a murderous police state. Then there was Pol Pot’s Cambodia. Like the Earl of Strafford, Pol Pot’s motto was “Thorough.” Wearing eyeglasses was for him evidence of counter revolutionary sentiment since it signaled an interest in such despicable bourgeois pursuits as reading. The result were those mountains of skulls for which his reign was infamous. We all know about North Korea: possibly the worst place on earth under the Kims, though it must be said that Venezuela, once the richest country in South America, under Hugo Chavez and Nicolás Maduro is well on its way to socialist apotheosis, i.e., total collapse.

https://quillette.com/2018/03/10/psychology-progressive-hostility/

Recently, I arrived at a moment of introspection about a curious aspect of my own behavior. When I disagree with a conservative friend or colleague on some political issue, I have no fear of speaking my mind. I talk, they listen, they respond, I talk some more, and at the end of it we get along just as we always have. But I’ve discovered that when a progressive friend says something with which I disagree or that I know to be incorrect, I’m hesitant to point it out. This hesitancy is a consequence of the different treatment one tends to receive from those on the Right and Left when expressing a difference of opinion. I am not, as it turns out, the only one who has noticed this.

“That’s a stupid fucking question,” answered a Socialist Alliance activist when I asked sincerely where they were getting what sounded like inflated poverty statistics. “If you don’t believe in gay marriage or gun control, unfriend me,” demand multiple Facebook statuses from those I know. “That’s gross and racist!” spluttered a red-faced Ben Affleck when the atheist and neuroscientist Sam Harris criticized Islamic doctrines on Bill Maher’s Real Time. Nobody blinks an eye when Harris criticizes Christianity, least of all Affleck, who starred in Kevin Smith’s irreverent religious satire Dogma. But Christians are not held to be a sacrosanct and protected minority on the political Left. As Skeptic Magazine’s Michael Shermer tweeted recently:
Michael Shermer ✔ @michaelshermer

“When I debate Christians, Jews, Creationists, climate deniers etc. they are unfailingly polite, respectful, thoughtful, discerning, & listen to my arguments. Far Left SJWs do not. They simply look for fault & pounce. ”

Outbursts of emotional hostility from progressive activists – now described as Social Justice Warriors or SJWs – have come to be known as getting ‘triggered.’ This term originally applied to sufferers of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, but activists have adopted it to describe the anxiety and discomfort they experience when they are exposed to views with which they disagree. “Fuck free speech!” one group of social justice advocates recently told Vice Media, as if this justified the growing belief among university students that conservatives should be prevented from speaking on college campuses. It’s no secret that, with the rise of the triggered progressive, university professors are increasingly intimidated by their own students. An illustrative example of this alarming trend was provided by the hoards of screaming students who surrounded the distinguished Yale sociologist Nicholas Christakis and demanded his head (which they duly received). Christakis had made the mistake of defending an email his wife had written gently criticizing Yale’s attempts to regulate students’ Halloween costumes. “Who the fuck hired you?!” screamed one irate student in response. “You should step down!”

https://quadrant.org.au/magazine/2018/10/jordan-peterson-matters/

The Canadian professor’s entire moral enterprise arose from his horror at the ease with which murderous ideologies came to possess ordinary people. Most of us look only briefly at that matter and others, unsettling as they are, but Peterson explores the very bases of such thought and being.

The cultural world changed after the UK Channel 4 interview which took place on January 16 this year, in which Cathy Newman “interviewed” the Canadian psychology professor Jordan B. Peterson.

The interview, or rather attempted harangue by Newman, became an instant phenomenon, mainly because Peterson’s demeanour, intelligence and patience with Newman’s rudeness, and real or assumed stupidity, were so impressive. The interview, contrary no doubt to the plan of Newman and Channel 4, greatly raised Peterson’s already high public profile, ensured best-seller status for his second book (12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos), and consigned Newman and Channel 4 to the ridicule of millions of viewers around the world. Whether either will recover is yet to be seen. (online editor: that video is embedded below)

While numerous profiles and interviews of Peterson have, over the last year, appeared in news and opinion outlets, most have been along the lines of: “Look at this wacky Canadian professor who seems to have millions of fans for some reason.” Few have attempted to come to grips with what are arguably his most important and original contributions to the ideas of the day. (A notable exception is the excellent hour-long interview by Dutch commentator Timon Dias, on the Geenstijl website and YouTube.) For me, writing as I have done for ten years about the importance of personal morality, in particular a return to a virtue framework, the most exciting thing about Peterson is that he is bringing talk about virtue and morality back to thousands of people in a West which has shunned and indeed ridiculed those ideas for fifty years.

https://amgreatness.com/2018/10/24/a-stark-raving

It’s bad enough that our politics have now become so polarized that there seems to be no way to escape either a split or an apocalypse. Left and Right no longer huddle near a squishy but relatively amicable middle, the nation’s rudder tilted slightly to the left and the ship of state steadily drifting to port. The postwar consensus, which by and large accepted the Roosevelt-Truman domestic agenda in the interest of winning the war, is now breaking up as a result of the conservative reaction (1980-present) against it. Even the brief interregnum of Jimmy Carter/Bill Clinton/Barack Obama only served to heighten the distinctions between the two sides, while the Trump counterrevolution has effectively ended all thoughts of a reversion to the mean.

For his part, President Trump took the high road Wednesday. “Those engaged in the political arena must stop treating political opponents as being morally defective,” he said. “The language of moral condemnation . . . these are arguments and disagreements that have to stop. No one should carelessly compare political opponents to historical villains. It’s got to stop. We should not mob people in public spaces or destroy public property.”

“There is one way to settle our disagreements: It’s called peacefully, at the ballot box,” he said.

That’s quite right. Conflicts need be neither violent nor bloody. The Cold War was fought between the Soviets and the Americans without a clash of armies or an exchange of nuclear weapons. Similarly, the Cold Civil War (as I termed the current struggle back in 2010) has been largely nonviolent, however heated. But with the reports Wednesday of explosive devices and suspicious packages mailed to prominent figures on the Left—coming on top of some startling attacks against the Right (Steve Scalise and Rand Paul), we find ourselves moving into terra incognita, politically speaking.

It’s true that America has seen domestic violence before—the wave of anarchism and labor unrest around the turn of the century, the Mad Bomber in New York, the “Days of Rage” in the late 1960s—some of it politically motivated. But not since the Civil War—which was essentially a conflict between the Southern Democrats and the Northern Republicans (if you don’t believe me, read Grant’s Memoirs)—have the two main parties edged this close to direct action against each other.