One Law for Jews, Another Law for Gentiles

Most of the world is tribal and tribal morality is inevitably dual — there’s one morality for how you deal with members of the tribe and another morality for how you deal with outsiders.

Judaism is tribal morality (with the God of Judaism mandating differing codes, for instance, you do not lend to a Jew at interest but you can lend to a goy at interest). There’s one code for how you deal with your fellow Jews and a more relaxed code for how you deal with outsiders.

Westernized Jews tend to be the most polite and ethical Jews in their behavior towards non-Jews, depending upon how many generations they’ve been to the West, the more generations the more westernized, while Jews who come from parts of the world such as Eastern Europe and the Middle East which had terrible relations between Jew and goy may be more ruthless in their dealings.

The most prominent exception to tribal morality is WASP morality aka universal morality. When I was growing up a WASP, there was no notion that it was OK to treat outsiders any differently than your own group. This mono morality is why WASPs create the best countries (England, Canada, United States, Australia, New Zealand) with high social trust while Israel is a low-trust society.

Marjorie Miller describes the Israeli concept of ‘freier’:

A freier, in Israeli eyes, is a shopper who waits in line to pay retail. It is a driver who searches for legal parking rather than pulling onto the sidewalk with the other cars. … The fear of being a sucker turns driving into a bumper-car competition and makes grocery shopping as trying as arm wrestling.

… ‘In London, the culture is to give way, be a gentleman, don’t compete,’ said Peri, the former editor. ‘But an Israeli is the opposite. If you are stronger, why should you give way to someone weaker? In a debate, the British will say, ‘You have a point.’ In a debate here, no Israeli will admit he has been persuaded to change his mind. That shows weakness.’

Americans often find the Israeli attitude intolerably rude. Israelis, meanwhile, find Americans to be the biggest freiers of all. They are naive idealists. … Americans are perceived as innocents who follow the rules and who believe a person will actually do what he promises to do. ‘An American is willing to trust until someone proves to be untrustworthy,’ Shahar said. ‘Israel is much more like the rest of the world, where the basic assumption is that people . . . should not be trusted until proven trustworthy.’

When compared to Greeks, Italians, Persians and Arabs, Jews are not noticeably less ethical in business.

When “white shoe” Wall Street firms did not want to hire Jews, it was because in large part they wanted to keep up their standards and this depended upon employing WASPs rather that tribesmen with dual moralities.

When you hear about a major scandal on Wall Street, it’s rarely Presbyterians and Anglicans getting in trouble.

Adam Kirsch writes in Tabletmag:

In this case, there is no avoiding the fact that the Talmud is heavily biased in favor of the Jew against the gentile. The mishna in Bava Kamma 37b says, “With regard to an ox of a Jew that gored the ox of a gentile, the owner of the belligerent ox is exempt from liability. But with regard to an ox of a gentile that gored the ox of a Jew, regardless of whether the goring ox was innocuous or forewarned, the owner of the ox pays the full cost of the damage.” In other words, a gentile doesn’t even benefit from the rule about an innocuous ox costing only half the damages; his ox is automatically considered forewarned and so responsible for full damages. But a Jew’s ox can hurt a gentile’s ox with impunity….

Rather than remedy this injustice, however, the Gemara attempts to justify it. According to Abbahu, God “arose and permitted their [the gentiles’] money to the Jewish people.” The reason for this, he explains, is that after the Flood, the sons of Noah received what are known as the Noahide commandments—seven laws that are binding on all human beings, including laws against theft and murder. Because the non-Jewish peoples did not obey these laws, God punished them by allowing Jews to take their property. (Although one might note that the Israelites notoriously failed to uphold their own laws on many occasions.) Rabbi Yochanan gives an alternate explanation, based on the legend that God offered the Torah to all the peoples of the Earth, but only the Jews accepted it. Thus the other nations deserve to have their goods taken by the Jews.

No matter how much they justify it, however, the rabbis can’t ignore the fact that this principle would make Judaism look pretty bad if it were widely known. That is the message of a story about a pair of Roman officials who were once ordered by their emperor to learn the Torah. When they had finished, they said, “We have examined the entire Torah and it is true, except for this matter that you state with regard to an ox of a Jew that gored the ox of a gentile.” “But,” they added, “we will not inform this matter to the kingdom”: These Romans realized what kind of an impression this favoritism would make on a non-Jewish audience, and agreed to keep it secret.

As the Koren Talmud shows in its always useful notes, later Jewish commentators were equally concerned to palliate this inequity. Many of them held that the law about Jewish and non-Jewish oxen was only promulgated because, in the ancient world, non-Jews were usually pagans with no sense of religion or morality. In later times, when the gentiles that Jews dealt with were mainly Christians and Muslims, who had their own monotheistic beliefs and upheld the Noahide commandments, this law did not apply. Alternatively, Maimonides suggested that since gentile laws did not punish the owner of a goring ox the way Jewish law did, gentiles were treated accordingly and not given compensation when one of their oxen was gored. Still, however you explain it, this is one of those moments when the Talmud reveals the limits of its ethical imagination—which is exactly why later Judaism recognized the need to go beyond it.

Tribal morality is how the world works.

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The Return Of Tribalism

Comments at Steve Sailer:

* So many decry tribalism today, but it’s just about all people have left, and that’s why it’s coming back with a vengeance.

* This is a key insight. The declining importance of religion means that people don’t really identify that way. High geographical mobility means, first, that your neighborhood is more like a hotel room than your home—Paul Kersey memorably called modern suburbs “drifter colonies.” But it also means that your contact with your family is dramatically curtailed. It also means that your contact with the people you grew up with is dramatically curtailed. The homogenizing influence of mass culture, imposed legal uniformity, and neighborhood disruption ensures that there is nothing for most to identify with at a sub-national level.

Because of they way we are wired, we are going to take sides and fight each other. Our elites think they can keep that urge channeled into sports, loyalty to your job and co-workers, and ridiculous, abstract ideological conflicts over “muh freedumbs” and “social justice.” The way to bet, however, is that they lose control and more normal genetic interests re-assert themselves. Or, maybe that’s what they want. They seem to be happy with the Nazi freak show in the Ukraine.

* Growing up I always heard through the media that blacks had been stereotyped as criminals by the movies and television. Is this really true? I know that in the past two decades, tv shows ignore reality and feature white criminals almost exclusively, e.g. CSINY, Law and Order, etc.

Additionally it even came out that the producers of COPs manipulated the content to ensure blacks are not over overrepresented. And we know feature films have turned to the blond, English-accented guy as the villain of choice.

I also know if you go back far enough in films, blacks are hardly in the movies at all. And if they were cast, it was usually as servants or maids. In fact blacks claimed that at a certain point in time, the media ignored them altogether and made it appear they didn’t even exist.

I now have been watching some classic over-the-air tv channels with reruns of Perry Mason and other shows from the 1950s-1960s. And from what I can tell most do not show blacks at all, let alone stereotype them as criminals. Heck, I even saw an early 1960s Twilight Zone were a town was going to hang a man and the preacher was trying to convince them to not hate. The preacher WAS black and guy about to be hung WAS white.

Of course the only exception I can think of is Birth of a Nation from 1915. But was that the lone exception?

So my question is this. Did blacks ever get stereotyped in the media as criminals, and if so, when? I sure can’t find it. Is this whole media-stereotyping-blacks just another myth like the blacks-are-overrepresented-in-the-infantry or the Tuskeegee-Airman-never-lost-a-bomber-they-escorted memes that get repeated until people take them to be true?

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Steve Sailer: Hillary Denounces Bill’s Golf Club as “a Case Study in Ripping Off the Little Guy”

Comments at Steve Sailer:

* I can’t figure out which would make a better skit. Hillary & Hussein steadfastly proclaiming how difficult it is to untangle the Dallas shooter’s motives, while in the background he tries every trick in the book to show them it was black racism (culminating with him scrawling out a black power message in his own blood with his dying breath), or Hillary’s underlings doing everything they can to hide the fact of Bill’s Westchester Club membership from her, while Bill ducks her and she loudly denounces the club.

* If foreign funding for mosques were outlawed we would have 15% of what we have now and they would not be as large and elaborate with schools and community centers. Charities and individuals in Saudi Arabia fund many of the toxic ones. They are magnets for Muslim migration into your neighborhood or town so get the hell out if you see one being built. Especially a large one. The Muslims aim to fill it up.
Obama’s ghouls at the Dept of Justice go after (lawsuits) communities that block them such as one in Tennessee. All part of the semi-Kenyan, crypto Muslim’s pro-Islamic agenda.

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‘Kill All The White Babies’

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When Was The Last Time You Saw A Depressed Mexican?

I don’t ever remember that. I don’t think I’ve had any bad personal experiences with Mexicans.

You can learn from every group.

From blacks and Jews, you can learn the beauty of group solidarity.

From blacks, you can see the benefits of spontaneity.

From whites, you can learn how to create a great country.

From Mexicans, you can appreciate their happiness and hard work.

From Christians, you can appreciate their love.

From Ashkenazi Jews, you can appreciate their brilliance and intensity.

From Australians, you can learn mateship.

I’ve rarely seen latino or asian homeless. These groups seem to take care of their own.

The Los Angeles Times:

Once the home to Jewish, Italian, Japanese and diverse other people, Boyle Heights by the time that El Mercado was born was increasingly becoming a predominantly Mexican American neighborhood. Some activist groups have taken increasingly harder and louder stands against certain kinds of developments – including art galleries – that they see as opening the door to gentrification.

In Boyle Heights, the most striking examples of change have surfaced on the western side of the neighborhood closer to downtown L.A. – near Mariachi Plaza and a Gold Line station – where a wine bar, coffeehouse and bakery draw young, American-born Latinos.

Boyle Heights has not seen anything remotely like the gentrification that other neighborhoods, including Silver Lake and Highland Park, have experienced. But many of the residents have long felt that it’s a neighborhood on the brink of a major change; For years there has been talk about transforming the 14-story Art Deco Sears, Roebuck & Co. building on Olympic Boulevard into a complex of condos, retail space and restaurants.

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