“Leftism as Cancer” stopped being accessible through google in the course of a blog backup and restore, so reposting it.
Leftism is to memes as cancer is genes.
If the cells of the body mutate, cells that multiply at the expense of the body will be selected. And cells that mutate to a faster mutation rate will be selected, since they will have more fast multiplying variants.
In a healthy body, each cell lives for the body, and performs its role in the whole body, making the body one. In cancer, each cancer cell lives for itself, at the expense of the body, parasitically, until the parasites devour the host
Left wing memes are selected by propagation through state power for propagation through state power.
In a healthy state the state is one, but there is large civil society, which is many. Following Marx”s definition, by capitalism and civil society we mean the “society of industry, of general competition, of freely pursued private interest, of anarchy, of natural and spiritual individuality alienated from self.”
The civil society, which is many, produces the wealth, the science, and the technology. The state, which is one, defends civil society from enemies internal and external. For the reasons explained by Hayek and Mises, and colorfully dramatized by Ayn Rand, a unitary entity just cannot coordinate production very well. It runs into analogous problems with technology and science.
For civil society to function, to create wealth, knowledge, and technology, it must be free, a hundred flowers. For the state to function, it must be one flower. Elements of the state apparatus cannot be permitted to use state power to pursue their own goals. Elements of the state apparatus must be profoundly unfree in their role of elements of the state, in their exercise of the powers of the state, so that the state can be one.
In anarcho tyranny each groupuscule of the state uses state power and state resources to pursue its own particular good, thus the state spends money it does not have, and taxes and regulates beyond the laffer limit, suffering the tragedy of the commons. That is the anarchy. Because the state regulates beyond the laffer limit, we also get tyranny. Civil society, instead of having a hundred voices, has one voice, the voice of the state
That is the tyranny, a hundred supposedly independent voices of civil society speaking the same words.
Thus instead of the state being one, and civil society many, civil society is the voice of the state, one microphone heard through a thousand megaphones, while the state is many, and state resources suffer the tragedy of the commons, and the state is unable to pass a budget.
Elements of the state apparatus are free in their exercise of state power, thus everyday life of respectable people is subject to capricious tyranny, while criminals run free.
The left singularity is analogous to aneuploidy in a cancer. Cancers get selected for a high mutation rate, and left wing memes get selected for a high mutation rate.
This results in rising time preference, as depicted by Konkistador, and affinity for r-selected behaviors, as depicted by Anonymous Conservative.
Thus left wing movements start out each quite different from each other, and converge more and more to the left archetype, under the selective pressure for the niche of state mediated propagation of memes, just as all severely aneuploid malignant metastatic cancers look pretty much alike, by convergent evolution, and not much like their various tissues of origin.
If you are going to have a state, you are going to have a state religion or state ideology. The only way to avoid this is anarcho capitalism.
If you are going to have a state, you are going to have state official truth. If you are going to have state official truth, you need to stop it from endlessly mutating to ever greater virulence.
To prevent the official belief system from suffering memetic selection, the only solution is to have bishops, rather than open entry to the role of “opinion leader”. The Bishops need to maintain a monopoly on the state propagation of official truth, and any elements of the state that start free lancing need to be, at a minimum, excluded from the state, which is to say, at a minimum fired, and, in serious cases, convicted of apostasy from the official belief system, and imprisoned, sold into slavery, or executed.  If your official belief system will not sell William Wilberforce into slavery for apostasy from the thirty nine articles, his beliefs will win and the official beliefs will lose. His beliefs may well be better than the previous official beliefs, but every man jack will proceed with further improvements, resulting in memetic selection for virulence and a high mutation rate.
You have to kill or enslave William Wilberforce. If he is visibly holy, ironically check the body after three days. If he did not rise, not holy enough.
Non state apostates are harmless, since their belief systems are not selected for propagation by power. The problem is state and quasi state apostasy. Apostasy, in the sense of the sort of apostasy that the state should worry about and suppress, is mutation in the state meme system, mutations in the memes propagated by power.
Late stage leftism is the memetic equivalent of aneuploid maligant metastatic cancer. In cancer, the genes are selected for virulence within somatic growth, in leftism, the memes are selected for virulence within the state propagation of official memes.
Alien memes need to be excluded from participating in state power, thus the list (antibodies) of forbidden thoughts (antigens) needs to be updated frequently, while the list of required thoughts should be kept short, unchanging, and immune from empirical falsification by the facts of this world, to minimize memetic selection for propagation by power. This suggests an Archbishop to ensure that official memes do not mutate, to propagate the official and unchanging list of official memes, the archbishop having final responsibility for the propagation of the official list of unchanging official memes, and a Grand Inquisitor, to detect entryists and the undercover use of state power to propagate unofficial memes, or to furtively mutate official memes. The Grand Inquisitor should deal with endless change by ever changing conspiracies like that revealed by the Climategate Files, the Archbishop with unchanging official truth.
People who are in the position to deploy state power to propagate their beliefs need to be severely unfree in what beliefs they may espouse, just as police are not free to make up their own laws. To constrain such people, to constrain the state apparatus, we need the traditional thought control apparatus of Bishops and Inquisition, just as the courts are supposed to constrain the police.
If, however, that apparatus were to be applied to civil society, science, technology, and capitalism would be destroyed. The only penalty applied to people thinking unapproved thoughts should be exclusion from state employment and high status universities, exclusion from teaching jobs in the government education system, and the resulting lower status. We need to avoid penalties for thoughtcrime from pervading the civil society through regulation the way they do now, because that adversely affects the creation of wealth and knowledge. The state should be one being, and should therefore hold one set of official beliefs. Civil society should be many beings, so that the truth will out. To avoid potential conflicts between state and civil society, official truths should be either demonstrably true, or difficult to falsify.
It follows that the state cannot directly sponsor science, cannot be the sort of entity capable of directly sponsoring science. What the state can do to sponsor science is pay for impressive technological feats, and those who are successful in providing impressive technologies will sponsor science. Galilean kinematics was developed to land cannon balls on targets out of sight behind city walls, and the telescope with which Galileo saw the phases of Venus and the moons of Saturn was developed to spy on enemy fleets at sea. Should the state directly sponsor science (a most dangerous practice, for it is likely to wind up sponsoring apostatic religion dressed in the robes of science) it needs to forbid and severely criminalize peer review, and any form of science by consensus, especially consensus behind closed doors.  If the state finds itself funding “science” that discovers scientific truth through scientific consensus behind closed doors, it is funding apostatic religion. Apply the same remedy to state funded or sponsored peer review as to William Wilberforce. Ideas are more dangerous than guns. We need a free market in ideas that are not backed by state power. We dare not have competition between ideas backed by state power, and need to deal with such competition in the most drastic fashion, for the natural result of such competition is ever more extreme ideas propagated through an ever heavier hand of the state.
If you will not execute William Wilberforce, who swore to be faithful to the thirty nine articles while applying state power to overthrow them, you will lose to William Wilberforce.
Consensus is for bishops, not scientists. Scientists should form their opinions on the basis of public and replicated evidence, not on the basis of discussions behind closed doors, discussions which will inevitably lead to wanted evidence being published, and unwanted evidence being suppressed or “corrected”.
Restating in slightly different words:
Cancer cells are selected for rapid multiplication. They run into various limits that are supposed to stop body cells from multiplying out of control. In escaping these limits, they become aneuploid, thus develop a very high mutation rate.
Those mutants most apt to multiply rapidly and to penetrate other tissues are selected, thus cancer progressively becomes more cancerous, eventually becoming aneuploid metastatic malignant cancer.
If one is going to have a state belief system, and this seems unavoidable if one is going to have a state, then one needs an archbishop to ensure that all elements of the state apparatus stay on message – that in the cancer analogy, all cells of the body display stable and unchanging self antigens, and a grand inquisitor to detect hostile entryist belief systems.
In the cancer analogy:Â The Archbishop enforces mandatory unchanging self antigens, the Grand Inquisitor searches out and prohibits ever changing non self antigens.
Of course, if the Archbishop enforces self antigens on absolutely everyone, intrudes on the civil society, this is horribly oppressive, and as, as in Spain, wrecks the economy (Ayn Rand’s heroic entrepeneurs are the first to be repressed) but it is reasonable to enforce self antigens on everyone who matters in the state apparatus. Thus, in restoration England, if one wanted to be a member of parliament, be a professor at the best universities, have senior government employment, etc, one had to subscribe to the thirty nine articles.
Once in a while, in restoration England, heretics got their houses burned down by hostile mobs while authority looked the other way, but as far as I can tell this was only when their heresy pursued state power, engaged in entryism. You could be a Jew, a Puritan, or a Roman Catholic in Restoration England, and suffer no very great disadvantages other than lower status and exclusion from the state apparatus and the most prestigious universities.
No matter how badly the official belief system stinks, if it is subject to furtive mutation and selection for virulence, it will in time stink even worse. To prevent this, the Archbishop should prohibit spontaneous memetic mutation, the Grand Inquisitor should detect hostile memes and eradicate them from the state apparatus.
So Joe McCarthy was sort of a Grand Inquisitor seeking out agents of the hostile Communism meme. And was doing a good thing in taking on that role.
[…] Source: Jim […]
>If you will not execute William Wilberforce, who swore to be faithful to the thirty nine articles while applying state power to overthrow them, you will lose to William Wilberforce
I suggest that when reaction comes to England, we dig up his grave, and behead whatever remains of him.
tl;dr – my group gets to have real power and everyone else must be kept without power by force
Sorry Jim, please refresh my memory. How did Wilberforce fall afoul of the Articles of Religion exactly?
The Clapham sect were, supposedly, saints, while regular orthodox anglicans were not saints. William Wilberforce was God’s politician, it being God’s will that saints should rule over non saints.
William Wilberforce rejected the trinity (article 1)
The supposed divine endorsement of his anti slavery campaign makes his entire anti slavery campaign a violation of article 14. Similarly, being God’s politician puts him in violation of article 14.
The supposed sainthood of the Clapham sect was a violation of article 26, which is that the worthiness of a minister does not matter, only his proper appointment, and a violation of article 36, which is that Parliament, not God, appoints the hierarchy.
The Clapham sect failed to read the homilies, putting it in violation of article 35.
That’s a solid case. Thank you.
I’ve just read Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals, by the way. Now trying to think of Neoreaction/DE from his perspective. Since NRx/DE comes not from reaction or monarchism but from leftism by way of disillusionment, in more or less the same way that Neoconservativism came not from Conservativism but from Trotskyism, this seems appropriate. Of course, if this is true, then it’s just another mutation of the cancer. Cancer mutates with no conscious intent, human philosophy can be governed by such intent (see Alinsky on shifting human interests as Machiavelli’s blind spot,) so it may be possible that NRx/DE is an example where the analogy breaks down and one of the cancer metastasez mutates to a healthy form which will kill off the other ones and make the host young again…but I have my suspicions.
If you take audience requests, I’d like a thread on Alinsky, and also on why you repented of being a leftist.
https://reaction.laconfess.htm
As for Alinksy, that the book was dedicated to Satan, and that lots of seminarians showed up to discuss with him how to steer the church to “real” Christianity should suffice to tell you everything you need to know.
From that, I can conclude a couple of things:
that you are in your 60s
that you have an innate impairment which keeps you from proper Crimestop, likely exacerbated by deficiencies in the part of your upbringing where one normally has it explained to him that some things are not only not said or done but not thought
that at some point you went from libertarianism to DE, which gives me hope (it contradicts a viewpoint that from about 35 people are fixed in their views-since I’m in my early 30s, this has been weighing on my mind)
Alinsky is fascinating in the parts of the book where he is forthright-namely, that the goal of leftism is getting power through rabblerousing and pandering to the stupids while herding them along (the Rochester Negro Baked Beans Opera Hall Conspiracy is probably the epitome of that,) and that in this goal, it doesn’t matter what you say, and that anything you say at any given point, any principles you claim to espouse, must of necessity be relinquished at the next stage, so be ahead of the curve by simultaneously fervently believing in them and not believing in them one bit. All of which makes me suspect that any DE/NRx movement which would be successful would look and act, while in power, in ways completely different from the principles it now espouses so fervently. Moldbug sought to avoid that with all that Plinth stuff, but I suspect that anyone who’s made the sacrifices necessary to gain power will not hand it off so easily. Especially if it’s a group of people.
Alinsky is somewhat frank about viewing the undermen, subhumans, and sluts that he uses to destroy other members of the white male overclass as undermen, subhumans, and sluts.
Leftism is a lie to its core, as for example the proclamation that all men are created equal, and Lord Howe supplying George Washington with gunpowder and arranging for the deaths of his own men.
In Lord Howe’s murderous betrayal of his own soldiers, we see the alliance with far against near that has served the left so well.
The Dark Enlightenment, however, is truth.
Libertarianism attempts a procapitalist alliance with the left. It has been rendered irrelevant because ever leftwards movement has required Libertarianism to give up everything that mattered, for example freedom of association, and because with the defeat of the soviet union, the left has no longer has the destruction of capitalism as a goal, though as with the banking crisis, and Sarbannes Oxley, it is likely to blunder into destroying capitalism as an accidental side effect of its other obsessions, which obsessions and side effects libertarianism is no longer willing to call out.
Alinsky is also frank about his ultimate goal (POWER!) and his vagueness about what he intends to do with it once he gets it (though we get hints, my impression is that he was a brilliant tactician with no master strategy-he says as much.)
Leftism always has a lie at its core, but is armed with many truths (which it eventually betrays in favor of the lie.)Without these truths, it would not have been seductive to the large numbers of talented, principled and intelligent men upon whose participation its successes rested. The Communists, for instance, for all their evil, had many of the best people in Russia and China fighting for them; otherwise, they would have lost.
The Dark Enlightenment is NOT truth. It has various tenets, depending on whom you ask, some of which are more true, and some of which contradict the others. As Alinsky explains, this is not a bug but a feature, because most people can’t identify with a single-issue organization, and the ones who can get bored of it, so an “organizer” must find many issues and constantly use them to stir discontent. When power is gained, the old tenets get thrown away and any contradictions are summarily…resolved, but to get there, you must get there.
Likewise, the many contradicting tenets of the DE: IQ is the ultimate good…no, ethnonationalism is the ultimate good-what good does the IQ of the Jews do us if they don’t act in our interest?…no, ethnonationalism is not as good as colonialism-look at how much better Africa was under colonialism then under the prior and succeeding regimes!..women are innately sluts and must be used for hedonic value…no, they’re impulsive and must be treated like cherished property, and only SOME are sluts…the Christian church is completely corrupt and useless…the Christian church has been hijacked temporarily but holds the only hope for Western civilization, as it did during the fall of Rome…those who are dependents should be legally enslaved, but with productivity per capita increasing drastically due to automation, more and more jobs are unnecessary in a strict sense, and thus more and more workers are dependent. Etc. All these tenets are somewhat truthful, and hence their utility in attracting intelligent men of conviction to the DE. In fact, it is their very mutual contradiction which gives them utility at this stage, as seen above. Of course, if by some miracle the DE comes to power, there will be a bloodbath as it tries to work out which truth is more true and who is a true believer and who is just going along opportunistically.
Lord Howe did not betray his soldiers, who at the time were thought of as a sort of human livestock, any more than one can betray his dog or his horse. The very framing is leftist. He betrayed his King and his country.
The lie at the core of leftism is equality. From this directly follows the evil at the core of leftism: the betrayal of near for far – Lenin getting funded by the Kaiser, Lord Howe arranging for his troops to be killed, the manufacture of imaginary hate crimes to pin on whites leading to state sponsored black riots and state sponsored real hate crimes by blacks against whites.
The truth at the core of the Dark enlightenment is inequality.
You attribute all sorts of silly positions to the DE that it does not in fact take. All women are innately sluts in that if exposed to certain environments and stimuli they will all behave badly, and very few women are innately sluts in that if protected from those environments they usually will not. One of the big claims of the Dark Enlightenment is that the eighteenth century system was effective in protecting women from becoming sluts.
Similarly for Christianity. Christianity is corrupt and useless – but in the past Charles the Hammer salvaged it. The Christians among us hope for a miracle, divine intervention that will salvage it. I think that maybe another Charles the Hammer might salvage it. (Which is pretty much my prescription for Judaism – you need Charles the Hammer, aka King David) We disagree on the likelihood that the Church might in future be salvaged, not on its present condition.
Shafarevich doesn’t think that the socialist phenomenon is as simple as to be captured in one word like equality
>The lie at the core of leftism is equality.
The lie at the core of leftism may be equality, but at the core of equality there is a truth. For instance, among the Jews, while a king is a king, he must write a copy of the Torah for himself and read it daily, so that he keeps the commandments and “that his heart be not lifted up above his brethren.” There are certain aspects in which every one of the Jews is equal, and other aspects in which all mankind is equal. And if this were not the case, the lie of equality would not resound so thoroughly with so many good and smart people.
>The truth at the core of the Dark enlightenment is inequality.
And within that truth is a lie, because might does not ultimately make right, and the sort of might that claims it does flourishes only to be cut down, like grass.
>You attribute all sorts of silly positions to the DE that it does not in fact take.
If we equate the DE with you, sure. If we look at the big tent, no.
>All women are innately sluts in that if exposed to certain environments and stimuli they will all behave badly, and very few women are innately sluts in that if protected from those environments they usually will not.
Forgive me. I meant that the DE contradicts itself on whether the present sociosexual situation should be deplored or taken advantage of hedonistically.
>One of the big claims of the Dark Enlightenment is that the eighteenth century system was effective in protecting women from becoming sluts.
I have not seen any such claim being put forth by any of the luminaries of the DE except for yourself. It is a stupid claim, in any case, because the 18th century system was rife with sexual degeneracy (if we’re talking about Britain,) and only in the 19th century did the moralizing Victorians led by their queen make sexual promiscuity something shameful.
>Similarly for Christianity. Christianity is corrupt and useless – but in the past Charles the Hammer salvaged it.
I get the impression that the Catholic members of the DE do not agree with you, and feel that the Church will reform itself from the inside without any application of Hammers.
>Shafarevich doesn’t think that the socialist phenomenon is as simple as to be captured in one word like equality
🙂 But he does feel that it is simple enough to be captured in one word like Jooos.
The lie of equality did not resound with anyone until it proved to the the path to power, a tool for using far to destroy near. You are inventing an equalist Jewish tradition the way you invented a female emancipation Jewish tradition.
The rich man in his castle,
The poor man at his gate,
God made them high and lowly,
And ordered their estate.
Cleanliness does not get mentioned in the ten commandments, but the wrongfulness of covetousness gets repeated over and over.
Until you realize the superior need to rule the inferior, you are going to go on losing in Gaza, as you just lost.
It can uniformly deplore it while taking advantage of it hedonistically. Sluts are to be used – but not married. No contradiction there. Because women and men are different, we need a double standard.
That would be the nineteenth century that refused to allow King George to divorce Queen Caroline.
The eighteenth century punished sexual degeneracy. The nineteenth century refused to punish sexual degeneracy in women – such as Queen Caroline, and things have been getting worse ever since.
If you want to argue that the rot only set in the twentieth or late nineteenth century, then it is obviously the fault of the Jews. If one is going to argue the puritans and their successors are primarily to blame, then you have to look at the early nineteenth century as the time when everything went to hell in a handbasket, and recall Lord Howe arranging the deaths of his own men and supplying George Washington with gunpowder, the classic treasonous alliance with far against near. And, of course, recall King George’s unsuccessful attempt to divorce Queen Caroline, prefiguring today’s slutwalks and gay parades.
Remembering the eighteenth century as sexually degenerate is like remembering the twentieth century as sexually degenerate because it allowed “marital rape”, “date rape”, sex while intoxicated, and sex with underage women.
Like you, they are hoping a miracle, but they agree on the current state of the Church.
it’s funny how Shafarevich was just frozen out of library access while writing The Socialist Phenomenon in the Progressive World, but got denounced and was called on to resign from the National Academy of Sciences in the Free World for his samizdat.
He said that that samizdat article that I haven’t read wasn’t anti-Semitic, and I believe him, because mathematicians can be very arrogant even when they are not world-famous.
There doesn’t really seem to be much reason for anti-Semitism in Russia, so talking about Jewish power there is even more of a distraction than it is here.
>The lie of equality did not resound with anyone until it proved to the the path to power, a tool for using far to destroy near.
The rich not oppressing the widow and the orphan, not using interest to oppress the borrower and not taking the property of others certainly resounded with others. It’s all over the Torah.
>You are inventing an equalist Jewish tradition the way you invented a female emancipation Jewish tradition.
No, as usual, you are inventing something and then retrospectively applying it to a book and tradition you don’t grasp at all.
>The rich man in his castle,
The poor man at his gate,
God made them high and lowly,
And ordered their estate.
I’m not an Anglican, so appeals to their doggerel don’t resound with me.
>Cleanliness does not get mentioned in the ten commandments, but the wrongfulness of covetousness gets repeated over and over.
Covetousness cuts both ways-the rich are likewise forbidden to covet that of the poor. A king is forbidden from having too many wives or too much gold.
Every Jew is equal in that he has an inheritance in the land of Israel from his forefathers (except the Levites and the Kohanim), which goes back to him every 49 years, no matter if he sold it or what. The king doesn’t have any right to take anyone’s property by force, except during a time of war and for military purposes. Even the worst king and queen of Israel, Ahab and Yezevel, couldn’t just confiscate a private citizen’s small vineyard against his will, even with compensation-Yezevel had to get false witnesses to accuse him of blasphemy to have him killed. Why? Because all Israel is equal in their inheritance.
Which is all to say that the reason that equality makes such a compelling argument is that it mates a truth to a lie. We are equal in some ways, and there is a justice beyond victor’s justice.
>Until you realize the superior need to rule the inferior, you are going to go on losing in Gaza, as you just lost.
We well realize it. But there is still such a thing as justice, beyond “the strong do what they will and the weak accept what they must.”
>It can uniformly deplore it while taking advantage of it hedonistically. Sluts are to be used – but not married. No contradiction there.
And this is your spin, but it is not the spin of the entire DE.
>The eighteenth century punished sexual degeneracy.
Among the aristocracy? When and where? Please name some examples.
>If one is going to argue the puritans and their successors are primarily to blame, then you have to look at the early nineteenth century as the time when everything went to hell in a handbasket, and recall Lord Howe arranging the deaths of his own men and supplying George Washington with gunpowder, the classic treasonous alliance with far against near.
I’d argue that the puritans and co. are just the inheritors of a longstanding tradition within Christianity, going back to the originator via the Reformation, the Cathars, the Gnostics, etc.
>Remembering the eighteenth century as sexually degenerate is like remembering the twentieth century as sexually degenerate because it allowed “marital rapeâ€, “date rapeâ€, sex while intoxicated, and sex with underage women.
Did the aristocrats not have legions of officially recognized bastards in the 18th century? Was syphilis not rampant? Was one out of five women in London not a whore?
>Like you, they are hoping a miracle, but they agree on the current state of the Church.
I am not hoping for a miracle but for a logical continuation of certain trends I see in my society.
Not taking the property of others is an anti equality commandment, not an equality commandment. As is the no coveting commandment. To read it as an equality commandment you need to read the old testament through Marxist eyes.
The distinct feature of the widow and the orphan is not their poverty, for they are not necessarily poor, but that they have fallen outside the patriarchy through no fault of their won. Lacking an owner to guide them, supervise them, and protect them, they are, like stray dogs, to be pitied. This is a patriarchal commandment, not an equality commandment – it tells us that it is normative for women and children to be in submission to fathers and husbands. Like the no coveting commandment, it commands inequality, not equality. To get equality out of it, you have to read it through feminist eyes.
You are force fitting the Old Testament into a Procrustean bed of feminism and Marxism, because feminism and Marxism is in the air you breath, while the Old Testament is not. Property is not the poor. Widows and Orphans are not the poor.
The book and tradition being Das Capital and “The female eunuch”, not the Talmud.
Much as rich and poor alike are forbidden to sleep under bridges, beg in the streets and steal loaves of bread.
Eighteenth Century: Lady Worsley’s Divorce. She lost the fifty two thousand pounds she brought to the union, her husband (Sir Richard Worsley, the Governor of the Isle of Wight) lost his career for his failure to keep his wife under control. Thanks to the double standard, Captain Bisset got off, but he came close to losing twenty thousand pounds, which would have made Lady Worsley an unreasonably expensive piece of pussy. (The jury eventually concluded she was a worthless whore, so he did not have to pay anything. Hurrah for the double standard. Sluts are free, free as in beer. Captain Bisset got off despite banging Sir Worseley’s wife, but Sir Worsley did not get off for failure to properly guide and supervise his wife.)
Nineteenth Century: Compare and contrast with Queen Caroline, whose husband, King George, had to continue supporting her while she did the slutwalk in Paris.
From the restoration to 1810 or so, we had the greatest civilization the world had ever seen under a system where Church and State were one. There have been a lot of great Jewish scientists and technologists, but it was not the Jews that created science and technology.
And where is the problem with that?
You are not judging the eighteenth century by Hebrew or traditional Jewish standards, but by Puritan standards, which is to say, modern progressive standards.
If men and women were equal, which is to say, the same and interchangeable, then there would be no reason for the double standard. But men and women are different, hence the double standard is correct. Jesus prescribed divorce for female adultery, not for male adultery. The eighteenth century punished Lady Worsley for banging Captain Bisset, and it punished Sir Worsley for failing to keep his wife under control, but it did not punish Captain Bisset, though it would have done so had Sir Worsley made more effort to keep his wife in line. And it was right to do so.
Progressives believe that all religions, rightly understood, are progressivism. They have already assimilated pretty much all of Christianity, most of Judaism, and most of Islam. The trend I see is that Orthodox Judaism is being swallowed by progressivism, as Reform Judaism as long been swallowed and entirely digested.
>Not taking the property of others is an anti equality commandment, not an equality commandment. As is the no coveting commandment. To read it as an equality commandment you need to read the old testament through Marxist eyes.
Please explain the story of Ahav and Naboth, and why a king is forbidden from overly multiplying his wealth, and why is it that all Israel has an inheritance which reverts to them every year. I am waiting impatiently, you ignored the subject completely.
>The distinct feature of the widow and the orphan is not their poverty, for they are not necessarily poor, but that they have fallen outside the patriarchy through no fault of their won.
Almost every commandment dealing with them has to do with charity, and they are mentioned in those commandments along the Levite and the convert/non-Jew, all of whom have no inheritance. So please spare me your uninformed exegesis, the plain text is quite clear-we don’t leave them the corners of the field, the forgotten sheaf or the fruit that didn’t fall off a tree the first time we shake it because they are outside the patriarchy. We leave these things for them because they are poor and need food.
>Much as rich and poor alike are forbidden to sleep under bridges, beg in the streets and steal loaves of bread.
Again-please explain the story of Naboth’s vineyard, and why a king is forbidden from overly multiplying his wealth, and why all Israel gets their hereditary land back every 49 years.
In general, the poor lack the strength or cohesiveness to rob others with any scale. Really egregious robbery is done either by Alinsky’s Haves or his Have Some, Want More’s. Recall the USSR, where the middle class revolutionaries, supported by Wall Street money, dekulakized small landholders. And in the US, the people whose covetousness is destroying the economy are not in Ferguson but have Ivy League diplomas and high or very high net worth.
>The trend I see is that Orthodox Judaism is being swallowed by progressivism, as Reform Judaism as long been swallowed and entirely digested.
Your grasp on Orthodox Judaism is about like your grasp on the Bible.
While you maintain ever more heightened vigilance against entryism by late Bronze Age worshippers of the Golden Kid, you seem alarmingly relaxed about entryism by nineteenth and twentieth century progressives.
The moral of this story is that the state should not soak the rich.
It does not revert to them every year. The Jubilee year was supposed to happen once every fifty years, but never actually happened. If there had ever been a Jubilee year, you would know whether it was supposed to happen every fifty years or every forty nine years, or as announced by divine intervention.
The Jubilee year was supposed to be accompanied by divine miracles, thus arguably declared by God, rather than strictly according to the calendar. For whatever reason, possibly inactivity by God, never actually happened. So, no actual reversion of inheritance.
The charity prescribes a profound but benevolent inequality between the recipient of the charity and the provider of charity. It is not based on, nor does it support, equality. To conclude equality from Biblical charity requires a procrustean reading of the old testament, applying the progressive prescription that all religions, rightly understood, are progressivism.
If you see equalism and female emancipation in the old testament, you are in the progressive digestive system and two thirds digested.
You repeat progressive propaganda. The financial crisis was not wall street greed but a crisis of redistribution of wealth to non asian minorities.
The ideology of equalism creates the alliance of far against near, whereby near is treacherously destroyed. The money that was pissed away in the financial crisis was, for the most part, pissed away on dud mortgages. Over 99% of the mortgages that turned out to be dud were mortgages to non asian minorities, mostly mestizos and indios, the intent being to move mestizos, indios, and blacks into leafy green white suburbs full of million dollar homes, which goal was in substantial part accomplished, though the other part of that goal, to have the mestizos, indios, and blacks paying off million dollar mortgages, was conspicuously not accomplished.
In so far as Wall Streeters benefited, the number one beneficiary was Angelo Mozilo, who was given charge of a bank by affirmative action, and was himself one of the most powerful activists for affirmative action lending and ending credit worthiness criteria that have disparate impact.
I know what is in the old testament. You read the old testament through progressive eyes, in accordance with the progressive doctrine that all religions, rightly understood, are progressivism.
Mosaic law was written for a society that was, in some important ways, anarchic. The biggest threat in an anarchic society is do-it-yourself redistribution, resulting in the perfect equality of desperate poverty, where no one sows, knowing that someone else will harvest. Hence the no stealing, no coveting rule.
When, however, you have a state, the biggest threat is concentration of power accomplished by an alliance between the top and the bottom against the middle (the two scoundrels that Jezebel used against Naboth) – which is also forbidden. Hence Naboth’s vineyard.
>The moral of this story is that the state should not soak the rich.
Wrong. Naboth was not rich and it was expressly described as a small vineyard. I also notice you are ignoring the commandment for a king not to multiply his wealth overly much.
>It does not revert to them every year.
I mis-wrote.
> The Jubilee year was supposed to happen once every fifty years, but never actually happened.
A brave contention with no facts to support it. In fact, Yovel did happen, as pointed out by Ezekiel-he wrote in the year that one was supposed to have happened, but the Jews had meanwhile been carried off into Babylonian captivity.
Let us assume, though, that it never happened (and the Jews writing down Chronicles, Kings and the rest of it just didn’t notice or neglected to mention.) It is still a commandment, an ideal. So, if the Torah is against equality, why is there an ideal of everyone’s inheritance being periodically returned to him, and unsaleable in perpetuity?
>If there had ever been a Jubilee year, you would know whether it was supposed to happen every fifty years or every forty nine years, or as announced by divine intervention.
Where does it say that it would be announced by divine intervention? Are you making things up?
The debate over 49 vs. 50 years is due to the fact that during the Second Temple period they kept 49 years, as there was no Torah obligation to keep a Yovel, but only a rabbinical commandment. By the time they got around to writing down the Talmud, they were no longer in complete agreement, but the majority said 50 years, which is more in keeping with the plain sense of the Torah.
>The Jubilee year was supposed to be accompanied by divine miracles, thus arguably declared by God, rather than strictly according to the calendar.
I have no idea where you are getting this.
>So, no actual reversion of inheritance.
I know of no commandment in the Torah which depends on a miracle taking place.
>The charity prescribes a profound but benevolent inequality between the recipient of the charity and the provider of charity.
You are moving the goalpost. The point is that the way you treat them is due to charity and an obligation to support the poor, not to do with patriarchy or whatever.
>It is not based on, nor does it support, equality. To conclude equality from Biblical charity requires a procrustean reading of the old testament, applying the progressive prescription that all religions, rightly understood, are progressivism.
The Torah was not written by Ayn Rand, any more than it was written by Karl Marx. There are, as I have said, aspects in which all Jews are equal. There are aspects in which we aren’t.
>If you see equalism and female emancipation in the old testament, you are in the progressive digestive system and two thirds digested.
If you can’t tell that the Torah states that men and women are not equal, but women are not men’s property and have certain claims on them, then you can’t read plain text. As for equalism-I’ve pointed out that in our inheritance, we are equals, and you can’t sell your inheritance (or yourself into perpetual slavery, or your wife.) You can’t take someone else’s stuff by force, even if they are poorer and less distinguished than you. Etc.
>The financial crisis was not wall street greed but a crisis of redistribution of wealth to non asian minorities.
As usual, you didn’t understand anything I said. The Wall Street I am speaking of was that of Ned Lamont, Armand Hammer and co., which supported the Bolsheviks from 1917 onwards in exchange for various things, including concessions. I don’t know how you feel about Anthony Sutton, but I trust him as a scholar.
>I know what is in the old testament. You read the old testament through progressive eyes, in accordance with the progressive doctrine that all religions, rightly understood, are progressivism.
The problem is you don’t understand. You can’t understand, because you read until you get to what you want to hear, what you think supports your position, and then shut off. There have been about half a dozen times in our discussions where you were dead certain that something was written in the Torah, while it was plain text not the case. For a couple of instances: you thought that Rivka was married to Itzhak when Eliezer made the agreement with her family, while half a page down it says she became his wife when he took her into his tent, you thought that David was anointed for kingship by the strong men of Judah, while it said in plain text that he was first anointed by Shmuel when he was a youth and then later by the elders of Israel, you thought that marrying your deceased brother’s widow was a right, that she was chattel to be inherited, while it plainly says that it is HER right upon you, and if you don’t do it, she takes you to court where the elders prevail upon you to carry out your obligation, and if you don’t, she takes off your shoe, spits in your face in public, and your name is ruined forever. This isn’t stuff that’s up for Talmudic exegesis, it’s in plain text, but you can’t read it because you read in bad faith, looking for confirmation of your bias rather than for what it says.
>Mosaic law was written for a society that was, in some important ways, anarchic.
The Torah was written for all time. Hence, you have things like G-d telling people through Moshe, “if you decide to have a king for yourself,” etc. So it was written for a tribal anarchic society, and a kingdom, and for the exile after the fall of the kingdom, and for the return and rebuilding. In order to apply it, you can’t just read it and go, any more than you can repair a car with nothing but a Haynes manual.
>The biggest threat in an anarchic society is do-it-yourself redistribution, resulting in the perfect equality of desperate poverty, where no one sows, knowing that someone else will harvest. Hence the no stealing, no coveting rule.
The biggest threat to our existence was idolatry. Meaning, forgetting that we are free men with G-d’s inheritance in the Land of Israel, and trying to get over by worshiping idols. Idolatry is, of course, not exclusive to worshiping masonry and woodwork. Not coveting is something that is only accessible to a free man, who knows that his portion is from G-d, as is his brother’s. A slave can’t be content with this. Hence our behavior in the desert, and hence Moshe being raised as a noble and then a free man, and not having ever been a slave. Slavery leads to idolatry, idolatry to slavery, and covetousness to both.
>When, however, you have a state, the biggest threat is concentration of power accomplished by an alliance between the top and the bottom against the middle (the two scoundrels that Jezebel used against Naboth) – which is also forbidden. Hence Naboth’s vineyard.
The top also involves the rich. At a certain point, money and power become interchangeable. Hence, Wall Street putting FDR and Lenin in power, or Goldman Sachs being able to have the DA and FBI throw Aleynikov in jail for crimes the meaning of which were not comprehensible to them. The point being, even a king is equal to his subjects in certain economic aspects in Judaism. You will notice, again, that Ahav didn’t have a legal option to force Naboth to sell, or to just confiscate the vineyard and have done with it, which surprised Yezevel to no end-“are you a king or not?” Well, a king in Israel was a different thing than a king in Phoenicia, where she was from, and couldn’t do these things. Even an idolatrous king of Israel like Ahav.
Incidentally, the Torah doesn’t apply these laws to the nations of the world. They are free to set up their economic system as they wish, whether total laissez faire or Egyptian-style totalitarianism or anything in between. As long as they have a system of just courts. The Torah understands that some contexts require central planning, like where you have the Nile and a massive public irrigation system, while others require total liberty, like those of the steppe nomads. It’s much smarter than your one-size-fits-all reductionism.
There is no commandment that Naboth not multiply his wealth overly much – hence a prohibition on soaking the rich
Inheritance is not equal, and over time will become ever more unequal. The intent was not to make people the same but to keep them distinct, to preserve tribal and clan identities. “ye shall return every man unto his family.”
20 And if ye shall say, What shall we eat the seventh year? behold, we shall not sow, nor gather in our increase:
21 Then I will command my blessing upon you in the sixth year, and it shall bring forth fruit for three years.
22 And ye shall sow the eighth year, and eat yet of old fruit until the ninth year; until her fruits come in ye shall eat of the old store.
In practice, of course, it never did bring forth fruit for three years, hence no sabbath year.
I am bringing the goalposts back to where they should be after you shifted them: Progressive redistribution is motivated by equalism. Biblical charity is not Thus biblical injunctions to charity within profoundly unequal relationships are not biblical support for equalism. Confucius was also a big fan of charity, but no one thinks that Confucius supported equalism.
Even less was it written by nineteenth century Harvard.
Women in the Old Testament do not have, and should not have, sexual autonomy. Their consent is not required for marriage.
Close enough for you?
How does that work out? Does every family have exactly the same number of surviving male children? There is no indication that they even got equal shares in the beginning. Seems that the original distribution was a result of the accidents of war and politics. Probably there was a roughly equal share out by Joshua, but in Judges, we see the conflict with the Canaanites going on and off for generation after generation.
Joshua overthrew and burned the former capital city of the Canaanites, but, due to social decay and the collapse of bronze age civilization, Canaanite society had already fragmented, thus the ensuing conflicts depicted in Judges must have produced endless dispossessions and re-acquisitions. It must have been like the re-conquista, which necessarily produced huge inequality through fortunes of war. During the re-conquista, one day a lord, the next a refugee. One man’s inheritance would make him man of power and wealth, another man’s inheritance was unfortunately in the hands of the moors.
The alliance of far against near, in which the desire of the masses to steal stuff is used to destroy competing members of the elite – the attack on property is based on equalism. The man who already has substantial property is not going to steal property, for the tactic is too easily reversed.
The Old Testament endorses property repeatedly and at length. Property rights are incompatible with equalism. The Old Testament never endorses equalism anywhere. All your purported examples of it endorsing equalism are strained procrustean readings.
That is a technicality. Of course marriage is not really final until sex takes place, but it is pretty final when the deal is done. And that is a technicality that is irrelevant to the important point which is that Abraham’s servant and Rebekah’s father did not think that Rebekahs consent was required, and Rebekah’s brother did not initially think that Rebekah’s consent was required. Similarly, the ceremonies of Levirate marriage.
Because he was.
Which anointing failed to have any effect. The great majority of Israel ignored this anointing.
No he was not.
He was never anointed by the elders of Israel.
It says in plain text that he was not later anointed by the elders of Israel, but by the men of Judah – which in context probably means the mighty men of Judah, but might mean the militia of Judah.
2 Samuel Chapter 2:
4 And the men of Judah came, and there they anointed David king over the house of Judah. And they told David, saying, That the men of Jabeshgilead were they that buried Saul.
5 And David sent messengers unto the men of Jabeshgilead, and said unto them, Blessed be ye of the LORD, that ye have shewed this kindness unto your lord, even unto Saul, and have buried him.
6 And now the LORD shew kindness and truth unto you: and I also will requite you this kindness, because ye have done this thing.
7 Therefore now let your hands be strengthened, and be ye valiant: for your master Saul is dead, and also the house of Judah have anointed me king over them.
See: “Men of Judah” No mention of elders of Israel, men of Israel, or house of Israel.
That is plainly not what says.
If that was the rule, it would be up to Ruth to reject Elimelech’s kinsman, but it was up to the kinsman to reject Ruth, while Ruth was elsewhere awaiting her fate to be settled.
You are making up a progressive Old Testament that exists only in your fantasies, while we can both read what is plainly in the Book of Ruth, chapters three and four. In the Old Testament, women are normally and normatively property, inherited almost like a chest of drawers or a family dog.
A woman that is not property through no fault of her own is to be pitied. A woman that is not property due to her willful rebellion is to be condemned and punished.
That is progressive doctrine, which appears nowhere in the old testament, and I much doubt it appears in the Talmud, except one defines the Talmud to include the writings of nineteenth century Rabbis and later.
>There is no commandment that Naboth not multiply his wealth overly much – hence a prohibition on soaking the rich
Naboth was not rich. He had a small vineyard.
>Inheritance is not equal, and over time will become ever more unequal.
Not so-the Hebrew population did not multiply too much after the conquest. By the time the Babylonians ran off the exiles of Judah, its population was about 120K. Further, there is no way of taking someone else’s land inheritance (meaning, the fixed one which he didn’t buy) permanently-once the Yovel happens, it reverts. It’s true that if someone has many children, the inheritance of each one shrinks, but some die childless, so it all balances out.
>In practice, of course, it never did bring forth fruit for three years, hence no sabbath year.
Says who? This means that the sixth year is so fruitful that its store is enough for the next three (until the crop of the ninth year, the one after Yovel, is lawful to eat.)
>Progressive redistribution is motivated by equalism. Biblical charity is not Thus biblical injunctions to charity within profoundly unequal relationships are not biblical support for equalism.
The point is not that the Torah is progressive. It is that it is not written by Ayn Rand. The poor are entitled to charity, the rest are obliged to support them (in no fixed measure, by the way.)
>Even less was it written by nineteenth century Harvard.
That part is obvious to both of us.
>Women in the Old Testament do not have, and should not have, sexual autonomy. Their consent is not required for marriage.
Their consent is required for marriage. Women have no sexual autonomy, and they should not (and by the way, neither do men have sexual autonomy in any Western sense,) but we see in the first extensive codification of Jewish law as it was practiced, the Talmud, that they have the right to demand their rights, for instance, a woman whose husband is not fulfilling his sexual obligations can force him to divorce her and pay her the sum specified in their marriage contract.
>How does that work out?…One man’s inheritance would make him man of power and wealth, another man’s inheritance was unfortunately in the hands of the moors.
It works out as best as it can. Joshua’s division of the land was more or less equal, by lots apparently (though we don’t get the details of how it was split on the individual level.) Of course, if at the time of the Yovel, your inheritance is in Gaza which is presently ruled by Philistines, you’re out of luck-better figure out how to conquer Gaza. But the point is that the ideal is that every man has his inheritance, which is inalienable on a permanent basis.
>The alliance of far against near, in which the desire of the masses to steal stuff is used to destroy competing members of the elite – the attack on property is based on equalism.
The people which Wall Street was sponsoring Bolsheviks to attack were not near-they were quite far.
>The man who already has substantial property is not going to steal property, for the tactic is too easily reversed.
We see the exact opposite with Ahab and Naboth. We also see the exact opposite with an extensive history of banksterism in the US (by which I mean an alliance of Ned Lamonts with various Columbia communists.) The man of SOME property will not steal property, because he has much to lose and doesn’t have the ability to steal much and consolidate his gains. The man of very much property is tempted by assumed impunity.
>The Old Testament endorses property repeatedly and at length. Property rights are incompatible with equalism. The Old Testament never endorses equalism anywhere. All your purported examples of it endorsing equalism are strained procrustean readings.
As I have (unsuccessfully) tried to explain at some length, there are aspects in the Torah where people are equal and others where they are not. The concept of property rights implies a basic equality-equality in the ability to possess property. A slave, for instance, has no property. Neither does a child.
>That is a technicality. Of course marriage is not really final until sex takes place, but it is pretty final when the deal is done.
Actually, you are incorrect. The Mishna, which is the first codification of Torah law as practiced, tells us that money/sexual consummation/a contract are each sufficient for marriage to be legal. http://www.mechon-mamre.org/jewfaq/marriage.htm
However, you can’t marry a woman in her absence. She has to take the money (a ring will do,) and she must know its value.
> And that is a technicality that is irrelevant to the important point which is that Abraham’s servant and Rebekah’s father did not think that Rebekahs consent was required, and Rebekah’s brother did not initially think that Rebekah’s consent was required. Similarly, the ceremonies of Levirate marriage.
Again-we have a sketchy account. Rivka gave her consent initially. Her restating of it sealed the deal-her family was not in a position to stop the marriage. For Levirate marriage, the marriage is the woman’s right and the man’s obligation.
>It says in plain text that he was not later anointed by the elders of Israel, but by the men of Judah – which in context probably means the mighty men of Judah, but might mean the militia of Judah.
As usual, you read until you get to what supports your thesis, then stop. In fact, the “men of Judah”were the elders of Judah, and they anointed him king over JUDAH. Not Israel. So, how did he become king of all Israel? You’d have to keep reading to find out.
>See: “Men of Judah†No mention of elders of Israel, men of Israel, or house of Israel.
See, this is what happens when you have no context or background, and are not learning in good faith but only to win an argument. If you keep reading, this is what you will see:
5 Then came all the tribes of Israel to David unto Hebron and spoke, saying, “Behold, we are thy bone and thy flesh.
2 Also in time past, when Saul was king over us, thou wast he that leddest out and broughtest in Israel; and the Lord said to thee, ‘Thou shalt feed My people Israel, and thou shalt be a captain over Israel.’â€
3 So all the elders of Israel came to the king at Hebron; and King David made a league with them in Hebron before the Lord, and they anointed David king over Israel.
See? Elders, Jim. Not “strong men,” or whatever.
>>you thought that marrying your deceased brother’s widow was a right, that she was chattel to be inherited, while it plainly says that it is HER right upon you
>That is plainly not what says.
This is what it says:
5 “If brethren dwell together, and one of them die and have no child, the wife of the dead shall not marry outside unto a stranger; her husband’s brother shall go in unto her, and take her to him for a wife, and perform the duty of a husband’s brother unto her.
6 And it shall be that the firstborn whom she beareth shall succeed in the name of his brother who is dead, that his name be not put out of Israel.
7 And if the man like not to take his brother’s wife, then let his brother’s wife go up to the gate unto the elders, and say, ‘My husband’s brother refuseth to raise up unto his brother a name in Israel. He will not perform the duty of my husband’s brother.’
8 Then the elders of his city shall call him and speak unto him; and if he stand by it and say, ‘I like not to take her,’
9 then shall his brother’s wife come unto him in the presence of the elders, and loose his shoe from off his foot, and spit in his face, and shall answer and say, ‘So shall it be done unto that man that will not build up his brother’s house.’
10 And his name shall be called in Israel, ‘The house of him that hath his shoe loosed.’
She goes up to the court (the elders at the gate) and sues him: “he will not perform the duty of my husband’s brother.” She has the right, he has the duty.
>If that was the rule, it would be up to Ruth to reject Elimelech’s kinsman, but it was up to the kinsman to reject Ruth, while Ruth was elsewhere awaiting her fate to be settled.
He had the duty before Boaz did. We have an obligation to let people perform their duties.
>n the Old Testament, women are normally and normatively property, inherited almost like a chest of drawers or a family dog.
Not so. You can sell a chest of drawers of a family dog. You can’t sell your wife. Not even, for instance, in the case where she is a war captive you took (and by the way, you HAVE TO marry such a captive-you can’t just have sex with her.) And it is explicitly stated in the Torah. A chest of drawers or a dog have no legal powers and no claims to make on you. Etc.
>That is progressive doctrine, which appears nowhere in the old testament
It is common sense. Ever heard of a poor king? How is it that Ned Lamont and his buddies were able, while having no constitutional power, to drive US foreign policy in subverting allied foreign governments and extracting concessions from their successors (for instance, in the USSR)? Money buys power in any mature and functioning system (which is to say, a corrupt one.) What appears in the Torah is an explicit prohibition for a king to overly multiply his wealth, which you ignore because it doesn’t fit your ideology, and a story of a king acting wicked by…using his power to expropriate wealth.
Spielberg’s most famous movie is, of course, the hateful forgery Schindler’s List, which proves that the other hateful forgery Protocols of the Elders of Zion is actually true.
“I get the impression that the Catholic members of the DE do not agree with you, and feel that the Church will reform itself from the inside without any application of Hammers.”
Their perspective is this: God will provide the hammer if it’s needed. So far the hammer hasn’t appeared so they choose to believe in magic reform movements and/or god bailing them out. The truth is every religion is dependent upon the host society and on the hard leadership that comes with actual military power. In this age the cathedral has all the hard power thus all the reform moves only in the direction of becoming more and more leftist.
The truth is that every host society is dependent on its religion. As we can see with population collapse in those which abandoned religion, and extreme competitive disadvantage for those with particularly idolatrous religions when they encountered societies not so hampered (the South and Central American civilizations in particular.)
If that’s the case, it’s pretty clear that every pogrom and expulsions of Jewish populations through out history are entirely justified on the grounds that Jews are instrumentation in destroying people’s faith.
You mean “instrumental.” It would be difficult for one to make the argument that the Jews of medieval Europe were instrumental in destroying Christianity, or that the Jews of the Muslim world were instrumental in destroying Islam. In fact, the murderers and the robbers, stupid and vicious as they were, did not make those arguments, but made other ones, such as that Jews drank the blood of Christian babies and fooled innocent peasants into borrowing on interest, then demanded the return of the money (of course, the ones yelling the loudest about this were nobles who’d borrowed money and didn’t want to pay it back.) So not even they were dishonest enough to make this argument.
Religion always collapses either from external invasion (by people, usually, with a more compelling religion, for instance, one that doesn’t require child sacrifice, or at least one equally compelling) or from internal decay into more and more corrupt idolatry.
It seems to me that, on the contrary, child sacrifice makes a religion compelling. Canaanites seem to have been successful in converting Hebrews, so successful it was a problem.
This an extreme application of your theory that lots of irritating observances make a religion persuasive.
Dropping children into the flames in front of the congregation is a very impressive display of faith. And a government sponsored religion can always get bigger and better displays of faith.
Group A sacrifices a splash of wine, a pinch of incense, and, on big occasions, the parts of the sheep they don’t much like to eat. Group B sacrifices the children of the ruling elite (which thereby fails to reproduce) by burning the children alive in public. Obviously the religion of group B will persuade, providing the government of group B with soft power.
Child sacrifice makes a religion compelling in a short term and closed system way. In the long term, it is extremely maladaptive (as is all idolatry,) as evidenced by the lack of Molech cults among us today.
There was a lot of sacrifice involved in Judaism (and by the way, many of the sacrifices involved burning the entire animal.) A sheep today costs several hundred dollars, back then it was proportionately more. Some commentators (Maimonides and, I believe, Ibn Caspi) see animal sacrifice as something G-d didn’t want but made as a concession to the Hebrews’ weakness, as they had been used to this mode of worship and would have continued if forbidden all together, sacrificing to various idols in quiet. Thus, He gave us sacrifices to be performed only at certain times, in certain contexts and only in one specific place.
Idolatry is inherently seductive. The idolatry of the times was much more seductive than that of the Classical period, as evidenced by the story of Rabbi Ashi and King Menashe: http://revach.net/tanach/yirmiyahu/Yirmiyahu-Part-4-The-Enigma-Of-King-Menashe/3529
Perhaps this has to do with the hypothesis of Consciousness and the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, or maybe each age has its own flavor of idolatry.
The reason there are no cults of human sacrifice today is not because of persuasion and moral progress, but because cults of human sacrifice have been put to fire and steel. In the destruction of the Aztecs, it was commanded “Spare not the woman to bear sons to avenge her brothers, nor the old man to give counsel.”
Cortez’s men remarked on how disturbingly persuasive human sacrifice was – which was of course, all the more reason to eradicate it by any means necessary.
And why is it that none of the human sacrifice cults were able to effectively resist being put to fire and the sword? Because being idolatrous is maladaptive. Not just in one way but in many ways.