He’s dead. No joy, no sadness, just relief. He will no longer harm anyone ever again. The following are two Facebook posts I made after being rather infuriated by gushing lovey dovey “We Love Shimon Peres” posts.
Post #1
Alright Facebook. Another politician dead and here come the deep meaningful posts about what we can all learn from his life. The gushing, the love, and even the people who didn’t like him at all saying things like “Say what you want about Shimon Something, but he positive positive blah blah. He may have destroyed the lives of tens of thousands of people and worse, but at least he was a great blah blah blah.”
The aura of thought police is exuding, totally exuding today. I’m not interrupting or trolling comment threads about this Peres guy, except I will say this on my own.
There are many, many people who hate the guy’s guts, and justifiably so. It should be legitimate for them to have their own catharsis of relief that he’s gone.
That’s how it is in politics. You take from one group you give to the other. Those that were taken from have a right to resent it, and resent it intensely. Those that gained from it will likely love him, but only they are allowed to post things because they liked him? No.
Me personally, I don’t care. The world is not better or worse off now that he’s dead, because he’s been inactive for a while. But the people whose lives have been destroyed by him should not feel embarrassed or afraid to call him every bad name in the book and if their life or their home was destroyed by him, they should feel that it’s OK to cry in relief that this man is no longer breathing the same air that they are.
It’s OK to say bad things about dead politicians. It’s not pasul. You can do it, and it’s legitimate.
Post #2
Here’s a follow up on the lovey dovey Peres posts. As expected the Jewish thought police rang the alarm on me defending those who do not mourn the passing of Shimon Peres. I am one of those people and there are many many others.
There were the hysterical types calling me names, but they are more entertaining than annoying. Then there are the sagacious types who respond with counterpoints that sound reasonable but actually are not reasonable at all.
One case in point is a friend of mine who responded to me by saying something along the lines that Jewish etiquette encourages seeing the good side of people that just died, even politiciians, and that after the shiva we can all engage in a “dispassionate” debate about the merits and failures of the politicians.
Dispassionate? Dispassionate? If you have something critical to say you have to be DISpassionate and wait, while everyone else gushing over an evil man gets to be as passionate as they please, immediately upon hearing of the death?
No. Double standard.
Think about it this way. Imagine you are a person whose son committed suicide in the aftermath of the expulsion from Gush Katif. Your family is ruined, you livelihood gone, you live in a caravan and your marriage is a shell. You hate this man with a PASSION and you have to watch everyone else say great things about him while implying that anyone who says bad things about him now is doing something illegitimate.
You, the victim of Peres, on the other hand, even though your life was destroyed by this man, YOU have to wait, and you can only be DISpassionate even if you are allowed to criticize, eventually, after a certain buffer zone invented by the other side.
So I say no. We call the emperor nude when we see it. We do not praise him and then when nobody cares anymore, only then point out his nudity DISpassionately in retrospect, when it’s not in the news anymore and nobody is paying attention.
So I’m turning the tables. I say, if you have anything good to say about Shimon Peres, be quiet now, let his direct victims have their say first, PASSIONATELY, and then one week from now after shiva, anyone who wants to praise his legacy do so DISpassionately, when nobody gives anymore.
Otherwise, you are grievously insulting everyone whose lives this man destroyed.
And keep in mind, anyone he ever helped, by definition, he did it by taking money by force from others.
You know when Hillary Clinton says something so stupid and inane that literally everyone, even her fans, knows she’s either seriously mentally handicapped or deliberately lying? Yeah, well, she’s not the only one.
Back in our debate on the legitimacy of Israel from a libertarian perspective, which was challenging as Hammond gave me decent arguments that at least had the pretense of some sort of logic, Hammond insisted that there does exist a statute of limitations in libertarianism as far as claims to previously homesteaded land goes.
Our argument is that there is no statute of limitations in libertarianism in terms of a hard specific quantitative amount of time that must pass before a claim from the past becomes null and void. Such a statute cannot be in libertarianism because any specific quantitative time limit would be a posteriori and would null claims that could, in theory, be proven based on actual hard physical evidence of previous homesteading.
Now, Hammond is challenging me to “make an argument”. Obviously, what follows below will not qualify as “an argument” according to him, because according to him, I have never “made an argument”. I’ll just let you all judge for yourselves if I’m raving nonsense or presenting a very simple logical progression here.
Hammond, in his debate with me, quoted a footnote from our paper, in which we said the following:
But are there no statutes of limitation? Surely, two millennia and counting would more than qualify for any statute of limitations. There is such a thing, for the libertarian, as a “natural” statute of limitations: the further back ones goes into the past, the more difficult it is to encounter any relevant evidence. Since the burden of proof always rests with he who wishes to overturn extant property rights, mere passage of time can serve as a natural limitation.
Now, woe is me, I was not fully versed in every single footnote of our paper on the fly verbatim, so I thought he caught us in a contradiction. This sure sounds like we are accepting the notion of statutes of limitations in libertarianism based on time limits. During the debate, I knew this could not be, but I had no time to skim through the whole paper to look for the footnote as I was writing notes at the time to rebut his opening statement.
Let me be very clear, for Hammond’s sake. He is accusing us of contradicting ourselves with regard to statutes of limitations. On the one hand, we supposedly say that there is such a thing as statutes of limitation, and on the other hand, we supposedly accept the claim of Jews to land obviously and demonstrably previously homesteaded by Jews in Judea. How can we accept these claims and say they are legitimate if we accept a statute of limitations according to this footnote in the paper itself?
In Hammond’s words, this argument “fails even on its own terms” because we both accept and reject a statute of limitations.
OK, follow me so far? I’m going very very slowly here, deliberately, so even someone with zero background in logic can understand. I’m presenting “an argument” to expose Hammond’s dishonesty. He will no doubt say that he has no idea what I’m talking about and that this is not “an argument”. I can’t go any slower than I’m going now. So stay with me. (Obviously I don’t think Hammond is an idiot. He’s just playing one because he knows we caught him on this and he can’t get out of it.)
Now, what is the meaning of this footnote he has cited? As a co-author of the paper, I will give it you. Let’s go sentence by sentence.
Surely, two millennia and counting would more than qualify for any statute of limitations.
Meaning, yes, in general, 2,000 years does qualify as a statute of limitations. How so? הכא במאי עסקינן? במה דברים אמורים? (In what case does 2,000 years qualify as a statute of limitations? תניא (The text states)
There is such a thing, for the libertarian, as a “natural” statute of limitations: the further back one goes into the past, the more difficult it is to encounter any relevant evidenceץ
תיובתא דרפי פרבר? (Is this a refutation of Farber et al?)
אדרבא. Just the opposite.
2,000 years is a “natural” statute of limitations only because in general, the further back one goes into the past, the more difficult it is to encounter relevant evidence of past claims. This is only an observation of general natural trends. The “naturalness” of the statute of limitations for the libertarian is הכי השתא (one and the same as, intertwined with) the lack of hard, relevant, physical evidence of a claim in the first place. The limitation is not inherent in the amount of time passed, which would be a posteriori, but intrinsic only in the lack of evidence generally due to the passage of time.
גופא (going back to the quote) תני תוהא (we already know)
Since the burden of proof always rests with he who wishes to overturn extant property rights, mere passage of time can serve as a natural limitation.
“Can” כתיב, “Must” לא כתיב. It says “can”. It does not say “must”. When “can” 2,000 years serve as a natural statute of limitations? Only when there is no longer any hard physical evidence of past claims due to the “natural” passage of time. This would apply to all land in Israel for which there is no hard physical evidence of previous Jewish homesteading. The Right of Return for non-Jewish Palestinians who do not descend from Jews applies only to that land.
Meaning, if and where there is hard physical evidence of previous claims, the mere passage of time does not constitute a statute of limitations for the libertarian.
Now, what did Hammond leave out of his selective quotation of this footnote? Only this:
However, there can be no man-made statute in this regard,at least not for the libertarian. If there were, injustice would prevail when the plaintiff can marshal proof that a property title is illicit, and yet the court would not uphold it. This would also spell almost the death knell for reparations, surely a basic element of the libertarian philosophy. See on this note 75.
Now, I have challenged Hammond to quote the footnote in full on this dishonest incomplete lazy excuse for a rebuttal on his site here. And suprise suprise, he thinks the rest of the footnote is irrelevant.
Anyone forming pictures of Hillary Clinton in their heads right now? I certainly am!
I actually feel stupid, as if I’m talking to a 10 year old in an introductory course to symbolic logic and Aristotle’s basic premise that contradictions don’t exist. How could this not be relevant? I don’t know. I don’t know what to say anymore other than Hammond is being deliberately stupid so as not to get himself caught in the contradiction he has placed himself in.
What contradiction specifically? He says that our argument “fails on its own terms”. What “terms” are those? The terms that Jews’ claim on land previously homesteaded by Jews in Judea, with hard physical and indisputable evidence of previous homesteading by Jews (Har Habayit, Ma’aarat Hamachpela, most of East Jerusalem in Ir David), is valid because there is no man-made statute of limitations in libertarianism, when supposedly in this footnote that he quotes, without quoting the end of it, we supposedly admit that we believe in a statute of limitations for the libertarian when we do not and we never did.
So let me make this very clear to you Jeremy Hammond and fans, even though I am absolutely positive you all already understand perfectly and are just feigning idiocy in order to stem yourselves from admitting your contradiction:
There is no man-made statute of limitations in libertarianism, nor can there possibly be one, by the very apriorinature of libertarianism itself. The only natural statute of limitations in libertarianism is when there is no longer any hard evidence of previous claims, whether due to mere passage of time or anything else that erases evidence. OR there is an explicit relinquishment of all claims, as in the case of ייאוש.
But in cases where there is hard evidence of previous homesteading and no ייאוש, plus hard evidence that the nearest of kin to those original legitimate homesteaders still exist and claim this land and never ever relinquished their claims…
Well then, all land with hard physical evidence of previous homesteading by Jews, must go to the nearest of kin, which are Jews, by shares of stock in that land, regardless of any subsequent homesteader on that land.
Practically speaking then, because there is no man-made statute of limitations in libertarianism, all land with hard physical evidence of previous Jewish homesteading from the Roman period, must go to the descendants of those original homesteaders, given that no one Jew can prove descent from any specific homesteader. Therefore, all of itmust go to all verifiable genetic Jews with certain Y-chromosome and mitochondrial DNA markers by shares, to be determined by impartial third-party judges with zero connection to the Judeo-Christian-Muslim line.
Is this “an argument”?
Will Hammond quote the entire footnote at that dishonest article of his? No, because he thinks it’s “irrelevant”.
Why will he not actually quote the entire thing in reality, when he knows full well that it’s VERY relevant? Because he knows if he does, the stupidity he is currently feigning will become obvious even to the densest of his own readers.
When your only defense is to play dumb (I don’t know what “C” means on these classified emails! I never knew you couldn’t have a private email server! What’s the definition of “is”?) then I may as well be arguing with Hillary Clinton, which really, is not worth anyone’s time.
If Hammond wants to continue acting like Hillary Clinton, he is welcome to it. But if that’s really the best that the anti-Israel libertarian crowd has to offer, it’s really sub par.
Give me and every other genetic Jew on the planet (including Palestinian non Jews with Jewish genes!) Har Habayit by shares of stock. Give us Ma’arat Hamachpela, give us every single piece of land in Israel with verifiable physical hard evidence of previous Jewish homesteading, and the “Palestinians” can have the right of return to the rest. (See? I accept the right of return by Palestinians, but onlyto land where there is no hard and obvious physical evidence of previous Jewish homesteading. There is no hard obvious physical evidence of previous Jewish homesteading in most of Israel, so practically, we actually agree on much even though he insists I reject the right of return, which I DO NOT.)
So does our argument “fail on its own terms”? NO. It fails on his terms, which are that libertarianism necessitates a time-bound man-made a posteriori statute of limitations. These terms are wrong.
Dramatic effect follows for rhetorical emphasis only, no violence implied against any government official (skip to 1:21, and FYI Mandy Patinkin is a Jew):
Offer me money. (Not really, not interested.) Power too. Promise me that. (Not interested either.) Offer meeverything I ask for. (Har Habayit, Ma’arat HaMachpela, and every parcel of land with hard evidence of previous Jewish homesteading. That I actually DO demand. Not of Hammond. He is irrelevant. Of the Israeli government yemach shemam. They are my real enemy.)
I want my Beis HaMikdash back Binyamin Netanyahu you son of a bitch. The Feiglinites are coming.
The Jews are back. The exiles are gathered. Our only stumbling block left is the Israeli government itself. After this post I will get back to only that, because these Hammondeers only dig in by deliberately acting progressively more ignorant of basic English and logic.
Put the whole quote on the post. Yeah, no chance of that. Because it’s irrelevant obviously. Whatever Hillary. C is for Clinton, that’s good enough for you.
Note: I sent the email below to 200 people. In order for this big event to work, we MUST get pre-pledges before the start of the telethon.
It is now time for me to start sending to our team, as well – and that means you… and me.
Just to let you know:
Moshe Feiglin pledged 1,000 shekel.
Shai Malka pledged 1,000 shekel.
Shmuel Sackett pledged 1,000 shekel – after they twisted and almost broke my arm… just kidding!
(With the current exchange rate, 1,000 shekel is around $270)
Anyway, we need your pledge as well.
Please read the email and REPLY to me with your pledge.
Thanks,
Shmuel
Things for ZEHUT are going very well, Baruch Hashem.
The Jerusalem Post ran an article about us last week and Moshe is interviewed 3-4 times/week on radio and tv.
Lapid is rising in the polls – which is good for us – because we are the “flip-side” of everything he says.
Lapid and Feiglin have succeeded in changing the narrative from right/left to Israeli/Jewish.
We now have 15 chapters around the country plus another 7 in universities and our office in Tel Aviv is bussing with volunteers.
A recent poll was taken by “Ma’agar Mochot” showing that 71% of our supporters identify themselves as either “secular” or “traditional”.
This proves that we are getting to the right people…
As you know, TOMORROW we are running a big “Charidy” crowd-funding event where all donations are matched 4-1.
Aish HaTorah ran a Charidy program and they raised $1,364,557.
Charidy has run 900 programs so far including for the Lakewood Yeshiva, dozens of Chabad organizations, Hatzola and even Mayanot where they raised $2,306,044!!
These guys are very good and extremely professional.
Actually, today starts their biggest campaign ever. Yeshiva University is looking to raise a whopping $5,000,000!!
Our goal is to raise a total of $400,000. (We are very humble guys…)
The way it works is that on the actual day of Charidy – which is tomorrow – Sept 21st – the 18th of Elul (the birthday of the Ba’al Shem Tov) – we try to raise $100,000.
Before that day, it has been my job to find “MATCHERS” which will commit to a total of $300,000.
They will ONLY give their money if we hit our goal of $100,000 on Wednesday.
I divided the $300,000 into 3 groups.
#1 – One matcher for $100,000. I am proud to say that I achieved this goal! Michael Farkas of Miami Beach, FL has pledged this entire amount. Baruch Hashem.
#2 – Several USA matchers that collectively pledged $100,000. Baruch Hashem I reached that goal with 14 different donors.
#3 – Several ISRAELI matchers that collectively pledged $100,000. Baruch Hashem, just yesterday we hit our goal with 13 donors who actually pledged a total of $102,900.
(Note: I will gladly send you the names and amount of all “matchers’, if you would like to see them. This is 100% real – nothing is “fudged”)
In my debate with Jeremy Hammond on the legitimacy of the State of Israel from a libertarian perspective, the center of Hammond’s argument is that a 2,000 year old claim to previously homesteaded land is invalid because there is a statute of limitations in libertarianism.
First of all, he quotes a footnote in the paper that reads as follows.
But are there no statutes of limitation? Surely, two millenia and counting would more than qualify for any statute of limitations. There is such a thing, for the libertarian, as a ‘natural’ statute of limitations: the further back ones [sic] goes into the past, the more difficult it is to encounter any relevant evidence. Since the burden of proof always rests with he who wishes to overturn extant property rights, mere passage of time can serve as a natural limitation.
Sure sounds like there is a statute of limitations according to our paper! But Hammond deliberately leaves out the second part of the footnote to give the impression that we hold that libertarianism does support a statute of limitations, when we hold no such thing.Here is the full footnote. Note the However after Jeremy’s selective out of context quote:
I have requested that Jeremy put up the full quote on his article on his site discussing this very issue. I put it in the comments in any case.
But anyway, there is a statute of limitations in libertarianism, and it is a priori, but it has nothing to do with time passed. It cannot have anything to do with time passed because any measurement of time is a posteriori, whereas libertarianism, or should I say the positive Austrian method of deductive analysis as set forth by Ludwig Von Mises in “Economic Science and the Austrian Method” which leads to normative libertarianism, is a priori.
So what is the statute of limitations in libertarianism? It is when a claim is entirely foregone. When a claim is foregone, that claim cannot be picked up by subsequent generations. Once someone gives up a claim, that claim is gone and can no longer be inherited. In halacha the concept is called ייאוש, transliterated ye’ush. Giving up.
In Judaism for example there is a religious obligation to return lost objects to their previous owners. Lost objects cannot ever be taken regardless of the amount of time passed, unless there is ייאוש by the person who lost the object. It is not time-dependent. It is ייאוש dependent.
Once there is וודאי ייאוש, or definite relinquishing of claims, there is no longer any obligation to return a lost object, and the person who found it can keep it.
Now let’s reason this out deductively, just like Mises reasoned out the business cycle and just like Chazal reasoned out ייאוש in בבא קמא. If a person declares a piece of his property hefker (ownerless) and someone takes that piece of property, the child of that person can no longer claim that piece of property as his inheritance, obviously. Further, if a parent’s property was stolen and the parent has ייאוש, meaning he completely gives up on ever getting the property back, the child’s claim is now null and void and the child can no longer claim the property either, even though the property was lost unjustly in the first place.
If we now enlarge the sample size, do Mexicans have a claim on California and Texas? No, they do not, because Mexicans have given up their claims entirely. I don’t hear of any Mexicans claiming these places. Do Native Americans have a claim on their stolen land? In that case I am not 100% certain because I am unfamiliar with Indian tribes, but in the event that they have given up any hope of ever getting their stolen land back, then subsequent generations cannot claim it back either.
So, have Jews ever given up their claims to Judea/Israel/Palestine? No, not ever. We have never had any ייאוש regarding our eventual return to our homesteaded land. Not for a single generation. Our claims are reinforced every single day of our lives without exception and we are in fact commanded never to give up our claims. This is inherent in our mandated belief in the גאולה, the redemption of the Jewish People by the משיח at whatever point in the future and the ingathering of the exiles, which in fact has already happened.
Have some Jews given up their claims? Certainly. Have some Jews experienced ייאוש? Absolutely. Most of those Jews are no longer part of the nation. They are gone, assimilated, kaput. Many Jews have not had ייאוש, including yours truly. If and when a Jew who has given up his claims to his homeland marries one who has not,he or she re-inherits the continuous unbroken claim through marriage. Think of the Jewish Nation as one body, like Wolverine or the T-1000. If one strand breaks off and gives up the claim, the core heals and makes the body, the claim, full again. One piece flies off, but if it is found by the core and reabsorbed, the claim is restored through joining back up with the unbroken, whole Nation.
The only thing I need to prove is actual physical descent from the original homesteaders. All land with evidence of previous Jewish homesteading goes to the nearest of kin, which are Jews, whether they happen to practice Christianity or Islam or Judaism or Hinduism it does not matter. Since there is no one Jew who can prove individual ownership of any plot of land, all land with evidence of previous Jewish homesteading goes to the descendants of Jews by shares of stock, whether these descendants call themselves Palestinian or Israeli or whatever.
I can easily prove descent. I have the genes and I have the claim, repeated constantly and never, ever broken. Anyone else who can prove decent also has a right to previously homesteaded land, unless he has had ייאוש. Most Palestinians have not had ייאוש either.
So here’s what it comes down to practically:
Since possession is 9/10ths of the law, any human being sitting on homesteaded land in Israel that has no previous evidence of any homesteading by Jews, gets to stay there. If there is previous evidence of homesteading by Jews, anyone on that land must prove descent from Jews, and if they cannot, they must leave. All people who were expelled from their homesteaded land unjustly in 1948 or whenever, has a right of return. If he descends from Jews, he can return regardless of whether the land he was expelled from was homesteaded by Jews in the past or not. If he is not descended from Jews, he only has a right of return if the land he was on has no previous evidence of homesteading by Jews.
So does a statute of limitations exist in libertarianism? Yes. It is called ייאוש, ye’ush. Jews never had ye’ush, our claim is still valid, and it must be so a priori. All previously homesteaded land in Israel belongs to us by shares, simply because it is impossible to know which Jew owns which plot of land. Shares of stock in previously homesteaded land in the areas currently under the control of the Jewish State, must be distributed to all demonstrable descendants of the Jews that originally homesteaded the land.
As for Har Habayit, that specific land was homesteaded with Jewish money, donated and taxed, on the condition that it be used for the Beit HaMikdash. Any other use of it is a violation of contract. Therefore, according to libertarianism, the Beit HaMikdash, the Temple, must be rebuilt.
These issues are usually in my subconscious. Recent events have brought them out to my conscious thought. I don’t like discussing this stuff in general because these are Jewish issues and what non Jews think doesn’t concern me. But I’ve been brought in to the fold, so here are my thoughts.
Anti Israel libertarians say settlements are immoral because they are not annexed by the State of Israel, even though settling land is the crux of the entire libertarian homesteading theory, and libertarians are against states annexing anything in the first place.
Statist institutions and instruments like the UN and “international law,” suddenly become relevant and important regarding what these institutions say about Israel, even though they are despised and ignored and reviled in every single other case.
Anti Israel libertarians rail against the “ethnic cleansing” of “Palestine” while they simultaneously egg on the actual ethnic cleansing of Judea and Samaria of Jews, because “settlements” are “illegal” according to “international law” and should all be evacuated. I wonder what John Locke would say about THAT.
Libertarians hold that homesteading is the way one comes to own property, yet anti Israel libertarians like Jeremy Hammond can hold, only in the case of Israel, that it is legitimate to own UNhomesteaded land just because some statist body says that uncultivable land can be “owned”.
Israel is by FAR the most liberal state in the entire middle east in terms of economic and religious freedom, which means that it is the MOST libertarian state by any and EVERY measure, and yet it is the MOST hated by many libertarians.
Regarding Israel, suddenly statist political boundaries become relevant when they are reviled in any other case. The boundary between Israel and Judea and Samaria somehow is very important when libertarians, in any other case, revile the notion of political boundaries in the first place. Except with regard to Israel.
When the State of Israel expels Jews from their homes that were built on vacant unhomesteaded land as in the case of Gush Katif, anti Israel libertarians cheer. In any other case of statist violence such as this, libertarians jeer. In other words, ethnic cleansing of non Jews is evil, but ethnic cleansing of Jews is justice.
Regarding Israel, libertarians suddenly become supportive of overtly socialist schemes like “the right to strike”, which Murray Rothbard accused Israel of denying to Arabs, when in every other case besides Israel, there is no right to strike, because the right to strike means the right to prevent others from voluntarily contracting to work in a job that you have already quit.
Anti Israel libertarians insist that Arabs have a right to a “state of their own” even though in every other case, libertarians hold that nobody has a right to a state at all.
Anti Israel libertarians have no respect for the founders of their entire philosophy, the Jewish People, who by giving the world the story of the Exodus from Egypt, established the foundations of libertarianism itself for the entire Western World.
Libertarians are my ideological allies in the vast, vast majority of cases, and will continue to be so, even if they hate me. What they think of me personally makes no difference to me. Even the most bona fide anti-semitic libertarian, assuming there is one and the term “anti Semitic” actually means something, is my ideological ally in most cases.
But libertarians will never be my family just because they are libertarians. Jews are my family. The commies, the socialists, the lefties, the Kahanists, the Likudniks, all of them. Many of them are bad people and ideological enemies, but they are my family nonethless, and I can’t choose them. I care about them first, and if physically attacked, I would defend the life of the most socialist communist totalitarianist Jew against the attacks of the most anarcho libertarian, just because blood comes first, and that’s it.
As for the anti Israel Jewish libertarians, I can only sigh and move on. This is why Murray Rothbard’s attacks on Israel are mostly irrelevant to me and I just gloss over it all. But now that I have been brought into the fold of this intractable argument, people should know my thoughts.
My faith in God and His directing of Jewish history is too strong to be bothered all that much by anti Israel libertarians. But these thoughts of mine, while almost always dormant, are my thoughts.
One day libertarianism will conquer the world, and through the instrument of the Jewish People. Without the Jews, libertarianism cannot win. We are the כלי through which it will win, eventually.
One day Jewish libertarians will tear down the State of Israel and Jews will be free. But in the mean time, let’s be clear. The State of Israel, as a State, is much less evil than most other States on this planet right now, with the exception of maybe Switzerland. I gotta give props for centuries of sustained neutrality. Pleased don’t bother me Jews, about them financing Hitler. I know. But the US financed Stalin. Wake up.
Wow that was SO much fun. What a thrill to be on the Tom Woods show! He really is one of my favorite, if not actually my #1 favorite libertarian speaker. He is a scathing but light-hearted and hilarious cynic, with a biting sarcasm and wit possibly even more scathing than my own. He just does it better than me I think and with more poise, while I am more spastic and emotional. He can destroy any statist argument in seconds and he is entertaining as anything.
Here is Tom at his best. I loved this talk.
Here is what he writes in preview of our debate on his site:
There aren’t too many countries created from scratch before our eyes, so that historical episode raises important and interesting questions, for libertarians in particular.
Here’s the resolution: “Israel was founded on the basis of legitimate homesteading of land and reclamation of lost Jewish property from previous generations of Jews.”
Arguing in the affirmative: Rafi Farber.
Arguing in the negative: Jeremy R. Hammond.
The episode is already recorded, so I can tell you: this topic is debated in a manner that is at once civil, engaging, and informative.
I decided to host a debate on the topic when I discovered that Walter Block and the late Murray Rothbard, two Jewish libertarians, disagreed on the issue. So I thought we ought to hash it out and see what conclusions we can reach.
Now you’ll never guess: on Twitter, someone demanded to know why I was allowing a debate on the legitimacy of the state of Israel. Why not Germany, England, France, etc.?
I found the question obtuse. How about because major libertarians disagree, and it’s good to try to resolve disagreements? Or how about the significance for current events of the circumstances surrounding the creation of Israel? Only if we understand Israel’s birth correctly can we form correct judgments about ongoing events in our own day.
I’m not sure exactly how well I performed because I haven’t actually heard it yet, and you people in the US will probably hear it before me because it will be Shabbos here in Israel by the time it’s online. But I believe I did very well, at least in my own head. I dug in there with my Jewish claws so to speak and didn’t let go, and spoke from the soul about Rome, Har Habayit (the Temple Mount), Ma’arat Hamachpela (Cave of the Patriarchs), the expulsion from Gush Katif (Gazan Jewish settlements) and other topics. I also made a request of Tom personally as a Catholic libertarian at the end of the debate which you will hopefully hear, and I am serious about the request. It has to do with the Vatican and some stuff they have.
I have to commend Jeremy for a respectful debate. I believe he and I made history here, along with Tom, in conducting this discussion civilly. You’ll hear in the debate that we actually agree on much of the practical solutions to this conflict, which happen to be very similar to the solutions of Moshe Feiglin.
No Jeremy and those that agree with him generally will not turn into Feiglinites any time soon, that I’m certain of. But on principle, paying the Christian and Muslim Judeans to leave voluntarily (and with that nomenclature I’m giving you a small hint of the direction of my argument) is a solution that Jeremy did not object to on principle if the non Jewish people now living in Israel so desire to leave for money.
I believe they do. So let’s get it done.
Enjoy the show! You’ll find it here some time today. I will link to it on Motzash.
The best scenario for libertarians would of course be the best scenario for everyone in general, though most people don’t realize this because most people receive tax funds and would rather not have their milk supply cut off from the State’s nipple.
Here’s the best possible scenario as I see it. Hillary Clinton is sick as a dog, but she is still the best possible president, partly because of this. Julian Assange שליט”א is breathing down her neck and and about to make her life even more miserable than it already is, and forgive me for hoping that whatever remains of her sad life is spent doing nothing but staging personal battles against her accusers so she doesn’t have any time to kill anyone else in some foreign country or come up with bigger and more evil taxing schemes.
I don’t want her to suffer as much as I just want her to be totally preoccupied with defending (however poorly) her own sick (physical and spiritual) reputation just so she has no time to do anything else at all.
So the best scenario is as follows, as I see it. Hillary hobbles through to November while being beaten over the head by Assange and by the public for her health problems. By hook or by crook, she wins the election, and spends the her entire term fighting back scandal after scandal as her health continues to deteriorate. She is unable to pass a single piece of legislation, start a single war, or pass any executive order because she is too busy fending off attacks by a united Republican congress who do everything they can to stifle her just to spite her. She’ll be the greatest president since Nixon in terms of sullying the office, which is a very positive thing.
Go Hillary! If you’re voting, I endorse her. Just make sure you vote a straight Republican ticket to make sure she has the greatest opposition in Congress as possible. Make the branches of government fight one another so fiercely that they forget to oppress us in their preoccupation with one another.
For now though, she has to recover. I don’t want Biden getting in there and screwing this up. He doesn’t inspire nearly enough hatred for government. Hillary is the queen of that. I want her as president.
I’ll be debating Jeremy Hammond on the Tom Woods show next week, on the legitimacy of the State of Israel. I will be arguing from a minarchist perspective even though I am an anarcho-capitalist. It will be published on the Tom Woods YouTube channel and I will of course post it here when it’s up.
I don’t think Tom or Jeremy know what they’re in for. I will make arguments that every libertarian has heard before, but never in the context of Israel.
The Jewish Libertarian 