The history of leftism against freedom

Today’s state is the left, and the left is the state, as is apparent when one traces the funding of Occupy astroturf to itself.

Recapping Moldbug on the history of the left:

If we trace back the American left through the years, decades and centuries, we find the roots of today’s distinctly anti Christian and disproportionately Jewish left were nominally Christians, the super protestants of the 1940s, who in turn have plausibly Christian roots – the prohibition movement, the early feminist movement, the movement to raise the age of consent, the movement to give women the vote, and the anti slavery movement:  “Onward Christian soldiers”.

The center of the Anglo American left in the nineteenth century was England, and thought of themselves as primarily Christians, rather than leftists.  They did not pride themselves on being lefter than thou, but on being holier than thou.  In the early nineteenth century, the American left were muppets of the English left, and the English left ran the world, imposing leftism at gunpoint, for example abolishing slavery with the British navy. Today, the American left runs the world and thinks of itself as anti Christian, and it is difficult to say when the transition took place.  The transition to a US centered conspiracy could be said to have taken place as early as the Civil war, when the theocratic state of Massachusets and the theocratic city of Boston, its theocracy centered in Harvard University, imposed its theocracy on all America.  Back then the regnant left thought of themselves as Christian, and, indeed, much holier than Jesus, and continued to do so perhaps as recently as the 1940s.

The transition to American centered rule could also be said to have taken place as late as after World War I.  It was a gradual process without well defined dramatic transitions.

The transition from thinking of themselves as Christian, and indeed much holier than those horrid hateful reactionaries, Jesus and the Disciples, to thinking of themselves as anti Christian, took place after left wing power became centered in America.  The American constitution unambiguously prohibits theocracy at the federal level.  What America had after the Civil War was theocracy at the federal level, so it was necessary to kick the Theo out of their Cracy.

Kicking the Theo out of their Cracy was easily done, since they had long believed themselves holier than Jesus, but it was done late.  The regnant left believed themselves holier than thou, rather than lefter than thou, all the way to the 1930s or 1940s, and did not allow too many Jews too close to the corridors of power until the 1950s.

It was in the anti slavery movement that the predecessors of today’s left began to distinctly depart from Christianity:  For the New Testament takes a tolerant attitude towards slavery:  It gently suggests that Christians free their own slaves, but does not require it, and clearly prohibits Christians from freeing other people’s slaves, though they are perhaps permitted to close their eyes to other people’s runaway slaves and look the other way.  The civil war conspicuously and spectacularly exceeded not only what the New Testament requires, but also what it permits.  Killing people in large numbers and breaking other people’s stuff in order to end slavery is clearly and violently unchristian.  A Christian approach to the slavery problem would be to vigorously enforce the Old Testament rule “He that stealeth a man and selleth him, he shall be put to death”, and allow slavery to slowly wither away, as was successfully done in much of the world.

Killing a large part of an American generation and burning much of the South was holier than Jesus.

With the emancipation of women, they really had to ditch Christianity and started doing so, for while the New Testament is mildly disapproving of slavery, it endorses stern patriarchy in no uncertain terms, and thus, with women’s suffrage, we see the familiar modern left, the modern lefter than thou mingled with the older holier than Jesus.

The infamous “Society for the Suppression of Vice”, which is what we think of when use the term “Victorian” to mean stern disapproval of sex and the belief that women have no sexual nature, was a left wing movement, operating in England out of the same headquarters and operated by the same people as the anti slavery movement, the movement to get Calvinist bishops into the Church of England, and the movement to make the Thirty Nine Articles a mere formality with no real content.

Since women supposedly had no sexual nature, the repressive measures that the “Society for the Suppression of Vice” successfully imposed were anti male measures, strikingly similar to the measures imposed by modern feminists despite the supposedly very different rationale.

The “Society for the Suppression of Vice” theoretically believed in chastity for both men and women and said so frequently, stressing the “both”, so frequently as to suggest that people doubted it, or that they doubted it themselves, but they believed that to make women chaste was primarily a matter of preventing evil men from making poor innocent women do bad things.

Perhaps when they emphasized “both” they were having a dig at the right wing view that it was women, the uncontrollably lustful sex, that needed to be restrained for their own good, the good of the family, and the good of society, and not men, or they thought of it as a dig at the right, but the emphasis on “both” seemed guilty and defensive to me, that they were saying “We are not the hypocrites! You are!”

In fact it was the “Society for the Suppression of Vice” that were the hypocrites, for though theoretically  opposed both men and women having sex, in practice they were closely associated with the various movements to rescue fallen women, which proposed to rescue fallen women by removing all the adverse social, legal, and economic consequences from women having sex outside marriage.

Thus, in practice the supposedly anti sex “Society for the Suppression of Vice” was, like modern supposedly pro sex feminists, opposed to beta males having sex and in favor of women having sex with alpha males outside marriage.  Indeed we can trace this all the way back to Cromwell’s puritans desacralizing marriage and legalizing divorce.  The modern supposedly pro sex feminist movement, who, despite supposedly being pro sex, are always inventing new forms of “rape”, has continuity of personnel and organization all the way back to Cromwell’s puritans.

Since women, unlike men, bring their bastards home, with disastrous consequences, and women are, according to the right of that time (the reactionaries of our time) the uncontrollably lustful sex, it makes perfect sense to control female sexuality, rather than male. The double standard rests on biology. There is nothing hypocritical about it, and the then right and the present day reaction have never been the slightest bit ashamed of the double standard.  It was those proposing to both suppress vice and also protect women from the consequences of vice, that were hypocritical.  And indeed are hypocritical, for the same hypocrisy stands today, when women are encouraged to get drunk with strangers, but should they wake up with a stranger and a terrible hangover, it is rape, the stranger is the rapist and the poor innocent woman the rape victim.

Similarly, the temperance movement had massively overlapping personnel and postal addresses with the female emancipation and female suffrage movements, and their personnel, organizations, and postal addresses were in part descended from the anti slavery movement.

Since Jesus and the disciples, and just about everyone in the New Testament, drank alcohol socially, at mealtimes and in moderation, the movement to prohibit alcohol was holier than Jesus, which is to say pharisaical.

Since Jesus and the disciples accepted the institution of slavery, discouraged slaves from running away, and prohibited freeing other people’s slaves, the movement to free the slaves was holier than Jesus, which is to say pharisaical.

Since Jesus and the disciples firmly endorsed and commanded stern patriarchy, the movement to emancipate women was holier than Jesus, which is to say pharisaical.

Thus the Victorian movement to ever greater holiness prefigured and became the movement to ever greater leftism, prefiguring today’s left singularity.

Tracing the English speaking left all the way back, we see continuity of personnel and ideology, the ideology slowly changing from Puritan Christianity to Unitarian Universalism to modern leftism, but changing slowly and continuously without any abrupt change, though over time every detail of the ideology changed, except for the war on Christmas, desecration of marriage, and the emancipation of women, which remained the whole time, even though sometimes justified by the argument that Christmas was too pagan, and at other times justified by the argument that Christmas was not pagan enough, and sometimes, strangely, both arguments simultaneously, while the desecration of marriage never got an explanation, for they never admitted that that was what they were doing, nor did the emancipation of women for as long as they thought themselves Christian, for Paul unambiguously tells the Church to socially enforce male authority over women.

To oppose the left, is to oppose the state.  To oppose the state is to oppose the left.  Disagreements between those who would replace the state with a large and effectual state, and those would replace it with a small and effectual state are inconsequential, in part because if the central authority, the federal level, attempts to do too much it is guaranteed to be ineffectual, disruptive, and disorderly, due to diseconomies of scale.

All governments are in some sense theocratic, though the ideology may pretend to have no gods, or, like communism, actually have no gods.  You can restrict theocracy to only apply at the local level, as the United States used to do before the War Between The States, or, like the Ottoman Caliphate, tolerate other religions as subject states within an empire, in which one religion exercises imperial domain over subject religions, like an emperor exercising imperial domain over subject Kings. The only way to not have theocracy is to have some form of anarchy.

If there is going to be a government, that government is going to control the schools, and openly or furtively control the churches, and make them teach a particular viewpoint.  The question then is, what shall that viewpoint be?

If the official belief system bans too many heresies, as it does today, science and technology stagnates, because the scientific and technological way of thinking comes to be deemed hostile, subversive, and low status. Thus, for example, evidence is forbidden in Wikipedia. Only the voice of authority is deemed relevant. On the other hand, too much tolerance for hostile theocratic alien outside belief systems is likely to result in the official theocracy being infiltrated and overthrown by a more passionate, more self righteous, and more repressive belief system, as happened to theocratic Anglicanism.

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306 Responses to “The history of leftism against freedom”

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  3. Andrew says:

    Being against slavery is a “leftist” viewpoint?

    I’ve read all I need to read here.

    • Hidden Author says:

      He amusingly counts this as a way in which the left is “against” freedom.

      • jim says:

        If you oppose slavery the way Saint Paul the Apostle did, you are for freedom.

        If you oppose slavery the way Lincoln and the British Navy did, you are against freedom.

        • Hidden Author says:

          Let’s enslave Jim! I’m sure some homos would be very interested!

          • jim says:

            Since men were not created equal, sauce for the goose is not sauce for the gander.

          • Hidden Author says:

            Yes, wealthy young faggots are your rightful lords and masters!

          • B says:

            It is plainly obvious that for certain people, their freedom is incompatible with other people’s freedom: http://youtu.be/Tit2NonQ8AY

            In other words, the more freedom you give animals like the ones in the video, the less freedom normal, productive, law-abiding humans have. And it’s not a linear relationship. 5% more freedom for the animals (say, the relatively minor freedoms of not being subject to vagrancy laws or public obscenity laws) means 50% less freedom for you, because you can’t go shopping with your kids downtown without having scumbags with no visible means of support yelling “FUCK NIGGA FUCK!” at the top of their lungs. Just as kindness to the cruel is cruelty to the kind, freedom for the slaves means slavery for the free.

            To put it another way, for people whose idea of freedom is the freedom to fuck, consume drugs, eat and fight, there is no freedom, as they are slaves at heart, at the very least to their animal desires. Giving them formal freedom is the shortest way to ensure that you will be, as the curse goes, the slave of slaves, the most miserable fate imaginable. So the only decent thing to do is to give them only as much freedom as they can handle, and only on the condition that you can take it back if necessary.

  4. RS says:

    > Nailed it. The Universalists have a ton of minorities playing the role of Jim’s red cape (including Reformed Jews)

    That’s an extreme interpretation. I hope that you are just being polite. I’ll join you ; heck, what is truth?

    > but the Traditionalists would do well to let those of us who are also against the Universalists be on their side.

    I basically agree, but Ashkenazim and Europids aren’t going to go seamlessly into the field as brothers or identical twins or something. It is difficult to hope for more than something in between alliance and detente (on the broader picture I mean). We have particularistic goals/tendencies within the larger long march towards a particularist-eudaimonist Occident. We need structures that acknowledge that — acknowledge the limits of trust — and dampen its potential problematicity. Diplomacy 101, pretty much. The cooperation problems faced by particularists are not exactly a recent discovery. As far as Christian vs Christianity-skeptical Europids, it is not so different. I substantially prefer a Hellenic-like religion but can cooperate with others, as Thras says he can.

    • jim says:

      I basically agree, but Ashkenazim and Europids aren’t going to go seamlessly into the field as brothers or identical twins or something.

      Europids are not going into the field as brothers either.

      If you look at the financial crisis, it is pretty obvious that the Jews were in large part menials, or else being set up to take the fall in case of emergency. Which bankers pissed largest part of the money away and ran up the losses that led to the crisis that began in 2005, but was hidden under the carpet until 2008?

      Angelo Mozilo and Kerry Killinger, representing affirmative action and the inner party. Any Jews were just taking orders. Goldman and Sach, the evil Jews that everyone blames, had lots of political influence, so got special favor in being bailed out, but if they had been giving orders instead of taking them, would not have needed to be bailed out. They were unloading their bad assets on their customers in 2007, and were bailed out in 2008, which means in 2005, when all the little guys were running for the exits, they were not allowed to run to the exits. That, or they were so politically correct that they believed the official line, that there was no crisis, just irrational panic.

  5. RS says:

    > I’m not offering to unite with you. I just want you to stop whingeing.

    I already said it before, but your most dubious belief is probably that a palingenetic Israel has a likely good future separate from a palingenetic Europa.

    What do you garner, from events in your neighborhood 2000-3000 years ago, about the trials of unaligned small powers.

    The atom was split since then, making things different. How much and how so, one might wonder.

  6. Zach says:

    Off-topic:

    Obviously, you love art, and obviously, you don’t make this vague to keen observers.

    Why repeat yourself in a million different ways to thousands of peeps?

    Speak up brah! In the arts you say what you dislike or lack appreciation of, but what do you appreciate? Who can draw a straight line? Why does it matter?

    STEM courses are a fucking joke… we all end up in the arts, because reality is too hard to make binary, and thus logical. I suspect you fear a contradiction in your appreciation in one thing and your reasoning in another.

    FUCK THAT! 🙂

    FEAR NOT brah! Let it dangle! 😉

  7. Zach says:

    Red, you said:

    “Zach, I believe you’re viewing religion as more as moral force and less as an organizing and unity creating force.”

    Have lots to say on that, but you may be right. But brah! I don’t know shit on this topic. Better to share an opinion when one has an informed one. I don’t.

    Should have never wet my beak on this topic.

  8. Alat says:

    Just wanted to thank our host and Mr. “B” for this very enlightening conversation.

  9. […] The history of leftism against freedom. […]

  10. Robert in Arabia says:

    Very interesting thread.
    I am astonished that some people care what happens to America’s military adventures in the Islamic world. They must believe the clever Muslims with box cutters fairy tale.
    My view on Jews is based on my decades of experience with them. A Jew who never willingly is involved with Jewish functions after his bar Mitzvah can be a decent human being, the rest never.
    My best example occured when I was injured in an accident and needed a lot of help. I had two Jewish “friends” whom I had been seeing for several years.
    M was involved in Jewish religious and social groups, R had rejected the madness he had been taught. When I called M and told him I was crippled and needed help, he said he would be right over. I did not see him again for three years. R picked me up and took me shoppng for two years. I only learned the Talmudic principal that no help be given to non-Jews unless the Jew would benefit later in life. Where I live I have received consistent aid from Muslims. As a senior citizen and obviously not a Muslim, if I look lost Muslims rich and poor will offer me help and frequently drive me long distances. If I sit in a lobby, small Saudi children will come over and share their candy with me and their parents will beam. A friend was at a reception with His Majesty. A waiter slipped and spilled some coffee on the the king’s thobe. His Majesty, a man then in his eighties stood up, put his arm around the waiter and said anybody can make a mistake. I have discussed the police in the Kingdom with my various drivers from third world countries, all of them report that the police are courteous, helpful, non-threatening, non-abusive and respond to phone calls withing five minutes inside urban areas. Helpful policeman are not so easy to find in the USA or the UK nowadays.
    The Jews I encounter here, all insisting they are Christians, act like M unless they detached themselves from the madness like R.

    • spandrell says:

      You need a blog, or at least publish a dozen posts.
      First hand stories on the KSA are lacking.

    • B says:

      On behalf of all Jews everywhere, I would like to extend my sincerest apologies ever for your one Jewish friend being an asshole. Your condolence package is in the mail. Good luck with your wonderful Arab friends, and here’s keeping fingers crossed the oil doesn’t run out, or you might see another side of them; their neighbors to the north certainly enjoyed sawing off the heads of each other and any whiteys they got their hands on once the lock came off the cage.

      • Robert in Arabia says:

        My dear Jewish friend R died of cancer some years ago. He ha d commited some Jewish sins. Although his parents were medical people, he got his doctorate in public administration nit in medicine. That was held against him.
        He read /the Transfer Agreement and Zionism in the Age of the Dictators and talked about these books. That was held against him. He thought Isreal was a bad idea and talked about it. That was held against him. He married a non-Jew. That was held against. (They divorced.) His mother never visited him, her only child, during the months he was in the hospital dying. She did appear at his funeral in brand new luxurious fur and new Cadillac. She also put an add in the paper advising people to send no flowers but to send a contribution to a Jewish university in Israel. That was her way of fucking him after he died. He once told me what he had learned in the religious classes.
        He said that there were only three principles of Judaism. We are God’s Chosen People. We are better than everybody else. We don’t have to pay attention to anybody else. That was taught in a reformed congregation for rich Jewish families.
        In a America, one of the social circles with which I was involved was quite Jewish. One member was a person who had been a refugee from Germany who had come to America before the war. He was 19 when America went to war with the naughty Nazis. He explained how his parents arranged to get phony documentation from a Jewish doctor so that he could be exempt from risking his life fighting the bad people. He told this story to me because he thought that I was a member of the tribe.
        I learned one of my cherished Holohoax stories in this group One member was a Romanian lady who was not Jewish. She had been a child during the war in Romania. She went on a Pilgrimage th the Holy Land. She visited Yad Vashem. They had this large map on the wall listing the number of Jews killed by the naughty Nazis in each city. She was shocked when her home town was listed as a place where 10,000 Jews had been killed. She was shocked because nothing at all had happened to the Jews in her home towm. She had gone to Jewish stores throughout the war. She said all of the Jews in her home towm left for Israel or theUnited States after the war. I guess since they were not there after the war that counts as murdered victims of the naughty Nazis in Jewish think.
        In Paris, there is a building with two signs. One sign says that 400 innocent Jewish children from this school were killed by the naughty Nazis, around the corner there is a sign that says 400 Jewish children from this school were rescued by Rabbi so-in-so. One sign for gullible goy tourists, another for Jews. It depends on the tour bus which sign you see.
        It is always a lark to visit Auschwitz if you are knowledgeable. When you approach the ruins of the crematoriums you can asked what was in the vast open area next to them. Oops. It is the missing medical facilities for more than 10,000 Jewish patients. Had to bulldoze those. Yessir. The tour will provide schematics of the crematoriums that omit the room for storing the individual bottles for the ashed of individual crematees. In Berlin there was an active Jewish hospital to the end of war Bottles of ashes were sent there so that the ashes of Berlin Jews could be buried in the Jewish cemetery in Berlin. You might also asked to see the list of all the plays performed in the childrens’ theatre at Auschwiz or the records of the camp library for the internees.
        I purchases a three volume guide to collecting concentration camp mail where you can learn that Jewish internees had mail forewarding and postal bank accounts and could send and receive mail including cash and packages. You used to be able to buy concentration camp mail on Ebay until they noticed that this undermined the fairy tale.
        My poor friend R died believing and suffering about Jews dying like sheep.
        Even I must admit that I purchased the movie Schindler’s List. You can search Holocaust survivors and the name of the camp where Schindler rescued his workers. You keep finding survivor narratives from Jews who survived that canp, but who were not on the famous list.
        There is an affecting scene in the movie where the entrance to the camp is paved with Jewish headstones. Any tour book will tell you that Cracow is the site of the largest undamaged Jewish cemetery in the world. It was so nice of the thoughtful Nazis to put all the tombstones back when they left.
        People are entitled to their own opinions, they are not entitled to their own facts.
        Something I found on the net: …I survived (six years of imprisonment in ghettos, labor camps and concentration camps as a child during World War II)… When, as a nine-year-old, I spent a month in Buchenwald, it never occurred to me that those of my fellow-inmates who were Gypsies, Soviet prisoners of war, or Danish policemen arrested for helping the Jews escape, were undergoing experiences that were different from mine…. Both of my parents survived, and I had no siblings. I have no tattoo (though I sometimes perversely envied those who had them). I was never beaten or starved. After the War I went on with school at the normal grade level. And when I recently visited the Buchenwald memorial site, the foremost thought in my mind – unrepentant cinephile that I am – was to find the location of the barrack where I saw my first movie; never mind that my first screen image was of a smiling Hitler on horseback, introducing a newsreel. The search for the site of the barrack where I actually lived took second place. … I spent the last months of the War, after Buchenwald, in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp…
        http://www.ce.berkeley.edu/~coby/essays/confden.htm

        • B says:

          Cool story, bro. Thank you for sharing.

        • Eli says:

          Wonderful story indeed! The takeaway: a Jewish friend had been helping you out for years, and you ended up hating Jews, since, unlike Muslim kids, they never offered you candy, and because the Saudi King, graciously, didn’t order that the throat of the clumsy servant be slit.

  11. VXXC says:

    B is right. We do sell each other out way, way too much. Americans I mean.

    We’ve bred cowardice and called it virtue. A great trick of the Cathedral.

  12. Red says:

    >>Expelling the Jews and persecuting the conversos was justified as a way to fix Spain’s economic woes. Judenrein Spain had worse economic woes. Woes which were not suffered, for some reason, by the other countries which were on the way to the gold’s ultimate destination in its travel from America to India and China. I can’t for the life of me figure out why the inflation happened; obviously, when you have more currency and less productivity, you get inflation, but why would Spain’s productivity have fallen? Hmmm…

    The nation of Spain spent it locally like it was real money. Of course it caused massive inflation. Spanish productivity fell because it’s best people were either running around Europe fighting in pointless wars or in the new world chasing after more gold. The Spanish empire was always a net drain on Spain. This period was a golden age of power and glory of Spain. They got their 100 years of being the big dog of Europe.

    >>I came in talking about Judaism as a reactionary force (actually, about Christianity as an inherently Progressive phenomenon.) You gave me a long litany of complaints about the behavior of Jews assimilating into post-Christian ideology, ascribing that behavior to Judaism.

    I’ve never disagreed about Judaism being reactionary. It’s doesn’t appear to be very successful in preventing absorption by the cathedral though. Jews with their higher verbal IQ and great skill at manipulating outsiders was a good fit for the cathedral’s purposes.

    • B says:

      Many of those best people were assimilated Jews who had to flee to the New World to evade persecution. Thus, their productivity was lost to the metropole.

      The Golden Age, as Ibn Khaldun points out, is always the period of decay’s biggest growth.

      It is more successful at preventing assimilation while engaging the outside world than any other faith (not counting the Amish, who had to withdraw to rural enclaves.) In every age there have been many casualties. The Talmud says 4/5ths of the Jews did not want to leave Egypt and died for it. People are in general more susceptible to bribery than oppression. But we are still here, unlike many faiths and nations that have come and gone.

  13. Red says:

    “If you’d stop crying for a second, you might notice that the Jews I am speaking of are the religious Jews, not the assimilated Swipple Jews who are more Brahmin than the Brahmins. Now, tell me, who is more vulnerable to fear of proxy black misbehavior: the white people of Wisconsin, or the Jews living in Crown Heights and Williamsburg? ”

    Fuck you B. I’ve watched the town I grew up in overrun by the hordes of darkness that your people unleashed with the civil rights movement. Kids hide in doors all day because a bunch of jews wanted more power, more money, and more status. I watch white people everyday work themselves silly and never get see their kids to avoid living around the black plague that your people unleashed in service of their avarice. I have to listen everyday while Jews people pretending to be white attack and belittle whites. I have to endure everyday brainwashed that white people are shit and deserve all the garbage tossed at, all written up by Jewish propagandists. I have to watch a player like Tim Tebow get drummed out the league because Jewish sports writers hate flaming christens and do everything possible to destroy them.

    I know B’s and probably most religious Jews are not directly responsible for any of this shit but their fellow tribe members are. And the only way to deal with a close nit ethic group is to punish the many for the sins of the few. It’s not fair, but it’s the only thing that will cause a tribe to police and/or behave itself(same goes for the Brahmin).

    The offer to unite on class lines isn’t a honest one. B knows just as well as I do that a Jews will always pick Jew over the gentile no mater the long term destruction it may cost. I don’t hold it against him, it’s simply the way such ethic groups work.

    “There is an important reason not to hate Jews. They are the red cape that the matador uses to distract the bull. Always have been. When the matador is danger of being gored, he casts his cape to one side while he goes to the other side, and the cape gets gored.”

    The most important reason not to hate the jews is all consuming stupidity that hate causes. Jew hating sites, black hating sites, ect are little more than giant eye cancers. People reduce their entire life to: the JEWS did it to me instead of dealing with things as they are.

    Fortunately we’re not here for the next revolution. Neo-reactionism is the study of what worked in the past for the hope of creating a stable order in the future. A Brahmin Jew known as Mencius Moldbug lit the torch of knowledge and told us where to read so that we might become wise in the ways of what actually works. He wasn’t the first to light the path, but he was the first Brahmin to do so. And thus we have been learning, sharing, spreading, and hopefully passing on that what is true and what works in preparation for the day when it’s needed again. And when it comes to being a neo-recationary which tribe you came from doesn’t mater. Only the truth maters. I want everyone from the highest Brahmins to the lowest Helot to know that things can be better than the shit sandwich that we’ve been built for ourselves.

    • jim says:

      I know B’s and probably most religious Jews are not directly responsible for any of this shit but their fellow tribe members are. And the only way to deal with a close nit ethic group is to punish the many for the sins of the few.

      But Jews are not a close knit ethnic group. Two Jews, three factions.

      The trots are overwhelmingly Jewish, and hate Jews more than anyone. The old Bolsheviks were overwhelmingly Jewish, and yet predictably once they got into power, proceeded to purge each other till the party was pretty much Judenrein. Those that B calls swipple Jews generally hate Israel.

      Now it is true that integration is a Jewish plot. The Jews, newly allowed into the progressive ruling elite, the people that B accurately calls swipple Jews and that I call conversos, proceeded to impose integration in an effort to out progressive the progressives and make them feel guilty. Whenever you hear someone weeping bitter salt tears about separate drinking fountains, those so bitterly distressed are Jewish.

      On the other hand, mass underclass nonwhite immigration into European countries is not a Jewish plot. It is largely non Jewish progressives that are to blame.

      Outside the US, the rationale for mass immigration is “refugee status”, though nineteen of twenty of these “refugees” are useless underclass people who had no job in their old country, and show no willingness to get a job in their new country. They were indeed persecuted in their old country – persecuted for being useless parasites. Whenever you hear someone weeping bitter salt tears about poor refugees being turned away, those so bitterly distressed are seldom Jewish.

      • Red says:

        “But Jews are not a close knit ethnic group. Two Jews, three factions.

        The trots are overwhelmingly Jewish, and hate Jews more than anyone. The old Bolsheviks were overwhelmingly Jewish, and yet predictably once they got into power, proceeded to purge each other till the party was pretty much Judenrein. Those that B calls swipple Jews generally hate Israel. ”

        Well that explains why Jews are generally expelled instead of just roughed up when they get out of line.

        • B says:

          What explains it is that you people are dumbshits looking for a scapegoat because you are afraid to address the root cause of the problem, which is your leadership. Rockefeller, Ford, Carnegie, MacArthur, Pew-these are not Jewish names, nor are the synonymous foundations Jewish in any wise. And this is nothing new: when the Spanish royals expelled the Jews and then persecuted the conversos as a sop to people like you and their whining about the Jewish-dominated economy, the Spanish economy entered a period of massive inflation, resulting in the progressive hollowing out of the Empire and its eventual collapse into third world-hood.

          • Red says:

            B,
            You came in talking about how awesome jews are. I’ve spent some time refuting your fairy tale.

            I very well know that it’s the white elites that are the problem. I’m not a white nationalist for that very reason. But when the boot on your neck is a black or a Jewish one it’s only natural to resent the person kicking you more than the person who gave the order.

            >>when the Spanish royals expelled the Jews and then persecuted the conversos as a sop to people like you and their whining about the Jewish-dominated economy, the Spanish economy entered a period of massive inflation, resulting in the progressive hollowing out of the Empire and its eventual collapse into third world-hood.

            Odd, thought the inflation was caused by a massive influx of new world gold. I never would have guessed that it was a lack of jew-idum caused it. I guess if Spain had Ben Bernanke everything would have been fine.

          • B says:

            I came in talking about Judaism as a reactionary force (actually, about Christianity as an inherently Progressive phenomenon.) You gave me a long litany of complaints about the behavior of Jews assimilating into post-Christian ideology, ascribing that behavior to Judaism.

            >it’s only natural to resent the person kicking you more than the person who gave the order.

            That’s slave mentality. We got a good massa, it’s the overseer that be a asshole!

            >Odd, thought the inflation was caused by a massive influx of new world gold. I never would have guessed that it was a lack of jew-idum caused it.

            Expelling the Jews and persecuting the conversos was justified as a way to fix Spain’s economic woes. Judenrein Spain had worse economic woes. Woes which were not suffered, for some reason, by the other countries which were on the way to the gold’s ultimate destination in its travel from America to India and China. I can’t for the life of me figure out why the inflation happened; obviously, when you have more currency and less productivity, you get inflation, but why would Spain’s productivity have fallen? Hmmm…

      • VXXC says:

        “I have to listen everyday while Jews people pretending to be white attack and belittle whites.”

        It’s getting old watching Chris Matthews do it too, and he’s White.

        It’s getting older faster watching Indians, Chinese, Muslims and the rest of the swine join in.

        The entire act is wearing quite thin.

        There are two groups of white people who can’t stand each other, it’s blossoming into fanatical hatred, and the rest of you would be well advised to get the fuck out of our way.

        • Jefferson says:

          “There are two groups of white people who can’t stand each other, it’s blossoming into fanatical hatred, and the rest of you would be well advised to get the fuck out of our way.”

          Nailed it. The Universalists have a ton of minorities playing the role of Jim’s red cape (including Reformed Jews), but the Traditionalists would do well to let those of us who are also against the Universalists be on their side.

    • B says:

      I’m not offering to unite with you. I just want you to stop whingeing. You guys imported the blacks, you guys freed them, your pols led the charge for their Civil Rights, and because some Jews attempting to assimilate with your elites ran ahead of the locomotive, it’s the Jews’ fault. Furthermore, the only way to deal with something like this is to consciously form a united community with deep social structure, but the white people I’ve seen (except for the Amish, Mennonites, Mormons, etc.) will sell each other out all day for a promotion so they can buy a bigger SUV and McMansion on credit.

      >I watch white people everyday work themselves silly and never get see their kids to avoid living around the black plague that your people unleashed in service of their avarice.

      And yet these poor white people never think about moving to, say, Colorado and building something there. Wouldn’t want to miss out on the city life, and the job security. You guys rotted out after the West was won, and of course your following the trajectory of every other conquering nation ever is the fault of the Joooo.

      • Red says:

        >>your pols led the charge for their Civil Rights, and because some Jews attempting to assimilate with your elites ran ahead of the locomotive, it’s the Jews’ fault.

        LOL. Please nigga, all those whites leading the charge for civil rights where Jewish. Jews wrote Dr Kings speeches, they organized the media support, and created a masterful propaganda machine that told such beautiful lies about black folk. It’s the same pattern that from old Europe. Elites knowing that they couldn’t as effectively exploit people as well as the very verbally smart Jews put the Jews in charge of the exploration. And as Jews tend to do they went too far and will eventually pay a heavy price and at which time they’ll blame the goyim for their troubles. It really sucks to be a middle man minority. Self reflection is just not in the cards.

        >>And yet these poor white people never think about moving to, say, Colorado and building something there. Wouldn’t want to miss out on the city life, and the job security.

        Whites have been moving and forming new enclaves for ages. It’s called white flight and you might have heard of it. Unlike Jews we’re not allow to keep the blacks out and it’s always a Jewish lawyer pushing to let them into our neighborhood. I’ve read about Jewish neighborhoods who have their unofficial Jewish police forces that chase blacks out. It’s a wonderful idea. Whites get crucified when we try the same thing.

        >>Furthermore, the only way to deal with something like this is to consciously form a united community with deep social structure, but the white people I’ve seen (except for the Amish, Mennonites, Mormons, etc.) will sell each other out all day for a promotion so they can buy a bigger SUV and McMansion on credit.

        Whites have been breed for a thousand years to form loose nit high trust communities that are very successful at generating wealth, winning wars, and generally co-operating well. There’s never been a more initiative, inventive, and industrious group that European whites. Whites throwing all of that away to return to the clan structure may still happen. It won’t be a happy day for human advancement when or if it happens.

        For the Jews there are 2 modes: Become dogs of the elites or form self contained, self supporting communities. Whites being good at warfare have other options.

        • jim says:

          Red:

          LOL. Please nigga, all those whites leading the charge for civil rights where Jewish.

          But how did the blacks get turned loose in the first place?

          For the Jews there are 2 modes: Become dogs of the elites or form self contained, self supporting communities. Whites being good at warfare have other options.

          Secular Jews, and pre talmudic Jews, have been doing pretty well at warfare.

          • Red says:

            “Secular Jews, and pre talmudic Jews, have been doing pretty well at warfare.”

            Not really. Remember that Secular Jews were facing off again Arabs and Arabs are among the worst fighters in the world. The yom kippar war almost cost Israel everything because they didn’t keep up with advancements in missile tech and lost most of their ground attack planes on the first day. A slightly better opponent (say the Turks) would have rolled the entire country up. They’re recent performance in Lebanon was especially bad and I wouldn’t wager on a war with turkey or the kurds going in Iseral’s favor. Building up a stockpile of nukes was by far the foresighted thing any Jewish group has ever done.

            Most of the really hard core fighters were wiped out by the Romans. Such skills can always been breed back into a population but Jews have adopted a very different model of group survival that didn’t require fighting until very recently.

            • jim says:

              Yes, Turks way better than Arabs, and Yom Kippar War a near thing.

              I don’t think Lebanon counts, because asymmetric war is political power versus military power. I don’t think the IDF was allowed to win. On July twelfth, they said that they were at war with Lebanon and the Lebanese government. On July sixteenth, they said that they were not at war with Lebanon and the Lebanese government. With that sort of leadership you are bound to lose.

          • Red says:

            “I don’t think Lebanon counts, because asymmetric war is political power versus military power. I don’t think the IDF was allowed to win. On July twelfth, they said that they were at war with Lebanon and the Lebanese government. On July sixteenth, they said that they were not at war with Lebanon and the Lebanese government. With that sort of leadership you are bound to lose.”

            Could be. I’ve read that general IQ is way down in the armed forces(general produce of high IQ people not reproducing due to feminism), but that does really sound like the standard stab the army in the back setup.

        • B says:

          >I’ve read about Jewish neighborhoods who have their unofficial Jewish police forces that chase blacks out.

          If only. They don’t “chase blacks out” unfortunately. Crown Heights is full of them. But they do keep the blacks from chasing the Jews out. In fact, the only Jewish communities in Brooklyn that survived were the ones who did this; the rest got cleansed. Obviously, this was part of ZOG’s genius plan.

          >Whites get crucified when we try the same thing.

          Because you are scared of jail, because you betray each other for a penny, because you have no group loyalty or higher ideals. The “whites” who aren’t thus crippled, like the Irish of South Boston, the Italians of New York, etc., have been pretty good at keeping their neighborhoods white.

          >Whites being good at warfare have other options.

          I have observed the whites, wonderful at warfare, getting their asses beaten by Pashtun farmers with AKs, and have a seriously hard time dealing with inbred, incompetent, disunited Iraqi Arabs. But I’m sure that once the chains of ZOG come off them, the great white warriors will return to the traditions of Charlemagne.

          All I’m saying is, quit crying. Yes, I know Jon Stewart and Sarah Silverman are saying hurtful and subversive things on TV, and Rahm Emmanuel is a bad mayor. But you don’t see me complaining that you people are doing your best to destroy the Jews among you by assimilation, that there is a 50% intermarriage rate in America, that you are sucking up our superior brainpower and exploiting it while those poor Jews who’ve been seduced by your pretty lies are rendered effectively sterile, like Feynman, Einstein, Oppenheimer, the products of thousands of years of Jewish religion and identity, who instead of having five or ten Jewish children had one or two non-Jewish ones, whose lives were spent giving you people weapons and power never seen in history, which you proceeded to squander on global gay pride parades, right? You don’t see me complaining because I believe in a thing called “responsibility” on a national level, which means, if a large part of a nation makes stupid decisions that let it be exploited by another nation, that is their fault.

        • VXXC says:

          It’s true to say that if we want our high trust, hence high wealth and high law communities – we, we the white Europeans, have to have our hands on the levers of power.

          In the case of America we’re at the extreme end of the high trust whites, so we have to more than europe be in charge.

          The WASPS and lower church whites did this successfully [and subtly] for centuries. The great mistake was when Lord High Espiscopalian Aristo himself – FDR – summoned the permanent American Army in waiting; The Dissenters. Who yes bought along plenty of lawyers and moneymen of a different ethnic group. Also Joseph Kennedy who wasn’t Jewish.

          I’m convinced. The levers of power must be restricted [subtly one might hope] to those who’ve agreed to our terms. Which is mostly us. Including whatever restricted franchise exists.

          [some form of franchise is a universal characteristic of European governments for at least 1000 years].

          After the shortest way is at last taken with the dissenters.

          PS – I’m Irish, we owe you for Cromwell.

          • B says:

            If you want high trust, high wealth, high law communities, somebody COMPETENT has to have their hands on the levers of power. Lee Kuan Yew would do fine, but he’s not available. You can’t play the in-group game where the in-group is Americans of European descent (whites) and reap the advantages of in-group cohesion because whites do not view themselves as an in-group, and never have, long since before your ancestors started getting the eyes raped out of their heads by their likewise white British neighbors.

  14. B says:

    Yes, it is truly a hellish dystopia for the Arabs who live under our control. Their population has grown several times over since we’ve started oppressing them, and they are in no urge to leave; the universities are full of their retarded, affirmative-auctioned offspring. Poor things.

    The Puritans are not doing a very good job of providing families or reproducing. See: the Vanderbilts, who have produced…Anderson Cooper.

    • Thrasymachus says:

      Why should they leave? It’s their country. The accommodation Israelis make with the Arabs in their boundaries is a special case anyway.

      The moral and economic conditions of Europeans living under a Puritan/Quaker/Jewish system of social control ranges from comfort with fear to destitution with fear, but the fear is a constant.

      • B says:

        >It’s their country.

        We disagree on this point.

        Of course, you are making a bit of an unprincipled exception here-you live on land your ancestors stole from the Indians, without any further justification other than “we beat you.” Which I suppose is fine, as these things go-that’s the general historical standard.

        Sorry about your fear (I personally live in a settlement with no fence and Arab villages on three sides, and don’t feel any fear, but I can imagine it would be unpleasant.) The Jews I am speaking of are different from the Jews you are speaking of, being actually, you know, religious.

        > all progressive movements are internally reactionary

        Really? The Khmer Rouge were internally reactionary? The Bolsheviks were internally reactionary? In the same way that the Hasidim and Queen Elizabeth’s government were internally reactionary?

        I am really enjoying your cognitive dissonance. “Reality…does…not..fit! Urgh!”

        • Thrasymachus says:

          The Indians did not own North America (or the Aborigines Australia) because they (mostly) did not cultivate the land, but only hunted and gathered on it. They would have been left alone to hunt and gather had not been attacking whites been so central to their culture. I can’t speak for the displacement of the Cherokees, but the rest of the Indians got much less than was coming to them. See the TR Fehrenbach history of the Comanches.

          You’re not afraid of Arabs physically because if they threatened you you could shoot them, or the army would do it for you. You aren’t afraid of them politically, because you can say what you think openly under your own name without reprisal. Europeans don’t have either the right of free speech or the right of self-defense. I made some intemperate remarks about a progressive Christian under both my real name and my pseudonym, and the guy figured out who I was. After trashing me on his blog he generously said he would pray for me rather than expose my identity, so I suppose I should be grateful for these people’s passive-aggressiveness.

          Progressive movements are indeed internally reactionary, in that if you are a real insider (Inner Party) they will guarantee you a good job, a pleasant social life, membership in the community, social status, and the opportunity for good marriage and family life. Progressive policies make these very hard to maintain for those ruled. All I want is a system that will allow that for people like me. 60 years ago I would have been a conservative Democrat, now it makes me a fascist. So yes, all the groups you mentioned are internally reactionary. Check out “Nomenklatura” by Michael Voslensky.

          • B says:

            That seems like pretty specious reasoning about ownership. Daniel Boone and his fellow trappers kept running into Indians in Kentucky who would take all their stuff and tell them to GTFO of their hunting grounds. Apparently, they had a concept of ownership.

            For the first three years in Israel, Jews aren’t allowed to have guns, and afterwards EVERY SINGLE shooting of an Arab by a Jew turns into a mini-Zimmerman trial. Here you go, for instance: http://www.jpost.com/National-News/Man-filmed-shooting-Palestinians-taken-to-court

            The Army won’t do shit for me, just like they did nothing for the Fogel family in Itamar, or anyone else. Their leaders are as emasculated as those of the US military. They will show up afterwards with the police. They exist as much to protect the Arabs from us as vice versa. And if something happens, they might catch the guy a month later, and maybe he’ll even get put in jail, from where he’ll be sprung the next time the US puts pressure on us for more “peace process.”

            Politically, the same pressures are applied here but worse. The pressure from the internal security services upon the actual (not pet) opposition is far above and beyond anything I’ve seen in the states.

            The reason I’m not afraid is because I believe in something greater than myself, and therefore death, jail, getting fired are all unpleasant possibilities but all part of the game. You people stopped believing in anything, and therefore you throw each other under the bus for a promotion or a boost in self-esteem, like your Progressive Christian buddy, you won’t stand up for what is yours if it means a risk of death, jail or financial hardship, and therefore anyone can do anything to you, and you’ll just sit there and take it 99% of the time, occasionally snapping and pulling a Himeyer. Can’t blame the Jews for that one-we are not the ones that made you lose faith in everything and become Nietzsche’s Last Men. Even you, great Deconstructor of Leftism, want nothing more than a pleasant life, which makes you easy to manage.

            My insight into the Leftists’ inner structure and behavior comes from eg Radosz’ Commies. The picture he paints is not very Reactionary. The constant purges of each other, the sexual dissolution, the demand to constantly proclaim that Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia-this is in contract to the Reactionary ideal, where you are left alone as long as you don’t make trouble, where there is sexual order, etc. Their families are constantly dissolving, btw, which is not very reactionary.

            • jim says:

              That seems like pretty specious reasoning about ownership. Daniel Boone and his fellow trappers kept running into Indians in Kentucky who would take all their stuff and tell them to GTFO of their hunting grounds. Apparently, they had a concept of ownership.

              The Indians had a perfectly sound concept of ownership, and Daniel Boone would buy land from them. The problem was that they would drink all the money, and when they were out of money and booze, would attempt to take the land back by murdering women and children, to which the Jews settlers would respond, reasonably enough, with ethnic cleansing.

            • jim says:

              My insight into the Leftists’ inner structure and behavior comes from eg Radosz’ Commies. The picture he paints is not very Reactionary. The constant purges of each other, the sexual dissolution, the demand to constantly proclaim that Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia-this is in contract to the Reactionary ideal, where you are left alone as long as you don’t make trouble, where there is sexual order, etc. Their families are constantly dissolving, btw, which is not very reactionary.

              I also can report from inside the left.

              Those purges can get physical. Our media and enforcement agencies close their eyes to internal left violence.

          • B says:

            The problem with the Indians was that when you have two people living next to each other with no superior and impartial law enforcement authority, even if they’re both teetotaling law abiding populations, sooner or later there will be war. See former Yugoslavia, where more or less the same exact people speaking the same exact language, with the same customs (mostly) and culture (mostly) got sucked into almost total war. It goes to the lowest common denominator; the stupidest asshole on one side cheats or murders someone from the other, the other guy’s relatives respond and escalate, soon everyone is involved. Or if they do not respond and escalate, then the instigator and his friends learn that they can go unpunished, and they escalate. It could even be something stupid: “it’s not enough that they live on our land, but they’re fucking our women!” Someone gets punched in the face, someone else gets stabbed in revenge, it all goes downhill from there. No way out but subjugation or cleansing.

            I haven’t heard of serious physical violence within the American left except for where the black proxies got involved (the Panthers,) and the games they played with the Russian intelligence bureaux in the 30s. What happened?

            BTW, is that your paper on quantum processes in the brain floating around out there?

            • jim says:

              The problem with the Indians was that when you have two people living next to each other with no superior and impartial law enforcement authority, even if they’re both teetotaling law abiding populations, sooner or later there will be war. See former Yugoslavia, where more or less the same exact people speaking the same exact language, with the same customs (mostly) and culture (mostly) got sucked into almost total war.

              The Indians were not a test of this theory, since war ensued from Indian bad behavior (they would sell land and change their minds after they spent the money, mostly on booze) and Indian weakness (they were utilizing land so unintensively that the settlers perceived it as empty and undefended)

              Yugoslavia is not a test of this theory since the Serbians inherited a state that had ceased to be legitimate, since its rule over non serbs had been based on faith in communism. The cause of the Yugoslavian war was not the lack of a superior power, but the presence of an illegitimate one.

              The Hebrews of the Judges period were a counter example to this theory, since their only superior authority was God, who is notoriously apt to be passive about law enforcement.

            • jim says:

              I haven’t heard of serious physical violence within the American left

              Wasp progressives are non violent, Jewish progressives, the people you call swipple Jews, are non violent. Communists were pretty deadly as long as the Soviet Union existed, but the progressives closed their eyes so long as the commies were not killing establishment progressives, and now the commies are no more. The extreme left takeover of academia from the left in the sixties used a fair bit of actual physical violence. A bunch of white people claiming to be Hispanics, native Americans, etc are imitating black political violence, which generally does not kill people, just roughs them up.

              Ward Churchill, who received tenure for supposedly being one bazillionth Native American, was notorious for issuing death threats against fellow academics and leftists, some of which got recorded on tape. It is not clear he actually carried out any of these death threats, but in view of the way the establishment covered for him, it is impossible to say to what extent he actually carried out death threats. This is pretty typical of “Hispanic” and “Native American” academics and judges.

      • B says:

        Here you go: http://www.jewishpress.com/news/brotherhood-of-murdered-kin-protest-release-of-arab-israelis-video/2013/08/01/

        Now please, continue crying about how hard it is to be a white man oppressed by the Joooz.

        • Red says:

          Whites are generally oppressed by jews in similar fashion as they oppressed by blacks. Jews and blacks are the enforcement classes of the cathedral. Jews are in charge of wringing out wealth from whites and creating propaganda for the cathedral. Jew’s also act as gate keepers to keep non elite whites out of positions of influence via only selecting their kin for jobs. I believe that Jews enjoy a chance to fuck with the goyim the same way blacks enjoy fucking with random white people. Blacks serve a similar function but on a physical level. Of course being the cathedrals enforcement class will be the death of both groups in the long run. Not only does progressivism eats away at the family structure, but when times turn bad the progressives will toss their enforce classes to the mobs as a sacrificial victims.

          This of course this is a familiar role for the Jews. They were used as enforcer by the elites of Europe in order to wring extra resources out of the serfs and then tossed to the mob when he serfs have had enough of being exploited.

          • B says:

            >Jews and blacks are the enforcement classes of the cathedral. Jews are in charge of wringing out wealth from whites and creating propaganda for the cathedral.

            If you’d stop crying for a second, you might notice that the Jews I am speaking of are the religious Jews, not the assimilated Swipple Jews who are more Brahmin than the Brahmins. Now, tell me, who is more vulnerable to fear of proxy black misbehavior: the white people of Wisconsin, or the Jews living in Crown Heights and Williamsburg?

            >I believe that Jews enjoy a chance to fuck with the goyim

            You are viewing this through a prism of ethnicity, while you should be viewing it through a prism of class. ALL SWPLs enjoy fucking with the Helots. Pretty much all aspiring elite wannabe groups ever looked down on the peasants. There is nothing especially Jewish about this-Harold and Kumar also get a great kick out of mocking the peasants. Not aspiring to be elite, the Orthodox Jews do not play this game as a community.

            >This of course this is a familiar role for the Jews. They were used as enforcer by the elites of Europe in order to wring extra resources out of the serfs and then tossed to the mob when he serfs have had enough of being exploited.

            Yes, this is Netanyahu’s father’s thesis, as well as that of some Rabbis calling for all Jews to go to Israel. I agree, and think that mass aliyah is the answer-the current position of galut is undignified, dangerous and unbefitting a holy people and nation of priests. Not that I don’t think America’s whites made their bed and will unfortunately sleep in it, Jews or no Jews.

            • jim says:

              If you’d stop crying for a second, you might notice that the Jews I am speaking of are the religious Jews, not the assimilated Swipple Jews who are more Brahmin than the Brahmins.

              Quite so. The assimilated swipple Jews hate Israel more than anyone, and don’t much like Jews, feeling their Jewish ancestry entitles them to antisemitism. But religious Jews still feel guilty. Observe the reaction to the Crown Heights pogrom. If we look at the votes, most people, and most Jews, reacted sensibly to those events. But Jewish leaders, including religious leaders, did not act sensibly. They acted guilty.

              Now there is a shitload of stuff Jews should be feeling guilty for. Trouble is, they are feeling guilty for the wrong things. The kind of stuff that pisses of the Cathedral, like being beaten up in Crown Heights, they feel terribly guilty about. The kind of stuff that pisses off ordinary Americans, no guilt whatsoever. Thus Jews apply influence to discriminate against Christians, and in favor of Muslims – doubtless due to all the Christian suicide bombers not exploding in Israel Observe, for example the movie “Kingdom of Heaven”, featuring evil hateful demonic Christians and Saintly Muslims.

            • jim says:

              Not that I don’t think America’s whites made their bed and will unfortunately sleep in it, Jews or no Jews.

              Agreed. If all the Jews were to go to Israel, would make only a minor dent in the problem. They are the cape, not the matador, and the elite reaction to the Crown Heights Pogrom shows the elite reflexively ready to cast that cape to one side.

              • jim says:

                the Jews I am speaking of are the religious Jews, not the assimilated Swipple Jews

                A prosocial national religion will cheer on its nation, as theocratic Christian sects used to do.

                Our fathers’ God, to thee,
                author of liberty,
                to thee we sing;
                long may our land be bright
                with freedom’s holy light;
                protect us by thy might,
                great God, our King.

                I am not hearing that from religious Jews in Israel, because if they had prayers like that, the Cathedral would be in hysterics.

          • jim says:

            This of course this is a familiar role for the Jews. They were used as enforcer by the elites of Europe in order to wring extra resources out of the serfs and then tossed to the mob when he serfs have had enough of being exploited.

            Which means that when you say “The Jews did it”, you are playing into your enemy’s hands, even if the Jews did do it. (Which they usually did)

          • B says:

            >I am not hearing that from religious Jews in Israel, because if they had prayers like that, the Cathedral would be in hysterics.

            You should see some of our prayers 🙂

        • spandrell says:

          Even if Israel were to be wiped off the map, your women raped and your children sold into slavery, that wouldn’t change the fact that Jews are overwhelmingly high class soldiers of the Cathedral in the West. Jews as a whole might not be responsible of starting this mess, but there’s no shortage of reasons to hate you.

          • jim says:

            There is an important reason not to hate Jews. They are the red cape that the matador uses to distract the bull. Always have been. When the matador is danger of being gored, he casts his cape to one side while he goes to the other side, and the cape gets gored.

            Keep your eye on the matador, not the cape.

          • B says:

            Overwhelmingly?

            Since the Cathedral runs the West, more or less everyone in the West works for it in some capacity. This particular brand of antisemitism is just jealousy, because the Jews are doing the same thing as everyone else-just better. Nothing new here.

    • jim says:

      And what was the position of the National Religious party on affirmative action for Arabs into universities created by Jews?

      Jews in America have no problem discriminating against white Christians while discriminating in favor of Muslims in America’s elite universities, which universities over represent Jews relative to the number of Jews scoring high in the LSAT and under represent white Christians relative to the number of white Christians scoring high in the LSAT. And Jews in Israel proceed to do the same thing, even though in Israel they are destroying Jews, while in the US they are destroying white Christians.

      Talmudic Judaism maintains a posture hostile to the host society, and continues that posture even when that host society is Israel.

      • B says:

        We need to separate three things. First, you have the desires of the many “Talmudic” (i.e., Orthodox) Jews who voted for Bayit Yehudi (I presume this is who you mean by National Religious Party.) Then you have the platform of Bayit Yehudi. Then you have the likely outcome.

        The desires that they came to power on (in a surprise outcome) consisted of an actual implementation of Judaism appropriate to the reality of a sovereign Jewish state. You are right in that this is not something that has happened to date, but wrong in ascribing that sad state to the fundamentals of Orthodox Judaism vs. its incidentals acquired in exile. Nonetheless, enough Orthodox Jews believe in Judaism as a template for a sovereign, reactionary state that BY got 12 seats to the 20 of the Likud (the Outer Party,) 11 of Shas (Sefaradi Orthodox party dedicated to whatever brings the govt bux,) and 7 of United Torah Judaism (the Ashkenazi version of the above.) This is a significant portion of Orthodox Jews who want something reactionary.

        BY’s reflection of those desires can be found in their platform here: http://baityehudi.org.il/englp/our.htm While full of Goodspeak and Rightthink, this is more reactionary than anything I’ve seen in mainstream US politics, and certainly more reactionary than anything in mainstream Israeli politics to date. Of course, they are not Rav Kahane or Baruch Marzel’s party. On the other hand, Kahane’s party had one seat in the Knesset until being outlawed. So the vector is positive; the Judaism of BY’s constituency moves them in a reactionary direction, and is pulling in people from other lines of Judaism.

        The likely outcome: well, I don’t believe in a democratic vehicle for rightwards change. On the other hand, the processes of which BY is an epiphenomenon are going on WITHIN Orthodox Judaism, and can be described as it assuming a form that has laid dormant within it for a long time. You look at the mainstream Orthodox Judaism of the last thousand years and see it as incompatible with Jewish sovereignity. True; but on the other hand, the Torah (which includes the Talmud and all Orthodox Judaism) is said to have 70 faces, i.e., a large variance of morphs allowing it to function in all kinds of contexts. A major part deals with a sovereign state. If you are interested, one of the fundamental works of Orthodox Judaism (Rabbinical Judaism, if you please) is Maimonides’ Mishne Torah, and it has the Book of Kings and Wars explaining plainly the Talmudic vision of a sovereign state. Take a look: http://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/1188343/jewish/Melachim-uMilchamot.htm

        This is a fairly concise blueprint, and it is obviously reactionary in form. You can also look at the blueprint for a judiciary here: http://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/1172721/jewish/Sanhedrin-vehaOnashin-haMesurin-lahem.htm

        Since the desire to see a state like this is awakening in more and more of the Jewish people, I expect to see it materialize within my lifetime, in one form or the other.

        • B says:

          I really urge you to go through the first Mishne Torah link in detail, because the Laws of Kings and Wars are very germane to what we’ve been talking about, starting a little bit in.

          • jim says:

            Your link is unclear. Could you be a bit more specific?

          • B says:

            If you want to know what Rabbinic Judaism’s stance on a sovereign state is, a good place to start is by reading the entire 12 chapters in that link. Keep in mind that this is the ideal.

        • jim says:

          Nonetheless, enough Orthodox Jews believe in Judaism as a template for a sovereign, reactionary state that BY got 12 seats

          Voting for a party that proposes complete Palestinian autonomy within a contiguous region is not necessarily indicative of wanting a sovereign reactionary state.

          A reactionary is going to say that people are not equal, so you should not let just anyone vote.

          A reactionary is going to say that a state needs an official state belief system, not necessarily enforced on everyone as specified in the Torah, but enforced on everyone who wants to be part of the state apparatus, or wants a teaching position, or wants to attend the most prestigious educational institutions.

          So a reactionary Jewish state is not going to let Arab Muslims vote, or be elected, or teach, etc. And then it is simply going to annex Gaza and the West Bank.

          • B says:

            Not everything at once. Every wedge has a thin edge. Every Lenin has a Kerensky. The reason people voted for BY is that they wanted all the stuff you said, and the reason BY has changed that to what they have is that they are a democratic party functioning within a corrupt, coalition-based system.

      • VXXC says:

        Another white schelling point, continue Jim.

        I agree more with B on super swipple, and agree with Jim on cape/matador.

        But the conversation is proving the Schelling point breach.

        • jim says:

          I don’t understand your usage of Schelling Point.

          A schelling point is a natural point of coordination.

  15. Thrasymachus says:

    B says Judaism is reactionary. That’s true, but all progressive movements are internally reactionary, for the benefit of their members. Conservative lifestyles, good jobs or other economic support to support family life, extended family and ethnic networking- Jews and Puritans do all of these for themselves, while ensuring a hellish dystopia for those they control.

  16. […] The history of leftism against freedom « Jim’s Blog […]

  17. […] The history of leftism against freedom « Jim’s Blog […]

  18. Zach says:

    “Then you have not read either one all that much.”

    Do you have a crystal ball?

    It’s okay. You want the ball, you need the ball, but you don’t have the ball. So since you don’t, let’s meet reality.

    Read both multiple times. They’re interesting.

    Extract that which you must from one gheytarded book, and not the other. You win. I’m dumb. Hopeless. Red agrees. The end.

    • Red says:

      ““Men are apt to believe anything” Indeed they are.

      It’s my belief that whatever the Bible says, it says this:

      Do good.
      Do not not do good.

      People know what “good” is. To me the Koran reads like the Bible (shock/horror/gasp) and how much did that matter? It doesn’t. Because it doesn’t matter what the words say, it matters what the culture says. The same culture that fosters smart people believing stupid things.”

      Zach, I believe you’re viewing religion as more as moral force and less as an organizing and unity creating force. Morality is the servant of good order and unity, not the other way around.

      • jim says:

        Religions are synthetic tribes. Their supposed beliefs are in large part shibboleths.

        That does not make their morality meaningless, does not make their morality merely a principle of one gang against another gang, but it does mean that their morality is primarily intended as an adjunct to the organization of the tribe, to tell tribe members how to deal with tribe members.

    • jim says:

      The Koran tells Muslims they must be in a permanent state of war with unbelievers, interrupted by brief truces during which Muslims prepare for further war.

      The New Testament commands ridiculously extreme pacifism, which became entirely impractical when Christianity became the state religion, which necessitated Christians reinterpreting the extreme pacifism of the New Testament as mere hyperbole – which argument is not entirely hypocritical, since Jesus had a bit both ways.

      To get out from under this inconvenient commandment, Christians invented just war theory, which is still fairly pacific, for though it allows a Christian King to do terrible things in order to win, his intentions must be to bring about a peace that everyone should be able to live with indefinitely, and these intentions must be realistic and reasonable. If he fails to bring about such a peace, he was a bad person. Although, according to Just War Theory, Christians are allowed to be warlike, extremely warlike, in order to bring about a just peace, nonetheless, they are supposed to intend a just peace, and to actually succeed in this intention. Muslims can have no peace, till they have conquered the whole world. Christians on the other hand are supposed to settle, to create peace here and now and keep it permanently.

  19. Zach says:

    Hey Victor… I wouldn’t reply to myself either!

    No probs man.

  20. Zach says:

    The rationality in examining many ancient texts is meaningless. What is not meaningless is their interpretation, their influence on good and smart people, culture and the fostering of a pseudo-Natural Rights.

    The all has spoken. It sees what it wants to see. Behaves as it wants to behave. Thus the words matter, but hardly matter.

    I suspect children see their parents. Their parents see the church. Round about we go and all sees all. They see good. They see good things going on. So Christianity is adopted, not by its words, but by its observed influence.

    That’s what I see.

  21. […] On Jim’s blog, B, the hardcore Jew, started an awesome fight by throwing the first stone against the oxymoron of traditionalist christianity: […]

  22. VXXC says:

    Whoah did I miss a party.

    Meanwhile Jim more Schelling point traces…

    http://www.theonion.com/articles/gop-we-support-our-nations-11-million-latino-crimi,32784/

  23. Red says:

    “Not only are you then getting into idolatry and violating common sense (how can a guy be a god? How can you believe in a god that flies around knocking up women?) but you haven’t solved the problem whatsoever. If he’s been promoted to god, then he can talk to anybody and give them the direct software upgrade. See: Paul on the road to Damascus, Peter’s dream as a justification for violating kashrut, etc. Pretty much half the stuff that makes up early Christianity consists of these little upgrades. So you’ve directly set yourself up for more “revelations,” and obviously these revelations will not be of the right-wing variety.”

    How could the sons of God go around knocking up women in genesis(Genesis 6:1-8)? If your willing to believe Genesis why couldn’t one of the son’s of God sacrifice himself to redeem all of mankind?

    Paul’s revelation was quite right wing. He was establishing order to a religion that was out of control. Peter’s was about turning Christianity into a universal religion instead of a ethic one. Universal monotheism was clearly an idea who’s time had come. The church spent a great deal of time putting down “revelations” that was useless bullshit. It’s a feature of religion that can be hard to control with out a good hierarchy running things.

    Leftwing revelations are about power grabs. Rightwing revelations are about establishing order and making things work. They’re easy to tell apart.

    One of the reasons that Jesus was promoted to Godhood was to prevent any future game changers like Jesus. Hell even the biggest sect of Christianity that denied his divine nature (Arab Christianity, aka Islam) had to slam that door shut by saying that Mohamed is God’s last prophet and thus no one can change the game after him. The trinity doesn’t make sense because the reason for the trinity is to prevent a new Jesus showing up to ripping Christianity apart.

    • jim says:

      Leftwing [religious] revelations are about power grabs. Rightwing [religious] revelations are about establishing order and making things work. They’re easy to tell apart.

      Well said.

    • B says:

      >How could the sons of God go around knocking up women in genesis(Genesis 6:1-8)?

      It is far from straightforward what is meant, but even if you interpret them as angels, the angels are not “sons of G-d” any more than any other creation is.

      >why couldn’t one of the son’s of God sacrifice himself to redeem all of mankind?

      For one, because it’s inherently illogical. For another, because the Abrahamic covenant is closely linked to G-d NOT wanting human sacrifice.

      >He was establishing order to a religion that was out of control.

      Au contraire-he was attempting to overthrow an existing order which was, while flawed and imperfect, functioning.

      >Universal monotheism was clearly an idea who’s time had come.

      This is inherently a pretty Progressive statement. You can easily substitute any progressive idea here. Incidentally, that doesn’t mean it’s not true, but it’s not really an argument.

      >The church spent a great deal of time putting down “revelations” that was useless bullshit.

      Of course. Once the Communist Party came to power, it was time to take care of the Mensheviks, then the left uklonists, then the right uklonists, etc. The internal post-revolutionary struggle is the defining feature of Leftist movements.

      >had to slam that door shut by saying that Mohamed is God’s last prophet and thus no one can change the game after him.

      And that worked about as well as could be expected. See: the Shi’a, the Kharijites, the Ismailites, the Assassins, etc., etc., etc. all the way to today’s Takfiris.

      >The trinity doesn’t make sense because the reason for the trinity is to prevent a new Jesus showing up to ripping Christianity apart.

      And that also worked out as well as could be expected. But, yes, when you have a Leftist movement, eventually you will have to have nonsensical articles of faith to stop movement towards the singularity. Then those articles will be subject to attacks which are rallying points for the continuation of that movement, like the Monophysites, etc.

      • jim says:

        Au contraire-he [Jesus] was attempting to overthrow an existing order which was, while flawed and imperfect, functioning.

        It was functioning to get all Jews everywhere killed. That the Talmud was created shows that old style Judaism was intolerable and dysfunctional.

        The Torah sucks – hence the New Testament, to ditch it, and the Talmud, to weasel out of it.

        The fast way to get out of a poisonous holy book is to declare a prophet with divine authority to dump it, as the Bahai faith does with the Koran, and Christianity does with the Torah.

        The slow way is to legalistically white ant it, as the Talmud does.

        • B says:

          Most Jews at the time of the Talmud’s codification were living outside Roman dominion, in the Persian empire, where they had practically no trouble with the authorities. Yet one of the two major versions of the Talmud is the Babylonian. Now, in our version of history, this makes sense-it was the codification of an oral supplement to a written foundational document making up a body of law they’d already had. But in your version, it makes no sense whatsoever. Why would the massive Babylonian community accept a rejection of Torah done by the smaller community living under Roman rule? You’d expect to see massive resistance to the Talmud among them.

          • jim says:

            The Talmud in Baybylonia got started in the third century, some time after two hundred AD or so, but they were not actually talmudic Jews until around four hundred AD or so. Babylonian Talmudism influenced Jews living in Jerusalem, which was by this time only nominally under Roman rule, and they then developed their own talmud, around four hundred AD or so. heavily influenced by the Babylonian Talmud.

            As Talmudism became influential among Western Jews, some time after four hundred AD, Christians noticed the change, and were inclined to doubt the Jewishness of these Jews. They perceived Talmudic Judaism as coming into the Roman Empire from outside, even though Jerusalem was nominally inside.

          • B says:

            The Jerusalem Talmud was written first.

            I can not take the wild-eyed accusations of the Christians seriously. “These are not the real Jews! WE are the real Jews!” Oh, OK, Athanasius. How’s that ham sammich, pretty tasty?

            • jim says:

              The Jerusalem Talmud was written first.

              The Jerusalem Talmud is in large part commentary upon the writings of Judah ha-Nasi, who wrote in Babylonia, thus the Jerusalem Talmud is commentary upon the Babylonian Talmud. Talmudic Judaism originated in Babylonia around two hundred AD with Judah ha-Nasi, and spread throughout the former Roman Empire via Jerusalem around four hundred AD or so.

          • B says:

            You are smoking crack rock. Yehuda Hanasi lived and died in Israel.

      • Thrasymachus says:

        Non-Jews can’t be Jews, and they also can’t practice any religion of their own. So what are non-Jews supposed to do, from the Jewish theological standpoint?

        • B says:

          Non-Jews can convert if they really want to-it’s an inalienable right. There are the Laws of Noah, which are themselves shorthand for an expanded codex of jurisprudence. They can help us in our mission. They can bring sacrifices to the Temple. Otherwise, they can do whatever they want. Pretty sweet deal, really. Being a nation of priests and a holy kingdom comes with very heavy duties and responsibilities. Most people have quite enough on their plate keeping their shit together.

          • jim says:

            I don’t really have a lot of confidence in Orthodox Jews as a reactionary force.

            Being an ethnic religion, should be a reactionary force, but they really don’t seem to want the temple back, or Israel to win. They seem to find the lack of exile a frightful theological inconvenience.

            Logically, if no exile, have to chuck most of the Talmud, if chuck most of the Talmud, there goes the major source of status for rabbis.

          • B says:

            Dammit, Jim! Before making these grand pronouncements, you really should look into the subject matter. When you make claims about the Talmud, you demonstrate an appalling ignorance of its contents.

            Rabbinical Judaism is inherently pluralistic. Some Rabbis think the way you describe. On the other hand, there have always been very prominent ones who think the opposite. I can give examples, but you will not read their work.

            A major portion of the Talmud deals with an ideal state where there IS a Temple, where there IS a Jewish sovereign, when all of the other institutions of the Torah (like the Jubilee) are functioning, and where the lawmaking body of the land is the Sanhedrin. Now, the Sanhedrin has always been a Rabbinical institution, and it only has serious power (the ability to pass death sentences, for instance,) when it is seated at the Temple.

            So rather than “if no exile, have to chuck most of the Talmud,” it is precisely the opposite: most of the Talmud only applies when there is no exile and there is a Temple, a Jewish sovereign and Sanhedrin working with the two. The rest of the time, the majority of it is purely theoretical.

            • jim says:

              Well, you would not give me a link to these rabbis, so I googled “religious zionism”, and was led to the National Religious party, which struck me as conspicuously more Religious than it was National. Also, its support was small and shrinking.

              As an ethnic religion, mighty thin tea, and not much of it.

          • B says:

            So work on your research skills.

            For religious Zionism preceding secular Zionism, you can see the Rambam, the Ramban, the Chasidim who settled in the Gallilee and Hevron, and the Vilna Gaon’s followers of the Old Yishuv. For religious Zionism co-existing with secular Zionism, see: Rav Avraham Hakohen Kook, the First Chief Rabbi of Israel. Currently, see: Habayit Yehudi, Naftali Bennett, Moshe Feiglin, most of the settlers of Yehuda and Shomron, a quarter of the Jewish population of Israel.

            • jim says:

              What you are listing are the “far right” parties National Home, and National Religious Party – which are, as I said, weak tea and mighty small. Their rightism consists of things like state sponsored religious education, rather than demanding the temple back, or defensible borders containing sufficient land, and ejecting the Arabs from that land. Historically they and their predecessors were Zionist in that they favored the Jews being wafted back to Israel by the colonial powers, as sarcastically depicted by Kipling, rather than favoring killing for Israel and dying for Israel.

              To the extent that Religious Zionism has been nationalist, it has been irreligious in that it revolted against rabbinical authority. To the extent that it has been religious, it has not been nationalist, to the extent that they have been religious, they have been unwilling to kill and unwilling to die, unwilling to maltreat people who are so unfortunate as to be in the way of a Jewish state.

              Talmudic Judaism is fine with the bad things Jews have to do to survive as a people in exile, but unwilling to do the bad things necessary to survive as people with their own homeland. The Jews you cite are not counter examples to that claim. It was secular Jews that founded modern Israel, and secular Jews that continue to make sure it is defended.

              Torah Judaism preached and practiced the opposite extreme, being commanded to enforce religious uniformity and exclusivity by the most dreadful means, and doing so. Torah Judaism was reactionary, alarmingly so, Talmudic Judaism is subversive, not only subversive of the various host societies in which Jews have lived in exile, but subversive of Israel, subverting not only white Christians, but Israelis and themselves, a religion of exile inappropriate to a people with a homeland.

              The main attack on Israel has always been to persuade Israeli Jews to roll over and die of guilt, and it is religious Jews that have been most vulnerable to this attack. The Jews you cite are just not very nationalist in the sense of blood and soil, and what little nationalism they do have, is a revolt against rabbinical authority.

          • B says:

            Mighty small? Bayit Yehudi has more seats than the two Ashkenazi Haredi parties combined, and a comparable number to Shas, the Sefaradi one.

            >Their rightism consists of things like state sponsored religious education, rather than demanding the temple back, or defensible borders containing sufficient land, and ejecting the Arabs from that land.

            They are incrementalist. I have no delusions about democratic incrementalism as it applies to the Right, but what Bayit Yehudi demonstrates is the compatibility of Judaism (the dichotomy between “Torah Judaism” and “Talmudic Judaism” is false) with nationalism.

            >to the extent that they have been religious, they have been unwilling to kill and unwilling to die

            As I said, the combat units and special ops units have plenty of Daati Leumi troops and officers. There is an entire Haredi infantry battalion which is almost the size of a brigade. What do you think they are there for, to play ping pong?

            >The main attack on Israel has always been to persuade Israeli Jews to roll over and die of guilt, and it is religious Jews that have been most vulnerable to this attack.

            WHAT? No. To the degree that anyone is vulnerable, it is not the religious Jews but the coastal post-Zionist seculars who have been corrupted by wealth and want quiet hedonism. Predictably, they are dying out by failing to reproduce. The main mechanism has not been guilting, which only the faggy Swipple Jews are vulnerable to, but the typical US foreign policy gambit of building economic dependence, then threatening to pull the chair, and funneling money to “NGO” sockpuppets to exploit the democratic process.

            • jim says:

              The main mechanism has not been guilting, which only the faggy Swipple Jews are vulnerable to

              Why is Israel releasing a bunch of killers to gain some empty and temporary concession, instead of killing people and breaking things until its enemies concede?

              It is Jewish guilt.

              When the US army faced stubborn resistance from Fallujah, they were at first guilted into concessions by loud cries of “Fallujah massacre”, but eventually went in and broke things and killed people until they damn well got their way. Israel is even more guilt ridden than the Cathedral. It is not just the Cathedral guilting them through those NGOs, the Jews are guilting themselves. The Cathedral sics its NGO sockpuppets onto them because they are vulnerable.

              It is the job of religious leaders to bless the troops and encourage them to kill people and break stuff. That is the big win from having a national religion. God declares that you are right to kill people. Just not hearing it from Jewish religious leaders, and definitely not hearing it from Israel’s “Religious right”.

              And, come to think of it, those NGOs are hostile enemy organizations controlled by outsiders, traitors within the walls. A reasonable interpretation of the Torah is “kill them all”. You will explain to me that the Torah does not mean what it means or say what it says, but I am pretty sure that pre talmud Jews would not have tolerated groups analogous to the NGOs. The Soviet Union does not kill them all, but nonetheless, does various quite effective things to prevent them from getting up to mischief, which actions cause much ineffectual whining from the Cathedral.

          • B says:

            >It is Jewish guilt.

            It is not Jewish guilt. Nobody making the decision gives a shit about guilt. It is Israel being saddled with a legacy govt which is a mini-copy of the Cathedral and heavily dependent on it.

            >When the US army faced stubborn resistance from Fallujah, they were at first guilted into concessions by loud cries of “Fallujah massacre”, but eventually went in and broke things and killed people until they damn well got their way.

            We had something called Jenin here (though at the time this “we” for me was a “them,” and my “we” was doing Fallujah.) The bigger point of Fallujah is that the US took most of its casualties due to pussified military leadership demanding the Marines do house clearing in such a way as to minimize potential civilian casualties; only eventually did the Marines on the ground resort to Stalingrad-type tactics like putting a grenade into a house before entering it, just in case. They never were completely ruthless. They could have leveled every house, then napalmed the ruins and shot any survivors coming out, but they didn’t want to.

            >It is the job of religious leaders to bless the troops and encourage them to kill people and break stuff.

            May I introduce you to Rav Dov Lior? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dov_Lior

            Also, Rav Eliyahu:
            http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shmuel_Eliyahu

            >And, come to think of it, those NGOs are hostile enemy organizations controlled by outsiders, traitors within the walls.

            Why, Jim, I had no idea you were a talmid (student) of Rav Wolpo!

            http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shalom_Dov_Wolpo#Olmert_hanging_comments

            • jim says:

              And, come to think of it, those NGOs are hostile enemy organizations controlled by outsiders, traitors within the walls.

              Why, Jim, I had no idea you were a talmid (student) of Rav Wolpo!

              Wolpo believes Schneerson is the messiah – and, having a messiah, he can ditch all the inconvenient, unmanly, unwarlike, and subversive stuff that talmudists cooked up while in exile. Messiahs are handy that way.

          • B says:

            It is true that Rav Wolpo is a Chabadnik, but in this particular issue his opinion is shared by plenty of non-Chabad Orthodox rabbis. In short, this opinion has nothing to do with his Messianism, but a lot to do with his Judaism.

            To a larger point, if you read the last couple of chapters of the Mishne Torah link I provided you, you will have a better understanding of our thinking about the Messiah (at least that of some parts of the Orthodox world.) There is nothing necessarily supernatural about him, but much that you would call reactionary.

            • jim says:

              Try providing that link again. You were unclear the first time.

            • jim says:

              in this particular issue his opinion is shared by plenty of non-Chabad Orthodox rabbis.

              Is it now? Give me one. (And I am pretty sure a rabbi who thinks the messiah has arrived is not orthodox.)

          • B says:

            Au contraire-Rabbi Akiva thought Bar Kochba was the Messiah during the latter’s life, though the other sages disagreed. You can’t be more Orthodox than Rabbi Akiva.

            • jim says:

              Still not giving me an orthodox rabbi who thinks that NGOs are enemies within the gates, and should be restrained from doing harm.

          • B says:

            I can’t quote anything, but pretty much every single Orthodox rabbi in the settlements has this opinion. They may not voice it where it can be printed due to the constant persecution, but they have it, and everyone knows. Take my word for it, or don’t.

          • B says:

            Here is the (provisional) new Sanhedrin. Look at their writings, and ask yourself what these men’s position on American-funded anti-Israeli NGOs could possibly be:
            http://www.thesanhedrin.org/en/index.php?title=Hachrazah_5769_Sivan_25

            • jim says:

              Well that is a reactionary ethnic religion all right. Trouble is that the mainstream rabbis, and even the ultra orthodox, seem to be completely ignoring it.

              Their proposed constitution for Israel seems to be missing a King. They propose priestly rule, with the military nowhere, nor do they explicitly oppose universal suffrage, so, not entirely reactionary, but yes, reactionary enough. On the other hand, the fact that this program has been ignored tells us something about all the other rabbis.

            • jim says:

              On reflection, and after reading your recommended material on kings, the Talmud prescribes an ultra reactionary Jewish state – but one that cannot be implemented without a King, thus needs a messiah who is a political and military leader. So Talmudists take a posture hostile to and subversive of any actually existent Jewish state while waiting for the messiah, and they do not expect a messiah any time soon.

              Further, an actually existent Jewish state undermines rabbinical authority over Jews.

              A Christian reactionary can, and probably will, endorse an actually existent reactionary state provided its official belief system is not flat out incompatible with Christianity and hostile to it. A rabbi, however, needs his reactionary state to follow Talmudic prescriptions and put rabbis in charge.

          • B says:

            Again, the current state of things is heavily marked with exile-but it is a work in progress, and the ultimate goals are quite reactionary.

            • jim says:

              The Nascent Sanhedrin have ultimately reactionary goals. They want a government Jewish in race and religion that militarily defends a Jewish state – but they also want priestly rule with no place for military (kingly) rule)

              The “Our Home” Party of the the religious Zionists do not have ultimately reactionary goals – rather, they are stuck in a logical contradiction that leads ultimately to the destruction of Israel – that everyone, including the Muslim majority, have a right to a voice in their government. To accommodate this, have to give the West Bank and Gaza independence, which is suicide, or annex them and let them vote, which is suicide. They say full autonomy and territorial integrity, which is something somehow short of independence, but the closer you get to the cliff, the harder it is to stop.

              And the rest of the Rabbis, the overwhelming majority, including the ultra orthodox, indeed especially the ultra orthodox, are stuck in an exile mentality which is hostile to, and subversive of, the host society, even when that host society is Israel.

              Further, you cannot implement a reactionary solution, one that cheerfully and openly represses and excludes the Muslim majority, closely based on the Talmud, without a King, and if you want to implement a reactionary solution without a King, you are going to not base it closely on the Talmud. So the Nascent Sanhedrin also face a logical contradiction, though one subtler than that faced by the Religious Zionist party.

              The natural tendency of the Nascent Sanhedrin is to resolve the contradiction by coming around to monarchy, but the natural tendency of the Religious Zionist party is to resolve the problem by incremental progressivism, which progressivism is intended to stop short of the destruction of Israel, but progressivism does not stop.

              And the natural tendency of the rest of the Rabbis, mentally still in exile, is to passive aggressively arrange for the defeat and destruction of their host society, which is in this case Israel. Probably taking back the temple would cure this mental illness, but Jews first have to want to take the temple back.

        • B says:

          >They want a government Jewish in race and religion that militarily defends a Jewish state – but they also want priestly rule with no place for military (kingly) rule)

          Not so-the whole point of Judaism is that the Messiah will be our king, who will fight the wars, build the Temple, etc. Messiah means, literally, “anointed”, and will be anointed by the Sanhedrin, who will then govern in cooperation with him. In fact, big chunks of the Talmud are about the complementary powers and responsibilities of the two branches. Incidentally, the Sanhedrin are not “priests.” The functions of the priests are ceremonial, involving service in the Temple, blessing the people, etc., and priesthood is hereditary. The Sanhedrin are rabbis.

          The “Our Home” Party of the the religious Zionists do not have ultimately reactionary goals – rather, they are stuck in a logical contradiction that leads ultimately to the destruction of Israel – that everyone, including the Muslim majority, have a right to a voice in their government.

          There is no Muslim majority, and never will be, because their population growth is slower than that of the religious Jews.

          >They say full autonomy and territorial integrity, which is something somehow short of independence, but the closer you get to the cliff, the harder it is to stop.

          They have something which pulls them in the opposite direction, which is Judaism and the settlements (one of its physical manifestations.) “Full autonomy” and “territorial integrity” are a sop to the democratic system…for now.

          >And the rest of the Rabbis, the overwhelming majority, including the ultra orthodox, indeed especially the ultra orthodox, are stuck in an exile mentality which is hostile to, and subversive of, the host society, even when that host society is Israel.

          This is absolutely true, and very insightful, but it is a solution which is daily proving more unsatisfactory to the people as a whole. The ultraorthodox are now serving in the military in unprecedented numbers, starting to learn real world skills, etc., with the predictable results. The seculars are more and more tolerant of and interested in religion-the secular radio DJ now mentions the weekly Torah portion casually, etc. These points converge in the future.

          >Further, you cannot implement a reactionary solution, one that cheerfully and openly represses and excludes the Muslim majority, closely based on the Talmud, without a King, and if you want to implement a reactionary solution without a King, you are going to not base it closely on the Talmud. So the Nascent Sanhedrin also face a logical contradiction, though one subtler than that faced by the Religious Zionist party.

          As I said, a Sanhedrin is by definition not complete without a king, and appointing one is one of their basic functions.

          >The natural tendency of the Nascent Sanhedrin is to resolve the contradiction by coming around to monarchy, but the natural tendency of the Religious Zionist party is to resolve the problem by incremental progressivism, which progressivism is intended to stop short of the destruction of Israel, but progressivism does not stop.

          But you are looking at a snapshot, and trying to figure out tendencies. The reality is that BY came from the Likud, and is much more right-wing, so the vector points the other way. The Sanhedrin also came from the galut-style Orthodoxy.

          >And the natural tendency of the rest of the Rabbis, mentally still in exile, is to passive aggressively arrange for the defeat and destruction of their host society, which is in this case Israel.

          Maybe, but this assumes that they are mostly disingenuous. I see the opposite. They daily have more cognitive dissonance between the ideal and the present states of things. Also, most of them do not undermine the State. The Religious Zionist ones support it, and push rightwards (to varying degrees.) The Ultraorthodox ones are quietist; their worst crime is selling vote blocks to the dominant parties in exchange for communal subsidies (the leaders themselves live quite modestly,) but as their numbers grow due to high birth rates, this will change.

          >Probably taking back the temple would cure this mental illness, but Jews first have to want to take the temple back.

          We can’t TAKE it back, because it was destroyed. We can rebuild it, and the person who does so will be the Messiah, anointed by the Sanhedrin.

          • jim says:

            Not so-the whole point of Judaism is that the Messiah will be our king, who will fight the wars, build the Temple, etc

            If you cannot implement a reactionary state till the Messiah arrives, not very reactionary. If the messiah is going to be King, have to be reactionary first.

            There is no Muslim majority, and never will be, because their population growth is slower than that of the religious Jews.

            West bank plus Gaza, plus Israeli Arabs. The government of Israel rules over a majority of Muslims, but is reluctant and embarrassed to rule over them.

            Of all the states in the world, and of all the peoples in the world, Israel needs reaction more than anyone, for equalism and majoritarianism is likely to physically kill them.

            To stay alive, Israeli Jews have to believe that not everyone is entitled to influence the government that rules over them. Where is the party that will tell them so?

            Probably taking back the temple would cure this mental illness, but Jews first have to want to take the temple back.

            We can’t TAKE it back, because it was destroyed. We can rebuild it, and the person who does so will be the Messiah, anointed by the Sanhedrin.

            So, Judaism cannot cure its ailment, has to wait for the Messiah to arrive to cure it?

            If the cure is a King, someone has to start by repudiating democracy, not the other way around. In the case of Israel, democracy is a suicide pact. Belief in democracy is what makes Israel not want to rule Gaza and the West bank, because you cannot let Gazans and West Bankers vote. If you want Gaza back, have to stop believing in democracy. After you stop believing in democracy, then you can take Gaza and the West bank. And then maybe you can get a king. But if you stop believing in democracy and take back Gaza and the West Bank, you are already half way to being cured, to being no longer psychologically in exile.

            Have to go reactionary before you can get in a King. Jews cannot wait for a King in order to go reactionary. Perhaps Americans can wait for progressives to go through a superprogressive phase and self destructively install a Cromwell or a Stalin, but Jews cannot afford to go through a superprogressive phase. It will kill you. If Jews are going to monarchy, have to reach it by going rightwards, rather than leftwards, because on the leftist path, apt to commit suicide.

            If going rightwards incrementally, a restricted franchise is the first step. Psychologically, Jews need a franchise not only restricted by loyalty to a Jewish state, but also restricted by indications of competence and moral worth, because you have to accept the limited franchise as right and legitimate, not merely a regrettable tactic. Next step, restrict government office and teaching positions to those loyal to the Jewish state. First, accept a limited franchise as right, then it becomes psychologically possible to rule Gaza and the West Bank. Ruling Gaza and the West Bank, it then becomes psychologically possible for religious Jews to realize that they are home.

            What makes Judaism not reactionary, incapable of being reactionary, makes it inherently subversive and disloyal, is that it is still a religion of exile, and not a religion of Israel. For Jews to be cured, have to cure themselves, have to go reactionary first, not wait for the messiah to cure them. The Messiah cannot cure you unless he is a King. If you were ready for Kings, you would be ready to take Gaza and the West Bank and rule them. If Jews were ready to rule Israel, you would already be most of the way psychologically back from exile. Cure first, messiah later.

            If you going incrementally rightwards, restricting the franchise and making government office conditional on loyalty to the Jewish state are the first steps, not monarchy. If Israel is a Jewish state, you should not have Muslims electing Muslim politicians. Muslim politicians, Muslim voters, Muslim academics, and refusing to rule Gaza and the West Bank, means that of course you are still psychologically in exile.

            As Kipling implied, it was not sane to expect the colonial powers to waft the Jews back into Israel. To take Israel, had to kill for it and die for it, which tactic secular Jews did. Religious Jews wanted the colonial powers to do the heavy lifting. Analogously, it is even less sane to expect the Messiah bring you psychologically home. Have to be psychologically at home first.

          • B says:

            I refer you to the last chapter of the Mishne Torah Book of Kings and Wars, where he speaks of the Messiah. He says that you should not think that the Messiah must do anything miraculous. By definition, he is just a guy who rules over the Jewish people, makes them obey the laws of Judaism, leads their wars, brings back the exiles and builds the Temple, and that’s how we know he’s the Messiah. Nothing supernatural.

            >If the cure is a King, someone has to start by repudiating democracy, not the other way around.

            His title does not matter. He can be called a king, a leader, or anything else. He has to do the above.

            >But if you stop believing in democracy and take back Gaza and the West Bank, you are already half way to being cured, to being no longer psychologically in exile.

            Practically no Orthodox Jew “believes” in democracy in the American sense of believing; the ideal state is universally acknowledged to be a monarchy with a Sanhedrin, and the idea of a system where an idiot’s voice counts the same as that of a scholar is inimical to Judaism. The question is getting from here to there. We have Yehuda and Shomron; the only places I can’t go as a Jew is into (many of) the Arab neighborhoods. Eventually, this will be fixed, as will Gaza and the Sinai.

            • jim says:

              By definition, he is just a guy who rules over the Jewish people, makes them obey the laws of Judaism, leads their wars, brings back the exiles and builds the Temple, and that’s how we know he’s the Messiah. Nothing supernatural.

              If nothing supernatural, he cannot bring the Jews home, for the Jews have to be ready to bring themselves home. Secular Jews in Israel are home, but religious Jews have a lot of baggage which means they are still psychologically in exile.

              Practically no Orthodox Jew “believes” in democracy

              Eventually, this will be fixed, as will Gaza and the Sinai.

              But the religious zionist party is promising to unfix it even further. And they are still too nationalist for most orthodox Jews.

          • Hidden Author says:

            It seems that a reactionary Israel would have a Caudillo. Here’s why:

            The traditional Jewish government is a trinity of King, Sanhedrin and Temple.

            The Temple would require the appointment of a High Priest to organize the purification and staffing. Who would appoint the High Priest?

            The Sanhedrin currently in existence is revered by a minority. How could a Sanhedrin establish enough of a consensus to legitimately rule? How would such a Sanhedrin be formed? Would it be established by a King organizing the rabbis? How would a man be revered enough as a King to control the rabbis?

            Speaking of a King, the King is appointed by the divinely-sanctioned authority of either a Sanhedrin (which I addressed) or a prophet. While God can obviously send a prophet, the fact that Israel has emerged without supernatural means suggests that the local reactionaries would have to find a King without a prophet. How then do they convince enough Jews to do likewise?

            Now about the Caudillo. The vacuum in monarchy has existed elsewhere. In Spain, for example. There the reactionaries gathered together around a Caudillo, Francisco Franco. He in turn pledged to be a loyal regent to the King. Since King, Sanhedrin and Temple are granted authority above every Jew and since a Jew would have to have the authority to assign positions in these offices (and thus in effect be superior to all of them), there is no way to establish the legitimate authority. So the closest that could be achieved would be to establish an alternate authority that claims to be a loyal regency to the legitimate authority that thereby rules as an indirectly legitimate authority. And it seems to me, that such an authority would probably be a general who establishes himself as a Caudillo, perhaps after the resident Palestinians are enfranchised, then join Jewish leftists to bring in Palestinian refugees to then absorb Israel into a united State of Palestine thereby illegitimizing democracy in the eyes of the overwhelming majority of Israeli Jews.

          • B says:

            Of course, ultimately they will have to bring themselves home in some sense. All of this stuff will be on some level done by the entire people; there is, for instance, a law that if the Sanhedrin issues an edict and it is ignored by the majority of the people, the edict is voided, and conversely, if a previous edict was accepted by all the people, a latter Sanhedrin can’t overturn it. But the leader will in some sense bring them home, via foreign policy.

            BY is not “unfixing” the “West Bank” (this is actually typical Prog goodspeak-all of Tel Aviv is in the “West Bank,” technically speaking, so I call it Yesha, Yehuda and Shomron, which is what it has always been called.) They are for making the settlements more permanent, rerouting the Arabs, funding more settlement construction projects, the continued development of transportation infarstructure, maintaining IDF control over the area, the continued creation of joint (colonialist) enterprises. At the worst, this is more of the same, at best, it lays the groundwork for positive changes.

            >Secular Jews in Israel are home, but religious Jews have a lot of baggage which means they are still psychologically in exile.

            Secular Jews are failing to reproduce and leaving the country. Bennett himself left to go make his fortune in America, only coming back once he’d become religious. Psychologically, we are all in the process of coming back from exile.

            Hidden Author-it doesn’t matter whether the Messiah is titled King, Caudillo or General Secretary with Emergency Powers. It also doesn’t matter whether he takes power and then institutes the Sanhedrin, or the Sanhedrin gets critical mass and anoints him. The deposition of legitimacy would seem to be a circular process in a Jewish state, but it is actually a spiral, incremental process. It doesn’t matter where you start, it matters that you start.

            The Sanhedrin is currently listened to by a tiny minority, but twenty years ago it didn’t exist at all. So what will happen in 40 years?

            • jim says:

              BY is not “unfixing” the “West Bank” (this is actually typical Prog goodspeak-all of Tel Aviv is in the “West Bank,” technically speaking, so I call it Yesha, Yehuda and Shomron, which is what it has always been called.) They are for making the settlements more permanent, rerouting the Arabs, funding more settlement construction projects, the continued development of transportation infarstructure, maintaining IDF control over the area, the continued creation of joint (colonialist) enterprises. At the worst, this is more of the same, at best, it lays the groundwork for positive changes.

              More of the same is accepting that equality and democracy is legitimate. If legitimate, Israel must be destroyed. If illegitimate, someone has to say so. The positive change that you need is someone rejecting democracy and equality.

          • Hidden Author says:

            Dear B,

            It seems though that there is a distinction between *a* King Messiah and *the* King Messiah. Since a heroic king is anointed by God, then he counts as *a* King Messiah, like David or even the Gentile, Cyrus. But *the* Messiah is a specific Messiah associated in Biblical prophecy with peace on earth, the Redemption and the World to Come (or are those supernatural events completely detached from the rise of a messiah?). Otherwise, how could a man be Messiah merely by restoring the traditions of Israel, especially if he could die and leave his legacy to several generations of successors?

            Also, the different titles reflect different concepts so the difference is relevant unless all that’s needed is some generic dictator figure.

            For example, a Caudillo would not derive his power from a dynasty or from the rabbis but by his control of the military by means of charisma and patronage. Is this what Maimonides had in mind?

            And I assume that your General Secretary would come from a dominant political party structured like the Communist Party even if its ideology is at the other end of the political spectrum. In such a party, there is a paradox that the General Secretary controls the Politburo and the Central Committee but the Politburo and the Central Committee also control the General Secretary. This paradox plays out in different ways.

            For example, the Central Committee removed Nikita Khrushchev but in Romania, the party cadres at that level feared Ceausescu so much that they used a military coup instead. And Stalin shuffled the deck many hands with the Central Committee though perhaps his death came because an insider poisoned him out of fear of another purge. Is such a nest of intrigue what Maimonides had in mind?

            And what makes you assume that the Caudillo would be a saintly Messiah anyways? You yourself say that the Israeli Establishment politicizes the officer corps. So an outright Kahanist probably won’t be a position to launch a military coup even if the chance comes. But perhaps a legitimist, the kind that even obeys orders to evacuate hundreds of thousands of settlers, would turn on the Establishment if it delegitimized itself by say, merging into a united State of Palestine as part of a democratization process.

          • B says:

            >The positive change that you need is someone rejecting democracy and equality.

            Yes, but the people are not yet ready. But they’re getting there.

            Hidden Author-there are varying opinions on what the Messiah will be, what his era will look like, etc. I hold by that of Maimonides, who says that he willnot necessarily perform miracles, that he will eventually die and that his heirs will inherit the throne, that his era will be distinguished by the fact that the Jews will have external pressure on them and that there will be material plenty so that the Jews can focus on serving G-d. He says that the Messianic Era is distinct from the World to Come.

            Again-it does not matter what title he uses, only that he does what the Messiah is supposed to.

            • jim says:

              The positive change that you need is someone rejecting democracy and equality.

              Yes, but the people are not yet ready. But they’re getting there.

              If the religious zionist party proposes full autonomy and territorial integrity for the West Bank, they propose leftwards movement at a slower pace to nearer stopping point.

              But there is no stopping point. Incrementalism does not work for us, because incrementalism means that you accept enemy principles that logically imply and require all sorts of disastrous consequences, and then hypocritically make unprincipled exceptions to avoid the disastrous consequences.

          • B says:

            Incrementalism doesn’t work for secular or post-Christian reactionaries because they don’t have a community and because their birth rates are through the floor, and even if they had a bunch of kids, the kids would get hoovered up by the Cathedral’s standardized testing and sorting apparatus, turned against their parents and assimilated. They are fractured and don’t have a cohesive rallying point. In general, the Western reactionaries are Bill Murray in Zombieworld, lurching around with zombie makeup on and trying not to get eaten. Obviously, this is no way to rebuild a civilization, and you need to get rid of the zombies first.

            But for us, incrementalism well might work (until it no longer does and something more…dynamic happens.) We have high birthrates, a cohesive community, a big potential pool to draw from (I know quite a few former Ultraorthodox and secular Jews who are now religious Zionists, and myself am one,) and more importantly, a very good rallying point. If you say you are for rebuilding the Temple, or for a Jewish state, in fact, if you refer to the Torah and Talmud as a template of the way things should be while working an office job in Tel Aviv, this is fine. Nobody expects any different-you are, after all, wearing a knit kippah and live in a settlement. They might disagree, they might argue (unlike American whites, we enjoy a good argument and don’t take it as an assault on our deepest sense of self,) but what they will NOT do is to react the way that your typical Western white collar worker would if you were to introduce them to, say, Carlyle’s The Nigger Question, or any other seminal work of neoreaction. In the Western model, before you can have a grownup conversation about reaction, you have to pull a Moldbug and seduce your reader/conversation partner into reading half a dozen musty Googlebooks volumes written in what might as well be Japanese, via hundreds of pages of elaborate argument. We, on the other hand, have a common frame of reference; even most secular Jews have somewhat of a grasp on the Torah’s basic concepts. So instead of having to explain the Bow of Ulysses, Roll, Jordan, Roll and the works of the Reverend R.L. Dabney before getting to the point, i.e., that some people can only function in civilized society under close lifelong adult supervision, we can refer to the laws of slavery, our own experience in Egypt and afterwards, etc.

            All of which is to say that unlike Western reactionaries, we can run out the clock on the competition and poach from them, while using their own system to tie them up.

            • jim says:

              But for us, incrementalism well might work (until it no longer does and something more…dynamic happens.) We have high birthrates, a cohesive community, a big potential pool to draw from (I know quite a few former Ultraorthodox and secular Jews who are now religious Zionists, and myself am one,) and more importantly, a very good rallying point. If you say you are for rebuilding the Temple, or for a Jewish state, in fact, if you refer to the Torah and Talmud as a template of the way things should be while working an office job in Tel Aviv, this is fine. Nobody expects any different-you are, after all, wearing a knit kippah and live in a settlement. They might disagree, they might argue (unlike American whites, we enjoy a good argument and don’t take it as an assault on our deepest sense of self,) but what they will NOT do is to react the way that your typical Western white collar worker would if you were to introduce them to, say, Carlyle’s The Nigger Question

              When you say you endorse “a Jewish state”, you get away with it because is ambiguous as to whether you mean a democratic and egalitarian state gerrymandered to maintain a Jewish majority by abandoning defensible borders, or a state in which few or no non Jews may vote, only people loyal to Israel as a Jewish state may hold office in government or academia, and any person or group who strongly objects to this arrangement gets ethnically cleansed all the way out of Eretz Israel, and if they will not go, get slaughtered.

              Your position is ambiguous because of the leftist and subversive characteristics of Judaism: The Torah takes an ultra reactionary position: Religious orthodoxy enforced on everyone by the most drastic means, ethnic cleansing of the land of Israel. The Talmud reinterprets this as something slightly less reactionary, then the Talmud reinterprets the Talmud as something even less reactionary, which then gets reinterpreted … as something that really is not compatible with the survival of Israel as a Jewish state.

              I think that if you instead of saying “Jewish state”, said “limit the franchise, officially discriminate against non Jews, and ethnically cleanse any groups that make trouble out of Eretz Israel”, this would have consequences very similar to discussing “the nigger question” in the USA.

              It was secular Jews, not religious Jews, that founded Israel by killing for it and dying for it. To the extent that religious Jews wanted to return, they wanted the colonial powers to magically waft them back. And, to the extent that religious Jews were Zionists, they were in revolt against the rabbis.

              The reactionary aspects of Judaism are neutralized both by the Talmudic process of re-re-re-re-interpretation, and also by interpreting them as to be accomplished by the Messiah performing miracles, rather than the government accomplishing them by the usual means.

              The only way to not neutralize the reactionary aspects of Judaism would be to state them as goals to be accomplished in this world now, and to advocate incremental steps towards those goals as steps towards these ultimate goals. Your current religious right parties are not advocating incremental steps towards these goals, but that the incremental left wing steps away from these goals be smaller and stop sooner.

            • jim says:

              For Orthodox Judaism to be reactionary, would have to be reactionary, not incrementally less leftist. Incrementalism only works if your increments are pointing in the correct direction.

          • B says:

            >When you say you endorse “a Jewish state”, you get away with it because is ambiguous

            When I state it, it is not at all ambiguous. Yet the response is not the same as you’d get introducing your neighbors to the Nigger Question.

            >It was secular Jews, not religious Jews, that founded Israel by killing for it and dying for it. To the extent that religious Jews wanted to return, they wanted the colonial powers to magically waft them back.

            Not so-plenty of religious Jews have killed and died for it over the years, more with each war.

            >And, to the extent that religious Jews were Zionists, they were in revolt against the rabbis.

            Not so-“the rabbis” are not an entity. Rav Kook, for instance,
            was very Zionistic, as Zionistic as Ben Gurion.

            Bottom line-my perspective from the inside is very different, we will see over the next twenty years how things develop.

            • jim says:

              When you say you endorse “a Jewish state”, you get away with it because is ambiguous

              When I state it, it is not at all ambiguous

              You know what you mean, but how do they know what you mean?

              In my experience in America, people are profoundly reluctant to construe statements as meaning a thought crime. One can very easily speak in dog whistles, words that the politically correct cannot hear, because they don’t want to hear. If you actually want to be heard, it is non trivial to communicate your meaning. There are some areas where you will be jumped upon for subtly and indirectly revealing your true thoughts, but mostly it is the other way around. They don’t want to know that dissent exists, other than the dissent that they like to imagine exists.

              How do you know that they are construing “a Jewish state” as referring to a thought crime?

          • B says:

            I make it explicit.

            • jim says:

              How do you make it explicit?

              You have not made it explicit to me. I have laid down an incrementalist program that would make Israel a Jewish state (rather than an egalitarian democratic state) You have not acknowledged it or endorsed it.

              You sound to me more like a Messianist, who thinks that the messiah will do all the disturbing politically incorrect stuff by working miracles, rather than by siccing settler militias on problem groups. And, since the political correct do not expect a messiah any time soon, your views do not worry them.

              To make it explicit that you want to get from location X to location Y, you have to point at Y, and attempt to take the first step towards location Y. You are not pointing at Y, since the literature you reference is generally interpreted as proposing a supernatural Y, arrived at by supernatural means, and you are not proposing any concrete specific small steps towards Y.

              If the messiah is a mortal leader, he cannot do all that politically incorrect stuff except the society is ready to do it. And you don’t sound ready to do it. By you, I mean thee, singular you, not just the Jews, you personally. You don’t sound personally ready concretely implement the horribly politically incorrect stuff that is implied by your interpretation of the Talmudic messianic literature as referring to normal political actions and collective violence by mortals.

          • B says:

            >You have not acknowledged it or endorsed it.

            We have our own program.

            >You sound to me more like a Messianist, who thinks that the messiah will do all the disturbing politically incorrect stuff by working miracles, rather than by siccing settler militias on problem groups.

            Not at all. Have you read anything I’ve written? I do not expect him to work miracles.

            >you are not proposing any concrete specific small steps towards Y.

            Proposing concrete specific steps on the internet is a good way to get Boaz Albert’ed: http://lifeinisrael.blogspot.co.il/2013/08/policemen-shocked-boaz-albert-in-front.html

            >You don’t sound personally ready concretely implement the horribly politically incorrect stuff that is implied by your interpretation of the Talmudic messianic literature as referring to normal political actions and collective violence by mortals.

            Again-calling for collective rightist violence on the internet is a good way to get curbstomped by our state with nothing to show for it. For the right, the strategy in the meantime is building settlements, having lots of children, building a massive economic base, supporting the rabbis whose vision is coherent and compatible with our future success, infiltrating the institutions which will be critical in the future (academe and the military.) If this doesn’t have the ring of “to the barricades, comrades!”, remember that before successfully ascending those barricades, the comrades had spent decades or centuries creating the proper socioeconomic conditions for success; if the Puritans had been a bunch of ragbags, Cromwell would have failed, as did the revolutionaries of 1848.

            • jim says:

              You sound to me more like a Messianist, who thinks that the messiah will do all the disturbing politically incorrect stuff by working miracles, rather than by siccing settler militias on problem groups.

              Not at all. Have you read anything I’ve written? I do not expect him to work miracles.

              Getting politically incorrect things done under his leadership that Israelis are not willing to do without his leadership seems pretty miraculous to me.

              If you are going to get a non miraculous messiah, it has to work the other way around. When the hour comes that Israel is willing to make itself at home, then the man will appear to lead them in doing it. First the hour, then the man.

              You cannot get a non miraculous messiah, unless you first get support for the actions and policies that a non miraculous messiah would implement. And you are reluctant to plainly state those actions and policies to me.

              you are not proposing any concrete specific small steps towards Y.

              Proposing concrete specific steps on the internet is a good way to get Boaz Albert’ed

              In a previous comment, you told me Orthodox Jews can freely advocate reactionary policies without getting into trouble, and now you tell me that should you advocate reactionary policies, you will get the snot beaten out of you.

              If this doesn’t have the ring of “to the barricades, comrades!”, remember that before successfully ascending those barricades, the comrades had spent decades or centuries creating the proper socioeconomic conditions for success;

              History of the left is that first they announced their program, then they got the power to implement it, not the other way around. Indeed, the program was an instrument to attain power.

          • B says:

            >Getting politically incorrect things done under his leadership that Israelis are not willing to do without his leadership seems pretty miraculous to me.

            That is how leadership works; if the led would have done what the leader told them to do in the absence of the leader, then the leader is superfluous and not really a leader.

            >First the hour, then the man.

            This is very non-Carlylean thinking.

            >In a previous comment, you told me Orthodox Jews can freely advocate reactionary policies without getting into trouble, and now you tell me that should you advocate reactionary policies, you will get the snot beaten out of you…History of the left is that first they announced their program, then they got the power to implement it, not the other way around. Indeed, the program was an instrument to attain power.

            Not really. First, the left announced their strategic ideals, then they implemented their tactical steps without advertising them too much. Lenin never came out and said that the platform of the Communist Party involved having some thug like Stalin knocking over banks. In other words, I can say something like “we need to drive all the Muslims out of Israel, and only let them in selectively after there is a Jubilee year if they are certified as gerei toshavim. We need to rebuild the Temple and conquer everything from the Nile to the Euphrates.” I can not say something like “me and Reuven and Shimon need to get together and commit X act of political violence in order to make this goal more immanent.” Well, neither could Lenin publish a book saying that Koba and Kamo need to knock over the Tbilisi Bank.

            • jim says:

              First, the left announced their strategic ideals, then they implemented their tactical steps without advertising them too much. Lenin never came out and said that the platform of the Communist Party involved having some thug like Stalin knocking over banks.

              Actually he did. The party called it expropriation, not robbery, advertising their policy and program.

              Actions speak louder than words. Stalin was busy knocking over banks as part of the communist party struggle for power, propaganda of the deed. They murdered forty people in Yerevan Square expropriation, which was wildly unnecessary and excessive overkill. They wanted the robbery to be as dramatic and as over the top spectacular as it possibly could be.

              The equivalent of Stalin’s bank robberies would be Orthodox Jews ethnically cleansing troublesome Arabs while shouting “Eretz Israel” and then issuing a statement that the Torah and Talmud require Jews to get rid of anyone in the land of Israel that fails to accept Jewish rule of the land of Israel – all of the land of Israel.

              Well, neither could Lenin publish a book saying that Koba and Kamo need to knock over the Tbilisi Bank.

              He did not issue a book that Stalin needed to knock over a bank, but he used the bank robberies to define his party as leftwards of the other parties, and to demonstrate that his party was potent, effective, and to be feared.

              The retreat from Gaza demonstrated that the settlers were defending Israel a lot more than Israel was defending the settlers. There is widespread recognition that the retreat from Gaza was a bad idea. Why was it a bad idea?

              It was a bad idea because you need settler militias to keep Arabs from taking action to undo Jewish rule of the land of Israel. You need settler militias for Jews to rule over the Arab majority. That is a fact. It is a fact that everyone knows but few can speak. Are Orthodox Jews speaking that unspeakable fact? Are they saying “Settlers should go back into Gaza to rule over the Arab majority and quell them. Jews need to rule over all land within short missile range of major population centers, and need settlers to do that.”

          • B says:

            >The equivalent of Stalin’s bank robberies would be Orthodox Jews ethnically cleansing troublesome Arabs while shouting “Eretz Israel” and then issuing a statement that the Torah and Talmud require Jews to get rid of anyone in the land of Israel that fails to accept Jewish rule of the land of Israel – all of the land of Israel.

            Seems like a great idea-but there were certain prerequisites that had to be met, like three generations that grew up looking up to the Decembrists and other Leftists. This is the first generation in which there is a decent-sized Religious Zionist party, and the third in which there is any sort of right wing mainstream at all.

            >The retreat from Gaza demonstrated that the settlers were defending Israel a lot more than Israel was defending the settlers.

            True.

            >It was a bad idea because you need settler militias to keep Arabs from taking action to undo Jewish rule of the land of Israel.

            False. There were no settler militias to speak of in Gaza. My friends from Hevron, who went there before the dispossession to support the settlers, tell me that the local Arabs, the Muwassi, were completely fearless and brazen, and that once the Hevron settlers started to do what they did in Hevron (i.e., take shortcuts through the Arab neighborhoods and in general demonstrate fearlessness on a casual basis,) the Gaza settlers were amazed-they had given the local Arab neighborhoods wide berth. The reason there were no missiles being launched from Gaza is that the settlers were protected by a military which was semi-proactive in patrolling and controlling the situation.

            >Are they saying “Settlers should go back into Gaza to rule over the Arab majority and quell them. Jews need to rule over all land within short missile range of major population centers, and need settlers to do that.”

            Well, yes, and more than that: http://nachmankahana.com/beshalach-and-yitro-5773/

            The rabbis must come to the people. The majority of the nation is looking for Jewish moral leadership.
            This leadership will be composed of rabbis who regard the medina not as a mere political entity, but as a stage in the final geula.
            The time has come to establish a political party whose platform is unashamedly for a Torah state, and which will implement the “Ten Political Commandments”:
            1- Redefine democracy based on Torah principles, and make Torah the law of the land and and will be coercive, as all law is.
            2- Implement massive construction in Yehuda, Shomron and the Golan with the aim of settling a million Jews there within ten years. And never forget the Biblical boundaries of God’s holy land and our obligation to liberate those lands.
            3- A massive effort to bring millions of olim, including the research of the many millions of people who are descendants of the Anusim (Maronos) and the Ten Lost Tribes, for the purpose of uniting them with the Jewish nation
            4- All able-bodied men will undergo basic military training, regardless of how many pages of Talmud they know. And all soldiers will be taught the rudiments of Judaism. All female soldiers will be released from military service.
            5- Shabbat will be the law of the land. There will be no desecration of the Shabbat in public areas, including non-Jews. Kashrut will be strictly observed as will the limits of modesty – tzniut.
            6- Amend the Law of Return that only halachic Jews will be able to attain citizenship and serve in the Knesset (after completing a minimum requirement of Torah studies and general knowledge).
            7- An ultimatum will be given to the residents of Gaza, that within 24 hours all weapons are to be deposited in the city stadium. After this time if anything which can be construed as a weapon is found, the entire city will be immediately destroyed.
            8- The Gazans are to immediately clear out the area called “Gush Katif” in preparation for its rebuilding, bet knesset by bet knesset, home by home, on an area three times larger then previously.
            9- Architectural plans for the Bet Ha’Mikdash to be ready for implementation at the appropriate time.
            10- Rav Lau will be dispatched to make a statement to the General Assembly of the UN; that Medinat Yisrael is the realization of God’s promise to return His nation to His land, and Israel will establish a United Religions in Yericho, to unite all the gentiles in the world around the seven Noachide laws.
            The last election clearly indicates that the people are frustrated and ready to return to Torah values, with many ready to lead an halachic life.
            The question is where are the rabbis who are prepared to lead?

            • jim says:

              The time has come to establish a political party whose platform is unashamedly for a Torah state, and which will implement the “Ten Political Commandments”:

              Those making this proposal seem to agree with me that the actually existent orthodox rabbis are for the most part stuck in an exile mentality that is hostile to the host nation and host society and subversive towards it, even when, perhaps especially when, that host nation is Israel and that host society is Jewish.

              The program seems good and wise to me, with one exception: “Making Torah law the law of the land”. In exile, the Jewish law has been elaborated to be an IQ test and status display, rather than a practical guide for people to live together without causing problems for each other. Consider, for example what was done with the prohibition against cooking a goat in its mother’s milk.

              Seems to me that Moses’ main concerns were normal law and order issues, patriarchy, and preventing the army from being struck down by plagues, and that the law has been getting ever more elaborate and less connected to practical issues since then – that Jewish religious law, which was originally the normal coercive law of the Jewish state, has become something profoundly unsuitable for being normal coercive law. Are you going to make everyone install two sets of clothes washing machines?

          • B says:

            >The program seems good and wise to me, with one exception: “Making Torah law the law of the land”.

            Without this point, the rest have nothing to stand on.

            >In exile, the Jewish law has been elaborated to be an IQ test and status display, rather than a practical guide for people to live together without causing problems for each other.

            It is the opposite. I am surrounded by people of average IQ who have no problem living according to Jewish law. It is quite simple once you start.

            >Consider, for example what was done with the prohibition against cooking a goat in its mother’s milk.

            What has been done with it, exactly?

            >Seems to me that Moses’ main concerns were normal law and order issues, patriarchy, and preventing the army from being struck down by plagues, and that the law has been getting ever more elaborate and less connected to practical issues since then – that Jewish religious law, which was originally the normal coercive law of the Jewish state, has become something profoundly unsuitable for being normal coercive law.

            The Written Torah is quite concise, and doesn’t spell out a lot of issues that must be addressed in any practical implementation. On the other hand, it has many commandments that are not trivial in int
            >Are you going to make everyone install two sets of clothes washing machines?

            • jim says:

              >Consider, for example what was done with the prohibition against cooking a goat in its mother’s milk.

              What has been done with it, exactly?

              Cheese burgers, all the good sauces for sphagetti.

          • B says:

            sorry, misfired:

            The Written Torah is quite concise, and doesn’t spell out a lot of issues that must be addressed in any practical implementation. On the other hand, it has many commandments that are not trivial in interpretation. For instance, why does Moses, who is normally quite concise and addresses most matters very sparsely, repeat the commandment not to boil a goat in its mother’s milk three times? I mean, who cares? Obviously, the logic goes, it was important, and therefore…

            >Are you going to make everyone install two sets of clothes washing machines?

            I don’t know where you got that idea-nobody has two sets of washers. But almost everyone has a double kitchen sink, with a partition in the middle. I doubt there would be a morality police checking people’s sinks or hiding under beds. On the other hand, closing the stores openly selling pork products or the strip joints/whorehouses of Tel Aviv doesn’t strike me as a bad idea. Nor does requiring a basic dress code where women can’t walk around dressed like hoes.

            • jim says:

              why does Moses, who is normally quite concise and addresses most matters very sparsely, repeat the commandment not to boil a goat in its mother’s milk three times? I mean, who cares?

              It looks like a law against a specific group of entryists. Probably there was an entryist group whose national or religious dish was that, and the intent was to make them either stop identifying with their nation or religion, or else stop claiming to be Hebrew.

              Somewhat similarly, several countries are prohibiting the hijab, and people are making a big deal out of it.

          • B says:

            Your argument is basically that of the Karaites and the Saducees before them, who said that the Oral Law was just something the Rabbis made up and that the Written Torah was the only thing received by Moshe. We can address this inductively and deductively.

            Inductively, though both the Saducees and the Karaites had massive followings, the former are no longer with us, and the latter are down to a couple of thousand. Given that G-d created us and this world and that He gave us a law by which to live in it, a law claiming to be His which leads to extinction could not actually be His. I believe Carlyle addresses it, as does the Torah itself: “by this shall you live,” as opposed to “die.”

            Deductively, if you try to follow the Written Torah verbatim, it makes no sense. For instance, you can’t have a justice system that functions for long based on a literal interpretation of “an eye for an eye.” What good does it do a man who was blinded that the transgressor was blinded in turn? Now they are both blind and must be supported by society. And what if the victim only had one functional eye to begin with-now he is blind and the transgressor one-eyed-is this justice? And if a blind man blinds another? You can’t say something like “then cut off his hands”-the Torah specifically says there is one law for all, and you can’t punish the blind and sighted differently for the same crime.

            Rather, the Oral Law tells us that this commandment means the price of an eye for an eye, but also that this is not enough-the crime of bodily injury is very grave and the transgressor needs the forgiveness of the victim before he is absolved.

            http://ravkooktorah.org/MISHPATIM_67.htm

            http://www.aishdas.org/toratemet/en_mishpatim.html

            So it is with the rest of the Torah. The Rabbis did not speak lightly.

            • jim says:

              Deductively, if you try to follow the Written Torah verbatim, it makes no sense. For instance, you can’t have a justice system that functions for long based on a literal interpretation of “an eye for an eye.” What good does it do a man who was blinded that the transgressor was blinded in turn? Now they are both blind and must be supported by society. And what if the victim only had one functional eye to begin with-now he is blind and the transgressor one-eyed-is this justice? And if a blind man blinds another? You can’t say something like “then cut off his hands”-the Torah specifically says there is one law for all, and you can’t punish the blind and sighted differently for the same crime.

              It is perfectly clear that “an eye for a eye” means that the punishment must be comparable in severity to the crime, not that it always has to be literally exactly the same. If Torah law cannot always be followed literally, a reasonable conclusion is that it is not intended to be always followed literally, rather than that there is some other law intended to be followed literally that did not get written down until four hundred AD or so.

              It is very difficult, perhaps impossible, to create laws that are to be followed literally all the time. Laws are made for a purpose and need to be interpreted so as to give effect to that purpose. Back in the day, armies were generally defeated by disease more often than by fire and steel, and so it has been until the late nineteenth, early twentieth century. Moses, obviously, was trying to protect the army against disease. Ignoring the purpose of the laws necessarily leads to much silliness.

            • jim says:

              Inductively, though both the Saducees and the Karaites had massive followings, the former are no longer with us, and the latter are down to a couple of thousand. Given that G-d created us and this world and that He gave us a law by which to live in it, a law claiming to be His which leads to extinction could not actually be His. I believe Carlyle addresses it, as does the Torah itself: “by this shall you live,” as opposed to “die.”

              Originally Judaism was a nation state religion. The Sadducees were the state. When the Jews were exiled, it had to change to an exile religion. So the Rabbis changed it.

              Now that they are no longer exiled, this is psychologically unhealthy, and it needs to change back.

          • B says:

            >It is perfectly clear that “an eye for a eye” means that the punishment must be comparable in severity to the crime, not that it always has to be literally exactly the same.

            What is perfectly clear to you is not perfectly clear to everyone, and vice versa. For instance, to the Muslims it is perfectly clear that bodily mutilation is an appropriate legal punishment.

            >If Torah law cannot always be followed literally, a reasonable conclusion is that it is not intended to be always followed literally, rather than that there is some other law intended to be followed literally that did not get written down until four hundred AD or so.

            And who decides when it should be followed literally? And what if those people disagree? In fact, the Oral Torah is not “a law that must be followed literally.” It is a combination of traditions and juridical procedures for determining the appropriate law in a given context. Which is why the Talmud is in the form that it is, i.e., an extended argument/conversation spread over hundreds of personages and many centuries.

            >It is very difficult, perhaps impossible, to create laws that are to be followed literally all the time. Laws are made for a purpose and need to be interpreted so as to give effect to that purpose.

            And that way lies Progress. This was effectively the argument of the Reform Jews-and the descendants of the Reform Jews of the 19th century are either nonexistent or not Jews. Again-“by these shall you live”, not go extinct.

            >Moses, obviously, was trying to protect the army against disease.

            Obviously. And the prohibition against grafting different species of trees was because he was a horticultural fundamentalist. And the one against crossbreeding species of animals was because, well, it just ain’t right. And the one against castrating animals, also. Obviously.

            >Ignoring the purpose of the laws necessarily leads to much silliness.

            True. But we don’t know the purpose of many of the laws, and the purpose of others is debatable. For instance, Maimonides dug up a book called On The Nabatean Agriculture from the Egyptian archives. The author, a Muslim, studied ancient agricultural practices as they had been preserved in various sources and niche communities, and said that there was a widespread fertility ritual where a virgin would graft a bough into a tree while a man grafted himself into her from behind. Thus, he says, the prohibition. But he doesn’t say you can just repeal the prohibition because the Nabateans and co. are gone. That way (I presume) lies a free for all of transgression, which is Progress. This is exactly the Talmudic logic for the milk and meat prohibitions:

            “The meat of fowl cooked in milk is permitted according to Scriptural Law. We, however, are prohibiting it and publicizing the prohibition as a decree, lest the matter lead to a detriment and people say: ‘Eating the meat of fowl cooked in meat is permitted, because it is not explicitly forbidden by the Torah. Similarly, the meat of a wild animal cooked in milk is permitted, because it is also not explicitly forbidden.’ “And another may come and say: ‘Even the meat of a domesticated animal cooked in milk is permitted with the exception of a goat.’ And another will come and say: ‘Even the meat of a goat is permitted when cooked in the milk of a cow or a sheep. For the verse mentions only “its mother,” i.e., an animal from the same species.’ And still another will come and say: ‘Even the meat of a goat is permitted when cooked in goat’s milk as long the milk is not from the kid’s mother, for the verse says: “its mother.”‘ For these reasons, we will forbid all meat cooked in milk, even meat from fowl.”

            You will notice that what the Rambam is describing is exactly the logic of the NYT-first marital infidelity was OK, then extramarital heterosexual behavior, then homosexuality, now transsexualism, who knows what next. To prevent this kind of progressive transgressivism, the Torah provides for a Sanhedrin which will build fences around the commandments, procedures for amending those fences, temporary easements of prohibitions, etc.

            • jim says:

              It is perfectly clear that “an eye for a eye” means that the punishment must be comparable in severity to the crime, not that it always has to be literally exactly the same.

              What is perfectly clear to you is not perfectly clear to everyone, and vice versa. For instance, to the Muslims it is perfectly clear that bodily mutilation is an appropriate legal punishment.

              And, observing that there is no burglary where they apply bodily mutilation, I am inclined to agree with them. However they do not literally apply an eye for an eye all the time. More generally, they interpret most of the koranic prescriptions as hyperbole or examples of good practice, which obviously they are, rather than following them absolutely literally.

              For example, Mohammed says that there can be no permanent peace with infidels, and any truce must end in months – but he himself kept a truce for some years, so Muslims interpret “months” to mean “as short as reasonably practical”, rather than as “months”.

              But he doesn’t say you can just repeal the prohibition because the Nabateans and co. are gone. That way (I presume) lies a free for all of transgression, which is Progress. This is exactly the Talmudic logic for the milk and meat prohibitions:

              Prohibitions targeted at entryist groups need to be continually updated because the entryist group responds to the prohibition by changing its antigens. But, supposing that you don’t want to repeal the prohibition for fear of starting a free for all, neither should you endless escalate the prohibition, for that is going to start a holier than thou free for all.

          • B says:

            >And, observing that there is no burglary where they apply bodily mutilation, I am inclined to agree with them.

            We can reduce crime to an arbitrarily low level by applying an arbitrarily high level of brutality. But there is a cost. We have a hard-coded tradeoff level and procedures for moving it left and right as necessary based on context.

            >Prohibitions targeted at entryist groups need to be continually updated because the entryist group responds to the prohibition by changing its antigens.

            Yet we don’t have any Baal or Moloch worshippers in our midst today.

            >But, supposing that you don’t want to repeal the prohibition for fear of starting a free for all, neither should you endless escalate the prohibition, for that is going to start a holier than thou free for all.

            True-but there is something deeper. People have an inbuilt urge to take upon themselves additional stringencies, and the way to deal with it is not to punish them for it but to channel this urge constructively. Which we have no shortage of-see the institute of Naziruth, for instance. And you can see that in our society, attempting to be holier-than-thou has certain long-term negative feedback mechanisms.

            • jim says:

              >And, observing that there is no burglary where they apply bodily mutilation, I am inclined to agree with them.

              We can reduce crime to an arbitrarily low level by applying an arbitrarily high level of brutality

              America’s notoriously non harsh prisons, and propensity to let off offenders, results in a level of crime which necessitates a great many people in prison. Singapore, on the other hand, hardly needs to imprison anyone, because Singaporean punishments actually deter. Singapore used to have a fairly high murder rate. Now it has an extremely low murder rate, not because they punish murder markedly more harshly than most (that would be difficult) but because they punish lesser crimes more harshly than most, thus preventing a population of habitual criminals from existing.

              There is an optimal level of brutality in suppressing miscreants, and Saudi Arabia and Singapore are clearly a lot closer to that optimum than we are.

              One might argue that Singapore is closer than Saudi Arabia, but the racial differences make it hard to reliably draw such a conclusion.

              And you can see that in our society, attempting to be holier-than-thou has certain long-term negative feedback mechanisms.

              Not seeing that. The left singularity is leftists going holier than thou without any limits.

          • B says:

            >There is an optimal level of brutality in suppressing miscreants, and Saudi Arabia and Singapore are clearly a lot closer to that optimum than we are.

            Agreed.

            >One might argue that Singapore is closer than Saudi Arabia, but the racial differences make it hard to reliably draw such a conclusion.

            I guess.

            >Not seeing that. The left singularity is leftists going holier than thou without any limits.

            My society is not America. Without getting too much into family business, I am seeing that excessive stringencies in a branch of Judaism lead to people leaving the branch for another branch or leaving Judaism altogether. There is a dynamic equilibrium.

            • jim says:

              The left singularity is leftists going holier than thou without any limits.

              I am seeing that excessive stringencies in a branch of Judaism lead to people leaving the branch for another branch or leaving Judaism altogether. There is a dynamic equilibrium.

              That works because Orthodox Judaism is not the state religion it is supposed to be, but a religion in exile. If it psychologically, emotionally, and politically returned home, and became a state religion once more, then there would be no competitive limit on holier than thou – and the business about mixing cheese and meat shows it is already alarmingly holy. To return to being state law, rather than religious law, has to drastically cut down on the holiness, and suppress holier-than-thou clerics.

              If it once again became the state religion, it would be besieged by entryists, and would need to issue a brand new list of prohibited antigen beliefs and practices, would have to act pragmantically, politically, and realistically, as it did when it was the state religion. Just as Jews returning to Israel became soldiers and farmers, Orthodox Judaism returning to Israel from spiritual exile would have deal with excessive holiness.

  24. […] The history of leftism against freedom « Jim’s Blog […]

  25. […] hanging questions: Can Left and Right be rigorously distinguished in any other way? Isn’t Christianity, as Nietzsche insisted, inextricable from this […]

  26. spandrell says:

    B owned this thread so massively it’s not even funny.

    Come on Jim, Roman culture was *the* patriarchy, the most traditional, manly, kickass rightist culture that has existed. Christians didn’t gain followers by upholding it. That’ s not how religion spreads. They spread through subverting the culture. Slaves go to heaven too! Love thy neighbor! It is documented that women were overrepresented in the early Christians.

    Christianity’s leftist points are simple, obvious and direct. Rightist points require dozens of books of interpretation to make them square. Don’t ask for quotes of scripture, scripture has been used to justify anything for centuries already.

    There have been traditionalist christians, communist christians, nazi christians, Hirohito worshipper christians. You of all people should know. The fungibility of the Bible is the best proof of the limits of rational debate.

    • B says:

      And another thing. There’s been some talk about the military fixing this and making it right. Well, it will never happen. First, everyone in the military with any rank is either a guy who’s compromised himself on most levels and now just wants to do his time and get his medals, promotions and retirements, or a soulless Patrick Bateman-type sociopath. Second, on the off chance that there may be a spark of danger somewhere in there, the govt is busily infiltrating the military leadership with nobodies, talentless assclowns (literally) who will owe everything to the system and have no moral compass whatsoever. Obsoive: http://www.foxnews.com/us/2013/03/16/parris-island-leader-says-women-can-handle-combat/

      Or this shreck: http://www.susankatzkeating.com/2010/01/captain-holly-graf-plows-down-whale.html

      Or this wonderful nexus of the military and religion (search for “chaplain” in there): http://www.monomakhos.com/the-lavender-mafia-just-a-conspiracy-theory/

      So, in short, the military, like the big Christian churches, is a giant tree completely eaten up with termites.

      • VXXC says:

        B — what else do you base this on?

        There are many warriors B, they struggle mainly against bureaucracy and cowardice moral and physical in the leadership, as well as what you list.

        But do you base this on any personal knowledge?

        It’s not going to be Reaction’s Ironsides, but neither is anyone else.

        • B says:

          Yes, I base it on personal knowledge. About a decade’s worth, in all kinds of units and places. All of the O’s I saw past Captain, and most of the senior NCO’s, were either working stiffs trying to keep their ass out of trouble and make it to retirement in order to pay for their wife, ex-wife and kids (and thus non-threatening systemically,) retard fratboy company men who’d never cracked a book in their life without being forced to, or total dead-eyed sociopaths. The rare exception is so busy fighting the uphill fight that he is irrelevant. But don’t take my word for it-read about the French putsch attempt of 1959. Compare those guys, who’d grown up fighting actual Nazis, parachuting into occupied France, campaigning across Europe, fighting the Viet Minh, surviving the post Dien Bien Phu death marches and camps, etc., with today’s officer corps. Even the baddest badasses have never fought anything scarier than Pashtun farmers and the occasional foreign fighter, never for longer than a few days, and almost never with air support and medevac off the table. The exceptions are in units that might as well be part of the CIA, whose Progressive record is unparalleled in the last 60 years. Yet the frogs folded like laundry and came crawling to DeGaulle like whipped dogs. What chance do today’s buzzcut retards have?

          • jim says:

            The Cathedral fears the army for the same reason as we have hopes.

            My hopes are rather with the rentacops and mercenaries. Observe what happened with the Occupy movement. We had big fake confrontations between cops and Occupy, in which five hundred cops met five hundred Occupy, and had shoving matches and people got hurt, but a typical confrontation between rentacops and Occupy was three rentacops versus three hundred Occupy, and the rentacops win a totally one sided victory.

            The mercenary company Blackwater was getting scary effective and successful, until the Cathedral got scared and bought them up and gave them a new mission as nursemaids and social workers, but buying up potential competition is apt to result in more competitors for you to buy up.

          • B says:

            It is best to have true hope, but better to have no hope than false hope.

            The mercenaries are an outsourcing operation for the Cathedral, and by definition not a threat to them. I can’t see them emerging as a force for order except if the Cathedral collapses completely and the mercenaries become financially independent.

            If you want to see a nascent model for neocolonialism, look up Central Asia Development Group. Mike Yon’s writeups are OK, though a bit shallow, since he is in flyby mode. Notice something: 1) this is really as good a mixed administration model as you can do in today’s world, and 2) it is completely dependent on the Cathedral, and the more Cathedrally parts of the military like Civil Affairs. The nanosecond that the company starts making money off its projects’ inherent profitability, it will get shut down as exploiters. Not to mention, of course, the global financial system, an outgrowth of the Cathedral (or vice verse-the more I read Anthony Sutton, the more I’m not sure.) CADG is based out of Singapore, which might give it a bit of leeway-but not much.

            • jim says:

              The mercenaries are an outsourcing operation for the Cathedral, and by definition not a threat to them.

              By this logic, the Saxons were no threat to the Romano British. The military is always a threat to the priesthood, and the more functional the military, the greater the threat.

            • jim says:

              it is completely dependent on the Cathedral, and the more Cathedrally parts of the military like Civil Affairs.

              Conversely, the Cathedral is dependent upon it.

              If the Cathedral hired mercenaries to keep some country safe, and Central Asia Development group to develop the economy of that country, as it tends to do, who in fact would be running that country?

          • B says:

            But in reality, these organizations do not have the deep social structure and cohesion, the asabiyyah, of the Saxons. They are full of potential and actual Cathedral moles, and their normal operators are in it for themselves and maybe a couple of their buddies to the left and right.

          • VXXC says:

            I agree the Military is structurally incapable [by design] of fixing this, it wouldn’t actually seriously occur to it.

            Glad to hear you are basing this on experience.

            Me too, and I think you missed the people for the system.

            You are also missing the potential.

            However if you want to be bitter and give up, Reaction is for you.

            @ Jim – don’t look for hope in mercs or rentacops. Mind you I’m NOT telling you to give up hope.

            • jim says:

              Without rentacops, Occupy would have done to Wall Street was done to University administrations in the sixties.

              Of course I have hope in rentacops. Obama manufactured an astroturf rentamob, and sent them against Wall Street and major symbols of capitalism. The rentacops were loyal to their salt, and entirely untroubled by facing a huge state sponsored mob with police mysteriously absent. Or if they were troubled, they did not permit fear to show.

            • jim says:

              The Cathedral is so nervous about the military, and hostile towards it, that some in the Cathedral surely suspect the military of being capable of fixing this.

          • VXXC says:

            @B,

            You missed something.

          • B says:

            The only place I might have missed the people is in the Tier 1 units. But those guys have given so much to get where they are, and occupy such a privileged position that I do not see a significant number of them throwing everything away for probable disgrace and ruin. My opinion on the rest of the military is what I said above. Feel free to disagree, but events so far really support me.

            Thanks for that last bit, too. Obviously, the way to change things is to keep doing the same thing and wait for better results. Ask the lifers, they will tell you.

        • B says:

          Tell me, how do you propose organizing your secret military cabal? In the smoke pit between the mandatory SHARP briefing and the CSM’s exhortations to avoid DUIs this weekend? Will you interrupt the discussions of UFC, Glenn Beck and Katie Perry’s latest videos to propose a restoration of the Republic? Because that is the level of most of the cream of the crop. The guys who function on a higher level are generally keeping their head down, working on a little project in their own corner, and planning to move on to bigger and better things.

          • jim says:

            Despite their famous verbal intelligence, Jews don’t seem very good at thinking about this sort of problem. Military cabals are not organized in that manner.

            Certain officers start by holding exercises that could be interpreted as preparing a coup, or could be interpreted otherwise. Officers who may be unsympathetic cooperate, because they would like to have a career, not to mention normal life expectancy, regardless of who comes out on top.

            Six hours before the coup, the organization, having already been formed, organized, practiced, and drilled, goes live, and members of the long existent group say the word “coup” in so many words for the first time. The word goes around. The question then is asked: Are you really in, or really out? And all those officers who were kind of sort of in, then have to choose for real.

          • B says:

            Forgive me for presuming that since I spent the better part of my twenties in exactly the kind of units that would serve as the launchpad for a coup, studying insurgencies in my spare time from work, I actually know what the hell I’m talking about.

            First, a cabal is not started during exercises. A cabal is started ten or twenty years before, when its members are cadets and junior lieutenants debating political theories and engaging in the kind of mental masturbation idealistic young men are wont to do. See: Hugo Chavez, or the Young Turks, for that matter.

            Second, exercises in the US military are planned many months in advance, in scrupulous detail, and I’m talking about company and battalion-level stuff in Fort Bumfuck, Wisconsin, not to mention division and above in the Military District of Washington. If there is a doubt, there is no doubt.

            Third, a significant fraction of those officers who were kind of sort of in would have reported those officers who were really in right away. The system would have responded expeditiously. This isn’t MAJ Hassan, the antigens are constantly pinging for right-wing ANYTHING.

            Fourth, if there is one thing the top leadership of the US military has gotten pretty good at in the last couple of decades, it’s using small elite organizations within the US military which are more or less self-contained to identify and quickly destroy the leaders of an insurgency. If you think the insurgency would come from the ranks of those units themselves, I addressed that below, but in any case, those guys are watched like hawks.

            Fifth, like Stalin said, human resources determine everything else. The higher up you go, the more it’s company men scrambling for the promotion after the next one, for that reserved parking spot at the PX, for the executive-level job at SAIC after retirement in a couple of years. The cadres of your potential coup get out as captains and staff sergeants and go on to bigger and better things.

            There is a reason that the Soviet Army, full though it was of hard and intelligent guys, never threatened the Communist Party of the USSR, that the PLA never threatened the Party in China, that the American military post-WW2 never formed a threat to USG.

            • jim says:

              A cabal is started ten or twenty years before, when its members are cadets and junior lieutenants debating political theories and engaging in the kind of mental masturbation idealistic young men are wont to do.

              The Pinochet coup was not started ten or twenty years before, at most a year or so before. Junior officers discussed politics, without going so far as to call themselves coup plotters. The army began to engage in coup exercises, without calling them coup exercises. A few hours before the coup, the long existing coup organization, composed entirely of junior officers, activated, and said plainly to themselves, we are a coup cabal and we are going to have a coup, which up to that moment had arguably been ambiguous. They then sent a delegation to Pinochet, the highest ranking Army officer. Pinochet said he did not want in. He counter proposed to have a coup in few days, which would have had the effect that those who had already activated to hold a coup in six hours would probably die. They said that unless he signed on with the coup, with this coup, with the coupists represented by this delegation, with this coup rolling to start shooting in six hours, this “would undermine the discipline and unity of the armed forces”, which sounds to me like “Sign or die!”

              Pinochet signed, and disappeared. During the coup, no one on either side could find him. After the coup, he was found playing with his grandchildren.

          • B says:

            There are some minor differences in context. For instance: the Chilean coup had external support from the biggest player in the overthrow business on the planet, the Allende government was shaky and not entrenched, the Chilean military had a long tradition of political violence instead of a centuries-old tradition of political passivity, the Chilean secret services/intelligence apparatus were at the very least neutral if not on the side of the rebels, and certainly (and least importantly, I’d argue,) the extent of their surveillance was nothing like that of the surveillance applied to the US military.

            • jim says:

              For instance: the Chilean coup had external support from the biggest player in the overthrow business on the planet

              On the contrary, the US government was making an exaggerated effort not to get involved.

              The coup was 100% Chilean – indeed if the US government had wished to get involved, the nature of coups makes this quite difficult.

              The Chilean military had a long tradition of political violence instead of a centuries-old tradition of political passivity

              The Chilean military had been out of politics since 1833, out of politics for one hundred and thirty years.

              the extent of their surveillance was nothing like that of the surveillance applied to the US military.

              The Chilean coup was conducted as if surveillance was omnipresent, with the fatal words not being said out loud in an unambiguous fashion until a few hours before the coup.

          • B says:

            Funny, because the conventional wisdom is that the CIA was, in fact, involved. Though they were not supporting THE plotters, they were supporting other plotters (the fact that there were multiple military plots going on at once should tell you so)mething about the state of Chilean state security at the time. Which meant significant moral support to these plotters.

            You don’t need to say “the fatal words.” Simple routine counterintel and link analysis will generally pick you up pretty well.And of course today, what with everyone’s net presence and massive surveillance, it’s not that hard to build a filter for data picking out visitors to potentially subversive sites who are in sensitive positions, link them into a network, then go through manually. Once you have likely problem children, you don’t give them the benefit of the doubt for not saying something explicit. The opposite: since, like any military, you have hard and fast rules designed so that they are impossible to not violate, you roll them up for violating those rules. Apropos of nothing, how many USN commanders have been relieved in the last year?

            • jim says:

              Funny, because the conventional wisdom is that the CIA was, in fact, involved [in the Chilean coup].

              The Cathedral line is that the CIA was involved. In reality the Chilean coup was a revolt against the Cathedral, and thus a revolt against the US. The CIA is leftist, the coupists were rightist.

              And similarly the conventional wisdom, aka Cathedral official line, is that Aristide was democratically chosen by the people of Haiti against the will of the US, and was deposed by the US – even though he was installed at gunpoint by US troops, was at all times protected by white English speaking bodyguards, and was removed by creole speaking black Haitian revolutionaries.

              The Cathedral line on Aristide is more transparently absurd than the Cathedral line on Chile, because the Haitian story refers to events that took place in public, while the Chilean story refers to events that took place in secret, but they are both the same kind of tale. If one is a lie, so is the other.

          • B says:

            >If one is a lie, so is the other.

            Perhaps. Or, perhaps, like with the coup against Mossadegh, the CIA was actually playing for the right in this case. Or is Kermit Roosevelt lying to us? You will notice that although the Cathedral is left-wing, periodically its military and intelligence branches will do right-wing stuff, in keeping with the great American tradition of keeping both thumbs on the scales. Examples: the intervention in Siberia, the initial support for Battista, the eventual support to Taiwan, the initial support of South Africa, the air support flown to Dien Bien Phu, the war in Afghanistan against the Soviets. It’s not as simple as “if this is a lie, everything is a lie.”

            • jim says:

              Examples: the intervention in Siberia, the initial support for Battista, the eventual support to Taiwan, the initial support of South Africa, the air support flown to Dien Bien Phu, the war in Afghanistan against the Soviets. It’s not as simple as “if this is a lie, everything is a lie.”

              The initial support for Batista is a lie, or rather a misleading half truth, since the US enforced an arms embargo against Batista while allowing arms to Castro. The “eventual support for Taiwan” was conspicuously late. The intervention in Siberia was to rescue forty thousand Czechoslovak troops and supplies intended for them. The American commander, General Graves, bent over backwards to avoid conflict with the Bolsheviks.

              The US did indeed try to prevent South Vietnam from going communist, but North Vietnam and China went communist because the US Government wanted them to go communist.

    • jim says:

      Roman culture was *the* patriarchy, the most traditional, manly, kickass rightist culture that has exi

      That was the Roman monarchy and the early Roman Republic. The late Roman Republic, not so much, the early empire, far from it.

      Christianity appeared in the early empire, and preserved and supported the patriarchy against social decay, which is why we had a close imitation of the early Roman marriage ceremony until around 1960 or so.

      Yes, converts to Christianity tended to be women. And today, converts to Islam tend to be women. Women go to where the manliness is.

      Rightist points require dozens of books of interpretation to make them square

      Jesus on marriage: Men can divorce their wives only for adultery and misrepresentation of virginity. Women cannot divorce their husbands at all. A divorced woman cannot remarry while her husband lives, but a man can.

      Paul on marriage. Wives shall submit to their husbands. A Bishop shall be married to only one wife, and shall have a properly patriarchal family.

      Rome was heading left, and Christianity was standing in the way yelling “Stop”

      1 Timothy 2

      9. Let the woman learn in silence with all subjection.
      10. But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence.

      1 Corinthians 14

      34 Let your women keep silence in the churches: for it is not permitted unto them to speak; but they are commanded to be under obedience, as also saith the law.
      35 And if they will learn any thing, let them ask their husbands at home: for it is a shame for women to speak in the church.

      In other words, the Church should socially promote male headship.

      There have been traditionalist christians, communist christians, nazi christians, Hirohito worshipper christians.

      No there have not been. Left Christianity is a step on the path to full absorption by the state. Left Christians go unitarian, and Unitarians go militant atheist, the church turns into a museum, and they get government jobs. Communist Christians are entryists, reinterpreting Jesus as a community organizer, redemption as revolution, and salvation as socialism.

      When they go left they hide the embarrassing parts of the bible, pretty soon they are walking away from the bible altogether, then shortly thereafter Unitarian, then shortly thereafter militant atheist and the Church becomes a museum, or they sell it to the Muslims for a mosque.

      That the bible cannot be made to say anything you like is proven by the propensity of left wing Christians to react to it the way vampires are said to react to it.

      • spandrell says:

        I guess there have ever been no true scotsmen, even in the highlands.

        Christianity didn’t preserve Roman culture. The Roman church did, and that was fortunately a very different animal.

        The fact is, Christianity was tamed in most places through the establishment of national churches subject to political power, especially in the East.

        Where Christianity was not tamed, it periodically tried to push for the singularity. Jan Hus, St. Francis, Luther, Calvin, you name it. There was always some guy starting a movement about being holier than thou, because he could. Protestantism just blew up the only official checks the system had, and we know what happened later.

        Hell even Orthodox lands are a mess, look at what Russian messianism did to them. I wonder what Chinese people think when they read the Karamazov brothers.

        • Red says:

          Religion in general just works better when the military leaders have the last word instead of the priests.

          The early Christan church pushed unlimited immigration, bans on infanticide, the brotherhood of man, and large scale public welfare. The roman church pushed putting the local community first, the hierarchy of man, infanticide is fine as long as you don’t talk about it, and controlled welfare in the form of monasteries that removed crappy people from the gene pool. Hell the Roman church even went as far to engineer the break up of clans though their policy on having to marry distant relations. The Roman church created a “fixed” version of Christianity that worked quite well for a 1000 years.

          • spandrell says:

            The Roman Church broke up the clans so they could enforce their power better. Of course mid term it was an awesome policy to have, but let’s be clear that it was a power grab against local political power.

            Same with papal ordination of bishops and enforce celibacy. It was just a way of strengthen the hierarchy. Which is OK, until it isn’t. Jim notoriously blamed the church for scientific ignorance, persecuting Galileo and all that. Hope Jim isn’t ill, and this is just a conversion à la Auster.

            • jim says:

              The Roman Church broke up the clans so they could enforce their power better. Of course mid term it was an awesome policy to have,

              “Mid term”! Their policy was aimed not at the next decade, but at centuries to come. An organization that can plan for centuries to come and get its way is pretty damned functional.

          • Red says:

            “The Roman Church broke up the clans so they could enforce their power better. Of course mid term it was an awesome policy to have, but let’s be clear that it was a power grab against local political power. ”

            Good policy is almost always the result of group making a policy that helps them in the long term. Bad policy is almost always the result of a group making a policy that helps them in the short term. And the sky is blue.

          • spandrell says:

            Long term is now, and clannishness is something we could use right now. Breeding for universalism might be the undoing of us all in the end.

        • jim says:

          The papacy did not go that far left – celibacy was alarmingly holier than thou and a pretty clear violation of the Gospels, so, change somewhat similar to the evolution of the left, but there is no comparison with the astonishingly rapid evolution of puritanism from Charles the First to Cromwell.

  27. Samson J. says:

    Ahoy Jim, totally and completely off-topic, but since we discussed this in the past I thought of you: I can’t believe it, but Hotmail is telling me I HAVE TO give them a cell phone number to make sure my account is “secure”. Not “recommending”; it’s MANDATORY or my account will be locked. I can’t believe this is really happening. They’re telling me it’s for my own “safety”, and I can’t believe how transparent that is.

    • jim says:

      They are going to lock you out of your account for your own safety.

    • Samson J. says:

      They are offering me the opportunity to use an alternate email account instead of a cell phone number, which makes things less suspicious, but still.

      • jim says:

        Cannot complain if one has an alternate email account.

        Hushmail used to offer free accounts with no password recovery option, though you have to renew it every so often or they shut it down.

        Not sure if they still do. (Passwords are usually recovered by hackers performing a social engineering attack)

        Password recovery is performed by low IQ indian following a script written for low IQ people. If by some mistake they hire a high IQ indian, he is not allowed to use his brains, because he has to follow the rules written for low IQ indians. So an attacker who knows the script can “recover” your password.

  28. Victor says:

    Have you ever seen D. W. Griffith’s Intolerance?

    The statement he makes is very similar to yours.

  29. Zach says:

    The left wins. Why?

    Observe:

    Song:
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FeohN5JMeYY

    Lyrics:
    http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/karnivool/cote.html

    My theory: The song is amazing. The lyrics make it more amazing. Why? The lyrics speak to hearts and not minds. It speaks to “us” in other words. Every man alive can relate to this.

    Result:

    Conservatives lose because their representation in the arts, things that people relate to, is horrifyingly bad. You heard it here first.

    Who can relate to what?

    No reason:

    “So drop me down, let me feel this either way”

  30. B says:

    Christianity was the original transgressive Leftist movement (though an argument could be made for the preceding Jewish heresies like Sadduceanism and Essenism.) It really served as the prototype of all the subsequent ones. Any attempt to have a sustainable Christian government without sliding off into the Leftist Singularity necessitated tons of hypocrisy, unprincipled exceptions, special pleading and the rest of it, embodied most vividly in the Catholic Church of the Middle Ages. Any attempt to actually implement Christianity in real life on any scale rapidly turns into feral Leftism, the Munster Republic, etc.

    Of course, by the standards of original Christianity, today’s Leftists are insanely far to the Left. So what? By the standards of Leftism 100 years ago, today’s Leftists are also insanely far to the Left. It’s an exponential curve. I’m sure that, barring a Restoration, in 100 years Barney Frank will be denounced as a reactionary for his failure to take up a principled stance in favor of mandatory pedophilia, or whatever form the eternal boot stomping on a human face will have taken by then. The point is that all this started with Christianity’s transgression against Judaism in the name of being holier than the High Priest, holier than the Prophets, holier than Moses, etc.

    • jim says:

      I see no long term tendency of Christianity to move left – indeed, under the Holy Roman Empire, Christianity moved rightwards. Similarly, I see no endogenous Greek Orthodox tendency to move left. They are being moved left by external attack.

      Gallicanism and Puritanism, on the other hand, went leftwards very rapidly.

      • Contaminated NEET says:

        Puritanism is a natural, predictable, and likely inevitable consequence of Lutheranism, which is itself a natural, predictable, and likely inevitable consequence of Catholicism. Leftward movement is built into the religion.

        As for the Holy Roman Empire, it was the cradle of Lutheranism, and before that, the Hussites. It doesn’t look like a great example of rightward-moving Christianity to me.

        I don’t know enough about Orthodoxy to judge, but I’ll make a wild guess anyway. It’s probably holding steady because people that want to move left just convert to another faith (secular progressivism). If they can repel the entryists, the Romans will end up there as well.

        • Contaminated NEET says:

          One more thought occurs to me; I want to elaborate on my point about would-be leftwing Orthodox believers converting to progressivism rather than moving their church leftward.

          It reminds of a common and slightly ridiculous objection to evolution: if monkeys became humans, then why are monkeys still around? And why aren’t monkeys becoming humans right now?

          When a radical new doctrine appears, there’s generally enough resistance that some portion of a church rejects it and sticks with the old ways. After that point, if old believers want to change to the new doctrine, they usually just defect to the new church rather than schism again to form a near-clone of the new church. The ecological niche is already filled.

          All of this is to say that if by divine intervention, all forms of progressivism and all forms of Christianity except Orthodoxy disappeared without a trace tomorrow, Orthodox Christianity would recapitulate the Reformation and the leftward spiral. The potential is there. They did produce the Skoptsy, who were at least as deep into the maelstrom as the Quakers, or the Unitarians, if not deeper.

          • VXXC says:

            As long as the conclusion is it’s hopeless so stay on the couch, the conclusion is correct.

            The argument in the long run we’re all dead is always proved true.

            [and I mean argument, not observation].

            Not to suggest doing anything useful, as uber’s don’t do dat, but if you figure out a way to infect the Progs with: It’s Hopeless/Be Useless virus do share it. I’d suggest doing it yourself, but Uber’s don’t do dat work stuff.

            WORD. Here’s a word: Uberlesse Oblige. Sounds like Useless Oblige in English.

          • jim says:

            But, there was no progressive movement derived from Christianity in Russia. The skoptsy were not leftists, did not parallel the puritans or gallicans. Russian progressivism did not have internal Christian roots. The origins of leftism in Russia are Jews and the Tsar himself. Alexander II freed the serfs, a reasonable reform, but one that launched an ever leftwards movement that rapidly got out of control.

        • jim says:

          Leftward movement is built into the religion.

          The engine driving leftism is the struggle for power by being holier than thou, phariseeism, which Jesus condemned in the harshest possible manner.

          Sixteen hundred years of Christianity, no very obvious leftward movement. Puritanism from Charles the First to Cromwell, forty nine years, dramatic and extreme movement left.

          • Dr. Faust says:

            Those are good points but I would look at it from a different angle. Christianity is feminine. Jesus called his followers to turn the other cheek. A masculine religion like Odinism called for his followers to rise up and destroy the ice giants. One is for a tolerance of evil. The other is for its destruction. The feminine is explicitly left and Christ was feminine. While history may not appear as a solid leftward march it was not for a lack of ideology. The same could said for the feminists or the abolitionists. If you recall that Socrates called for freeing the slaves and equal rights for women. His arguments are just as good today as they were then but it wasn’t until the prosperity of technological advance that the slaves could be free and women were liberated. It was not so much the lack of moral underpinnings to the problem but the necessity for slaves and housewives. Once slaves became economically inefficient they were freed. Once women were redundant thanks to washing machines, public schools, and household appliances they were put to work outside the home. The leftist ideology has always been in Christianity. The equality of all men’s souls. The tolerance of evil. None of that changed or had any effect for millennia because it couldn’t. It needed prosperity, technology, and opportunity to become active but their lay a kernel of leftism dormant within Christianity since its inception.

            There are few men in Christianity compared to women for a reason. It prattles endlessly about love because it is a feminine religion and the feminine is the source of leftism. The likely stop to global leftist thought will not be imposed by men but by nature as we either reach the redundancy of human labor or the leftist singularity destroys the whole.

            • jim says:

              The feminine is explicitly left and Christ was feminine.

              There is much truth in that. But, provided Christ’s extremely manly condemnation of Phariseeism is followed, and Paul’s gentler admonitions against excessive religious purity, you don’t get the left singularity.

          • Dr. Faust says:

            It’s not the death toll it’s the dichotomy in their beliefs. If we assume that the gods are an anthropomorphization of the self then it’s easier to understand the multitudes of denominations.

      • Dr. Faust says:

        Do you agree with the belief that any ideology not overtly right will inevitably move left?

      • B says:

        The Holy Roman Empire, the Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox are exactly what I think of when I think of “tons of hypocrisy, unprincipled exceptions, special pleading and the rest of it.” The early Christians would have been aghast. These are examples of Christianity hollowed out. They are to early Christianity what Chernenko’s Communist Party was to the Communist Party of 1919.

        It could be no other way. The original nature of Christianity was transgression against the fundamental laws of Judaism. Kashrut, for instance, the distinction between the Jews and the Nations, or the driving out of the money changers-have you ever wondered what they were doing in the Temple in the first place? The whole point was that Jesus and his followers were so holy that they didn’t need to be bound by the restrictions of the Torah, that they had a better, purer Judaism, that they knew better than the Rabbis, that the existing structure was corrupt and needed to be abolished, that it was your intent rather than your actions that was important, that good intentions and faith outweighed obedience to the Law, that the natural distinctions between men could be erased, that the Covenant with G-d could be revised and reinterpreted at will, that the adherents of this new religion needed to prioritize it over their communities and families. This is pure transgression for its own sake, and it is this that is the essence of Leftism.

        Since the original idea, which was that Jesus would come back in the time of his contemporaries to establish his kingdom on Earth, didn’t work out, the whole thing degenerated into a mess of competing heresies until it was coopted by the Roman Empire, given a bureaucracy and an official truth, and otherwise rendered more or less harmless to its adherents. Did the Russians of 1983 believe in the equal distribution of the means of production? Did they have a faith in the Marxist-Leninist Dialectic? Did they all consider the teaching of Marxism to be omnipotent because it was true? Uh, sure, whatever, pass the vodka, comrade. Where did you get those Levis?

        Nonetheless, even this relatively innocuous Christianity was continuously mutating various Leftist heresies. The Iconoclasts, Hussites, Cathars, Nestorians, Molokans, Jumpers and Leapers, Doukohobors and who knows what else, all came from guys taking the official party literature a bit too seriously for their own good.

        • jim says:

          The Holy Roman Empire, the Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox are exactly what I think of when I think of “tons of hypocrisy, unprincipled exceptions, special pleading and the rest of it.”

          Really? I don’t think so. In what did they deviate from the Christianity of the Gospels? Give me a verse, and a point of doctrine or practice that deviated.

          • B says:

            Well, the lilies of the field and sparrows of the air thing doesn’t seem to have been much reflected in the massive accumulation of wealth by the churches, for one.

            • jim says:

              To the extent that the church massively accumulated wealth, it created the monasteries and nunneries, which performed a superset of the functions of a welfare state, where people who probably could not make it in the outside world were given not merely a handout, but were given jobs, community, and discipline.

              The dissolution of the monasteries in England led to huge problem with beggars and vagrants, which problem the state and society handled with executions, enslavement, and handouts – a considerably less Christian solution.

              Try again.

          • B says:

            Where in the Christian gospels is the creation of a massive wealthy bureaucracy designated for long-term social welfare projects mentioned?

          • B says:

            Like any revolutionary manifesto, the gospels are long on style and short on specifics.There is nothing in there that clearly prohibits almost anything, if done with the right intention. That is the thin edge of the wedge. But there is a clear philosophy of “don’t worry about the material, worry about the spiritual,” which by the time of the medieval Catholic church has magically transformed into “use the spiritual for the material.”

            There is nothing in there that explicitly prohibits a Pope in a close and incestuous relationship with secular power, or the blatant buying and selling of positions in that bureaucracy, or the forbidding of normal sexual relations to the officials of that bureaucracy to keep them from creating dynasties, or the barely-underground sexual extravaganza that their top leadership would devolve into-but I think you have an idea of what the early Christians would have said about that. I’m telling you, it’s the difference between the revolutionary USSR and the Perestroika version.

            • jim says:

              Contemporary Christians, for example Chaucer, said the same things about it as first century Christians would have said about it. That members of the Church hierarchy frequently sinned would surprise no one, least of all Paul. The doctrine was not significantly different, nor were their aspirations.

              Paul arguably authorized celibacy in the same breath as strongly recommending against it. Obviously Paul did not think that “celibate” church officials were very likely to be celibate, but if you believed, or claimed to believe, that they actually would be celibate, you could plausibly claim to be adhering to the new testament, even though obviously deviating from it.

          • B says:

            >Contemporary Christians, for example Chaucer, said the same things about it as first century Christians would have said about it.

            Right. And the second enough of them got serious enough about Christianity to do something, you got the Reformation and the rest of it.

            >Paul arguably authorized celibacy in the same breath as strongly recommending against it.

            He was for it before he was against it! Again, like any revolutionary manifesto there is enough to justify whatever tactical position advances the cause. On one hand, Jesus comes to fulfill the Law, on the other hand he prevents other Jews from obeying the part of it having to do with the shekelim, appears after his death in a vision to Peter and abrogates a huge part of it, etc. Whatever works best, whatever puts asses in seats. Once you arrogate to yourself the ability to renegotiate covenants postfactum (of course, while claiming that whatever innovation you are introducing is completely inherent to the old system’s basis, it’s just that people are too blind to see it,) it’s only a matter of time before your followers, well, follow you. Why not? You can’t just throw out some of the basics, then say to the moment, “stay, thou art so fair!” Who says A must say B, or his followers will.

            • jim says:

              You can’t just throw out some of the basics, then say to the moment, “stay, thou art so fair!”

              Well that is why Christ gets promoted to God. If you say he is just another preacher who changed Judaism somewhat, (Unitarianism) then you can go on changing it. Stick him upstairs to God, you get doctrinal stability at the doctrines of the new testament.

              Which is in fact what happened. The left singularity happened at particular places and times. It does not affect all Christians. That is why the Puritans had to conquer using military force.

              Further, that is why left Christianity always goes Unitarian. They have to demote Jesus to community organizer so that they can correct and improve his doctrines. The fact that they go Unitarian demonstrates that the Gospels are incompatible with leftism

          • B says:

            Not only are you then getting into idolatry and violating common sense (how can a guy be a god? How can you believe in a god that flies around knocking up women?) but you haven’t solved the problem whatsoever. If he’s been promoted to god, then he can talk to anybody and give them the direct software upgrade. See: Paul on the road to Damascus, Peter’s dream as a justification for violating kashrut, etc. Pretty much half the stuff that makes up early Christianity consists of these little upgrades. So you’ve directly set yourself up for more “revelations,” and obviously these revelations will not be of the right-wing variety.

          • Arakawa says:

            “Pretty much half the stuff that makes up early Christianity consists of these little upgrades. So you’ve directly set yourself up for more “revelations,” and obviously these revelations will not be of the right-wing variety.”

            The Church solved this problem very easily, for many centuries. Any new ‘revelation’ that is not utterly trivial in doctrinal implications and perfectly cromulent to Church teaching, was presumed (by the Orthodox Church at least, is still presumed) to be the product of demonic rather than divine inspiration, absent overwhelming evidence to the contrary. Guilty until proven innocent.

        • Red says:

          “or the driving out of the money changers-have you ever wondered what they were doing in the Temple in the first place? The whole point was that Jesus and his followers were so holy that they didn’t need to be bound by the restrictions of the Torah, that they had a better, purer Judaism, that they knew better than the Rabbis, that the existing structure was corrupt and needed to be abolished”

          The Rabbis allowing usury inside the temple was a pretty good example how far they’d fallen from the law of Moses. At the time Judea was full of Pharisees doing holier than games and full of outright corruption that religious authorities ignored or probably profited from. It’s pretty traditional in the bible for a prophet to come forth and tell Jews that they’ve failed to follow the law and their shit stinks. Jesus was just following that well established model.

          • B says:

            I can’t argue with you because it would be like arguing about abolitionism with someone whose view of slavery is informed by Uncle Tom’s Cabin, or about conditions in prerevolutionary Russia with someone who grew up reading Communist sources exclusively.

            If you are interested in the actual historical facts, I recommend you actually read the primary sources of Judaism rather than getting your opinion from Christian agitprop. Specifically, the laws of the shekalim. Maimonides’ Mishne Torah is pretty informative: http://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/946889/jewish/Chapter-One.htm

            As for the difference between the Prophets and Jesus, first, prophecy ceased after the building of the Second Temple. Second, the Torah sets out the criteria for a false prophet clearly. First, we know a false prophet if a good prophecy of his fails to come true. Second, even if his prophecies come true, a prophet who attempts to abrogate one of the commandments, positive or negative, is a false prophet and must be put to death. NONE of the Prophets abrogated a commandment, except for explicitly as a temporary measure (Elijah having the sacrifice contest with the priests of Ba’al, etc.)

            • jim says:

              If you are interested in the actual historical facts, I recommend you actually read the primary sources of Judaism rather than getting your opinion from Christian agitprop.

              That the Jews ditched Torah Judaism shows that there was an intolerable problem with it.

              What Jesus complains about, phariseeism, was something very similar to the left singularity, something very similar to the holier than thou attitudes of today’s leftists.

              Such a program, in power, inevitably leads to crazy self destructive policies – as, predictably, happened. The Romans bent over backwards to accommodate the Jews, but every time the Romans accommodated them, the Jewish leadership would just get even holier.

          • B says:

            Since this is a reactionary website, perhaps we should compare the previous version (Rabbinical Judaism) with the update (Christianity) not by their inherent logic or consistency, but by reactionary parameters applied to their results.

            Christianity has universalist values and refuses to make distinctions between ethne. In fact, its ideal end state is one in which no such distinction exists. Likewise, family explicitly takes a backseat to Christian identity. Applied to Europe, this transformed its inhabitants from a patchwork of ethnicities (extended families linked by genes, language and culture) to the self-identified citizens of monarchic states, then transnational conglomerates, breaking down communal structures, then extended families, then nuclear ones. All the structure between the individual and the state (and its local parish institutions, of course) is seen as an obstacle, a rickety and outdated structure full of pests. In fact, what is the difference between a (post)Christian whose roots stem from England and a (post)Christian born in Rwanda? It is most un(post)Christian to discriminate between the two in a system where there is neither Hellene nor Jew, at least ideally. So you get what you get-different flavors of ice cream, put in a blender. The languages, literature and perspective of the early Christians have all been relegated to the dustbin of history by Christianity, and its modern adherents would find these deeply alien. Quite Progressive.

            Rabbinical Judaism has always placed a premium on ethnic identity and on deep social structure, and has preserved those of its bearers as empires rose and fell. When conditions emerged for the reconstitution of a Jewish state after two millennia, it turned out that Rabbinical Judaism had, in a roundabout way, preserved an adequate number of men of the proper caliber and the proper worldview to make that happen against all odds. Now there is an ethnostate with the language which was spoken millennia ago, cultural and philosophical perspectives emerging from stasis which were unimaginable since the loss of Jewish sovereignty, etc. I’d say that’s pretty reactionary. Which is why the international Left HATES Israel-it just has that bad ant smell.

            Now, Carlyle could, I suppose, be excused for dismissing Rabbinical Judaism and the Jews as “ou’ clothes.” The sad state of the Jewish community in exile perhaps supported this reading (though I am surprised he didn’t pay closer attention to Moses Montefiore and co.) I can’t blame the patron saint of Neoreaction for taking his contemporary brand of muscular Christianity more seriously than its predecessor, given his context. However, if he was to come back to life today and see today’s Presbyterian ministers engaging in globally televised Arab cock-chugging competitions, I suspect he would have revised his opinion. I would definitely pay a month’s worth of income for Carlyle’s take on the World Council of Churches.

            • jim says:

              Since this is a reactionary website, perhaps we should compare the previous version (Rabbinical Judaism) with the update (Christianity) not by their inherent logic or consistency, but by reactionary parameters applied to their results.

              Competition to holier than thou, exemplified by the Pharisees, manifested in large part in competition to see who could get further up the Roman’s noses, which predictably resulted in the Romans going Roman on the Jews.

              The same dynamic played out over and over again in exile, Jews provoking their neighbors, until the surviving Jews went Talmudic, and invented a whole new holy book by creating an elaborate official reinterpretation of the old holy book, creating the Talmud, which explained that everything in the Old Testament actually meant the opposite of what it said.

              That the Jews created the Talmud shows that the Old Testament was intolerably impractical once the Jews could no longer defeat their neighbors. So, if it had to be changed, the quickest and cleanest way was obviously to get in a prophet with divine authority to abrogate the problem bits.

              The new rules meant that competition to be holy would no longer get Jews killed. Instead, you got to be holy not by heroically pissing off people more powerful than oneself, but by ever more creatively lawyering an ever more complicated set of rules, which had the beneficial effect of selecting for verbal intelligence for as long as Judaism was out of power. Should, however, orthodox Jews return to power in Israel, they are going to strangle the country in red tape. Obeying the rules will be an intelligence test that everyone will fail.

              Rabbinical Judaism has always placed a premium on ethnic identity and on deep social structure, and has preserved those of its bearers as empires rose and fell. When conditions emerged for the reconstitution of a Jewish state after two millennia, it turned out that Rabbinical Judaism had, in a roundabout way, preserved an adequate number of men of the proper caliber and the proper worldview to make that happen against all odds. Now there is an ethnostate with the language which was spoken millennia ago, cultural and philosophical perspectives emerging from stasis which were unimaginable since the loss of Jewish sovereignty, etc. I’d say that’s pretty reactionary. Which is why the international Left HATES Israel-it just has that bad ant smell.

              Quite so, but there is a psychotic self contradiction in Rabbinical Judaism. Having created a religion of exile and powerlessness, Rabbinical Judaism cannot handle coming home and having power.

              What was not reactionary was their attempt at socialism, from which they have yet to entirely recover, and their attempt to be a light unto the nations by being more progressive than thou, which is still a serious problem.

              They cannot take back the temple. They have to remain symbolically in exile. Hence the stupid and unsuccessful attempt to be socialist, for Israel to be lefter than thou. They cannot just say “Oh, Hitler was right. One land, two peoples, there will be trouble.” They want Jerusalem, and they do not want Jerusalem. If they really wanted Jerusalem, they would tell every Muslim in the vicinity of the temple “Out or die” and put Rabbis in charge of it on the model of the Christian holy sites in Jerusalem. Christians have the Ark and Muslims have the temple, though Jews would only have to ask politely to get the Ark back. At least Christians keep the Ark politely hidden and ignore it completely, while the Muslims are burrowing into the temple looking for holy magic and damaging it.

              Let us compare Israel with Armenia. The Armenians do bad things to Muslims, because the Muslims are intransigent, and Armenia needs to do bad things to survive, and no one pays the slightest attention. The Jews do bad things to Muslims for the same reasons, and the reason everyone pays attention to it is because the Jews pay attention to it.

            • jim says:

              I can’t blame the patron saint of Neoreaction for taking his contemporary brand of muscular Christianity more seriously than its predecessor, given his context.

              Let us compare Armenia with Israel. Armenia does what it has to, and does not feel bad about it.

          • B says:

            Heh, this is getting good.

            First, the Talmud is not a “book” but more or less the minutes of a bunch of juristic arguments spanning about a millennium, with various anecdotes etc. thrown in. It is the codification of an oral tradition that goes back all the way to Moses, in some form. Judaism as expounded purely in the written Torah was never practiced, because the written Torah is shorthand, with massive data compression. Your model of the Talmud as a creation of exile is wrong-its foundations, the Mishnayot, were set down starting several centuries BCE. Also, the Jews NEVER had the ability to completely defeat their neighbors. We never conquered the entire Promised Land, even in the initial period; the coast remained in the Philistines, for instance. So what?

            The Romans made it very difficult for the Jews to be Jews, playing various universalist games designed to make it impossible to serve G-d first. In this, they were following a tradition set by the Universalist Greeks. In times following the Talmud’s codification, there were still conflicts whenever the dominant power made it impossible for the Jews to be Jews, though these conflicts were more one-sided, Jews not having a land of their own to stand on.

            >if it had to be changed, the quickest and cleanest way was obviously to get in a prophet with divine authority to abrogate the problem bits.

            In fact, the Talmud explicitly states that prophecy is not a valid way of determining changes to the Law.

            Of course, Rabbinical Judaism has sucked up a lot of bad influences in exile, and the default position was generally one of exile and powerlessness, because that was the situation the Rabbis had to adapt to. It’s like an abused child who builds a warped mental world in response to his warped surroundings. However, just like the potential for return from exile and rebuilding of Israel was built into it, the potential for cleansing, reestablishing a religious government (Sanhedrin,) monarchy and rebuilding the Temple is built into it. There are people working in that direction, and have been since at least the first Chief Rabbi, Rav Kook. It hasn’t happened yet-but it will, and things are moving that way.

            >They want Jerusalem, and they do not want Jerusalem.

            True. But more and more, we want Jerusalem.

            >the reason everyone pays attention to it is because the Jews pay attention to it.

            Also true. But given the way things are going, the main external driving force behind paying attention, Western Progressives (many Jewish themselves, unfortunately) will soon have bigger and more immediate problems to worry about. The main internal problem demographic, the Israeli Progressives, are shrinking, having chosen prestige over reproduction. In other words, let’s skate to where the puck is going, not where it is.

            >their attempt to be a light unto the nations by being more progressive than thou

            Being a light unto the nations, a holy nation and a kingdom of priests, is in our national charter for existence. It is basic to the Abrahamic covenant. Even our socialists couldn’t see any other way. Their attempt didn’t work out, but it also didn’t fail. It built a material foundation for what is to come.

            Armenia is a non-starter. It is, as it has always been in its brief periods of semi-independence, a sort of compromise between the surrounding empires, with no claim of greater significance to the outside world. For now they can do what they want with their Muslims, because it doesn’t matter much to anyone outside Armenia. But we have a different situation, with all the advantages and disadvantages that brings.

            What’s this about the Christians having the Arc?

            • jim says:

              [The Talmud] is the codification of an oral tradition that goes back all the way to Moses

              Not it is not. It is the codification of a religious movement that started around two hundred AD at the earliest. Christians at the time monitored the transformation of Judaism, a transformation that subsequently around four hundred AD or so made the spurious claim of ancient roots.

              In fact, the Talmud explicitly states that prophecy is not a valid way of determining changes to the Law.

              Well of course they would say that, since they were in competition with the followers of Jesus who had used prophecy to make changes to the Law. If they admitted that they were making changes in the law because the law as it stood kept getting them into trouble, they would just be conversos.

              What’s this about the Christians having the Arc?

              Supposedly hidden in a Coptic Chapel in Aksun, though so very well hidden that no outsider can verify this. It is certainly true that Coptics in that area have piles of very ancient stuff, though the Ark, if they truly have it, would be a lot more ancient than the rest.

            • jim says:

              Let’s skate to where the puck is going, not where it is.

              If we look at where the puck is going, Judaism is heading away from progressivism, Christianity is being assimilated.

              But Christianity is not becoming progressive. Assimilation results in Christian physical churches becoming museums, Christian organizations becoming first unitarian, then militant atheist.

              The roots of Christianity, far more than the roots of Talmudic Judaism, its Gospels, far more than the Talmud, endorse and support the most fundamentally reactionary institution of them all: The monogamous patriarchal family.

            • jim says:

              Judaism as expounded purely in the written Torah was never practiced, because the written Torah is shorthand,

              When the Torah was translated into from Hebrew into Greek by Jews, those Jews show no indication of ever having heard of the supposedly ancient tradition of the Talmud. They appear to have been entirely unaware that Torah did not say what it said, nor mean what it meant.

              When the Talmud first appeared, Christians at the time were inclined to doubt that Talmudic Jews were legitimately Jewish, and were reluctant to extend existing arrangements that had been made with Torah Jews to Talmud Jews.

          • B says:

            >The roots of Christianity, far more than the roots of Talmudic Judaism, its Gospels, far more than the Talmud, endorse and support the most fundamentally reactionary institution of them all: The monogamous patriarchal family.

            You’d have a pretty hard time supporting that statement, I think. The Christian gospels are ambivalent about family, advising the adherents to abandon theirs if it conflicts with Christianity and stating that the ideal state involves no family whatsoever. Then you have some somewhat misogynistic (yeah, I know, but sometimes the shoe fits) stuff from Paul. That’s that. No explicit framework to go on, hence Christians can’t even agree on whether divorce is acceptable or not.

            Talmudic Judaism, on the other hand, provides a well-developed framework with extensive rights, obligations, contingencies, possibilities, etc. for a family, taking into account human needs, weaknesses, desires, etc., and channeling them into socially productive pathways. For instance, the obligations of a husband to his wife and vice versa sexually are spelled out, and recourse is granted to both up to and including divorce, with extenuating circumstances, etc. A family-less state is explicitly advised against as unnatural and harmful, instead of being held up as an ideal as with Christianity. The man has the upper hand, but the woman has firm rights and claims on him. In short, I would advise you to look a bit more into the subject.

            The most reactionary social institution is the extended family. Monogamy is not required by the Bible by any means, although harems and other licentiousness are discouraged.

            • jim says:

              Then you have some somewhat misogynistic (yeah, I know, but sometimes the shoe fits) stuff from Paul.

              Not misogynistic. If you think that you don’t know the gospels, or else you don’t know women. What you are calling misogyny is essential to a social order where women voluntarily choose to get married young, rather than chasing alpha cock for twenty years. The alternative to Paul’s “misogyny” is the quite real misogyny of marriage without female consent, or else a society that fails to reproduce biologically or culturally. Those are the choices.

              That’s that. No explicit framework to go on, hence Christians can’t even agree on whether divorce is acceptable or not.

              If Christians cannot agree about divorce, it is because some of them are ditching the clear, direct and uncomplicated commandments of the New Testament, which cover the question of divorce, among other things, firmly, thoroughly, and clearly. This ditching of the gospels is usually followed shortly thereafter by going universalist, which is in turn swiftly followed by going militant atheist.

          • B says:

            >What you are calling misogyny is essential to a social order where women voluntarily choose to get married young, rather than chasing alpha cock for twenty years.

            I have the privilege of living in an observant community where the women do not go sober and shamefaced, and where it is considered good that a married woman adorns herself to look good in her husband’s eyes, and a single one to look good for suitors. Yet the women here marry young, have lots of children and show no signs of turning into alpha cock-chasing hooers. Tell me, Jim, what are we doing wrong? Or is it that Paul was as wrong here as everywhere else?

            >If Christians cannot agree about divorce, it is because some of them are ditching the clear, direct and uncomplicated commandments of the New Testament, which cover the question of divorce, among other things, firmly, thoroughly, and clearly.

            Which “commandments” themselves are the warrantless abrogation of actual explicit commandments in the Written and Oral Torah. Well, so much for all that “I come to fulfill the Law” stuff. Was there a divorce crisis in Talmudic Judaism that we’re not hearing about?

            >This ditching of the gospels is usually followed shortly thereafter by going universalist, which is in turn swiftly followed by going militant atheist

            Let me refer you to the original point, which is that once you just chuck some commandments, you are opening the door to revising all of them, at which point it’s a free-for-all.

            • jim says:

              I have the privilege of living in an observant community where the women do not go sober and shamefaced,

              I am pretty sure they do go sober, and as for shamefaced, where does Paul command women to be shamefaced or unattractive? If your community works with consensual marriage, it is furtively following Pauline prescriptions, not Torah or even Talmudic prescriptions, the Talmudic prescriptions only being workable with non consensual marriage.

              Let me refer you to the original point, which is that once you just chuck some commandments, you are opening the door to revising all of them, at which point it’s a free-for-all.

              But those churches that ditch the commandments and keep Jesus and the gospels, do not revise all of them, and there is no free for all.

              Conversely, when under progressive pressure, they do ditch the commandments of Jesus, they shortly thereafter ditch Jesus, demoting him to community organizer, and ditch the gospels, going Unitarian, and soon after going Unitarian, go militant atheist.

              Jesus was promoted to God to avoid a free for all, and as long as he stays God, no free for all. Conversely, when the Church bends under pressure, they wind up demoting Jesus.

          • B says:

            >enforced by the most dreadful means, which is something that Jews have not been doing since the Talmud.

            Again, read the actual Bible. There have been Jews lax in observance going back as far as there have been Jews. Even our first king, and many after him. In the Second Temple period, the High Priest would enter the Holy of Holies with a rope around his leg, so they could drag him out if he dropped dead. It takes an awful lot to get the most dreadful means applied to you, and always did.

            >Talmudic Jews today, all of them, practice the other extreme. The National Religious party, which received an insignificant vote, was not very National.

            That’s because the National Religious party collapsed a couple of years ago-we have a many-party system. Bayit Yehudi (the Jewish Home) got ten percent of seats in the last elections. Its leader, Bennett, was a commando in one of the local equivalents to Delta Force. It doesn’t get much more national than that. Imagine GEN Boykin as Speaker of the House. Never happen.

            • jim says:

              Israel’s most pressing problem is that if it annexes the territories, it finds itself with two million hostile voters who want to kill Jews, if it gives them independence, the two state solution, it finds itself with an enemy within artillery range dedicated to the destruction of Israel.

              The obvious solution is at a minimum to proudly abandon democracy, and possibly do some ethnic cleansing as well – respond to provocations by clearing the area in which the provocation occurred.

              Let us see what Bayit Yehudi’s position on this is:

              “Full autonomy with transportation contiguity of the Palestinian Authority-controlled territories: Arab can get from any point to any point in the West Bank without checkpoints and soldiers.”

              In other words, they will not give the Arabs democracy, but will continue to feel really bad about not doing so.

              In the US, what would happen with the Indians is that the settlers would buy some land from the Indians. The Indians would get drunk and stay drunk. Eventually they would wake up with a bad hangover, no money, no whiskey, no food, and no hunting grounds, whereupon they would horribly murder some settler women and children. Whereupon the settlers would ethnically cleanse the Indians. Israel has 101 excuses to acquire land, and the Bayit Yehudi is happy to reject all of these excuses. Even if they cannot today propose a policy of ethnic cleansing, they could be psychologically working towards it.

        • B says:

          >It is the codification of a religious movement that started around two hundred AD at the earliest.

          Untrue. The Mishnayot date from several centuries BCE. Tefillin, which are not mentioned explicitly in the written Torah and only come from a Talmudic interpretation, have been found in the Kumran caves, from the 1st century BCE, and there is no reason to assume they were not worn previously.

          >Well of course they would say that, since they were in competition with the followers of Jesus who had used prophecy to make changes to the Law.

          This rule comes straight from the written Torah’s laws on false prophets. Jesus was neither the first nor last such produced by Judaism.

          >If they admitted that they were making changes in the law because the law as it stood kept getting them into trouble, they would just be conversos.

          Not particularly. Since Talmudic juristic procedure has a lot of leeway built into it, adapting to circumstances is its trademark. “By this shall you live,” etc.

          >Supposedly hidden in a Coptic Chapel in Aksun, though so very well hidden that no outsider can verify this. It is certainly true that Coptics in that area have piles of very ancient stuff, though the Ark, if they truly have it, would be a lot more ancient than the rest.

          Forgive my skepticism-that seems a bit thin as far as evidence is concerned. We have a tradition that it is buried in the Temple Mount.

          • jim says:

            The Mishnayot date from several centuries BCE.

            No they do not. They were written by Judah ha-Nasi around two hundred AD, which was the beginnings of what over the next two hundred years became the Talmud.

          • B says:

            No, they were not. Yehudah Hanasi codified them, but the content goes back a long way before him. If you are suggesting that he made them up out of thin air, the burden of proof is on you. You also have the problem of explaining why all this innovation was unquestioningly accepted by the huge diaspora in the non-Roman world, and what the Jews did for laws before then (looking at the written Torah, it is obvious that it’s nowhere near a complete body of jurisprudence, that massive areas of jurisprudence are only hinted at, and that living exclusively by it would have been like trying to live exclusively by the US constitution.) Occam’s Razor pretty much says that the traditional version, which is that Hanasi codified what already existed, is the most parsimonious.

            • jim says:

              Yehudah Hanasi codified them, but the content goes back a long way before him

              How would you, or anyone else, know?

              And how could this content have existed before ha-Nasi, and leave no trace or indication at all?

              You also have the problem of explaining why all this innovation was unquestioningly accepted by the huge diaspora in the non-Roman world

              It was accepted over a period of centuries, because Torah Judaism was unworkable and suicidal, for pretty much the same reasons as it was unworkable and suicidal in the time of Jesus.

          • B says:

            Because he did not live in a vacuum. So if he had just showed up and said out of the blue “Rabbi Akiva said X,” his contemporaries would have either said “who?” or “no, he didn’t.” The contents and ascriptions are highly detailed and specific.

            If it was so unworkable and suicidal, how did it survive so long? At that point, it had been 700 years since the destruction of the First Temple. The Jews of Babylonia had been there that long. Hell of a track record for something that doesn’t work.

            • jim says:

              So if he had just showed up and said out of the blue “Rabbi Akiva said X,”

              Ha-Nasi was the hereditary religious leader of his community. So if he said “Rabbi Akiva said X”, Rabbi Akiva was probably sitting in the audience and honored to be mentioned, and entirely unworried as to whether this as an accurate rendition of what Rabbi Akiva had in fact said.

              Ha-Nasi was in a position to totally make stuff up from nothing if he felt like it. He probably did not totally make stuff up from nothing, but rather stretched stuff as necessary to fit, as has been common practice with a great many religious innovators.

            • jim says:

              If it [Torah Judaism] was so unworkable and suicidal, how did it survive so long?

              The Old Testament commands the Jews to massacre their neighbors. Pre Talmud historians report the Jews to be dangerously warlike fanatics prone to massacring their neighbors. This was an extremely unsafe posture for a province of the Roman empire, and a considerably worse posture for a people in exile.

              The Talmud reinterprets those disturbing parts of the Old Testament to say the opposite of what they say and mean the opposite of what they mean.

              Post Talmud historians report the Jews to be timid and unwarlike – a considerably safer posture for people in exile

          • B says:

            Rabbi Akiva had been dead for some time at that point. Further, the Talmud records a Halakhically conflict between the Exilarch and a senior Rabbi that ended with the former’s abject capitulation to the latter, as well as embarrassing stories about Yehuda Hanasi’s errors, punishment from the heavens and subsequent recovery. But since you don’t know any of this, not apparently care to, an would rather snow me with things you pull out of your orifice about the Babylonian Talmud being written in Greenland 6KYA, I doubt there is a point to this discussion. If you actually care to know the facts before arguing about them, a good primer is Lau’s The Sages.

            • jim says:

              Rabbi Akiva had been dead for some time at that point.

              I wondered how you knew that, so looked up Rabbi Akiva.

              It is perfectly obvious that the Rabbi Akiva of the Talmud is a fictional character, because the supposed events of his life are Aesopian – see, for example the story “All that God does is for the good.” If the events of his life are fictional probably his words and doctrine are also. If Rabbi Akiva’s words and doctrine are fictional, then all pre 200AD sources for the Talmud are fictional.

          • B says:

            Not so. There is a clear distinction in Talmudic study between halacha and aggada. The fantastic stuff is aggada, meaning, parable serving to illustrate a particular point. To say that because a particular detail of a story about someone, or the whole story itself, was exagerrated, therefore no such person existed and all stories about his life are fictional is to a) miss the point of the parable, b) throw the baby out with the bathwater.

            • jim says:

              You implicitly concede that Rabbi Akiva did not live the life he supposedly lived. Why then believe he said the words he supposedly said?

              Or that he existed at all.

              When ha-Nasi cites Rabbi Akiva as a source, it is as if he was to cite Little Red Riding Hood and Chicken Little as sources. Obviously ha-Nasi was making it all up in the third century AD, and at the time did not seriously intend or expect people to believe that Akiva had said this stuff, or even existed.

          • B says:

            Jim, you’re a smart guy and I respect the hell out of you, but on this issue you are clearly out of your depth and grasping. Why don’t we put the Talmudic debate on hiatus, you read some of the primary sources and Rabbinical literature instead of learning about slavery from the writings of John Brown, look at Judaism on its own terms, and we’ll revisit at your leisure.

          • B says:

            And while you’re going through it, ponder this. You are saying that “Torah Judaism” (which never existed in the way you think it did, but nevermind that) was maladaptive, because it made its adherents overly combative. Yet you yourself said:

            “The history of Homo Sapiens is one of tribes winning, and people who submit to governments dying in slavery. In the male line, westerners are largely descended from those who resisted the Roman Empire in the west, while those who submitted, perished without descendents in the male line.”

            So pick one. Is fighting the Romans against all odds adaptive or maladaptive?

            In reality, the Jews after the Assyrian exile were to one degree or another more or less continuously subject to foreign rulers. When those rulers behaved reasonably, taxing the Jews but not forcing them to choose between their physical and national existence by attacking the pillars of Judaism, the Jews submitted. See the story of how “Alexander” became a kosher name, or how the Second Temple was built. When the rulers did things like desecrating the Temple, forbidding circumcision and Torah study, etc., the Jews took up arms even with the certainty that they would lose. See the events of Hanukkah.

            After the codification of the Talmud, not much changed in principle. The Jewish revolts against Gallus and Heraclius are examples, as are the wars of the Khazars, who were ruled by an elite following Rabbinical Judaism. Maimonides (it doesn’t get more Rabbinical than Maimonides) writes: ” This is why our kingdom was lost and our Temple was destroyed and why we were brought to this; for our fathers sinned and are no more because they found many books dealing with these themes of the star gazers, these things being the root of idolatry, as we have made clear in Laws Concerning Idolatry. They erred and were drawn after them, imagining them to be glorious science and to be of great utility. They did not busy themselves with the art of war or with the conquest of lands, but imagined that those studies would help them. Therefore the prophets called them “fools and dolts” (Jer. 4:22). And truly fools they were, “for they walked after confused things that do not profit” (I Sam. 12:21 and Jer. 2:8).” He wrote this almost a millennium after the codification of the Talmud.

            Eventually, with enough time and suffering in the Diaspora, a sort of quietism became the norm for most Jews (though not all-check out the Habbani of Yemen.) However, the greatness of the Oral Torah, i.e., Rabbinical Judaism, is its adaptability. When we were blessed with the opportunity to return, our people again sprung forth warriors. True, they were not religious at first, and there is much to be said about this, but now a very large percentage of Israel’s combat and special operations troops comes from the National Religious community.

            • jim says:

              So pick one. Is fighting the Romans against all odds adaptive or maladaptive?

              Well, the fact that the Jews are still around and numerous, when so many other peoples are gone and forgotten, would indicate that it is adaptive.

              When we were blessed with the opportunity to return, our people again sprung forth warriors.

              If it was up to religious Jews, Israel would not exist. Darwinism made secular Jews possible. Secular Jews made Israel possible.

              The Talmud permits all the bad stuff Jews had to do to survive as a people in exile, and forbids all the bad stuff Jews have to do as a people with a homeland. Or at least that is how it still seems to be interpreted.

          • B says:

            BTW, if you’d spent half as much time reading the Torah as you had proclaiming your opinions on it, you would have noticed that it does NOT command the Jews to massacre their neighbors. It commands the Jews coming out of Egypt to wipe out the Seven Nations inhabiting the Land, and to wipe out Amalek in all generations. On the other hand, it expressly prohibits them to attack their neighbors Moav and Edom, to take anything without payment from them as they pass through the land, including water, or to even pass through their land without express permission. With Sihon, regarding whom the Jews were not commanded, they requested passage through his land on the same terms, which he refused and came out to fight them, at which point they wiped him and his people out. Later, the Jews form alliances with their neighbors, and the Tyrean ones are instrumental in building the Temple. Later still, the Jews are told by G-d through Jeremiah not to fight against the Babylonians conquering them. This is a bit different from “dangerously warlike fanatics prone to massacring their neighbors.”

            • jim says:

              it does NOT command the Jews to massacre their neighbors

              Iraq has written history going all the way back, and they are descended from the Amorites, so you still have an outstanding genocide order against all of them west of the Euphrates. If the Israelis had killed everyone on the list, they would have ethnically cleansed all the lands between Egypt and the Euphrates.

              And there is, which created so much trouble in the Roman Empire, a standing order to eradicate heretical neighboring cities.

              If thou shalt hear say in one of thy cities,
              which the LORD thy God hath given thee to dwell
              there, saying,

              Certain men, the children of Belial, are gone
              out from among you, and have withdrawn the
              inhabitants of their city, saying, Let us go and
              serve other gods, which ye have not known;

              Then shalt thou inquire, and make search, and
              ask diligently; and, behold, if it be truth, and
              the thing certain, that such abomination is
              wrought among you;

              Thou shalt surely smite the inhabitants of that
              city with the edge of the sword, destroying it
              utterly, and all that is therein, and the cattle
              thereof, with the edge of the sword.

              If you have a theocratic monarchy this is more reasonable than it sounds. If they are not following the King’s religion, they are in obedience to some other authority in this world, which authority is a security threat to the Kingdom, which this worldly security threat needs to be dealt with – and will usually be dealt with by the threat, rather than the reality, of massacre.

              If, on the other hand, you have a bunch of wild eyed religious fanatics with no King in charge of them, which was the situation at times during the Roman Empire, this kind of commandment is a huge problem. You get situations similar to the recent civil war in Algeria, where FIS and GIS decided to kill all Algerians less holy than their extremely holy selves.

              This sort of commandment has a bad reputation, because of what happens when you get the situation Jesus complained about (religious leaders competing for authority and prestige in this world on the basis of claims of superior holiness). In that situation, those deemed insufficiently holy are apt to get killed.

              Religious conformity enforced with fire and sword works OK if soldiers are in charge of priests, for the soldiers are apt to err in the direction of too much tolerance for heresy, rather than too little, but when priests are in charge of soldiers, is apt to become extremely nasty.

          • B says:

            There was no commandment to wipe out the Amorites; they declared war on the Israelites and were beaten, end of story. Further, we do not consider that we know the lineage of today’s Arabs, because they are so mixed; if we did, they would be considered Ishmaelites, from an entirely different lineage than the Amorites. Further, there was no commandment to wipe out the members of the Seven Nations residing outside Israel.

            The commandment to eliminate an idolatrous city only applies to a Jewish city the majority of whose inhabitants have turned to idolatry-not to a non-Jewish city. Further, the Sages say that there are three things that have never been and never will be: an apostate city (to be destroyed,) a rebellious son (to be put to death,) and an infected house (to be razed.)

            • jim says:

              The commandments, individually and taken as a whole, command religious uniformity and exclusivity, enforced by the most dreadful means, which is something that Jews have not been doing since the Talmud. Your cities are full of Jews that are not very Jewish.

              Talmudic Jews today, all of them, practice the other extreme. The National Religious party, which received an insignificant vote, was not very National.

          • B says:

            Answer posted below, by mistake.

        • B says:

          >But Christianity is not becoming progressive. Assimilation results in Christian physical churches becoming museums, Christian organizations becoming first unitarian, then militant atheist.

          That’s pretty no true Scotsman, but ok. However, there are plenty of Christian churches with communities around them. These communities are often quite devout, and do a great job of providing the Cathedral’s muscle. It would be a very bad day at the NSA if all the devout Mormons called in sick, and if the Baptists did, the whole DoD would shut down.

          • jim says:

            Devout Mormons are not progressive, so if the NSA is full of devout Mormons, the Cathedral probably trusts them even less than they trust the army.

            And as Mencius Moldbug has argued, the state department is in a condition of cold war and proxy war with the Army.

          • B says:

            The Cathedral has no idea who the NSA is full of, and the Mormon squares and assorted Aspies there just go to work and do their jobs, so it stays that way. They have made their rapprochement with the Union a long time ago, and keep up their side of the bargain.

    • Red says:

      It was the democratization of religion that set off the protestant reformation in Germany. It wasn’t a natural outgrowth of Catholicism.

      One of the big problems with Catholic feudalism was how successful it was at producing high quality people. Once you’ve breed smart, successful men in large numbers they begin to think that they can make choices about religion, government, and politics just as well as their lord or bishop. This leaves them prey to demagogues like Luther and insane movements like Protestantism.

  31. spandrell says:

    Well Jesus was not northern european so he had better tolerance to alcohol. That the puritans saw reality over their religious goggles is a good point in my book.

    • Dr. Faust says:

      Are you stating that there is a race more divinely attuned to win a drinking contest than the Irish?

      • Steve Johnson says:

        Define win.

        Number of drinks you can consume before passing out?

        Ability to drink without drinking to the point where you pass out and in the long term it ruins you life?

        The first might be a contest some Irishman might win (although my money would be on a Russian). For the second I’ll take someone of Mediterranean heritage.

        • jim says:

          People who are immune from hangovers are generally also immune from addiction and also metabolize alcohol at a very high rate. These traits tend to go together.

          • Art says:

            That’s interesting. Do you happen to remember the source?
            I am immune from hangovers despite consuming large quantities of alcohol.
            I have also been consuming other substances for the past 30 years without getting addicted. Not that I never form a habit or a physiological dependency, rather whenever it starts interfering with my life – quitting and enduring the withdrawal seems like an easy and obvious choice.

            I have always wondered what kind of evil power forces junkies to continue taking heroin after it is no longer enjoyable and causes nothing but pain and misery. I am sure it is not the fear of withdrawal sickness.

    • Red says:

      And yet the Puritan solution and the Islamic solution failed to solve the problem.

      You have to breed the abuse of alcohol out of the population, not restrict it in endless holier than though games. Give the drunks so much they die from it early and often and by the 3ed generation the levels of abuse will level off.

  32. Zach says:

    Like is Faust.

    Dr Faust, I think you mean smart people.

    “How many religious geniuses are there”

    The entire history of NA claims this.

    Right?

    • Dr. Faust says:

      I don’t think people make decisions based on reason and evidence regardless what they claim. I believe they form their beliefs largely on biases and prejudices and then seek out the evidence which supports their claim. Certain studies have confirmed this belief.

      How many versions of history are their? How much revisionist history exists now? There are nearly as many interpretations of history as there are interpretations of the bible. At some point it leads to conclude that history is as amorphous as the bible and what a person reads in it a reflection of themselves.

      I think of myself as a fair, balanced, and rational person willing to challenge any belief that I have. At some point I realized that is probably not true. Now I try and assume I’m biased and don’t know the answer. This naturally leads me to agnosticism and uncertainty on most issues. Since everything is challenge how can anyone be so sure of themselves? I can’t and I doubt others can be as well.

      My hopes for the truth lies in technology which is why evidence against the singularity is something I’m interested in. Maybe once we have strong AI, if that’s possible, we’ll be able to program a computer to do our thinking for us since it doesn’t seem to matter about our intelligence since we can’t use it properly anyway.

      In an interview with Roman Vampolskiy said that strong AI could be designed outside of a lab. That a group of college students could create it just as easily as someone at MIT so I fail to see how the singularity is going to be halted. Estimates at strong AI put the overall productivity increase only at 5% annually but those could easily be wrong. Vampolskiy believes strong AI is more dangerous and less controllable than nuclear fusion.

      • jim says:

        At some point it leads to conclude that history is as amorphous as the bible and what a person reads in it a reflection of themselves.

        I don’t see this. All versions of Christianity are pretty similar, when you compare them to all and any versions of Islam, or all and any versions of Buddhism, or all any versions of Hinduism.

        You can scarcely tell the difference between one version of Islam and another, because they are so dramatically different from any and every version of Christianity

        Versions of Christianity that deviate significantly from standard Christianity invariably go universalist, ceasing to be Christian, or, like the Mormons, whip up their own distinctively different bible.

        The Bible says what it says, and what it says is clear enough. There are some areas of wiggle room, but for most of what matters, not much wiggle room.

        • Zach says:

          It doesn’t matter what the Religious books say. Religion, and more specifically Christianity is a cultural phenomenon. Hardly having anything to do with a hard reading of the bible. Smart people are better at making a book say whatever they want it to. Probably why it was such a success. Had to be why.

          There is no reason in that madness. And the madness fostered great societies. Somehow culture ended up the better.

          “Men are apt to believe anything” Indeed they are.

          It’s my belief that whatever the Bible says, it says this:

          Do good.
          Do not not do good.

          People know what “good” is. To me the Koran reads like the Bible (shock/horror/gasp) and how much did that matter? It doesn’t. Because it doesn’t matter what the words say, it matters what the culture says. The same culture that fosters smart people believing stupid things.

          Faust made some good points. His first paragraph is accurate.

          • Zach says:

            Whatever the Bible says is quite a bit different from what it says.

            🙂

          • jim says:

            To me the Koran reads like the Bible

            Then you have not read either one all that much.

            All Christian religions are somewhat alike (except for the ones that are going Unitarian and are in the process of ditching the bible, which these days is most of them), and they are alike in ways that reflect the bible. All Muslim religions are alike, and strikingly different from Christian religions, and they are alike in ways that reflect the Koran.

            The fact that absolutely zero Christians took violent action against “piss christ”, they all turned the other cheek, every single one in the entire world, while hundreds of thousands of Muslims committed acts of violence in response to cartoon Mohammed directly reflects the behavior that their scriptures commands.

            Muslims kill about as many in nine months as the Spanish Inquisition killed in seven hundred years, because the Koran directly and explicitly commands them to do so.

        • Dr. Faust says:

          While all Christians believe in sin there are few who agree on what that is. While all Christians believe in the supremacy of Christ’s teachings when it contradicts Old Testament commandments, none can really agree on what he taught. Charles Manson read from the bible and did the Archbishop of Canterbury. One believed it called him to start a race war, the other to instill homosexual bishops. The Westboro Baptist Church believes homesexuality is a captial offense. There are hundreds of denominations all varying degrees of belief divergent enough from others to establish their own church. The Catholics believe in the Saints and the sanctity of Rome. I could go on but each culture, people, and era instills their own versions of the bible. They all read from the same book and draw their own conclusions. They see what they want to see. That is to say they see themselves and then project that onto the world and use the bible to justify it.

          Perhaps mainstream Catholicism holds a consistent lineage but only by degrees. The High Inquisitor believed heresy not only an irredeemable sin but a disease which could spread to others and that the best way to root out evil was through torture and execution. The early pagan converts to Christianity evangelized just like the modern day Christian Evangelists only they murdered anyone who refused to convert. Our knowledge and technology forces the Christians to re-evaluate their beliefs and then come up with absurd creationist museums to justify that the world is 6000 years old.

          Even if we reduce the religion to its most finite ethos then few can agree. Do we forgive or do we stone our children to death for disobedience? How do we love our enemy when we’re commanded to execute him?

          • jim says:

            You misrepresent Charle’s Manson’s beliefs. His inspiration to start a race war was not derived from the Bible, but from rock music lyrics heard under the influence of LSD.

            As for the inquisition, if the inquisition is your example of Christians being violent for religious reasons, you are mighty hard up for examples. You would be better off arguing the thirty years war, but the thirty years war, though bloody, is atypical of Christians. Belfast is an oddity, Beirut is normal.

            The Inquisition killed as many in seven hundred years as Muslims do in a few months. On average, over a period of forty years, the communists killed three times as many each day, as the inquisition did in seven hundred years.

  33. Zach says:

    I think Jim has the most coherent worldview of any person I’ve read.

    …that being said, I think he’s wrong. Smart people are apt to believe stupid things. Social Biology basically puts this on an altar. Undisputed.

    • Steve Johnson says:

      But thinking clearly is difficult and our “cognitive elite” aren’t getting training in it – in fact they’re trained in the opposite – how to cut off lines of thought that lead to dangerous conclusions, how to fail to notice patterns (in fact, to hold as an ideal that pattern recognition itself is evil), how to fail to recognize flaws in an argument if the speaker is politically favored, etc.

      Maybe they’re not stupid – but they sure as hell are functionally stupid – because they’re incapable of thinking. As Greg Cocrane said recently:

      Sometimes the clues aren’t there yet, sometimes no-one has put them together – but ignorance is a minefield, not least because of the nasty way in which one thing leads to another. You start out trying to breed a pig with more bacon and before you know it you’re arguing that medieval evolution made the Jews smarter.

      (read the whole thing here or http://westhunt.wordpress.com/2013/05/23/the-end-of-science/ if the comments don’t allow links)

      Since ignorance is a minefield and you never know when you’re going to find a career ending conclusion it’s safer to not find anything at all but since you still need to publish it’s best to just make up your results. Everyone knows what the correct results are anyway, right?

      • Zach says:

        Yes, everyone knows official results but not correct ones. Thanks for the comment. I’ll check the link.

  34. Zach says:

    If smart people didn’t believe stupid things religion wouldn’t exist today.

    Just sayin;

    • jim says:

      If you want to believe in leprechauns, there are no empirical observations stopping you. If you want to believe in equality, there are empirical observations stopping you. So you can believe in leprechauns without being stupid. It is a lot harder to believe in equality without being stupid.

      • Zach says:

        Not the point.

        • jim says:

          Then what is the point?

          • Zach says:

            Your distinction (in reason) fails to accept what is. Trading one dumb belief for another dumb belief that both spawn from the same hive seems peculiar. In essence suggesting one is a good dumb belief and one is a bad dumb belief. etc.? Not so. And where it is more untrue, then makes me more right.

            Thus smart people believe stupid things.

            I apologize for that day. I had a “thing” at the house. And when I’m inebriated, I tend to talk (not think) through my fingers. doh!

    • Red says:

      “If smart people didn’t believe stupid things religion wouldn’t exist today.”

      Have you considered the benefits that religions bring? I doubt it. Most “smart people” dismiss religion without even investigating the benefits that such system brings to the group as a whole. So far the wages of atheism has been death, destruction, and genocide and yet most “smart people” project these attributes onto which ever religion they oppose.

      The truth of a system maters much less than the benefits that system brings the group. It’s absolutely impossible to rule a nation without a religion. Good religions bring unity in peace and war, good breeding, hygiene, and order. You don’t have to be believe the truth of a particular religion in order to realize propagating it brings good things to you, your family, and your people.

      • Zach says:

        Of course I have considered the benefits. This is not clear?

        • Zach says:

          Hi Red!

          Why did you doubt that I haven’t considered the benefits religious brings “in theory”? I’m tired of atheism, and their loser poster boys. What a waste of time to write a book suggesting “God is not Great”, “The God Delusion” and even the guy that was the most accurate yet “Breaking the Spell”.

          All three books sucked. They were fucking terrible.

          In short: I’m not one of those fellas. I quite like Christianity, and I analyzing the Religions, their Books, is missing the point. That’s all.

          “It’s absolutely impossible to rule a nation without a religion.”

          Now this is interesting. Is it? Is it really? What if you could choose your nation. Then, even under manipulated circumstances, then what?

          You might be right.

          Earlier I was speaking “for the bible”. I think I said:

          “Do good
          Do not not do good”

          But clearly, that interpretation is manufactured, as it should be. And I meant to include that the quote above is my interpretation of THE interpretation.

          My point is that the book can be many things yet people will make it good.

          I consider the Ten Commandments for example, to be a loose reading of Natural Rights.

          • Red says:

            Zach,
            Religion is the basis for all large scale hierarchy societies. Any smart person who can look past what religion says and what religion does can see this. Now mind you this is using the broad definition of a religion, not the narrow definition that progressives favor. Communism, environmentalism, Americanism, and Shintoism is a religion with this definition. It’s the glue that binds people together with a bunch of unrelated people. It’s not an accident that all the earliest stone buildings we know of were all religious in nature.

            Show me a dumb religious idea that smart people actually believe(they actually do actions based on the idea) and I’ll give you even odds that I can show a benefit to believing in or acting on that doctrine.

  35. Zach says:

    People have to believe stupid things.

    For example: “If men are to believe anything at all, it is best that they believe in Christianity”. <—- Not a perfect quote, but from memory, that basically sums it up.

    Men are prone to believe stupid things just as culture has been raped and force people to believe more stupid things.

    I think I have the coherent view here. I wouldn't be so confident if my friends were the opposite of what is claimed.

  36. Zach says:

    Okay I will never use the term “uber” again. 😉

  37. Dr. Faust says:

    On the other hand, too much tolerance for hostile theocratic alien outside belief systems is likely to result in the official theocracy being infiltrated and overthrown by a more passionate, more self righteous, and more repressive belief system, as happened to theocratic Anglicanism.

    Or like Islam overthrowing secular Europe.

    If the official belief system bans too many heresies, as it does today, science and technology stagnates, because the scientific and technological way of thinking comes to be deemed hostile, subversive, and low status.

    You’ve stated this before, that the technological singularity will not happen on cue. That innovation is slowing and will eventually halt because the leftist singularity. I’m not convinced. What further evidence can you provide to support your claims showing the stagnation of innovation?

    • jim says:

      What is wrong with my previous arguments?

      Tallest western building, last man on the moon, planes stopped getting faster, cars became humbler, all in 1970-1972.

      And if we looked at why it stopped, we see in the Challenger Inquiry, global warming, the ITAR project, and so on and so forth, stupid people in charge of the smart people. Murray’s cognitive elite is demonstrably dumb, as the Challenger inquiry revealed that those in charge could not understand the stuff they were signing off on.

      The Climategate files and the Challenger inquiry reveal a ruling elite too stupid to operate a technologically advanced society. New York and California show the US getting dirtier, poorer, and more primitive.

      • Zach says:

        Cars are not humbler. Not even close. That market continued as one would hope.

        Murray’s elite is what I said before: smart people believing stupid things. Basically the problem with stupid culture.

        Culture used to have spine (culture was wiser than population), now it is the chef’s choice. Culture is now creating culture.

        • Red says:

          Car inflation has been huge. To get the type of power you could get in 1972 in modern car you have to pay something on the order of 40-60k. You can still get fast powerful cars, but it costs a forfeiture.

          • Zach says:

            Power? HA! Inflation is as expected.

            Nothing to do with power. All to do with turning a track in a sufficient time.

            Power is easy. Unlike the 70s, merely creating a beast is not the optimal result.

            Of course Jim knows more than me (DUH!). You think I know peeps knew the shuttle goes KABOOM!?

            Chipping away here, but I’ll start with that.

            And Jim I actually disagree with one point. Let me quote:

            “It is a lot easier to believe stupid things if you are in fact stupid”

            Not true. That’s the problem. Maybe my life is a lie, but def not true brah!

            Logically true. Smart people will settle on that fact, but it’s just false. My friends, for example, are uber… and they believe stupid things. Sad I know. But it’s true of them as it is true of others.

        • jim says:

          Murray’s elite is what I said before: smart people believing stupid things.

          Murray’s elite signed off on papers that told them in no uncertain terms that the space shuttle was going to explode, and failed to realize what they were signing off on. Then there is the World Bank that does not know the difference between a positive feedback loop and a negative feedback loop, and Obama’s speech writers and fact checkers that did not know the difference between the Maldives and Malvinas.

          Jared Diamond’s “Guns Germs and Steel” has a target audience that is pretty stupid.

          It is a lot easier to believe stupid things if you are in fact stupid. So, selecting for piously moronic beliefs selects for morons.

          • Zach says:

            All true. I agree. Except for one thing…

            I know peeps that are (in fact) uber. And I mean UBER!

            They believe stupid things, thus I believe a dumb culture leads to dumb people.

            • jim says:

              In the present environment, it is difficult to know what people really believe. They could be lying about their beliefs.

              Recollect that the National Review staff that were so horrified by Derbyshire’s beliefs, were also horrified when during the convention they were assigned rooms in an area with too many blacks.

              Also, people may have beliefs that are intolerable, and express these beliefs in a way that is profoundly unclear. For example, in the debate over Zimmerman, it became apparent that many people believe that blacks have a right to be treated with special respect, and a right to respond to that respectful behavior with abuse, contempt, and derision, that a white man should treat a black man as a serf would treat an aristocrat, and a black man should treat a white man as aristocrat would treat a serf. This belief is true, in the sense that in elite environments, you had better act like that if you want to avoid trouble. But though true, inexpressible, cannot be expressed in any coherent words. So instead, the speaker misrepresents his own beliefs, making them seem stupider than they are.

          • Dr. Faust says:

            I have to disagree with the assertion that smart people can’t believe stupid things. How many religious geniuses are there? Have you ever tried to debate something not PC with mensa people? Bring up race, sex, or anti-democratic ideology and their brains will shut down.

            • jim says:

              It is not all that silly to believe improbable things about the next world. What could prove you wrong?

              But if you select for belief in stupid things about this world, you select for stupidity.

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