But the Alt Right is in danger of squandering this victory and turning it into their own defeat, for they have not been able to distinguish between a victory for the Alt Right and a victory of the Alt Right. And while it is clear that Trump’s election was the former sort of victory, it is equally clear that it was not the latter. While the Alt Right is a young movement, Trump won only 37% of the under-30 vote – a showing no better among youth than that of Mitt Romney, whose intellectual vanguard was nothing more spectacular than moribund basic-bitch conservatism.[1] Nor did Trump win giving White Americans a champion behind whom they could rally as White Americans: Trump won the White vote by only a percentage-point more than Romney. Moreover, Trump’s victory among Whites was driven overwhelmingly by older Whites: among Whites under 30, Trump won only 48% of the vote.[2] Indeed, Trump’s victory was the result less of an any radical intellectual vanguard for White identity politics, and more the result of an effective, data-heavy analytical program for leveraging Mitt Romney’s coalition in swing states run out of the office of Jared Kushner.[3]
Yet the Alt Right, drunk off the heady vapors of Trump’s election, has fallen into self-congratulation of the most deluded sort, announcing that it was they who “willed Donald Trump into office, [and] made [their] dream into reality.”[4] Richard Spencer has taken to hailing Donald Trump with the Roman salute, as though a lieutenant in some imaginary army that had crossed the Potomac to proclaim Trump emperor, and announcing that his movement is now the intellectual vanguard of the Donald Trump administration.
To call these claims specious, and this triumphalist attitude merely unwarranted, would be too generous. Rather, this self-congratulatory spectacle is so detached from reality that it borders on insanity. Who is to believe that anything more than a miniscule percent of Donald Trump voters had ever seen a pepe meme, or that there was anyone for whom the invective of a Ricky Vaughan tweetstorm furnished the deciding blow against their thought of voting for Hillary Clinton? Who would imagine that Donald Trump, Jared Kushner, Corey Lewandowski and Stephen Miller might have burned the midnight oil throughout October conferring over transcripts of past NPI conference speeches, carefully crafting ads and policies inspired by a nascent White identitarian wave sweeping American political thought?
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Let us give thanks that Anglos came to this country, conquered the natives, and kept expanding for as long as it was prudent to do so.
That is how the world works. If you are stronger than your neighbor, you conquer your neighbor. If you are weaker than your neighbor, you get conquered.
Today I’m thankful that the Native Americans had an open borders policy. I do not wish to repeat their folly.
Due to their low IQs compared to Anglos, there was no way the Native Americans could have resisted the Europeans.
If the Chinese become smarter and powerful than us, they will conquer us just as the West had its brutal way with China in the 19th Century.
(Editor’s Note: The following is the new concluding chapter of Dr. John J. Mearsheimer’s book The Tragedy of the Great Power Politics. A new, updated edition was released on April 7 and is available via Amazon.)
With the end of the Cold War in 1989 and the subsequent collapse of the Soviet Union two years later, the United States emerged as the most powerful state on the planet. Many commentators said we are living in a unipolar world for the first time in history, which is another way of saying America is the only great power in the international system. If that statement is true, it makes little sense to talk about great-power politics, since there is just one great power.
But even if one believes, as I do, that China and Russia are great powers, they are still far weaker than the United States and in no position to challenge it in any meaningful way. Therefore, interactions among the great powers are not going to be nearly as prominent a feature of international politics as they were before 1989, when there were always two or more formidable great powers competing with each other.
To highlight this point, contrast the post–Cold War world with the first ninety years of the twentieth century, when the United States was deeply committed to containing potential peer competitors such as Wilhelmine Germany, imperial Japan, Nazi Germany, and the Soviet Union. During that period, the United States fought two world wars and engaged with the Soviet Union in an intense security competition that spanned the globe.
After 1989, however, American policymakers hardly had to worry about fighting against rival great powers, and thus the United States was free to wage wars against minor powers without having to worry much about the actions of the other great powers. Indeed, it has fought six wars since the Cold War ended: Iraq (1991), Bosnia (1995), Kosovo (1999), Afghanistan (2001–present), Iraq again (2003–11), and Libya (2011). It has also been consumed with fighting terrorists across the globe since September 11, 2001. Not surprisingly, there has been little interest in great-power politics since the Soviet threat withered away.
The rise of China appears to be changing this situation, however, because this development has the potential to fundamentally alter the architecture of the international system. If the Chinese economy continues growing at a brisk clip in the next few decades, the United States will once again face a potential peer competitor, and great-power politics will return in full force. It is still an open question as to whether China’s economy will continue its spectacular rise or even continue growing at a more modest, but still impressive, rate. There are intelligent arguments on both sides of this debate, and it is hard to know who is right.
But if those who are bullish on China are correct, it will almost certainly be the most important geopolitical development of the twenty-first century, for China will be transformed into an enormously powerful country. The attendant question that will concern every maker of foreign policy and student of international politics is a simple but profound one: can China rise peacefully? The aim of this chapter is to answer that question.
To predict the future in Asia, one needs a theory of international politics that explains how rising great powers are likely to act and how the other states in the system will react to them. We must rely on theory because many aspects of the future are unknown; we have few facts about the future. Thomas Hobbes put the point well: “The present only has a being in nature; things past have a being in the memory only, but things to come have no being at all.” Thus, we must use theories to predict what is likely to transpire in world politics.
Offensive realism offers important insights into China’s rise. My argument in a nutshell is that if China continues to grow economically, it will attempt to dominate Asia the way the United States dominates the Western Hemisphere. The United States, however, will go to enormous lengths to prevent China from achieving regional hegemony. Most of Beijing’s neighbors, including India, Japan, Singapore, South Korea, Russia, and Vietnam, will join with the United States to contain Chinese power. The result will be an intense security competition with considerable potential for war. In short, China’s rise is unlikely to be tranquil.
It is important to emphasize that my focus is not on how China will behave in the immediate future, but instead on how it will act in the longer term, when it will be far more powerful than it is today. The fact is that present-day China does not possess significant military power; its military forces are inferior to those of the United States. Beijing would be making a huge mistake to pick a fight with the U.S. military nowadays. Contemporary China, in other words, is constrained by the global balance of power, which is clearly stacked in America’s favor. Among other advantages, the United States has many consequential allies around the world, while China has virtually none. But we are not concerned with that situation here. Instead, the focus is on a future world in which the balance of power has shifted sharply against the United States, where China controls much more relative power than it does today, and where China is in roughly the same economic and military league as the United States. In essence, we are talking about a world in which China is much less constrained than it is today….
OFFENSIVE REALISM IN BRIEF
In its simplest form, my theory maintains that the basic structure of the international system forces states concerned about their security to compete with each other for power. The ultimate goal of every great power is to maximize its share of world power and eventually dominate the system. In practical terms, this means that the most powerful states seek to establish hegemony in their region of the world while also ensuring that no rival great power dominates another area.
The theory begins with five assumptions about the world, which are all reasonable approximations of reality. First of all, states are the key actors in international politics, and no higher authority stands above them. There is no ultimate arbiter or leviathan in the system that states can turn to if they get into trouble and need help. This is called an anarchic system, as opposed to a hierarchic one.
The next two assumptions deal with capabilities and intentions, respectively. All states have offensive military capabilities, although some have more than others, indeed sometimes many more than others. Capabilities are reasonably easy to measure because they are largely composed of material objects that can be seen, assessed, and counted.
Intentions are a different matter. States can never be certain about the intentions of other states, because intentions are inside the heads of leaders and thus virtually impossible to see and difficult to measure. In particular, states can never know with complete confidence whether another state might have its gun sights on them for one reason or another. The problem of discerning states’ intentions is especially acute when one ponders their future intentions, since it is almost impossible to know who the leaders of any country will be five or more years from now, much less what they will think about foreign policy.
The theory also assumes that states rank survival as their most important goal. This is not to say it is their only goal, for states invariably have numerous ambitions. However, when push comes to shove, survival trumps all other goals, basically because if a state does not survive, it cannot pursue those other goals. Survival means more than merely maintaining a state’s territorial integrity, although that goal is of fundamental importance; it also means preserving the autonomy of a state’s policymaking process. Finally, states are assumed to be rational actors, which is to say they are reasonably effective at designing strategies that maximize their chances of survival.
These assumptions, when combined, cause states to behave in particular ways. Specifically, in a world where there is some chance—even just a small one—that other states might have malign intentions as well as formidable offensive military capabilities, states tend to fear each other. That fear is compounded by what I call the “9-1-1” problem—the fact that there is no night watchman in an anarchic system whom states can call if trouble comes knocking at their door. Accordingly, they recognize they must look out for their own survival, and the best way to do that is to be especially powerful.
The logic here is straightforward: the more powerful a state is relative to its competitors, the less likely its survival will be at risk. No country in the Western Hemisphere, for example, would dare attack the United States, because it is so much stronger than any of its neighbors. This reasoning drives great powers to look for opportunities to move the balance of power in their favor, as well as to prevent other states from gaining power at their expense. The ultimate aim is to be the hegemon: that is, the only great power in the system…
Most Americans never think about it, but one of the main reasons the United States is able to station military forces all around the globe and intrude in the politics of virtually every region is that it faces no serious threats in the Western Hemisphere. If the United States had dangerous foes in its own backyard, it would be much less capable of roaming into distant regions.
The United States is the only regional hegemon in modern history. Five other great powers—Napoleonic France, Wilhelmine Germany, imperial Japan, Nazi Germany, and the Soviet Union—made serious attempts to dominate their respective regions, but they all failed. The United States did not end up dominating the Western Hemisphere in a fit of absentmindedness. On the contrary, the Founding Fathers and their successors consciously and deliberately sought to achieve hegemony in the Americas. In essence, they acted in accordance with the dictates of offensive realism.
When the United States finally gained its independence from Britain in 1783, it was a relatively weak country whose people were largely confined to the Atlantic seaboard. The British and Spanish empires surrounded the new country, and hostile Native American tribes controlled much of the territory between the Appalachian Mountains and the Mississippi River. It was a dangerous neighborhood for sure.
Over the next seven decades, the Americans responded to this precarious situation by marching across their continent to the Pacific Ocean, creating a huge and powerful country in the process. To realize their so-called Manifest Destiny, they murdered large numbers of Native Americans and stole their land, bought Florida from Spain (1819) and what is now the center of the United States from France (1803). They annexed Texas in 1845 and then went to war with Mexico in 1846, taking what is today the American southwest from their defeated foe. They cut a deal with Britain to gain the Pacific northwest in 1846 and finally, in 1853, acquired additional territory from Mexico with the Gadsden Purchase.
The United States also gave serious thought to conquering Canada throughout much of the nineteenth century. Indeed, the Americans invaded Canada in 1812 with that goal in mind. Some of the islands in the Caribbean would probably have become part of the United States had it not been for the fact that numerous slaves were in that area and the northern states did not want more slaveholding states in the Union. The plain truth is that in the nineteenth century the supposedly peace-loving United States compiled a record of territorial aggrandizement that has few parallels in recorded history. It is not surprising that Adolf Hitler frequently referred to America’s westward expansion as a model after Germany invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941. “Here in the East,” he said, “a similar process will repeat itself for a second time as in the conquest of America.”
There was another job to be done to achieve regional hegemony: push the European great powers out of the Western Hemisphere and keep them out. This goal is what the Monroe Doctrine is all about. The United States was not powerful enough to act on those principles when President James Monroe articulated them in 1823; but by the end of the nineteenth century, the European great powers had become minor players in the Americas. The United States had achieved regional hegemony, which made it a remarkably secure great power.
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Comment: “It would help a lot if the Richard Spencers of the world weren’t doing their nazi-Germany historical recreation society gestures at otherwise respectable conferences.”
No, you’re missing the point of Alt Right.
Alt Right does not flow from respectability. It is the enfant terribles of the Right. It has to be edgy. Now, Alt Right has a place for the staid and respectable.
Kevin Macdonald is rather a diligent pedantic scholar of Jewish history and power. He doesn’t have style and flair. He is offering a counter-culture-of-critique.
He is considered dangerous and heretical(even outrageous) by MSM because his views are so politically incorrect. But he is not a trouble-maker, a bomb thrower, a visionary, or leader.
Jared Taylor is also a respectable figure. He is well-mannered and dignified in style. But he too is unwelcome and considered dangerous by the MSM for his views that are inimical to standard PC.
Neither men are looking to be risque, edgy, or dangerous. They are just considered as such because their views deviate so much from the boilerplate of what is Acceptable in the Current Year.
Same goes for Paul Gottfried. Like MacDonald, he too is an academic type. His book ENCOUNTERS is interesting, but it’s more about ideas than action.
Peter Brimelow used to be a respectable figure, but his views on immigration become increasingly heretical and even ‘evil’ according to PC as the US became more diverse, PC took over media and academia, and GOP caved to Neocons and ‘cucks’.
Now, the Alt Right has room for such individuals and owes a debt of gratitude(because they kept the fire alive against all odds when their ideas were written off as dustbin of End of History.) Alt Right owes something to those people.
But they aren’t exactly core Alt Right. Elements of dissident right were given no place at the table, not even in Conservatism Inc that eventually purged Buchanan, Derbyshire, and even Steyn.
So older figures like Macdonald, Brimelow, and Taylor formed an alliance with younger figures like Spencer.
Also, the MSM in 2015 decided to tie Alt Right with Trump, and it was the media that cast a wide net. Alt Right became everything from Daily Stormer & Andrew Anglin to Milo of Breitbart & Steve Bannon. Some in the media went so far as to say Trump himself is an Alt Right candidate. Ridiculous.
The core Alt Right has been a movement of the edge, but according to the media, you’d think at least 1/4 of the people who supported Trump were Alt Right. Media played up and exaggerated Alt Right as much as they underplayed Wright & Ayers in 2008.
Core Alt Right is really a youthful dissident, heretical, theoretic, and revolutionary(even radical) movement made up of a new generation of thinkers and activists who feel they have no place in Conservatism Inc.
Though the media’s definition of Alt Right was too inclusive, it is true enough that there is a great variance among Alt Right figures that range from traditional Christians like Mark Hackard to neo-pagans to aristocratic libertarians, and etc.
American Conservative Magazine and Taki Mag sort of pointed the way, but TAC is part of Dilbertine Beltway culture, and Taki Mag is more like Alternative Conservatism or Alternative Libertarianism than truly Alt Right, which is far more brazen about race, identity, resistance, and youthful passion.
Unlike Macdonald, Taylor, and Brimelow who never asked for notoriety or trouble but got them due to PC domination, the Alt Right relishes notoriety, danger, risque politics, mischief, bad boy antics, and a bit of scandal. It goes for white mischief.
And it is not afraid to be bold, visionary, creative, and daring. It doesn’t shirk away from intellectual molotov cocktail-tossing, trolling(sometimes with sadistic glee), fight fire-with-fire-ism, and the sardonic smirk. It’s sort of like the French New Wave with trouble-makers like Truffaut, Godard, Chabrol, and others.
Or like the British Invasion with its Rockers vs Mods thing. Or like punk rock(though I can’t stand it). Alt Right is closer to the spirit of the Stones than the Beatles. It is a baiter of the Establishment like young Bob Dylan who speech at Tom Paine award was a riot and who drove the folkies nuts with electric guitar at Newport. It is a pisser on Political Correctness and Globalist Power.
The fun thing about Mick Jagger was he could play it straight with the press but also the bad boy, the nasty, and the jester. He could to the gentleman, he could do the black, he could do the white doing black, he could do the white doing black doing white. He reminds me of Anthony Michael in WEIRD SCIENCE.
So, the Alt Right aspect of NPI conference needed to be edgy. It needed to make a bold gesture that would outrage the MSM. It couldn’t be just matter-of-fact. The Alt Right is nothing without a bit of theatrical, hyperbolic, apocalyptic, parodic, ironic, and even a bit sick.
It’s like Kevin Grace describes Mishima’s antics. The cult of Mishima owed to notoriety and ambiguity. Mishima wasn’t just a writer but a cult figure.
Alt Right is into real ideas. It is about honest and courageous discussion of race, identity, history, and social reality, far more so than the media and academia, though I suppose a world controlled totally by Alt Right could lead to its PC repressions.
At the moment, it is the most daring, courageous, and honest intellectual movement in America. It may not have the most erudite thinkers or the most intelligent people(on the level of Pinker and Ivy League types), but they make up for it with boldness and courage seen almost nowhere else where PC dominates from far left to Conservatism Inc.
Also, Alt Right isn’t only alt to Conservatism Inc & GOP but alt to 14/88 and Neo-Nazism, the Hollywood fantasy of the KKK. To be sure, Alt Right has connections with both Conservatism Inc and 14/88. Alt Right is close to Brimelow whose site features Ann Coulter who supports politicians of GOP. And there are some murky connections between Alt Right and 14/88 via borderline figures like Greg Johnson and Alex Kurtagic.
But then, even some non 14/88 elements of Alt Right love to play with neo-Nazi memes just to piss off the media and academia — and teachers pets — that throws fits and tantrums all the time. If MSM sees fantasy KKK at Oberlin and Nazi-rapists at UVA, why not play along and provoke them with a Pepe the ‘nazi’ frog? Sometimes, hilarity ensued when college professors began to give lectures about Pepe as a ‘hate symbol’. They have no idea how much they got trolled. In this our Age of the Trigger, it is irresistible not to TRIGGER the media and respectable establishment with some outrage. It’s like bad boy French Right of the 1950s that did outrageous things, like in the scene in LES COUSINS where a French youth romanticized a Nazi soldier lost in France.
60s Counterculture had its serious thinkers and activists, but it also had its shock troops, jesters, clowns, provocateurs. It got a lot of attention but some of that theatricality.
If Alt Right had thus far been ONLY a respectable movement about think pieces and staid conferences, it would not have made any splash on a culture that looks for the Outrage of the Week.
And we have to give Spencer a lot of credit. Not only did he coin the term but he brought together and orchestrated different personalities in both continents.
And let’s not forget he was arrested in Hungary(of all places) because the Globalist masters fingered him and forced even conservative Orban to arrest him. Despite having done no wrong — Spencer’s sin was bringing together European patriots — , he was banned from EU for several years. How many people were willing to go through all that? Also, unlike many Alt Rightists, he put himself out there, and he was even hounded in his place of residence in Montana.
Given his presentation and style, I think Spencer could have gone far in politics. Had he played it safe and respectable like Mitt Romney, he could have been chosen for political office or public face of some Neocon outlet. He is smart and presentable, which a lot of political thinkers and activists are not.
But he didn’t take the 30 pieces of silver. He didn’t do the Jack Hunter thing, the guy who went from being the Southern Avenger to the Southern Fried Chicken.
Also, Spencer was smart enough to find the chink in the establishment armor. American Renaissance conferences were canceled in private venues due to terrorist and financial threats, and of course, the MSM ignored this repression of freedom and assembly. And even Conservatives were mum and offered no moral support since they’d caved to Neocons and PC. Spencer however realized that the safest place for alternative voices was in the belly of the beast. The Reagan building. He’s been very savvy about those things.
Also, I don’t hold it against Spencer that he’s a Germanophile(but he also seems to be a Russophile) and that he admires certain positive attributes of National Socialism. I think any honest person would admit National Socialism couldn’t have gained power and popularity had it been all bad. Of course, its evil side was very evil and led Germany to destruction. But it is possible to separate the wheat from the chaff. It’s like Joachim Fest said in his very critical and damning biography of Hitler. Had Hitler died after he took Sudetenland, he would have gone down as one of Germany’s greatest leaders.
Spencer’s blindspot is that he isn’t nearly as concerned as he should be about the dark evil side of National Socialism. I don’t believe for a moment that he is a Hitler-lover; still, his outlook is visionary and prophetic, and this makes him somewhat Wagnerian and ‘Nietzschean’ in his view of history, and he sometimes gets carried away with the Future Is Ours rhetoric that may seem a bit supremacist-ish. I tend to prefer the humanist model because hubris always leads to nemesis and demise.
Spencer’s association with Kurtagic(who is really like a Himmler-figure) is troubling. I can always spot pathological Himmler-ish type. (Anglin is like a clown version of Streicher, and no one takes him seriously.) Anyway, I think Spencer’s camaraderie with Kurtagic has less to do with ideology than Kurtagic’s sense of reach, a futurism peering deeper into the realm of the possible.
Whatever Spencer’s feelings about National Socialism may be, he is not a mindless fanboy of Naziesquery that Matthew Heimbach is. Indeed, Spencer’s banning of Heimbach and Parrott a year ago at the NPI conference signals real ideological divide.
Besides, the media have no credibility after its indulgence of Ferguson riots, BLM lunacy, black & PC thuggery on colleges(esp at Mizzou but also at Duke), cop killings, silence about Hillary & Obama’s mass murders in Middle East, and etc.
And how dare Jewish power bitch about racial supremacism when AIPAC strongarms all politicians to continue the support of Israel’s Occupation of West Bank. And isn’t Jewish Globalist animus toward Russia predicated on the perception that Russians are a bunch of inferior drunken Slavs undeserving of all the great resources of Russia that should really fall into the hands of globalist oligarchs?
Also, the HAMILTON’s casts behavior toward Mike Pence was downright disgusting. It violated all decency and protocol. Being black or proggy means never having to say you’re sorry.
And Spencer’s supposed ‘hail’ salute is NOTHING compared to MSM’s non-stop hounding about Trump as ‘literally hitler’ and ‘fascist’ for a whole year. If indeed MSM is correct, it means someone should assassinate Trump since we’ve all been led to believe that Hitler should have been killed(even in the cradle) and it was fun, fun, fun to see Gaddafi sodomized and lynched to death. If Trump is indeed Hitler, the logic would indicate he deserves the same fate. The fact that the media can go on after such behavior is the real scandal. Besides, if any racial hatred is permissible in the US, it is anti-white hatred, and there were so many examples of this in the anti-white violence at Trump rallies where men and women were bloodied in the face. Trump supporters didn’t shut down a single Hillary or Sanders rally. Sanders’ worst opposition came from BLM. But Hillary thugs shut down Trump’s rally in Chicago. And after the election, Proglodytye thugs went about smashing several cities for several nights. But according to MSM, the great horror is Spencer’s Hail remark. MSM needs to be trolled. What a joke.
I don’t defend everything Spencer did, but I think we should stand by him because he’s been out there, paid his dues(especially in Hungary and EU as a whole), gave up what could have been a lucrative career in politics & punditry for his true convictions, and devoted his life to the cause of his people.
To focus so much on this ‘hail’ thing is to miss the bigger picture. Spencer isn’t just some loser-dork neo-nazi basement dweller who never would have amounted anything.
He has the image and smarts to have been someone in Conservative Inc. Had he played his cards right, the GOP establishment would have appointed him for some institute or groomed him for political office. He has charm and likability. Even progs who loathe him say there’s something appealing about him.
But, he gave all of that up because, unlike the Romneys, Grahams, Cottons, and Gowdies of the world, he chose not to sell his core ideas and dreams for 30 pieces of silver.
It’s like Mr. Blonde, crazy as he is, has been utterly moral in his loyalty to the crew.
I don’t care how the media spin the HAIL thing. Spencer has done more than most to further the Alt Right. He not only wrote think-pieces — any blogger can do that — but organized meetings, brought people together, and met with various media outlets to explain things. It took a lot of will, nerves, and resolve, especially as the entire power structure from academia, media, and politics are no-go zone for people like him.
Worse, even when Spencer played by the rules, the powers-that-be were out to destroy him. Though he didn’t violate any terms, he was taken off Twitter. And National Review cheered the decision like the worthless cuck-zine that it is. Of course, NR didn’t come to his defense when he was arrested in Hungary. Incidentally, the very Hungary that banned the White Identity meeting hosted a Jewish Interest Meeting.
Also, Spencer doesn’t take things too personally. He is able to see the bigger picture. He had every reason to feel bitter and betrayed by Viktor Orban, but he supported Orban who defended his nation from Muslim and African invaders. He let bygones be bygones for the greater good.
And Spencer surely understands why Trump has to now distance himself from the Alt Right. Trump now has to be respectable. Trump played the ‘reckless’ maverick to rouse up energy and interest to win the election. He took a huge gamble and won. But now he has to turn his back on the Alt Right to be leader of the country.
It’s like the ending of CHIMES AT MIDNIGHT and BROADWAY DANNY ROSE. It’s the nature of the game. When the players finally win or make it, they turn their backs on their supporters to shmooze with the men of power and privilege.
But then, for the Alt Right to remain a vanguard movement, it has to remain ‘dangerous’ and go where no one wants to go. Though THE FOUNTAINHEAD has a Hollywood ending, it is right that SOMEONE has to be willing to be like Howard Roark and never compromise core principles.
Alt Right must carry the cross. It comes with the territory of playing the vanguard role.
Why does any country, including Israel, allow its enemies to live inside of them? I don’t blame Arabs and Muslims for hating the Jewish state and wanting to destroy it. I respect them for that. A Jewish state in their midst is not in their interest. What is crazy is for the Jewish state to allow those Arabs and Muslims who hate it to be citizens and to move freely.
I respect Saudi Arabia for not allowing any churches or synagogues. In some contexts, it would be best for Israel and the West to follow a similar policy with mosques, but in other contexts, a more permissive attitude is more adaptive.
UPI: HAIFA, Israel, Nov. 24 (UPI) — About 60,000 people were evacuated from Haifa, Israel, as fires, some deliberately set, raged across the country, the national police chief said Thursday.
Wildfires, fanned by strong winds and dry conditions, are devouring forests, and fires in at least five parts of Haifa, a port city of about 300,000 consumed homes and businesses. Other fires, caused by arson or negligence, have also broken out, officials said.
By late Thursday over 100 Haifa residents and firefighters were treated for injuries, mostly smoke inhalation. No deaths or serious injuries have been reported.
Roni Alsheich, national police chief, said some fires were set by arsonists, “presumably with nationalist intentions,” adding, “There are some cases of arson and lots of cases that are not arson.” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the fires could be attributed to “natural and unnatural causes,” and Gilad Erdan, the country’s public security minister, told Army Radio he estimated that half the fires burning across Israel were cases of arson.
“The fire is not under control,” Haifa’s police chief noted Thursday. “Residents should quickly evacuate.” A large apartment tower in Haifa’s Romena neighborhood was consumed by the fire.
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Without faith in a transcendent source of morality, we’re all just different forms of live trying to survive and thrive.
In my 25 years in Jewish life, I don’t remember a rabbi, let alone a regular Jew, asking me what I believe about God (I believe in God in the traditional Jewish sense). Jews don’t tend to ask other people about their religious faith. Yet Jew, like every other group, can’t help lumping people into good guys and bad guys. That feels good. It is the human instinct to divide others into the categories of friend and enemy. This distinction is the basis of politics, notes Carl Schmitt.
All faith contains a large element of subjectivity otherwise it would be universally shared. So if you want to look at the world objectively, you have to dispense with faith and understand that there are various forms of life competing for scarce resources.
Posted inNationalism|Comments Off on Without Faith, There Are No Good Guys Nor Bad Guys In The Universe
"This guy knows all the gossip, the ins and outs, the lashon hara of the Orthodox world. He’s an [expert] in... all the inner workings of the Orthodox world." (Rabbi Aaron Rakeffet-Rothkoff)
