Haaretz: ‘On Memorial Day, Israel Has What U.S. Lacks’

I don’t see how you can have a common purpose in a multi-racial, multi-religious country unless your country is under assault. I’m thinking about America after 9/11. Neighbors started talking to each other, flags began flying, and there was a fleeting sense of shared American identity. But that didn’t last long.

It’s not just that different groups see the world differently, but that they experience the world differently because they have different gifts, different values, different histories, and different genetics. Israel is a Jewish state and Judaism is its official religion. About 80% of its population is Jewish. Thus it can have more of a shared experience than a diverse society like America.

Haaretz: “Jill Max is the Director of the Baltimore Hebrew Institute of Towson University. She has a 23-year history of professional and volunteer leadership in the Baltimore Jewish community.”

She writes:

Last month, during another visit to Israel, I had the privilege of experiencing Israel’s Memorial Day at Mount Herzl. Our group entered the national cemetery early in the morning, before it was closed to outside visitors.  We made our way through the cemetery, ultimately arriving at the section where the casualties of the most recent conflict are laid to rest. One could barely move, as every inch of ground was packed with uniformed soldiers, huddled together in group embraces, sobbing and swaying. Mothers sat on plastic stools adjacent to their sons’ graves as mourners paid their respects. Pictures of smiling young men atop marble slabs told the stories of lives cut short. Cigarette smoke filled the air; tears blurred my vision. And all I could think about were the young men I encountered last summer. Had they all returned unharmed? I was haunted by the fear that they had not.
I am ashamed to admit that in my own country, I have never really marked Memorial Day in any kind of meaningful way. I have no personal connections to military service or loss, and our culture does not support the ideals of collective mourning on that day. We are much more comfortable with retail sales and celebrating the unofficial commencement of summer at the pool or a barbeque.
I live in Baltimore, Maryland, only an hour’s drive from Washington, D.C. Every year, when Memorial Day approaches, I remember that I would like to visit Arlington National Cemetery, the sacred ground where many of our country’s war dead are buried. I’ve had the unexpected experience (by pure chance while at the airport) of greeting a flight of WWII heroes as they arrived for a once-in-a-lifetime visit to the memorial in Washington that was erected in their honor. And when U.S. military personnel are on my flight, I always feel both humbled and indebted to them.
In our country, military service largely divides us by class and privilege. I know only one person whose son serves in our military, and this is not uncommon. Since the tragic events of 9/11, so many young men have given their lives, or returned home with catastrophic injuries to defend my country, and I have never found a way to honor that sacrifice, even on the one day each year when that might be a real possibility. As I write this, I understand how profoundly different my life would be if my own son had been obligated to serve in the military, rather than remaining safe within the confines of an elite college campus.
Collective responsibility is a fundamental principle of Israeli society. Culturally, it is almost entirely different in the United States. Here, people are much more interested in protecting their own – their families, their religious groups, their political interests – that they rarely come together around any one ideal that relates to or unites the society as a whole. Although we have set aside a day to remember and honor those men and women who sacrificed their lives to defend this country that we all profess to love, most of us squander that opportunity.
In Israel, the idea that we are all responsible for each other permeates every aspect of life. It is particularly evident on Memorial Day, because everyone has experienced a personal loss, the country shuts down and people use the day to grieve and reflect. Yet the concept of collective responsibility extends beyond that day, being exhibited in large and small ways throughout the year.

The stronger your in-group identity, be it Jewish or Muslim or black or Christian, the more likely you are to have negative feelings about out-groups. For example, the stronger your Jewish identity, the more likely you are to care about other Jews and to not care so much about non-Jews, even when they are your fellow Americans.

When America was a 90% plus white Christian country, there was more of a sense of collective responsibility. There was high social trust. In a diverse society, people close down, distrust strangers, watch a ton of TV, and to the extent they socialize, they generally do it with people like themselves.

When Jill writes the following, I think she is mainly talking about herself and her peer group: “I am ashamed to admit that in my own country, I have never really marked Memorial Day in any kind of meaningful way. I have no personal connections to military service or loss, and our culture does not support the ideals of collective mourning on that day. We are much more comfortable with retail sales and celebrating the unofficial commencement of summer at the pool or a barbeque.”

Plenty of Americans take Memorial Day seriously. They are usually white Christians, the core of the country, the people who built the United States of America. Jews in America tend to identify as part of the Coalition of the Fringe (Democrats) who are frequently opposed to the white Christian core (Republicans).

To counter the power of the Fringe, Samuel Francis argued that whites must “reassert our identity and our solidarity, and we must do so in explicitly racial terms through the articulation of a racial consciousness as whites… The civilization that we as whites created in Europe and America could not have developed apart from the genetic endowments of the creating people, nor is there any reason to believe that the civilization can be successfully transmitted to a different people.”

Jill Marx writes: “In our country, military service largely divides us by class and privilege.”

A more profound division may be by region, race and religion. America’s officer corp has long been dominated by Southern white Christians.

Jill: “I know only one person whose son serves in our military, and this is not uncommon.”

That is not uncommon in Jill’s Jewish social circle, but in a white Christian group, that would be uncommon. America’s white Protestants tend to take their civic duties seriously. They serve proudly. They pay their taxes honestly. They do jury duty. They pick up trash. They work to keep America safe and beautiful.

Many American Jews (700-1000 a year) serve in Israel’s army rather than in America’s.

Los Angeles Times, 2014:

Can an American become a citizen of a different country without giving up U.S. citizenship?

Yes. “In order to lose U.S. nationality, the law requires that the person must apply for the foreign nationality voluntarily, by free choice and with the intention to give up U.S. nationality,” the State Department says.

Does the U.S. let its people join the Israel Defense Forces?

Yes. “Service with the IDF is something that many Americans do proudly, and we have no issues,” U.S. State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf said Monday in a briefing.

Why would an American join the Israeli military rather than the U.S. military?

The answer varies from person to person, but Edward “Ori” Getz of Houston, who joined the IDF in 2011 when he was 26 years old, talked to The Times this week about his own reasoning.

Getz said he had planned to join the U.S. military and was in the ROTC for five years but then changed his mind. “I did not want to go to Iraq and Afghanistan. I did not feel that was a reason to get killed,” he said. Israel, on the other hand, “actually needs protection from the countries around it,” he said. “It’s actually fighting for its existence. America is going to be fine without my help.”

Getz, who grew up attending Jewish day school in Texas, said Israel has always been important to him. “It’s the one place in the world that the Jews can always defend and protect themselves and not always have to run away,” he said.

He said he’d never felt any conflict between his allegiances to the United States and to Israel: “America pretty much has Israel’s back.” Getz moved back to Houston after his time in the IDF.

Daniel Flesch writes for Commentary magazine Feb 1, 2015:

Slandering Americans Who Fight for Israel

This past July, two young Americans, Max Steinberg of California and Sean Carmeli of Texas, were killed while fighting Hamas. They were serving in the Israel Defense Forces during Operation Protective Edge, Israel’s five-week war in Gaza. In the American media, their deaths became an occasion for raising the issue of lone soldiers—men and women who serve in the IDF but have no immediate family in Israel. Why, journalists asked, would Americans fight for Israel? And what does their service for the Jewish state say about their allegiance to America? As with most Israel-related matters that enter public debate these days, the discussion was grossly distorted and ultimately appropriated by those who sought to indict Israel and its American supporters. And as with many conversations concerning Israel, this one gave off more than a whiff of anti-Semitism.

The repeated charge against lone soldiers is that their sacrifice for Israel is proof of compromised or nonexistent loyalty to the United States. As a proud Jew, a proud American, and a former lone soldier who completed his IDF service in 2012, I am in a position to recognize this slander for what it is. The calumny against American Jews who fight for Israel is, in the end, a fashionable manifestation of a timeworn lie about the character of the Jewish people as a whole. And like all such lies, it makes its way into polite conversation in the guise of considered opinion.

My time in the IDF did not contradict or weaken my loyalty to America. It, in fact, affirmed and strengthened my deep belief in the United States and its founding principles. But before I explain my reasons for joining the IDF, let us briefly consider some examples of the criticisms heaped upon lone soldiers.

Days after the 24-year-old Steinberg was killed, Slate’s Allison Benedikt wrote an article blaming his death partially on Birthright, the organization founded by Charles Bronfman and Michael Steinhardt that has enabled hundreds of thousands of young American Jews to visit Israel. It was on a Birthright trip that Steinberg decided to join the IDF. For Benedikt, the very effort to get Jews interested in Israel is suspect. “You spend hundreds of millions of dollars to convince young Jews that they are deeply connected to a country that desperately needs their support?” she asked rhetorically. “This is what you get.” She was even more pointed in her assessment of lone-soldiering. Once an American Jew joins the IDF, she wrote, his “fundamental identity” becomes Israeli. That is an inescapably shabby way of speaking about a young Californian recently killed by Hamas.

But, then, American lone soldiers are often accused of harboring a shifty “dual loyalty,” with their affections divided between the United States and Israel. In some ways, this “dual loyalty” canard is more potent than an accusation of outright treason; its slightly weaker suggestion of duplicity allows for wider acceptance. In May 2014, two months before Operation Protective Edge began, the Anti-Defamation League released the findings of the “ADL Global 100,” an extensive survey of global anti-Semitic sentiment. Of 11 stereotypical anti-Semitic statements, the one concerning dual loyalty received the highest response. In the United States, 31 percent of those polled said that the statement “Jews are more loyal to Israel than [their native country]” was “probably true.” This number is more than three times higher than the 9 percent of American adults who claim to possess anti-Semitic views. Thus, the dual-loyalty charge allows anti-Zionists, anti-Semites, and those who simply don’t know any better to advance claims of Jewish deceit while they deny anti-Semitism outright…

Last September, the New York Times columnist David Brooks revealed in an interview with Haaretz that his son currently serves as a lone soldier. This made Brooks a suspect of dual loyalty by blood. His revelation prompted a debate in the media about whether he was obligated to disclose his son’s IDF service to Times readers, because he (very occasionally) writes about Israel. In a blog post from October, Margaret Sullivan, the Times’s public-opinion editor, concluded that Brooks did have such an obligation, stating that “many” of her readers were “outraged” to learn that Brooks’s son was, in the words of one, a “foreign mercenary.” It was shocking that Sullivan would even use this phrase, which suggests that its subject joined the Israeli military for the money—and Sullivan never bothered to question this vile imputation. She wrote finally: “I do think that a one-time acknowledgment [from Brooks] of this situation in print (not in an interview with another publication) is completely reasonable.”

Sullivan’s blog shifts the focus from Brooks, where it belongs, to his son, where it does not, which many readers use as a point of departure to blithely accuse lone soldiers of disloyalty. One commentator equates “choosing Israel’s military over America’s” with “choosing Israel over America,” while another states that the significant number of American Jews in the IDF “raises questions about where their loyalties lie.” More than 80 people agreed with these comments. In a separate piece, journalist Steve Sailer echoed this sentiment: “Nobody expects Jews like the Brookses [sic] to be more loyal to their fellow American citizens and less loyal to their foreign co-ethnics.”

What’s missing from the bad-faith speculation about the motives of lone soldiers are the views of lone soldiers themselves. We’re rarely asked about our motives. So here, then, is why I chose to serve in the Israel Defense Forces.

In the United States, the concept of national loyalty is different from what it is anywhere else in the world. America is exceptional because, unlike other countries, our national character is not defined by ethnicity, religion, or culture, but by our belief in liberty, representative government, and equality before the law. We are also unique in our willingness to defend these values. For any American, protecting these blessings is the noblest demonstration of patriotism. As a Jewish American who feels it incumbent on himself to defend the Jewish people, I am doubly fortunate. The Jewish state is the only Middle Eastern country that believes in and upholds the same principles. Defending the region’s only free, democratic, and pluralistic society against the forces of intolerance and extremism gave me the opportunity to safeguard the values that America holds dear, and to do so while protecting the Jewish homeland.

Just as important, my time in the IDF took me to the frontlines of the fight against the sworn enemies of both Israel and America. Indeed, American soldiers and veterans often tell me they admire my decision to join the IDF. They believe, as I do, that I fought the same ideological forces that they fought in Afghanistan and the Middle East. The primary struggle of our time is between Western, liberal democracies and radical, Islamic fundamentalism. Whether I was stationed on the Lebanese border or conducting internal-security missions in the West Bank, I defended innocent people against Islamist killers. I faced the same ideological enemy that attacked the United States on 9/11. With whom, after all, is Israel usually at war? Hamas, a terrorist organization whose leaders have said that “America is on its way to utter destruction” and that “God [has] declared war against America.” Then there’s Hezbollah, an Iranian-supported terrorist group whose leader, Hassan Nasrallah, said, “‘Death to America’ was, is, and will stay our slogan!” I joined the IDF in part to help ensure that Jews would never again face a Holocaust. But protecting the Jewish people also meant doing battle with those who live and die to see America perish. These two interests are complementary and require no reconciliation. Those who don’t readily see the compatibility of these interests are the ones whose motivations deserve rigorous questioning.

On my base every Fourth of July, we lone soldiers taught the Israelis “The Star-Spangled Banner.” And it’s no accident that the Israelis with whom I served admired the United States and were always keen to discuss American culture and politics. As the United States supplies the IDF with much of its equipment (to say nothing of political support), Israelis are acutely aware of America’s role in helping them defend Israel. My rifle was an American-issued M-4 with “Property of U.S. Government” etched on its side. Our gauze packages were, oddly enough, made near my hometown. The plane we jumped out of was a converted C-130 Hercules, with English instructions imprinted on the fuselage.

But for all the Israeli appreciation, there was a special camaraderie among lone soldiers. Contrary to Allison Benedikt’s foul suggestion, there was no possibility of forgetting that we were American. Most of us had no friends or family in Israel. Without the support network that our Israeli peers enjoyed, we relied on one another other for support. When on leave from base, the Israelis returned to their homes; lone soldiers returned to empty apartments. But we also knew we were goodwill ambassadors of a sort. Many members of my unit were shocked to learn that I chose to leave a comfortable life in America to serve in the IDF. But after I had explained my decision to serve, they were grateful to have me fighting by their side. Lone soldiers are highly motivated, and the Israeli soldiers and officers recognized our strength and determination. By our words and deeds, we fostered respect for America among Israelis.

My experience is borne out by the facts on lone-soldiering. For one thing, the U.S. government does not deem lone soldiers to be, in any sense, disloyal. It is not illegal for American Jews to serve in the IDF. In Wiborg v. U.S. (1896), the Supreme Court held that “it was not a crime under U.S. law for an individual to go abroad for the purpose of enlisting in a foreign army.” Americans constitute the single largest nationality among an estimated 2,500 to 4,000 non-Israelis in the IDF; in any given year, between 750 and 1,000 Americans serve as lone soldiers. This strong American presence is a testament to the compatibility of American and Israeli values and priorities.

Those who single out lone-soldiering in Israel universally ignore the long and well-established tradition of Americans fighting in the armies of many other foreign countries.

Everybody has conflicting loyalties, but it is rare country that is not bothered when you leave it to fight for another. That’s a bold statement that can’t be expected to go down well at home, even when it is argued for by high IQ Jews such as Daniel Flesch.

It is often not easy to see where one’s own loyalties lie, let alone to understand another’s hierarchy of allegiance. For example, is an American Christian or American Jew or American Muslim first an American and then his religious identity or the other way around? I am sure that varies by the individual. When I was growing up in Australia and California as a Seventh-Day Adventist, I think I was a Christian first. So I agree with Mr. Flesch that Jews aren’t the only Americans with multiple loyalties.

There’s one paragraph in the Daniel Flesch essay that most interests me. I will take excerpts and comment on them.

“In the United States, the concept of national loyalty is different from what it is anywhere else in the world.”

I doubt it. Which is more likely? That America is unique in its sense of national loyalty or that the author is confused?

“America is exceptional because, unlike other countries, our national character is not defined by ethnicity, religion, or culture, but by our belief in liberty, representative government, and equality before the law.”

Really? These beliefs are what makes us American? We are a proposition nation — affirm these propositions and you’re in! I don’t think that works. Ties of blood and soil are more powerful than ties of propositions. Does genetic similarity predict closer ties? For instance, "preschool children are 40 times more likely to be assaulted by a step parent — that is to say, a genetic stranger — than by a biological parent."

Dr. Phil Rushton found:

For Homo sapiens, inclusive fitness theory goes well beyond ‘kin’. As William Hamilton hypothesized, genes can increase the probability of their own survival by bringing about the reproduction of not only family members with whom they share copies, but also of any individuals with whom they share copies. Research with Hamilton’s theory on people is less well known and remains controversial. This review shows: (1) spouses and close friends assort on blood groups and that similarity predicts fertility; (2) twin and adoption studies find genes rather than upbringing cause people to positively assort; (3) phenotype matching is more pronounced on more heritable items within sets of homogeneous traits; (4) bereavement studies find grief is greater following the death of a more similar co-twin or child; (5) studies of face perception find people prefer and trust those who look like them; and (6) DNA variance within and between ethnic groups is equivalent to that within and between families.

Kin-selection theory predicts that animals increase their fitness by allocating more cooperation to kin than to non-kin. Hamilton (1964) showed that altruism (or, conversely, reduced aggression) is favored when rb – c > 0, where r is the genetic relatedness between two individuals, b is the (genetic) fitness benefit to the beneficiary, and c is the fitness cost to the altruist. However, to benefit kin over non-kin, altruists must be able to detect genetic relatedness. Mechanisms proposed for this to occur include familiarity, imprinting on self or others, and innate feature detectors that work in the absence of learning…

A study of 263 child bereavements found that: (1) spouses agreed 74% of the time on which side of the family a child ‘took after’ the most, their own or that of their spouse, and (2) the grief intensity reported by mothers, fathers, and grandparents was greater for children who resembled their side of the family than for children resembling the other side of the family…

Several studies have found that people rate faces as more attractive when they resemble their own. Platek et al. (2002) morphed people’s faces with those of toddlers and asked questions such as ‘Which one of these children would you like to spend time with?’ and ‘Which child would you adopt?’ People responded more positively toward children’s faces that had been morphed with their own. During debriefing, the participants expressed surprise that any morphing had occurred. DeBruine (2002) found people trusted a stranger’s face more when it had been morphed with their own than when it was left unchanged…

The pull of genetic similarity does not stop at family and friends. Malat & Hamilton (2006) found that people prefer same-race health providers and perceive them as more trustworthy. Putnam (2004) found that the more ethnically diverse a community, the less likely its inhabitants are to trust others, from nextdoor neighbours to local governments.

Inclusive fitness theory has been used to explain why members of ethnic groups move into the same neighbourhoods, join together in clubs and societies, and are prone to develop ethnocentric attitudes toward those who differ in dress, dialect, and other appearance…

In retrospect, it is not surprising that people are able to detect and prefer those who resemble themselves. Similarity, whether actual or perceived, is one of the most important factors in human relationships. It is more surprising to find just how fine-tuned the recognition process can be. The studies reviewed above show that the preference for similarity occurs within ethnic groups and within families and on the more heritable items from within sets of related traits.

In another paper, Rushton found:

Genetic Similarity Theory extends Anthony D. Smith’s theory of ethno-symbolism by anchoring ethnic nepotism in the evolutionary psychology of altruism. Altruism toward kin and similar others evolved in order to help replicate shared genes. Since ethnic groups are repositories of shared genes, xenophobia is the ‘dark side’ of human altruism. A review of the literature demonstrates the pull of genetic similarity in dyads such as marriage partners and friendships, and even large groups, both national and international. The evidence that genes incline people to prefer others who are genetically similar to themselves comes from studies of social assortment, differential heritabilities, the comparison of identical and fraternal twins, blood tests, and family bereavements. DNA sequencing studies confirm some origin myths and disconfirm others; they also show that in comparison to the total genetic variance around the world, random co-ethnics are related to each other on the order of first cousins.

Most theories of ethno-political conflict and nationalism focus on cultural, cognitive and economic factors, often with the assumption that modernisation will gradually reduce the effect of local antagonisms and promote the growth of more universalistic societies (Smith 1998). However, purely socio-economic explanations seem inadequate to account for the rapid rise of nationalism in the former Soviet Bloc and too weak to explain the lethality of the conflicts between Tutsis and Hutus in Rwanda, Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs in the Indian subcontinent, and Croats, Serbs, Bosnians and Albanians in the former Yugoslavia, or even the level of animosity between Blacks, Whites and Hispanics in the US…

Patriotism is almost always seen as a virtue and extension of family loyalty and is typically preached using kinship terms. Countries are called the ‘motherland’ or the ‘fatherland’. Ethnic identity builds on real as well as putative similarity. At the core of human nature, people are genetically motivated to prefer others genetically similar to themselves…

In 1964, evolutionary biologist William Hamilton finally provided a generally accepted solution to the problem of altruism based on the concept of inclusive fitness, not just individual fitness. It is the genes that survive and are passed on. Some of the individual’s most distinctive genes will be found in siblings, nephews, cousins and grandchildren as well as in offspring. Siblings share fifty per cent, nephews and nieces twenty-five per cent, and cousins about twelve and a half per cent of their distinctive genes. So when an altruist sacrifices its life for its kin, it ensures the survival of these common genes. The vehicle has been sacrificed to preserve copies of its precious cargo. From an evolutionary point of view, an individual organism is only a vehicle, part of an elaborate device, which ensures the survival and reproduction of genes with the least possible biochemical alteration.

‘Hamilton’s Rule’ states that across all species, altruism (or, conversely, reduced aggression) is favoured when rbc40, where r is the genetic relatedness between two individuals, b is the (genetic) fitness benefit to the beneficiary, and c is the fitness cost to the altruist. Evolutionary biologists have used Hamilton’s ‘gene’s eye’ point of view to carry out research on a wide range of social interactions including altruism, aggression, selfishness and spite. The formulation was dubbed ‘kin selection theory’ by John Maynard Smith (1964) and became widely known through influential books such as The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins (1976) and Sociobiology: the New Synthesis by Edward O. Wilson (1975).

“The Jewish state is the only Middle Eastern country that believes in and upholds the same principles. Defending the region’s only free, democratic, and pluralistic society against the forces of intolerance and extremism gave me the opportunity to safeguard the values that America holds dear, and to do so while protecting the Jewish homeland.”

The Jewish state is the Jewish state. It’s not a proposition nation. Israel exists primarily to protect the welfare of Jews. It is an ethno-state stuck with two million Arab citizens who hate it. America used to explicitly understand itself as a white Protestant nation. When it was founded, the nation was 85% Anglo. Since then, its founding stock has been steadily diluted by outsiders, and consequently social trust has plunged and corruption has risen. I don’t expect non-Englishmen to recognize and respect the rights of Englishmen.

Except for exceptional circumstances, I can’t think of any country where fighting for another country is honored. If you are an Australian, for example, it’s considered weird to go fight for another land. I doubt that Israelis honor their citizens who fight for foreign powers.

When there was a British commonwealth, however, fighting for fellow Anglos was honored because these were ties of blood and religion and monarchy.

If an American Jew joins the IDF, I don’t know that his primarily identity automatically becomes Israeli, but it would certainly tend in that direction.

According to the ADL survey, 31 percent of Americans agreed that “Jews are more loyal to Israel than [their native country].” Well, just as many American Christians and Muslims put their religion first, so too many Jews put Judaism and Jewish loyalties first. I don’t see anything anti-Semitic about noticing that. Since the 1960s, minorities in America, including Jews and blacks and latinos, have been encouraged to put their own identity first before their nation. Prior to the 1960s, I think those groups first identified as Americans. Their change in loyalty was a response to changing incentives. In America today, there’s little criticism of minorities who put their own race first. That may be good for those minorities, but I don’t see how that is good for America.

The way the world works is that most people don’t have the time and interest to think in complex ways about out-groups. American non-Jews will either see American Jews in general as fellow Americans or as a Fifth Column in their midst. American non-Muslims will either see American Muslims as fellow Americans or a Fifth Column in their midst. Jews will either see Christians as fellow monotheists who share a commitment to the Hebrew Bible and Western Civilization or as a persecuting enemy.

Right now, I suspect a secret survey would reveal that most Americans would prefer that their country be free of Muslims and blacks. Right now, I don’t think most Americans yearn for their country to be free of Jews, but that could change quickly.

Do America’s different races and religions have exactly the same attitudes to Memorial Day? Or to civic duties in general? Not that I have seen. America was built by white Protestants and the less white and Protestant the country becomes, the less American and the less civic-minded. By and large, WASPs make the best citizens.

Ron Guhname writes:

WASPs rule! I wrote in a recent post that I was getting the sense that Americans with Protestant European backgrounds were the best behaved. So I decided to sum all my prior post numbers that dealt with ethnicity and moral behavior to assess this idea systematically. I followed the simple strategy of assigning a rank for each behavior for each of the 8 ethnic groups with sufficiently large sample sizes. Jews were often ignored in previous posts since one must turn to the religion rather than the ethnicity variable to get estimates, but I wanted to include them, so I calculated numbers and then ranks for them.

I included all variables that I have posted on–here’s a list of them: okay to cheat on taxes; drinks too much; ethnocentric; dirty house; frequents prostitutes; promiscuous men over 30; feel that infidelity is not wrong; gay; lesbian; husbands and wives who cheat; fathers divorcing mom; women arrested; and promiscuity for men and women and under. I realized that I had not posted on drug abuse so I added that to the rest. I ranked group so high numbers indicate more bad behavior, then I simply summed the 16 rankings for each ethnic group. Here are the totals:

Bad Behavior Index

Blacks 106
Mexicans 85
American Indians 85
Italians 70
Irish 67
Jews 64
Germans 56
English/Welsh 47

My hunch was correct. This pattern coincides with that feeling that goes way back among nativists that the moral quality of the country was slipping with the mass immigration from Catholic, southern and eastern European countries, and more recently in concern over immigration from Mexico.

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How Hungary Became a Haven for the Alt-Right

From The Atlantic:

At the center of the scene is a publishing house called Arktos Media. It is routinely referred to as the preeminent publisher of the alt-right by those within the movement and experts who study it, and is known for translating many canonical alt-right texts into English, including the first full-text English translations of Russian theorist Alexander Dugin—characterized variously on the left and fight as “the intellectual guru of Putinism,” and “Putin’s Rasputin.” Dugin’s “ethnonationalism,” a belief in the creation of ethnically homogenous nation states, has been championed by white nationalists, who argue that Europe and America are innately white nations. Arktos titles largely promote a viewpoint it characterizes as “alternatives to modernity” that are critical of liberalism, human rights, and modern democracy.

Arktos originally began operations in India in 2010 when a Swedish businessman named Daniel Friberg absorbed a “traditionalist” publishing house run by American editor-in-chief John B. Morgan. Both lived in India for the first years of the company’s existence. In early 2014, both Friberg and Morgan moved to Budapest to continue to expand Arktos from within the European continent. (Morgan has since left Arktos and now works for Counter-Currents, a white-nationalist publishing house and website also partially based in Budapest.) Friberg, whose vision is central to Arktos, sees its mission as changing “metapolitics,” a term appropriated from 20th-century Marxist intellectual Antonio Gramsci. In Friberg’s book The Real Right Returns, he argues that multiculturalism and liberal human rights—what he calls “cultural Marxism”—have been the dominant culture since the fall of Nazism, and outlines how transforming this culture space is necessary for political and social change.

Peter Kréko, a Hungarian political analyst and academic researcher of populism and extremism at Indiana University Bloomington, said that the timing of Arktos’s move to Budapest was no accident. In 2014, Jobbik’s popularity surged, thanks to a platform that pledged to preserve Hungarian ethnic purity. That year, Orbán was also re-elected to a second term, and Jobbik won 20 percent of the national vote and 47 seats in the parliament, while Fidesz grabbed a super-majority. The Identitarians “are happy that they feel that in Hungary there is a leader that represents their values. These are people with an almost medieval view on the world and they find a safe haven in Hungary,” Kréko told me.

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The Media’s Assault On Homogeneous Japan

Washington Post today: “In Japan, single mothers struggle with poverty and with shame. Japan has a culture that makes it difficult for women to work after having children, and that makes life exponentially harder for single mothers, especially in a homogeneous society where those who do not conform try to hide their situations.”

OSAKA, Japan — The country suffered a “lost decade,” and then another one, after its bubble burst some 25 years ago. To this day, despite Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s efforts to reinvigorate it, Japan’s economy remains in the doldrums.

Now, experts are warning of a “lost generation” — a whole tier of Japanese children who are growing up in families where the parents — or, often, a single parent — work but do not earn enough to break through the poverty line.

“The Japanese economy has been getting worse and worse, and that’s hurting poor people, especially single mothers,” said Yukiko Tokumaru, who runs Child Poverty Action Osaka, a nongovernmental organizational that helps families in need.

The judgment and stigma that single mothers face in many countries are taken to another level in Japan, a homogeneous society where those who do not conform often try to hide their situations — even from their friends and wider family.

But Japan also has a culture that makes it difficult for women to work after having children — changing this is a key part of Abe’s solution to the country’s economic problems — and that makes life exponentially harder for single mothers.

“We have this culture of shame,” Tokumaru said. “Women’s position is still so much lower than men’s in this country, and that affects how we are treated. Women tend to have irregular jobs, so they need several jobs to make ends meet.”

Name me a country where single mothers do not struggle. A country where single mothers face no stigma is an unhealthy country.

From the Wall Street Journal:

Japanese Lawyers’ Problem: Too Few Cases

TOKYO—Japan is struggling with an unlikely problem: Its people aren’t litigious enough.

Fifteen years ago, the nation kicked off a plan to double the number of lawyers. Officials thought they could breathe dynamism into society by mimicking the Western legal system, where courts are more involved in settling issues such as consumer safety and corporate malfeasance.

But Japan’s new lawyers have failed to make a winning argument for why they are needed. The number of regular civil cases filed each year hasn’t budged in a decade. With crime near a record low and bankruptcies plunging, many lawyers are pleading poverty. …

Mr. Sakano said the overhaul ignored cultural differences with the U.S., whose law schools served as a model.

“A system that works in a heterogeneous society like the U.S. may not necessarily be suited to Japan,” he said. “Japanese have shown preference for more informal means of resolving disputes, such as through private negotiation mainly between the parties involved.”

The Economist:

As crime dries up, Japan’s police hunt for things to do

There was just one fatal shooting in the whole of 2015

Japan’s cluttered streets are not always pretty but they are remarkably safe. Crime rates have been falling for 13 years. The murder rate of 0.3 per 100,000 people is among the lowest in the world; in America it is almost 4 (see chart). A single gun slaying was recorded for the whole of 2015. Even yakuza gangsters, once a potent criminal force, have been weakened by tougher laws and old age…

This means plenty of attention for crimes that would be considered too petty to investigate elsewhere, such as the theft of a bicycle or the possession of a tiny amount of drugs. One woman describes how five officers crowded into her cramped apartment after she reported her knickers being swiped from a clothesline. A small army of detectives was assigned last year to apprehend a group of 22 people who had been growing marijuana for their personal use only and smoking it in deserted rural spots.

Japan needs more immigration!

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How Do You Keep Money In The Family?

According to Jewish law, one may marry one’s niece or cousin unless that is prohibited by civil law.

Rabbi Maurice Lamm writes:

A Man May Marry:

1. His step-sister (a step-parent’s daughter from a previous marriage, even though they were raised together as brother and sister from their earliest youth).

2. His stepfather’s wife (divorced or widowed).

3. The daughter-in-law of his brother or his sister (divorced or widowed).

4. His niece. In American and English civil law, a man may not marry a niece who is the daughter of his brother or sister, but may marry a niece who is the daughter of his wife’s brother or sister. The halakhic permission—even encouragement—to marry the daughter of a brother or sister is superseded by the civil law’s prohibition in this case.

5. His cousin.

6. His stepson’s wife (divorced or widowed).

7. His deceased wife’s sister, but not his divorced wife’s sister (unless she is deceased already).

8. A woman with whom he had relations in their unmarried state.

9. A kohen may marry a widow (who was never divorced).

A Woman May Not Marry:

1. Anyone not of the Jewish faith.

2. The son of an adulterous or incestuous union (mamzer).

3. A married man, until the civil and Jewish divorces have been completed.

4. A man with whom she committed adultery.

5. Her divorced husband, after the death or divorce of her second husband.

6. The following relatives (primary and secondary incest):

(a) Her father, grandfather and ascendants; her stepfather; and the husband of her grandmother and of her ascendants.

(b) Her son, grandson, great grandson; her son-in-law, and the husband of her granddaughter and descendants.

(c) Her husband’s father, or grandfather, and the father of her father-in-law and ascendants; and the father of her mother-in-law.

(d) Her husband’s son or grandson and descendants.

(e) Her brother, half-brother, her full or half-sister’s divorced husband in her sister’s lifetime, and her husband’s brother.

(f) Her nephew.

7. A convert may not marry a kohen.

A Woman May Marry:

1. Her step-brother (a step-parent’s son from a previous marriage, even though they were raised together as brother and sister from their earliest youth).

2. Her step-mother’s former husband (divorced or widowed).

3. The son-in-law of her brother or sister.

4. Her cousin.

5. Her sister’s husband (after her sister’s death, not divorce, unless she is deceased already).

6. Her uncle. In Jewish incest law, an aunt-nephew marriage is prohibited, but an uncle-niece marriage is permitted even though the state prohibits it. A man may marry his deceased wife’s sister, but a woman may not marry her deceased husband’s brother. Even a childless widow, whom the Bible commanded to marry her husband’s brother, must today receive chalitzah, enforced separation.

7. A man with whom she had relations in her unmarried state.

8. A kohen’s daughter does not have the restrictions of a male kohen.

Wikipedia:

Jewish views on incest deal with the sexual relationships which are prohibited by Judaism and rabbinic authorities on account of a close family relationship that exists between persons. Such prohibited relationships are commonly referred to as incest or incestuous, though that term does not appear in the biblical and rabbinic sources. The term mostly used by rabbinic sources is “forbidden relationships in Judaism.”

One of the most notable features of all the lists is that sexual activity between a man and his own daughter is not explicitly forbidden, although the first relation mentioned after the Levitical prohibition of sex with “near kin” is that of “thy father.”[1][2] (This assumes that the Torah is only speaking to men. If it is speaking to everyone, then a woman is not allowed to have sex with her father.[1] It also explicitly prohibits having sex with a woman and her daughter.[1] A man’s daughter is obviously also the daughter of a woman with whom he had sexual relations.) The Talmud argues that this absence is because the prohibition was obvious, especially given the proscription against a relationship with a granddaughter.[3] As with the case of a man’s own daughter, the shortness of the list in Leviticus 20, and especially of that in Deuteronomy, are explained by classical Jewish scholarship as being due to the obviousness of the missing prohibitions.[4][5]

Apart from the case of a man marrying his daughter, the list in Leviticus 18 roughly produces the same rules as were followed in early (pre-Islamic) Arabic culture.[4] However, most tribal nations also disliked exogamous marriage – marriage to completely unrelated people.[4]

Judaism’s view is that prior to the giving of the Torah at Mount Sinai, some of the prohibitions only applied voluntarily. Thus in several prominent cases in the Torah, the incest rules are ignored in favour of marriage to a close relative; Jacob is described as having married his first wife’s sister.

Some secular Biblical scholars have instead proposed that forbidding incest with a daughter was originally in the list, but was then accidentally left out from the copy on which modern versions of the text ultimately depend, due to a mistake by the scribe.

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Parasha Naso (Numbers 4:21–7:89)

This is the longest Torah portion and typically falls on the first Sabbath after Listen here.

* The Torah has no problem with different peoples having different gifts. “The Gershonites had the duty, under the direction of Aaron’s son Ithamar, to carry the cloths of the Tabernacle… The Merarites had responsibility, under the direction of Ithamar, for the planks, the bars, the posts, and the sockets of the Tabernacle, and the posts around the enclosure and their sockets, pegs, and cords.” The Levites duty is to guard. There hasn’t been a white starting cornerback in the NFL since 2004.

* Who rightly succeeds Mohammed? Are the Sunnis or the Shia the good guys?

* Lefty prof Justin Murphy: The psychology of prohibiting outside thinkers

* I wanted to watch some Australian TV and stumbled on the soap A Place To Call Home, which turns out to be about a woman moving to outback Australia in 1953 after she converted to Judaism in Europe just before WWII. The show was created by a gay guy and could easily be called, “Poofters in the Outback” because of all the gay stuff. It’s not fair. I know outback Australia. There are no poofters there. Believe me.

* How gay is soccer? “US Soccer to Wear Rainbow Numbers During Pride Month Friendlies” The poz is deep and wide.

* This week’s Torah portion deals with the Sotah (woman suspected of adultery). A civilization must police women’s sexuality more strictly than men’s because most men will never turn down sex from attractive woman. Men’s sexuality is generally fixed while women’s sexuality is more fluid. Women are the sex gatekeepers. We need to know who the father is or civilization collapses. I suspect many marriages would be helped by a Sotah-like ritual so men could cease suspecting their wives of adultery. In Jewish law, adultery only occurs when a married woman has sex outside of wedlock. A faithless wife is a much more serious problem than a faithless husband just as a promiscuous single woman is more of a problem than a promiscuous single man. “The unfaithful wife is a recurring prophetic image for Israel’s infidelity to God.” (Milgrom)

* Num. 5:13: “Although capital punishment may not be imposed on the basis of the testimony of a single witness (Num. 35:30), this verse implies that the case of an adulteress is an exception.” (Milgrom)

* I had some GFs cheat on me, while my own behavior in this regard has been as pure as the driven snow. I would really liked to have seen them go through the sotah ritual and have their bellies distend with the bitter waters!

* KC: “So boring! I wanna talk about the inversion of values and my own coming of age in a world that had recently shifted its definition of morals… how my strength has always been my weakness. Nietzsche. The Jews. Etc.”

* Torah is our road map to life. Everybody wants to rule the world, but you need Torah to change the world for the good.

* Jacob Milgrom: “For Israel, about to set out on its march through the wilderness, nothing was more vital than the assurance of God’s Presence, which depended on the strict maintenance of the purity of the camp.”

This reminds me of 12-step programs where sobriety depends upon the maintenance of a spiritual program, which entails drawing up a comprehensive moral inventory, making amends, asking God to remove your character defects (selfishness, self-seeking, fear, inconsideration, dishonesty), and developing your constant contact with God. It also means working hard, keeping your side of the street clean, keeping your home and car and office clean and organized, tracking your spending and earning and how you spend your time, and living as much of your life as possible in top-line behaviors.

SLAA: “Top Lines: Replace Behaviors with Healthy Ones: Break the habit pattern. We can’t get sober in a vacuum. We can’t simply stop destructive behavior. We have to replace it with healthy new activities. Often we have to be as compulsive for a time about sobriety as we were about acting out. Try taking creative actions you’ve never taken before. Prove to yourself you are capable of healthy actions by taking them. “In maintaining my sobriety, I find it more useful to keep in mind what I call my top line rather than my bottom line. My top line is what I do want for myself, my program goals. I want to integrate myself physically, emotionally, mentally, and spiritually; to relate to others from a state of wholeness; to live making decisions from a place of freedom and clarity rather than compulsion and confusion; to feel sufficiently safe to stay open enough to find the little realities of life moving, rather than needing to get dropped off a cliff to get a thrill. I want to be present, see things the way they are, and be glad to be alive. These things are beginning to happen for me.” — ©1986 Sex and Love Addicts Anonymous p. 270

Some guys can’t go to sleep without watching porn. A healthier substitute is to watch Mayday: Air Crash Investigations. They are documentaries, they’re exciting, but not so exciting that you can’t get to sleep afterward. And you don’t feel dirty the next day.

* Vox: “The Keepers has brought newfound attention to Sister Cathy’s murder, which might also bring the police new leads. Still, it’s possible we may never find out who killed Sister Cathy. But solving her murder isn’t the primary focus of The Keepers. What compels filmmaker White is the abuse that took place at Archbishop Keough and the voices of Maskell’s victims. That they are given the proper respect to tell their stories, which the church was so intent on ignoring, is the essence of the series.”

* Wikipedia: “Recovered-memory therapy (RMT) is catch-all psychotherapy term for therapy using one or more method or technique for the purpose of recalling memories.[1] It does not refer to a specific, recognized treatment method, but rather several controversial and/or unproven interviewing techniques, such as hypnosis and guided-imagery, and the use of sedative-hypnotic drugs, which are presently rarely used in the responsible treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder and other dissociative disorders. Proponents of recovered memory therapy claim that traumatic memories can be buried in the subconscious and affect current behavior, and that these can be recovered. The term is not listed in DSM-IV nor is it recommended by mainstream ethical and professional mental health associations.”

* Num. 5:8. Restitution first goes to the defrauded (not God!), and if he’s not around, to the priest, not to royal eminent domain, and then you sacrifice to God.

You can choose the priest who receives your donation of meat and money. Charismatic leaders are a characteristic of Jewish life. The more followers you develop, the more power, influence and money you accumulate.

* Herman Wouke’s 1962 novel, Youngblood Hawke.

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