RUTHFULLY YOURS

Conor Cruise O’Brien, the late Irish politician, writer, historian and academic who wrote “The Siege”….arguably the best history of Israel, lamented “Antisemitism is a light sleeper.” Indeed! It has awakened with gale force. Once, in order to be respectable due to post Holocaust guilt, it posed as “tough love” criticism of Israel.

The hypocrisy was staggering even then. After World War Two, millions of people were forcibly deported and rendered refugees, but only the Arabs made it a heritable status, as Palestinian Arabs were herded into squalid camps for four generations. Who got the blame? Israel.

History and facts were discarded as “the occupation” obsessed those too lazy and ignorant to read history. The so called “West Bank” was part and parcel of the White Paper of 1922 which deeded 80 percent of promised Palestine to the Arabs ….all the land East of the Jordan River…which became Jordan…and all the land west of the river ….20% to the Jews.

But history be damned! Never mind the harsh realities of Communist oppression and the genocides in Africa. Israel dared to defend itself! How dare they? The floodgates opened and antisemitism blossomed in the academies, in the media, and among large segments of the populations in Europe.

Yes, one may argue that it is largely driven by Islamic anti-Semitism, but who gives it a free ride by obfuscation and deliberate concealment of its source?

Those are the bitter reflections of Passover for me as we recount past suffering while “respectable” Jew hatred grows exponentially….rsk

If there is one thing lacking in our society today, it is a jealous fidelity to kindness. Yes, there is an excess of talk about kindness and being kind, and it always comes at the hand of someone who is trying to tell someone else that they have to be kind. The fact of the matter is this: kindness is not being taught in the home, and it is being agendized in our culture for manipulative purposes.

I can even go so far as to say that those who preach and celebrate kindness are – in many cases – the worst offenders of being unkind. A perfect example comes to us in every church parking lot after every mass every week.

Long ago, I listened to a Jesuit guest speaker at the church I attended with my Mother. He was less than happy with the congregation. He spoke of kindness and how Christians are supposed to treat people and pretty much called us all hypocrites. His example was the church parking lot after mass.

“You offer each other the sign of peace in the pews, smile and pretend to be kind, and then cut each other off in the parking lot because you have to be before your neighbor,” he said, and I paraphrase for the time that has passed since I listened to him. “You forget every last word of the sermon about being kind and Christian because you have to beat your neighbor to the brunch bar!”

Even after his tongue lashing, the exact scene he described played out in the parking lot after mass. Some didn’t hear it, didn’t get it, or just didn’t care. They went to church; they did their time, now back to “me first, I win, you lose.”

Some will argue that there is enough blame to go around for this malady, if, in fact, they believe it to be a problem at all. It seems the further one gets to the “touchy-feely” Left or the sanctimonious Right, the more they tend to overlook even their own acts of unkindness, even as they tell others what they have to do to be kind.

Ayn Rand’s archvillain, Ellsworth Toohey, in The Fountainhead, promoted “diversity,” in Chapter XIV, as one means of acquiring power: “Don’t set out to raze all shrines—you’ll frighten men. Enshrine mediocrity—and the shrines are razed.” This is true. If you’re taught, and believe that a thatched hut in Africa is as much of an achievement as the Empire State Building, then the shrine has been razed.

Diversity means mixing apples and oranges and forbidding you to choose between them.

Diversity means equating a Rachmaninoff symphony or a Chopin etude with any instance of “rap” you care to name. God help you if you disagree. Rap is undiluted hatred, in performance of shouting obscenities and misogyny in your face, backed up by throbbing, deafening, mind-nullifying bass. Its purpose is to destroy.

Rap is “a musical form of vocal delivery that incorporates ‘rhyme, rhythmic speech, and street vernacular’, which is performed or chanted in a variety of ways, usually over a backbeat or musical accompaniment….Rap differs from spoken-word poetry in that rap is usually performed in time to an instrumental track. Rap is often associated with, and is a primary ingredient of hip-hop music, but the origins of the phenomenon predate hip-hop culture. The earliest precursor to the modern rap is the West African griot tradition, in which ‘oral historians’, or ‘praise-singers’, or ‘critique individuals’ would disseminate oral traditions and genealogies, or use their formidable rhetorical techniques for gossip or to “praise or critique individuals….”

I beg to differ. It contains no music. And it is usually performed by someone who can’t sing, or doesn’t seem to try. After all, melody is verboten. I stress the term chanted.

Diversity means Western culture is alleged to be on a par with primitive cultures. The Venus de Milo is the same as a voodoo doll. To make a distinction between them is to “confess” your innate “racism, “white privilege,” and even Nazism. Elevate the subjectivist in art, and raze the absolute. A subjectivist person is a coward who is afraid to have values, or is afraid to defend what values he may have if they are attacked.

Diversity means that the artwork of Lawrence Alma-Tadema is on a par with the non-art of the likes of Jackson Pollack, together with that of all his ilk’s smears, blobs, blank canvases, and parallel lines of modern art.

Diversity means that meaningless means that there are no absolutes, only one’s subjectivist feelings. Feelings replace reality. A subjectivist will assert with a straight face that, “The Dark Horse Nebula is just a spilled ink spot, that’s how I see it.” To say that an “artwork” is meaningless is not an acceptable or recognized critique of a canvas of blobs and smears. To a doctrinaire subjectivist it is an expletive. A box of randomly chosen junk is the equal of or superior than the Statue of Liberty. If you are faced with a jumble of colors, or by a canvas on which are glued swatches of fabrics, and insist on identifying it as such, you will have violated the modern cardinal rule of art appreciation to not identify rubbish is trash. You will have hurt the creator’s feelings, and invaded his “safe space.”

Throughout the Arab/Moslem world Christians are imperiled. In Israel, alone among the Middle East nations, they enjoy freedom from persecution and freedom to practice and express their faith.

Holy week which begins on Palm Sunday, brings worshipers to churches and shrines meticulously restored and protected by the government of Israel.

On Good Friday, Christian pilgrims from all over the world, carrying wooden crosses gather in The Mount of Olives and march to the Holy Sepulchre in the middle of the Old City. Easter Sunday celebrates the resurrection of Jesus.

Our combined Judeo/Christian ethics have made the world better, kinder, with more freedom for all. Happy Easter from rsk

When did we begin to accept mere opinion as unquestionable truth, with no hint of doubt or uncertainty allowed, no need for deeper knowledge, no possibility of error and no place for any change of mind? Such is the arrogance of the loudly uninformed that fervour these days overwhelms mere fact.

There are three levels of ignorance. Simple ignorance is just not knowing and knowing you don’t know. Compound ignorance is thinking you know but knowing so little you can’t recognise your own ignorance. Tertiary malignant ignorance is then not knowing, thinking you do know and that, for their own good, others should be forced to conform to what you believe.

The simple form is the most honest and least harmful. It can even be beneficial in avoiding stupid mistakes as well as prompting one to learn more. Unfortunately, in our culture it seems to be noticeably less popular than the compound and malignant varieties. In the current version of democracy, the idea of one-person one-vote appears to have become equated with the notion that all opinions are of equal value and everyone is not just entitled to an opinion, but should have one on every issue regardless of how ill-informed they may be. Indeed, it appears that the only socially acceptable consideration for a belief is for the fervour and conviction with which it is held. Conviction thus trumps reason, and certainty prevails.

In public opinion polls it is unusual for anyone to say they do not know enough about something to have an opinion, or to be uncertain, to need to know more or even to be open to better knowledge. It seems that opinions are not only necessary but must be expressed as beliefs with no hint of doubt or uncertainty, no need for better knowledge, no possibility of error and no place for any change of mind in the light of better information. When the idea of simply not knowing about something or of making a tentative assumption that may be subject to change become unthinkable, believing a half-dozen impossible things before breakfast becomes the norm.

With such a dynamic prevailing in the public sphere, the future of our current form of democracy looks dubious. This problem is now manifest across a growing number of complex and uncertain issues of critical importance. These include mass immigration from failed societies, premature adoption of technically and economically unviable energy systems, an ongoing unchecked proliferation of government that is stifling essential productive activity, plus ever-increasing commitments for health, education, welfare and defence spending which are simply impossible to sustain. Another major and pervasive problem would also have to be the whole obscene morass of taxation that is now beyond any possibility of effective reform and desperately requires a fundamental rethink.

It is Easter weekend and my mind wanders, my thoughts are sad and full of fear for what is overtaking us. Yes, His rising fills me great wonder, gives me reassurance as to what lies ahead. But in this world, the Left marches, ever marches on, every day freedom erodes, the insidious march and relentless, doggedness of their pursuit to destroy America’s liberty, to bind us, reeducate us, to mold a new man in a Utopian vision. For they are God, they are creating a heaven on earth and we are nothing, worse than nothing, an obstacle in their long progressive drive. We stand in their way, they of the angels, we block them; therefore we must be destroyed. Liberty, the very thought of liberty must die.

So, my mind takes me, takes me into the Plains, north of the Platte, crossing the Missouri, fast as the winds could take me, past, into the way back, rushed and with fear at my heels, I pushed forward into hills of time, given over to time, before, long before this time of tragedy. Into the Dakotas and badlands, wheat high, winds strong and true, the breath of free men and liberty still blow through our bodies strong.

Liberty trampled, burned, destroyed and for what? This God’s graceful land, bequeathed by Founders of a vision unseen, unheard, unknown from all time and history. But now being shattered, transformed for a Utopian dream of hell, an equality of man’s God, a rejection of Him, a tyranny built on jealousy, envy and hatred, from the devil himself. How man, so easily fooled and sold into slavery of shattered illusions of self-righteousness and the striving to be their own God, to make heaven here, to want to mold men to break and destroy them.

All for want of peace, justice, equality and security, we so easily pursue a false God. We pursue our own God, to remake us as the Creator and Judge, to rule over all, to destroy all that is good, just and true and free. The enemy of the Illusionary is the free; their enemy is the very essence of liberty. The free must be destroyed, by the millions they have fallen, and how many more? I fear for all of us, the how many more that will suffer from their progressive crusade.

We have paved the way for tyranny, every day, every minute gone, we drift away from that dream, that dream of our Founders and of that timeless dream of a free man and his faith, his liberty to live and think and be as God made him.

Although Britons do have affordable access to primary-care doctors, and everyone in the UK is covered through high taxes, they are subjected to extensive waiting periods for specialists, surgeries and hospitalization. The fact is that many patients die waiting for treatment.

Rather than rejecting the basic free-market principles of the US economy — as a 2016 Harvard University survey found that most do — young Americans would do well to ask themselves why it is that so many people from countries with socialized medicine flock to the United States for treatment.

According to a recent Pew poll, support for universal health care, provided and paid for by the federal government, is higher among American millennials than among older generations. Young Americans seem to believe that socialized medicine is a “cure-all” for health-care ills in the United States, as it ostensibly is elsewhere, such as Canada and Britain.

Unfortunately, there are facts that would appear to put this fantasy to rest by the facts — for instance, the tragic and untimely death of a 20-year-old British woman in her dorm room last March. Victoria Hills, a first-year student, died of an ear infection, after “postpon[ing] visiting her campus general practitioner because her student loan had not come through and she couldn’t afford the prescription.”

There seems to be a myth that all medical care, procedures and drugs are free under a socialized system. Although Britons do have affordable access to primary-care doctors, and everyone in the UK is covered through high taxes, they are subjected to extensive waiting periods for specialists, surgeries and hospitalization. The fact is that in the West, as the ability of physicians to provide services becomes stretched, many patients die waiting for treatment.

Tonight Jews will gather with friends and family to celebrate Passover. We will recount the hardships of slavery in Egypt and the harsh oppression by the Pharaoh. We will rejoice in the rescue by Moses who demanded freedom for our people. We will recite the ten plagues that were unleashed on the Egyptians when the Pharaohs refused to free the Jews .The Pharaoh finally relented but when the Jews were leaving he sent an army to capture them and return them to enslavement. We will cheer when we retell how the waters of the Red Sea miraculously parted giving the Jews an escape, and the waters returned drowning the pursuing army.

Then, we will have a moment of silent prayer in memory of the martyrs of the Warsaw Ghetto who courageously rebelled on Passover in April of 1943 and held off the well-armed Nazis for over a month.

Finally, we will recount another miracle- the return of the Jews to Israel in 1948 when the seas again parted- this time for the steel hulls of vessels bringing besieged and beleaguered and traumatized survivors of the Genocide of World War 2 to safety and succor in the Jewish state of Israel.

Then we will eat, drink and be merry.

But, the story of Passover continues with great consequences:

The book of Exodus says that after crossing the Red Sea, Moses led the Jews into the Sinai, where they spent 40 years wandering in the wilderness. After travelling through the desert for nearly three months, they camped before Mount Sinai and it was there that God made a covenant with Moses and revealed the Ten Commandments on two stone tablets that codified the mandate to create a just and humane society and govern the lives of Jews and all decent people and nations. There are actually 613 commandments which cover every aspect of life-even hygiene and diet, but the Decalogue- the Ten Commandments are the most famous.

Think about that. At a time and place of local mores that sanctioned and celebrated murder and pillage and tyranny, these laws set forth principles of morality which have lasted for millennia.
Here, in this great nation we live in freedom from intimidation, oppression and harassment because those founding fathers who sought to “form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity” were religious Christians who were informed and guided by the Bible and the Ten Commandments which were revealed more than 3,000 years ago to Moses and the Jewish people on their way to their homeland in Israel.

Re-enacting slavery is not everyone’s idea of a good time, but this is how Jews celebrate Passover. Eating matzo—the bread of affliction—and horseradish, Jews gather at the ceremonial Seder to recall their enslavement under Pharaoh in ancient Egypt. Every family and household recreates the text of the Haggada, the narration, in its own way, to ensure that each participant experiences the national ordeal.

It might seem strange that people who prepare challah for the Sabbath and welcome the New Year with apples and honey choose to mark the low point of their history. Slavery is emotionally humiliating, physically harmful and psychologically degrading. It includes having sons killed at birth and daughters at the mercy of rapists, eating only bitterness and providing sweetness for slaveholders.

And many families need no reminder national enslavement recurs for the Jewish people. Benjamin Ferencz, who helped prosecute the major Nazi war criminals at Nuremberg, named his 1979 book about Jewish forced labor “Less Than Slaves.” Whereas slaves are generally well-maintained to ensure they remain productive, concentration-camp inmates were worked to death as another means of annihilation. The Haggada is mild compared with the Jewish experience under Hitler. Why commemorate a repetitive history of bondage?

The answer lies in the prescribed rhythm of the Seder, which passes from slavery through stages of gratitude to the Almighty to songs of liberation. Jews tell the hard truth about their past because they might otherwise take freedom for granted. Like athletes who know they must train for the marathon, Jews rehearse the Exodus to practice overcoming slavery.

President Donald Trump is facing a revolt from his base for having signed the bloated omnibus spending bill that torpedoes his “drain the swamp” pledges. But the president now has an opportunity to achieve a small measure of redemption: he should offer loud and unequivocal support to Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, who is being hammered for reportedly having rejected identity politics in favor of meritocracy.

Zinke is facing a storm of media criticism from liberals for allegedly saying that diversity is “not important,” though his office denies that he said this. The same sources that reported Zinke’s comments say that he followed up by stating that what he cared about was excellence—and that by hiring the best people, he would in fact put together the most diverse group anyone has ever had. This second statement is a cowardly concession (as is his denial of his initial diversity observation, assuming that he made that initial statement). Sometimes meritocracy will yield diversity; sometimes it won’t. The point is that it doesn’t matter. Diversity should not be an end in itself; excellence is the goal.

Rejecting the primacy of diversity constitutes a head-on assault on the received wisdom of Washington and elite American culture. Gender and racial quotas have been the order of business for the last three decades. The #MeToo movement has only intensified pressures on public and private organizations to hire based on sex and skin color. The result: wasted resources, the sidelining of merit, and ever more virulent and irrational identity politics. The rule of the diversity regime is that you’re required to be fanatically obsessed with race and gender until you aren’t—because at that unpredictable moment, whenever it comes, noticing race and sex becomes racist and sexist.

What’s fantastic about the Zinke story, which appears to be gaining momentum, is that the Interior Secretary is being condemned for allegedly saying that he discounts racial categories in hiring, and prefers “having the right person for the right job.” This position, uncontroversial for decades, was the essence of Martin Luther King’s vision of a colorblind, merit-based society. Treating people the same way regardless of their race or sex used to be considered the definition of fairness; now it is understood to be vicious and intolerable. Kristen Clarke, president of the National Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, writes of Zinke, “the racist views harbored by members of this administration and their failure to ensure diversity must be condemned.”