LAT: ‘How a Montana county became a stage for the national debate over refugees’

Posted on April 25, 2017 by Luke Ford

Los Angeles Times article:

To him, being a Presbyterian meant a life of public service and openness to other cultures. Back in Long Island, he sat on a refugee council at his church and once housed a Vietnamese refugee and her two sons. He joined churchgoers for a trip to refugee camps in the Middle East, and his church hosted a Coptic Christian priest from Egypt and a pastor from Syria.

But in Whitefish, the Presbyterian churches he visited were more interested in the Bible than the wider world and didn’t share his passion for women’s or gay rights.

LeBleu finally found a spiritual home alongside other liberal transplants at the Whitefish United Methodist Church. It was already working internationally to pay the salaries of Christian pastors in Angolan villages.

Its motto — “open hearts, open minds, open doors” — was prominently displayed on its website. To LeBleu, those were words to live by.

He saw an opportunity early last year after a photograph of a drowned Syrian boy went viral and a group of mothers in Missoula, a university town 130 miles down the interstate, were so moved that they launched an effort to take in refugees. Their plan to bring refugees to Montana for the first time in decades ignited a statewide debate and a string of demonstrations on both sides of the issue.

LeBleu’s response was to try to bring refugees to Whitefish.

He put out a call in church for volunteers. There were enough like-minded residents — the town had voted for Hillary Clinton — that he had no trouble finding support.

But it was a different story 17 miles south in the county seat of Kalispell, a blue-collar town of 20,000 known for its gun manufacturers and conservative churches.

Kalispell quickly became a hub of opposition to resettlement — and, on a rainy March morning last year, the site of a tense standoff.

LeBleu and about 70 pro-refugee activists, many from out of town, gathered in a park there with signs reading “Friendship not fear!” and “Stability, opportunity, peace for ALL.” Across the city’s main drag, a dozen or so Kalispell residents stood with their own placards warning of the problems they believed Muslims would bring: “Europe’s murder and rape epidemic is REAL, not ‘fear’” and “Kalispell NEEDS SHARIA LAW.”

Some of the men carried guns.

LeBleu was encouraged by the competing rallies. His side was bigger.

But letters to the local newspaper, the Daily Inter Lake, turned out to be a better indicator of public sentiment.

“Once those refugees are here, all we can do to protect ourselves is hope and pray they do not harbor sympathy for Islamic terror ideals. Beyond that, we are at their mercy,” one Kalispell resident wrote in a letter to the editor.

“Many of the refugees are being planted as representatives of Islamic terrorism. Europe is proof of this,” wrote another.

The Flathead County commissioners took sides last spring, sending a letter to the U.S. Department of State saying they could not “support the relocation of refugees without a legitimate vetting process and an analysis of refugee impacts to our local community.”

A friend says:

The big question is (1) Le Bleu moved from Long Island because he was drawn to the natural beauty and slower pace of life. What is the part that he doesn’t get about coming to some place because he finds it attractive, and then once he is there trying to change its character.

Was he rejected as a newcomer? He was delighted that people would talk to you on the street and ask how you were doing.

He came from a mainline Protestant denomination Presbyterianism which although originally a very severe fundamentalist branch of Christianity (Scottish Presbyterians wouldn’t save someone drowning on the Sabbath) is now another progressive liberal mainstream protestant sect that has seen its numbers drop off over the past three decades as it became more focused on social activism.

The article suggests that the social activism and not the religious part is the main part of being a Presbyterian. The author Jaweed Kaleem probably knows nothing other than whatever Le Bleu told him.

The article does mention that some Congolese refugees (although it is not clear what they were fleeing from ) have moved to Missoula which is a college town and a liberal spot in Montana about 100 miles south of Whitefish. And the father got a job as a greeter at Walmart. Way to import folks with special skills.

Whitefish is also the place that a Jewish real estate agent tried to drive Richard Spencer’s mother out of business (and she may have succeeded) Whitefish is a very affluent town. LeBleu could not have moved there if he didn’t have bucks (although if he owned his home on Long Island he could have used the proceeds to buy a place in Whitefish) the airport at Kalispell is thick with private jets belonging to the rich folks who have second homes in Whitefish.

Posted in America, Immigration | Comments Off on LAT: ‘How a Montana county became a stage for the national debate over refugees’

25 Things I Did To Recover From Sex And Love Addiction

Posted on April 23, 2017 by Luke Ford

From RecoveryRanch.com:

Sex Addiction versus Love Addiction: Are they Fundamentally Different or the Same?
September 25, 2012 | Staff Stories
Both sex addiction and love addiction are understood to be disorders of emotional intimacy characterized by obsessive thoughts and compulsive acting out behaviors. The difference between these addictions lies specifically in the types of acting out behaviors which may be present. A sex addict may have a problem with pornography or repeated anonymous sexual experiences, while the love addict acts out in relationship-by clinging to a partner (sometimes one who is destructive to him or her), by avoiding love and/or intimacy with a partner, by moving from one relationship to the next, and/or by not being able to cope when a relationship ends.

Sexual Addiction

In 1983, with the help of an addiction treatment center called the Hazeldon Foundation, Patrick Carnes published his seminal work, Out of the Shadows: Understanding Sexual Addiction. Since that time, many therapies have been devised and many more treatment centers have opened their doors to those suffering sexual addiction. “Hypersexual disorder” is how the American Psychiatric Association (APA) and its publication, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Psychiatric Disorders (DSM), propose to term the disorder. Still, to date, there is no APA supported diagnosis for sexual addiction, although many APA affiliated therapists and recovery centers treat individuals who experience both sex and love addiction symptoms.

A sex addict is someone who experiences life disruption or dysfunction due to habitual sexual obsessions and compulsions. Both men and women experience sexual addiction. A sex addict may compulsively look at pornography; may engage in compulsive masturbation; may engage in sex for pay activities (via phone, internet, or in person); may engage in compulsive voyeurism or exhibitionism; may seek repeated anonymous sexual encounters; or may feel unable to stop behaviors which lead to repeated infidelity. Sexual addiction is often progressive, meaning the compulsive acting out behaviors become progressively worse over time. A person engages in sex to “numb out” or feel a high in order to escape problems or avoid intimacy, but the consequences of shame, guilt, or broken relationships incite more and greater acting out behaviors.

Love Addiction

A love addict is someone who experiences an intoxicating rush when engaged in seduction; “romantic intrigue” (the initial phase of a relationship characterized by intense infatuation and increased sexual interaction); lust; or is someone who has a pattern of intense, painful, or obsessive relationships; or who is clinging, desperate, and insecure in a current relationship. A love addict may also be someone who is love-averse or “love avoidant” (incapable of lasting feelings of attachment) but who is either addicted to a pattern of usually unsuccessful relationships, or who has what is termed “emotional anorexia” and may avoid relationship or commitment altogether.

Chemicals behind Both Addictions

When a love addict ends a relationship, and when a sex addict goes without sex or sexual acting out behaviors, both may experience withdrawal symptoms. The withdrawal symptoms may include: depression, uneasiness, anxiety, restlessness, or irritability.

When a baby is held and petted, as well as when a mother breastfeeds and coos to her baby, the bond is reinforced by a chemical reaction in the brain. Oxytocin, dopamine, and endorphins flood the brain and bloodstream. These chemicals send a pleasant sensation through the mother and child and trigger the reward center of the brain, reinforcing this ancient act of caregiving. Likewise, when a drug addict injects a hit of heroin, this same reward center is tripped. It is this same reward center that is activated when we have sex, feel close to our lovers, or simply feel excited about the possibility of seeing them-oxytocin floods our system and elevates our mood. It is this chemical reaction people are addicted to; the method is different for everyone.

The 12-Step program established to support these addictions often refers to an overall addiction-sex, love, and relationship addiction-and has a program called Sex and Love Addicts Anonymous to support people who may feel they are suffering from one or all addictions under the umbrella. Since the basic problem of sex and love addiction is one of emotional intimacy, and because this problem may be rooted in how attachments were formed in childhood with primary caregivers, it is important to recognize that they are closely related. The same root issues may reveal themselves in different acting out behaviors, but the dysfunction is the same: it is a dysfunction of relationship. All addictive patterns create negative consequences-to an individual’s sanity, health, relationships, and work-and all require supportive efforts to be healed. Getting therapy, finding a support group, and attending local SLAA meetings are just some of the ways healing from sex and love addiction can be found.

Posted in Addiction, Personal | Comments Off on 25 Things I Did To Recover From Sex And Love Addiction

Parshat Tazria-Metzora

Posted on April 23, 2017 by Luke Ford

This week we have two Torah portions (Lev. 12:1 to 15:33).

Listen here and here.

* One receives a sense of calm from studying Torah. The events of the day fade away and you step into the realm of eternity.

* Early childhood education.

* People pleasing is not a virtue. It always involves dishonesty and deceit. Do you need to tell people what they want to hear?

* Judging by the many complications of Torah laws, Jews must have been smart from the beginning. This is not a religion for the dim (on the other hand, mizrahi Jews have an average IQ of 92, Sephardim Jews of 97, while Ashkenazi Jews are about 108).

* No hidden knowledge in Torah. It’s all laid out. It’s the opposite of Scientology.

* Bicameralism in psychology.

* All ancient cultures had taboos against menstruating women (fearing that they were “the repository of demonic forces”). From a Jewish perspective, menstruation represents death (the death of an egg aka potential life) and Judaism constantly separates between life and death (Jewish priests are not allowed to visit a cemetery, can’t marry hookers aka converts to Judaism).

* I love how it is cool to care about trees, but uncool to care about whites and Western civilization (the product of white goyim). Re: Los Angeles Times: “The trees that make Southern California shady and green are dying. Fast.”

* Jacob Milgrom: “Anthropology has taught us that when a society wishes to express and preserve its basic values, it ensconces them in rituals.”

* Skin disease (tzaraath) represents death, so creepers have to be separated from the community lest they bum people out. Wiki: “The Torah identifies three manifestations of tzaraath: as an affliction of human skin, (Leviticus 13:2) of garments (Leviticus 13:47) and of houses (Leviticus 14:34).”

* Wiki: “Professor Jacob Milgrom, formerly of the University of California, Berkeley, noted that reddish substances, surrogates for blood, were among the ingredients of the purificatory rites for scale-diseased and corpse-contaminated persons, symbolizing the victory of the forces of life over death.”

* Nega’im do not render gentiles impure because they are already impure to begin with. The house and clothing of a goy is insusceptible to tzaraath as is a Torah scroll (so holy, it cannot receive impurity).

Wiki:

Rabbi Shimshon Raphael Hirsch demonstrated at length that tzaraath was not to be interpreted as a medical malady, but rather as a spiritual affliction. The verse itself indicates this, as it directs those who find themselves afflicted to seek out a Kohen (priest) and not a doctor, while the Torah specifically permits and even encourages those who are in need of medical care to seek treatment from physicians.[52]

The Torah’s emphasis is clearly on the tu’mah (טומאה, “ritual impurity “) that results from a diagnosis of tzaraath because the verses focus on the kohen’s declaration of “unclean” – וראהו הכהן וטמא אתו (“The kohen will see [the eruption] and [declare] him impure”).

The Talmud, and the majority of historic Jewish literature in general, regards tzaraath as a punishment for sin; it lists seven possible causes for tzaraath:[53]

an evil tongue (malicious gossip)
murder
a vain oath
illicit sexual intercourse
pride
theft
miserly behavior

* Judaism’s purity laws according to Wikipedia:

The Hebrew terms tumah and taharah refer to ritual “impurity and purity” under Jewish law.[1][2] The Hebrew noun tum’ah (טָמְאָה) “impurity” describes a state of ritual impurity. A person or object which contracts tumah is said to be tamei (Hebrew adjective, “ritually impure”), and thereby unsuited for certain holy activities and utilisations (kedusha in Hebrew) until undergoing predefined purification actions that usually include the elapse of a specified time-period.

The contrasting Hebrew noun taharah (טָהֳרָה) describes a state of ritual purity that qualifies the tahor (טָהוֹר; ritually pure person or object) to be used for kedusha. The most common method of achieving taharah is by the person or object being immersed in a mikveh (ritual bath). This concept is connected with ritual washing in Judaism, and both ritually impure and ritually pure states have parallels in ritual purification in other world religions.

The laws of tumah and taharah were generally followed by the Israelites, particularly during the First and Second Temple Period,[citation needed] and to a limited extent are a part of applicable halakha in modern times.

* Mishna “Zavim: (זבים “Seminal Emissions”); deals with the laws of a person who has ejaculated.” Spilt seed represents death.

Monty Python notes that every sperm is sacred:

Let the heathen spill theirs
On the dusty ground.
God shall make them pay for
Each sperm that can’t be found.

CHILDREN:
Every sperm is wanted.
Every sperm is good.
Every sperm is needed
In your neighbourhood.

MUM:
Hindu, Taoist, Mormon,
Spill theirs just anywhere,
But God loves those who treat their
Semen with more care.

* Mr. Darcy: “Who knew that when the Saxon Began to Hate it would be such hilarious good fun?”

* If a priest is deformed (aka limps), he can’t serve in the temple. Judaism values aesthetics. Perhaps fatties should not serve in our synagogues?

* Feces and urine are not impure.

* John Mearsheimer: “Creating a peaceful world is surely an attractive idea, but it is not a practical one.” This seems to be the opposite of Judaism’s vision, unless you place that vision in the Messianic Age.

* An Amazon review of Jacob Milgrom’s popular Leviticus commentary:

Few modern Bible scholars have revolutionized the study of one book to the extent Jacob Milgrom has revolutionized the study of Leviticus. Milgrom’s massive three volume commentary on Leviticus in the Anchor Bible series, exceeding 2500 pages, is an exhaustive and sometimes exhausting study that addresses virtually every issue raised in Leviticus. (I have also reviewed for Amazon the Anchor Bible commentary on Leviticus by Milgrom and you might want to read those reviews.)

This more modest volume, issued by Fortress Press, can best be described as a condensation of Milgrom?s Anchor Bible commentary. Milgrom eliminates almost all his discussion of the dating of the text, arcane questions of etymology, syntax and grammar, and his thorough reviews of scholarly opinions, both modern and ancient, on various issues. Instead, Milgrom’s concentrates on explaining the basics of Leviticus when viewed within the context of the ancient world.

Milgrom argues that the authors of Leviticus, which he identifies as “P” (Priestly source, chiefly Lev. 1-16) and “H” (Holiness source, chiefly Lev. 17-27), while preserving many rituals and customs that Israel shared with its neighbors, infused them with a profound theology unique to Israel, a theology founded upon a radical monotheism that banished demons from the world and posited man?s choices as the chief source of good and evil.

Readers who don’t want to shell out more than $100 for the three volume Anchor Bible commentary and wade through thousands of pages of text will find in this more modest volume most of Milgrom’s principal insights.

Milgrom explains how P transformed the ancient concept of purity and impurity so that it became part of an overall system reflecting profound values of life and death, with holiness being linked to life and impurity to death. Milgrom argues that P limited the physical causes of impurity to a mere handful all of which are connected with death. In contrast, P taught that the chief source of impurity was man?s sin, the more serious the sin the more severe the impurity it created. Man?s sin generates impurity which pollutes the Tabernacle and, if not expurgated by sincere repentance and sacrifice, will drive God?s presence from the Tabernacle. Milgrom also demonstrates how the dietary laws in Leviticus are part of an overall ethos which seeks to limit human consumption of meat and to instill in Israel an abiding respect for life, both animal and human.

Milgrom also argues that H built upon the foundation laid by P, expanding the concept of holiness to encompass not just the Tabernacle/Temple but the entire land of Israel, which according to H absorbed the impurities caused by the people’s sins. H teaches that if the people continue in their sinful ways by disobeying God, the land will vomit the people out and people will not be permitted to return from exile until they have repented and the purity of the land has been restored by the passage of time. H, moreover, transforms P by teaching that holiness is not limited to the priesthood but is attainable by all of Israel. H commands that the priests to maintain their holiness and the people to attain holiness, but the means of maintaining and attaining holiness are the same – obedience to God’s commandments.

To be precise, it is not accurate to say that according to Milgrom, H teaches that the land of Israel is holy. In fact, Milgrom argues that neither P nor H label the land as holy. However, according to Milgrom, H teaches that the land is susceptible to pollution caused by the people’s sins. Thus the people and the land share a common bond – both are susceptible to impurity and the holiness of the land depends upon the conduct of those living on it. Thus, Milgrom says, H teaches on the one hand that both the land and the people are defiled by the people’s sins and, on the other hand, the people explicitly and the land implicitly are sanctified by the people’s obedience to God’s commands. For H, the holiness of the people is a goal, not yet attained, and therefore the land is not yet holy. However, holiness for both is the goal.

I struggled considering whether to give this volume the highest rating. Overall, Milgrom’s Anchor Bible commentary on Leviticus is better, but this volume does a tremendous job of serving the needs of readers who don’t have the time or the money to purchase and study the Anchor commentary. Moreover, this shorter commentary contains several homiletic reflections by Milgrom that do not appear in his more scholarly Anchor Bible commentary. If you want a relatively inexpensive and manageable commentary on Leviticus and don’t mind missing many of the more esoteric but equally enlightening insights in the Anchor Bible commentary which have been omitted due to the constraints of this series, this shorter commentary by Milgrom is for you. Myself, I prefer my Prometheus unbound!

* Jacob Milgrom writes: “Infectious diseases and especially those to which a sexual fault is attached always inspire fears of easy contagion and bizarre fantasies of transmission by non-venereal means in public places. The removal of door knobs and instillation of swinging doors on U.S. Navy ships and the disappearance of the metal drinking cups affixed to public water fountains in the United States in the first decade of the twentieth century were the early consequences of the “discovery of syphillis” — “instantly transmitted infection.” The warning to generations of middle-class children always to interpose paper between bare bottom and public toilet seat is another trace of the once rife horror stories about the germs of syphilis being passed to the innocent by the dirty.”

* When I had CFS, many people wondered if I was contagious. My peers treated me as contagious. Most people fear being around the sick. The more terrible and mysterious the disease, the more they fear.

* Jim Crow laws were a symbol of the fear of contagion.

* There aren’t many Christian or goyish commentaries on Leviticus, but there is now one Christian scholar — Roy Gane, who studied under Jacob Milgrom. Leviticus was more important to Seventh-Day Adventists than to most other Christians (see my dad’s life).

Spectrum, Jan. 13, 2016:

Desmond Ford’s New Book Recalls Conflict Over Sanctuary Doctrine, Dismissal from Adventist Employment

Former Adventist pastor, theologian and professor Dr. Desmond Ford has released a new book in which he documents the events that led to his dismissal from denominational employment in 1980. The events in Ford’s retrospective, entitled “Seventh-day Adventism, The Investigative Judgment and the Everlasting Gospel,” are more than 35 years old, but they continue to provide insights into the ways ecclesiastical authority has been determinative for both theology and employment with the Adventist denomination.

A convert from Anglicanism to Seventh-day Adventism, Ford has had a longstanding preoccupation with the assurance of Salvation. That preoccupation motivated the release of the book, and played a crucial part in its central conceit—Ford’s critique of the Adventist doctrine of the Investigative Judgment or Pre-Advent Judgment, often referred to simply as the Sanctuary Doctrine.

Ford saw the fear caused by the notion of a heavenly investigation into the deeds of every human being, preceding the close of probation and the Second Advent. The doctrine, Ford observed, caused many Adventists to question their standing with God, and to doubt whether they were fit to be saved. For Ford, this uncertainty was incompatible with the Gospel. For decades, Ford tried to point out the problem. Page 42 of the book describes the situation this way:

“Dr. Ford traces his concern with the sanctuary doctrine back to 1945. Since then, he has sought unsuccessfully in papers, articles and books to persuade church leaders to face up to what he regards as serious non sequiturs in the traditional Adventist interpretation of Daniel 8:14 and Hebrews 9. From 1962 to 1966, the select General Conference Committee on Problems in the Book of Daniel had given protracted attention to these problems without being able to reach a consensus with respect to them. The 1970s witnessed implementation of a policy that reserved decisions in theological matters primarily to administrators, which made it impossible to resolve a growing tension about the sanctuary through normal scholarly study and deliberation.”

The preceding paragraph reveals that, in addition to Ford’s objections to the Adventist understanding of the Investigative Judgment, he took issue with the imbalance of power between administrators and theologians, which set up bureaucrats (most of whom were not theologians by training) as the gatekeepers of Adventist doctrine, and thus of Adventist orthodoxy.

Ford had been a professor at Avondale College in Australia, but prior to the events discussed in this book, he transferred to Pacific Union College in the United States, where he served as a visiting lecturer.

In 1979, Ford’s impasse with the Adventist Church over the Sanctuary Doctrine came to a head. Ford framed the events of that October as a turning point for the church. From the book’s preface:

“October 27, 1979 was a pivotal date for Seventh-day Adventism. On that day Desmond Ford, responding to an invitation from the PUC (Pacific Union College) Forum, spoke to over 1000 people on “The Investigative Judgment: Theological Milestone or Historical Necessity.” Dr. Eric Syme responded, expressing his substantial agreement with Ford’s presentation. Then followed a lengthy Q&A session.”

Ford considers the events of 1979 and 1980 to be of continuing importance for the Adventist Church for two reasons:

1. Ford’s objections to the Sanctuary Doctrine and his subsequent dismissal cut to the heart of Seventh-day Adventist teaching.

2. An incorrect understanding of God’s judgment, he said, can only lead to an incorrect understanding of the Gospel.

On one level, Ford’s critique of the Sanctuary Doctrine was pragmatic and pastoral—the teaching caused people to doubt their salvation. On another level, his critique was scholarly.

The book details his objections to official the Adventist understanding of the Heavenly Sanctuary and the Investigative Judgement by means of a transcript of Ford’s October 1979 presentation.

One key issue, Ford stated, had to do with the word “cleanse.”

Unto 2300 days, then shall the sanctuary be cleansed.” On the basis of that word, our pioneers linked this prophecy with Leviticus 16, but the word isn’t there. You say, “Of course it’s there.” No, it’s not there. The KJV is a mistranslation. The word translated “cleanse” there is not found in Leviticus 16. It’s a different word altogether. That’s why almost all modern translations do not use “cleanse,” and therefore, from all other translations, you are crippled as a way of getting back to Leviticus 16” (pg. 12).

* In 1999, via email, a Seventh Day Adventist Bible scholar deconstructed me and my father:

You father “knows” too much for me to tell him anything. Including about you. It will never happen.

…Knowing too much, summarizing too fast, summing up too quickly, is a weakness he has. It’s a way that you and he are terrifically alike.

…By the way, you enjoy controversy and driving people nuts way too much. Both of you. What is the blessing in “Blessed are the peacemakers.” (Jesus knew at least as much about Judaism as you do….) Part of what makes you ill at ease in the self/world dichotomy is this approach toward the outside world as the enemy to be debunked.

Hiding behind “journalism” as the reason for this cynicism just won’t do. I ain’t convinced! There are lots of “journalists” who do have the same problem with their approach, but there are lots that don’t. It’s not endemic to journalism to have to drive people nuts, to be cynical, and to print what MAY be someone’s screwup and assume it’s true until proven otherwise. The theory of the law, “Innocent until proven guilty” would help in your approach to your journalism. But of course you became this sort of journalist as a result of an already existing cynicism, not the reverse. You have charm and intelligence and good looks, and I can see that it is dangerously easy for you to mislead people about yourself–even when you know you’re doing it. Careful, this can make for a hollow feeling and dis-ease.

…Now, what your father [two Ph.Ds in Christianity] was exposed to was “readings” in the British style. Not the original materials, but readings of not-very-good European writers, whose writings couldn’t even be taken seriously (since they’re relatively ignorant of the details) in American Biblical Studies. Out of this study of generally poor secondary sources your father got the impression he was something of an expert in theology. From this weak background, with most of his questions unanswered, he launched into doing what only someone who didn’t know what he didn’t know would do: he tried to write a commentary on Daniel. It was a terrible mishmash of preterism, historicism, and futurism without any understanding of how these systems complement and clash. There was no understanding of their history, of the sameness and difference involved in them.. And much of the book was unedited quotes from other sources strung together in ways that didn’t fit at all. It became apparent to me after only a few minutes that your father didn’t have the foggiest notion of the Book of Daniel, and shouldn’t even be teaching an academy class on the subject, much less writing a book about it. That a Seventh Day Adventist publishing house published this mess, virtually unedited, and with even the Hebrew title screwed up, showed the blind leading the blind.

You write very much in the style of your father. Like him, you tie together long quotes, with rather poor segues and transitions. This is so evident in your website that I marvel that I didn’t get it sooner. And you’ve gotten the same kind of accurate and strong criticism your father got for what passes for writing. And the same kind of “this guy really didn’t take the time to know what he was talking about before he became a legend in his own mind” criticism.

Posted in Torah | Comments Off on Parshat Tazria-Metzora

Eastern European Jews And The Case Of the Marginalized Elite

Posted on April 22, 2017 by Luke Ford

Paul Gottfried writes:

The story of Eastern European Jews who immigrated to America in the beginning of the twentieth century is a story of “self-marginalization.” The more dramatically Eastern European Jews progress socio-economically, the more strenuously they identify with “marginalized groups” and seek to undermine the white Christian majority population. And though he takes care to guard against charges of being Politically Incorrect, David R. Verbeeten’s The Politics of Non-Assimilation: Three Generations of Eastern European Jews in the United States in the Twentieth Century (De Kalb: NIU Press, 2017) is a goldmine of sociological evidence revealing this critically important phenomenon which so many scholars are happy to ignore.

The Dissident Right may find Verbeeten controversial as well. Though Kevin MacDonald argues his theory about Jewish group behavior ably, I believe it is unwarranted to generalize about the social behavior of all Jews simply because of the behavior of Eastern European Jews. [In Search of Anti-Semitism, by Paul Gottfried, Takimag, April 6, 2009] Other Jewish immigrants in other times and places have behaved very differently, including backing causes which today would be called reactionary or even “racist.”

Most Sephardic and German Jews who came to this country disappeared quickly into the gentile gene pool. As late as 1920, a plurality of American Jews, mainly those of German and Sephardic descent, voted for the Republican presidential candidate, Warren Harding. (Presumably the 38% who voted for the socialist Eugene Debs came from the newly enfranchised Eastern European Jews) [U.S. Presidential Elections: Jewish Voting Record, Jewish Virtual Library, Accessed April 20, 2017]. One of the earliest religious congregations to declare for Southern secession was the Temple in Charleston, Beth Elohim, the congregation of Confederate secretary of state Judah Benjamin. Thousands of Jews, of German or Sephardic origin, fought for the Confederacy [Jewish Confederates, by Hunter Wallace, Occidental Dissent, June 5, 2013].

Verbeeten gamely attempts to explain the change in American Jewish political attitudes but sometimes avoids the obvious. There is no demonstrable correlation, he tells us not very convincingly, between the fear of anti-Semitism and the compulsive affinity of Eastern European Jews for “left-wing activism.” Although Eastern European Jews went into the Democratic Party en masse, we’re told the party they chose may have “harbored” more anti-Semites than did the Republican Party. He also claims that “rather than antisemitism, the Jewish Left is far more decisively correlated with secularization.” The proof we are given is that Orthodox Jews, even of Eastern European provenance, remained “conservative.”

The author, a Cambridge PhD with whom I’ve corresponded for years, is far too intelligent to take such assertions seriously. It seems unlikely those Jews who eagerly assimilated feared and/or loathed the goyim whose company they were seeking. It’s equally unlikely Jewish leftist organizations like the Anti-Defamation League, which constantly claim rampant anti-Semitism among white Christian heterosexuals, are free of any fear of antisemitism.

Besides, the attraction of Eastern European Jews to the Democratic Party was not the chief measure of their radicalism. There was a disproportionately large Jewish membership in the Communist Party. Verbeeten analyzes this inconvenient truth in his discussion of Eastern European radical Alexander Bittelman, one of the architects of the American Communist Party. He also notes the heavy Jewish vote cast in 1948 for the Soviet-appeaser Henry Wallace and the very noticeable Jewish presence in almost every culturally Leftist pressure group in the US for the last century. This radicalism tells us more about American Jewish political attitudes than the fact Jews voted for FDR.

Verbeeten’s insistence that Jewish radicalism and Jewish self-marginalization correlates not with fear of antisemitism but secularization raises an obvious question. Why were earlier Jewish immigrants to America far less likely than the Eastern European latecomers to become permanently radicalized once they stopped attending synagogue or performing Jewish rituals?

Lots of German and Sephardic Jews broke away from their ancestral ritual community, without going on to support Stalin’s Five Year Program or demanding transgendered rest rooms. Admittedly Orthodox Jews are more likely than other Jews to vote Republican now, perhaps because of the GOP’s fervent support for Israel. But Orthodox congregations have also had their fill of Jewish leftists (like Abe Foxman). And though Orthodox Rabbis have not very often marched for gay rights, it’s doubtful “secularization” is the chief reason Eastern European Jews remain on the political and social left.

More importantly, a leftist mindset is by no means peculiar to Eastern European Jews. This group has behaved like other ethnically cohesive minorities in America drawing friend/enemy distinctions. That such groups would support the Left is entirely predictable. Their members view themselves as a minority struggling against an Establishment from which they think (or would like to think) they’re being excluded. Pointing to the majority “enemy” that allegedly threatens one’s minority existence makes perfectly good sense from an in-group perspective. Having an enemy, even an imaginary one, at the gate prevents loss of collective solidarity—and benefits those whose job it is to exaggerate the danger of hostile outsiders.

The German Jewish patricians whom Verbeeten discusses as the managers of Jewish philanthropies were not particularly interested in maintaining Jewish solidarity. They admired the Protestant upper-class whom they tried to imitate. German Jewish philanthropists were far more indulgent than Eastern European Jews in dealing with the social elite who snubbed them, according to Verbeeten. The prejudice they encountered in seeking membership to private clubs and opulent WASP neighborhoods was viewed as a temporary inconvenience. It was not something they cared to denounce since they hoped to become the friends of those who were snubbing them. Such conduct was not unusual for a group seeking admittance into a higher social stratum.

However, once Eastern European Jews took over these philanthropies, and formed the American Jewish Congress in 1918, they attacked white Christian discrimination in any and every form. Of course, these vaunted Jewish warriors against discrimination were far from equally critical of those who attacked them from the Left. Indeed they’ve often bent backward to excuse the hateful antisemitism of blacks and other designated victim groups. Such hypocrisy is deemed an acceptable cost to maintain the Jewish alliance with the socially marginal.

What is equally remarkable about this Jewish “self-marginalization” that Verbeeten discusses is its intergenerational character. It has not faded over time but resulted in jumping from one Leftist commitment to the next, from Alexander Bittelman’s Stalinism through support for the Civil Rights revolution in all its phases down to feminism, gay marriage and crusades for illegal immigrants.

We are clearly dealing with a group that embraces all kinds of Leftist causes, most of which have a destabilizing effect on what remains of a traditional Christian society.

Posted in America, Jews | Comments Off on Eastern European Jews And The Case Of the Marginalized Elite

Very Racist, Very Anti-Semitic Article In Los Angeles Times Pretending To Mourn Loss Of Tree Privilege

Posted on April 20, 2017 by Luke Ford

Just substitute “Jews” for everything bad in this article and you can see how this essay is an invite for a Holocaust. It is stoking the flames of hate.

This is not who we are. It’s the current year. My wife’s son is very upset.

Substitute “whites” or “goyim” or “WASPs” for leafy trees and you’ll be clued in to the white supremacy inherent in the system.

How long will we stand by while foreign eucalypti devastate our native habitat and suck up our water?

I’m from Australia but I’m sick of eucalypti running everything in this town.

Why can’t there be a patch of this earth that is free from invasive species? Why can’t Southern California native plants have their own safe space?

The WASPs that made America great are dying. Fast.

The whites that shade, cool, and subsidize invasive species from around the world are dying. Fast.

We are witnessing a transition to a post-oasis landscape in Southern California as the natives are displaced by the growing brown tide.

Catastrophic loss of our goyim (white Christians of European ancestry) canopy would have consequences for human health and well-being, property values, air-conditioning savings, carbon storage, the removal of pollutants from the air we breathe, and wildlife habitat.

Jerrold Tu, pathologist for Los Angeles County, likened the surge in white mortality to “watching a train wreck in slow motion.”

Funny how it is cool to care about trees, but uncool to care about whites and Western civilization (the product of white goyim of Christian origins).

From The Hidden Life of Trees by Peter Wohlleben:

Los Angeles Times:

The trees that make Southern California shady and green are dying. Fast.

The trees that shade, cool and feed people from Ventura County to the Mexican border are dying so fast that within a few years it’s possible the region will look, feel, sound and smell much less pleasant than it does now.

“We’re witnessing a transition to a post-oasis landscape in Southern California,” says Greg McPherson, a supervisory research forester with the U.S. Forest Service who has been studying what he and others call an unprecedented die-off of the trees greening Southern California’s parks, campuses and yards.

Botanists in recent years have documented insect and disease infestations as they’ve hop-scotched about the region, devastating Griffith Park’s sycamores and destroying over 100,000 willows in San Diego County’s Tijuana River Valley Regional Park, for example.

“It’s heartbreaking to see trees dying in such dramatic numbers in famously lush cities like Pasadena, Alhambra and Arcadia.”
— Jerrold Turney, plant pathologist for Los Angeles County.

…And that insect is just one of the imminent threats.

“Many of the trees we grow evolved in temperate climates and can’t tolerate the stress of drought, water restrictions, higher salinity levels in recycled water, wind and new pests that arrive almost daily via global trade and tourism, local transportation systems, nurseries and the movement of infected firewood,” he said.

“There will be no miraculous recovery of these urban ecosystems after the beetles are done with them.”

— Mark Hoddle, director of UC Riverside’s Center for Invasive Species.

But Southern Californians would face many other costs.

“Catastrophic loss of our canopy,” McPherson said, “would have consequences for human health and well-being, property values, air-conditioning savings, carbon storage, the removal of pollutants from the air we breathe, and wildlife habitat.”

Jerrold Turney, plant pathologist for Los Angeles County, likened the surge in urban tree mortality to “watching a train wreck in slow motion.”

“It’s heartbreaking,” he said, “to see trees dying in such dramatic numbers in famously lush cities like Pasadena, Alhambra and Arcadia: sycamores, all the maples, olives, liquidambers, flower plums, myrtles, oleanders and oaks.”

Mark Hoddle, director of UC Riverside’s Center for Invasive Species, said that the tree loss is “starting to cascade across the urban landscape.”

“Without shade trees, water temperatures will rise and algae will bloom in riparian areas, for instance,” Hoddle said. “As a result, fish, frog and native insect populations will diminish, along with the pleasure of hiking, because there’ll be nothing to look at but dead boughs of trees.”

“And,” he added, “there will be no miraculous recovery of these urban ecosystems after the beetles are done with them.”

Among the hardest-hit native species of urban trees are California sycamores, typically found along streams and commonly used as shade and street trees in places such as Griffith Park and along downtown’s Wilshire Boulevard.

“Here’s the sad news about sycamores,” said Akif Eskalen, a plant pathologist at the University of California, Riverside. “If we cannot control the shot hole borer, it will kill all the sycamores in California. And when they’re done with sycamores, they’ll move to other trees.”

By 2012, pathologists knew that the shot hole borer was transmitting a fatal fungal disease to 19 species of trees in Southern California, he said. Since then, scientists have identified 30 additional host species.

“If we cannot control the shot hole borer, it will kill all the sycamores in California.”

— Akif Eskalen, plant pathologist at the University of California, Riverside.

Posted in California, Evolution | Comments Off on Very Racist, Very Anti-Semitic Article In Los Angeles Times Pretending To Mourn Loss Of Tree Privilege

Asian Success

Posted on April 16, 2017 by Luke Ford

Comments at Steve Sailer:

* It’s true Asians do better at math and science and drone-occupations.

But blacks succeed a lot more in other areas, indeed those areas deemed cool. Sports, music, sex, booty-call, yapping, comedy, and etc.

So, in some ways, Asians are successes, in some ways failures.

Also, huge difference between Asian female and Asian male. I think it’s more accurate to divide Asian-America into American-Female-America and Asian-Male-America. The former is much more successful sexually. Because men of all races seek out Asian women, Asian women have gold value. Because no women want Asian men, they have lead value. But homo Asian men may be more successful. Women seek big dongs but homos just seek some bung to pork. So, even an Asian homo with smaller dong has a bung to pork. So, George Takei is a sexual success since all he has to do is play biatch. No wonder Takei is the face of Asian American malehood. Only has value as homos with bungs.

* Imagine if you were trying to buy real estate between 2002 and 2008, and some racist/bigoted lender prevented you from getting a loan. Wouldn’t you be relieved/grateful once that real estate bubble burst?

* Asian Americans suffer from significant discrimination in America today. I’ve argued ad nauseum before that black, white, and Hispanic Americans discriminate against Asian Americans in ways that we wouldn’t countenance if it were any other ethnic group in this country.

It’s bad enough that it’s considered perfectly okay by black, white, and Hispanic Americans to mock and denigrate Asians on a regular basis in this country, but then you also have actual institutionalized racism in this country that discriminates against Asian Americans in the form of college admissions, etc. And on top of that, given the East Asian tendency to skew towards STEM and away from business and politics, Asian Americans are mostly ignored in our national discourse. This triple whammy really hits Asian Americans hard in this country.

* Washington Post reporter Jeff Guo wrote an epic-length Tweet storm with every Angry Asian cliche imaginable: the Model Minority Myth is racist, Asians are discriminated against in the U.S., they weren’t even allowed in for awhile, the food tastes awful, and the portions are so small.

* That is an amazing thread. He says that Asians don’t actually earn more than whites when you control for education. So we’re controlling for education now when comparing racial achievement? When talking about blacks and Hispanics, relatively low education is blamed on racism. And then he says that the reason that Asians are so obsessed with education is that they need it to overcome racism. So it’s racism, racism, racism, no matter what the outcome.

* I guess part of the resentment is that Asians out hustle everyone in a zero sum game which is kinda bad overall. Like Asians only have an average IQ of 105 so it seems they’re sort of bringing their rat race culture over here which is bad. I think most white people would prefer the Finland model of education to the South Korea model of education. Didn’t the cram school thing get so out of control over there that they had to shut it down?

* No one said Asian IQ is on par with Jewish IQ.

Jewish IQ has been measured at 110 to 115.

East Asian IQ is 99 or 100, though maybe 105 in elite centers of the nation.

Hindu IQ ranges like a mofo. It goes from very high to tarded. India is genetically very diverse.

There are surely various ways of discrimination at upper reaches of society. Also, Jews can get away with it more. It’s okay to call out on ‘racist’ Wasps, but it’s still troublesome to talk of Jewish over-representation.

But that kind of discrimination will be found anywhere and in all societies.

My belief is that a nation should not allow minorities to rise above middle position in management except in rare cases where the person is truly talented.

It’s gonna be crazy stupid for Canada to allow Hindus and Chinese to take over elite positions in society. There goes Canada.

* Everything neatly fits into place if you marry someone of your own subcaste, because their likes, dislikes and upbringing is likely to be very similar to your own. They will likely have similar political views, similar ideas on familial responsibilities, money management and so on. The merchant castes disdain formal education and want their kids to start small businesses ASAP, the academic castes prize academia, elite institutions and art, the martial castes value military and police service. Each subcaste has its own traditions, its own favored temples, its own variations in marriage, birth and death rituals, in some cases its own dialect.

Intermarriage with other communities would make your life progressively harder the more different the other community is from yours. Of course, as India modernizes many of these old identities are dying out.

My personal ranking for preferred spouses would be as follows
Same subcaste, same area> Same caste, same area> same caste, different area> castes close to mine in habits and behavior > other hindu castes > Non-hindu Indians but from indian religions, like Sikhs and Jains > Christian Indians > Buddhist East/Southeast Asians > Whites and non Buddhist Asians > Hispanics > Blacks and Muslims.

* Marrying outside the caste is not just about outward appearance – I have a strong hunch that each Indian caste has subtle genetic differences in brain architecture which, in combination with nurture differences, leads to essentially different breeds of humans. Nietzsche said something similar.

Almost all the dreamy, intellectual people I’ve met during my time at various elite Indian institutions have been Brahmins. The kind who would read Wikipedia for hours on end, with multiple tabs open at the same time. The kids from the merchant castes were usually more successful, because their intelligence, which was as good as that of the Brahmins’, was focused, utilitarian and pragmatic. The warrior caste people were usually the cool kids, the ones with naturally good physiques and good social skills.

Every caste views its own archetype as the best – a Brahmin would not be impressed by someone’s BMW, a merchant caste would not care much about a research paper published in Nature, a warrior caste person would consider anyone who wasn’t a cop or soldier to be unworthy.

* East asian Americans complain about only being 20% not 40% of the Ivy League. But do any of them write in English at the 99.99 percentile? At 20% of the Ivy League and more at Stanford, you’d expect a lot more great writers in many fields, but I can’t think of any. The highly competitive world of screenwriting, blog networks, and books seems to be less than 1% East Asian.

It isn’t racism since there are plenty of blacks and south asians doing these things.

* Jeff Guo has a strong academic background, as has been noted. But there must be an interesting explanation as to why his ideological commitments so thoroughly overwhelm his common sense.

Here is an account of how he had to retract a large chunk from a WaPo story after finding out he had been duped by a source who told him a fake story he wanted to hear (where have we seen that before?):

Link

The unredacted article is still a fascinating exhibit — he spends nearly 3000 words trying to figure out why gay black men contract HIV:

Link

* Whit Stillman and few others are real ‘auteurs’ in the true sense of the world.

I think globalism is making things less interesting. Without roots and some kind of cultural foundation, everyone sounds the same.

The couple in LOVE STORY is moving away from roots, but they still have roots in something real. Italian life or Wasp life(when it had unique character).

But it seems like we are living in the age of the children of the children of LOVE STORY. And these globots are without character.

It’s no wonder we have green hair people, tattoos, piercings, and other idiocies. Or pussy hats. Without roots, people seek some kind of identity by creating new fashions.

But the old identities were so much better.

Wong Kar Wai has a great eye but his movies are vapid because his characters are globots. They aint chinese, they aint european, they aint nothing. Just fashionistas.

* But as the Foreign Policy article said, there is no successful black nation anywhere.

Also, black Americans are better off than Africans… which is why Africans wanna come to US, but blacks don’t wanna go back to Africa.

Also, Meso-Americans were conquered and enslaved and enserfed. But their problems are different from blacks.

A simple mind trick. If US had enslaved Asians or Hindus, would we have same problem? A different problem, to be sure, but the kind of problem that we have with blacks? No way.

Look at Sweden. Many blacks arrive there as free people and are showered with goodies. They cause problems.

Look at Somalis in US. A big mess.

* In the US, only four people matter.

1. Whites. While it’s true that whites are most bashed, they are also most desired. Everyone, including your family, wants to come to white nation. Everyone wants to live near whites. Everyone trusts whites more than other races. Everyone would be happier if daughter married white than black or brown.

2. Jews. Jews have lots of power. And their wit, humor, creativity have won them fans. Seinfeld. They have Holocaust thing. A holy people.

3. Blacks. In some ways, many people fear and even hate blacks. But they love blacks on tv, sports, music, and etc. So, blacks have cool factor. And they got slavery narrative. Now, Asians have tragic narrative too, but watching asians suffer isn’t as dramatic cuz they aren’t good divas of suffering.

4. Homos. This is more recent, but the homo rise is surely the fast and most ridiculous in America. But Homos are holy.

As for the rest, they don’t matter. It’s just the way it is. It aint just Asians. Ask Muslims… who only got some attention FINALLY as pawns against Trump. Who cares about Palestinians? Ok, some in BDS do, but most Americans don’t care. And most American attitude toward Mexican is ‘pick tomaters’. And Hindus are made fun of cuz of their accent, but Hindus laugh along. Hindus do get humor and mockery. In high school in early 80s, a Pakistani twins were mocked by white guys for being Muslims. Whites couldn’t tell different between Pakis and Iranians who were hated then. But the Pakis had a sense of humor about it and laughed along. And they became super patriotic nuts who joined US military and etc.

In the end, it’s not so much the suffering or victimhood but the dramatics, charismatics, and showmanship of victimhood that matters. It’s like when chicken george cried when his chicken got killed. Dang, it was so sad watching Ben Vereen crying with saliva drooling out of his mouth. That got to me as a kid. And Jews created a holy cult of Anne Frank as new virgin mary.
And homos are so flamboyant in their ‘victimhood’.

Expression counts. It’s like Guernica the painting. The actual bombing was minor compared to others. Not many were killed, but Picasso drew a powerful painting of it, so the town became mythologized.

* They will never concede that the country was built by whites.

They do all sorts of mental contortions to create a multicultural past that didn’t exist. We see in movies, education and Google doodles that many people are working hard to make American history simply disappear – replaced with a new, improved and inclusive history that was hidden from us by white supremacists all these years!

* There are probably some better examples out there, but the lack of really any top tier Asian Americans in creative writing or entertainment fields despite their numbers, education, and ambition indicates to me that they tend to lack a je ne sais pas set of positive personal traits you see in similarly high IQ whites and blacks. So Ivy League schools quite reasonably want to see higher SAT scores from them to make up for it.

* Hi Yan,
You fellows are obviously bright as a button and switched on, but we in the West don’t need a billion of you. Stay home. Thanks.

* Asian success undermines the media’s anti-white narrative which is necessary to keep the anti-white coalition pointing at the right target.

That’s why the media like Asians to be invisible.

* Verbally aggressive people in a civilized society generally think they can get away with verbal bullying so physical size only kicks in in environments where normal rules don’t apply.

* When Murray and Herrnstein were working on The Bell Curve, they were a little worried that their centrality-and-immutability-of-intelligence point would actually strengthen the welfare state, because it left less room for personal responsibility. But for some reason, progressives turned out to be much more comfortable with “NAMs are capable of better decision-making but just don’t follow through” than “NAMs are stuck with an ineradicable handicap.”

* I remember well the shock I encountered on first going to east Asia. I was young and foolishly looking for a society that wasn’t based on competition. Buddhism seemed to appeal.
There are no people on earth more competitive! They live and breath competition. That is all life is to them, it seemed. (I’m exaggerating a bit–it wasn’t all that bad, and most I encountered were lots of fun. The ladies could be fun too of course, but there was a feeling of ruthlessness I also got from them, as in (like everywhere) only the baddest muthaf***** interested them.)

* It’s funny how Sullivan explains Asian vs. blacks outcomes through culture, when everyone likely remembers that Sullivan believes in HBD and used to promote open discussion on the topic

Posted in Asians, Blacks, India | Comments Off on Asian Success

What if the Trump-Putin Connection Turns Out to be Kushner’s Chabad?

Posted on April 16, 2017 by Luke Ford

Comments at Steve Sailer:

* Chabad were always czarist supporters. In fact the “Alter Rebbe” -literally the old rabbi, Shneur Zalman of Liadi who was the founder of Chabad strongly supported the Czar against Napoleon. This despite having been imprisoned by the Czarist government not long before the French invasion. There are even Chabad legends that the Alter Rebbe had a spy in Napolean’s camp and would pass on his reports to the Czarist authorities. Chabad was also very skeptical of Communism and supported the Czarist and later the White government against the Bolsheviki. The 6th Rabbi of Chabad (Rabbi Y.Y. Shneerson) was imprisoned by the Bolsheviks and sentenced to death for counter revolutionary activities. His sentence was reduced after a international campaign.

* Chabad-Lubavitch is one of the most remarkable examples of the tendency of some Ultra-Orthodox Jewish organizations to turn from anti-Zionist to de facto pro-Zionist (sometimes fanatically so) without ever actually officially amending their ideology.

* My family attended a chabad-run synagogue for a year or two. They definitely were a very welcoming group. It was a much nicer experience than the reform and conservative ones I had been to. To be honest, all the stereotypical American Jewish traits were on full display at those places, especially extremely conspicuous donations to the synagogue. In contrast, Chabad felt like a much more genuine community.

* The Chabad Rabbis were mainly interested in having a joyous worship service, whereas the Reform and Conservative Rabbis were obsessed with the Holocaust and defending Israel.

* I have heard that the Chabad people run boarding houses for Jewish backpackers/hippies in many places around the world, and that these places are known for their good food and inexpensive lodgings.

* I’m no expert on the alignment-of-forces of judaists here, but it halfway looks like Chabad maintains its office here to harvest dollars from religious kids who come for the 1-2 year study-in-Israel schtick.

Let’s be clear about something: the Chabad is NOT Old Line Modern Orthodox, like Lookstein who did Ivanka’s conversion.

The religious establishment here made an exploratory press release about not recognizing Ivanka because her papers came from Lookstein; but Netanyahu read them the riot act; they folded RIGHT QUICK.

NEtanyahu, like all his predecessors, has always been able to call the religious parties bluff (to withdraw their support during a Knesset vote-of-confidence) by threatening to turn off the tap of State funding. NEtanyahu knows that because they’re’s so MANY rabbis competing for votes, he can successfully divide-&-conquer, merely by putting an individual one into “redpill dread” that his camp followers would jump to another rabbi’s campfires relatively quickly, once the first rabbi can no longer pay salaries, supply apartments,underwrite matchmakings, etc etc etc.

* I disagree with the poster who said that the Chabad Worldwide Empire is completely independent of 770 Empire Parkway, It’s like the Pope. He can take a bishop down if the bishop causes too much bad press. But most of the time, he choses his battles very carefully.

Chabad has like 2-3 houses in Philippines, who (on paper) shouldn’t be so accepting of these retired 70 year old Israeli and American Jewish guys who are shacked up & making babies with 21-year-old Filipina Catholics. But these guys are the the only target audience the local rebbe has in his “territory”. The rebbe does what he has to do. “Go along to get along” is how the rebbe is gonna get promoted up the hierarchy.

In Thailand, it’s less of a “red loine”. The Thai chicks are Bhuddists, who (from the outside world’s point of view) are not pagans. Christianity is straight up pagan.

But, ya know…. King Solomon himself was willing to tolerate pagan temples when they came attached to shiksa hotties, so I guess chabad rebbo’nim can ALSO learn to hold their nose and wait for a promotion back to the Big Leagues.

* Trump is an American phenomenon. Even the change of the name from Drumpf to Trump is very American. Only in America, for good and ill.

Alt Right is pissed with the recent ‘betrayal’, but then Trump would be nothing without betrayal. He’s been about Deals, not Ideals. He’s played all sides and then some. He’s been all over the map his entire life. He has said everything, meant everything, meant nothing.

He’s a phony but he can sometimes get excited enough to believe in whatever he is excited about… until the thrill runs out, and then he’s onto other stuff. Just look at his history with women.
The ONLY way he could in 2016 was by connecting with the Deplorables, and their votes were indeed gold to him. But in office, they can’t do him any good anymore. The power is with Congress, Deep State, Wall Street, Pentagon, and etc, and they have no use for his nationalism-than-globalism.

Also, Trump is a promoter, a showman, a circus master. He gets bored easily when he has to do nitty gritty stuff. He needs splash, pizzazz, once in a while, so why not lob some bombs at Syria? Fireworks. A bit of Kilgore in him that will blow up a village to go surfing. He has to sow his wild oates, which he has in endless supply.

Howard Roarks, the men of unshakable conviction, exist in fantasy. Even if they did exist in reality, they win only in fantasy. In real life, they never win. Or, their victory comes with huge price. During the Soviet Era, the Soviet government was filled with men of power and privilege. They had the connections, dachas, and caviar. Who knows or cares about any of them now? They are all forgotten. Who, from the Soviet era, looms as a giant? Solzhenitsyn, who stuck to his truth. But what price did he have to pay. Gulag, persecution, exile. In the end, he won, but most people are not willing to pay that kind of price, not least because for every Solzhenitsyn who finally triumphed, 1000 others died in silence and in vain.

NO ONE wants to pay that kind of price. Only in the Ayn-Randian universe does a man of iron principle like Roark defy, triumph, and realize his dream easy succession. The real world belongs to Gail Wynands, Tooeys, and Keatings. Those are the three basic types in the world of wealth and power.

Some people compared Trump to Howard Roark, but he was more like Wynand. When push comes to shove, Trump folds and goes along, just like Wynand who realizes he hasn’t the will go all the way. All said and done, Wynand is all about wealth and connections. Without those, he is nothing. In contrast, Roark has the power of vision that his solid gold in his mind regardless of his condition in life. Trump is all about wealth, connections, and making deals. If he can’t do that, he has nowhere to go. And besides, democratic politics is about compromise with the Power. It’s not about dictatorial will, no matter noble it may be.
Depressingly however, political compromise in the US means shilling out for the globalists. It’s one thing to compromise for the good of the people but quite another when the compromise mainly serves the GLOB elites. When FDR came up with New Deal, he made compromises with labor, not with the capitalist elites. But labor isn’t powerful enough to exert the kind of pressure necessary to tear Trump away from the GLOB.
As for military guys, some of them just want ANY excuse to play ball. They see it as a sports. Any reason to play the game and fight the ‘enemy’. Always a need for one.
Or maybe, Trump is thinking of the WWII option. It’s been said that WWII, more than the New Deal, ended the Great Depression. FDR’s economic theory came down to creating the military-industrial complex. As the US mainland is free from attack, what does it matter if the US war machine goes into high gear and creates jobs and makes bombs to destroy other nations? Under FDR, guns were butter.

Trump is a phenom, and he reveled in the campaign. That was his element. Entertainer, showman, comedian, provocateur, clown, big personality, salesman, demagogue, and etc. He’s been promoting fights and running a TV Show. But when it comes to running something like government, he’s at a loss. Trump is used to running his own businesses. Also, anything in business can be solved with money and settlements. Profits are the only thing that matters in business. In government, there are Other Interests, and some of these are tribal, ideological, and personal, and Trump cannot solve this problem by greasing hands.
Also, Deep State are different from politicians. Trump once said politicians came to him for handouts, and that’s all that most politicians or prostitucians are interested in. For them DC is Hollywood for ‘ugly people’. It’s their ticket to the Good Life and Respectability. But Deep State operatives, globo-tribalists, and entrenched ideologues are different. Some of them care about the power, not the money. Some of them are ideologues and grand visions. And others got more money than Trump and can’t be bought.
So, Trump must be flustered dealing with these types. They are unlike any other people he’d worked with before. They have their own agendas and try to bend Trump to their will. Money cannot solve his problems with them. And on most things, they are more informed than Trump even if they twist the facts to push the agenda, as with Syria.

This Trump phenom is symptomatic of America as a spectacular but silly country. The US reinvents everything into a fantasy, a circus, a new religion. Mormonism is almost proto-Hollywood in its cheesy and Pirates-of-Penzance-like reinvention of the Bible. Mormonism’s combination of opportunism & materialism AND puritanism & moralism is part of the kitschy delusion. Hollywood reinvented Christianity with ET with an outerspace messiah who befriends lonely children, dies, is resurrected, and returns to heaven. All the western mythology(and then some) was reinvented as STAR WARS. And the themes of revolution and radicalism of the 20th century was reinvented into a Calvin Klein fantasy of MATRIX.
The Founding Fathers were lately reinvented as a bunch of rappers.
So, Trump’s nationalism is another fantasy, a show, a musical. It’s not the real thing but a reinvention worthy for Las Vegas extravaganza. Trump has real power, but he cannot be taken seriously or soberly. He has to be approached as a Cecil B. DeMille production. He’s the santa or the fake santa of nationalism, but then, is there such a thing as a real santa? Hoping for a true nationalist in Trump is like wishing that a store santa is the real thing. Given the system that allowed his rise, real nationalism is hard to come by.

Trump pulled off a fun opening act as the would-be-Moses of the Deplorables, but the whole idea now seems rather silly. Trump as the deliverer? The man most famous for saying ‘you’re fired’ is going to create an America where everyone is hired. LOL.
But even if there is some sincerity in Trump as leader of long-forgotten Deplorables, the question is how far is he willing to go even if he succeeds on the economic front? After all, there were two Moses in the movie. There was Moses I, the Egyptian who served the empire. And Moses II, the one who regained his identity and led his people to the Promised Land.

Trump’s vision doesn’t go beyond Moses I. In other words, he remains the servant of the Empire, the Glob. And his nationalism is really a means to serve the GLOB even better.
Moses I defies the System and pushes ‘reforms’ that lead to better treatment for slaves, better food, and more human conditions. He sees it as a kind of triumph of justice, and it is. He has improved the lot of the Jewish slaves, but the fact is they remain slaves, and he is still serving the Pharaoh. If anything, one could say he has empowered the empire even more by making the slaves more productive, more hardworking, and improved in morale. So, paradoxically, his justice for the slaves has made the tyranny over them even more powerful. After all, an empire needs hard workers. (Communism failed in part because work ethic crumbled.)

Thus the moral victory of Moses I was delusional. He did bring some measure of justice to the slaves, but turning them into better and more willing workers, he has also empowered the Egyptian Empire that will conquer and enslave more peoples. The slaves were part of something bigger. They were just cogs in the system.

For Moses to truly free the slaves, he must become Moses II, the man who awakens to his true identity and embarks on the exodus to lead his people from bondage. As long as the empire exists, Jews will just be slaves and servants to it no matter how much their lot is improved with better working conditions and better food. (Likewise, Hitler fattened Germany up in the 30s to embark on empire. Had he improved the lives of Germans for the sake of German nation itself, he would have been a decent leader. But his mind was infected with dream of empire, and that meant the Germans, once made strong and healthy again, would be used as cannon fodder to expand the empire. But if Hitler pursued his own mad dreams, Trump is beholden to the Imperial Vision of the Anglo-Zionists who are intoxicate with power and hegemony like college coaches with winning the Rose Bowl.) Trump isn’t up to playing Moses II, and he knows it, and we know it. And even if he wanted to, it’s not possible under the current system.

So, we really need to think about the ultimate meaning and worth of Trumpian nationalism. If it’s not true nationalism, what is it? Is it just a means to improve the morale, productivity, and patriotism of Americans so that they can be harnessed to serve the Empire better? After all, there has been an erosion of patriotism under Bush and Obama. Bush’s wars even made Conservatives feel sorry they supported him. Obama’s homo-worshiping supporters do not make red blooded patriots who will not only chant USA USA USA but fight and die for the empire. Most people in the US military didn’t want to die for Obama.

Without the gungho support of Red State America, the empire seems ever wobbly, all head and no body, as the body feels disconnected to the head that is all about homos and trannies in the military.

So, Trump is useful for recharging patriotism and national pride among white Americans. But is it about national independence from globalism/empire(like how the US was founded in the first place) OR is it about national servitude to the empire? “Trump fattened you real good and returned you back to health. USA USA USA. Now, go out and win one for the globber.”

Trump defies the globalist Pharaoh only to serve him better. He brings back American pride and optimism… but he doesn’t break the chains that holds the US in bondage to the GLOB. US may be the lone superpower, but there is a power bigger than the US. The GLOB is a made up of networks from US to Canada to EU to Australia to Japan to China to Latin America, and etc. It is the world of super-globalist-elites, the superpower over the superpower. The GLOB plays the entire world. It’s like one horse among those pulling a carriage maybe the biggest and strongest. The super-power horse. So, it is the biggest power? No, there is a power above it: the combined energies of all the horses harnessed by the rider who hold the reins. America is the biggest and strongest horse of the GLOB but one of many horses harnessed together to stampede around the world.

Trump is the man to demand better treatment for the big horse. Better food and new horse-shoes. But he’s not the one to cut the horse loose and ride it to freedom like in ELECTRIC HORSEMAN. In the end, it must remain a WAR HORSE.

BRIDGE ON THE RIVER KWAI, which came out one yr after TEN COMMANDMENTS, tell more or less the same moral tale. British soldiers are held captive, and the commander Nicholson(Guinness) is an honorable and courageous man. He has a deep sense of responsibility for all his men, and he expects humane treatment for all of them.
Japanese want to use them for slave labor to build a bridge. And the Saito promises good treatment for Nicholson and officers IF they collaborate with Japanese in working prisoners like slaves. Nicholson refuses and pays a heavy price, and his men appreciate his defiance and sabotage the work until Saito relents and promises humane treatment to all the men. So, like Moses I, Nicholson triumphs and earns a measure of justice for his men.

The irony is that, with improve productivity and morale, the men are serving the Japanese Empire, the evil enemy, even better than they might have otherwise. But Nicholson so savors his moral victory over Saito and the improved lot of his men that he becomes blind to the larger context of what’s happening. No matter what his men do — work as slaves treated inhumanly or prison-laborers treated well — , they are serving the Japanese war machine to expand, kill more innocents, and kill more British soldiers. (But then, Nicholson, despite his concern for his men, is first and foremost, a man of hierarchy and blinded by class distinctions and all their vanities, which makes one wonder if he was motivated more by personal pride or morality.)

In the end, Nicholson does come to his senses and blows up the bridge that was built by his men with great effort. However magnificent it is, it was built to serve the Japanese Empire.
Blowing up the bridge is the only way he can free himself and his men from the Japanese empire.
And in the TEN COMMANDMENTS, Moses is truly the deliverer of his people ONLY WHEN the split-sea-bridge is closed between his people and the Egyptians.
You can’t be part of an empire and still be free. The chains must be broken. Bridge must blow, the sea must close.

In the case of the US, breaking the chains of empire is tricky. When Vietnam and Algeria threw out the French(and when Indians kicked out the Brits), it was nations yearning to be free and cutting the chains of imperialism. Those under imperial power can do this by sending the imperialists home.
But US is the main imperial power in the world. Why would the US empire want to cut off the chains when it is the master over vassal states? America owns the chains.

The reasons are threefold. (1) Empire is morally dubious, for both master power and servant nations. (2) Empire is costly and often bloody, and sometimes risks something like WWI (3) The current empire is less about American domination than the Glob domination over the US. The GLOB is a worldwide network. US is its main asset but the US is only of the its assets. So, the American Empire is really part of a bigger empire. Soros and his ilk play the whole world. Trans-national corporations have no loyalty to any nation. It’s all about those at the top, and the elites of the world now attend same schools — Harvard and Yale — and plot the helot-ization of all peoples. GLOB has zero interest at heart when it comes to most Americans. If anything, the GLOB sees all nationals as replaceables.

Anyway, for there be true freedom, we need someone to blow up the bridge or close the sea.

There can no half-measures, like the guy finds out in PRINCE OF THE CITY. The poison has to be purged completely, and globalism is this vile evil force in the world. It is not good ole internationalism, a good thing that’s about various nations trading and respecting one another’s sovereign autonomy. Globalism is about the erasure of all borders, all identities, all sovereignties. It is about mass amnesia, homomania as world religion, endless Wars for Israel, Pentagon’s insatiable hunt for new crises, demographic imperialism, and degradation of all native rooted identities and cultures(with the exception of Israel). Globalism is evil and must go. Trump is not the one to blow up the bridge. He will play showbiz version of Moses I but not Moses II who came to realize that the only way Jews can be free is to make a clean break with the Egyptians.

Trump is fun and made a big splash and ruffled feathers, but I think the most he can offer is the hope of Deplorables being turned into good workers again so as to become better minions of the Empire. One thing for sure, Trump is not a serious man, nor should he be approached as such. He has to be seen for what he is. The hustler who plays everyone. To be upset with Trump is to be upset that one’s playboy father is cheating on the mother.

The true nationalist? He will come up with a way to blow up the bridge.

Posted in Chabad | Comments Off on What if the Trump-Putin Connection Turns Out to be Kushner’s Chabad?

L.A. rabbis arrested at ICE protest

Posted on April 16, 2017 by Luke Ford

Jewish Journal:

Several area rabbis were among more than 30 protesters arrested April 13 in downtown Los Angeles for an act of civil disobedience to call attention to the treatment of undocumented immigrants.

The group was taken away after blocking a driveway to the Metropolitan Detention Center (MDC) Los Angeles, booked at Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) headquarters and released by mid-afternoon.

Bend the Arc Rabbi-in-Residence Aryeh Cohen said the act of civil disobedience demonstrated a refusal to accept Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) treatment of undocumented immigrants.

“What it says to ICE, the institution, is that we are intending to put our bodies in between them and … deportations and detentions of people who have been in this country for a long time,” Cohen said in a phone interview. “I think what it said to LAPD is our fight is not with them but with ICE.”

The protest, which began around 10 a.m. several blocks away, brought together Jewish, Muslim and Christian faith leaders and community members who chanted, “Exodus from detention!” as they marched toward the Detention Center, from where vans leave to round up immigrants. The center, itself, is a federal jail downtown that holds individuals for immigration-related crimes, among other offenses.

Participants in the protest, which came on the third day of Passover, drew parallells between the Israelites’ Exodus story from bondage to liberation and the plight of undocumented immigrants who live in fear of being detained.

“I’m standing with my brothers and sisters in faith … on behalf of the undocumented and the refugee and immigrant communities that are being targeted now. Especially now during Passover, it is time we remember our own liberation,” Rabbi Sarah Bassin, associate rabbi at Temple Emanuel of Beverly Hills, told the Journal, as she was locking arms with Wilshire Boulevard Temple Rabbi Susan Goldberg, before their arrest.

Approximately 200 members of Bend the Arc: A Jewish Partnership for Justice, Clergy and Laity United for Economic Justice (CLUE) and other faith-based social organizations turned out.

Among those arrested were Bassin, Goldberg, Cohen; Rabbi Chaim Seidler-Feller, director emeritus at Hillel at UCLA; and Rabbi Susan Laemmle, dean of religious life at USC.

Goldberg said the purpose of blocking the entrance to the detention center was to prevent ICE vehicles from doing roundups.

I don’t recall these rabbis going to Israel and getting arrested preventing Israeli law enforcement from rounding up and expelling illegal immigrants.

Posted in Immigration, Rabbis | Comments Off on L.A. rabbis arrested at ICE protest

Politico, Trump, Chabad and the new anti-Semitism

Posted on April 16, 2017 by Luke Ford

Rabbi Dovid Elezrie writes:

Not every day do you wake up to find you run the world. That’s what I discovered reading Politico the day before Passover. According to the long article, the key link between Putin and Trump is Chabad. You see, those Chassidim tentacles reach out everywhere. They are the cabal that binds Washington and Moscow. According to Politico, Jewish Russian oligarchs are buddies with Chabad rabbis in Russia who are connected in some convoluted fashion to Jared Kushner and others in the Trump orbit.

For centuries Jews would tremble before Passover, fearing a new blood libel that they were using Christian blood to bake matzahs. This went out style after the Mendel Beilis trial in 1914 in Czarist Russia. Next the Protocols of the Elders of Zion declared the Jews run the world. This too fell out a favor after the Holocaust. Now Politico has created a new version of the old story, only this time it’s not all Jews. The new kind of anti-Semitism is only against those guys in the black hats and the beards, the ultras, or Chassidim. And it’s not just Politico, CNN took a shot at the “ultra-orthodox” in hour long special a day before Passover. The production was so off base that even Israeli’s ultra-left publication, the anti-orthodox Haaretz, lampooned CNN for its bizarre depiction of orthodox Jews.

Politico’s theory is if you follow the connections — built over an abundance of lox and bagels served at a bris in New York, weddings in Mar-a-Lago and meetings in Trump Tower—they all lead to Chabad. To make these connections, Politico creates its own facts, distorting the development of the Jewish communal structure in Russia after the fall of Communism as having been orchestrated by Putin. It fails to reveal that Chabad sustained Judaism during the anti-religious Soviet Regime. Many of its rabbis sent off to Siberia and even death for keeping Judaism alive. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, Chabad emerged from the underground to continue its leadership. It wasn’t “brought in” by Putin. It was there, serving at a time of great danger, all along.

Politico claims it’s the Chabad connections that cement the bond between Putin and Trump. But why stop there? The article could have revealed the true depth of the Chassidic conspiracy. It didn’t mention the links between Chabad and the Democrats. Former Obama Chief of Staff Jack Lew, an observant Jew, attended the same synagogue that the Kushners do. Bernie Sanders’ closest friend and college roommate is a Chabad Chassid, beard and all. And what about Hollywood? Steven Spielberg dedicated a Chabad synagogue in LA , Beis Bezalel, in memory of his stepfather. His late mother was a member there. Mark Zuckerberg was caught dancing with the Chabad Rabbi at Purim party in Harvard. It’s even the New York Times! Tom Friedman recently attended the wedding of his niece in the Chassidic bastion of Crown Heights in Brooklyn.

If Politico had done the most basic fact checking it would have discovered that Chabad is unique amongst major Jewish groups — it never gets involved in politics. While others are busy with press releases on everything from immigration to who should be the US Ambassador to Israel, Chabad never says a word. Not in the US and not in the 90 countries around the world where it has centers. Chabad’s mission is Jewish education, outreach and social service. Its stays out of politics. It does not endorse anyone for any political position, even if it’s just for dog catcher in Iowa.

As a Chabad rabbi, I find Politico’s contentions bittersweet. Over forty years ago when I started as a young campus rabbi, we were viewed as a quaint cultural relic. Liberal Judaism was triumphant, those Chassidim from Brooklyn a bit like a gaggle of Tevyes from Fiddler on the Roof. However, Chabad taught as its central tenet the love of all mankind, the responsibility for Jewish destiny, the return of Jewish scholarship and spirituality as the foundation of Jewish life. Slowly Jews around the world were receptive to that message, and today Chabad is a global phenomenon. With size comes the lies and distortions. This Passover we have learned that not only are we popular, we are the secret cabal between the world powers.

Posted in Anti-Semitism, Chabad | Comments Off on Politico, Trump, Chabad and the new anti-Semitism

What’s wrong with Jews’ emphasis on intellect?

Posted on April 16, 2017 by Luke Ford

Dennis Prager writes:

The fact is, there is no correlation between intellect and goodness. In fact, a disproportionate number of intellectuals, in the 20th century and today, have been, to put it bluntly, moral idiots — and therefore disproportionately supported the greatest evils of their time. Almost all the support in the West for Soviet Communism came from intellectuals, not hard hats. Within Germany, the university was one of the most passionate pro-Nazi institutions. In America today, a Christian plumber is far more likely to support Israel than a Ph.D. in sociology, or in any other subject (including Judaic studies). And the number of bright, even “brilliant,” college students whose moral compass is broken is enormous.

Finally, intelligence not only is not as important as goodness, it is not nearly as important as common sense. A person of average intelligence with common sense will navigate life far better, by making far more intelligent decisions, than a brilliant person who lacks common sense. According to Satoshi Kanazawa, an evolutionary psychologist at the London School of Economics, in at least one important area — binge drinking and getting drunk — more intelligent people actually have less common sense. They do both more.

Parents who overemphasize brains to the detriment of other positive values, such as character, common sense and the ability to deal with life’s vicissitudes (think of all the bright college students who need “safe spaces” because they can’t deal with speakers with whom they disagree) are doing long-term damage to their child. And, to return to my opening question about looks and brains, they are not doing their daughter any favor if they neglect looks. In real life, they matter, too. But you need common sense to acknowledge that.

I don’t think he is right. Morality boils down to the ability to empathize. Empathy is a form of abstract thought and it basically correlates to brai power aka IQ. Civilization is only possible with an average IQ above 97.

Philosopher Gedaliah Braun writes:

My first inklings about what may be a deficiency in abstract thinking came from what I began to learn about African languages. In a conversation with students in Nigeria I asked how you would say that a coconut is about halfway up the tree in their local language. “You can’t say that,” they explained. “All you can say is that it is ‘up’.” “How about right at the top?” “Nope; just ‘up’.” In other words, there appeared to be no way to express gradations.

A few years later, in Nairobi, I learned something else about African languages when two women expressed surprise at my English dictionary. “Isn’t English your language?” they asked. “Yes,” I said. “It’s my only language.” “Then why do you need a dictionary?”

They were puzzled that I needed a dictionary, and I was puzzled by their puzzlement. I explained that there are times when you hear a word you’re not sure about and so you look it up. “But if English is your language,” they asked, “how can there be words you don’t know?” “What?” I said. “No one knows all the words of his language.”

I have concluded that a relative deficiency in abstract thinking may explain many things that are typically African.
“But we know all the words of Kikuyu; every Kikuyu does,” they replied. I was even more surprised, but gradually it dawned on me that since their language is entirely oral, it exists only in the minds of Kikuyu speakers. Since there is a limit to what the human brain can retain, the overall size of the language remains more or less constant. A written language, on the other hand, existing as it does partly in the millions of pages of the written word, grows far beyond the capacity of anyone to know it in its entirety. But if the size of a language is limited, it follows that the number of concepts it contains will also be limited and hence that both language and thinking will be impoverished.

African languages were, of necessity, sufficient in their pre-colonial context. They are impoverished only by contrast to Western languages and in an Africa trying to emulate the West. While numerous dictionaries have been compiled between Euro­pean and African languages, there are few dictionaries within a single African language, precisely because native speakers have no need for them. I did find a Zulu-Zulu dictionary, but it was a small-format paperback of 252 pages.

My queries into Zulu began when I rang the African Language Department at the University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg and spoke to a white guy. Did “precision” exist in the Zulu language prior to European contact? “Oh,” he said, “that’s a very Eurocentric question!” and simply wouldn’t answer. I rang again, spoke to another white guy, and got a virtually identical response.

So I called the University of South Africa, a large correspondence university in Pretoria, and spoke to a young black guy. As has so often been my experience in Africa, we hit it off from the start. He understood my interest in Zulu and found my questions of great interest. He explained that the Zulu word for “precision” means “to make like a straight line.” Was this part of indigenous Zulu? No; this was added by the compilers of the dictionary.

But, he assured me, it was otherwise for “promise.” I was skeptical. How about “obligation?” We both had the same dictionary (English-Zulu, Zulu-English Dictionary, published by Witwatersrand University Press in 1958), and looked it up. The Zulu entry means “as if to bind one’s feet.” He said that was not indigenous but was added by the compilers. But if Zulu didn’t have the concept of obligation, how could it have the concept of a promise, since a promise is simply the oral undertaking of an obligation? I was interested in this, I said, because Africans often failed to keep promises and never apologized—as if this didn’t warrant an apology.

A light bulb seemed to go on in his mind. Yes, he said; in fact, the Zulu word for promise—isithembiso—is not the correct word. When a black person “promises” he means “maybe I will and maybe I won’t.” But, I said, this makes nonsense of promising, the very purpose of which is to bind one to a course of action. When one is not sure he can do something he may say, “I will try but I can’t promise.” He said he’d heard whites say that and had never understood it till now. As a young Romanian friend so aptly summed it up, when a black person “promises” he means “I’ll try.”

The failure to keep promises is therefore not a language problem. It is hard to believe that after living with whites for so long they would not learn the correct meaning, and it is too much of a coincidence that the same phenomenon is found in Nigeria, Kenya and Papua New Guinea, where I have also lived. It is much more likely that Africans generally lack the very concept and hence cannot give the word its correct meaning. This would seem to indicate some difference in intellectual capacity.

Note the Zulu entry for obligation: “as if to bind one’s feet.” An obligation binds you, but it does so morally, not physically. It is an abstract concept, which is why there is no word for it in Zulu. So what did the authors of the dictionary do? They took this abstract concept and made it concrete. Feet, rope, and tying are all tangible and observable, and therefore things all blacks will understand, whereas many will not understand what an obligation is. The fact that they had to define it in this way is, by itself, compelling evidence for my conclusion that Zulu thought has few abstract concepts and indirect evidence for the view that Africans may be deficient in abstract thinking.

Abstract thinking

Abstract entities do not exist in space or time; they are typically intangible and can’t be perceived by the senses. They are often things that do not exist. “What would happen if everyone threw rubbish everywhere?” refers to something we hope will not happen, but we can still think about it.

Everything we observe with our senses occurs in time and everything we see exists in space; yet we can perceive neither time nor space with our senses, but only with the mind. Precision is also abstract; while we can see and touch things made with precision, precision itself can only be perceived by the mind.

How do we acquire abstract concepts? Is it enough to make things with precision in order to have the concept of precision? Africans make excellent carvings, made with precision, so why isn’t the concept in their language? To have this concept we must not only do things with precision but must be aware of this phenomenon and then give it a name.

How, for example, do we acquire such concepts as belief and doubt? We all have beliefs; even animals do. When a dog wags its tail on hearing his master’s footsteps, it believes he is coming. But it has no concept of belief because it has no awareness that it has this belief and so no awareness of belief per se. In short, it has no self-consciousness, and thus is not aware of its own mental states.

It has long seemed to me that blacks tend to lack self-awareness. If such awareness is necessary for developing abstract concepts it is not surprising that African languages have so few abstract terms. A lack of self-awareness—or introspection—has advantages. In my experience neurotic behavior, characterized by excessive and unhealthy self-consciousness, is uncommon among blacks. I am also confident that sexual dysfunction, which is characterized by excessive self-consciousness, is less common among blacks than whites.

Time is another abstract concept with which Africans seem to have difficulties. I began to wonder about this in 1998. Several Africans drove up in a car and parked right in front of mine, blocking it. “Hey,” I said, “you can’t park here.” “Oh, are you about to leave?” they asked in a perfectly polite and friendly way. “No,” I said, “but I might later. Park over there”—and they did.

While the possibility that I might want to leave later was obvious to me, their thinking seemed to encompass only the here and now: “If you’re leaving right now we understand, but otherwise, what’s the problem?” I had other such encounters and the key question always seemed to be, “Are you leaving now?” The future, after all, does not exist. It will exist, but doesn’t exist now. People who have difficulty thinking of things that do not exist will ipso facto have difficulty thinking about the future.

It appears that the Zulu word for “future”—isikhati—is the same as the word for time, as well as for space. Realistically, this means that these concepts probably do not exist in Zulu thought. It also appears that there is no word for the past—meaning, the time preceding the present. The past did exist, but no longer exists. Hence, people who may have problems thinking of things that do not exist will have trouble thinking of the past as well as the future.

This has an obvious bearing on such sentiments as gratitude and loyalty, which I have long noticed are uncommon among Africans. We feel gratitude for things that happened in the past, but for those with little sense of the past such feelings are less likely to arise.

Why did it take me more than 20 years to notice all of this? I think it is because our assumptions about time are so deeply rooted that we are not even aware of making them and hence the possibility that others may not share them simply does not occur to us. And so we don’t see it, even when the evidence is staring us in the face.

Posted in Africa, Ethics, IQ | Comments Off on What’s wrong with Jews’ emphasis on intellect?