Well here’s some good news and rare praise from me to a body of politicians. According to RT, the vote was 285 to 281 in favor of dropping charges.
Liberty activists will go gaga over the fact someone is being nice to Snowden, but I think the real significance here is that the world is getting less and less afraid to stand up to the US Government. They are weakening. Russian jets just buzzed the USS Ronald Reagen, some warship or other. China is threatening a passing US warship as it sails by some manmade island chain. And now Europe is raising the middle finger to the American State.
I’m not typically a wolf cryer about World War III, but this is nuts. Some idiot named Ash who is the “defense” secretary of the US, is saying that there should be US troops in Syria. While Russia is over there. Fighting.
On the pretense of fighting “ISIS”. So in order to defend Americans from ISIS, they need to invade a country that has nothing to do with America, making sure they risk a real war with a nuclear power while doing it. A nuclear power that really does have the capability of hitting American soil.
Russian and US troops fighting in the same country is a very bad idea. These people are insane and they are threatening the existence of all humans on Earth. They can send troops anywhere they want without even so much as a vote. The power they have to endanger us all is mind numbing.
These people are crazy. They’re dangerous psychopathic crazy people. I don’t know what else to say.
A group called חוזרים להר or “Return to the Mount” led by Refael Morris is apparently offering ₪2,000 shekels for every Jew that is arrested praying on the Temple Mount.
This is an absolutely fantastic idea, and though I cannot participate, I contacted the guy and suggested he start a crowdfunding campaign to raise money and up the grant to a serious amount. I will let you know what he says. I would gladly contribute to the fund and encourage all to do so as well, when and if a crowdfunding campaign begins.
There’s nothing better than externalizing a very precious good by attaching a monetary value to it. Let’s do it!
If he doesn’t start the campaign I’ll do it myself.
Transporting myself from 2007 to now, I’ve come very far. I would not recognize my life at all if I had teleported here from 8 years ago. Stranger still are the connections I’ve made.
One is a Chabad Rabbi who I somehow made contact with after my Yanklowitz piece on organ sales. This guy runs runs around testing matching donors and he needs money to do this. He found my piece and contacted me. He is a libertarian Chabad Rabbi.
We talked, and I gave him some money and will continue to donate to his organ donation causes, because as much as I hate hypocrites who donate but rail against organ sales (Yanklowitz no longer falls into this category as he has changed to an organ sales supporter, thank God) I do fully support voluntary organ donation since it is a great thing. Exchanging organs for love (or whatever it is you get from donating) is just as wonderful as exchanging organs for money.
So anyway, this Rabbi and I became acquaintances. And the other day he messages me out of the blue that he is the Rabbi who happened to speak at Irwin Schiff’s funeral, which I wish I could have attended. It would have been so meaningful to me both as a Jew and a libertarian to be there, and to be menachem aveilim on all cylinders.
I discovered that a mutual acquaintance of ours, who is involved in the Feiglin movement, suggested to the Schiff family that this Rabbi officiate at the funeral. The Schiffs wanted a likeminded Rabbi to speak, and this guy was the one.
It’s just great that the libertarian movement in the US and Israel is connected at these critical “pressure points”. I love it.
The coolest part, which I will not share photo evidence of out of respect for the privacy of spirituality, is that I have a picture of Peter Schiff with tefilin on. It is not doctored or photoshopped. It’s Schiff wearing tefilin.
From what I know of Schiff, his family is not religious, but he and his family are infused with Jewish identity. That is what matters most. I am told that a gentile drove three hours to speak out of the blue at the funeral, promising to keep up the fight against the income tax and broke down crying. What a perfectly beautiful Kiddush Hashem, on every single level.
The whole Schiff family makes me proud to be a Jew.
Yesterday some kind of whacknutty tropical like squall came zooming through Israel. My 16 month old son got a bit scared, and a friend dropped off her baby as she was doing some errand or other. The two babies sat in my wife’s lap huddling with her as I ran about shutting windows.
The power went out, but we have one of those emergency LED lights. On may way to the gym this morning, I saw a car smashed in half by a downed tree. But otherwise, Karnei Shomron has been pretty good with electrical issues, as monopolies go.
So in times like this, I do check the main stream garbage media for safety reasons. On the front page of Ynet, one of the absolute worst news sources of any country, I see this pathetic headline. I don’t click on these things, just check if there’s anything I need to know.
Here’s the headline:
רבבות עדיין בלי חשמל: “מדינת עולם שלישי”
30 אלף משקי בית עדיין ללא חשמל מאז אתמול בבוקר. לני, אימא לשניים מרמת השרון: “חברת החשמל כל הזמן אומרים שעובדים על זה. בינתיים, חייבים למצוא סידור לילדים”. אלפים חתמו על עצומה לתביעה ייצוגית. ראשי הערים של כפר סבא ורעננה קוראים לנתניהו להתערב ולהקים ועדת חקירה
Here’s a quick lesson in economics. When an entire industry is monopolized by tax funded state-privileged talentless fattened lazy ass jerks who can charge you whatever the hell they want for electricity but whose “workers” get free electricity and all competition in the entire country is outlawed, your service is going to suck. And the only thing you’ll be able to do, instead of switch electric companies, is to sign petitions like a chump. Just thank God these schmucks are not given a monopoly over the food industry, or we’d all have starved to death long ago.
And you can save Netanyahu the trouble of spending my money to put together a group of politicians meant to “investigate” this amazing occurrence. The reason it happened is because the electricity industry is a giant State cartel. There. Investigation finished.
Solution? Sell off the infrastructure to private companies, return the proceeds to taxpayers, and let the private sector fix it. Whoever fixes it first gets the most money, and we can all stop signing petitions and begging Netanyahu to “get involved”.
And the next time there is any prolonged power outage, you can switch electricity providers, just like you can switch internet providers or cell phone companies now if there are any outages. What an ingenious concept.
Well, they finally figured it out. The the Muslim layeth down with the Jew and swords have turned into surveillance cameras. Nation does not life up sword against nation, because the Jews learn not prayer anymore.
All hail the lord, State of Israel, for protecting us in its Ultimate Wisdom.
I’m not a Star Wars nerd. I don’t follow it intensely (or at all really), I don’t know all the names and trivia of the whatnot, and I don’t read the fan fiction. I’m just an average guy who likes Star Wars, as are most of us. I saw the new Episode VII: The Force Awakens trailer and it inspired me to write this. I write stuff. It’s what I do when I’m inspired. What can I say.
I love nights. I love being alone. I of course love being married and having kids as well, thank God, and only love being alone when I know the loneliness can end at will. But I’m a night person. The darkness and the loneliness activate me, make me think. I’m a Dark Side guy.
Over the last few weeks I’ve been watching the Star Wars movies, 3, 4, 5, and 6 so I don’t come into the 7th one forgetting the whole story. I skipped the first two because they stunk. Now, I don’t normally think about Star Wars at all, but there is something to be said about the most successful movie franchise in all of movie history. It hit something. It’s a beautiful work. I’m no film critic, and I don’t break down films frame by frame. But I do break down concepts. The concepts of Star Wars hit something very deep in human nature, otherwise they’d be Die Hard, or Terminator, or some other popular trilogy that’s pretty cool but not amazingly magical and inspiring like Star Wars.
Mark Hamill, the guy that plays Luke Skywalker, is not the greatest actor. He is the ultimate typecast. He didn’t get anywhere big in his career, ironically thanks to playing one of the most iconic characters ever. And yet, someone like him, who frankly is not the best, to play a role like that and to succeed so magnificently, he is the only one ever to do that. In that sense he is the best actor ever.
Now as to Star Wars itself. I saw the trailer for Episode VII. It gave me goose bumps. Strange for something fiction. But there’s something there. The bifurcation of good and evil through “the force” is something that really is inside us. While the movies make it into something that can move objects at a distance, the force does exist. There is action at a distance in quantum mechanics and it is observable through the double slit experiment, so perhaps one day when our brains evolve to those pulsating cartoons, we’ll be able to use the force like Jedi.
The problem is that the movies simplify the force and bifurcate it absolutely. The Jedi are never allowed to use their negative emotions, and any move in that direction means they’ll become a Sith. This is a consequence of Christian theology that simplifies reality into a children’s game. There is the Jedi, and the Sith, the Dark Side, and never the twain shall meet. The Force suddenly becomes something that can move objects and divide good and evil in straight lines. (There is a straight line, but it’s not what the Jedi say it is.)
The fact that the Jedi can never use their destructive emotions shows that they are weak characters. That’s why they never have much of a personality.
The Jedi act as priests, never marrying, never indulging in the their own physicality, never existing purely as human beings, never indulging in their feelings. They are “out of this world” and therefore any touch with ambition converts them to the Dark Side. The Dark Side is portrayed as emotion, hate and anger, rather than strictly a lust for power and control over others.
I have ambition. A lot of me is motivated by the dark emotions of hate and anger. As Darth Sidius, the Emperor, says, it makes me stronger. It gives me focus. But that doesn’t mean I go all bat crazy and start killing people. It depends what your ambition is. If it is to rule, libido dominante, then you’re just a politician.
Libertarian ambition is to destroy power. Depending on personality, different people are driven by different emotions, usually having to do with enneagram typology. I am driven by a combination of hate, anger, love, and hope. All emotions combined into one, that’s what motivates me. Everything that is human, from negative to positive, the light side and the dark side, that’s what propels me forward. That’s why you’ll see a lot of sarcasm here but then again a lot of hope for the ultimate goal, which is no power over anybody, liberty for all. It all combines together.
The Sith have a point. One should not neglect the passionate aspects of existence. It does make you stronger. It does give you focus. The rage, the hate, the anger, it can all be used positively. Directed towards good. The Jedi have a point, too. The destructive aspects of human personality, which are the same rage and hate, must not be used to simply destroy. They must be harnessed towards constructive ends.
But then again, the “letting go” of all that we fear to lose, as Yoda says, can also be destructive. It will lead to atrophy and the lack of a will to get up in the morning and fight. Indulge to much in letting go of your Yetzer Harah, in rabbinic jargon, or evil inclination, and there will be nothing driving you in the end.
Chazal say that without the Yetzer Harah, nobody would get up in the morning. Humanity needs both the light side and the dark side. The challenge is not to deny the dark side. The challenge is to use it for good.
Of course, Anakin Skywalker is the Jesus figure who was immaculately conceived and whatever. There’s something in Christianity about Jesus fighting the devil or something and overcoming in the end (maybe I’m making that up, I’ve never read their book) and I guess that’s what Anakin fighting Darth Vader means, and then dying killing the Emperor etc.
If Star Wars were written by a Jew with Rabbinic conceptions, the Jedi would be masters of the Dark Side as well, except they would be able to control the Dark Side rather than be controlled by it. They would also be married and have personalities rather than being stoic priests.
They also would not be beholden to “republics” and politicians.
The same theme runs throughout the X Men franchise with Magneto vs Professor X. Magneto is Dark Side, Charles Xavier of the Light. The force in X Men is mutation, same stuff.
As good as Star Wars is, its heroes are not well rounded. They are priests, and they are weak. A true hero would not shy away from any aspect of existence, but utilize all of it towards one goal.
In the end, the good goal is liberty. The evil goal is power. As long as you know that simple truth, the Dark Side is no threat to changing you.
Peter Schiff just posted this on his YouTube channel. When you listen to this, you may notice something strange. That is, Irwin Schiff actually says things with real content in his sentences. He talks like a human being.
Compare this with the speech from a Republican or Democrat politician, and you’ll notice that it is completely devoid of any content, and he may as well be burping and farting into the microphone.
Now let’s listen to a human being with a soul speak, so that we may listen and gain strength and hope that not all of humanity is dead, and not all Jews are catatonic Statists.
Even though Irwin was a minarchist, not an anarchist, he is the embodiment of what Murray Rothbard describes as a radical, motivated by a beautiful hatred of the State, who would blister his finger pushing a button that would obliterate it if he could, until it gets down to the bare minimum of defensive army, police, and courts. What a man.
David, I only saw Irwin speak once. He was running for the Libertarian nomination for president. (He lost to Ron Paul, not exactly a disgrace.) Like his son Peter, Irwin was an extraordinary speaker: no ums or ahs, eloquent sentence following eloquent sentence in logical progression, classical rhetorical skills. He was caged for the last years of his life in the big prison in Angola, Indiana, a desperately ill, 87-year-old man handcuffed to his bed, just in case he might wobble out and challenge the machine gun-toting guards. Irwin was punished for answering a question in public about his last book, which a federal judge had ordered him never to discuss.
The State protects itself before it protects any of its slaves. Commit a crime against another person and may get off easy. Commit a crime against the State, and they will shut you up to your last breath. Dare to speak against them by answering a question about a book you wrote and they will handcuff you to your bed.
Even if you are an 87 year old man dying of lung cancer who never committed a violent crime against another person.
There runs through my work a deep and pervasive hatred of the State and all of its works, based on the conviction that the State is the enemy of mankind.
~Murray Rothbard
I hate the State. The image of an old dying 87 year old Jew handcuffed to his prison bed for talking about a book against paying taxes drives me almost to the point of madness. And when I post this and other Jews react with indifference or worse, a “He got what he deserved for not paying taxes,” there’s only one word that comes to mind.
Irwin Schiff is the father of Peter and Andrew Schiff. Many know Peter for his libertarian activism, his brokerage Europac, his prediction of the housing bubble and his bank, Europac Bank which I have a link for up in my menu bar.
Irwin Schiff died על קידוש השם ממש, he died as a martyr for the cause of liberty. He was a Polish born Jew who escaped the Holocaust, thank God. He was arrested for not paying income taxes because he refused to do so. He was arrested in 2005 for tax evasion, serving a 13 year sentence. He died after 10.
I remember hearing Peter talk about his father’s influence on him, and how he introduced Peter to real economics and liberty. Peter’s most popular book, How an Economy Grows and Why it Crashes, is a wonderful introduction to real sound economics from the ground up, especially for kids, based off a short story that his father had told to Peter and Andrew when they were kids. It is important to read this book to your children before government propaganda gets to them through media and poisons their minds into thinking that centrally planned monetary systems are normal.
Irwin was a great man, a great Jew, and a Kiddush Hashem in the real, full sense. His influence through his sons will be very long lasting. He chose to fight the State head on and he paid for it with his freedom. If you choose to fight the State head on, which I do not recommend and which I do not do myself, then be prepared because they will fight you and they will take away your freedom, whatever you have left of it, and if pushed hard enough they will kill you.
After reading How an Economy Grows and Why it Crashes and hearing about Irwin’s influence on Peter, I’ve considered Irwin a sort of father figure to me as well. It is then a bit eerie that he happened to pass away on my own father’s birthday.
Peter and Andrew, המקום ינחם אתכם בתוך שאר אבילי ציון וירושלים.
The Jewish Libertarian 