This week’s Torah portion (Deuteronomy 7:12–11:25) is the third in the last book of the Torah. Listen here and here.
* Is there more wisdom in Torah than in any other book? I am sure there are many good responses to this question, but I don’t see a life being handicapped by taking that approach. This is a good map for living.
* This parasha doesn’t sound very multi-cultural:
7 When the Lord your God brings you into the land you are entering to possess and drives out before you many nations—the Hittites, Girgashites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites, seven nations larger and stronger than you— 2 and when the Lord your God has delivered them over to you and you have defeated them, then you must destroy them totally.[a] Make no treaty with them, and show them no mercy. 3 Do not intermarry with them. Do not give your daughters to their sons or take their daughters for your sons, 4 for they will turn your children away from following me to serve other gods, and the Lord’s anger will burn against you and will quickly destroy you. 5 This is what you are to do to them: Break down their altars, smash their sacred stones, cut down their Asherah poles[b] and burn their idols in the fire. 6 For you are a people holy to the Lord your God. The Lord your God has chosen you out of all the peoples on the face of the earth to be his people, his treasured possession.
15 The Lord will keep you free from every disease. He will not inflict on you the horrible diseases you knew in Egypt, but he will inflict them on all who hate you. 16 You must destroy all the peoples the Lord your God gives over to you. Do not look on them with pity and do not serve their gods, for that will be a snare to you.
17 You may say to yourselves, “These nations are stronger than we are. How can we drive them out?” 18 But do not be afraid of them; remember well what the Lord your God did to Pharaoh and to all Egypt. 19 You saw with your own eyes the great trials, the signs and wonders, the mighty hand and outstretched arm, with which the Lord your God brought you out. The Lord your God will do the same to all the peoples you now fear. 20 Moreover, the Lord your God will send the hornet among them until even the survivors who hide from you have perished. 21 Do not be terrified by them, for the Lord your God, who is among you, is a great and awesome God. 22 The Lord your God will drive out those nations before you, little by little. You will not be allowed to eliminate them all at once, or the wild animals will multiply around you. 23 But the Lord your God will deliver them over to you, throwing them into great confusion until they are destroyed. 24 He will give their kings into your hand, and you will wipe out their names from under heaven. No one will be able to stand up against you; you will destroy them. 25 The images of their gods you are to burn in the fire. Do not covet the silver and gold on them, and do not take it for yourselves, or you will be ensnared by it, for it is detestable to the Lord your God. 26 Do not bring a detestable thing into your house or you, like it, will be set apart for destruction. Regard it as vile and utterly detest it, for it is set apart for destruction.
* So what is the difference between this and Nazi talk of exterminating its enemies? The only moral difference is one seen through the lens of faith. If you believe that the God of the Bible is the author of morality, then what he says goes. If you don’t have a transcendent source for morality, then there is no objective morality. These exhortations in Torah could well mirror the exhortations given to the white walkers in Game of Thrones before they rampage south.
* Is there a difference between this approach and what the Taliban did to the ancient Buddhist statutes in Afghanistan? The moral difference is what do the symbols symbolize?
* Dennis Prager: “God wants one piece of earth to be holy. That’s why it is called the Holy Land.”
* Det. 7:14: “You will be blessed more than any other people; none of your men or women will be childless, nor will any of your livestock be without young.” Doesn’t sound like there’s a lot of room in this Torah vision for trannies, gays, and those who don’t want kids. Being blessed by God equals having kids.
* I love Det. 7:15. “The Lord will keep you free from every disease. He will not inflict on you the horrible diseases you knew in Egypt, but he will inflict them on all who hate you.” I think it is talking about the poz – multiculturalism, gay rights, tranny rights, diversity. Israel doesn’t have same-sex marriage. Israel is run ruthlessly in the interests of its majority population of Jews. Israel does not allow Muslims to immigrate. God is looking out for his people.
* Det. 7:17 You may say to yourselves, “These nations are stronger than we are. How can we drive them out?”
A small cohesive society can often out-compete a large multi-cultural blob. Think about Sparta and how they defeated Persia.
* Det. 7:26: “Do not bring a detestable thing into your house or you, like it, will be set apart for destruction. Regard it as vile and utterly detest it, for it is set apart for destruction.”
How does that apply to us today? What are we not allowed to bring into our homes? Trannies? Gays? Pedophiles? I am sure there are many gentile homes where they would not allow a Jew to enter. I am sure there are black homes that do not want any whites coming in. On the other hand, the workplace is a different sphere. You can maintain standards for your home that would be illegal to maintain for your work place.
* There’s not a lot of religious freedom in this Torah portion. That’s more of a Protestant thing. Judaism, Catholicism and Islam tend to create corporate unitary states.
* Why does the Exodus out-rank the Creation in Jewish religious life? Because the Exodus is particular to Jews so there’s more for Jews to hang on to. A normal healthy person is going to identify with his own group more than he identifies as a globalist or humanist.
* Moshe in Deuteronomy sounds like Donald Trump. He takes things personally. Out of nowhere, he’ll start complaining that because of the people, he won’t get into the Promised Land. The bigger the man, the more they take things personally. You’d think it would be the other way round, but it’s not.
Nothing in life is personal. People act from their genes and environment and their limit array of choices. Would the Israelites not have complained in the desert if someone other than Moshe had been their leader? Of course they would have still complained. Their complaining was not a personal attack on Moshe. They were Middle Eastern people who express their emotions more freely than Northern Europeans.
* Dennis Prager notes that just as you can have water pollution and air pollution, you also can have soul pollution. My soul was polluted by 12 years spent writing on the porn industry. People close to me saw the decline. One friend said, “You used to have all these wise insights into many different parts of life, but now you live in the gutter.” Another acquaintance saw the decline in just the 18 months he knew me, noting I was now talking like a pornographer, making inappropriate jokes about blowjobs in casual conversation. As soon as I quit writing on porn, my soul started to clean up and my life started to turn around.
* Here’s The Full 10-Page Anti-Diversity Screed Circulating Internally At Google I love the inadequacy of the response by Google’s new Vice President of Diversity, Integrity & Governance, Danielle Brown. She can’t compete in the marketplace of ideas. Organizations dominated by women tend to become conformist and cliquish. Danielle Brown is determined to wipe out dissent.
Steve Sailer: “The Establishment is freaking out over one unknown Google worker circulating a well-reasoned dissent against all the anti-white male propagandizing and programs that Google has subjected their hardworking employees to in recent years.
Keep in mind that during the triumphant years in which Google ascended to its near monopoly status, it didn’t pay much attention to the diversity rules imposed upon the rest of society, because, after all, it was Google and hi-tech and so it didn’t have to obey. But as I long predicted, the diversity rent-seekers eventually got their hooks into Google over the last few years so now Google has a full panoply of makework jobs in the diversity racket to attack verbally the people who actually get the work done. Now, one of the workers has written back.”
* Can one conduct all of one’s affairs in the light of spiritual principles? I’m not sure. If you play football, your job is to tackle other players, and in doing so, you may well injure or even kill them. If you can’t do that, you can’t play the game. What is the spiritual way to tackle someone? Your job as a boxer is to knock out your opponent. What’s the spiritual way to knock someone cold? Your job in law is to represent your client and defeat the other side. Your job as a hitter in baseball is to obliterate the pitcher. Your job as a pitcher is to humiliate the batter. Your job as a politician is to defeat your opponent and to succeed as a leader. Your job as a general is to defeat the enemy.
The journalist, for example, has so many competing ethical obligations (to his sources, to his subjects, to his readers, to his employers, to his advertisers) that an ethics code may well be meaningless. An effective ethics code outlines your obligations to one party, such as a patient if you are a doctor. When you have ethical obligations to many competing parties, you may not really have an ethics code.
* Should rapists have pride? Imagine a guy who says: I was born a rapist, but–no no, don’t worry, don’t freak out. I’m not a practicing rapist, thanks to years of the preemptive conversion therapy literally blasted at me from every public institution in the West. So, I’m just celibate.
Should I come out? I know a few guys who are public about their depraved thoughts. One guy even celebrates it! Rape pride, he says. We are the world.
* I was watching episode three of the CNN documentary series The Nineties. This episode was on race relations. About 80% of the talking heads were blacks, and then there were two white leftists (Laurie Levinson and an LA TIMES editor). There was lots of blaming of whitey, zero blame directed at blacks. There was no mention of high black crime rates, but lots of talk about racist white cops. The show was weaponized information aimed at destroying white cohesion.
One thing I did like about the show was the black rapper Sister Souljah. In general, I admire the way blacks support each other, call each other brother and sister. I identify with Sister Souljah, only I am not on Team Black. I’m on Team White.
From her marvelous song “The Hate That Hate Produced”:
The time for scared, lip-trembling, word-changing
Self-denying, compromising
Knee-shakin’ black people is over
If you have something to say
Speak up with authority and conviction
If not, sit down and shut up
We have to have the power to tell the truth
To say whatever is necessary
To do what needs to be done
Whatever it is, no matter who it may hurt
Tell ’em who I am! C’mon!
Tell ’em who I am! C’mon!
Souljah was not born to make white people feel comfortable
I am african first, I am black first
I want what’s good for me and my people first
And if my survival means your total destruction
Then so be it!