The far left and far right eventually meet. Kind of like a circle...you go far enough in any one direction...

O.T. (sort of...)

From Ha'aretz news

16:54
Head of UN humanitarian mission in territories says Israel must make good on commitments to lift closures (AP)

Shouldn't the Palestinians make good on their commitments to fight terror?

#1: Yes. I had never really realized that until after 9/11, but seeing David Duke in the Arab News and Justin Raimando in Pat Buchanan's new magazine really "completes the circle". Blair's Law lives.

From time to time Fronnt Page Magazine has similar articles by John J Ray all dealing with the left and they are all very interesting.

I went to his web page

[Link: members.optusnet.com.au...]

and then to his unpublished papers and specifically a paper he published on Anti-semetism. I was shocked by what I read. In essence he believes the conduct of Jews, (you know, money grubbing, deceitful, immoral and clannish) is the cause of antisemetism.

Fortunately, no one would publish this paper.

Excellent reading
especially for those who have always feared a "US Police state"
it will come from the left
right Hillary ??
HG

I thought the article was good, one complaint though:
"'Mussolini set the example in his revival of pagan rites, and in October 1928 instituted a ceremony in which patriotic citizens presented their national savings certificates as a burnt offering on an ancient altar of Minerva specially brought out of its museum for the purpose'

So do modern day Leftists find a superior spirituality in pagan pre-Christian religions such as the religions of the American Indians? Mussolini was there before them (Smith, 1967, p. 100)."

There is no religion known as paganism. Its only a catagory of pantheonic based religons. My problem here is that he implies there some type of negativity in anything else a but judeo-christian form of religion. The irony is that Judaism is a pagan religion. So in theory, I as a Jew, could take a lamb and sacrifice it as an offering to the Almighty and it would be the same as saying a prayer. Judaism is more akin to that of the one practiced by Greeks and Romans than that of Christians. I don't want to go off topic but with this understanding, one can see why Chritians can't comprehend why Jews appear more concerned with money than they are.

Been saying for years that the 'rats took the nazi's 1935 playbook and have sucessfully incorporated it into their own. Back in the mid 70's one of my coworkers commented on the fact his mother believed that the government was trying to eliminate the middle class. She said that the middle class was an abberation in our society and that the government was slowly but surely getting rid of that abberation. I laughed then but it seems more likely that the old lady knew more than I gave her credit for knowing.

I couldn't read more than a little of this article. It seems specious at best.

Brief addition - the article tries to lay out the similarities between the modern left-wing and Mussolini (at least in the part I got to before having to close it) but ignores many of the facts to the contrary.

While I agree that the far left and the far right meet at the bottom of hell, I wouldn't associate myself with this guy nor would I read the rest of his tripe.

#4 Ted B.,

What is interesting is that in the Front Page article he deplores German and French Jew hatred.

Perhaps he deplores it while recognizing its roots in human behavior. And the universal need for a scape goat.

I will look into it further.

BTW Horowitz who is Jewish seems OK with Ray. So for the time being until further study so am I.

There is no religion known as paganism. Its only a catagory of pantheonic based religons. My problem here is that he implies there some type of negativity in anything else a but judeo-christian form of religion. The irony is that Judaism is a pagan religion. So in theory, I as a Jew, could take a lamb and sacrifice it as an offering to the Almighty and it would be the same as saying a prayer. Judaism is more akin to that of the one practiced by Greeks and Romans than that of Christians.

Uh, No. Not just no, but Hell No.

Let's start with the dictionary definition of "pagan":

[Link: www.dictionary.com...]

1. One who is not a Christian, Muslim, or Jew, especially a worshiper of a polytheistic religion.

Then let's look at the reality: Judaism professes there to be but a single God, and "Thou shalt have no other gods before me. Thou shalt not make unto thee a graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth: thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them".

Judaism was the first monotheistic religion, as far as I've ever heard. In that, it was the first non-pagan religion.

I don't want to go off topic but with this understanding, one can see why Chritians can't comprehend why Jews appear more concerned with money than they are.

Now you're just being a moron.

Hi all:
Well most people don't realize that Mussolini was a socialist before the First world war. Further, Hitler created the Hitler youth from the direct inspiration of the Kosmonol (the Communist youth party)
What he tells me is nothing new though for many it'll be an eye opening revelation
xavier

. Judaism is more akin to that of the one practiced by Greeks and Romans than that of Christians. I don't want to go off topic but with this understanding, one can see why Chritians can't comprehend why Jews appear more concerned with money than they are.

are you aquainted with the idea of transubstantiation..??

[Link: www.newadvent.org...]

Great article. In truth the reason why the left has allways had ties with facisim is the inherent flaw in their philosophy. To achieve their goal of social justice it requires an all powerfull state with the power to force citizens to live according to the philosophy of the ruling class. Since power corrupts, a tired cliche but true, the state which begins as an honest attempt to create justice ultimatly creates great injustice.

This was the reason why I ultimatly seperated from the left.

Ray's anti- semetism thesis is this. Racism is part of human nature. We all prefer our own naturally and are wary of the stranger. Therefor recognizing this in human nature the Jews should accommodate to it and be nice and stop being Jewish. I think I have it right.

(There's nothing wrong in being partial to your own and even thinking it is superior as opposed to moral reletivism. The problem comes us when you act against the other. That is the racism we all abhor.)

Mike Silverman (1) -

In Eric Hoffer's Book "The True Believer", he says the same thing, if I'm not mistaken (it's been many years since I've read it, though).

Ian (3) - Dig it. This explains David Duke / Pat Buchanan perfectly.

What follows is a letter I wrote to Dr John J Ray on his paper on anti-semetism.
-------------------------------------------

I recently read your paper on Semitism and Antisemitism. It is easy to see why no one would publish it. It is unabashedly racist.

In essence, you are blaming the victim for the crime. When a woman is raped the idea that she is responsible for it either because of how she acted or because of how she dressed is no longer tolerated. The rapist must take full responsibility for his act. There are no mitigating circumstances.

In the case of Jews you argue that they are responsible because they think too highly of themselves or because they “take what they can get with no accompanying sense of obligation” or they were out for a “fast buck”, or they “are completely untrustworthy and know no honour” etc., etc., ad nauseum.

The horrible thing is that you think such opinions reflect reality. I have no doubt that not only your case examples share these views but you do as well.

You argue that since these views are “mainstream” that “one should accept Jews often do behave in ways that are offensive.” Is it not possible that mainstream views are prejudiced. You further argue that whatever stereotypes may have been formed that proximity would disabuse people of that stereotype and but the opposite takes place, the more the Jews the more the aversion. I dispute this entirely. America has the most jews and the least anti-Semitism, Glock and Stein notwithstanding. They seem to be saying that with proximity, anti-Semitic behavior goes up. With respect there is a big difference in your views. You leap frog from proximity to reprehensible conduct. Glock and Stein I submit are simply saying that the proximity alone does it. At the end you even take the classic position of an antisemite by arguing that some of your best friends are Jews or in your words, “I wish Jews well and feel that honest criticism is t6he duty of a friend.”. Thank you very much. I would prefer that my friends give us the benefit of their doubts.

You cannot change an emotional dislike or prejudice with facts. The anti-semite will always see things the way he wants to. To them, the Jew is both communist and capitalist, strong and weak, a miser and a spendthrift. We cover the gamut. We are whatever is bad.

In the end, your paper falls flat on its face if our conduct is not as reprehensible as you put it. We can be as ambitious or as separatist as we like. It is our right. It is your job to recognize that right and stop telling us how to be.

Ted Belman

I found it interesting that Mussolini asserted the rich were not happy. I know a person who voluntarily shares this as his philosophy routinely, yet consistently buys Florida lottery tickets every week. (Just in case he's wrong, I guess.)

Hoffer's thesis in his great book "The True Believer" is that a true believer is one who attaches to any cause, the more extreme the better and then lives for the cause.

He argues that such individuals feel themselves to be worthless so they attach to a cause that they perceive as being of great value. In this way they too become of great value. He says it doesn't matter what the cause. One day it could be communism, another, religion and another racism whatever. The constant is the type of person they are psychologically.

Ariel, I'm with you....this ahistorical, weakly-argued and dubiously researched (Funk & Wagnalls???) "article" is perfect for a geocities site because it'd never make it in a legitimate academic or journalistic setting.

If conservatives have to obliterate all negative manifestations of rightwing political ideology (fascism) and have to ignore all positive manifestations of leftwing political ideology (communitarianism for example) in order to prove the superiority of conservativism, then it's a sad, sad state of affairs.

Hey, you dont´believe ist: A smear campaign against "littlegreenfootballs" in an Austrian "Leftwing-Newspaper":

ad vocem

Ooops,

[Link: derstandard.at...]

There is nearly no difference between the far right Nazi one and the so called left wing.

The "idiotarian international" works all over the world.

No discussion without the "hero" Chomsky, Fisk an all the other idiotarians.

The same game you have in the well known "Der Spiegel", FAZ aso.

Ooops,

[Link: derstandard.at...]

There is nearly no difference between the far right Nazi one and the so called left wing.

The "idiotarian international" works all over the world.

No discussion without the "hero" Chomsky, Fisk an all the other idiotarians.

The same game you have in the well known "Der Spiegel", FAZ aso.

Jews appear more concerned with money than they are

What the fuck?

Mike's circle of hate going from right to left in a circle is interesting analogy of what is going on in the left elite. Once a person I had (previously) respected very much told me that "Once the society falls apart it will be the left and socialism that rebuilds it; and then we won't have to tolerate religion and all that nonsence anymore."

What I found interesting in that statement was that years later the Unibomber would make the exact same analogy, that is--you have to cause havoc and economic collapse in a country for the left to be able to take over and rise. Kill off your country's wealth to create it, as it were.

For years in Germany the Green party spoke of the same way to power, 1. Destroy the economy and cause havoc, 2. a takeover of socialist ideals with only one party in power, and 3. the outlawing of religion as dangerous.

Now, I think religion isn't always a great political windfall, but it seems to me the left in the US today still believes that chaos is the only way that their "brilliance" can be seen as savior.
What kind of philosophy is that?

If you have to cause economic collapse and starvation, if that is the one and only way you points of views will be given "respect"--then, aren't you really a facist underneath it all?

Connecting the circle isn't hard. Some hard right-wingers in the US used to believe we'd have a race or class war one day. Contrast that then with the left--who seem hell bent on making a class war come about no matter what.

The circle analogy is great. It pretty much says that the left, disappointed at not having a right wing take over legitimize their beliefs--is doing it themselves. A full circle.

So in theory, I as a Jew, could take a lamb and sacrifice it as an offering to the Almighty and it would be the same as saying a prayer. Judaism is more akin to that of the one practiced by Greeks and Romans than that of Christians.

Uh, No. Not just no, but Hell No.

Oh, my. This is a huge can of worms, and one of my favorite topics. In brief, you're both right and you're both wrong; Christianity and Judaism are both nominally monotheistic but both also contain elements logically incompatible with monotheism. Generally speaking, the problem is that early versions of both Jewish and Christian theology imagine a God who is extremely anthropomorphized, like the gluttonous, sex-loving gods of the Romans and Greeks. (The reason this is logically inconsistent with the more sophisticated monotheism that followed is that an omnipotent Supreme Being would not and could not have the motivations -- hunger, horniness -- of Its biological creations.)

The thing is, though, that as early Jews (and early Christians) developed more sophisticated theological visions, they couldn't bring themselves to jettison the scriptures that imagined God as merely one divine king vying for power with other divine kings. And so you get the strange spectacle of an omnipotent universe-creator who professes to be jealous if his creations worship other gods (Why? there are no rivals to dethrone him. Even if every single human on earth switched to Hinduism, Judeo-Christian theology says that Vishnu and company are either manmade phantasms or disguised demons -- i.e., finite creations of the Supreme Being -- and in either case, could never hope to overthrow Jehovah). Or a God who created the entire universe of 50 billion galaxies with His Word, yet still gets mad if two men have anal sex. (Why? God can't get AIDS, and the non-reproductive character of gay sex isn't a problem because God can magically make a billion new babies out of pipecleaners, dried macaroni, and glitter glue, if He so desired. Thus there's no self-serving reason for him to object to homosexuality, and neither can there be an altruistic reason, because sometimes homosexuals lead blissfully happy and sex-packed lives.)

Turning to the case of Christianity, there is the bizarre case of Satan, who is held to be another example of a fallen, finite creation, and yet who must function as an equal-but-opposite Antigod in order for the Redemption story to make much sense. (Why would an omnipotent Supreme Being have to go through the rigamarole of a blood sacrifice to save mankind from their sins? He could just say Bibbidy-bobbidy-boo, you are all hereby HEALED! Only if Satan presented a credible threat to God's power could the bargaining chip of Christ's sacrifice be necessary.)

So you see, there are pagan elements deeply woven through both Christianity and Judaism, although some believers (who are usually called ''liberals'') have seen the above problems with anthropomorphized conceptions of God and discarded the tribal-king-protecting-his-turf-from-rivals with a more abstract (and necessarily more benevolent) Creator.

P.S. If any of yinz aren't sufficiently pissed off by the above, be sure 'n' read this essay, wherein I prove that Jesus was actually a half-human, half-alien monster baby a la The Village of the Damned!

P.P.S. And please don't worry about the fate of my soul in the hereafter, because if there's one thing I'm certain of, it's that any being capable of creating a universe as vast and complex as ours would have to be an infinitely good sport. (As Carl Sagan noted, in a different context, How is it that hardly any major religion has looked at science and concluded, 'This is better than we thought! The Universe is much bigger than our prophets said, grander, more subtle, more elegant'? Instead they say, 'No, no, no! My god is a little god, and I want him to stay that way.')

And so you get the strange spectacle of an omnipotent universe-creator who professes to be jealous if his creations worship other gods (Why?

Simple. Because God said "Thou shall not murder" and Zeus didn't. Other gods didn't tell humans to do or not to do what God did. The moral laws of the Bible derive from God's authority which must remain unchallenged.

Think of it this way. In America the constitution must be binding (and not China's) or else the various rights afforded by it are meaningless. In the universe God must be authoritative or else the various moral laws are meaningless.

Simple. Because God said "Thou shall not murder" and Zeus didn't. Other gods didn't tell humans to do or not to do what God did. The moral laws of the Bible derive from God's authority which must remain unchallenged.

Think of it this way. In America the constitution must be binding (and not China's) or else the various rights afforded by it are meaningless. In the universe God must be authoritative or else the various moral laws are meaningless.

Son of a gun. I disagree with the emphasized statement -- because I favor the horn of Euthyphro's Dilemma which says that good can be described without reference to the authority of an omnipotent figure (in so describing good I rely on consequentialism -- the good is that which promotes rational happiness; the evil is that which engangers it). And yet I think your argument about God's authority remaining unchallenged is a good one -- if there were an omnipotent being who was motivated by altruistic concern for his creations, he would want his creations to obey his moral advice (which is flawless because of his omniscience) at all times, and so would discourage them from worshipping other gods even though he himself knows that the other gods don't exist.

Another reason why the choice between atheism and Deism can only be decided by Occam's Razor...

I'm not really trying to convince you that "in the universe God must be authoritative or else the various moral laws are meaningless" but rather that this is the mindset behind the Bible's objection to all other gods; not that primitive God was petty, jealous, intolerant etc as were pagan gods as you posit.

so would discourage them from worshipping other gods even though he himself knows that the other gods don't exist.

Interestingly enough there is a passage in the Talmud that has God saying something like "Would that they would forget about Me but [at least] keep My laws".

This passage has been much maligned over the centuried, but Judaism has always emphasized deed over creed. If we all acted as if God existed but didn't believe it, Judaism says that God would be much more pleased than with the reverse situation.

...sorry about this being off topic but I know this will be of interest to many.

The French author accused of inciting r@ca hatred for calling islam the stupidist religion has been found not guilty by a French court. see link below.

[Link: news.bbc.co.uk...]

Interestingly enough there is a passage in the Talmud that has God saying something like "Would that they would forget about Me but [at least] keep My laws".

OH MY GOD. I am having, no joke, one of those ecstatic epiphanic movements where you get the same neurochemical cascade as can be produced by a little toke of weed or several hours of slow methodical sex. Except I've reached this state just by reflecting on the profundity of the the above, without drugs or friction on my wiener. Hot damn.

I still think Occam's Razor narrowly favors the non-existence of God, but wow, the men who made up the above passage from the Talmud were sharp thinkers. It makes the grossly material Fundamentalists with their gold-paved celestial cities or dark-eyed houris look like such fleshly pikers.

Maybe I should convert to Judaism. Except that I think the perfectly ordinary Jewish rabbi Jesus (whose historicity I have just today changed my previous opinion on, even though I still believe he was an ordinary mortal man whose biography got mixed up with a pre-existing myth about a prodigious changeling child) nonetheless improved on Jewish tradition a little by rejecting the moral necessity of observing ritual purity laws (''Not that which goeth into the mouth defileth a man; but that which cometh out of the mouth, this defileth a man.''Matt. 15:11).

Son of a gun. An ecstatic epiphany!

I'm still an atheist, though.

If you read the article, it says that there 20 James who had father's named Joseph and brothers named Jesus. I saw a book that went into a lot of reasons why Jesus didn't exist, but I forgot what it was called and don't remember the name.

I say one half-baked comment and you guys jump on it like it has be given attention, oh well.

heres one:
Mussolini just got caught up in all the action and he wasn't all that bad.

why don't you go run with that. Its closer to the topic and yes, I don't really think that

James:
I'm not really trying to convince you that "in the universe God must be authoritative or else the various moral laws are meaningless" but rather that this is the mindset behind the Bible's objection to all other gods;

and again:
Interestingly enough there is a passage in the Talmud that has God saying something like "Would that they would forget about Me but [at least] keep My laws".

This passage has been much maligned over the centuried, but Judaism has always emphasized deed over creed.

Right. Well, I agree that the Talmudic passage you cite is an absolutely brilliant rationalization for the seeming paradox that a perfect and omnipotent being would act like a petty tyrant. (Refer to my preceding arguments.) But I disagree that this mindset is also behind the Bible's objection to other gods -- the Talmud came later and was the product of a more sophisticated theology.

In the Bible, when it says God was jealous, I believe men who wrote those passages really did think that God was a petty chieftain squaring off against rivals. (You can see hints of the old Hebrew polytheism and the transitional henotheism at various points in the Torah, as when Aaron tops the Egyptian priests' stunt of conjuring up snakes by conjuring up... a somewhat bigger and toothier snake. Later in the Tanakh, the conception of God seems to be heading towards a more sophisticated and abstract monotheism.)

Interestingly, one could argue that the relative primitivism of the Torah's god compared to the Talmud's god (and I'm a goy, remember, so be patient with my lack of citations) either reflects the lack of sophistication in an early Jewish culture that was wholly manmade, or that the early revelations were deliberately dumbed down until such time as humans had developed more complex social structures.

As I said, only Occam's Razor makes me favor atheism over some form of Deism...

I don't know if Ray has read it, but back in the 1970's A. James Gregor wrote a book called "The Fascist Persuasion in Radical Politics." He says much the same thing.

Certainly in terms of its adoration of irrationalism, its worship of power, and its contempt both for ordinary people and bourgeois democracy, the New Left had a great deal in common with fascism.

My theory (racist as it is) is that socialism morphed into facism in Germany and Italy because of the national character of Germans and Italians.

Socialism has been pretty benevolent when practised by the English Social Democrats and the Labour movements in Australia and New Zealand.

The basic form of argument being employed here, which is that if you can locate a quote from a historical figure that has a vague resemblence to the statements of a modern political movement that it therefore follows that the modern movements is destined to follow a similar trajectory.

So if I could find a quote from someone who was once a republican but then became a white-supremacist that would prove that republicanism evolved inexorably into white supremacism?

Dumb.

Talmud is fun. Let me give you a sneak preview of something I am planning to post on Kesher Talk over the next few months: every week a recommendation of a Jewish cultural work (usually a book), something accessible for people who want to understand us better. These are my 2 entries for Talmud:

The Talmud and the Internet, Jonathan Rosen.
Although Talmud is as central as Tanakh in making Judaism what it is today, it is intimidating to most Jews as well as gentiles. There is no sweeter introduction to the structure of Talmud and its place in Judaism than this little book, and the Internet analogy is surprisingly apt.

[from a review:] "In the Internet's 'world of unbounded curiosity, of argument and information, where anyone with a modem can wander out of the wilderness for a while, ask a question and receive an answer' Rosen finds a real parallel to the Talmud, 'a place where everything exists, if only one knows how and where to look....' "

If your curiosity is piqued by Rosen's book, many Jewish adult education centers offer an Intro to Talmud class (it is meant to be studied aloud in groups and needs a knowledgeable guide), and here are some websites.

PS. Anti-semites often misquote Talmud - this site is a good corrective.

Carnal Israel: Reading Sex in Talmudic Culture, Daniel Boyarin.
Boyarin is a Berkeley professor and the book is written from a scholarly pomo viewpoint, but don't let that put you off. The prose is accessible and the texts (mostly Paul-Bunyan-like tall tales of medieval sages, who were a randy bunch) are lots of fun.

[from a review:] "This study of rabbinic constructions of the body, gender, and sexuality is one of the very few programmatically feminist readings of ancient rabbinic culture that, at the same time, is deeply learned in the sources and existentially committed to the traditions grounded in them."

***
The best Talmud story demonstrating how human community and intelligence trump Godly miracles is the "Oven of Aknai":

. . . On that day Rabbi Eliezer brought forth every imaginable argument, but the Sages did not accept them. Rabbi Eliezer said to them: if the law agrees with me, let the carob tree prove it. Thereupon the carob tree was torn a hundred cubits out of its place. The Sages retorted: no proof can be brought from a carob tree. Again he said to them: if the law agrees with me, let the stream of water prove it. Whereupon the stream of water flowed backwards. The Sages retorted: no proof can be brought from a stream of water. Again he urged: if the law agrees with me, let the walls of this study hall prove it. Whereupon the walls inclined towards falling. But Rabbi Joshua rebuked the walls, saying: when scholars engage in a legal dispute, who are you to interfere. Thus the walls did not fall, in honor of Rabbi Joshua, but they did not resume an upright stance, in honor of Rabbi Eliezer, but stood inclined at an angle.

Again Rabbi Eliezer said: if the law is with me, let Heaven prove it. Whereupon a Heavenly voice cried out: why do you dispute with Rabbi Eliezer, seeing that in all matters of law the law agrees with him. Then Rabbi Joshua arose and exclaimed: It (the Torah) is not in Heaven (Deut 30:12). What did he mean by this? That the Torah had already been given to us at Mount Sinai, and thus we pay no attention to a Heavenly Voice, because You (G-D) wrote in the Torah at Mount Sinai "After the majority one must incline." (Exodus 23:2).

[later] Rabbi Nathan met Elijah the Prophet and asked him: What did the Holy One, blessed be He, do in that hour? Elijah answered: he laughed with joy and replied "My children have defeated me."

-- Talmud, tractate Baba Metzia, 59A/B

i.e., after the divine laws are given, it is for human beings to work out their implications - in other words, to grow up - and God can't force a result via supernatural hocus-pocus. This is also a subtle refutation of the early Christians (at that time still a Jewish sect), whose evidence for Jesus' Messiah-hood were his miracles, such as rising from the dead. Here the sages are doing an end run around the Christians by saying, "So what? Miracles are not the point."

I say more about this aspect of Jewish theology here, a thread which regrettably features several of the commentors who have given lgf a bad name.

Throbert (#35),

Great post. I'll have something to say about it tomorrow.

(great info as well, Yehudit)

i.e., after the divine laws are given, it is for human beings to work out their implications - in other words, to grow up - and God can't force a result via supernatural hocus-pocus. This is also a subtle refutation of the early Christians (at that time still a Jewish sect), whose evidence for Jesus' Messiah-hood were his miracles, such as rising from the dead. Here the sages are doing an end run around the Christians by saying, "So what? Miracles are not the point."

Some excellent points in there. There were people who followed Jesus only for his miracles (free meal-ticket) and still didn't believe in his Deity. Today people still ask "If only God would show me a sign!", then write off anything miraculous as coincidence. After all, they didn't see a hand flow down from heaven and hand them the $20 they needed for their next meal, they just found it on the ground. The story of Gideon and the fleece is a perfect example of the effectiveness of miracles.

I guess the point I'm trying to make is that asking for miracles is just an excuse for unbelief. People make their own minds up based on substantial and intuitive knowledge, regardless of "signs". Still, it also says that if you see miracles often enough you should shut-up and take notice.

Goat Boy wrote:

My theory (racist as it is) is that socialism morphed into facism in Germany and Italy because of the national character of Germans and Italians.

But what do the national characters of Germans and Italians have in common? Actually, IMO, fascism was a by-product of the great schism of socialism that took place during the First World War. The orthodox Marxist-Leninist view was that all socialists should work for the defeat of their respective governments, and that notion scattered the left to the four winds.

In Russia, socialists who supported a "defensive war" against German imperialism broke away from the Bolsheviks. In western Europe, the Social Democrats broke away from the revolutionary Marxists. Mussolini was expelled from socialist circles for supporting Italy's cause against Austria, and went on to organize fascism. In Germany, somebody coined the phrase "National Socialism", meaning "Socialist, but not traitors to our country." A Marxist agitator named Joseph Goebbels threw in his lot with another disgruntled rabble-rouser from Austria, and the rest is history.

i.e., after the divine laws are given, it is for human beings to work out their implications - in other words, to grow up - and God can't force a result via supernatural hocus-pocus.

Have you read my essay pointing out the similarities between the apocryphal gospels of Jesus' childhood and that Twilight Zone episode about a kid who would wish people into cornfields? I think that these early biographies of Jesus must've been based on some Jewish legend about a magical ''problem child'' -- a legend that came to be misunderstood as representing an actual historical figure.

If your curiosity is piqued by Rosen's book, many Jewish adult education centers offer an Intro to Talmud class

Mmmaybe. Of course, I'm the guy who suggested that Israel is Willow getting her ass whupped by Palestinian vampires, and America should be seen as Buffy, which shows you how ankle-deep my thinking runs...

I just love the image of those poor walls, trying to do the bidding of both Eliezer and Joshua. It would make a great comic book. The kicker is that they then excommunicated Eliezer, even though God had sided with him, essentially because he didn't debate the issue according to the rules.

I went into some detail on this because actually every religion that has stood the test of time (and probably most of those that didn't) have fairly sophisticated concepts of divinity, the universe, and their relation to humanity. I cite my own because it's the one I know the most about. I get tired of seeing simplistic stereotypes of religions get set up as strawmen.

(I'm not going to get into the theology of sacrifice in Temple Judaism here, but that is also more complicated and multi-layered than Throgbert makes it out to be.)

#41

You nearly pinned down how my old Collectivism text book defines the difference between fascism and communism; One was national socialism, while the was global.

Fascism also just drops the egalitarian facade Communism always employed. They just decided "you know, we just don't like you people." then sent them to the concentration camps. Communism is almost more sickening in the way it kills people. They say, "Their is a shortage a food in the country, and because capitalism and efficiency of labor is evil, the only logical choice is to kill enough of you untill there is enough food to feed the rest."

BTW, not to put a damper on that great tale, according to various meforshim all those fantastical miracles were referring to people. For example, "the carob tree" refers to Rabbi Hanina ben Dosa, a famous holy man who was noted for subsisting on nothing but carobs [and for turning vinegar into oil, but that's another story]. So what the tale is actually saying [in a very hyperoblic fashion] is that Rabbi Eliezer ben Hyrcanus actually went around to various heavy-duty scholars who were free agents and they agreed with his ruling -- but the Halachic principle is that the majority rules ['acharei rabim l'hatos'/ derived from this verse: Ex. 23:2 ] and his rounding up individual scholars of renown to buttress his position did not impress the solid majority who disagreed with him and were not obliged to rule according to his minority opinion, even if God would have liked that.

If I remember correctly, this interpretation is found in Sefer Be’er Hagolah by the Maharal, where he explains the meaning of similar fantastic stories that are found in the Talmud. The essential point the story is making, however, is exactly as you put it, Yehudit.

"I think that these early biographies of Jesus must've been based on some Jewish legend about a magical ''problem child''..."

Nope. Jesus was just another messianic nutcase running around Judea in those tumultous times. There were bunches of them (to Christians, he was the one who was real. To Jews, he was nobody until Jews starting following his disciples and Paul turned the movement into a separate religion by unhooking it from halacha). Monty Python's "Life of Brian" is actually pretty accurate in portraying the milieu.

Christians, or people raised in a nominally Christian milieu (i.e. mainstream Western gentile society) tend to look at Judaism through the wrong end of the telescope. Because Jesus is a big deal to them, they keep wanting to find Jesus in our history or religion. He isn't there, folks, except as an external effect: his believers generated incredible amounts of persecution which are part of our history.

To us it's not the "Old" Testament, it's just the Bible, and its characters are our mythic ancestors and its language is our holy tongue and now Israel's modern tongue. From the Bible was generated - beginning before Jesus' time and continuing its development in a very different direction from Christianity - an incredible amount of interpretation and laws and stories and philosophy and rituals and theology, and that's it.

One reason I want to do this series of recommendations (see #38) is to allow those who care about the Middle East dilemmas to "get" how Jews think and how we see the world, without an encrustation of preconceptions, even positive ones.

"I think that these early biographies of Jesus must've been based on some Jewish legend about a magical ''problem child''..."

Nope. Jesus was just another messianic nutcase running around Judea in those tumultous times. There were bunches of them (to Christians, he was the one who was real. To Jews, he was nobody until Jews starting following his disciples and Paul turned the movement into a separate religion by unhooking it from halacha). Monty Python's "Life of Brian" is actually pretty accurate in portraying the milieu.

Christians, or people raised in a nominally Christian milieu (i.e. mainstream Western gentile society) tend to look at Judaism through the wrong end of the telescope. Because Jesus is a big deal to them, they keep wanting to find Jesus in our history or religion. He isn't there, folks, except as an external effect: his believers generated incredible amounts of persecution which are part of our history.

To us it's not the "Old" Testament, it's just the Bible, and its characters are our mythic ancestors and its language is our holy tongue and now Israel's modern tongue. From the Bible was generated - beginning before Jesus' time and continuing its development in a very different direction from Christianity - an incredible amount of interpretation and laws and stories and philosophy and rituals and theology, and that's it.

One reason I want to do this series of recommendations (see #38) is to allow those who care about the Middle East dilemmas to "get" how Jews think and how we see the world, without an encrustation of preconceptions, even positive ones.

Sorry for the double post - browser acting up. Or server. or something.

Yehudit: Actually, I believe that the Jesus of the Gospels is probably a composite of a Middle Eastern (not necessarily Judaic) myth about a changeling child (really!) and an actual person -- this being the ''messianic nutcase running around Judea in those tumultous times'' that you refer to.

I am agnostic as to whether this Actual Person was (a) a nutbag who got undeservedly credited with a few wise sayings that had been cribbed from rabbinical wisdom, or (b) a moderately good teacher who made a name for himself by cribbing from rabbinical wisdom, but who then somehow got nutbag claims about being the Son of God attributed to him.

Perhaps because of my Catholic upbringing, I'm more inclined to think that the historic Jesus was more or less a dude like Brian in the film -- essentially decent, insightful, but definitely didn't think himself the Messiah -- than that he was like the movie's Hermit in the Pit, who gained followers accidentally while they were chasing after the real Brian. But it could go either way, I guess...

Well, there are "problem children" all through the Bible - Genesis is the original dysfunctional family saga. James, any Biblical characters come to mind who would fit what Throbert is looking for? Maybe Yosef, that precocious brat who had visions . . . .

James, any Biblical characters come to mind who would fit what Throbert is looking for?

Bear in mind that my hypothesis requires a problem child with evil voodoo powers, who is therefore likely to be hiding out somewhere in folklore along with Lilith, rather than in Scriptures.

Anyway, Yehudit, I read your remarks in the other thread and found them extremely interesting. My favorite moment in the thread may have been when another poster, presumably coming from a Christian background, chimed in with the observation that God had revealed the OT in order to let humankind know that we were ''incapable of getting along without Him,'' or somesuch, which is rather different from the point you were trying to make.

I was reminded of a sci-fi ''short-short'' story that I read years ago -- a retelling of the Fall of Man from Genesis. In this version, after Adam and Eve eat the apple, the angel shows up with the flaming sword to expel them from Paradise, etc. Only this time, A&E tag-team the angel, steal his pretty flaming sword, and kick his ass home. God beams down, quite miffed; A&E apologize about the angel busines -- but firmly say that if God didn't want them to eat the apple, He shouldn't have put the tree there in the first place. God bursts into tears of joy and says ''On a hundred million planets I have slaves and worshippers, but now at last I have my children.''

Another thing. Has anyone read Why God Won't Go Away: Brain Science and the Biology of Belief? My roommate had it lying around a few months ago; I leafed through it and didn't really get the point, and I guess neither did my roommate, because he wasn't smacking his head and going ''Wow!'' But I'm going to have to re-read it now.

Because I figured out yesterday that I, although an atheist, have personally experienced the joy-state of religious mysticism described in the book. Remember the epiphanic sensation I said I had while reading about the beautiful humaneness of the Talmudic God?

I am having, no joke, one of those ecstatic epiphanic movements where you get the same neurochemical cascade as can be produced by a little toke of weed or several hours of slow methodical sex.

Well, indeed I recognized that epiphany feeling -- it felt like the euphoric effects of pot or the sensory bliss of really intense group masturbation helped along by kinda chanting various sexual words. Bear with me through the little dose of TMI there.

Because, wait, I'd also felt the epiphanic sensation after reading Atlas Shrugged in college (I've cooled on Ayn Rand since then, but boy, did it feel like tongues of fire had come down from heaven the first time I made it through Galt's Speech praising voluntary human cooperation and the mutually beneficial effects of laissez-faire capitalism.)

I'd felt it while having sex recently with a guy whom I find extremely attractive -- physically, intellectually, emotionally -- that feeling of union with another human being and with some transcendant dimension of pure love.

I'd felt it after getting a second wind in a long bike ride -- that breathless, giggly sensation.

I'd felt it after writing that essay about Jesus being a Village of the Damned child -- I was so excited to have made that original (to me) metaphorical connection after a difficult process of thought.

And I suspect it's akin to what Palestinian suicide bombers feel as they count down the seconds to pressing the button -- that they're about to be transported to a Paradise of unimaginable bliss, to engage in sexual unions with the beautiful and to be with the Creator.

In other words -- and note that this doesn't say anything one way or the other about whether there is or isn't a God out there -- when we feel we've been touched by God, it's all about the endorphins flooding our brain. (You can thus see God as a delusion created by our highly evolved mammalian brains, or the endorphin mechanism as the means by which our benevolent Creator tickles us to get our attention when He wants to have a chat, and as the divinely-designed biological basis for the voice of conscience that gives us pleasure when we resolve to treat each other with kindness and love. The endorphin effects can sometimes also be triggered by emotions that are neither particularly virtuous nor negative -- like when a crowd cheers its excitement (it's all about unity with other humans) at a football game. And the effect can be triggered by extremely negative things like group hatred and physical violence -- the Palestinians crowds (unity again) who cheer the deaths of Jews. We all yearn to unite with one another and with something greater than ourselves; the devil is in the details.

Wait, there's something else I forgot -- whether you see the endorphin mechanism as an evolutionary accident that promotes group cooperation or as the design of a loving God who wanted us to treat each other with affection, the mechanism also explains why we get pleasure from identifying with virtuous heroes in movies and literature. It explains why we identify with ''bad boy'' heroes -- we want to unify with them one-on-one, at the id-gratification level. It explains the addict's desire to be one with the drug. It explains why both loving monogamous sex and casual group sex can be equally exciting if the state of unity is reached. It explains why fundamentalists care only about those who are like them, and why more ''evolved'' liberals care about those who are different. It explains why misguided liberals apologize for the Islamofascists -- they want to unify with them. It explains the Islamofascists themselves -- they do have some altruistic concern for other Islamofascists, if not for anyone else; on a gross and limited level, they're unifying.

Evolved or created, the pursuit of endorphin and the neurochemical's ability tendency to promote a sensation of oneness explains so much about who we are and why we do what we do.

One day, perhaps, the right will bother to inform itself about the actual history of the environmental/conservation movement which is rooted in early 19th century America and England. Creating a bird sanctuary in the 1930s really says nothing. I hope the author is better informed about the rest of his assertions.

But wait, there's more! The fact that endorphins tend to promote a sensation of oneness, with the reciprocal fact that contemplation of oneness can promote endorphin release also explains all religions and cults, good and bad.

Reform Jews and liberal Christians who want all humanity to unify under banners of peace and justice are motivated by endorphins just as surely as the New Age practitioner who wants only to connect with a 35,000-year-old Atlantean warrior. Not to mention the fundamentalists -- Jewish, Christian, Muslim, Hindu -- who see their own tribe as more worthy than the rest of humanity. And the hippy-dippy leftists who reject their own but naively embrace religious or secular fascism -- they still dream of group cohesion. Wow. Transcendental Meditation and Nazism and Alle Menschen werden Brüder and Ayn Rand's obsession with humping a Heroic Man and the label on a bottle of Dr. Bronner's Soap are all products of the exact same neurological/spiritual phenomenon channeled in different ways: the yearning for oneness of some kind or another.

And the ethical universalism of Judaism can be seen either as the gift of an exceptionally gentle and loving God, or as a brilliant Jewish invention that takes advantage of a naturally-occurring brain chemical that makes us feel better and better the more we strive to pursue constructive activities with as many other people as possible and refrain from destructive and selfish activities.

I of course vote for the second one, and see the Anglo-American invention of liberal democracy -- which occurred, you will note, in a milieau of an increasingly benign and tolerant Christianity following a period of repressive Christianity -- as another brilliant exploitation of a biological phenomenon. But one could also argue that the liberalization of Christianity and the emergence of Western human-rights theory were divinely guided by the Jewish god, with big payoffs for the Chosen People. The Jews will also be much better off if Islam adopts American secularism -- at the very least, like Jerry Falwell, they'd grudgingly leave the Jews alone. Of course, they'd be better off still if Islam become more like Reform Judaism or liberal Christianity, and actually emphasized harmonious relations with Jews (and people of all creeds).

Damn, now that I think of it, this is all one massive Jewish plot concocted by their fluffy-numkins God of Love and Justice!

Hayek says the transition from socialism to fascism of some form is inevitable. See"Road to Serfdom"