Caitlyn Jenner Endorses Ted Cruz. Caitlyn Jenner is a selfish idiot. Which is not surprising for a rich, Republican. Just as so many other jocks who are Republicans are selfish idiots. There are lots of idiots. Lots of them are rich.
Hate Update: Admit it, anything more complex would go over your head.
Saturday, March 5, 2016
Hate Mail - Absurdity
Either someone can't count or they can't hear accurately. Or they never bothered to listen to the entire piece. Well, it could be any combination or all of those but any one of them would fail as intelligent musical commentary. How anyone could mistake a duo for a trio when you can see the people playing as well as hear them is something I can't account for. Maybe the scribbler doesn't know the meaning of the word.
Hate Update: I don't usually do used jokes unless I give credit. I'll bet you memorized George Carlin routines as a childish adult, didn't you.
Hate Update: I don't usually do used jokes unless I give credit. I'll bet you memorized George Carlin routines as a childish adult, didn't you.
The Donald Trump Wing of the Republican Party Is Foul Brood Of Its Corrupt Adults
For someone from Maine, the current frenzy in the Republican Party to disavow the Donald Trump candidacy is especially strange. The claim that a crazy fringe who support Trump is hijacking the Party is an obvious lie. What happened is that the movers and shakers in the Republican party and its media arm, well, pretty much the entire broadcast and cabloid media has nurtured the worst of the worst in order to get a winning margin in elections. What happened isn't so much a takeover as the coming of age of the poisonous mindset that the Republicans have been encouraging since Richard Nixon, the Bush family and the like have had control of the party. Now their horrible brood is on the verge of taking over from the cynical adults who nurtured them.
In Maine that phenomenon takes the form of the putrid Paul LePage who so obviously and semi publicly and with such open hypocrisy traded sides from the old establishment to his natural ally, Trump, within the space of five days. And make no mistake about that, Paul LePage was nurtured by the Republican establishment. He has enjoyed the endorsement of both of the "moderate" Republicans Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins, even after his first term when his pure and vidictive venom was flowing and hurting people in Maine. In one of her endorsements Olympia Snowe said that Paul LePage had been the protogee of her first husband, the Republican state legislator Peter Snowe. LePage also enjoyed the explicit if not admitted support of the electronic media in Maine which is dominated by Republicans, including the supposed public broadcaster.
And the same thing is true across the country. The Trumps, LePages and Christies of the Republican Party are the thugs that were created by the Republican establishment of the past fifty years.
I am not enjoying watching the Republicans because I can't be sure that what they have sown will not mature into something that will consume the entire country if not world.
In Maine that phenomenon takes the form of the putrid Paul LePage who so obviously and semi publicly and with such open hypocrisy traded sides from the old establishment to his natural ally, Trump, within the space of five days. And make no mistake about that, Paul LePage was nurtured by the Republican establishment. He has enjoyed the endorsement of both of the "moderate" Republicans Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins, even after his first term when his pure and vidictive venom was flowing and hurting people in Maine. In one of her endorsements Olympia Snowe said that Paul LePage had been the protogee of her first husband, the Republican state legislator Peter Snowe. LePage also enjoyed the explicit if not admitted support of the electronic media in Maine which is dominated by Republicans, including the supposed public broadcaster.
And the same thing is true across the country. The Trumps, LePages and Christies of the Republican Party are the thugs that were created by the Republican establishment of the past fifty years.
I am not enjoying watching the Republicans because I can't be sure that what they have sown will not mature into something that will consume the entire country if not world.
Friday, March 4, 2016
Dave Holland Quintet - Prime Directive
Dave Holland - bass
Robin Eubanks - trombone
Chris Potter - saxophone
Steve Nelson - vibraphone
Nate Smith - drums
The duo playing of Robin Eubankes and Chris Potter is as good as any in history.
Update: How's Never
I can't resist posting this one, remembering the time I had a major blog brawl with a guy who said that there has never been a bass or percussion solo worth listening to. He knew because he played bass in a garage band. It's clear no one let Dave Holland or Nate Smith in on that bit of musical wisdom. Thankfully.
Nothing Is Easy And Simple No Matter How Much We Want It To Be: Long Footnote to This Morning's Post
Just as reading the Congregationalist Marilynne Robinson in the last decade knocked me into a totally different place, in this decade the Congregationalist Walter Brueggemann is in this decade. For anyone who thinks you can't change when you're officially in your elder years, I'm here to tell you, you can. And for anyone who thinks that you're bound to get more conservative as you get older, no, that's not a given, either.
This lecture titled, "Imagining Life from God and Back to God," begins with the truth about The Bible that is as unwelcomed by fundamentalists as it is by atheists, that everything said about God in the Bible is filtered through the human imagination - just as every single thing about the physical universe said by every single scientist is - and that it is inevitable that the filter will inform what is said about God by any given person. His comparison between God as imagined by Moses in his confrontation with Pharaoh and God as imagined in the poetry of the Prophets finds its expression in Hosea, the alternatively tough law giver of Moses and the God who passionately wants to be for and with us at the same time. Brueggemann says that we shouldn't bet on our preferred God as being complete and that any human imagination of God can risk becoming an idol if we aren't open to God always being more than we want or can imagine.
\
How does this relate to the post this morning? For a start, none of our candidates are seen by us unrelated to our own preferences and experience. The disappointment with Bill Clinton and Barack Obama (especially by those who began with an inflated, even messianic view of Obama) colors a lot of what people assume about Hillary Clinton. And a lot of what is said about Bernie Sanders, this time, isn't different from what a lot of the same people were saying about Barack Obama seven years ago. I wasn't terribly enthusiastic about either Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama, I began by being a support of John Edwards, based on what he said and his record in office, and look at how reliable that view of things was.
The deification of the cheap, sleazy TV inaction figure, Donald Trump, the "evangelical" support of him and, as an alternative, Ted Cruz and the great hope of the establishment at this point, Marco Rubio all are a product of unconsidered human preferences. An evangelical filter that could produce enthusiasm for the serial adulterer, Trump or Cruz or Rubio is obviously gone haywired - even a lot of evangelicals are openly troubled by what that means for the word and the movement. I think a lot of them, as so many in so many other traditions bet their souls on Republican Mammonism and this year shows it is a bet that has lost everything.
And before we, on the left, get too cocky about the supposed implosion of the Republican Party, we'd better wait until we see what happens in November. They could win it all, that's not outside of the realm of possibility, especially if the Democrats are split by the supporters of one or the other candidate staying home or voting for a third party pipe dream candidate. Lots of Bernie supporters I've heard are delusional enough to talk about voting Green. As if 2000 never happened.
This lecture titled, "Imagining Life from God and Back to God," begins with the truth about The Bible that is as unwelcomed by fundamentalists as it is by atheists, that everything said about God in the Bible is filtered through the human imagination - just as every single thing about the physical universe said by every single scientist is - and that it is inevitable that the filter will inform what is said about God by any given person. His comparison between God as imagined by Moses in his confrontation with Pharaoh and God as imagined in the poetry of the Prophets finds its expression in Hosea, the alternatively tough law giver of Moses and the God who passionately wants to be for and with us at the same time. Brueggemann says that we shouldn't bet on our preferred God as being complete and that any human imagination of God can risk becoming an idol if we aren't open to God always being more than we want or can imagine.
\
How does this relate to the post this morning? For a start, none of our candidates are seen by us unrelated to our own preferences and experience. The disappointment with Bill Clinton and Barack Obama (especially by those who began with an inflated, even messianic view of Obama) colors a lot of what people assume about Hillary Clinton. And a lot of what is said about Bernie Sanders, this time, isn't different from what a lot of the same people were saying about Barack Obama seven years ago. I wasn't terribly enthusiastic about either Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama, I began by being a support of John Edwards, based on what he said and his record in office, and look at how reliable that view of things was.
The deification of the cheap, sleazy TV inaction figure, Donald Trump, the "evangelical" support of him and, as an alternative, Ted Cruz and the great hope of the establishment at this point, Marco Rubio all are a product of unconsidered human preferences. An evangelical filter that could produce enthusiasm for the serial adulterer, Trump or Cruz or Rubio is obviously gone haywired - even a lot of evangelicals are openly troubled by what that means for the word and the movement. I think a lot of them, as so many in so many other traditions bet their souls on Republican Mammonism and this year shows it is a bet that has lost everything.
And before we, on the left, get too cocky about the supposed implosion of the Republican Party, we'd better wait until we see what happens in November. They could win it all, that's not outside of the realm of possibility, especially if the Democrats are split by the supporters of one or the other candidate staying home or voting for a third party pipe dream candidate. Lots of Bernie supporters I've heard are delusional enough to talk about voting Green. As if 2000 never happened.
There Is Nothing Moral About Letting Trump, Cruz or Rubio Win The Election As You Preen In Your Purity
Marcia Pally's piece at Religion Dispatches about the issues of purity vs. political effectiveness in the nomination fight between the supporters of Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders is about as insightful as any I've read. She puts it into a stark choice, one which every politician who wins office, no matter how ethical they are will face.
You want an effective leader to put policies in place, but the very experience that makes politicians effective also tends to make them less ethical and less likely to support the policies you want.
That is a choice which our Constitution and the laws that have been made under it makes inevitable. There has not been a president who was not, at one point or another, morally compromised. Some of the least compromised, such as Jimmy Carter, were considered ineffective presidents and were not returned to the office. The most ethical candidates, of whom George McGovern was as good an example as any, don't win elections except in the most rare of instances. The most successful presidents have never been the most ethical.
The last Democratic king of clout was Lyndon Johnson. Twenty-four years in Congress and knowing where all the skeletons were buried gave his famous “Johnson treatment” that unfakable menace. He is purported to have said that he didn’t trust a man unless he had the man’s pecker in his pocket—which he often did. That got civil rights legislation and Great Society programs through a Congress far more racist and sexist than today’s.
And, say what you will about Hillary and, more so, Bill Clinton, their ethical compromises are minor compared to those of Lyndon Johnson and his paled when compared to those of any of the Republicans who became president after him.
The greatest moral failure of those who strike an absolute pose for purity is that they enable the very worst of those who will gain office. Their purity is entirely metaphysical and theoretical, the results of their pose are all too real. That is the ugly truth of it. Democracy is only less prone to produce evil than every other system, The People, the theoretical power in democracy are able to be corrupted, are prone to all of the evils that the worst monarchs and despots are, the gamble of democracy is that, on average, those inclinations will SOMETIMES be defeated by enough people either seeing them as wrong or not in their interest. Pally's article makes a number of rather excellent observations about how the ancient Greeks and Hebrew scriptures rather exhaustively document that human and social propensity.
The problem of effective power and ineffective purity goes back to the Greeks and to the canny authors of the Bible, who can be read in a number of ways. One is to look at the plain words on the page (an approach that emerged from Protestantism’s mandate that the text be read by each person for herself), while another is not to read it as a surface text—as a set of instructions to carry out—but as a “problem set” to work ethics through. Readers who take this latter line find quite a bit on the power-purity problem.
Consider David, about whom the book of Samuel has nothing good to say. A power broker, warrior, murderer, adulterer, liar and schemer, David is nevertheless left by God as the premier secular power. He’s effective but smarmy. Nathan, the prophet, is the enduring moral voice. The political and moral spheres are split, and the bottom line is this: we could act ethically in the political sphere, which would mean better politics and less conflict between that world and our moral standards. But as long as we don’t, we will be split. The gap between moral aims and politics is the outcome of the societies and politics we make.
That point was clear already in Judges, where increasing political chaos led to calls for a stabilizing king who would supposedly stanch the mayhem.
I'll break in to say that we could learn a lot from a serious reading of Judges as we descend into exactly that. If the Republicans continue to win, if the regime of media debasement of people, appealing to their weakness, paranoia, their basest wants and desires for the profit of those who own the media, Judges is probably a good prediction of where that leads. And the solution that is offered by the media - Donald Trump like Ronald Reagan is a product of the unfettered media, entertainment - is not democracy appealing to the best in people, it is facism, American style.
But involvement in mayhem, even to quiet it, embroils Saul in turf wars, vendettas, and Nixonian paranoia. It is again the prophet Samuel who is the bearer of ethics, the first in the line of “prophetic voices” for justice from outside the seats of power. Politics and ethics are again split—as they remain into the New Testament. It is because they are at odds that Paul says we are to render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s and turn to the important task of building the religious community as a “contrast society” to the injustice of the political sphere.
Grassroots organizing and voting are opportunities for the exercise of the prophetic voice, efforts to bring ethics to public policy from outside government. Which returns us to the power-purity question: for those who find Democratic policies more ethical than Republican, do you vote for Hillary because she’s got the muscle most able to implement them—though that muscle comes with big business “connections,” “donations,” and “dealings” of dubious ethics that might get in the way of the policies you want—or do you vote for Sanders because his positions are perhaps closer to your ideal?
You should read her article, it is one of the best of this election cycle.
-----------
In the run by the idealistic Ned Lamont against the quisling Joe Lieberman for the Democratic nomination for the Senate in Connecticut, I proposed that someone force both of the candidates to pledge that they would abide by the choice of the Democrats whose nomination they were asking for in the general election. If a candidate is asking for a party's nomination, they should be gotten on record as supporting the eventual choice of the people who they are asking to give them the nomination. It wasn't done and Joe Lieberman was put back into office where he wreaked havoc with, among other things, health coverage as passed and signed into law by Obama. If he had not been there, "Obamacare" would likely have been stronger.
Last night, the FOX anchor got the Republican candidates to make that pledge, that they would support the choice of Republican voters. I would bet that if the scenario of a brokered convention taking it from Trump happens, that promise won't be worth the paper it's not written on.
I would like someone who gets to ask both Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders a question to get them, both, to make that pledge and that they will ask their supporters to vote for the only thing between us and which ever of the psychopaths the Republicans will be running getting into office. If they can't make that promise, if they would really act as a spoiler to defeat the Democratic nominee, they have no business asking for the nomination which belongs to the members of the Democratic Party.
You want an effective leader to put policies in place, but the very experience that makes politicians effective also tends to make them less ethical and less likely to support the policies you want.
That is a choice which our Constitution and the laws that have been made under it makes inevitable. There has not been a president who was not, at one point or another, morally compromised. Some of the least compromised, such as Jimmy Carter, were considered ineffective presidents and were not returned to the office. The most ethical candidates, of whom George McGovern was as good an example as any, don't win elections except in the most rare of instances. The most successful presidents have never been the most ethical.
The last Democratic king of clout was Lyndon Johnson. Twenty-four years in Congress and knowing where all the skeletons were buried gave his famous “Johnson treatment” that unfakable menace. He is purported to have said that he didn’t trust a man unless he had the man’s pecker in his pocket—which he often did. That got civil rights legislation and Great Society programs through a Congress far more racist and sexist than today’s.
And, say what you will about Hillary and, more so, Bill Clinton, their ethical compromises are minor compared to those of Lyndon Johnson and his paled when compared to those of any of the Republicans who became president after him.
The greatest moral failure of those who strike an absolute pose for purity is that they enable the very worst of those who will gain office. Their purity is entirely metaphysical and theoretical, the results of their pose are all too real. That is the ugly truth of it. Democracy is only less prone to produce evil than every other system, The People, the theoretical power in democracy are able to be corrupted, are prone to all of the evils that the worst monarchs and despots are, the gamble of democracy is that, on average, those inclinations will SOMETIMES be defeated by enough people either seeing them as wrong or not in their interest. Pally's article makes a number of rather excellent observations about how the ancient Greeks and Hebrew scriptures rather exhaustively document that human and social propensity.
The problem of effective power and ineffective purity goes back to the Greeks and to the canny authors of the Bible, who can be read in a number of ways. One is to look at the plain words on the page (an approach that emerged from Protestantism’s mandate that the text be read by each person for herself), while another is not to read it as a surface text—as a set of instructions to carry out—but as a “problem set” to work ethics through. Readers who take this latter line find quite a bit on the power-purity problem.
Consider David, about whom the book of Samuel has nothing good to say. A power broker, warrior, murderer, adulterer, liar and schemer, David is nevertheless left by God as the premier secular power. He’s effective but smarmy. Nathan, the prophet, is the enduring moral voice. The political and moral spheres are split, and the bottom line is this: we could act ethically in the political sphere, which would mean better politics and less conflict between that world and our moral standards. But as long as we don’t, we will be split. The gap between moral aims and politics is the outcome of the societies and politics we make.
That point was clear already in Judges, where increasing political chaos led to calls for a stabilizing king who would supposedly stanch the mayhem.
I'll break in to say that we could learn a lot from a serious reading of Judges as we descend into exactly that. If the Republicans continue to win, if the regime of media debasement of people, appealing to their weakness, paranoia, their basest wants and desires for the profit of those who own the media, Judges is probably a good prediction of where that leads. And the solution that is offered by the media - Donald Trump like Ronald Reagan is a product of the unfettered media, entertainment - is not democracy appealing to the best in people, it is facism, American style.
But involvement in mayhem, even to quiet it, embroils Saul in turf wars, vendettas, and Nixonian paranoia. It is again the prophet Samuel who is the bearer of ethics, the first in the line of “prophetic voices” for justice from outside the seats of power. Politics and ethics are again split—as they remain into the New Testament. It is because they are at odds that Paul says we are to render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s and turn to the important task of building the religious community as a “contrast society” to the injustice of the political sphere.
Grassroots organizing and voting are opportunities for the exercise of the prophetic voice, efforts to bring ethics to public policy from outside government. Which returns us to the power-purity question: for those who find Democratic policies more ethical than Republican, do you vote for Hillary because she’s got the muscle most able to implement them—though that muscle comes with big business “connections,” “donations,” and “dealings” of dubious ethics that might get in the way of the policies you want—or do you vote for Sanders because his positions are perhaps closer to your ideal?
You should read her article, it is one of the best of this election cycle.
-----------
In the run by the idealistic Ned Lamont against the quisling Joe Lieberman for the Democratic nomination for the Senate in Connecticut, I proposed that someone force both of the candidates to pledge that they would abide by the choice of the Democrats whose nomination they were asking for in the general election. If a candidate is asking for a party's nomination, they should be gotten on record as supporting the eventual choice of the people who they are asking to give them the nomination. It wasn't done and Joe Lieberman was put back into office where he wreaked havoc with, among other things, health coverage as passed and signed into law by Obama. If he had not been there, "Obamacare" would likely have been stronger.
Last night, the FOX anchor got the Republican candidates to make that pledge, that they would support the choice of Republican voters. I would bet that if the scenario of a brokered convention taking it from Trump happens, that promise won't be worth the paper it's not written on.
I would like someone who gets to ask both Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders a question to get them, both, to make that pledge and that they will ask their supporters to vote for the only thing between us and which ever of the psychopaths the Republicans will be running getting into office. If they can't make that promise, if they would really act as a spoiler to defeat the Democratic nominee, they have no business asking for the nomination which belongs to the members of the Democratic Party.
Hate Mail
Don't try to play word games with me.
I'm not going to play with you because you're too stupid for it to be interesting and winning against an ignorant dolt is no fun.
Update: Annoying the equally silly and ignorant doesn't constitute winning to any but the ignorant and doltish. No wonder you mistake it for winning.
I'm not going to play with you because you're too stupid for it to be interesting and winning against an ignorant dolt is no fun.
Update: Annoying the equally silly and ignorant doesn't constitute winning to any but the ignorant and doltish. No wonder you mistake it for winning.
Thursday, March 3, 2016
Mail - Oh, Let Me Guess Where That Demand To Name A Holocaust Survivor Who Linked Darwin To The Holocaust Came From.
Note: I'm leaving this on the top of the page another day, it would seem someone has yet to read it. Of course it will make no difference, the same clearly false statement will be repeated and the same dolts will nod their heads. I'll post something later.
In the book Elie Wiesel: Conversations By Elie Wiesel, Robert Franciosi, he said:
When we study what happened a generation ago, we cannot but think that it was prepared by the rationalists. If Darwin, the scientist, for example, had not reduced man to the state of an animal, maybe people would have thought twice before killing human beings.
That's what I come up with from memory in about 45 seconds. If I had the time to research the issue I would find others, I'm sure. Anyone who read what the Nazi racial theorists based their ideas of biological supremacy on would find the same short links between the British Darwinists and the German Darwinists and the proto-Nazi eugenicists (they were the same people in a number of instances) and the Nazi eugenicists whose biological dogmas were the explicit basis of the various programs of mass murder the Nazis committed. In the case of Ernst Haeckel and several others, the links go both ways from and to ol' St. Chuck Darwin, himself.
He goes on to say,
Even Darwin wasn't the first. If the Church hadn't seen the Jew as subhuman, maybe the Germans would have thought twice too. The Holocaust could not have happened had there not been this combination of factors.
Of course the official Church, demonstrably, didn't see Jews as subhuman, as mentioned, again, this morning there were eminent Catholics, some of them bishops and cardinals who were Jewish converts. In the post I linked to I mention the very man who is so often cited by those accusing the Catholic church of antisemitism, Edgardo Mortara, who was infamously taken from his parents, made a ward of Pope Pius IX, ordained as a priest and who lived as an ordained Catholic priest until just after the start of the Second World War. If he had lived long enough it's possible the Nazis would have murdered him, a Catholic priest, because he was Jewish. As they, in fact, murdered St. Edith Stein who was a nun.
Pius IX, who is generally cited as an antisemite is also interesting in that he was a friend and something of a patron of the Lehman brothers, French twins who converted to Catholicism in the 1850s. became priests and theologians and were active in the First Vatican Council. They circulated a Postulatum encouraging Jewish conversion which was signed by just about all of the Cardinals at the Council. Clearly the leaders of the Catholic church didn't see Jews as subhuman, even as they were guilty of a form of antisemitism. Again, as mentioned, they WANTED JEWS TO BECOME CATHOLICS. That's entirely different from the Nazis who would have never entertained the idea that Jews could become Germans or "Aryans". That, alone, shows that Wiesel's claim that "the Church" saw Jews as subhuman during the period in question is clearly false. though it is certainly possible to make the case that they practiced a different form of antisemitism. And there is more.
Another indictment of Catholic antisemitism is the demand made by the Spanish monarchs that all Jews and Muslims either convert to Catholicism or leave Spain shows that even those world class antisemites didn't see Jews as subhuman, though there were those in the Spanish hierarchy who, for reasons of power, discriminated against converted Jews in the priesthood and hierarchy. I would be surprised if you could find a period in the entire history of the Church when Jews were discouraged from converting on the basis of them being seen as subhuman. As mentioned by those in the morning post, that is a biological concept that is at odds with how Catholics traditionally view people, as a matter of church doctrine, at least.
There are hundreds probably thousands of cases of Christians putting their lives and the lives of their family at risk by protecting Jews from the Nazis, as mentioned here before, many of the people honored by Yad Vashem did that, those people certainly didn't see Jews as subhuman. Some, like the future Pope John XXIII issued ersatz baptismal documents for Jews to help them escape. That's only scratching the surface in disproof of that last statement. The history of the Catholic and other Christian churches is certainly not great in the treatment of Jews but even back into the medieval period there were Popes who issued encyclicals defending Jews against the blood libel, expulsion and numerous other instances of antisemitic actions, often by local officials who whipped up hatred so they could confiscate the property of Jews. While that history is certainly bad, in the period in question, from the 1850s through the end of WWII, "the Church" certainly did not teach that Jews were subhuman.
In the book Elie Wiesel: Conversations By Elie Wiesel, Robert Franciosi, he said:
When we study what happened a generation ago, we cannot but think that it was prepared by the rationalists. If Darwin, the scientist, for example, had not reduced man to the state of an animal, maybe people would have thought twice before killing human beings.
That's what I come up with from memory in about 45 seconds. If I had the time to research the issue I would find others, I'm sure. Anyone who read what the Nazi racial theorists based their ideas of biological supremacy on would find the same short links between the British Darwinists and the German Darwinists and the proto-Nazi eugenicists (they were the same people in a number of instances) and the Nazi eugenicists whose biological dogmas were the explicit basis of the various programs of mass murder the Nazis committed. In the case of Ernst Haeckel and several others, the links go both ways from and to ol' St. Chuck Darwin, himself.
He goes on to say,
Even Darwin wasn't the first. If the Church hadn't seen the Jew as subhuman, maybe the Germans would have thought twice too. The Holocaust could not have happened had there not been this combination of factors.
Of course the official Church, demonstrably, didn't see Jews as subhuman, as mentioned, again, this morning there were eminent Catholics, some of them bishops and cardinals who were Jewish converts. In the post I linked to I mention the very man who is so often cited by those accusing the Catholic church of antisemitism, Edgardo Mortara, who was infamously taken from his parents, made a ward of Pope Pius IX, ordained as a priest and who lived as an ordained Catholic priest until just after the start of the Second World War. If he had lived long enough it's possible the Nazis would have murdered him, a Catholic priest, because he was Jewish. As they, in fact, murdered St. Edith Stein who was a nun.
Pius IX, who is generally cited as an antisemite is also interesting in that he was a friend and something of a patron of the Lehman brothers, French twins who converted to Catholicism in the 1850s. became priests and theologians and were active in the First Vatican Council. They circulated a Postulatum encouraging Jewish conversion which was signed by just about all of the Cardinals at the Council. Clearly the leaders of the Catholic church didn't see Jews as subhuman, even as they were guilty of a form of antisemitism. Again, as mentioned, they WANTED JEWS TO BECOME CATHOLICS. That's entirely different from the Nazis who would have never entertained the idea that Jews could become Germans or "Aryans". That, alone, shows that Wiesel's claim that "the Church" saw Jews as subhuman during the period in question is clearly false. though it is certainly possible to make the case that they practiced a different form of antisemitism. And there is more.
Another indictment of Catholic antisemitism is the demand made by the Spanish monarchs that all Jews and Muslims either convert to Catholicism or leave Spain shows that even those world class antisemites didn't see Jews as subhuman, though there were those in the Spanish hierarchy who, for reasons of power, discriminated against converted Jews in the priesthood and hierarchy. I would be surprised if you could find a period in the entire history of the Church when Jews were discouraged from converting on the basis of them being seen as subhuman. As mentioned by those in the morning post, that is a biological concept that is at odds with how Catholics traditionally view people, as a matter of church doctrine, at least.
There are hundreds probably thousands of cases of Christians putting their lives and the lives of their family at risk by protecting Jews from the Nazis, as mentioned here before, many of the people honored by Yad Vashem did that, those people certainly didn't see Jews as subhuman. Some, like the future Pope John XXIII issued ersatz baptismal documents for Jews to help them escape. That's only scratching the surface in disproof of that last statement. The history of the Catholic and other Christian churches is certainly not great in the treatment of Jews but even back into the medieval period there were Popes who issued encyclicals defending Jews against the blood libel, expulsion and numerous other instances of antisemitic actions, often by local officials who whipped up hatred so they could confiscate the property of Jews. While that history is certainly bad, in the period in question, from the 1850s through the end of WWII, "the Church" certainly did not teach that Jews were subhuman.
Wednesday, March 2, 2016
Love's Labours Requires More Than An Unprepared Reading or Listening
In the project of reading "the bad plays" among the so-called "Shakespeare plays" I mentioned that I'd read the seldom produced or read Love's Labour's Lost. While I didn't find it as awful as my current least favorite, "Pericles" I found the plot unbelievable and silly, based around the resolution of a group of French nobles writing up a group of rules under which they are going to study rigorously, living rigorously (the three hours a night of sleep was the thing I found most ridiculous) eating plainly and meagerly and forsaking the company of women. Of course a group of women come to visit and, though they don't succeed in getting together the study plan is foresaken as they succumb to the charms of the ladies.
Having found that the usual method of reading the plays outside of any context doesn't necessarily let you understand them, I listened to this lecture about the play with some really good reading performances by distinguished actors, including the recent Oscar winner, Mark Rylance and Derek Jacobi. I can't find the identity of the other actors and don't recognize them but they really are very good, I wish they'd been listed .
As you can hear in the lecture, the play that went entirely over my head was certainly much more meaningful to informed audiences of the 1580s and 90s, the histories, personalities and events in then contemporary France.
As a hobbyist anti-Stratfordian leaning in a Baconian direction, I'll point out that whereas the Stratford man is not believed to have ever traveled out of the environs of London and Stratford, the young Francis Bacon spent more than two years in France as part of the company of the English ambassador. He would have had plenty of time to learn about the events that the play satirizes and plays off of.
There are several videos in this series dealing with the background of several other plays, which I'll post. They are certainly worth thinking about. I'm going back and re-reading Love's Labour's Lost as I get a chance to look up the various figures and events mentioned in the lecture.
I won't go into the vicious, not to mention dirty attacks by supposedly distinguished academics against Rylance and Jacobi by insiders of the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust, the center of the Shakespeare industry which will strike back at anyone who looks at the evidence and notes that while the Stratford Shakspere left a relatively extensive personal record, it is a record of a broker, money lender, and sharp businessman, it is entirely absent of evidence that he wrote anything. There are even those who doubt that as many as four of the six alleged signatures are not in his hand but are written by clerks or others. Hell hath no fury like an academic who fears that his lunch ticket might get devalued.
Having found that the usual method of reading the plays outside of any context doesn't necessarily let you understand them, I listened to this lecture about the play with some really good reading performances by distinguished actors, including the recent Oscar winner, Mark Rylance and Derek Jacobi. I can't find the identity of the other actors and don't recognize them but they really are very good, I wish they'd been listed .
As you can hear in the lecture, the play that went entirely over my head was certainly much more meaningful to informed audiences of the 1580s and 90s, the histories, personalities and events in then contemporary France.
As a hobbyist anti-Stratfordian leaning in a Baconian direction, I'll point out that whereas the Stratford man is not believed to have ever traveled out of the environs of London and Stratford, the young Francis Bacon spent more than two years in France as part of the company of the English ambassador. He would have had plenty of time to learn about the events that the play satirizes and plays off of.
There are several videos in this series dealing with the background of several other plays, which I'll post. They are certainly worth thinking about. I'm going back and re-reading Love's Labour's Lost as I get a chance to look up the various figures and events mentioned in the lecture.
I won't go into the vicious, not to mention dirty attacks by supposedly distinguished academics against Rylance and Jacobi by insiders of the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust, the center of the Shakespeare industry which will strike back at anyone who looks at the evidence and notes that while the Stratford Shakspere left a relatively extensive personal record, it is a record of a broker, money lender, and sharp businessman, it is entirely absent of evidence that he wrote anything. There are even those who doubt that as many as four of the six alleged signatures are not in his hand but are written by clerks or others. Hell hath no fury like an academic who fears that his lunch ticket might get devalued.
Oh, Fudge
One of my great aunts was a real character. In a family of Boston Globe readers, of readers of history and politics and serious authors, she read The Record American, Boston's sleazy tabloid that decades later merged with the far classier Herald, using the up market name but keeping the tabloid ethos and sleaze. My grandfather, her brother, would listen to her expound on the latest sensations found in the rag, only later to shake his head and say, "She is such an ignorant woman." She was also addicted to gangster movies which she watched on TV up into her late 80s, keeping the doors and windows locked as she relished the thrills gotten from that kind of stuff.
We all loved Aunt M., dearly, she was a real character, though she wasn't the deepest thinker in our family. She was a great cook, she'd worked as a professional cook, picking up some interesting methods and ingredients from families of various ethnicities and she was a spectacular seamstress. She could look at a garment someone was wearing and reproduce it just from that, without a pattern, which is a form of genius, it's certainly applied geometry of a very complicated variety. I guess that's where she put her efforts.
The reason I'm bringing her up is that every year she would give up candy for Lent, but every year she would eat fudge, reasoning that "Fudge is fudge, not candy". So, you see, fudging on Lenten resolutions is a bit of a family tradition with us.
On the other hand, there are still more than 300 days left in the year to keep your New Years resolutions. Worth restarting that effort. Or that's what I'm telling myself this morning.
We all loved Aunt M., dearly, she was a real character, though she wasn't the deepest thinker in our family. She was a great cook, she'd worked as a professional cook, picking up some interesting methods and ingredients from families of various ethnicities and she was a spectacular seamstress. She could look at a garment someone was wearing and reproduce it just from that, without a pattern, which is a form of genius, it's certainly applied geometry of a very complicated variety. I guess that's where she put her efforts.
The reason I'm bringing her up is that every year she would give up candy for Lent, but every year she would eat fudge, reasoning that "Fudge is fudge, not candy". So, you see, fudging on Lenten resolutions is a bit of a family tradition with us.
On the other hand, there are still more than 300 days left in the year to keep your New Years resolutions. Worth restarting that effort. Or that's what I'm telling myself this morning.
Tuesday, March 1, 2016
Hate Mail - Oh, Let Me Guess Where That Demand To Name A Holocaust Survivor Who Linked Darwin To The Holocaust Came From.
In the book Elie Wiesel: Conversations By Elie Wiesel, Robert Franciosi, he said:
When we study what happened a generation ago, we cannot but think that it was prepared by the rationalists. If Darwin, the scientist, for example, had not reduced man to the state of an animal, maybe people would have thought twice before killing human beings.
That's what I come up with from memory in about 45 seconds. If I had the time to research the issue I would find others, I'm sure. Anyone who read what the Nazi racial theorists based their ideas of biological supremacy on would find the same short links between the British Darwinists and the German Darwinists and the proto-Nazi eugenicists (they were the same people in a number of instances) and the Nazi eugenicists whose biological dogmas were the explicit basis of the various programs of mass murder the Nazis committed. In the case of Ernst Haeckel and several others, the links go both ways from and to ol' St. Chuck Darwin, himself.
He goes on to say,
Even Darwin wasn't the first. If the Church hadn't seen the Jew as subhuman, maybe the Germans would have thought twice too. The Holocaust could not have happened had there not been this combination of factors.
Of course the official Church, demonstrably, didn't see Jews as subhuman, as mentioned, again, this morning there were eminent Catholics, some of them bishops and cardinals who were Jewish converts. In the post I linked to I mention the very man who is so often cited by those accusing the Catholic church of antisemitism, Edgardo Mortara, who was infamously taken from his parents, made a ward of Pope Pius IX, ordained as a priest and who lived as an ordained Catholic priest until just after the start of the Second World War. If he had lived long enough it's possible the Nazis would have murdered him, a Catholic priest, because he was Jewish. As they, in fact, murdered St. Edith Stein who was a nun.
Pius IX, who is generally cited as an antisemite is also interesting in that he was a friend and something of a patron of the Lehman brothers, French twins who converted to Catholicism in the 1850s. became priests and theologians and were active in the First Vatican Council. They circulated a Postulatum encouraging Jewish conversion which was signed by just about all of the Cardinals at the Council. Clearly the leaders of the Catholic church didn't see Jews as subhuman, even as they were guilty of a form of antisemitism. Again, as mentioned, they WANTED JEWS TO BECOME CATHOLICS. That's entirely different from the Nazis who would have never entertained the idea that Jews could become Germans or "Aryans". That, alone, shows that Wiesel's claim that "the Church" saw Jews as subhuman during the period in question is clearly false. though it is certainly possible to make the case that they practiced a different form of antisemitism. And there is more.
Another indictment of Catholic antisemitism is the demand made by the Spanish monarchs that all Jews and Muslims either convert to Catholicism or leave Spain shows that even those world class antisemites didn't see Jews as subhuman, though there were those in the Spanish hierarchy who, for reasons of power, discriminated against converted Jews in the priesthood and hierarchy. I would be surprised if you could find a period in the entire history of the Church when Jews were discouraged from converting on the basis of them being seen as subhuman. As mentioned by those in the morning post, that is a biological concept that is at odds with how Catholics traditionally view people, as a matter of church doctrine, at least.
There are hundreds probably thousands of cases of Christians putting their lives and the lives of their family at risk by protecting Jews from the Nazis, as mentioned here before, many of the people honored by Yad Vashem did that, those people certainly didn't see Jews as subhuman. Some, like the future Pope John XXIII issued ersatz baptismal documents for Jews to help them escape. That's only scratching the surface in disproof of that last statement. The history of the Catholic and other Christian churches is certainly not great in the treatment of Jews but even back into the medieval period there were Popes who issued encyclicals defending Jews against the blood libel, expulsion and numerous other instances of antisemitic actions, often by local officials who whipped up hatred so they could confiscate the property of Jews. While that history is certainly bad, in the period in question, from the 1850s through the end of WWII, "the Church" certainly did not teach that Jews were subhuman.
When we study what happened a generation ago, we cannot but think that it was prepared by the rationalists. If Darwin, the scientist, for example, had not reduced man to the state of an animal, maybe people would have thought twice before killing human beings.
That's what I come up with from memory in about 45 seconds. If I had the time to research the issue I would find others, I'm sure. Anyone who read what the Nazi racial theorists based their ideas of biological supremacy on would find the same short links between the British Darwinists and the German Darwinists and the proto-Nazi eugenicists (they were the same people in a number of instances) and the Nazi eugenicists whose biological dogmas were the explicit basis of the various programs of mass murder the Nazis committed. In the case of Ernst Haeckel and several others, the links go both ways from and to ol' St. Chuck Darwin, himself.
He goes on to say,
Even Darwin wasn't the first. If the Church hadn't seen the Jew as subhuman, maybe the Germans would have thought twice too. The Holocaust could not have happened had there not been this combination of factors.
Of course the official Church, demonstrably, didn't see Jews as subhuman, as mentioned, again, this morning there were eminent Catholics, some of them bishops and cardinals who were Jewish converts. In the post I linked to I mention the very man who is so often cited by those accusing the Catholic church of antisemitism, Edgardo Mortara, who was infamously taken from his parents, made a ward of Pope Pius IX, ordained as a priest and who lived as an ordained Catholic priest until just after the start of the Second World War. If he had lived long enough it's possible the Nazis would have murdered him, a Catholic priest, because he was Jewish. As they, in fact, murdered St. Edith Stein who was a nun.
Pius IX, who is generally cited as an antisemite is also interesting in that he was a friend and something of a patron of the Lehman brothers, French twins who converted to Catholicism in the 1850s. became priests and theologians and were active in the First Vatican Council. They circulated a Postulatum encouraging Jewish conversion which was signed by just about all of the Cardinals at the Council. Clearly the leaders of the Catholic church didn't see Jews as subhuman, even as they were guilty of a form of antisemitism. Again, as mentioned, they WANTED JEWS TO BECOME CATHOLICS. That's entirely different from the Nazis who would have never entertained the idea that Jews could become Germans or "Aryans". That, alone, shows that Wiesel's claim that "the Church" saw Jews as subhuman during the period in question is clearly false. though it is certainly possible to make the case that they practiced a different form of antisemitism. And there is more.
Another indictment of Catholic antisemitism is the demand made by the Spanish monarchs that all Jews and Muslims either convert to Catholicism or leave Spain shows that even those world class antisemites didn't see Jews as subhuman, though there were those in the Spanish hierarchy who, for reasons of power, discriminated against converted Jews in the priesthood and hierarchy. I would be surprised if you could find a period in the entire history of the Church when Jews were discouraged from converting on the basis of them being seen as subhuman. As mentioned by those in the morning post, that is a biological concept that is at odds with how Catholics traditionally view people, as a matter of church doctrine, at least.
There are hundreds probably thousands of cases of Christians putting their lives and the lives of their family at risk by protecting Jews from the Nazis, as mentioned here before, many of the people honored by Yad Vashem did that, those people certainly didn't see Jews as subhuman. Some, like the future Pope John XXIII issued ersatz baptismal documents for Jews to help them escape. That's only scratching the surface in disproof of that last statement. The history of the Catholic and other Christian churches is certainly not great in the treatment of Jews but even back into the medieval period there were Popes who issued encyclicals defending Jews against the blood libel, expulsion and numerous other instances of antisemitic actions, often by local officials who whipped up hatred so they could confiscate the property of Jews. While that history is certainly bad, in the period in question, from the 1850s through the end of WWII, "the Church" certainly did not teach that Jews were subhuman.
Hate Mail - Who Cares If They Don't Read It?
There is no to very, very little danger of them ever reading what I posted. As it is they figure they, the combined forces of the mid-brow blog flies know better than Arthur Herzberg and Leon Poliakov and Irving M. Zeitlin, not to mention a clear and unambiguous reading of what Voltaire wrote in the most blatant of terms.
They are, to not praise with faint damn, meat heads and poseurs who have no interest in the truth, not to mention an enormous amount of conceit.
They are, to not praise with faint damn, meat heads and poseurs who have no interest in the truth, not to mention an enormous amount of conceit.
Knocking The Clay Feet Out From Under The Atheist Saint Voltaire
Oh, dear, it would seem that I dissed that great paragon of the atheist "enlightenment", Voltaire by telling the truth about him, that he was a vicious anti semite. The whine is, "You lied about Voltaire." That's an atheist, oh, sorry, "SECULARIST" myth I've dealt with before by quoting the racist and anti-semite. as recently as the end of last December. But, as with the racism and eugenics of Charles Darwin, the idiocy of the American Communists, the mountain of mythology that has been constructed needs repeated refutation because the people who still maintain it have no regard for the records of their heroes in their own words, the evidence that provides and the inescapable truth that is a logical necessity when you confront that record in detail.
I don't have the time to go through the jillion letters of Voltaire to pick out the relevant passages, though I've read a number of them and he was a real sleeveen. Here's a passage from Jews: The Making of a Diaspora People By Irving M. Zeitlin.
But Voltaire also hurled dark and unsavory epithets at the Jews. Scholars have for the most part either ignored this side of Voltaire or have attempted to explain it away. How? By suggesting he attcked the Bible to get at Christianity.
Which is generally what Voltaire was want to do and which is a use that Jews are still commonly put to by the ideologues who will turn on them as soon as that use has been made of them.
But a survey of Voltaire's writings on Judaism and Jews suggests that in order for the Jews to be able to enter rhis new heaven, they had to purge themselves of their despicable traditions and history.
Again, this is something which is a theme throughout the “enlightenment” literature when the “rights of Jews” is the topic. Jews are OK, as long as they stop being Jews. Well, that's among the best of those “enlightened” folk. As the book points out, even among those gods of the enlightenment, even as they promoted their theories about the universal nature of man, a considerable number of them made an exception for those who were not white, Western, Europeans who had abandonned Christianity.
They had to abandon their particularism and become “enlightened.” But the evidence of his [Voltaire's] letters, in which he is most candid and frank, indicates something more than demanding that the Jews give up their particularism. Responding to his correspondent's favorable comments about the Spanish-Portugese Jews in the British colonies – who had been expelled from the Iberian Peninsula – Voltaire wrote:
"I know that there are some Jews in the English colonies. These Marranos [conversos] go wherever there is money to be made… But that these circumcised Jews who sell old clothes to the savages claim that they are of the tribe of Naphtali or Issachar is not of the slightest importance. They are, nonetheless, the greatest scoundrels who have ever sullied the face of the globe." (Correspondence, LXXXVI, 166; Cited in Herzberg, 285)
Both Arthur Herzberg and Leon Poliakov propose that the view expressed in Voltaire's correspondence is an early form of secular antiSemitism. The essence, after all, of the Enlightenment message is that humans are not bad by nature, and that they can be improved and perfected through freedom and education. As a general proposition that applies to all humans, it ought to include the Jews. But from Voltaire we hear something else: that the Jewish character has not changed from ancient times to the present. It is an eternal trait. The issue for Voltaire is not the theological quarrel between Christians and Jews. It is, rather, the clash between GrecoRoman Western culture and those who infected it with oriental ideas.
In 1771, Voltaire adopted one of his favorite poses, that of a classic Roman, and wrote Lettres de Memmuis a Ciceron, placing in the mouth of Memmius a description of Syria in which the Jews were singled out as the worst of men, hating all others and in turn hated by them : “The Persians and Scythians are a thousand times more reasonable ...” Voltaire then goes on the praise Cicero for his anti-Jewish oration Pro Flacco, the climax of which reads: “They [the Jews] are, all of them, are born with raging fanaticism in their hearts, just as the Bretons and the Germans are born with blond hair. I would not be in the least bit surprised if these people would not some day become deadly to the human race”. (Oeuvres Completes. XXVIII, 439-40; cited in Herzberg, 300). And Herzberg comments: “Voltaire had thus, being an ex-Christian, abandoned entirely the religious attack on the Jews as Christ-killers or Christ-rejectors. He proposed a new principle on which to base his hatred of them their innate character” (Herzberg, 300).
Herzberg then goes on to aver that this “racist” remark by Voltaire is no accident as is shown by what he wrote the following year in his Il faut prendre une partie. It consisted of speeches by the adherents of various religions, each speech designed to make the particular religion appear rediculous. At the end, a “theist,” Voltaire, reviews the speeches and addresses the Jews:
"You seem to me to be the maddest of the lot. The Kaffirs, the Hottentots, and the Negroes of Guinea are much more reasonable and more honest people than your ancestors, the Jews. You have surpassed all nations in impertinent fables, in bad conduct, and in barbarism. You deserve to be punished, for this is your destiny." ( Oeuvres Completes, XXVIII; cited in Herzberg. 549)
But Voltaire's new form of Jew-hatred is in continuity with the old: he blames the Jews for their expulsion from Spain – they brought in on themselves because they allegedly controlled all the money and commerce in the country. Why are the Jews hated?
Voltaire's utterances soon take on the character of silliness as well as venom: the Jews borrowed everything in their culture from others. He goes so far as to assert that the Jewish religion was borrowed from the Greek. How did they manage to do so? By identifying Lot's wife with Eurydice and Samson with Hercules. The Jews, for Voltaire, were inveterate plagiarizers and there is not a single page of the Jewish books that were not stolen, mostly from Homer. The gist, then, of Voltaire's view of the Jews is this: there is a cultural, philosophical, and ethnic tradition of Europe that was handed down, from the values taught by the Greeks, and then carried to all reaches of the European world by the Romans. This is the normative culture of which Voltaire approved. But the Jews, he asserts, are a different family and their religion is rooted in their character. It is possible to redeem Europe by bringing it back to its pre-Christian values. But the Jews are radically different: being born a Jew and the obnoxiousness of the Jewish outlook are indissoluble; it is, therefore, most improbable that even the “enlightened” can escape their innate character. “The Jews,” as Herzberg sums up Voltaire's position, “are subversive of the European tradition by their very presence, for they are radically other, the hopeless alien. Cure them of their religion, and their inborn character remains.” (304). Thus, it seems that Voltaire, by providing a new, secular anti-Jewish rhetoric in the name of European culture, rather than in the name of religion, planted the seeds for a quasiracial or racist conception of the Jews.
I don't have the time to go through the jillion letters of Voltaire to pick out the relevant passages, though I've read a number of them and he was a real sleeveen. Here's a passage from Jews: The Making of a Diaspora People By Irving M. Zeitlin.
But Voltaire also hurled dark and unsavory epithets at the Jews. Scholars have for the most part either ignored this side of Voltaire or have attempted to explain it away. How? By suggesting he attcked the Bible to get at Christianity.
Which is generally what Voltaire was want to do and which is a use that Jews are still commonly put to by the ideologues who will turn on them as soon as that use has been made of them.
But a survey of Voltaire's writings on Judaism and Jews suggests that in order for the Jews to be able to enter rhis new heaven, they had to purge themselves of their despicable traditions and history.
Again, this is something which is a theme throughout the “enlightenment” literature when the “rights of Jews” is the topic. Jews are OK, as long as they stop being Jews. Well, that's among the best of those “enlightened” folk. As the book points out, even among those gods of the enlightenment, even as they promoted their theories about the universal nature of man, a considerable number of them made an exception for those who were not white, Western, Europeans who had abandonned Christianity.
They had to abandon their particularism and become “enlightened.” But the evidence of his [Voltaire's] letters, in which he is most candid and frank, indicates something more than demanding that the Jews give up their particularism. Responding to his correspondent's favorable comments about the Spanish-Portugese Jews in the British colonies – who had been expelled from the Iberian Peninsula – Voltaire wrote:
"I know that there are some Jews in the English colonies. These Marranos [conversos] go wherever there is money to be made… But that these circumcised Jews who sell old clothes to the savages claim that they are of the tribe of Naphtali or Issachar is not of the slightest importance. They are, nonetheless, the greatest scoundrels who have ever sullied the face of the globe." (Correspondence, LXXXVI, 166; Cited in Herzberg, 285)
Both Arthur Herzberg and Leon Poliakov propose that the view expressed in Voltaire's correspondence is an early form of secular antiSemitism. The essence, after all, of the Enlightenment message is that humans are not bad by nature, and that they can be improved and perfected through freedom and education. As a general proposition that applies to all humans, it ought to include the Jews. But from Voltaire we hear something else: that the Jewish character has not changed from ancient times to the present. It is an eternal trait. The issue for Voltaire is not the theological quarrel between Christians and Jews. It is, rather, the clash between GrecoRoman Western culture and those who infected it with oriental ideas.
In 1771, Voltaire adopted one of his favorite poses, that of a classic Roman, and wrote Lettres de Memmuis a Ciceron, placing in the mouth of Memmius a description of Syria in which the Jews were singled out as the worst of men, hating all others and in turn hated by them : “The Persians and Scythians are a thousand times more reasonable ...” Voltaire then goes on the praise Cicero for his anti-Jewish oration Pro Flacco, the climax of which reads: “They [the Jews] are, all of them, are born with raging fanaticism in their hearts, just as the Bretons and the Germans are born with blond hair. I would not be in the least bit surprised if these people would not some day become deadly to the human race”. (Oeuvres Completes. XXVIII, 439-40; cited in Herzberg, 300). And Herzberg comments: “Voltaire had thus, being an ex-Christian, abandoned entirely the religious attack on the Jews as Christ-killers or Christ-rejectors. He proposed a new principle on which to base his hatred of them their innate character” (Herzberg, 300).
Herzberg then goes on to aver that this “racist” remark by Voltaire is no accident as is shown by what he wrote the following year in his Il faut prendre une partie. It consisted of speeches by the adherents of various religions, each speech designed to make the particular religion appear rediculous. At the end, a “theist,” Voltaire, reviews the speeches and addresses the Jews:
"You seem to me to be the maddest of the lot. The Kaffirs, the Hottentots, and the Negroes of Guinea are much more reasonable and more honest people than your ancestors, the Jews. You have surpassed all nations in impertinent fables, in bad conduct, and in barbarism. You deserve to be punished, for this is your destiny." ( Oeuvres Completes, XXVIII; cited in Herzberg. 549)
But Voltaire's new form of Jew-hatred is in continuity with the old: he blames the Jews for their expulsion from Spain – they brought in on themselves because they allegedly controlled all the money and commerce in the country. Why are the Jews hated?
"It is the inevitable result of their laws; they either had to conquer everybody or be hated by the whole human race. They kept all their customs, which are exactly the opposite of all proper social customs; they were therefore rightly treated as a people opposed to all others;…. they made usury a sacred duty. And these are our fathers ." (Oeuvres Completes, XII, 159-63: cited in Herzberg, 302-2)
Voltaire's utterances soon take on the character of silliness as well as venom: the Jews borrowed everything in their culture from others. He goes so far as to assert that the Jewish religion was borrowed from the Greek. How did they manage to do so? By identifying Lot's wife with Eurydice and Samson with Hercules. The Jews, for Voltaire, were inveterate plagiarizers and there is not a single page of the Jewish books that were not stolen, mostly from Homer. The gist, then, of Voltaire's view of the Jews is this: there is a cultural, philosophical, and ethnic tradition of Europe that was handed down, from the values taught by the Greeks, and then carried to all reaches of the European world by the Romans. This is the normative culture of which Voltaire approved. But the Jews, he asserts, are a different family and their religion is rooted in their character. It is possible to redeem Europe by bringing it back to its pre-Christian values. But the Jews are radically different: being born a Jew and the obnoxiousness of the Jewish outlook are indissoluble; it is, therefore, most improbable that even the “enlightened” can escape their innate character. “The Jews,” as Herzberg sums up Voltaire's position, “are subversive of the European tradition by their very presence, for they are radically other, the hopeless alien. Cure them of their religion, and their inborn character remains.” (304). Thus, it seems that Voltaire, by providing a new, secular anti-Jewish rhetoric in the name of European culture, rather than in the name of religion, planted the seeds for a quasiracial or racist conception of the Jews.
If a lot of that sounds familiar, well, you can read atheists saying similar things on the internet every day, most of them alleged leftists or liberals (in the 18th century meaning of the word). And if that doesn't ring a bell, a lot of it sound remarkably like how the proto-Nazis and the Nazis viewed Jews. As I pointed out, also late last year, there was a huge difference between that kind of biological anti-semitism and that which, for example, the Vatican has been charged with. The Catholic church welcomed Jews who wanted to convert to Catholicism, a number of converts and their children have been named to high positions in the Catholic hierarchy.
And there is certainly a difference between how Voltaire and atheists, in general, view the Jewish scriptures and how Christians, in general, view them. The Jewish scriptures have, from the beginning of the canon of the Christian Bible, been included as inspired scripture. There has never been a period in the past two-thousand years in which non-Jews have been more interested in getting the understanding of those writings right, of understanding them within their original context than today. And there are no non-Jews who are more interested in getting it right than serious, committed Christians. Walter Brueggemann's incredibly in depth study of them is not unique among modern, Christian scholars. Even as the intellectual descendants of Voltaire, or at least their cartoon, sanitized, plaster secular Saint Voltaire, are saying the same things they pretend he didn't say before the fascists and Nazis said them.
Monday, February 29, 2016
A Natural, Tough Corrupt Love, of The Lie Itself: Francis Bacon Nails Contemporary Discourse Right And Pseudo- Left
Back during the stupidity of the Reagan administration, as the media went down on bended knee and pretended the emperor was clothed, Studs Terkel noted that having a long memory was a revolutionary act. True words, if the memory is accurate. It wasn't enough though, I'd say that being able to read long sentences and hard sentences is related and also indispensable for making change in the age of sound bites and 8 word sentences of short words.
I am reading though the short essays of Francis Bacon, easily found online, and am amazed at how topical they are. It might take a few readings of his long, classical sentences to figure out what he's saying but it would be good practice for people whose idea of the limits of language are based on the dumbed down discourse as taught by 20th century prescriptive rule books of writing and writing based on the exigencies of newspaper sales.
This passage from the first one, Of Truth, covers most of the online chatter and alleged journalism that I've seen since going online and a lot of it from before.
Certainly there be, that delight in giddiness, and count it a bondage to fix a belief; affecting free-will in thinking, as well as in acting. And though the sects of philosophers of that kind be gone, yet there remain certain discoursing wits, which are of the same veins, though there be not so much blood in them, as was in those of the ancients. But it is not only the difficulty and labor, which men take in finding out of truth, nor again, that when it is found, it imposeth upon men's thoughts, that doth bring lies in favor; but a natural, though corrupt love, of the lie itself.
It's been my experience that you might visit a website for the fun of the giddiness and the insouciant pose of agnostic non-commitment, affecting "free thought," but it will end in a love of the lies that are ubiquitous when you settle for that. If anyone wants to ask what we've lost as the culture gave up a willingness to practice the rigor that is so often necessary to find the truth of something, due to the devaluation of the truth or merely finding it inconvenient, making self-sacrifice necessary, look around at the Republican field and the rats piling on to the garbage scow that the Trump campaign is or the Cruz or Rubio campaign would be if they could.
This passage almost knocked me over.
The poet, that beautified the sect, that was otherwise inferior to the rest, saith yet excellently well: It is a pleasure, to stand upon the shore, and to see ships tossed upon the sea; a pleasure, to stand in the window of a castle, and to see a battle, and the adventures thereof below: but no pleasure is comparable to the standing upon the vantage ground of truth (a hill not to be commanded, and where the air is always clear and serene), and to see the errors, and wanderings, and mists, and tempests, in the vale below; so always that this prospect be with pity, and not with swelling, or pride. Certainly, it is heaven upon earth, to have a man's mind move in charity, rest in providence, and turn upon the poles of truth.
I don't know exactly what poet Bacon is referring to but the passage is amazingly close to the verses in the Dharmmapada, chapter 2.
28. When the learned man drives away vanity by earnestness, he, the wise, climbing the terraced heights of wisdom, looks down upon the fools, serene he looks upon the toiling crowd, as one that stands on a mountain looks down upon them that stand upon the plain.
29. Earnest among the thoughtless, awake among the sleepers, the wise man advances like a racer, leaving behind the hack.
30. By earnestness did Maghavan (Indra) rise to the lordship of the gods. People praise earnestness; thoughtlessness is always blamed.
And that's one of the milder translations of it, there was at least one that talks about the pleasure of the enlightened man standing on a height taking pleasure in pain of those who haven't been enlightened. It reminds me of the predestinarians who, forced by their commitment to the dogma of original sin saying that one of the joys they imagine in heaven consisting of the elect seeing the eternal torment of even those they loved in life. Keeping in mind that predestination isn't a majority opinion in Christianity. Even the Calvinists don't seem to really believe in it. But I won't get into a discussion of original sin (also not a universally held dogma) or how I would say it has distorted and damaged the culture of Christianity. It, more than just about anything, has made it possible for the likes of Trump, Palin, etc. to claim that their political messaging is in line with something they call "Christianity" which has nothing to do with the Gospels.
Anyway, when was I first reading through that passage my first thought was that I wasn't going to be able to continue, that was until I got to the qualification that Bacon made at the end of the sentence. and continued.
... so always that this prospect be with pity, and not with swelling, or pride. Certainly, it is heaven upon earth, to have a man's mind move in charity, rest in providence, and turn upon the poles of truth.
Maybe that's the defining difference that corrupts our politics. The angry, enraged hate talk of the Republicans but also of so many others, is big on the pleasure of watching the pain of other people, the pleasure at the pain of poor people, Black people, Latinos, Muslims, most of all women, is the predominant feature of the electorate as heard on TV and radio, as read in the papers. The enthusiasm for increasing that pain is certainly a major feature of many of the politicians jumping on the Trumpery powered poltical machine. Chris Christie and Paul LePage have won elections at holding the prospect of sticking it to the poor, the destitute, women, members of unfavored minorities while working to further enrich the rich.
Notice the claim of what would be "heaven upon earth" to have a man's mind move in charity, rest in providence, and turn upon the poles of truth" and compare that to what's coming out of the politicians and the hate talk media that dominates our "free press". Is it any wonder that we've gone to hell on a regime of hate and lies by those "affecting free will, as well as in acting?"
Then go back, reading it again, especially, especially the first few sentences in light of that. The easy, lazy, self-regarding cynicism that has replaced real liberalism is really not going to end up in a different place from where the Republicans have taken us.
Just this first three paragraph essay could incite a weeks worth of posts. But I'll stop it here. The more I read of Bacon the more astounded I am that he's not taught in high schools. These essays are all short and so full of substance, I think students could learn a lot more from reading a select few of them, learning what those long sentences mean and looking for relevant examples of what he's talking about in the lives of the students and the world they live in than they would from the typical teaching of THE PLAYS. That is if they still do that in most places.
I am reading though the short essays of Francis Bacon, easily found online, and am amazed at how topical they are. It might take a few readings of his long, classical sentences to figure out what he's saying but it would be good practice for people whose idea of the limits of language are based on the dumbed down discourse as taught by 20th century prescriptive rule books of writing and writing based on the exigencies of newspaper sales.
This passage from the first one, Of Truth, covers most of the online chatter and alleged journalism that I've seen since going online and a lot of it from before.
Certainly there be, that delight in giddiness, and count it a bondage to fix a belief; affecting free-will in thinking, as well as in acting. And though the sects of philosophers of that kind be gone, yet there remain certain discoursing wits, which are of the same veins, though there be not so much blood in them, as was in those of the ancients. But it is not only the difficulty and labor, which men take in finding out of truth, nor again, that when it is found, it imposeth upon men's thoughts, that doth bring lies in favor; but a natural, though corrupt love, of the lie itself.
It's been my experience that you might visit a website for the fun of the giddiness and the insouciant pose of agnostic non-commitment, affecting "free thought," but it will end in a love of the lies that are ubiquitous when you settle for that. If anyone wants to ask what we've lost as the culture gave up a willingness to practice the rigor that is so often necessary to find the truth of something, due to the devaluation of the truth or merely finding it inconvenient, making self-sacrifice necessary, look around at the Republican field and the rats piling on to the garbage scow that the Trump campaign is or the Cruz or Rubio campaign would be if they could.
This passage almost knocked me over.
The poet, that beautified the sect, that was otherwise inferior to the rest, saith yet excellently well: It is a pleasure, to stand upon the shore, and to see ships tossed upon the sea; a pleasure, to stand in the window of a castle, and to see a battle, and the adventures thereof below: but no pleasure is comparable to the standing upon the vantage ground of truth (a hill not to be commanded, and where the air is always clear and serene), and to see the errors, and wanderings, and mists, and tempests, in the vale below; so always that this prospect be with pity, and not with swelling, or pride. Certainly, it is heaven upon earth, to have a man's mind move in charity, rest in providence, and turn upon the poles of truth.
I don't know exactly what poet Bacon is referring to but the passage is amazingly close to the verses in the Dharmmapada, chapter 2.
28. When the learned man drives away vanity by earnestness, he, the wise, climbing the terraced heights of wisdom, looks down upon the fools, serene he looks upon the toiling crowd, as one that stands on a mountain looks down upon them that stand upon the plain.
29. Earnest among the thoughtless, awake among the sleepers, the wise man advances like a racer, leaving behind the hack.
30. By earnestness did Maghavan (Indra) rise to the lordship of the gods. People praise earnestness; thoughtlessness is always blamed.
And that's one of the milder translations of it, there was at least one that talks about the pleasure of the enlightened man standing on a height taking pleasure in pain of those who haven't been enlightened. It reminds me of the predestinarians who, forced by their commitment to the dogma of original sin saying that one of the joys they imagine in heaven consisting of the elect seeing the eternal torment of even those they loved in life. Keeping in mind that predestination isn't a majority opinion in Christianity. Even the Calvinists don't seem to really believe in it. But I won't get into a discussion of original sin (also not a universally held dogma) or how I would say it has distorted and damaged the culture of Christianity. It, more than just about anything, has made it possible for the likes of Trump, Palin, etc. to claim that their political messaging is in line with something they call "Christianity" which has nothing to do with the Gospels.
Anyway, when was I first reading through that passage my first thought was that I wasn't going to be able to continue, that was until I got to the qualification that Bacon made at the end of the sentence. and continued.
... so always that this prospect be with pity, and not with swelling, or pride. Certainly, it is heaven upon earth, to have a man's mind move in charity, rest in providence, and turn upon the poles of truth.
Maybe that's the defining difference that corrupts our politics. The angry, enraged hate talk of the Republicans but also of so many others, is big on the pleasure of watching the pain of other people, the pleasure at the pain of poor people, Black people, Latinos, Muslims, most of all women, is the predominant feature of the electorate as heard on TV and radio, as read in the papers. The enthusiasm for increasing that pain is certainly a major feature of many of the politicians jumping on the Trumpery powered poltical machine. Chris Christie and Paul LePage have won elections at holding the prospect of sticking it to the poor, the destitute, women, members of unfavored minorities while working to further enrich the rich.
Notice the claim of what would be "heaven upon earth" to have a man's mind move in charity, rest in providence, and turn upon the poles of truth" and compare that to what's coming out of the politicians and the hate talk media that dominates our "free press". Is it any wonder that we've gone to hell on a regime of hate and lies by those "affecting free will, as well as in acting?"
Then go back, reading it again, especially, especially the first few sentences in light of that. The easy, lazy, self-regarding cynicism that has replaced real liberalism is really not going to end up in a different place from where the Republicans have taken us.
Just this first three paragraph essay could incite a weeks worth of posts. But I'll stop it here. The more I read of Bacon the more astounded I am that he's not taught in high schools. These essays are all short and so full of substance, I think students could learn a lot more from reading a select few of them, learning what those long sentences mean and looking for relevant examples of what he's talking about in the lives of the students and the world they live in than they would from the typical teaching of THE PLAYS. That is if they still do that in most places.
You Don't Need William Shirer To Have Noticed It, There Is No Question That The Nazis Cited Tacitus To Support Their Ideology
Note: I know where the snark sent in under another name came from, the same idiot who I answered as recently as last fall has been saying the same thing over and over again. As the famous quote goes, you can lead a washed up pop music scribbler to water but you can't make him think finds its strongest confirmation in him. So I'll repost the piece I did on that from last October. If Shirer did or didn't notice it makes little difference, historians and eye-witnesses did document it.
Since it is relevant, I am also posting response to some other stupidity, one from a buddy of the washed up scribbler whose pseudonym combining two vicious antismites is certainly relevant.
"In 1936, for example, the Nazi party convention in Nuremberg featured a historic “Germanic” room with walls covered in quotes by Tacitus" Stupidity Answered At Noontime
If a person doesn't think there is a God to be accountable to, then—then what's the point of trying to modify your behavior to keep it within acceptable ranges? That's how I thought anyway. Jeffrey Dahmer
Charlie Hebdo killings 12, Jeffrey Dahmer, at least 16
I will admit I checked around to try to verify the quote from Dahmer, it's all over the web. It's supposed to be from some interviews he did with Stone Phillips which I did find but which I had to turn off after about two minutes because there are just some things I won't do just to check on a quote. I need to go wash my mind out with soap. Fels Naphtha, probably.
Update: I am challenged to name a massacre in the United States committed by atheists. Well, I'm busy but I recalled reading this story a while back.
ANCHORAGE, Alaska -- Details began emerging about the mindset of a confessed serial killer who committed suicide last weekend in an Alaska jail cell, as family members prepared for his funeral and authorities searched for a woman they believe to be his first victim.
A Texas pastor said this week that Israel Keyes of Anchorage had attended his sister's March wedding in Texas, where he ranted about how he didn't believe in God.
Pastor Jacob Gardner said some of the preaching at the wedding had targeted Keyes to get him to "denounce his atheism." But the ceremony ended with Keyes raging against God, The Anchorage Daily News reported.
"We were greatly desirous to see him saved, and greatly desirous to see him denounce his atheism, which he was steadfastly holding to and defending," Gardner told the newspaper.
Keyes was arrested later that month in Lufkin, Texas. He then confessed to killing at least eight people across the country, before he was found dead Sunday in his Anchorage cell. Authorities say Keyes had slit one of his wrists and strangled himself with a rolled-up sheet.
So, atheist feller, when are you going to call for banning atheism? That's the difference between me and you groovy atheist guys. I figure people are only guilty of what they do and approve of, I don't figure 1.6 billion people are guilty of the Charlie Hebdo murders. By your, um, "logic" that Muslim cop murdered by them is guilty of his own murder. But, then, I clearly remember that you guys also fingered Dr. George Tiller for his murder - before someone pointed out that the "Xian" was murdered as he ushered at his Reform Lutheran Church.
Update 2: Since it's a Friday afternoon and it's been a long week, heckler atheist feller keeps insisting I name AMERICAN atheist mass murderers. Since he and his fellow atheists are gassing on about the murders in FRANCE I don't feel the need to allow him to set up the rules that he and his posse aren't abiding by. I could name any number of atheists who were among the champion murderers of all time, Stalin of course, Mao, Pol Pot, .... anyone who was an atheist with control of a government and military going back to the reign of terror in France. You know, little things like that.
Since it is relevant, I am also posting response to some other stupidity, one from a buddy of the washed up scribbler whose pseudonym combining two vicious antismites is certainly relevant.
"In 1936, for example, the Nazi party convention in Nuremberg featured a historic “Germanic” room with walls covered in quotes by Tacitus" Stupidity Answered At Noontime
steve simelsOctober 13, 2015 at 10:26 AM
"The charge that the Nazis are a product of Christianity is a big lie"
You're right -- the Holocaust actually didn't happen in a country informed by centuries of European Christian anti-Semitism. I can't imagine how that canard got started.
For every simple question there is a simple answer and it is wrong, as has been said. In this case the question tacitly being posed as a simple one is also wrong because it is not simple though, as Bertrand Russell says in the left side bar, those with simple minds will turn what is said into a simple and wrong form because that's what they do.
The Nazis left us quite a bit of evidence that their thinking was far more informed by their understanding of classical European and "Aryan" culture than from the Hebrew culture which informs every word of the Bible, both the Jewish scriptures and the Christian scriptures which were all written by Jews. Antisemitism didn't start in Christian Europe, it was endemic to some areas of Europe well before Jesus was born. Even in the Bible, antisemitism is noted in the pre-Christian era. Maccabees, 1 and 2, document the classical Greek attack against Jews, including the first known attempt to exterminate all of them under Antiochus Epiphanes. I don't know the extent to which the Nazis cited Greek antisemitism, directly, but I do know they were quite influenced by the antisemitism and the pro-Germanic sentiments of Tacitus. Once again, I'm answering something quickly so I will depend on this article, I will revise it down to quotes later but I will post the entire thing, for now.
Ask a well-read individual to list the most dangerous books in history, and a few familiar titles would most likely make the cut: Hitler’s “Mein Kampf,” Marx and Engels’ “The Communist Manifesto,” Chairman Mao’s “Little Red Book.”
But what about an obscure booklet written by a Roman senator? According to Christopher Krebs, assistant professor of the classics in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Tacitus’ “Germania” deserves a spot on the roster.
“Tacitus’ text played a crucial role in shaping the three or four major discourses that eventually fueled National Socialism,” also known as Nazism, said Krebs. “The influence of the Germania was exerted over hundreds of years.”
The text, first published in 98 C.E., has a long legacy: Rediscovered in the 15th century, it was read widely by German humanists in the 16th. In following centuries, the aureus libellus — or “golden booklet,” as many called it — continued to fascinate readers inside and outside of Germany. The Germania was popular among nationalists in the 19th century, and became particularly dear to Nazi leaders in the 20th who adopted Tacitus’ themes and slogans to further their political and racial agendas.
While doing research on the humanists’ reception of the Germania, Krebs discovered that the distinguished historian and historiographer Arnaldo Momigliano had named Tacitus’ work “among the most dangerous books ever written.”
“I began to wonder if that statement was true,” Krebs said.
Intrigued, he dove back into the text and found a world of connection to Nazi ideology.
“Every influential National Socialist was familiar with the Germania,” said Krebs, “and many foot soldiers referred to the text as a ‘bible. ’”
What, exactly, were they so keen to read? Krebs describes the text as a “political ethnography” of Germania, a region northeast of Gaul that remained mostly independent from Roman rule. When Tacitus wrote the ethnography, the Romans had been fighting with Germanic tribes for more than two centuries.
“Tacitus was a politician writing about one of Rome’s fiercest and worst enemies,” said Krebs, “so his ethnography is given within the framework of Roman political discourse.”
Though the Germania was an ethnographic study, it is unlikely, according to Krebs, that Tacitus saw the region firsthand. Instead, he probably constructed the account by drawing on Greek and Roman ethnographical writings about “people in the north” as well as the reports of travelers and warriors who had visited the region. As a result, Krebs noted, the text “was not an accurate depiction of reality.”
Inaccuracies aside, Tacitus’ descriptions of the tribes in Germania provided fodder for future conceptions of the “ideal” German people. Tacitus criticizes parts of the culture in Germania, but he also seems to express admiration for a certain number of its qualities — and it was those qualities that the Nazis would seize upon nearly 2,000 years later to serve their dream of an Aryan race.
According to Krebs, the Nazis stand at the end of a long interpretive tradition that began with 16th century humanists, who considered Tacitus the authoritative word on Germanic culture. These scholars also drew from the text protonationalist themes that would resonate with Nazi ideology.
“If you read the German humanists’ interpretation of the text, you find almost everything that the Nazis would come to associate with Germania,” said Krebs. “The early 16th century reception is basically a mirror image of the early 20th.”
Between 1500 and 1600, Krebs estimates, nearly 6,000 editions were reproduced for readers in German-speaking countries. And during the Nazi regime, Tacitus’ influence was pervasive, extending from party leaders to party soldiers.
According to Krebs, Nazi leaders drew upon three primary themes expressed in the Germania: nationalism, an emphasis on German culture and its origins, and a discourse of racism.
“The booklet encouraged readers to think in terms of ‘we Germans’ and ‘the German fatherland,’” said Krebs.
Tacitus’ words also helped nationalistic readers to perpetuate an image of the “ideal” German man.
“Tacitus depicts the Germanic tribes as a moral people, living a pure and simple life,” said Krebs. “His text emphasized their freedom and fortitude.”
Readers focused on these characteristics, with the result that “the Germanic people were associated with warrior qualities,” said Krebs.
In addition, the text highlighted the fact that most of the Germanic tribes were indigenous to the region, with almost no history of migration.
“He depicted the tribes as descending from an ‘earth-born god,’ and thus deeply rooted to the Germania territory,” said Krebs. “The Nazis employed that rhetoric to advance their theory that the culture of the German volk was inherently tied to the soil on which they were born.”
For Nazi ideology, the text proved an excellent propaganda tool.
In 1936, for example, the Nazi party convention in Nuremberg featured a historic “Germanic” room with walls covered in quotes by Tacitus.
And the leader of the Nazi party? Though Hitler doesn’t mention the Germania specifically in any of his writings, Krebs is “certain that he must have known about it.”
“Hitler was not extremely literate,” said Krebs, “but two books that he is known to have read made ample use of Tacitus.”
Moreover, Krebs said, Hitler’s preferred “authority” on questions of race — adviser Hans F.K. Günther — was “intimately familiar” with the text.
As to the kind of antisemitism contained in Tacitus, here, from his Histories
4. In order to secure the allegiance of his people in the future, Moses prescribed for them a novel religion quite different from those of the rest of mankind. Among the Jews all things are profane that we hold sacred; on the other hand they regard as permissible what seems to us immoral. In the innermost part of the Temple, they consecrated an image of the animal which had delivered them from their wandering and thirst, choosing a ram as beast of sacrifice to demonstrate, so it seems, their contempt for Hammon. (6) The bull is also offered up, because the Egyptians worship it as Apis. They avoid eating pork in memory of their tribulations, as they themselves were once infected with the disease to which this creature is subject. (7) They still fast frequently as an admission of the hunger they once endured so long, and to symbolize their hurried meal the bread eaten by the Jews is unleavened. We are told that the seventh day was set aside for rest because this marked the end of their toils. In course of time the seductions of idleness made them devote every seventh year to indolence as well. Others say that this is a mark of respect to Saturn, either because they owe the basic principles of their religion to the Idaei, who, we are told, were expelled in the company of Saturn and became the founders of the Jewish race, or because, among the seven stars that rule mankind, the one that describes the highest orbit and exerts the greatest influence is Saturn. A further argument is that most of the heavenly bodies complete their path and revolutions in multiples of seven.
5. Whatever their origin, these observances are sanctioned by their antiquity. The other practices of the Jews are sinister and revolting, and have entrenched themselves by their very wickedness. Wretches of the most abandoned kind who had no use for the religion of their fathers took to contributing dues and free-will offerings to swell the Jewish exchequer; and other reasons for their increasing wealth may be found in their stubborn loyalty and ready benevolence towards brother Jews. But the rest of the world they confront with the hatred reserved for enemies. They will not feed or inter-marry with gentiles. Though a most lascivious people, the Jews avoid sexual intercourse with women of alien race. Among themselves nothing is barred. They have introduced the practice of circumcision to show that they are different from others. Proselytes to Jewry adopt the same practices, and the very first lesson they learn is to despite the gods, shed all feelings of patriotism, and consider parents, children and brothers as readily expendable. However, the Jews see to it that their numbers increase. It is a deadly sin to kill a born or unborn child, and they think that eternal life is granted to those who die in battle or execution—hence their eagerness to have children, and their contempt for death. Rather than cremate their dead, they prefer to bury them in imitation of the Egyptian fashion, and they have the same concern and beliefs about the world below. But their conception of heavenly things is quite different. The Egyptians worship a variety of animals and half-human, half-bestial forms, whereas the Jewish religion is a purely spiritual monotheism. They hold it to be impious to make idols of perishable materials in the likeness of man: for them, the Most High and Eternal cannot be portrayed by human hands and will never pass away. For this reason they erect no images in their cities, still less in their temple. Their kings are not so flattered, the Roman emperors not so honoured. However, their priests used to perform their chants to the flute and drums, crowned with ivy, and a golden vine was discovered in the Temple; and this has led some to imagine that the god thus worshipped was Prince Liber, (8) the conqueror of the East. But the two cults are diametrically opposed. Liber founded a festive and happy cult: the Jewish belief is paradoxical and degraded.
I don't have the time to document it but, in line with the Nazi dependence on Tacitus, you can find him cited on neo-Nazi and other antisemetic websites with the statement that what he said was accurate and has always been characteristic of Jews from antiquity till today.
"The charge that the Nazis are a product of Christianity is a big lie"
You're right -- the Holocaust actually didn't happen in a country informed by centuries of European Christian anti-Semitism. I can't imagine how that canard got started.
For every simple question there is a simple answer and it is wrong, as has been said. In this case the question tacitly being posed as a simple one is also wrong because it is not simple though, as Bertrand Russell says in the left side bar, those with simple minds will turn what is said into a simple and wrong form because that's what they do.
The Nazis left us quite a bit of evidence that their thinking was far more informed by their understanding of classical European and "Aryan" culture than from the Hebrew culture which informs every word of the Bible, both the Jewish scriptures and the Christian scriptures which were all written by Jews. Antisemitism didn't start in Christian Europe, it was endemic to some areas of Europe well before Jesus was born. Even in the Bible, antisemitism is noted in the pre-Christian era. Maccabees, 1 and 2, document the classical Greek attack against Jews, including the first known attempt to exterminate all of them under Antiochus Epiphanes. I don't know the extent to which the Nazis cited Greek antisemitism, directly, but I do know they were quite influenced by the antisemitism and the pro-Germanic sentiments of Tacitus. Once again, I'm answering something quickly so I will depend on this article, I will revise it down to quotes later but I will post the entire thing, for now.
Ask a well-read individual to list the most dangerous books in history, and a few familiar titles would most likely make the cut: Hitler’s “Mein Kampf,” Marx and Engels’ “The Communist Manifesto,” Chairman Mao’s “Little Red Book.”
But what about an obscure booklet written by a Roman senator? According to Christopher Krebs, assistant professor of the classics in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Tacitus’ “Germania” deserves a spot on the roster.
“Tacitus’ text played a crucial role in shaping the three or four major discourses that eventually fueled National Socialism,” also known as Nazism, said Krebs. “The influence of the Germania was exerted over hundreds of years.”
The text, first published in 98 C.E., has a long legacy: Rediscovered in the 15th century, it was read widely by German humanists in the 16th. In following centuries, the aureus libellus — or “golden booklet,” as many called it — continued to fascinate readers inside and outside of Germany. The Germania was popular among nationalists in the 19th century, and became particularly dear to Nazi leaders in the 20th who adopted Tacitus’ themes and slogans to further their political and racial agendas.
While doing research on the humanists’ reception of the Germania, Krebs discovered that the distinguished historian and historiographer Arnaldo Momigliano had named Tacitus’ work “among the most dangerous books ever written.”
“I began to wonder if that statement was true,” Krebs said.
Intrigued, he dove back into the text and found a world of connection to Nazi ideology.
“Every influential National Socialist was familiar with the Germania,” said Krebs, “and many foot soldiers referred to the text as a ‘bible. ’”
What, exactly, were they so keen to read? Krebs describes the text as a “political ethnography” of Germania, a region northeast of Gaul that remained mostly independent from Roman rule. When Tacitus wrote the ethnography, the Romans had been fighting with Germanic tribes for more than two centuries.
“Tacitus was a politician writing about one of Rome’s fiercest and worst enemies,” said Krebs, “so his ethnography is given within the framework of Roman political discourse.”
Though the Germania was an ethnographic study, it is unlikely, according to Krebs, that Tacitus saw the region firsthand. Instead, he probably constructed the account by drawing on Greek and Roman ethnographical writings about “people in the north” as well as the reports of travelers and warriors who had visited the region. As a result, Krebs noted, the text “was not an accurate depiction of reality.”
Inaccuracies aside, Tacitus’ descriptions of the tribes in Germania provided fodder for future conceptions of the “ideal” German people. Tacitus criticizes parts of the culture in Germania, but he also seems to express admiration for a certain number of its qualities — and it was those qualities that the Nazis would seize upon nearly 2,000 years later to serve their dream of an Aryan race.
According to Krebs, the Nazis stand at the end of a long interpretive tradition that began with 16th century humanists, who considered Tacitus the authoritative word on Germanic culture. These scholars also drew from the text protonationalist themes that would resonate with Nazi ideology.
“If you read the German humanists’ interpretation of the text, you find almost everything that the Nazis would come to associate with Germania,” said Krebs. “The early 16th century reception is basically a mirror image of the early 20th.”
Between 1500 and 1600, Krebs estimates, nearly 6,000 editions were reproduced for readers in German-speaking countries. And during the Nazi regime, Tacitus’ influence was pervasive, extending from party leaders to party soldiers.
According to Krebs, Nazi leaders drew upon three primary themes expressed in the Germania: nationalism, an emphasis on German culture and its origins, and a discourse of racism.
“The booklet encouraged readers to think in terms of ‘we Germans’ and ‘the German fatherland,’” said Krebs.
Tacitus’ words also helped nationalistic readers to perpetuate an image of the “ideal” German man.
“Tacitus depicts the Germanic tribes as a moral people, living a pure and simple life,” said Krebs. “His text emphasized their freedom and fortitude.”
Readers focused on these characteristics, with the result that “the Germanic people were associated with warrior qualities,” said Krebs.
In addition, the text highlighted the fact that most of the Germanic tribes were indigenous to the region, with almost no history of migration.
“He depicted the tribes as descending from an ‘earth-born god,’ and thus deeply rooted to the Germania territory,” said Krebs. “The Nazis employed that rhetoric to advance their theory that the culture of the German volk was inherently tied to the soil on which they were born.”
For Nazi ideology, the text proved an excellent propaganda tool.
In 1936, for example, the Nazi party convention in Nuremberg featured a historic “Germanic” room with walls covered in quotes by Tacitus.
And the leader of the Nazi party? Though Hitler doesn’t mention the Germania specifically in any of his writings, Krebs is “certain that he must have known about it.”
“Hitler was not extremely literate,” said Krebs, “but two books that he is known to have read made ample use of Tacitus.”
Moreover, Krebs said, Hitler’s preferred “authority” on questions of race — adviser Hans F.K. Günther — was “intimately familiar” with the text.
As to the kind of antisemitism contained in Tacitus, here, from his Histories
4. In order to secure the allegiance of his people in the future, Moses prescribed for them a novel religion quite different from those of the rest of mankind. Among the Jews all things are profane that we hold sacred; on the other hand they regard as permissible what seems to us immoral. In the innermost part of the Temple, they consecrated an image of the animal which had delivered them from their wandering and thirst, choosing a ram as beast of sacrifice to demonstrate, so it seems, their contempt for Hammon. (6) The bull is also offered up, because the Egyptians worship it as Apis. They avoid eating pork in memory of their tribulations, as they themselves were once infected with the disease to which this creature is subject. (7) They still fast frequently as an admission of the hunger they once endured so long, and to symbolize their hurried meal the bread eaten by the Jews is unleavened. We are told that the seventh day was set aside for rest because this marked the end of their toils. In course of time the seductions of idleness made them devote every seventh year to indolence as well. Others say that this is a mark of respect to Saturn, either because they owe the basic principles of their religion to the Idaei, who, we are told, were expelled in the company of Saturn and became the founders of the Jewish race, or because, among the seven stars that rule mankind, the one that describes the highest orbit and exerts the greatest influence is Saturn. A further argument is that most of the heavenly bodies complete their path and revolutions in multiples of seven.
5. Whatever their origin, these observances are sanctioned by their antiquity. The other practices of the Jews are sinister and revolting, and have entrenched themselves by their very wickedness. Wretches of the most abandoned kind who had no use for the religion of their fathers took to contributing dues and free-will offerings to swell the Jewish exchequer; and other reasons for their increasing wealth may be found in their stubborn loyalty and ready benevolence towards brother Jews. But the rest of the world they confront with the hatred reserved for enemies. They will not feed or inter-marry with gentiles. Though a most lascivious people, the Jews avoid sexual intercourse with women of alien race. Among themselves nothing is barred. They have introduced the practice of circumcision to show that they are different from others. Proselytes to Jewry adopt the same practices, and the very first lesson they learn is to despite the gods, shed all feelings of patriotism, and consider parents, children and brothers as readily expendable. However, the Jews see to it that their numbers increase. It is a deadly sin to kill a born or unborn child, and they think that eternal life is granted to those who die in battle or execution—hence their eagerness to have children, and their contempt for death. Rather than cremate their dead, they prefer to bury them in imitation of the Egyptian fashion, and they have the same concern and beliefs about the world below. But their conception of heavenly things is quite different. The Egyptians worship a variety of animals and half-human, half-bestial forms, whereas the Jewish religion is a purely spiritual monotheism. They hold it to be impious to make idols of perishable materials in the likeness of man: for them, the Most High and Eternal cannot be portrayed by human hands and will never pass away. For this reason they erect no images in their cities, still less in their temple. Their kings are not so flattered, the Roman emperors not so honoured. However, their priests used to perform their chants to the flute and drums, crowned with ivy, and a golden vine was discovered in the Temple; and this has led some to imagine that the god thus worshipped was Prince Liber, (8) the conqueror of the East. But the two cults are diametrically opposed. Liber founded a festive and happy cult: the Jewish belief is paradoxical and degraded.
I don't have the time to document it but, in line with the Nazi dependence on Tacitus, you can find him cited on neo-Nazi and other antisemetic websites with the statement that what he said was accurate and has always been characteristic of Jews from antiquity till today.
Friday, January 9, 2015
They Send Me E-Mails - To Be Consistent You'll have To Outlaw Atheism Too, Then
If a person doesn't think there is a God to be accountable to, then—then what's the point of trying to modify your behavior to keep it within acceptable ranges? That's how I thought anyway. Jeffrey Dahmer
Charlie Hebdo killings 12, Jeffrey Dahmer, at least 16
I will admit I checked around to try to verify the quote from Dahmer, it's all over the web. It's supposed to be from some interviews he did with Stone Phillips which I did find but which I had to turn off after about two minutes because there are just some things I won't do just to check on a quote. I need to go wash my mind out with soap. Fels Naphtha, probably.
Update: I am challenged to name a massacre in the United States committed by atheists. Well, I'm busy but I recalled reading this story a while back.
ANCHORAGE, Alaska -- Details began emerging about the mindset of a confessed serial killer who committed suicide last weekend in an Alaska jail cell, as family members prepared for his funeral and authorities searched for a woman they believe to be his first victim.
A Texas pastor said this week that Israel Keyes of Anchorage had attended his sister's March wedding in Texas, where he ranted about how he didn't believe in God.
Pastor Jacob Gardner said some of the preaching at the wedding had targeted Keyes to get him to "denounce his atheism." But the ceremony ended with Keyes raging against God, The Anchorage Daily News reported.
"We were greatly desirous to see him saved, and greatly desirous to see him denounce his atheism, which he was steadfastly holding to and defending," Gardner told the newspaper.
Keyes was arrested later that month in Lufkin, Texas. He then confessed to killing at least eight people across the country, before he was found dead Sunday in his Anchorage cell. Authorities say Keyes had slit one of his wrists and strangled himself with a rolled-up sheet.
So, atheist feller, when are you going to call for banning atheism? That's the difference between me and you groovy atheist guys. I figure people are only guilty of what they do and approve of, I don't figure 1.6 billion people are guilty of the Charlie Hebdo murders. By your, um, "logic" that Muslim cop murdered by them is guilty of his own murder. But, then, I clearly remember that you guys also fingered Dr. George Tiller for his murder - before someone pointed out that the "Xian" was murdered as he ushered at his Reform Lutheran Church.
Update 2: Since it's a Friday afternoon and it's been a long week, heckler atheist feller keeps insisting I name AMERICAN atheist mass murderers. Since he and his fellow atheists are gassing on about the murders in FRANCE I don't feel the need to allow him to set up the rules that he and his posse aren't abiding by. I could name any number of atheists who were among the champion murderers of all time, Stalin of course, Mao, Pol Pot, .... anyone who was an atheist with control of a government and military going back to the reign of terror in France. You know, little things like that.