Feeling Right at Home
Jerry Falwell: “Everyone now knows that the stage is set for the church of Jesus Christ to turn this nation back to the faith of our fathers and the Judeo-Christian ethic.”
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Zionista, what a great addition to the line of jewschool contributors! welcome.
judeo-christian is my least favorite hyphenated word.
i’m pretty sure jerry falwell’s ethic has nothing to do with Judeo-anything- quite possibly nothing to do with anything-christian
Thanks, Asaf.
Does everybody remember this one…?
“I’ve met wonderful Jews in Siberia, Brazil, the United States, here in Jerusalem who are all saying ‘Yes, Jesus you are our messiah.'”
http://www.acj.org/Daily%20New…
…One of Pat Robertson’s greatest hits. From Jerusalem last Sukkos. So, now we all can be just another Christian denomination in the great American “mainstream.”
They say they support Israel, but somehow we can never be scared enough for these guys….
“I see the rise of Islam to destroy Israel and take the land from the Jews and give east Jerusalem to Yasser Arafat,” Robertson said. “I see that as Satan’s plan to prevent the return of Jesus Christ the Lord.”
Nobody ever talks about the fact that America’s founding fathers were deists, not christians. thom j made his own bible taking out all references to jesus as a god. i’ve posted on this before so i’ll spare y’all the rant again.
locofoco I do rather often. I love winding up happy-clappys with that bit of fact. One quote which is rather good is Hamilton at the Constitutional Convention about not needing “outside influences heavenly or terrestrial.”
Still twits like Falwell insist on re-writing history to their liking.
Mixed feelings on this one:
1) Yes, they still want to convert us, but
2) They sincerely have adopted the Torah’s value system, and are hewing to it more closely than many American Jews. As an Orthodox Jew, I definitely agree with much of their social agenda, and view supporting this agenda as part of being a “light to the nations”.
3) Bottom line – America is very comfortable and open, but it is not home. Germany and France were also enlightened republics that extended full citizenship to Jews – but in the end a Jew outside Israel is still living on the sufferance of a majority. Human law is always capable of being changed or superceded. Jews cannot rely on any political system for their long-term safety.
That is why I moved to Israel.
I hear you, Ben-David. In free societies, the scum is free to sometimes rise to the top if the mainstream electorate becomes more complacent than vigilant. That is certainly one motivation, among a myriad of others, for any politically mature Jew to remain an unrepentent Zionist.
Trouble is, the scum tends to rise on that social agenda you support. Consider the fears they exploit. Is there any policy that conservative Republicans advance that hasn’t been charged with divisive rhetoric, pitting a vague “mainstream” against trial lawyers, activist judges, homosexual agendas, Hollywood elites and Massachusetts liberals? And why are conservative legislators and lobbyists so afraid of privacy and responsibility? A few examples. Is it really fair that an individual who suffers from medical malpractice or a debilitating employment injury be prohibited from seeking both restitution and bankruptcy protections? Do you really and truly believe that my marriage will be any less solid and sacred if pairs of same-sex couples are allowed to commit to the same responsibilities and benefit from the same spousal rights that my wife and I do? If a woman is allowed access to legal abortion procedures, do you really believe that abortion will become a routine birth control practice? And if we start basing civil laws on subjective religious morality, who decides among all various and often contradictory religious traditions which are valid and which are not? And by what standard?
Have you ever met Christian Missionaries, who see that you’re a relgious Jew, and confide their confidence with you seeing as “We all in the same war against the Idol worshipping religions” As if any religion ever worshipped more than one god. But maybe that’s what he meant.
It’s kinda true. The campaign to wipe out the old ways of worshipping in exchange for a kind of moral-guilt-fear-extati c song and dance religion, that boiled down all folk traditions into one officially recognized way of being allowed to, and occasionally forced to, serve the divine. That is ours, and much of our tradition, much like the work of various Popes throughout the generations, is to soften that control by making it as appealing as possible, be it through funner holidays or deeper theology. Is it time Judaism took responsibility for what it’s ideological child has wrought?
The most dangerous thing that Modern Christians and
Jews do together is look at the bible at face value, without the tradition of how to relate to it, how to look at the hurt and the wound as just that: Hurt and wound, of a thousand generations, honestly and openly.
The main function, i’ve heard said by sages in jerusalem, of the New Testament as well as the Mishna and Gemara was and is to make the bible G-d presentable to a more elightened generation, to make clear that the tradition was never about romantizing the horror of God’s manifestation as much as using language to help you feel what it’s like.
As is known, the Torah isn’t just God’s word, How could the true voice of G-d have words? Rather, it Is G-d himself, the aderet and the emunah, the color and the taste, experienced, and that how we can all get soo crazy over our scriptures, healed and saved and driven to kill, because the stories touch so deep, we know they all must be true, even if we refuse to believe that what we experienced from it the first time is all it’s saying.
The second coming and the second tablets are when what was being said the first itme, that I just didn’t get get’s clarified for sure. version 2.0
Zionista – here we go again.
Once again, you define conservative opinions as “divisive” and “subjective” – which implies that left-liberal opinions on abortion, gay marriage, and the redistribution of wealth are widely held and “objectively” true – but they are neither. They represent just one opinion – and one not popular enough to carry elections.
One obvious example: who judges when I am making “too much” money, and who should receive it when big-government programs redistribute it? The liberal opinion – starting with the core notions that accumulation of wealth needs fixing, and distribution of wealth is positive – is far from axiomatic, far from “objectively” true or moral.
In democracies, we resolve differences of opinion by going with the majority. It’s not a perfect system – this is a thread about the Jews’ uncertain position even in a democracy, and the majority can embrace slavery, anti-Semitism, and other untrue/immoral stances – but it does guarantee that individuals and community are governed with their consent, and by their most widely accepted values.
People who try to impose their will on a majority that disagrees with them are “divise” – and undemocratic. Being convinced that you’re right is not sufficient reason to impose your will on the populace without their consent.
For the past two decades in America, the people doing this – projecting the obvious inevitability of their own quite subjective beliefs while failing to convince their fellow citizens, and if necessary using the courts to impose unpopular opinions – have been liberals.
People who win elections because their platform reflects widely held opinions are not “divisive”. On the contrary – their election victories indicate widespread public support and consent to be governed by such values and opinions. Their legislation is based on moral judgements no more or less “subjective” than liberal moral judgements are.
But they have the advantage of being commonly held – that is, people are being governed by their own consent, in accord with the community’s most widely held opinions and moral values.
And yes – over the past 20-30 years, these people have increasingly been Republicans and those mouthing/espousing conservative ideas.
The most obvious examples of this dynamic are two of the hot-button issues you mention: abortion and gay marriage.
Despite your projection of how obviously, objectively correct gay suffrage is, America’s voters went out of their way to clearly state that they feel otherwise. Faced with liberals who have done judicial end-runs around the legislative process to impose their will, they expressly voted for statues that prevent subversion of the law of the land to express what is clearly a minority opinion.
This is also the perception that has made the abortion debate so rancorous – that a minority opinion contrary to most people’s values and mores is being railroaded through the courts and educational system.
Those are the two key words here:
Minority. Opinion.
YOU may be 100 percent sure you are right – and you may only associate with those who share your group think – but it’s still just an OPINION.
And if you can’t convince your countrymen in sufficient numbers, it is a MINORITY opinion, and The Rest Of Us don’t have to suffer having it imposed upon us.
It’s called democracy.
You write about “the scum rising to the top” in democratic societies. Voters in America have made it clear who they think “the scum” is – that is, who they feel is imposing their agenda, undemocratically, from “the top” – from positions of power in the judiciary and some NGOs.
The same awakening is now taking place in Israel – and will probably be the most lasting result of this summer’s events.
Ben-David,
Calling it democracy looks good, but there are democratic principles beyond the notion that the majority rules. You can take comfort with the vote counts from last year’s elections, but the rest of us will go on having a conversation. And the liberal boogeyman is a myth losing legs with each fudged statistic, each demonized interest group on the conservative echo-chamber hit list, and the conservative policies that depend on them are losing their glow in the wake of every broken promise. Surely, they have been able to Swift Boat their way to a great deal of success. But how far and for how long?
Ben-David: “People who win elections because their platform reflects widely held opinions are not ‘divisive’. On the contrary – their election victories indicate widespread public support and consent to be governed by such values and opinions.”
Except that when Andrea Mitchell refers to Senate Judiciary Committee requests for White House documents in a Supreme Court confirmation process as a “fishing expedition” (see Meet the Press transcripts from last Sunday), one can’t really claim that an honest exchange of ideas is taking place in the arena of our national conversation. Mrs. Greenspan is a fresh example of how a comfortably deregulated news business is not about to go and spoil a good thing by giving the status-quo’s opposition a fair hearing. Particularly not when the opposition party platform includes a reinstitution of the fairness doctrine, equal time provision and media ownership limits. It is simply not in the best interest of the news business to play this game on a level playing field.
In fact, the whole conservative agenda is a phony bill of goods. Just follow the crumbs from No Child Left Behind, Clear Skies, Healthy Forests, Operation Iraqi Freedom, etc.
In other words, the electorate turns out for a lofty ideal like “private initiative” and gets national parks overgrazed by private ranchers. And good luck getting that story into the arena of any national conversation with the likes of Mrs. Greenspan calling the shots, fades, pans and tilts. But, to paraphrase Lincoln, you can Swift Boat some of the people all of the time….
By the way, how did Justic Sunday II cement your so-called popular opinion in the national consensus?
Ben-David: “People who win elections because their platform reflects widely held opinions are not ‘divisive’. On the contrary – their election victories indicate widespread public support and consent to be governed by such values and opinions.”
http://www.comedycentral.com/s…
…you forgot to mention Bushitler!
Translation: Zionista has no answer, so s/he obfuscates with (typically leftie)puffery about how there are other things to democracy besides majority rule, and a typical leftie froth-at-the-mouth about various non-issues from the increasingly lurid loony liberal sideshow.
I wrote:
In democracies, we resolve differences of opinion by going with the majority. It’s not a perfect system – this is a thread about the Jews’ uncertain position even in a democracy, and the majority can embrace slavery, anti-Semitism, and other untrue/immoral stances – but it does guarantee that individuals and community are governed with their consent, and by their most widely accepted values.
– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –
If you can come up with a better summary of the democratic system, let me know…. and could you please enumerate the “principles” that are equally central to democracy that I’ve left out?
Zionista, I am convinced. The American Democratic party is a bastion of righteousness and UNITY. Now i see it. I’ve been so blind!
pardon the bluntness, but you’re whing about Republican “divisiveness” is a crock.