We discuss Andrew Joyce’s three essays on the Alt Right & homosexuality. Listen here.
My cohosts are Dennis Dale and Casey the Classicist.
* The Messiah Will Purify Jewish Bloodlines.
* We discuss Count Joseph Arthur de Gobineau (14 July 1816 – 13 October 1882).
* From page 46 of the book Anti-Semitism Before the Holocaust by Albert S Lindemann: The writings of the widely recognized ‘father of modern racism,’ Count Arthur de Gobineau, further suggest some of the overlooked intricacies of racist thinking in regard to the Jews in the nineteenth century…
Gobineau pushed what could be called the essentialist core of racist thinking to its logical conclusion: environment did not explain the rise of civilizations but rather inherent racial genius did; the decline of civilizations was due to the dilution of that genius through race mixing. The phrase in Disraeli’s novel, ‘all is race; there is no other truth,’ was thus consistent with Gobineau’s theories. Revealingly, Gobineau considered the Jews to be one of the superior ‘white’ races and approved of their efforts throughout history to remain racially pure…
Gobineau’s racism was widely criticized, especially in his own country, but in one revealing regard it was widely accepted both in Europe and among people of European descent in the Americas: African Blacks were, he asserted, a distinctly inferior race. For Gobineau, Africans and the European lower orders had common traits — low intelligence, lack of self-control, and proclivity to violence. For all its claims to scientific validity, this view had deep roots in the European and Judeo-Christian past, going back to texts of the Bible as well as commentary on it. Indeed, the terminology of modern racial theory derived from biblical mythology in the account of Noah and his sons (Gen. 9:21-27): Shem, from whom the Semites descended; Ham, from whom the African Hamites descended; and Japheth, from whom the Europeans descended…
Some rabbinical commentary also contained proto-racist elements, enhancing for example the derogation of Blacks more than the bare biblical text in making the sons of Ham ‘ugly and dark-skinned’. The influential Jewish medieval philosopher Moses Maimonides wrote that ‘the Blacks’ nature…is below that of man and above that of a monkey.’ So Disraeli might be said to have drawn from both modern scientific and age-old sources when he concluded that if the white population of the United States were to continue to ‘mingle with [its] negro and coloured population’, an inevitable degeneration of the civilization of the young republic would be the result…
Blacks were often described as lacking in intelligence, Jews as cunning, dangerously intelligent. Blacks allegedly lacked self-control, whereas Jews were seen as disciplined and devious. Insofar as Jews were described as inferior, it usually had to do with moral issues, although their small stature, weak bodies, and odd ‘Oriental’ appearance were also mentioned. In short, negative visions of Blacks tended to describe them as animal-like, at a lower stage of evolution; they could be used in the way beasts of burden were used and were dangerous int eh way that such animals could be dangerous. But there was no concern in nineteenth-century Europe or America that Blacks were taking over the world through clandestine power and financial manipulation.
* The Zakein Mamre is a sage who does not accept the legal rulings of the Sanhedrin. He is executed so that controversies do not disrupt the nation of Israel.
Sanhedrin 88A: “And Rabbi Elazar says: Even if the rebellious elder says his ruling on the basis of the tradition, and the members of the court say: This is the correct understanding in our eyes, he is executed, so that discord will not proliferate among Israel and to ensure that there will be a standard halakhic ruling. And if you say: For what reason was Akavya ben Mahalalel not executed? It is due to the fact that he did not issue his ruling as practical halakha; he merely claimed that his understanding was correct in theory, which is always permitted.”
From Chapter three of the Rambam’s Mishneh Torah:
A person who does not acknowledge validity of the Oral Law is not the rebellious elder mentioned in the Torah. Instead, he is one of the heretics and he should be put to death by any person.
א
מי שאינו מודה בתורה שבעל פה אינו זקן ממרא האמור בתורה אלא הרי זה בכלל האפיקורוסין [ומיתתו בכל אדם]:
2
Since it has become known that such a person denies the Oral Law, he may be pushed into a pit and may not be helped out. He is like all the rest of the heretics who say that the Torah is not Divine in origin, those who inform on their fellow Jews, and the apostates. All of these are not considered as members of the Jewish people. There is no need for witnesses, a warning, or judges for them to be executed. Instead, whoever kills them performs a great mitzvah and removes an obstacle from people at large.
ב
מאחר שנתפרסם שהוא כופר בתורה שבעל פה [מורידין אותו] ולא מעלין והרי הוא כשאר כל האפיקורוסין והאומרין אין תורה מן השמים והמוסרין והמומרין שכל אלו אינם בכלל ישראל ואין צריך לא לעדים ולא התראה ולא דיינים [אלא כל ההורג אחד מהן עשה מצוה גדולה והסיר המכשול]:
3
To whom does the above apply? To a person who denied the Oral Law consciously, according to his perception of things. He follows after his frivolous thoughts and his capricious heart and denies the Oral Law first, as did Tzadok and Beitus and those who erred in following them.
* The Rise & Fall of Civilization by Brian Fitzpatrick
Sex is the sacrament of choice for secular and pagan people — in which they seek their personal, ontological stability. It cannot be found there, but makes a good pretence at it by making one feel good (for five minutes). – E. Fox
Perhaps the definitive work on the rise and fall of civilizations, was published in 1934 by Oxford anthropologist J.D. Unwin.
In Sex and Culture, Unwin studied 86 human civilizations ranging from tiny South Sea island principalities to mighty Rome. He found that a society’s destiny is linked inseparably to the limits it imposes on sexual expression and that those sexual constraints correlate directly to its theological sophistication and religious commitment.
Unwin noted that the most primitive societies had only rudimentary spiritual beliefs and virtually no restrictions on sexual expression, whereas societies with more sophisticated theologies placed greater restrictions on sexual expression and achieved greater social development.
In particular, cultures that adopt what Unwin dubbed “absolute monogamy” proved to be the most vigorous, economically productive, artistically creative, scientifically innovative, and geographically expansive societies on earth. Absolute monogamy is a very strict moral code. Under absolute monogamy, sex can occur only within one-man/ one-woman marriage. Premarital and extramarital sex are not tolerated and divorce is prohibited.
Understandably, the only societies that practice absolute monogamy are the ones that take their religion very seriously.
Whether monotheistic or polytheistic, they believe devoutly in God or gods, and they order their society according to divine moral laws.
Unwin’s contemporary, British historian Arnold Toynbee, was much more explicit about the centrality of religion in history. Toynbee’s masterpiece, his 12-volume Study of History, charted the rise and fall of 26 civilizations. In Toynbee’s view, “The course of human history consists of a series of encounters…in which each man or woman or child…is challenged by God to make the free choice between doing God’s will and refusing to do it.”
Why exactly does absolute monogamy, the Pauline moral code, bring vitality to a society? Absolute monogamy fosters cultural growth by solving what anthropologist Margret Mead called the “central problem of every society”— that is, to “define appropriate roles for the men.” Monogamous civilizations require men to choose either lifelong celibacy or the responsibilities of a husband: fidelity, breadwinning, and fatherhood. Most men choose to marry, to their good fortune, because married men tend to be healthier, happier, and more productive than bachelors.
Those committed husbands create stable marriages, which offer the greatest opportunity for raising healthy, productive children who can keep a society strong and growing. Likewise, the great economist Joseph Schumpeter attributes the success of capitalism not to the entrepreneur’s lust for money or status, but to his love of family. To Schumpeter, the central pillar of any healthy civilization is the self-sacrificing married man who doesn’t spend his income on his pleasures, but prefers “to work and save primarily for his wife and children.”
And in Family and Civilization, Harvard historian Carle Zimmerman concludes that “the creative periods in civilization have been based upon” the strongest form of family, which he terms the “domestic” type: “The domestic family affords a comparatively stable social structure and yet frees the individual sufficiently from family influence to perform the creative work necessary for a great civilization.” If devotion to God, a Pauline moral code, and strong marriages and families are the key to cultural success, then what causes civilizations to decline?
Zimmerman warns of “periods of family decay in which civilization is suffering internally from the lack of basic belief in the forces which make it work.” Unwin’s explanation would be that if people lose their faith in God, they tend to lose their motivation to live by the strict moral code. In This Present Age, sociologist Robert Nisbet writes, “What sociologists are prone to call social disintegration is really nothing more than the spectacle of a rising number of individuals playing fast and loose with other individuals in relationships of trust and responsibility.” Moral standards begin to erode when a society’s members chafe at the discipline imposed by absolute monogamy and begin to gratify their personal impulses without regard for the consequences inflicted on others.
In other words, in an amoral, hedonistic society, you can’t trust the people you need to trust, not even your spouse. Moreover, if people can make and break relationships at will, with no legal repercussions or social stigma, they are much more likely to abandon their marriages—at their children’s expense—when the going gets tough. Husbands with roving eyes are much more likely to trade in their wives for new models.
Thus, the founder of Harvard’s sociology department, Pitirim Sorokin, warned that if individualistic selfishness and self-seeking are not checked, a society will lapse into a state of “sexual anarchy.” In The American Sex Revolution, Sorokin writes that “both man and society are degraded” as a culture becomes “sexually obsessed:”
The members of such a society are habituated to look at the opposite sex as a mere instrument for pleasure…To these individuals, talk of human dignity, religious, and moral commandments, and rules of decency is just bosh…The society degrades the values of womanhood and manhood, of motherhood and fatherhood and venerable age, of marriage and family, and even of love itself.
