Purim: The Diaspora Mentality

 

“It can’t happen here.”  

“Come, let us wipe them out from among the nations so that the name of Israel will not be remembered.”

Psalm 83  

“So many Hamans, only one Purim.”

 

Once again Purim is upon us, a time of spring-fever hilarity and drunken silliness. The only holiday of the Jewish calendar when it is not only permitted, but practically commanded that we drink enough so that we do not know the difference between Mordecai, the hero, and Haman, the villain. And what’s not to celebrate? On the surface, Purim is another one of the quintessential Jewish holidays that can be summarized thus:
They tried to kill us. We won. Let’s eat.     

But scratch below the surface of the formula, and look again. Purim is antithetical to the joy of Pesach, when we rejoice in our liberation from slavery, and our obligation in every generation to understand that it was we, ourselves, who came forth from Egypt. Rather, Purim is more than slightly hysterical, as we read the Megillah and remember that in the Diaspora, the Eternal G-d of Israel is silent, hidden even in the face of our total annihilation.  Even the circumstance of our peril in Shushan was governed by the capriciousness associated with the false gods of the nations, the date of our destruction—13 Adar—being chosen by the casting of lots, called purim.  And the villains do not have the solemn power of a Pharaoh and his priests, ready to duel, gods against G-d, over the fate of Israel. A drunken king willing to mortgage away his kingdom for the price of a half-year long drinking party and his vain chancellor who struts and fusses his way to the destruction of the Jews of Persia; that’s what we get in this Diaspora tale of precarious redemption. And even that is not accomplished by the strong hand and mighty arm of the Eternal, full of power and glory. No, in our Diaspora redemption, the King is too weak to even rescind the death decree, but the Jews of Persia are granted a special dispensation to defend themselves against those commanded to destroy them.  

Purim is very much a Diaspora tale, and in the Megillah itself we see all of the stereotypical manifestations of what R. Soloveitchik calls “the galut (exile) mentality.” The tale could be pulled right out of a newspaper from Europe today, or any other place and time in which a highly assimilated and comfortable Diaspora Jewish community is suddenly made aware of how small, vulnerable and hated it really is.

Even the heroes are Diaspora heroes. When Hadassah is entered into the “Miss Shushan” contest to get the king a new queen, she goes with a less “Jewish”name, Esther, which means “hidden.” Her uncle, the Court Jew Mordecai, counsels her not to reveal her identity, so that she remains hidden in the court of the King. The attitude of the Jews of Shushan is also typically that of assimilated Jews of the Diaspora. As R. Irving Greenberg puts it, when Mordecai refuses to bow to Haman in the street:

“. . . they were confident they had nothing to do with ‘Mordecai the Jew’ types who would not go along with Persian rules. It was a rude awakening to discover that Haman designated all Jews as his target. Even more shocking was the discovery that the respectable [King] Ahashverosh, who would never kill Jews—some of his best friends were Jews—passed the ring to Haman without hesitation and was ready to stand by indifferently while the mass murder proceeded. The Jews of Shushan discovered the bitter lessons of the Diaspora: It can happen here, and we are one. (The Jewish Way).

When the destruction of the Jews of Shushan is announced, Esther and Mordecai’s responses are echoed down through the whole sorry history of Diaspora Jewry. Mordecai weeps, Esther decides that it is better not to stand out (“Shah! Be shtill!”), and the Jewish community is divided on the seriousness of the peril (“They don’t really mean it.” “This is the land of Schiller and Bach.”) It is only when Mordecai takes action, sending a message to Esther in which he says:

“Do not think that you alone of all the Jews, will escape into the King’s house; for if you remain silent at this time, relief and deliverance will come to the Jews from another place, and you and your father’s household will be destroyed. Who knows but that you have come into the King’s Household for just such a time as this?” (Esther 4: 13 – 14)

And so Esther does act, and deliverance comes because of her action. But her actions are not the confident and direct acts of a prophet like Moses, but the careful and hesitant self-abasement of a court Jew in the uncertainty of exile:

“If I have found favor in your eyes, O King, and if it pleases the King, let my life be given to me at my request and my people spared at my pleading . . . If only we had been sold to be slaves, I would have been silent for merely suffering bondage, I would not have wanted to cause damage to my king . . .” (Esther 7:3 – 4).

The hysterical hilarity of Purim is a celebration of the momentary relief of a people who know that evil has been averted but not destroyed; that the wheel is still in spin. Haman hangs today, and the Jews are saved, but tomorrow there could arise another son of Amalek--who embodies the pure, destructive will to annihilate the Jewish people—and genocide come upon them like a bolt out of the blue.

This Purim, as I drown out the name of Haman with a swing of the grogger, and eat my Hamantaschen accompanied by a nice Moscato, I also remember this about Amalek: he is the symbol of idolatry, the claim to an absolute power that is contradicted by the very existence of the Jew. As R. Greenberg puts it:

“Premature messianists. . . are angered by the persistence of the Jew who thereby gives the lie to their presumptions. Idolatry is tempted to make the Jew disappear and thereby clear the way for its own, uncontested dominance. The twentieth century has made the matter even clearer. Whosoever would be God must destroy the Jews totally. As long as one Jew is alive, the Jewish denial of all but God remains . . . the temptation to become God is overwhelming, therefore a plan to murder every last Jew becomes conceivable—and doable.” (The Jewish Way).

And I think about the rising unrest in the world, and the empty promises of Utopia that come from the right, the left, the Islamists, the trade unions, the political personality cultists, the Occupy movement and the idolater in the White House who said: “We are the ones we have been waiting for.” Is it no wonder, then, that we are seeing a rise in Jew-hatred all over the world, from Achmadinejad’s call to “wipe Israel off the map, to the Occupy Los Angeles teacher who wants all Jews expelled from the United States. SSDD.

And the Jews of the United States, confronted with a maniacal hatred of ourselves and our country, act just like the Jews of Shushan. So many liberal Jews refuse to see Obama’s hatred of Jews and Israel. So many libertarian Jews help Ron Paul sweep the overt anti-Semitism in his campaign under the rug. Jewish self-hatred abounds in the press, in the media. It is hard to understand. It seems crazy. It seems suicidal. It is irrational.

“Do not think that you alone of the Jews will escape into the King’s house—(the party, the movement, the collective) . . .

Utopia is an idol; beautiful at a distance, but corrupt and deadly close-up. And no matter how much the individual Jew might protest and argue that it is not he who contradicts assimilation, the collective, the perfection of human kind, Amalek sees his very existence as a threat, saying:

 

“Come, let us wipe them out from among the nations . . .”

So many Hamans. Only one Purim.

My Resignation from Campaign for Liberty Albuquerque

I am beating this horse long after it has expired, but I want a record of this letter on my blog. If you are "tired of people running to defend Israel all the time" as one of my correspondents complained, then skip this entry. I truly wish I did not have to write this Letter of Resignation. Unfortunately, the people in question could not admit that accusing Israel of stealing organs, and accusing American Jews of dual loyalty is not exactly calculated to win them friends and influence. So after a week of futile discussion, I sent them this:

Dear Members of Campaign for Liberty Albuquerque,

I have decided based on the e-mails that I have received in the past few weeks, e-mails which were also available on the world-wide web at the Albuquerque Campaign for Liberty Meet-Up, that I do not wish to be associated with Campaign for Liberty Albuquerque and will therefore be severing my relationship and support of Campaign for Liberty. I have stated my concerns to the membership of Campaign for Liberty, and have seen little evidence that they will be addressed. I have therefore decided to end my association with the group. This is entirely a personal decision based on my my experience that one or a few members of the group have an unreasonable attachment to attacking the state of Israel using some very old anti-Semitic accusations that will in the end deter the group from the goals originally stated.

I have said that ant-Semitic accusations have been sent out to the group through the official e-mail list. My concerns have been met with the statement that these e-mails are merely criticism of Israel and that I am advocating censorship and theocracy (?) by stating my concerns. Therefore, I do want to address the issue of anti-Semitism as opposed to criticism of Israel before I end my association.

Criticism of the State of Israel with respect to specific policies is not anti-Semitic, nor is criticism of the government of Israel or of specific politicians who develop and implement policy. All of this is behavior normal to polite and reasoned discourse. It is common to see such criticism within the newspapers published in Israel as well as in the United States. Neither is criticism of the role of the United States in providing support for or reaction against Israeli policy anti-Semitism. It is certainly not anti-Semitic to say--as I have said a great many times in many different forums--that the United States ought to withdraw all foreign aid, including aid to Israel.

However, the stuff that one individual put up on the Campaign for Liberty forum is not criticism of Israel. Rather it is the stuff of old European anti-Semitism as featured in the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, and predating that forgery, it goes back to the ancient and medieval periods in Europe. For example, the member in question accuses the State of Israel of stealing the organs of Palestinian corpses as a matter of policy. This is the blood libel. The only difference in this formulation, is that it is Israel that stand in by proxy for the Jewish people. The source of much of such accusations is the propaganda of Hamas, Hezbollah and other Islamist terrorist organizations, and goes back to the alliance of the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem with Nazi Germany. In the Arabic press, those sources do not differentiate between Israel and Jews, and indeed accuse the Jewish people as a whole of this updated version of the blood libel. In the English versions they simply replace the word for Jew with the word for Israel. In this new form of anti-Semitism, Israel stands in as a proxy for Jews. This kind of unreasoned accusation against the Jewish people as Jews has a long historical record; one that the member is likely ignorant of though he accepts it without question when the accusation supports his prejudices.

The statement that support of Israel is treason to the United States comes from an accusation of Jewish dual loyalty that goes back into European history to long before the United States existed. It was made by the Nazis and their ally the Grand Mufti. It is the same accusation made in the Dreyfuss Affair, and it was the reason that Jews in Russia were deprived of their rights and interred in the Pale of Settlement. In medieval times, it was the reason that Jews were kept in ghettos, and were forced outside the regular medieval hierarchy of peasant-landed gentry-noble-king. The accusation goes back further to the Christian Code of Justinian, and before that to the various conquerers of the ancient world. For those of you who read the Bible, this same notion goes back to Exodus:

"Now a new king arose in Egypt who did not know Joseph. He said to his people: Behold! The people of the sons of Israel are mightier and more numerous than we. Come let us deal wisely with them, or else they will multiply and join themselves with those that hate us, and fight against us . . ." (Exodus 1:8-10)

Both accusations leveled on the e-mail list and at the forum are very old anti-Semitic tropes that have been recast as the same kind of blanket accusations against the Jewish State and its citizens. They are part of a larger effort to delegitimize the State of Israel, which is demonized by anti-Semites in the same way that they once demonized the Jewish people as a whole. The purpose of these accusations is to make the case that Israel should not exist and should be destroyed because it is the Jewish State. No other country has its very existence threatened in this way, even those that burn widows alive on the funeral pyres of their deceased husbands or those that stone women accused of adultery. Those are the predictable actions of real theocracies. Israel, which is imperfect as is any human institution, is not a theocracy. It is a democracy with a demonstrated record of law that supports the rights of its citizens. Oddly enough the states from which such accusations arise are theocracies, or wish to become one.

That this is not criticism of policy is obvious from the fact that no evidence is presented to the truth of these accusations, and that no reputable journalist has ever published any such story duly backed up with evidence in a well-referenced article, even in those publications that are generally critical of Israel.

Criticism of policy does not include blanket statements such as "support for Israel is treason to the United States", which automatically makes traitors of nearly every American Jew, regardless of his or her stance on specific issues. Legitimate critical concern about policy does not include "big lies" that are repeated over and over in order to get people to believe them. Criticism ends where reflexive blame of Israel for everything bad that happens in the world begins. That is not criticism it is demonization. And the very form that this demonization takes comes from the same untrue and sensational accusations made against Jews from time immemorial. It is a far greater insult than criticism to deny Israel the same right to self-defense as it routinely understood to be the right of every other country.

I do not wish to be associated with an organization that tolerates such behavior. There is a difference between censorship (of which I have been accused) and the censure of a statement that not only detracts from the purpose of the organization, that bespeaks a terrible prejudice, and that supports the notion of collective responsibility, but which is also entirely a lie.

I do not believe that Ron Paul sanctions such notions, and I do not think he knows of this cancer eating away at the heart of the organizations that support him.There is a great difference between the principled libertarian stance that opposes the confiscation of money from the citizens of the United States for purposes other than those outlined in the Constitution, as opposed to casting all blame on Israel for all problems created by foreign aid to multiple countries by way of the decisions made by the Congress and tolerated by Americans. There is a difference between imagining how an interventionist foreign policy might create conditions for the 9-11 murder of American civilians, and excusing the murderers by blaming the victims. However, so long as such behavior is tolerated on forums dedicated to Dr. Paul's presidential campaign, I believe that he will not have a snowball's chance in hell of even getting into the debates, let alone getting his name on the general election ballot. He will inevitably be inaccurately tarred with the same brush that accurately describes some of his supporters.

For these reasons, I choose not to put my time and effort into a group that has, with the exception of a few individuals, acquiesced to the statement of an ideology marked by the demonization of Israel, and has tolerated anti-Semitism by proxy through that demonization. I cannot imagine supporting a candidate for president whose followers support such statements. Accordingly, in order to protect my name from association with these ideas tolerated on the New Mexico Campaign for Liberty, I have made my stance clear on my web-log, and I am informing my other friends and associates in the various liberty organizations of my decision and the reasons for it by including them in the address lines of this e-mail. I have also sent an inquiry to the national Campaign for Liberty asking whether they, as a matter of policy, support such statements in order to determine whether to further support the organization at the level. I have also sent such a question to the Ron Paul people, for the same reason.

Elisheva Levin

Questions? Concerns? Complaints? Comments are open.

Mixed Premises: Glenn Beck, Collective Guilt and "the Jews"

Norma Rae:You a Jew?
Reuben Warshawsky: Beg your pardon?
Norma Rae: Are you a Jew?
Reuben Warshawsky: Born and bred.
Norma Rae: I never met a Jew before.
Reuben Warshawsky: How ya doin'? . . .
Norma Rae: Well, what makes you different?
Reuben Warshawsky: History.

(From the Movie Norma Rae, 1979)

History. That is what defines the difference between how a Jew--however secular--thinks about anti-semitic statements and how a non-Jew thinks about them. History. That is why many non-Jews are mystified by what Jews consider to be anti-semitic. It's history. The history of European Jewry that even American Jews seem to carry in their DNA and the history that Americans thankfully have not experience and know nothing about.

This difference in understanding is exempified by the popular radio talk-show host Glenn Beck, and his TV Christian testimony, and a crucial remark that probably seemed innocuous to him, but was disturbing to his Jewish listeners. In the interest of full disclosure, I do listen to Glenn Beck frequently. I am not crazy about his current revivalist mood, and I am not interested in his religious opinions, but I do admire his ability to make connections that are not obvious, and from them to discuss what is happening to the Constitution of the United States. I often agree with his assessment of the people and the actions that are making the news but my definition of the terms and my reasoning is very different from Beck's because his morality is definitively collectivist and Christian and mine is definitively individualist and rational. And yet, being a Jew and knowing the history, I shuddered at his remark.

On his Tuesday July 13, 2010 TV show, Beck dicussed the issue of collective salvation as presented by Black Liberation Theology. Part of the connection between liberation theology and Marxism is the idea that salvation is not individual, nor can it be attained by individual choice, rather it is collective, and therefore the initiation of force against individuals in order to "save" them can be morally justified. In liberation theology in general, Jesus is identified as the ultimate victim, and thus only victims have spiritual value and are among the elect. They, in turn, by forcing the oppressors ( usually identified as white, male, or wealthy) to "give back what they took", can save them as well. Since this salvation is collective, one does not have to be among the actual oppressed to be saved, rather one merely has to belong to some "oppressed" class or group as identified by those who promulgate this idea. (Jews, though certainly oppressed for millennia, never make the collectivist cut).

The problem is that such an idea also assigns collective responsibility over generations, and promotes the notion of collective punishment. There is no place for the individual moral choices that promote life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. The "oppressed" are good by definition, and the "oppressors" are evil by definition, regardless of the actual actions of individuals so defined. This kind of collectivist morality has always led to mass torture and murder of the second group by the first.

In the segment of Glenn Beck's TV show on Fox News that is in question, Beck first plays a video of the founder of Black Liberation Theology, James Cone. (Full segment is available at JIDF. I do not agree with JIDF's politics nor their assessment of the Glenn Beck remark). Glenn Beck's full response to Cone deals with the Christian theology of the atonement by the crucifixion of Jesus.

Note: Jews DO NOT agree with the doctrine of original sin that was posited by the early Christians in order to explain the need for the crucifixion. Judaism teaches that the presence of human beings on the earth is very good -- tov meod--and that human beings are endowed with free will, which means that each person must make choices and it is the nature of those choices that determine whether he is good or evil. This is a religious expression of individual responsibility. This idea evolved over time within the Israelite religion, and became normative in very early Rabbinic Judaism.

In his response to Cone, while discussing the Christian doctrine of the cross, Beck begins by saying:

"This is kind of complex, because Jesus did identify with the victims. But Jesus was not a victim. He was a conqueror...Jesus conquered death. He wasn't victimized. He chose to give his life....If he was a victim, and this theology was true, then Jesus would've come back from the dead and made the Jews pay for what they did. That's an abomination." (The Glenn Beck Show, Tuesday, July 13, 2010--at approximately 6 minutes into the segment. Emphasis mine).

Here is a video of this crucial statement. It is in its own context, and can be understood just from this clip:

The last few words of this statement indicate not what liberation theology says about Jesus and the Jews, but what Glenn Beck appears to believe about the crucifixion of Jesus and the Jews: that "the Jews" were indeed responsible for the crucifixion of Jesus. For him, it is not a matter of the responsibility of some people or some Jews, but it is the responsibility of "the Jews." The use of the collective noun "the Jews" is an assignment of collective responsibility. Beck did not continue this line of reasoning, but rather went on to discuss the difference between Black Liberation Theology and normative Christian theology regarding the blood atonement of Jesus' death. His offhand remark about what "they [the Jews] did" was never clarified. And although at this point it is possible to imagine that since this was not Beck's main point, he did not choose his words carefully, that is not how many Jews took it.

To many, many Jews--the liberal, the conservative, the libertarian--the remark made it difficult if not impossible to listen any further to what Beck had to say. I am one of them. The reason for this? History.

The charge of Deicide--the crime of killing a god--was first leveled at Jews by the fathers of the early Church, and was made more explicit following Constantine. The code of Justinian imposed legal handicaps and penalties for this "crime" collectively on the Jews of the Roman empire nearly five centuries after the death of Jesus, which indicates that these Christian theologians and leaders thought that the collective responsibility is borne by Jews across the generations. Augustine wrote that Jews must be made miserable forever for this "crime." The Anti-Defamation League of B'nei B'rith (ADL) characterizes the charge of deicide as one of the four big lies about Jews that have caused the most persecution of our people down through the centuries. Good Friday was generally 'Bad Friday" for the Jews of Europe, as Christians of various denominations attended church and learned every year that the Jews are eternally responsible for the suffering and death of Jesus. The Catholic Church approved the following prayer for the "perfidious Jews" as part of the Tridentine Good Friday Service until 1955:

"Let us pray also for the perfidious Jews: that Almighty God may remove the veil from their hearts; so that they too may acknowledge Jesus Christ our Lord. ('Amen' is not responded, nor is said 'Let us pray', or 'Let us kneel', or 'Arise', but immediately is said:) Almighty and eternal God, who dost not exclude from thy mercy even Jewish faithlessness: hear our prayers, which we offer for the blindness of that people; that acknowledging the light of thy Truth, which is Christ, they may be delivered from their darkness."

Such prayers, as well as the reading of the Passion, in which "the Jews" call for the death of Jesus, were not likely to inspire in the hearts of the Christian faithful any charity for their Jewish neighbors, and in fact many instances of the destruction of Jewish life and property occurred following Good Friday services across Christian Europe over the centuries.

Knowing this history in all the gory details means that Jews really hear what is being said even in passing, and apply to it all of the background that is the persistence of memory.

American Christians, who are generally ignorant of this history because it did not happen here--thanks to the wisdom of our Founders--do not hear it, they do not get it.

And Beck does not get it either. On his Friday radio program, Beck reacted to the accusations in the press and on blogs that he had made an antisemitic remark by reiterating the issue of liberation theology's doctrine of the atonement, saying that according to that heresy, Jesus' death did nothing salvific and that the empty tomb means nothing, because it is the "oppressed" who are the collective messiah, and their actions to take back from the "oppressors" what is theirs by force is what achieves salvation. ( BTW: Beck is NOT wrong here. This is an accurate summary of liberation theology). Then he goes on to say:

Beck: "What does the press report? That I said that Jesus had to come back and 'get them Jews.'

No! I'm saying that in a perverted world, in a perverted gospel that's exactly--'Glenn Beck says that the Jews killed Jesus! It was the Romans that killed Jesus!' Pat? . . ."

Pat Gray: (giggling) "Well, technically the Romans--"

Beck: "Yes!"

Pat Gray: "--carried out the will of the Great Sanhedrin--the Jews--wanted him executed--"

Beck: "Now does that make me--all of a sudden--anti-Jewish?"

Pat Gray: "No!"

Beck: "That's what they're gonna say!"

Pat Gray: "That's ridiculous ...It's ridiculous that ..."

Beck: "That's what they're gonna say . . .There's no one more pro-Israel and more pro-Jew than I am! I can't take it anymore! The lies! The bearing of false witness. Here's the truth. From Barack Obama, from Jim Wallace, from Van Jones--I'm going to play audio for you today that should shake you to your core. THIS IS the reason why they are doing these things. . .we found their manifesto and I swear to you this is the real thing. This is their plan . . . but above that is this perversion of religion, this perversion of the Gospel of Jesus Christ . . .that's what it is--that there's collective salvation and they'll FORCE you into it. I'll give you that in just a second . . .

(Transcribed by me).

It is clear here that Glenn Beck believes that those accusing him of anti-semitism are doing so because he has attacked the social gospel, liberation theology and collective salvation. And this is true of some of the people attacking him. They are latching onto the statement "the Jews wanted him [Jesus] executed" and "Jesus would've come back from the dead and made the Jews pay for what they did" in order to focus their readers/viewers attention on these collective phrases--"the Jews", "the Jews", "what they did"--rather than on the larger argument that Glenn is making, which is that the doctrine of collective salvation perverts the individual nature of salvation according to normative Christianity. Glenn therefore continues this discussion by getting an evangelical preacher of some note to preach the normative version later on the same program.

BUT . . . that is not what many Jews who hear this are objecting to at all. Speaking for myself as a Jew (with the understanding that a great many Jews would say the same), I could not care less about the Christian doctrine of salvation by the blood atonement of Jesus. I do get that liberation theology is collectivist--and therefore evil--but I also hear those ugly accusations of collective responsibility for the death of Jesus hurled at my people. I hear: "what they [the Jews] did" and "the Jews wanted him executed." And I know from the bloody history of Christian Europe exactly where those charges lead.

When Glenn Beck argues that the Nazis and the Communists preached collective salvation and collective responsibility, he is being accurate. And when he argues that collectivism leads to the deaths of millions he is absolutely right. Because collectivists teach that there is some universal common "good" that trumps the good defined by each individual, they thereby justify forcing the individual to sacrifice for the "good of the collective." Beck condemns collectivism when it comes from the left, from the social gospel and from James Cone. But out of the other side of his mouth, he is unconsciously assigning collective responsiblity to a whole people over two millennia. Apparently, collectivism is not evil when used in the service of Christianity.

And this is the problem with much of the "religious right." They don't even hear the words they are using--words that are painfully obvious to a Jewish ear--words that preach their own brand of collectivism.

It is clear from this that Glenn Beck's worldview is founded on mixed premises. The assignment of collective responsibility and collective punishment is wrong when black liberationists want to take his property in order to "save" him, but when assigning collective responsibility to "the Jews" for the death of Jesus, it must be right--and he cannot be an antisemite--because this is what his religion has taught him from the cradle. He is so unconscious of this glaring contradiction that he cannot question it, nor can he apply his avowed principle--that collectivism is evil--universally to his conclusions. Many of the people on the left, or in the liberationist churches, have the same philosophical problem he has, though they are arguing from the opposite horn of the dilemma. That dilemma is created by the unquestioning adherence to a religious doctrine that has been handed down by tradition--an ugly tradition that has created even uglier results--crusades, pograms, holocaust.

I agree with Beck that collectivism is wrong; the difference between us is that I know that it is evil because it always removes the rights and responsiblilities of individuals, and it removes choice and consequence from human interaction. It ignores the very nature of the human being as an autonomous individual. The use of the concept of collective salvation must always create the role of the annointed--whether they are called "the oppressed", "the proletariat" or "the Christians"--and with it, the role of the damned--whether they be the "oppressors", the "bourgeoise", or "the Jews"--and these assignments are always made on the basis of the class variable--that is what group the person 'belongs to', not by the free association of individuals, but by the arbritrary association of birth. The notion of collective salvation must always come with the notions of collective responsiblity and collective punishment. Whether it is claimed in the name of a god or government, collectivism is always evil.

Beck preaches principles. Here is the principle that he is not applying consistently. That each human being is an individual who by his very nature has the right to life, liberty, and property. That each individual has the ability and the obligation of free will--that he can and must choose between right and wrong--and that each individual is responsible for the outcomes of those choices.

As I have said above, I believe from what Beck has said that he is unconscious of the contradiction between his political and religious beliefs. He appears to be unaware that he denies collective salvation as preached by liberation theology while simultaneously assigning collective responsibility to "the Jews." He does not even hear what he is saying, he does not catch it because it is so "obvious" to him, and he does not really know the bloody history of that particular collectivist notion.

I therefore wish for him the realization of the quote he loves from Jefferson:

"Question with boldness even the existence of a god; because if there be one he must approve the homage of reason more than that of blindfolded fear."

Edited once for typos, incomplete cut-pastes, and clarity.