A commenter went on a tirade against me in response to my post on Charlie Hebdo. Some of his points are good enough to respond to. Towards the end though it gets hyperbolic, calling me “appalling” and “lacking basic human decency”.
For those who want to see the whole thing, I have pasted it here and respond point by point.
First off, let me say that in written communication where two people don’t see or know each other, things tend to get very emotional and exaggerated. So I try to subtract the hysteria and try to get to the meat of things, because I know that in person he wouldn’t accuse me of “lacking basic human decency”. I really try to avoid this, but when I do get into a heated Facebook comment war with somebody, I just discount the vitriol and don’t hold it against him. People have called me – people I know, not people I only know through Facebook – all kinds of horrible things specifically for my views on the purpose of Holocaust awareness and laws against Holocaust denial. I would still have lunch with these people and stay friends with them.
As you can probably guess if you read this blog, I don’t believe it is a gentile’s responsibility to remember the Holocaust, and I don’t care about Holocaust denial.
But anyway, this kind of hyperbolic language in comments is nothing new. It happened in the Gemara and among the Rishonim and Acharonim all the time. Nasty, horrible comments that we now wrap in a book of Rabbinical humor. What first comes to mind off the top of my head is the boxing line between Chazal “רחמנא ליצלן מהאי דעתה” and the reprisal “רחמנא ליצלן מדעתה דידך!” Or the fact that the Yerushalmi Chazal referred to Hillel HaZaken as “The Babylonian” just as Haredim refer to Rav Soloveitchik as JB. Or the fact that the ראב”ד said of the Rambam that people “better than him” believed that God was a physical being. Or that the Rambam called Rashi (not by name) a moron for believing that it was a good thing that Hizkiyahu buried ספר הרפואות. Or if you want to see some really hysterical language, check out שד”ל on pretty much anyone who disagrees with him.
So anyway, I’ll just take the hyperbolic tone as a continuation of the Jewish tradition of tearing the other side apart through comments. Fine.
As for responding to the comment, first of all, here it is, and I will respond part by part:
You are being obtuse and, though I realise that this is a coping strategy, this is important enough that I shall elaborate.
1) To begin we must detail exactly how outrageous the entire premise of your post, namely the comparison between Charlie Hebdo and Der Sturmer, really is:
(i) Charlie Hebdo is a left wing magazine that takes a pro-immigration editorial line and has specifically called for the banning of the National Front.
(ii) Anti Islam/Mohammed cartoons represent a tiny fraction of Charlie Hebdo’s output.
(iii) Charlie Hebdo has been as rude, or ruder, about many other religions and ideologies, including, to re-iterate, the French far right.
(iv) Muslims in Europe are not a persecuted minority, but a persecuting minority, responsible for an disproportionate amount of both violent and petty crime, gang violence, political violence, pimping, sexual assault and rape.
(v) Muslims in Europe are not a persecuted minority, but the beneficiaries of an ongoing ‘awareness lowering’ campaign by political elites. For example Muslims who commit crimes are almost invariably referred to as “Asian”, even when they are from Eritrea. They also maintain a very effective ‘frontlash’ designed to stigmatise any indigenous Europeans who object to the latest Muslim outrage as leading a non-existent Islamophobic backlash (your own post is a typical example). In addition, they disproportionately benefit from European welfare states.
I agree with all of this, except that Muslims are not persecuted. They are persecuted and they are also persecuting. There is a Muslim problem in Europe. Therefore, what? He doesn’t say. Should Europe expel them all? He can’t say that, just like the MSM in Europe has to call Muslims “Asians” even if they’re Eritrean. How about kill them all? Certainly can’t say that, and wouldn’t support that. Neither would I. Pay them to leave, like the Feiglin plan? Maybe he would support that. We’ll have to ask him. He’s invited to post here directly and I’ll publish it. I would support that, too. Europe pays Muslims to leave voluntarily and go back to…I don’t know…wherever. No problem with that at all.
But there’s also a black problem in America. And there’s a Haredi problem in Israel. Are all these problems absolutely identical? No. Haredim in Israel are not Muslims, and blacks in America are not either. They are all different manifestations of the same problem- welfare, drug laws, forced public schooling, minimum wage laws, gun laws, some of which apply more to some problems and not others. What they all have in common is a festering group of people with similar lifestyles or religious laws whose society is degrading because of government intrusion. Welfare is common to them all. Gun laws mostly to South Side Chicago blacks. Drug laws to blacks and Muslims. The draft to Haredim. Minimum wage to all of them. Get rid of all those things and Muslims will be less violent, Haredim lass insular and defensive, and blacks won’t kill each other as much.
In sum, the comparison with Der Sturmer is utterly ludicrous for all the above reasons. To make it so soon after 12 people were gunned down in broad daylight with AK 47s in what used to be a first world capital, is moral idiocy of the first order. I should also note that you seem barely unable to acknowledge the murder of four Jews shortly afterwards.
The people killed at Charlie Hebdo were innocents, and the killers murderers. Those who killed my Jewish brothers in France have the din of בועל ארמית קנאים פוגעים בו in my opinion. They should all die for their crimes as soon as possible. I’m יוצא now.
2) The next stage is to ask what could lead you to such detestable and foolish pronouncements. This is not difficult. In certain intellectual circles, it has become an article of faith to deny that Islamic fundamentalism is a major global problem, and to argue that, to the extent that it is, it is the fault of western, (mostly U.S.) foreign policy. The reason why people maintain this position is because (i) they oppose interventionist US foreign policy (ii) they are lazy. Whilst there are plenty of cogent arguments to be made against neo-conservatism that take due account of the questions it is designed to answer, these people cannot be bothered. and so simply deny there is any problem with Islamic fundamentalism, or Islam, at all.
Islamic fundamentalism is a major global problem. But which problem is more major? US foreign policy, or Islamic fundamentalism? You can’t beat the math. US foreign policy causes so many more deaths than Islamic fundamentalism that to compare the two is “detestable and foolish” in commenter’s words. US foreign policy has killed millions. Islamic fundamentalism tens of thousands. The only difference is that one is organized by a state and systemetized, surrounded by effective propaganda to make people think that the murder of millions is necessary for their security and “freedom”, and the other is perpetrated by a disorganized mob, both equally murderous, both equally evil.
Maybe he wants to say that US foreign policy is not motivated by religious hatred? I say it is. Christian religious evil. George Bush invaded Iraq and killed hundreds of thousands because of Jesus. Grenada, the Philippines, Panama, Lybia, Mexico, Vietnam, God knows what other countries I’m missing and there are certainly a bunch, all invaded by Christians who think they are “exceptional”. “American Exceptionalism” it’s called. It’s an offshoot of Christian religious doctrine, the same bullshit that led to the Crusades, the Inquisition, the Conquistadores, the slaughter of countless Indians, and now this same Christianity is leading us into yet another cold war with Russia after almost destroying the entire damn planet in nuclear Armageddon in 1962.
We have a serious Christian Fundamentalism problem on this planet. Can the commenter deny that? If he does, he is buying into a very thin veil of “freedom” and “security” propaganda that has no bounds as to what it can justify. Am I to take the Western Side of this battle just because Christians are wise enough to clothe their murder in a few catchphrases? So the US can kill millions as long as it says it’s for “protecting freedom”?
Muslims are different. They kill you and say they hate you, instead of killing you and saying they love you, like the Christians do. Who cares what they say. They both kill you.
The problem is that Islamic fundamentalists continually embarrass their apologists by performing spectacularly indefensible acts, like bursting into a school in Pakistan and shooting a hundred kids, trapping an entire ethnic group up a mountain so they can kill them in broad daylight, or massacring the staff of an obscure liberal magazine because they published some poxy cartoons.
I’m not an apologist for Islamic fundamentalists. They are evil. My suggestion is, stop oppressing Muslims and Muslim countries, and less people will become Islamic fundamentalists. Islamic fundamentalists will burst into a school and kill hundreds of kids in the name of Allah. Christian fundamentalists will bomb the school from the air in a B52 and call it “collateral damage” in the name of “defending freedom”. Either way, the kids are dead. How many children has America killed defending freedom through collateral damage? Just because they say “oops” and “We really love you, sorry,” I’m supposed to turn a blind eye? They’ve killed much more than Muslims have killed defending Allah.
The apologists therefore have to continually one up each other by coming up with ever more outlandish arguments, riding roughshod over whatever principles they started out with. Apparently oblivious to the fact they are making total fools of themselves, and breezily unconcerned with the moral sewer they are wading through, they plumb the depths patting each other on the back for the latest *incite*, of which your post represents a sort of nadir, at least as far as I know.
What is outlandish about what I’m saying? How is it foolish? Is it factually incorrect? I’m the one pointing out that everyone is killing everyone and just justifying it differently, and suggesting that, in order to calm the world down a bit, the Christians should stop killing Muslims, and their governments stop oppressing them through the laws I mentioned above. Is that what puts me in a moral sewer?
There’s a big fight going on. The Christians versus the Muslims. The Christians kill and say I love you. The Muslims kill and say I hate you. The Christians kill children in an organized way with excuses. The Muslims kill in a disorganized guerrilla way. Right now, the Christians are more powerful, so I suggest to the more powerful side to stop inciting the less powerful side. Both sides are equally evil.
So I suggest that Muslims stop killing people, but I am culturally Western rather than Islamic, so I try to convince “my side” so to speak, also because it is more powerful and therefore has more power to stop the fight.
3) Now we come to the last bit, the specific flabbergasting tomfoolery of you. Central to Islamist apologetic is, of course, pointing out all the things that Islamists have alleged good cause to be so very angry about. Now, the main thing Muslims the world over complain about (even more than the Iraq war) is West Bank settlers and people invading their precious Al Aqsa. This is why, with the exception of you and your nameless co-thinkers, all apologists for Islam make a point of demonising West Bank settlers and people who want to go up on the Temple Mount. A quick google search of “Libertarian” websites on the matter makes for grim reading indeed.
Yeah, that sucks. But libertarians yelling at Jewish settlers breaks the NAP not. If anti settler libertarians were consistent in believing in Lockean homesteading theory, they would leave us alone. My “settlement” is not built on Arab land. It was built on vacant land. There is no Arab land besides what is homesteaded by an Arab person. There is no Jewish land besides what is homesteaded by a Jewish person.
But, in truth, they are on much better ground here than with Charlie Hebdo. Jewish settlers really are trying to settle land that is and has been for centuries majority Arab, and arguably violating international law, whereas the French cartoonists were just doing what, depending on how you look at it, has been legal in France, their own country, for two centuries (mocking religion) or forever (mocking Mohammed). Palestinians really are suffering unlike French Muslims who have no real grievances against a country that took them in and gave them a far greater standard of living than they could ever have forged for themselves. Thousands of Palestinians have died as a consequence of dispute ownership of Yesha, no-one has died because French people drew cartoons (unless we count all the people Muslims have killed over it).
You call yourself a Misesian Jew, but here you betray yourself by quoting “international law” and calling unhomesteaded land “Arab land”. You call me obtuse but say that French Muslims are not suffering and have no grievance against a country that “took them in”. I guess blacks have “no real grievance” against America because they have a higher standard of living in America than they would have had in Africa. Right? No real grievance? What about minimum wage laws, gun laws, drug laws, forced public schooling that keeps them in poverty and unable to work? None of that is grievance worthy? Both for the blacks and the Muslims? You’re lucky you come from a people (the Jews) talented enough to rise above all the government meant to push you down, but blacks and Muslims are not as resourceful or lucky.
And here’s you, a Jewish settler who goes up on the temple mount, and therefore the chief object of loathing, both for a billion Muslims and their millions of Leftist and Libertarians supporters, brazenly dumping over the memory of French cartoonists in the most wildly hyperbolous manner possible in a pathetic (and, trust me, futile) attempt to suck up to the freak show internet cult which is the Ron Paul fanboy movement.
I am the Chief Object of Loathing. Because I am the pivot of all of this. I am the top of the pyramid. The Apex. Me and my types are only a bare handful on the planet. I know where I sit. The Libertarian Anarchist Ron Paul Jewish Settler Temple Mount Invader. It all revolves around me and a few others, because I represent what every single side of this murderous conflict hates. Including you.
And yet I sympathize with every single side as well. The libertarians, the Christians, the Muslims, the Blacks, the Haredim. All of them. Strange, huh? This means that I, or someone like me with leadership potential (the closest is Feiglin) am the hope for humanity presently, because only I or someone like me can mediate the conflict. And I’m knocking at Har Habayit to boot, the center of it all.
And on top of all of that, call me a Messianist, but I don’t even believe in the right of the Moshiach to be king! I don’t even say את צמח דוד in my Shmoneh Esrei! I have stated publicly that if the Moshiach is declared and he starts instituting halacha laws, that I will break them!
More than that you imagine that implementation of the Feiglin plan will somehow mollify world Islamic opinion and make Israel less despised by Muslims and American Libertarians, a prospect so patently opposite to reality that one has to suspect you are already in the first stages of meltdown.
Well, I do believe that. Once Feiglin leads the Jewish people, these problems will start solving themselves through the Or LaGoyim model. It will take an economic catastrophe and reset that is in the process of happening.
It’s not too late for you to turn your brain back on, nor repent the appalling forays into the moral gutter you are making. It’s possible to maintain a belief in Misesian economics and Libertarian political theory without signing on to every extravagant and nonsensical canard you come across at LewRockwell.com. All you need is a level head and some basic human decency.
I challenge the commenter to give me his Final Solution to the Muslim Problem. What is it? My solution is to stop killing Muslims and repressing them through government laws. I suggest Muslims stop killing Christians or their Western cultural descendants regardless of whether they are religious or not, but I’m not culturally Muslim, and of the two sides, I believe the West has a better chance at stopping the killing first, despite the fact that they do much more of it.
Rafi, from the moral gutter, signing off.
The Jewish Libertarian 
First, let me say that I appreciate very much that, in general, you responded to my points and did not latch on to various asides and generally make strawmen arguments. With that said, I will make the following points.
1) Regarding tone, you compared 12 cartoonists and magazine staff members who have recently been mowed down with AK 47s to Nazi propagandists who were to some degree responsible for six millions murdered Jews. Inside your ancap echo chamber this might seem a normal kind of thing to say. Outside of it, to be blunt, it sounds, leaving aside everything else that is wrong with it, seriously offensive. The argumentative equivalent of defecating on the table at a dinner party. If you were taken aback by the severity of my comments, I can quite assure you that most people would be much more so by yours.
2) On this note, there is a barely a word in your long post justifying or explaining your analogy. I take this is a quiet admission that, though you still don’t appreciate the full moral depravity of what you said, you recognise that you made yourself look like a massive plonker. That’s good enough for me, the desire not to make a fool of oneself is often a far great disincentive to bad behaviour than the fear of sin.
3) To clarify your own position, I do not believe that any of EY is ‘Arab land’, I was merely arguing tu quoque to point out that is far easier, for those inclined, to demonise Jewish settlers and the Zionist project in general, that it is to demonise Charlie Hebdo.
4) Regarding international law, I think settlements may well be illegal under the current dispensation, but I believe the current dispensation is wrong because right of conquest in wars of self-defence should be recognised. The fact that it is not so now is one of the factors that encourages limitless Arab aggression because when they lose, they don’t lose anything.
5) I do not understand your comments regarding the verity of my status as a Misesian. Mises said not one word against international law and quite a deal in favour. I am willing to bet that, like most Rothbardians, you have never read Human Action from front to cover and that you are simply unaware how different authentic Misesianism is from Rothbardianism. If I am wrong I will denote 100 sheks to a charity of your choice (*excluding charities that I judge to be immoral).
6) Now the meat of the issue: I have simply no idea where you get such low figures for the death toll of radical Islam. Islamists have formed one or both sides in the following conflicts: the Pakistan-Bangladeshi war (3,000,000 + dead), the South Sudanese war (2,500,000 dead), the Darfur war (300,000 dead), the Iran-Iraq war (400,000 dead), the Syrian civil war (250,000 dead), the Algerian civil war (90,000 dead), the Iraqi civil war (600,000 dead), the Yemeni civil war (25,000 dead so far) . This is on top of terrorist attacks (25,000 dead since 9/11), which is clearly in excess of any other ideology. This massive death toll is in spite of the fact that, to date, Islamists have not been very successful in achieving their aim of wielding state power.
7) I am also unimpressed by your claims that the West is killing so much more people. I presume you are referring to Iraq and Afghanistan, where the death tolls are, indeed, high. However, the vast majority of people killed in both countries were not killed by western forces, but by Arab militias, mostly Islamists. This point really reveals the hypocrisy of the Ron Pauls and Chomskys of this world. They ascribed murders committed by Muslims, to westerners and then claim Islam is less murderous than the west! So, will I condemn America for invading Iraq? Sure, because it was stupid and wrong. Will I condemn them for killing a million people there? No, because they didn’t actually do it. As we see today from Syria, the result of not deposing an Arab despotism, is basically the same as the result of not deposing an Arab despotism: Arabs setting about killing each other with great enthusiasm. I feel vaguely sad about that, but I don’t think we have any great reason to feel sorry about it.
8) Discounting that, what are we left with? Drone attacks in Pakistan, Yemen, and a few other places. Are innocent people dying in these? Yes. Are they actually making things worse? Maybe. Do they mean that the west is killing more people than Islamists? Plainly not. Are they what is actually causing Islamism? See my next point.
9) The biggest problem with Paultardism is that it is incapable of seeing any global problem as having anything to do with anything other than the US Federal govt. The simple truth is that radical Islam is a movement with its own goals and motives, not a response to anything America or any other western country has done, and this truth is made clear by the fact that Islamists, overwhelmingly, do not actually target the West. The main targets of Islamist violence are, in order, (i) other Muslims who are not frum enough, or frum in the wrong way, (ii) non Muslim minorities in Muslim countries, (iii) non Muslims on the borders of Muslim areas (Nigeria, India, Israel). The one big exception is Al Queda, which really did make a point of targeting the west, and had removal of American troops from Saudi (so they could take it over) as their main demand. But they are the exception not the rule. In reality, far from angry Muslims rushing to the west to kill the infidel, angry Muslims rush from the west to go fight in Syria and kill other Muslims and the odd Alawite. I would be at a loss to understand how you can imagine this to be a response to western foreign policy, unless I knew that in your internet subculture it is a priori true that everything is a response to American foreign policy.
10) Regarding Christian fundamentalism. I really have no idea what you are talking about. G W Bush was a Christian fundamentalist of sorts, though no more so than Ron Paul, but Rumsfeld, Cheney, Wolfowitz etc. weren’t. Nor is Obama or anyone in his administration, nor is anyone is any of the 20 or so countries that contributed to the invasion of Iraq. Is Christian fundamentalism a problem in some places? Yes, there’s the Lord’s Resistance Army in Uganda, for a start, but I don’t think you meant that, though, frankly I have no idea what you meant. Certainly it has nothing to do with the obnoxiously secularist Charlie Hebdo.
11) Regarding Muslims in Europe. Yes, I do support implementation of the Feiglin plan, but not just the *nice* bit of paying them to leave (which, of course, in Europe is regarded as fringe right wing extremism), but also the other bits: arresting/deporting known Islamists, militarily occupying certain areas, loyalty oaths, curtailment of political rights etc. Of course, if Europe were to decide to do this now, as opposed to 50 years from now when it’s half too late, there won’t be the need for nearly so much of the nasty stuff as there will be in Israel.
12) In general, my advice to the Western world is, after implementation of their own Feiglin plans, to simply disengage with the Islamic world as much as possible. I say this for two reasons, first because the West cannot fix the problem. Islamic fundamentalism is just one of the expressions of the chronic dysfunctionality of certain societies, which is, in turn, the product of tens of thousands of years of evolution, and thousands of years of cultural development. It isn’t, in short, going to go away any time soon. The second reason is that the West doesn’t need to. With almost no exceptions, Islamic terrorism against western targets has come from Muslims who have been allowed to immigrate to the West, their children, or people they have converted. Get rid of that and the West’s problem, terrorism, is solved. The other problem, Muslim headcases slaughtering each other, will not go away, but that is their problem, no-one else’s.
13) Regarding the grievances of American blacks and European Muslims, I take a position much closer to those infamous newsletters that Ron Paul claims he never read. It’s probably true that these two groups are hit pretty hard by minimum wage laws and the like, but it is equally true that they are the most reliable voting blocks for parties that champion those policies. They certainly don’t regard these things as grievances, so why should I regard them as such? That leaves us with the war on drugs, which, again, does more harm than good, but, again, blacks complained just as much when the crack epidemic was sweeping through their communities and the police were doing nothing to help. People in extremist subcultures, like yourself, are particularly prey to imagining that other people who are angry are really deep down angry about the same thing they are. They’re not. What these groups are angry about is that they live, for the most part, in places that are more dysfunctional, violent and poor than white people. They blame “white privilege”, Marxists blame capitalist exploitation, you blame labour laws. In reality there’s no one to blame, except impersonal unforgiving laws of natural selection or, if you prefer, G-d. Would American Blacks and French Muslims be better off in a real free market? Yes, but they’d still be worse off than everyone else and they would still, in all likelihood, do whatever was in their power to bring the free market down. (By the by, Rothbard, actually did recognise this and wrote about it length, but this has gone down the memory hole because Libertarians are good at acting all radical when they attacking fantasy Christian fundamentalists and the U.S. war machine, but ultimately want to fit with the zeitgeist that says racism is the worst thing on earth).
14) Briefly, I am dismayed by your comments regarding the future king from the house of Dawidh. You are, by the way, factually wrong in saying the Hachmei Bavli initiated that bracha. It was part of the original 18, and in EY they amalgamated two brachoth to make room for birchat haminim, whereas in Bavel they kept them separate and just increase the Amidah to 19 brachoth. The bottom line is that in both nuschaoth, you have to say something about the return of malchut beth dawidh. More importantly, though, you are completely wrong in seeing Halacha as a game. Halacha is our guide to live as individuals, as communities and as a nation. It is true that some halachoth have to be changed in the light of modern subjectivist economics, just as others have to be changed in the light of modern science. It is true that, until that is done, the halachic system is in many ways unserviceable. However, just because the system is broken does not mean it is a game. I can see why, given your background in American Modern Orthodoxy where the philosophy of Rav Soloveitchik reigns supreme, you might have got this idea. Moreover, I have read certain articles by your brother that imply he takes that view. Nevertheless, I implore you to reconsider. I recommend the shiurim of Rabbi Bar Hayyim available for free on machonshilo.org
I’m not going to respond to all of this. Just in short, I’m against labeling anyone as anything, “Misesian” or “Orthodox” or even “libertarian”. (I am aware that that is the name of this blog.) No two people share the exact same beliefs. Believe what you want and label yourself what you want in order to anchor yourself more or less to what you want people to think of you.
I would ask you to stop using annoying terms like “Paultardism”.
Regarding the analogy between Der Sturmer and Charlie Hebdo, it is not perfect, and yes, Der Sturmer was worse. Lisa’s points are taken. But the analogy still holds pretty well, as no analogy is perfect. Is it “offensive” to make the analogy? Anything can be offensive. I think the authors of both magazines are equally useless to the world, with Der Sturmer doing more evil, but neither doing any good. I would personally be happy if some Jews gunned down Der Sturmer staff in the mid 30’s. So I understand why some muslims are happy that some staff of Charlie Hebdo were killed, even though Der Sturmer’s target was explicitly “jews” where Hebdo’s was Mohammed, which to a Muslim, includes all Muslims, because they think differently. Making fun of Moses would seem just strange, mostly because Moses is holy to all three Judaism-stemming religions. Mohamed is specific to Islam.
But very few people can differentiate between “understanding” and “condoning” no matter how many times it is clarified.
So you know Zev, eh? Well, we are cut from the same cloth, and though we’ve come at it from very different directions, we’ve reached similar conclusions in some ways. He took the biblical scholar path, whereas my ambition is to free the monetary system. Yes, Halacha structures our lives. Through a very intricate game. Call it whatever makes you feel comfortable.
Rafi, you say: “I don’t even believe in the right of the Moshiach to be king! I don’t even say את צמח דוד in my Shmoneh Esrei! I have stated publicly that if the Moshiach is declared and he starts instituting halacha laws, that I will break them!”
Maybe you can justify all that for the readers at length. Torah observant Jews would be a little dismayed.
To my view, according to Halacha one may become king through a majority. At least from a utilitarian perspective, monarchy is far better than democracy, as Hoppe explains. While it is better there be no king at all, as Samuel said, and Chazal say that in the future we will have no “Shiabud malchuyos”, as long as Jews are not yet perfect anarchists, we are obligated to exchange any alternative form of governance and any other person in for a limited monarchy headed by a scion of the house of David, as it says “Som tasim alecha melech”. Mashiach is a king, but he may choose to be like Moshe (no taxation, etc.). One way this might occur is through the democratic process, see this:
http://www.rabbibrand.022.co.il/BRPortal/br/P102.jsp?arc=1126338&kw=%D7%9E%D7%A2%D7%A8%D7%9B%D7%AA-%D7%91%D7%97%D7%99%D7%A8%D7%95%D7%AA
Mashiach will not stay such forever, either. The ultimate goal is “Hashem yimshol bachem” Shoftim 8:23.
Judaism and libertarianism are not the same, see here:
https://thejewishlibertarian.com/2014/08/07/chaim-s-responds-on-circumcision-and-the-non-aggression-principle/
Enough said,
Chaim
I’m writing something on this today.
Well I have witnessed quite a few “word-fights” between Christians.. and Christians, and the discussion is contrived, at least for the very “missionary” (quotes are because I concluded that there is no specific way described to do missionarism in the Bible other than to publish it and let people read it, so anyone trying too hard will earn the quotes from my part) American part. All those love declarations… there aren’t that many in NT if one is being honest to it… but there is a declaration of “love” (quotes are because I have concluded it is more into God’s affiliation to say “appreciation” here than “love”) for Truth (as in – cold, factual, honest truth). God or even Gods or even Goddesses, no supernatural supremely intelligent higher being, or a huge computer with all the answers, or lack of all this, the human brain, can ever help humanity if at any question the human spirit answers in blocked preserved formulas, deduced on what people consider “Jesus would like to hear” (??!!!??!!!) or “what is the right answer” or “what is progressive” or “what is love” – which is actually only what people want to hear about themselves – sometimes stuff like “when we form a band and we only care about ourselves, this is not because we compensate the lack of feeling with force and rules, it is because we love each other, deeply”.
What is Love? [other than love in itself].
God never commanded anyone to “love”, there is no mention of imposing this, though there is a lot to conclude on God’s appreciation of love, as a deeply high principle (which shouldn’t be sold at the gutter through small rules and dumb order, because it is Holy), but not imposing it on humanity neither declaring it if we are to be honest.
I believe a lot of people can talk to God, do find Him, and when they hear something uncomfortable they conclude that isn’t God. This is gnosis – what is true is what makes you feel good. Or how many Christian “missionaries” describe as a “lovely feeling”.
I was shocked to find out that for thousands of years, within the Christian Church (the original ones, Catholic and Orthodox) there has always been an explanation for Jesus’s death that never even once accused the Jewish people of anything, not even disobedience. I will write it here even if Rafi chooses not to post my comment, simply because it must be known, that this is what the dogma always was even during the Inquisition aimed at the Jewish people (some was aimed at other people): Jesus came to die as a human, so he discoveries what is going on in that “hell” and where and who is that “fallen angel” called “devil” who accuses the poor humans of wrong things they haven’t done. I have concluded God did do that, and I have also concluded that he found no other devil than human hypocrisy and falsehood. And this is the quote “turn against himself, the devil can’t win” (devil supposedly opposing humanity).
People love Christianity because it offers an escape in the person of a half-goat creature that is the root of all evil. Many people love this. Many more to come maybe. The Bible is true, but the excuse is not. [unlike the “genius” Romans said – this being the devil’s greatest trick, convincing us he doesn’t exist – WHAT???????? isn’t this the forbidden twisted thinking?? Hello, Roman brain if ever such thing existed??].
I really do hope honest Christianity to exist one day, and if the stories are true, then this should happen very soon and very quick as the clock be ticking.
Hi Rafi,
What’s with the את צמח דוד rant? Apparently you believe in a Moshiach, and the bracha doesn’t say “king” anywhere, does it? And frankly it has nothing to do with the point you were trying to make, but it was basically a declaration that you are not Orthodox… Also it sounds from your post that you leave the bracha out entirely. Pardon my ignorance, which is admittedly woeful, but surely that causes a whole bunch of problems, for example do you let people count you as one of the six daveners? Do you eat [bread, let’s say] before fulfilling your obligation (which never happens)? Hmm.
I wrote about את צמח דוד a year or so ago. Read it here. As for whether or not I am “Orthodox”, read it here.
Short answer is, not to sound pompous quoting God or anything, I am what I am, and people can label me however they want. I do leave the bracha out entirely, just as the Yerushalmi never had it. It is an addition by the Bavli. I have never gone into a minyan where people did not count me because of what I believe. I don’t understand the bread question. I don’t eat bread normally, except on Shabbat, because I eat primal and bread is poisonous to the human body.
Really, Rafi? You’re going to resort to “the side with more casualties is the victim”? How does that work with Gaza last summer. And the bottom line is that you were mistaken to compare Charlie Hebdo with Der Sturmer. It showed a horrible lack of perspective and proportion.
No, the side that started the violence is the aggressor. The other side is the victim. For Gaza, we are the aggressors, and the Arabs are the victims, because it is their land (according to our current leaders) and we are blockading them.
I’ve never read Der Sturmer or Charlie Hebdo. They are not exactly the same. But neither have you.
For Gaza, we are the victims and the Arabs are the aggressors, because I don’t give a damn what “our current leaders” have to say about it. Truth is not subjective.
As far as Der Sturmer and Charlie Hebdo, I have seen the cartoons in question in both of them, and you are so incredibly wrong to compare mocking Muhammed and portraying Jews as evil bloodsucking fiends. You’re trying to make a point, Rafi, and the point might have had something to it, but you botched it completely by comparing them.
Well, there’s what you feel about Gaza and there are the facts on the ground. The facts on the ground are that it’s their land, we left it, and we’re blockading it. Therefore we aggress and they defend. You and I feel differently on a religious level, but until that is translated into reality we are the aggressors by default.
I understand you think “Islam” is the enemy. I don’t know what you want to do about “Islam” though. You clearly hate it. Therefore what?
Wow. Such a short comment and so many errors. The facts on the ground are that it’s *not* their land, but that we left it due to a lack of will to do anything about their aggression, a lack of foresight to see what would happen when we left it, and fear of what the world would do if we were to act appropriately to defend ourselves. I don’t see where religion enters into it.
Hate Islam? I’m not sure that’s correct. I hate Christianity. I disagree with Islam. There’s a difference. I oppose Islam. But more to the point, I understand Islam, at least to an extent. I understand some of the differences between the way they think culturally and the way people in the west think. I understand that when you make a gesture of conciliation to someone in the west, they are inclined to return the gesture, unless they are psychologically damaged in some way, but that when you make a gesture of conciliation to someone in the Islamic world, they are inclined to see it as weakness and press their advantage. I understand that they see the world in terms of victors and losers, and that they behave in a way that would be viewed as psychotic from a western point of view when their opponents adamantly refuse to be either. In all honesty, they can be somewhat benevolent as top dog, and they can be relatively passive, and what we’d see as sane, when completely beaten. But give them hope of being ultimate victors, and they go absolutely apeshit berserk.
You know the story from Aharon Barnea’s book, right? That Barnea was told by Salah Tamari? If so, sorry to bore you, but if not, this is what Tamari related. He had lost all hope in Israeli prison. And one day, he saw one of the Jewish guards eating a sandwich in a pita. And it was Pesach. Tamari was mindboggled, and asked the guard how he could do such a thing. The guard shrugged and said, “That stuff from thousands of years ago has nothing to do with me.” Tamari had an epiphany at that moment. He realized that a nation with no connection to its roots had no real connection to its land. He decided right then and there to go for everything. He shared this insight with his fellow terrorist scum, and there was a sea change in the “Palestinian” attitude. One which has led inexorably to today. (Check out Barnea’s book Mine Enemy for the whole story).
Now, I mention that not to say that it means we should all be frum, though we should. I say it because people are constantly trotting out the nonsense that terror comes from the hopeless. People so downtrodden that they can see no other option but to commit atrocities. And that is the most arrant bullshit. The hopeless are hopeless. They aren’t dangerous. The hopeful… the ones who think they can destroy those they hate… those are the dangerous ones.
You ask me what me answer is to radical Islam? Simple. A no tolerance policy. If you try to train a dog or a child by acting erratically and unpredictably, the dog or the child will wind up feral. Consistency is really important if you want them to act sanely. They must know that if they behave violently, it will be returned on them ten fold. A hundred fold. But the same-fold every time. And the punishment must hurt. If a “Palestinian” commits a terrorist act, his home should not be demolished. His neighborhood should be demolished. Or his town should be demolished and a Jewish town built on its site. They can control themselves. They just need the incentive. And it has to be consistent. And without apology. They can respect strength. What they can’t respect is weakness and erratic behavior. And when you post nonsense about them being justified in their behavior, you simply tell them that you don’t have the strength of character to stop them, and they can have it all.
Why stop at destroying the neighborhood? Why not kill all Arabs, or Muslim Arabs, because one of them committed murder? What’s the difference? What makes you stop at destroying the whole neighborhood instead of just killing all of them?
I didn’t justify anything. Regardless of whether muslims kill people or not, the West should stop invading their countries and bombing them. I think it will help the situation. You clearly think that it will not, and think that we should kill more. OK. I get it.
I think that’s wrong.
Because the violence is not invididual crime. When Rand spoke of “police, army and courts”, there’s a reason she mentioned police and army separately. There is a difference between a national offensive and an individual crime.
I don’t see how that answers anything at all.
Also, you keep dodging the simple fact that the parallel to mocking Muhammed would be mocking Moshe Rabbenu or the like. Offensive, but not the same as stirring up hatred against a whole populace by portraying them as evil incarnate. And so long as you refuse to simply acknowledge that mistake, it makes it hard to see any of your arguments as anything but self-serving. You seem like an honest guy, even when you’re wrong. Honesty would call for an acknowledgment that you were wrong with your comparison.
Analogies are analogies. They are never perfect. Just because this one is not perfect as well, you think I’m wrong. I think I’m right, and that the analogy is illustrative. Der Sturmer was worse, but Hebdo and Sturmer both serve to whip up hatred for a religion.
Nonsense. Mockery is not in the same conceptual universe as whipping up hatred.