RUTHFULLY YOURS

I admit that I am absolutely unfamiliar with the music of Kanye West. But I also suspect that Mr. West is unaware of how his latest comments on slavery actually echo the interpretations of slavery that permeate Jewish classical texts.

When the people, later to be called Jews, were originally slaves in the land of Egypt, they were known as Hebrews and were considered the property of Egypt. After their release from bondage, they became Israelites. After three months of traveling toward the Promised Land, they received the Decalogue and it is here that they are introduced to “the fundamental and astounding idea” of freedom. As Rabbi Ben Zion Spitz, Chief Rabbi of Uruguay explains

God introduces to the world an entirely different concept of ‘slavery.’ It is a temporary condition. A Jewish man, out of luck and resources (typically because he stole something and then couldn’t repay), becomes an indentured servant for six years. He must be treated well and cared for. He must have a quality of life equal to that of his master. However, if he becomes comfortable with his servitude and his master, he can request to stay on longer. The Torah [Bible] prescribes that in such a case the master takes this slave to the doorpost and pierces the slave’s ear by the doorpost, marking him, branding him as a slave until the Jubilee year, when all slaves are freed, all men of Israel reclaim their ancestral lands.

This ear piercing is meant to signify that even though the newly freed people heard the First Statement (often called the First Commandment), they simply refused to listen to its incredibly revolutionary message. G-d freed them but they must be exquisitely careful not to become enslaved again and they must never make slaves of others. Thus, the piercing indicated that they refused to acknowledge that “man is meant to live free and not be the slave of any other human being.”

Once on a visit to Ariel, our host, a determined Jewish resident, told me that the happiest days of his life are those on which babies are born.

In today’s postings, please read:
“Israel’s Demographic Miracle:Birthrates are falling across the world, especially in developed nations—except in one. How did mainstream, middle-class Israelis start having children again, and what does it mean?”
Genesis 1:28 God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply……”
rsk

“Cohn argues that the prophets who transformed oppression and disorientation into a murderous quest against one whole category of people were the true precursors of the revolutionary movements of the twentieth century. Communists no less than Nazis, he observed, have been obsessed by the vision of a prodigious “final, decisive struggle” in which a “chosen people” will destroy a world tyranny and thereby inaugurate a new epoch in world history. “As in the Nazi apocalypse the Aryan race was to purify the earth by annihilating the Jewish race, so in the Communist apocalypse the bourgeoisie was to be exterminated by the proletariat … a secularised version of a phantasy that is many centuries old.” Cohn finds little difficulty in tracing a disconcerting resemblance between the sermons of the medieval prophets and the speeches of their twentieth-century successors.”

……When the likes of Noam Chomsky set the agenda, anyone who imagines the ‘progressive’ Left of today’s intellectual class is morally worthier or intellectually loftier than the lunatic prophets of medieval Europe needs to think again.

And if we are going to take a moral position on this—and I think we should—we have to ask both what the consequences were of using terror and not using terror. If it were true that the consequences of not using terror would be that the peasantry in Vietnam would continue to live in the state of the peasantry of the Philippines, then I think the use of terror would be justified.
—Noam Chomsky, discussing the slaughter of landlords in Vietnam, Forum on Vietnam War, New York, December 1967

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A reader asked if Quadrant was going to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the radical student movement of the Sixties that culminated in the mass demonstrations in Paris of May 1968. Believing that, like the centenary of the Bolshevik revolution in October 2017, there was nothing to celebrate, I didn’t give the suggestion much thought at the time. Rather than anything positive, the political and cultural legacies of May 1968 are almost all negative: anti-Americanism, anti-colonialism, anti-capitalism, anti-humanism, anti-religion, anti-male feminism. In their place, the best the era could advocate was adolescent hedonism: sex, drugs and rock’n’roll. At its worst were the views of radicals like Noam Chomsky above, who could conjure up a “moral position” to support the killing of all the landlords in Vietnam. Most of the influences that have so diminished Western culture in the last fifty years derive from the 1960s.

On reflection, however, I recalled that, even as I and most of my generation of 1960s undergraduates eagerly absorbed the fashionable mind-sets of the day, some of us also read a small number of books that warned us there was little new under the Sixties sun, and most of its social experiments had been tried many times before and always ended in disaster.

Is there no limit to the demands of political correctness, the burden of hypothetical solutions to imaginary problems, and the detachment from empirical reality that can be imposed on a society? Here, a list of questions whose answers would be obvious were they not being obscured.

Why do we facilitate the largescale ongoing immigration of refugees from failed states with no assessment of the outcomes? In particular, it would seem worth trying to better understand the effect of a common factor for almost all of the failed states, which is the nature of the culture they share and how this may be affecting the successful assimilation of these immigrants.

Why is there such a political obsession in Australia with climate change and carbon emissions when no recent extremes of climate are outside the bounds of earlier natural variability, when the claimed warming trend is less than the margin of error in measurement and when this is the only developed economy in which the level of natural uptake exceeds the emissions. As Australia is a net carbon sink, why are we not then receiving credits from other nations who are large net emitters?

Why is there a massive drive for wind and solar power when they require three to four times more installed generating capacity than they deliver and, at current levels, are providing only about 10% of baseload demand at already exorbitant cost with increasingly difficult load management problems? Especially, when the full baseload capacity of conventional power is still required to provide backup for the highly erratic alternative power and it must then be running inefficiently in standby mode much of the time

Why the phobia about nuclear power when we have the largest reserves in the world, ideal conditions for it and, with current technology, can enjoy the cheapest, most reliable, safest and cleanest power of all? Better still, we also have vast areas of the most remote, geologically stable and driest places to store any waste.

Why do we ban the clearing of native vegetation and increasingly hamstring our farmers and graziers with myriad environmental costs, restrictions and demands? We used to have an abundance of some of the least expensive high-quality food in the world. Now we have some of the most expensive with increasing dependence on imports.

Do our eco-saviours have no awareness that ecology is above all holistic and that what we do not get in one place only shifts the effect to somewhere else?

Why is it that Cuba, Venezuela, North Korea et al. are always having to impose gross violations of human rights and subject their populations to severe deprivations for some higher purpose which remains permanently in the future? Might there not in fact be some fundamental fallacy in collectivist philosophy that renders freedom, prosperity and equality permanently unattainable?

Why is it that so many of those who profess such great concern over threats to the environment greet any evidence that something may not be as bad as they fear with anger and rejection, never with hopeful interest? Might it be that their real commitment is not to nature but, to displaying their virtue and pleasuring themselves with a delicious sense of self-righteousness?

Mr. Coburn, an Oklahoma Republican, was a U.S. senator from 2005-15. He is a Manhattan Institute fellow.

Here’s a simple idea to help lower health-care costs: publish prices. A bipartisan group of state lawmakers in Colorado is pushing a bill to do precisely that. The Comprehensive Health Care Billing Transparency Act would allow Coloradans to see the true price of any health service they use—exams, procedures, prescriptions—before they undertake treatment.

If passed, the legislation would mandate that hospitals and other facilities disclose the base fees they charge for specific services “before applying any discounts, rebates, or other charge adjustment mechanisms.” Every bill sent to a patient would need to include an itemized list, which would allow patients to see if a service had been marked up. By making such information available upfront, the legislation would reintroduce competition to Colorado’s opaque health-care markets.

The bill is the brainchild of Denver businessman David Silverstein, who made news last year when he suggested that consumers stop paying their medical bills until providers show how they arrived at the prices being charged. Mr. Silverstein is the founder of BrokenHealthcare.org, a nonprofit that hopes other states will follow Colorado’s lead in legislating greater health-care transparency.

As profound a change as the Colorado bill represents, all it really would do is let consumers deal with health care the way they do any other product or service. Think about it: When you want to buy a car, you shop around, comparing the quality and price of competing models and the offerings at different dealerships. The same is true for practically everything else Americans buy: refrigerators, houses, office supplies, washing machines, computers, and on and on.

“President Trump’s peace through strength policies are working and bringing peace to the Korean peninsula. We can think of no one more deserving of the Committee’s recognition in 2019 than President Trump for his tireless work to bring peace to our world.” — 18 Members of the US Congress to the Norwegian Nobel Committee, May 2, 2018.

US President Donald Trump was nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize by a group of 18 members of Congress. In a letter to the Norwegian Nobel Committee, dated May 2, Rep. Luke Messer (R-Ind.) and 17 other House lawmakers — including Mark Meadows (R-N.C.), Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.), Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), Diane Black (R-Tenn.) and Steve King (R-Iowa) — wrote that Trump has worked “tirelessly to apply maximum pressure to North Korea to end its illicit weapons programs and bring peace to the region.”

The letter further stated that the Trump administration

“successfully united the international community, including China, to impose one of the most successful international sanctions regimes in history. The sanctions have decimated the North Korean economy and have been largely credited for bringing North Korea to the negotiating table. Although North Korea has evaded demands from the international community to cease its aggression for decades, President Trump’s peace through strength policies are working and bringing peace to the Korean peninsula. We can think of no one more deserving of the Committee’s recognition in 2019 than President Trump for his tireless work to bring peace to our world.”

Although the letter constituted a formal nomination, it was not the first suggestion that Trump might, or should, win a Nobel Peace Prize. On May 1 — mere days after an historic summit between Moon and North Korean ruler Kim Jong-un, during which the two leaders vowed to work toward “complete denuclearization” of the Korean Peninsula — Moon was quoted by a Blue House official as saying, “President Trump should win the Nobel Peace Prize. What we need is only peace.”

As she walked the red carpet of the White House Correspondents’ dinner on April 30, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) was asked by a Pajamas Media reporter whether Trump would be eligible for a Nobel Peace Prize in the event that North Korea actually agrees to denuclearize, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) replied:

“We’re a long way from that, but let’s see. There’s always an opportunity for a president of the United States to qualify. Let’s see how it goes.”

Pelosi and other Trump detractors are in an uncomfortable position where the Nobel Peace Prize is concerned. Former US President Barack Obama was awarded the prize in 2009, “for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples. The Committee has attached special importance to Obama’s vision of and work for a world without nuclear weapons.”

A friend- a retired professor in Virginia has developed a real cure for the insomnia that plagues so many adults and seniors. It is in the process of being copyrighted and prepared for market, but he has given me leave to share this with Ruthfully e-pals.

He has put together all John Kasich’s speeches in one disc. Those who have tried it claim they slept like babies….rsk

“…suddenly sunshine and perfect blue…” After a cold and wet April, some sunshine appeared in the past week, at least here in the northeast. As well, the month provided signs of optimism – perhaps only visible to those of a cheerful disposition. And, this despite on-going concerns: the Islamization of European nations like Belgium and France; the threat to liberty that comes from an expanding, unaccountable European government in Brussel; the risk of protectionism; the confluence of expanding government debt and rising interest rates; and the threat to democracy from those who persist in using all means possible – including nasty innuendos and circumventing civil liberties – to end, or at least stymie, the Trump Presidency.

Kim Jung-un, in preparation for a June summit with President Trump (and I suspect under orders from Beijing), agreed to suspend nuclear and missile tests and shut down the site of the last half dozen tests under Mount Mantap – a location many scientists suspect is in danger of collapse. Mr. Kim crossed the border into South Korea – the first North Korean leader to do so since 1953 – to meet with President Moon Jae-in. Also, leaders of the world’s largest countries met: India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi and China’s President Xi Jinping. After 59 years of rule, the last Castro left office, though it is uncertain that Miguel Diaz-Canel will serve the people any better. Jobless claims fell during the month. Unemployment is at 4.1% and work-force participation is rising. After years of stagnation, there was a modest increase in hourly earnings of 0.3%. Even the stock market, following two months of declines, rose modestly. Following publication of Steven Pinker’s book Enlightenment Now, op-eds appeared by Jonah Goldberg in National Reviewand Daniel Finkelstein of The London Timesnoting what every student of history should know: The world has never been richer, healthier, more democratic or fairer – a consequence of the Enlightenment: western values, self-determination, democracy, rule of law, market-driven economies, humanism, reason and science. Something to keep in mind, when we find ourselves in a funk.

The ever brilliant and thoughtful writer Edward Rothstein has a column, below on a new exhibit at the United States Holocaust Museum- “Americans and the Holocaust” which rightfully accuses American media and policies.

“What did we know and when did we know it? And what could have been done?These are the questions posed by a new long-term exhibition at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, “Americans and the Holocaust.” And behind them is a long-simmering indictment. The accusations: that there was a continuous refusal before World War II to accept larger numbers of Jewish refugees; that there was a seeming refusal during the war to accept the scale of the murders; and that there was an outright refusal late in the war to expend any military effort in disrupting the Nazi killing machine.”

What about Great Britain’s outrageous role in enabling Hitler’s killing machine? Britain’s notorious White Paper of 1939 which cut off Jewish immigration to Palestine on the eve of the Holocaust was a death sentence for millions of European Jews trapped in Europe.

After World War 11, British perfidy persisted and the 1939 White Paper remained the basis of British policy. Its cruel provisions kept wretched survivors of the Holocaust trapped and homeless in displaced persons’ camps in hostile European nations or behind barbed wire in detention camps in Cyprus. They fired on half of the “freedom ships” taking survivors to Palestine.

The British Navy was ordered to attack in case of any resistance. They used tear gas, clubs and firearms against refugees who occasionally fought back with sticks and eating cutlery.

When these ships reached the Palestine coast they were apprehended, boarded, and often rammed by the Royal Navy. Passengers were herded and transported to squalid prison camps on Cyprus formerly used to house German prisoners of war!

There is monumental blame to go around, but Britain gets a pass. rsk