Irrational Patriotism and the Freedom of Association: The Case Against New Mexico Campaign for Liberty

Being libertarian and Jewish while being active in the Patriot Movement is interesting and sometimes maddening. Most of the people I encounter within it are conservative, and although we disagree on certain fundamental principles, they are rational in their approach to news and events. We may understand them differently, and often I find myself taking the more radical stand. For example, they oppose illegal immigration and support the Arizona law, whereas I oppose the welfare state and the war on drugs that make free movement across the border a problem. In this case, we both know that there is an invasion going on across our southern border, and we both know that the lives, liberty and property of Americans living near the border are threatened, but we respond to that knowledge from somewhat different perspectives. As a libertarian, I see the source of the problem differently, precisely because I do not accept the notion that the government has any business regulating drugs or "spreading the wealth around." However, we can talk with one another, attempt to bridge differences, and work together on our mutual goal: to restore the Constitution of the United States.

But just as there is a wing nut fringe on the left--those who tell us that Mao is a philosopher and equal to Mother Teresa in charity and those who believe that Hugo Chavez is a statesman--so there are wing nuts operating on the fringe of the patriot movement. They are far from the majority, and unlike the wing-nuts on the left who seem to surround the president of the United States these days, they have no power, except that of chasing reasonable people away from patriot groups. They are often the people who end up creating the conditions for small groups to engage in infighting and to finally fall apart from lack of participation.

My latest experience in this regard:

I have supported Campaign for Liberty for over a year, and I have supported Ron Paul as one of the few principled members of Congress, and for his primarily constitutional stances on many issues. However, I do reserve the right to disagree, as we all should, based on differences with respect to issues. In that time I have noticed the acceptance of a kind of post-modernism among many of Ron Paul's young followers, that is combined with what appears to be a deliberate illiteracy and a terrible ignorance of history and the values of Western culture. This leads to an uncritical acceptance without reason of whatever new conspiracy theory* happens to hit the internet. Sometimes these theories have a kernel of truth, but have been generalized to such an extent that they become meaningless.

* NOTE: I am using the term "conspiracy theory" in the neutral sense rather than the pejorative sense. That is, I accept that there are conspiracies in the world, and that people really do gather together to secretly plan and accomplish illegal and immoral actions. However, a conspiracy theory is a claim, not a fact, until it is substantiated with evidence. Although conspiracies do happen, and at every level, every bad thing that happens in the world is not necessarily a conspiracy, there is room for human error and folly in history.

Further, this generalization leads to a stance of powerlessness in the face of this conspiracy theorizing that is a type of conspiracism, which is the tendency to accept that everything bad that happens in the world has been engineered by the ubiquitous "they" who have god-like powers and have so brainwashed humanity that they control every decision made by every person on earth. Thus, it becomes acceptable to sit and complain, but it also becomes unnecessary to actually develop solutions or to do anything about the problem--whatever it is--because "they" are in control.

Twisting together threads involving an international banking conspiracy (which has a basis in truth but has been over-generalized), and the old myth of a Jewish conspiracy to take over the world (which has no truth), some of Ron Paul's young supporters have uncritically bought into a particularly ugly form of anti-Semitism that hails from the left. They have learned that making anti-Semitic statements outright is frowned upon by most Americans, but that by couching their anti-Semitic sentiments as criticism of Israel, they can claim the moral high ground, and turn and accuse those who point out that the demonization and delegitimation of Israel is anti-Semitic of "censoring" their "criticism" of Israel.

Sometimes I think that these young Ron Paul supporters are not only illiterate with respect to history, but that they are also illiterate with respect to vocabulary, and mistake the term "censor" for the term "censure". There is a difference. But more to the point, without any sense of time or history--which was robbed from them by their post-modernist education--these young people are cannon fodder for any demagogue that begins by claiming to be a champion of liberty and freedom. Ron Paul is a legitimate champion of liberty. He is not a demagogue. But when an historically innocent young person enters the heady waters of the Ron Paul pages, message boards, blogs and discussion groups, his uncritical desire to appear smart in the new milieu is ripe for the demagogic sharks that inhabit the dark waters at the edge of the reef. It is a kind of modern gnosticism.

This is exactly what is happening with the local Ron Paul group, called Campaign for Liberty New Mexico. One person has gotten control of the message boards at the New Mexico Campaign for Liberty Meet-Up group. He has done so by re-posting lurid, over-the-top "criticism" of Israel, much of which would set off the alarm bells of a critical reader. These re-posts come from the kinds of internet sources that have replaced the yellow journalism and propaganda rags of the first Progressive Era in the early 1900's.

For example, a few weeks ago he re-posted an article that claimed that Israel has been caught red-handed stealing organs from Palestinian corpses for the purpose of selling them in the illegal organ trade. That this is irrational from a medical standpoint is the least of it; the article supports a clearly modern form of the blood libel, and can be traced to the standard Palestinian blood libel claim that Jews are ritually murdering Palestinian children to put their blood in the Passover Matzot. (Never mind that the only ritual murders that are proven have been done by Islamists who have slit the throats of Jews like Danny Pearl in some sort of bizarre human sacrifice while shouting "Allahu akbar!" for the You Tube cameras. I guess the point of demonization is to accuse your enemy of your own darkest acts).

At that point, I wrote to this young man asking to be removed from his e-mail list. I had received the post by e-mail and had not realized that the 'announcements' were going out via the Meet-Up Group.

A week or so later, I received another post from this young man, entitled "Support for Israel is Treason!!!!" (multiple exclamation points in the original). Again linking to some Alex-Jones-type breathlessly yellow journalism, he wrote a page-long one paragraph screed complete with the capitalization, multiple exclamation points, bad-grammar and misspelled words that I have come to expect from these young and illiterate intellectual wanna-be's.

Unfortunately, I took the bait and tried to appeal to the reasonable people who might be reading this stuff. I wrote the usual rational arguments and was promptly accused of attempting the censor ideas on the website. This was clearly false since there was barely an idea present in the mishmash of unfounded rumor and over-the-top emotionalism in the post and in the response to my response. When I saw that on the e-mail responses, this young man was being lauded by a few supporters as a visionary patriot, I did some further research. I checked out the on-line message board at the Campaign for Liberty New Mexico Meet-up site. And there I saw that there were some healthy discussions about other topics posted by other members. However, this young man's posts rarely had any responses--it's hard to respond to such irrationality effectively--and that further his new topics were almost all intended to demonize Israel.

What had happened was that this young man had effectively stopped any censure of his views and stopped any argument or any censure of the nature of his posts by effectively using the argument that he was being "censored" for criticizing Israel. Those who lauded him responded, and everyone else apparently did not want to even be associated with such arguments. Further, this young man has put himself up as the next leader of the group through an emotional campaign of screeds against the current group leader, and is likely to become the leader of the group. Whereby he will continue the kind of ranting and emotional demagoguery until the group becomes an ineffective splinter, unable to campaign effectively for Ron Paul because it has become associated with irrational attacks on anyone who doesn't buy the latest conspiracy theory, or who refuses to be associated with demonization of Israel--this guy's pet theory.

I am certainly among those who refuses to be associated with this back-door anti-Semitism. I am well aware of what it is and where it will lead. I have--like the naive scholar that I am--futilely tried to point out the inevitable splintering and the inevitable end that will follow, as this young man and his few followers become more and more isolated until there is nothing left of the original group or its mission. Of course, I have played right into the hands of the demagogue, who has in turn accused me of being part of the world-wide Jewish conspiracy that is trying to silence him because he has the rare truth that Israel is the point of that conspiracy. There is no reason in it, and a rational person will do what I have done. I have disassociated myself with this group not only because I am a Jew, but because I do not want my good name ruined by association with such irrationality.


Unfortunately, this kind of thing drives the splintering of patriot groups often enough that the whole of the movement can be easily tarred with the same brush, rendering the vast majority of patriot positions invisible. It is a problem. It allows the same kind of demonization of the patriots out there that has been done against Israel. It can be used by the progressives and the left to divide and conquer, should we allow such people as the young man I described above to speak for us. And we will be admonished to do so by people who worship at the altar of unity. But unity for the sake of unity is a false god; it has no power. The power to accomplish our goal comes from the Principles of Liberty.

Those of us who want to be successful in the restoration of the Constitution must focus on these principles. That all men are endowed by their Creator with unalienable rights. That among them are the rights to life, liberty and property. That governments are instituted by the individuals in order to protect those rights.

Those of us who want to be successful must also disassociate ourselves with anyone who promotes unfounded conspiracies, and who participates in the demonization of any person or group. Such behavior takes us off the path and promotes endless internal debate that does not rise to the level of reasoned argument. It can't, being essentially irrational in its very nature. The danger of this particular time is to be carried off track and to fall spectacularly from the heights of principle to the depths of populism and demagoguery. We must not do it. We cannot stop it happening at the fringes, but we cannot buy into it or allow it to destroy the essence of the cause of liberty.

What will happen to the Ron Paul R3volution itself is not our concern. I think elections, although important to slowing down the destruction of our liberty, are not the fundamental answer to the problem. Further, Ron Paul sparked the enthusiasm of many young people for liberty. He cured the apathy of many libertarians, like me, who had given up on seeing liberty restored in our own day. But he also inspired true believers who, in their their terrible ignorance and adulation will do what true believers tend to do, and accept any claim associated with him uncritically. And they will turn on him when he disappoints their sanctification of a mere mortal by acting rationally. Indeed, many have done so already, disappointed that he ended his 2008 campaign when it became clear that he was not going to even place in the primaries.

For myself, the way is clear. I cannot be associated with Campaign for Liberty New Mexico. And I need to do a little research to see where Campaign for Liberty national stands on these questions. If there is any hint of anti-Semitism by proxy, or the uncritical support of other such demonization, then I cannot be associated with it either. I will withdraw my support, no matter how good the strategy or how strong the group appears to be.

My grandma Fran used to say to me: "Show me your friends, I'll show you your future." And as an adult I appreciated her down-to-earth wisdom. I have applied it to examining the associations of politicians, and that is ultimately why I do not trust the current President of the United States to support my liberty. He surrounds himself with outright communists and revolutionaries, with admirers of murderers like Mao.

I cannot be friends with anti-Semites--even those who substitute Israel in order to prevaricate upon their actual sentiments. And I understand now what it means to say so. Although I value the right of anyone to have his say, I do not value indiscriminate acceptance of what he says. I simply cannot be associated with unreason that is likely to lead nowhere good. I cannot befriend anti-Semites. To do so would be a suicidal denial of the value of my own identity and being.

"Choose life," we are commanded. "That you and your children might live."

About Lily: A Difficult Decision

During the past few days I spent my 15 minute writing period discussing Lily, her behavior problems, how they have intensified over the past 6 months, and the difficult decisions that must be made about this situation. Dr. Nichol was, in the end, very frank about the stark choice that we face. He was quite clear that if we decide to keep Lily in the household, we would never be able to let our guard down regarding her for the rest of her life, even if we use medications and behavior modification, spending thousands--primarily on the training--she will remain untrustworthy. The only option to removing her from our household is euthanasia. Or as we used to say in those days when the Engineering Geek and I were growing up, putting the dog down. And the decision remains ours. He did not tell us what to do.

From the outside it looks like an easy decision: the dog is displaying more and more fear-based aggression, and the target is generally Shayna, the low dog on the totem pole, the dog who is generally quiet and shy. The obvious thing to do is to put the difficult dog down and to let the shy and quiet dog blossom. Except. . . except that such black and white pictures of the two different canine temperaments happens only in mediocre novels and B-movies.

Although Lily has indeed been showing more and more incidents of aggression towards Shayna, she is still a sweet and obedient dog with us, and is a pleasure to have around most of the time. Since consulting our very capable trainer, Casey, we have instituted a program of home training and she not only has learned to sit, stay, and down-stay, but she is beginning to come when she is called. She is affectionate, and she enjoys Umbrae's company much of the day in the dog run without incident. All of this makes it very difficult to contemplate putting a healthy dog down.

And Shayna's shyness is not all sweetness and light. It has the dark side of fear to it. Shayna will snap if she is cornered by a person, especially a large male person. She never makes contact, and the snarl and snap are a warning: "Look at these teeth and leave me alone!" If she is not cornered, her MO is to run to her "office" (her crate) and hide. She is very reactive to loud noises--pots and pans banging, a door slamming in the wind--and she is absolutely melded to her routine. Although all dogs are creatures of routine, Shayna gets physically ill when it is changed. Shayna can be said to be on sensory overload a good deal of the time, and she manages her anxiety with routine. She, too, will likely need a course of anti-anxiety medications and has already begun training--the beginning of her behavior modification.

By now, the gentle reader may be wondering why it is Lily's behavior and not Shayna's that has created the need for the decision that we are about to make. The difference lies in the nature of the behavior problem. Although both dogs are reactive, Lily's reaction consists of an all-out attack. Further, she has not only attacked and physically injured dogs, she goes after strangers and has come close to injuring people. And that is a line that cannot be allowed to be crossed. Although during the current escalation of aggression, Lily has only attacked other dogs, this must not be construed to mean that it will always be so. Lily cannot be trusted with other people. Ever.

It is also a grave concern that Lily attacked and injured Shayna in the dog run, when we were not there. Usually dogs do not fight when alone. When they fight--which is more common among females*--they tend to fight over resources. Food. The dog bed. Attention. And a person can generally end the fight by walking away. That she attacked when we were not there is very abnormal behavior and is impossible to predict or prevent except by keeping the two dogs completely separate. Forever.

*Female-upon-female fighting is very common. Male-upon-male is a distant second. And male-upon-female almost never happens. Had I known this, the make-up of the canine side of the household would have been different.

These are the reasons that the decision must be made about Lily and not about Shayna.

As is true with most difficult decisions, this one has moral implications. It is generally the moral import of a decision that makes it difficult. Choices that are about pure preference are seldom difficult. We go with what we like. Chocolate or vanilla? Cake or pie? There is no moral dimension to such a decision, as as human beings become practiced choosing our preferences, we make such choices without much thought.

But a decision that involves life and death, even that of an animal, has a moral dimension. It is not the same moral dimension as such a decision about a human being. That is entirely separate. Animals--even animals as sophisticated in social structure and the ability to make decisions as a dog is--are not moral souls. They do not make a conscious choice between good and evil, right and wrong. Rather they make decisions based more on instinct, and are hard-wired to act in favor of survival. And an animal is not conscious of its own death in the future. Dogs, like most other mammals live in the moment. (Dogs are aware of the difference between a living animal and a dead one, but they do not generalize it). That consciousness of impending death is what makes the human a moral being; the myth of the tree in the garden is a story about becoming conscious of mortality and thereby acquiring the need for morality.

Because she is a dog, Lily will not be aware of her impending death--should that be our decision--even when we go to put her down. We will make sure that her passing is unanticipated and painless. A walk in the meadow. A ride in the car. Going out to the garden at the Vet. That is all she will know until she knows no more.

But we are aware of it. And so the factors of our decision include important questions. When is it proper to destroy the life of an animal? Is it ever proper to spend thousands upon thousands of dollars on uncertain treatments for a dog, when a limited amount of discretionary wealth inevitably means that humans in the family will have to choose to do without certain wants, and even needs?

What about Lily? Is she ever really relaxed? Does her anxiety overwhelm the good life for her? What does it do to her brain to go repeatedly into that out-of-control place?

And, of very great importance, what about the threat of pain and suffering to another human being that Lily poses? As much as we'd like to believe that we can keep Lily from encountering another person and harming him or her, there is always chance. Dogs escape. In the confusion of comings and goings, they see the open door and the beckoning world and out they go. Lily was on a leash and slipped her collar and ran toward the neighbor dogs that she bit; they were minding their own business on their own property. She could do the same to a human being should she go into that "red zone" and get loose.

In my moral calculus, a human being's welfare is more important than the life of a dog--even a dog I love. This is so because I am obligated to respect the rights of another person, and also because I can only imagine the pain and fear caused to another person who is attacked by a dog. A dog for whom I am responsible, and whom I cannot cure.

And of course, every attack by a dog on a person creates problems for neighbors, dogs and dog-owners everywhere. Whole breeds of dogs are collectively held responsible for the irresponsible behavior of a dog owner who willfully or inattentively lets a dog harm a person. Dog owners find their lives more and more restricted, no matter how responsible they are and how good their dogs are. It tears the social fabric, making for strife between neighbors, anger and fear, and inevitably guilt and shame for the responsible dog owner. Can I keep a dog that is clearly becoming more aggressive, one that I have been warned can never be trusted, and take the risk of creating such chaos?

These are the questions that must be answered. The nature of the questions themselves predict for me the inevitible conclusion. A little time must be taken in order that every human being in the household has the opportunity to ask these questions and prepare themselves for the consequences of the decision that must be made.

A little time. But not so much time that a decision is never made. Not so much that the decision is taken out of our hands by events. A mensch--a real human being--does not let events determine her morality. This idea has been a long time coming to me, even though it seems so simple. I was raised in chaos. I did not learn until late that what I do matters. It has an effect upon the world. In fact, the home(s) or origin for both our problem dogs probably mirrored mine in that important way. But I am a human being and I can learn to be a mensch, and I am obligated to make decisions based upon my ability to think about the future and to make conscious choices. And so, too, with the other humans in the house.

This is not an easy decision. But then, life was not meant to be easy. Life was meant to be life. And it is in the wholeness of life and in the nature of a human being to make such decisions.

Libertarian Ethics: Natural Law and Natural Rights

"If it is said that moral conduct is rational conduct,

what is meant is that it is conduct in accordance

with right reason, reason apprehending the objective good

for man and dictating the means to its attainment."

--F.C. Copleston, SJ: Aquinas (1955)

The principle of individual liberty was established during the Enlightenment by philsophers and was based on the concept of natural law. This concept of liberty is not commonly taught in government schools in a way that elucidates its philosophical origin and the importance thereof; rather liberty and the rights of man are taught as an interesting but somewhat quaint idea produced wholesale by those white men in whigs, the founders of the Republic. This is so because the educational philosophy of government schools is based on unreason; specifically upon the post-modern positivist idea that reality cannot be measured and that values are determined subjectively by each individual based on emotion rather than reason*.

*This is the philosophical legacy of David Hume.

Natural law, however, is based on the idea that a human being, like any other thing in the universe, has an identity that is differentiated from any other thing; that is that humans have a definible nature that differentiates them from anything else, and that human nature is measurable. Thus, for human beings, natural law is used to determine what ends are compatible with the facts of human existence and values are therefore objective. Or as William Blackstone described the natural law as:

" . . . demonstrating that this or that action tends to man's real happiness, and therefore very justly concluding that the performance of it is a part of the law of nature; or, on the other hand, that this or that action is destruction [sic] of man's real happiness, and therefore that the law of nature forbids it." Blackstone's Commentaries on the Laws of England, Vol. I, as cited in Brendan F. Brown (ed.), The Natural Law Reader, p. 106.

Although the Scholastics who developed the concept of natural law believed in a supernatural being, they nevertheless established the natural law upon human reason alone. Currently, therefore, the concept of natural law is opposed by many conservatives who argue that the origin of ethics must come from supernatural revelation (which takes them beyond human reach*); it is also opposed by skeptics who argue that ethics can only be ascertained by human beings subjectively, from emotion (which makes them relative).

*As a Jew, I am opposed to this view. the Rabbinic view is that the law "is not in heaven" based on the Torah portion Nitzavim, which says: "It is not in heaven that you should say who will go after it and bring it to us . . . nay, it is very near to you that you may do it." Thus the Rabbis set up a system whereby they could argue that precepts must be based on human nature and norms.

Because natural law can be determined by reason, it provides an objective standard by which traditional norms can be held accountable and found wanting should they violate basic human nature, thus making it possible for people to find their current legislation wanting. It thus provides a basis for the Rule of Law and the establishment of justice. (This ability to reject the status quo on the basis of natural law differentiates libertarian thinkers from many conservatives, who tend to argue that tradition is good because it is old. A tradition may be good or bad; if it is good, it is not because it is old, but because it is the fulfillment of what is good according to the essential nature of man).

During the Enlightenment, natural law was wedded to the concept of individualism by the English enlightenment philosophers, the greatest of whom was John Locke. From this individualist tradition, Locke developed the idea of the natural rights of man, and this idea was founding philosophy of the American Revolution. Locke based his idea of individual rights upon the foundation of human self-ownership. He wrote that:

"Every man has a property in his own person. This nobody has any right to but himself. The labour of his body and the work of his hands, we may say, are properly his. Whatsoever then, that he removes out of the state that nature hath provided, and left it in, he hath mixed his labour with, and joined to it something that is his own, and thereby makes it his property."

John Locke, An Essay Concerning the True Origin, Extent and End of Civil Government, as cited in Murray N. Rothbard (1980) The Ethics of Liberty.

Essentially, if a person owns his own self, then no one else may own him, and thus he has a right to Liberty. To remove his life from him would be an ultimate theft of his own self, and thus he has a right to Life. Finally, as Locke stated, if he mixes his labour with things in nature, he has the right to keep and control them, the right to Property. These rights are endowed to human beings by virtue of their very nature and are therefore natural law. They are, as Jefferson wrote, "inalienable." They are not given by government, and government cannot take them away. Neither do they accrue to a collection of human beings as a group; rather they belong to each individual as an individual. Thus no group may lawfully (in the sense of the Rule of Law) or morally do anything that the individual does not have the right to do. No group may violate the rights of the individual simply because it is a group. (That is the essence of democracy, mob rule by the will of the majority, legislating away the natural rights of the individual).

These are the individual rights of each person, which are protected by the United States Constitution (currently being honored only in the breach). They are the rights to Life, Liberty and Property. Libertarian ethics begin with the acknowledgement of the natural rights of individual human beings.

Libertarian Ethics: Life is the Standard

I at no time believed that value-free analysis or economics

or utilitarianism . . . can ever suffice to establish the case

for liberty. Economics can supply much of the data for a

libertarian position, but it cannot establish that political

philosophy itself. Political judgments are necessarily value

judgments, political philosophy is therefore necessarily

ethical, and hence a positive ethical system must be

set forth to establish the case for individual liberty.

--Murray N. Rothbard, The Ethics of Liberty (1980)

As I have mentioned before, I am second-generation Libertarian, although in my early adulthood I had a long hiatus from any political activity, and then I made some detours in my thinking. However, the apple does not, so they say, fall far from the tree, and so here I am politically involved in libertarian causes, and in the cause of Liberty.



Recently, on the recommendation of a Libertarian friend, I read L. Neil Smith's book, The Probability Broach. It was not only an enjoyable swashbuckling alternative history sci-fi book, but it also poked gentle fun at some of the early libertarian heroes of my childhood. I am guessing that because I am second generation libertarian, I experienced a certain meta-enjoyment of the book that can only be had by second-generation libertarians. Imagine Rand and Ross-Bird (Rothbard) living in a anarcho-capitalist libertarian society, rather than fighting for liberty in a corporatist-fascistic statist society. But there amidst the adventure and the humor, the heart of Smith's book is a description of a society based on the ethics of individual liberty.



There are those who disparage Liberty as a luxury at best, and as a profoundly immoral system at worst. And those who would defend the cause of Liberty often cut themselves off at the knees by conceding the ethical and moral argument for Liberty by agreeing with the collectivist ethics that are destroying the freest and most productive society in history. Liberty is not a luxury; no, it is an absolute necessity for human productivity and happiness, and this is what makes it good as well.

At a basic level, libertarian ethics rest on the idea that human life on earth is good, and that human beings are rational animals that use their minds to survive on earth. That is, that man's ecological niche is the use of technology to alter the environment in order to survive and thrive.

From an ecological standpoint, human beings, like all other animals, must get the energy required for metabolic processes from the primary producers that convert energy from the sun into chemical energy useful to living things. That is, human beings are consumers. (See The Energy Web). Like all animals, human beings must work for a living by finding primary producers and consumers lower on the food web to consume. But because man is endowed with the rational faculty, humans make and use tools, plan ahead and develop natural resources, increasing the efficiency (in time and energy) of that work. In economics we call that production. And the rule of nature is that production must precede consumption. You cannot consume what has not been produced. This is so by definition.

In the ecological sense this means that plants must live where they can access sunlight, and if they cannot access enough sunlight to produce the amount of glucose (energy stored in carbon bonds) needed to carry out their metabolic processes, they die. Animals must go where the primary producers are in order to consume them, and those consumers lower on the food web. If an animal cannot consume enough energy, it dies. And energy is lost at every step of the way. Natural selection therefore "favors"* those organisms that find ways to produce (in the economic sense) enough to consume so that they can not only live, but reproduce themselves successfully more often than others that share the same niche. And it must be emphasized that natural selection acts upon individuals, not groups. (This does not contradict the fact that it is indeed species that evolve, not individuals. See G.C. Williams, Adaptation and Natural Selection, and R. Dawkins, The Selfish Gene). These are the facts of life on earth.

*Of course, being a force of nature, natural selection does not actually favor anything or select anything, it is a blind force operating on the basis of the facts of life on earth. Anthropomorphic language is useful here for conveying meaning, but should not be taken literally. There is no consciousness, and therefore no choice involved, and therefore no morality or ethics implied.

Thus, individual members of a population develop a whole host of different strategies in order to make sure that their offspring (and thus their genes) survive into the next generation. Various forms of aggression against other members of that same population make up some of these strategies. (In evolutionary ecology, the definition of aggression is limited to acts against others in the same population or species; predation is an entirely different activity). Among these is "cheating"--that is gaining advantage by deception or theft upon the productive capacities of other individuals.

There is a maxim in evolutionary ecology that so long as the number of cheaters remains at a minumum in a population, cheaters always win. What this means is that there are costs to the cheaters in a population, but so long as the number of cheaters remains pretty low, the cost of cheating to the cheater is worth paying, and the cost to the "honest" producer for stopping the cheater is not worth paying. In the EEA (evolutionary environment of adaptation), the number of cheaters in a population is kept in stable equilibrium by selective forces. (For a thorough explanation of this dynamic see Dawkins, The Selfish Gene, Chapter 5: Agression: Stability and the selfish machine.) However, hypothetically, if the number of cheaters were able to rise above a certain stable minumum, members of the population would not be sustained into the future, and it would crash*.

*This is why the engineers of the current world economic crisis--and it is being engineered by cheaters--may get more than they bargained for. The plan (whether conscious or not) is to develop a world population of serfs over whom they can exert power, and thus establish a system in which the cheaters themselves do not have to exert much individual energy on production. But there are likely too many of them, and their capacity for self-deception is too great, and thus they could end up crashing the civilization, thus destroying the goose that laid the golden egg as it were. If this happens, it is because the honest producers who have been agressed upon were immoral and did not defend against the agressive cheaters.

But human beings are uniquely endowed by their nature to choose between good (life and the fullness thereof) and evil (death and destruction). Human beings are capable of conscious self-deception in ways that the other animals are not. This ability (and requirement) by his very nature, makes the human being a moral animal. As long as she lives, a human being must constantly consciously choose life (good) over death (evil). This requirement devolves on the individual and is independent of social considerations, that is, even Robinson Crusoe had to make moral choices, alone on his island, even before meeting Friday.

Thus the basis of human ethics is that life is the standard by which we measure what is good and what is evil.

Rules for Patriots?

"What is the rationality of those who expect to trick

people into freedom, cheat them into justice, fool

them into progress, con them into preserving their

rights, and while indoctrinating them with statism,

put one over on them and let them wake up in a perfect

capitalist society one morning? --Ayn Rand*

*Rand, Ayn (1967). Conservatism: An Obituary. In Ayn Rand (Ed.), Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal (Centennial Edition). New York: Signet Books, p. 216.

I'm not a conservative. There are conservatives who have lately tried to convince me that this is what I am, and 'liberals' who have ended friendships with me because that is what they think I am. But I am not a conservative. And, like many libertarian thinkers, doubtless, I will have to write the obligatory essay entitled "Why I Am Not a Conservative." Someday. Until then I will refer you to those self-same essays by F.A. Hayek, Ayn Rand, and David Boaz. You can find the rest through those intellectual giants upon whose shoulders I stand.

In the meantime, take my word for it. I am not a conservative.

In the patriot communities that I have been frequenting lately, however, I run into a lot of conservatives, blue-dog Democrats, and Republicans who have found that their party left them just as the Democrats left my libertarian-minded parents back in 1968. I have also run into a lot of Constitutionalists--but they have known for a long while that the major parties are unprincipled. Many of the newly awakened, on the other hand, are not sure of that yet.

Many of these people are just waking up to the fact that in the past 10 years the pace of the US move into democratic socialism, majority mob rule, and a weird liberal fascist statism has increased from a walk to an outright run. They have been living their lives, as good liberty-minded people tend to do, and they find themselves surprised by the tactics of the Progressives (dressed as Teddy Roosevelt Republicans, as well as Wilson Democrats), who have been working toward this time for nigh unto a hundred years. (See American Progressivism: A Reader by R.J. Pestritto for background).

As these good folks rub the sleep out their eyes, and stretch, they pick up bits of the Progressive agenda in a variety of places, and sooner or later they hear about Rules for Radicals by Saul Alinsky, a Marxist from Chicago. And they notice that Alinsky's tactics (taught to both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, among others), have been achieving results. Thus it is that I have heard it suggested in two different forums that the patriot community should re-write Rules for Radicals, calling it Rules for Conservatives or Rules for Patriots. Hey, it works!

This is a very bad idea.

The moral core of the organizing principles in Rules for Radicals is relativism, and Alinsky's overt statement is that the ends justify whatever means are necessary to achieve the desired goal. This is moral utilitarianism, in which the moral worth of an action is weighed according to its outcome. In general, although certain of Alinsky's tactics are good for organizing any group to do anything, his philosophy is based on lies and deceit. His object is to win at all costs, and thus his heroes are Machiavelli and Lucifer.

I have the 1971 copy of Rules. I don't remember how I came by it--but I read it for a political science class at Illiniois in 1980 (taught by an avowed Marxist in love beads, tie-dye and sandals, no socks or coat in the midst of a record breaking cold Illiniois winter. His name was Joel K. His outfit made me think that Marxism was not only dead since Stalin, but also hopelessly impractical). In the preface of the 1971 edition, I read:

"Lest we forget at least an over-the-shoulder acknowledgment to the very first radical: from all our legends, mythology, and history . . . the first radical known to man who rebelled against the establishment and did it so effectively that he at least won his own kingdom—Lucifer." -- Saul Alinsky*

Alinsky, Saul. (1971). Rules for Radicals: A Pragmatic Primer for Realistic Radicals. New York: Random House.

I remember thinking about what this implied. Although I am a Jew, and I do not believe in the Christian Satan--human beings are well able able to choose between good and evil for themselves-- but I do understand that Alinsky is here implying that winning the kingdom is to be done by appealing to the least honorable of human desires, that of gain through trickery and deceit. In Milton, Lucifer tricks Adam and Eve by implying that knowledge of good and evil leads to life eternal without the necessity of work and struggle. That should they eat the fruit of the tree of such knowledge, they will be as gods, who have no need to earn their living, but can remain perpetual children in Paradise, their living provided to them for free.

Digression: In the Jewish Midrash, knowledge of good and evil is a metaphor for growing up and becoming creative and productive human beings in the image of G-d, who clearly engaged in creative work. Thus Chavah is not vilified as Eve was by the Church. Earning one's living is considered honorable, and work is as important as rest. Thus Jews do not consider money, the symbol of productive work, as evil--it is a tool that can be used for good or evil as a person chooses.

In the part of his book on the ethics of Marxist revolution, Alinsky clearly lays out his relativism and utilitarianism. All of it adds up to the idea that the ends justifies the means in one way or another. In particular, his ethics state that the morality of an action is directly related to whether the act takes place in a situation of victory or defeat, that it is relative to whomever is judging it, and that a radical should do whatever is deemed necessary and make moral arguments for it later.

Thus could Stalin starve millions off their land and make the argument that good came out of it.

This man, a Marxist with very questionable ethics and no objective principles, is not a good model for Patriots who are working to restore the Constitution of the United States. Our founding principles are based on the concept that the very nature of the human being requires liberty, and that all human beings are endowed with unalienable rights not subject to the whims of a king or the mad desires of the mob. Liberty requires that individuals make choices based on objective principles, and that they respect the rights of others. Certainly, Lucifer can trick a man or a woman into slavery, appealing to unrealistic desires that violate the Laws of Thermodynamics. But Franklin and Jefferson could not trick a people into Liberty. And neither can we restore the Republic through lies and deceit.

To quote Rand again:
"The world crisis today is a moral crisis--and nothing less than a moral revolution can resolve it: a moral revolution to sanction and complete the political achievement of the American Revolution . . .[The Patriot] must fight for capitalism, not as a "practical" issue, not as an economic issue, but with the most righteous pride, as a moral issue. That is what capitalism deserves, and nothing less will save it." Ibid. p. 225, (originally in Rand's For the New Intellectual).

Fortunately, we do not need to model ourselves after Lucifer the Deceiver Saul Alinsky.

We have those honest and forthright heroes, the original Radicals for Liberty, our Founders. Their methods of organizing the Revolution are as useful today as they were in 1775. We can use Committees of Correspondence, but our technology is the keyboard and the internet instead of the quill pen and pony post. Our Committees of Safety can prepare our communities for the crisis by riding into town in an F-150 instead of a horse and wagon. Our Continental Congress will meet by electric light instead of candlelight, and can deliberate in the comfort provided by modern HVAC systems. These are cosmetic differences.

But the methods are the same. The Committees of Correspondence will provide people with information, not Alinsky's glittering generalities. The Committees of Safety will provide our communities with real strategies to be self-reliant, not to surrender their liberties for Alinsky's imagined security. The Continental Congress will deliberate the civil disobedience of citizens, not Alinsky's desired surrender of slaves.

We do not need Alinsky, nor should we desire to emulate his empty rhetoric. We have Jefferson and Franklin, Adams and Patrick Henry.

May they inspire us to the righteousness and liberty!

Expendable: The Moral Bankruptcy of Appeasing Evil

This week has brought some news out of Iran that ought to concern us all, but especially concerns Israel. Iran has tested an intercontinental rocket capable of carrying a nuclear weapon. The Jerusalem Post reports it here. And in another story, the same paper reports that prior to Bibi's visit to Washington, President Obama sent CIA head Panetta to Jerusalem specifically to warn Israel against a pre-emptive strike on Iran's nuclear program. And then Obama used Bibi's visit to announce that he would continue his policy of talking to I'manutjob . . . er, Achmadinajad for six months, and when if that doesn't work, he'll convince the UN to strengthen sanctions against Iran. By then, it may well be too late for Tel Aviv.


Evidently, Obama has been reading his Ghandi:

"The calculated violence of Hitler may even result in a general massacre of the Jews by way of his first answer to the declaration of such hostilities. But if the Jewish mind could be prepared for voluntary suffering, even the massacre I have imagined could be turned into a day of thanksgiving and joy that Jehovah (sic) had wrought deliverance of the race even at the hands of the tyrant. For to the god fearing, death has no terror. It is a joyful sleep to be followed by a waking that would be all the more refreshing for the long sleep."

--Mahatma Ghandi, 20 Nov. 1938

The moral bankruptcy of this statement is self-evident. To Ghandi, the lives of others are expendable, a sacrifice to his ideal world where evil is not to be resisted. Thus, to him, those who would fight to protect their lives and those of their innocent children have the obligation to lay down their arms and submit to terror and death or be considered less moral than the murderers, who apparantly are doing G-d's work by murdering Jews. This is the most profoundly immoral statement I have ever read.

And President Obama? Certainly he has no obligation to come to the rescue of Israel if there is no threat to the United States. And if this is the case, then as President, he should state this clearly. However, he has a lot of damn gall insisting that Israel must not defend her own people against a clearly defined threat to their very existence. I'manutjob has clearly stated his goal to wipe Israel off the face of the earth numerous times. He is a religious fanatic who wants to bring the Caliphate on Earth through the 12th Iman.

Evidently, Obama's moral bankruptcy extends to the sacrifice of the lives of 5 million Jews in order to preserve his fantasy that evil can be negotiated with rather than confronted. It is easy to let others be first in line to face evil in faith, with no resistance, even to death by fire, while hiding behind one's own self-righteousness.

It is a fine thing for President Obama to lecture Bibi Netanyahu, making moral equivalencies, as the world turns inevitably toward nuclear war at the hands of a madman and tyrant. To take a page from the Other Testament: "They cry peace, peace when there is no peace."

Israel's population, which comprises nearly half of the Jews left in the entire world, is on the front lines. And clearly, just as in they were in Europe, they are expendable.

Why Progressives Don't Understand the Tea Parties

(Edited on April 24 for clarity and spelling. After reading some of the comments, I realized that my definition of certain terms differs from that of others, so I defined some of them).


In the mainstream media and across the Progressive blogosphere, pundits and ideologues on the left shake their heads at the tea-party goers, accusing us of being used for poltical purposes and of racism, all without the slightest evidence garnered from the actual gatherings; after all, progressives need no evidence. In their own minds they are right, and that rightness, far from being only a matter of fact (which would require evidence), transubstantiates into righteousness, a quality of being on a higher moral plane than the benighted tea-partiers. They have what Thomas Sowell calls The Vision of the Annointed.


On the comments to one of my Tea Party blogs, a comment by Mark sums up the progressive attitude toward the tea parties quite well:

"The simple reason is that the "tea party" movement is not about opposition to government policy. It's about opposition to Barack Obama, plain and simple . . . . it's not a real grassroots movement. It's what political junkies call "astroturfing" - fake grassroots activism. In this case, it was instigated and coordinated by right-wing lobbyists, the Republican Party and Fox News as well as the rest of the conservative media as a means of bashing Obama and rallying support to an otherwise floundering GOP."

This engendered quite a bit of discussion by others, most of whom are surprised at such conclusions made without any good evidence. Although Mark does offer some evidence, it is negative* and backward-looking.** Essentially Mark seems to be saying, "Since you did not protest Bush's spending (though he offers no evidence that we didn't), you cannot be serious about protesting now."

Definition of Terms:

*In science, negative evidence is the absence of some indicator. This term is not perjorative, however negative evidence alone is weak, and is best interpreted in the light of positive evidence of a different sort. Thus in a pregnancy test, a negative result--the titer does not indicate the presence of the hormone HCG--may indicate that the woman is not pregnant, but there may be many other reasons for the result. Definitive presence of HCG, however, is a much more reliable indicator of pregnancy (though not foolproof).

**There is a better term for backwards looking, and for the life of me, I cannot think of it. (Lupus brain!) What I mean here is that Mark is using the lack of a specified previous behavior to interpret current behavior. Again, there may be many reasons why people did not do something in the past, but now are doing it. In the absence of any other evidence for his claims, this is another extremely weak argument. I have my own hypotheses about it, but that's another blog entry.

Sorry, Mark, all "astroturfing" aside, the absence of evidence is not the same as evidence of absence. (I really wish the public schools taught the rules of rational discourse better, as well as logic and the emprical principles of science! Drat that NCLB).

Although events are coming fast and furious, and so I have blogged about a great many other things, I have been thinking about this, puzzled that progressives, so ready to take up a cause and organize a protest at the drop of a hat, are unable to see those of us they consider to be their enemies as equally passionate about our ideas.

Today, as I was reading through the posts of the Objectivist Roundup over at Rational Jenn, I came across a speech by Dr. John Lewis that clarified my thinking about this wonderfully. At one point in his talk he said:

"This ruling elite, looking down on us right now, cannot understand gatherings such as these, in which free people gather to defend liberty. They think that this must be orchestrated by a vast conspiracy, because they cannot understand how autonomous human beings might gather by their own choice, to affirm their commitment to liberty.
Our so-called leaders think this because they don’t see autonomous moral beings at all. They see only serfs, sniveling and whining, begging their masters for the scraps needed to survive, acting as a collective mob rather than as thinking individuals."

--Dr. John David Lewis, Charlotte, NC, 15 April 2009

That's the problem. Progressives are collectivists* and cannot imagine individuals coming together autonomously, without being "organized" by some greater entity than themselves, and for purposes that the collective directs. Collectivists simply do not think of individuals as free and autonomous human beings, unencumbered by the group.

*Collectivism is a social or moral outlook that emphasizes the group over the individual, gives priority to group goals, and considers the sum of the whole as greater than the parts. Collectivists use phrases like "the good of the whole" and tend to be concerned with equity. Again, I am not using this term perjoratively here. The Progressive movement since the beginning has been about redistribution of wealth and power, and this is not an individualistic goal, nor is it classically liberal.

The whole speech is worth listening to several times. In it, Dr. Lewis discusses the moral basis of the problems we are facing, and gives a coherent moral justification for political Liberty and for Capitalism, the economic system that sustains it. I have embedded the You Tube video of the speech below. A revised text version can be found at Classical Ideals.

Dr. Lewis has given his kind permission "to read this speech in full wherever defenders of Liberty gather."

For Shame, President Obama!

In 2001, just a week before the September 11th attacks, then Secretary of State Colin Powell withdrew the US delegation from the U.N. World Conference on Racism & Etc. (the whole title is entirely too politically correct for this blog) held in Durban, South Africa.
The Bush adminstration withdrew the delegation because the conference became a demonstration of Holocaust denial and virulent antisemitism, largely controlled by avowed enemies of the West.

A personal note: it was the twin shocks of the progressive reactions to Durban and then the 9-11 attacks that convinced me once and for all of the moral bankruptcy of the left, and made me understand that the left may use naive Jews, but that ultimately they will stab us in the back. Alas, I am a slow learner.

On Saturday morning, February 14, the Obama Administration announced that it was sending a delegation to Geneva, Switzerland, to help plan Durban II, the Durban Review Conference, which is intended (in the UN's own words) "to reaffirm the Durban Declaration." You know, the one that denies the Holocaust and reaffirms the old UN canard that Israel is a racist state.

This conference is chaired by Libya, Cuba, Iran and Pakistan. These are countries that not only demonize the US, but also hideously oppress their own people. As you can see below, they would also like to see your freedom of speech and expression removed.

For shame, President Obama! First, to announce this on Valentine's Day, early in the morning like that, means that the adminstration knows this is a shameful action. Secondly, for the US to participate in the planning of the reaffirmation of the Durban Declaration is to associate ourselves with the enemies of our Western values. The purposes of the conference is described thus by The Wall Street Journal:

As for what this Review Conference is supposed to achieve, some clues are provided in the latest draft of the so-called Outcome Document. Israel's "racial policies" are a major theme, as is "the plight of Palestinian refugees and other inhabitants of the Arab occupied territories," meaning Israel itself. Under debate, however, is whether to include a line that the Holocaust "resulted in the murder of one third of the Jewish people." Presumably Iran objects.

The draft also calls "on states to develop, and where appropriate to incorporate, permissible limitations on the exercise of the right to freedom of expression into national legislation." Yes, you read that right. The transparent purpose is to criminalize all criticism of Islam, a.k.a. "Islamophobia." There is also a not-so-sly effort to extract reparations for the long-banned trans-Atlantic slave trade: States that "have not yet condemned, apologized and paid reparations" for the trade are urged "to do so at the earliest." (Does an anti-Semitic conference deserve US participation of any kind? The Wall Street Journal, February 20, 2009).

According to the WSJ, as well as the Jerusalem Post, the Obama Adminstration is well aware of the purpose of the conference, and is not committed to participating in April, but is sending a delegation to the planning meetings in order to "try to change the direction in which the review conference is heading." This is disigenuous at best. How does participating in the planning of a Conference whose express purpose is to reaffirm the goals of the previous conference going to mitigate anything. The amoral underpinnings of the Obama adminstration's pragmatism is showing clearly in this action. To paraphrase my grandmother, may she rest in peace, show me who an adminstration hangs out with, and I'll show you its character.

This action on the part of the Obama adminstration is not only a slap in the face to Israel, it is a profoundly anti-Western act of appeasement to the worst sort of characters. It also betrays a profound misunderstanding of what sort of people one may compromise with and with what sort one may not. What compromise can be reached between an enemy's desire to destroy you and your own desire to live?

For a scathing review of this policy decision from one of the members of the Oslo negotiating team, see Obama's Durban Gambit at CAROLINEGLICK.com

They Wanted War

During Hannukah, even as we discussed the Maccabees, we have been increasingly concerned with the renewed rocket attacks on southern Israel launched from inside the Palestinian State of Gaza. These attacks had been ongoing for eight years, and since the recent cease fire was not renewed by Hamas, rockets are once again being fired into the sovereign State of Israel.

In the past few days, the government of Israel has (finally!) run out of patience with the situation, and has begun a response with air strikes against Hamas. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) began by calling civilian cell phones in Gaza, warning them to leave buildings and areas inside Gaza in which the Hamas military stores arms, and from which plans are made and rockets are launched. They did this prior to beginning the air strikes against these military targets, thereby giving up the element of surprise. Currently, the air strikes continue, and the IDF has declared much of the border with Gaza a military zone, and has been moving in ground forces. A spokesman for Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has said that as far as the PM is concerned, this is all-out war.

Yesterday, as I was going through my e-mail, I saw this headline from the New York Times:

Israeli Troops Mass Along Border: Arab Anger Rises

My immediate reaction was to ask: Arab anger? What about Israeli anger? How long should a sovereign state tolerate attacks across its border with another state? One such incursion is an act of war that should not be tolerated by any government. One of the primary duties of government is to protect citizens against external aggression. Hamas initiated the war against Israel with the first rocket fired across her border. That the Israeli government has not responded until now could be seen by the citizenry as a dereliction of its duties, and indeed, that is one reason why the Olmert government has fallen and new elections have been called.

A further look at the NYT headline revealed this tag:

With the death toll in Gaza rising to nearly 300, a furious reaction spread
across the Arab world, raising fears of greater instability in the region.

Really? Instability in the region? No shit, Sherlock!
The NY Times has risen to new heights as the Master of the Obvious.
Isn't it clear that the region has been unstable for . . . oh, say, at least since World War I? Or maybe since the Crusades? Or how about when the Romans destroyed Jerusalem and erected Aolea Capitolina? Maybe we could go back to the Aryan invasions in prehistory?
Evidently, like most of the rest of the country, the NYT writers have no firm grasp of history.

But I digress. With the Israeli response to Hamas aggression, the usual parade of PC terrorism apologists have once again come out of the woodwork. These are the same people that claim moral equivalency for the mujahideen that murdered nearly 200 civilians in Mumbai right after Thanksgiving. (For an excellent article about this, see this link at the Center for the Advancement of Capitalism). In whatever guise they frame their arguments, these people essentially claim that Israel has the moral obligation to sustain attacks and make no response in her own self defense. Their reasoning, no matter how convoluted on the face of it, is that it is precisely because Israel is a successful state that is capable of defending her people that she is morally obligated not to do so.

Essentially, these people are arguing that a successful state, capable of guarding the rights of its citizens, is morally obligated to commit suicide rather than respond appropriately to incursions by terrorist groups bent on the destruction of the very concept of civilized government.

As Americans, we are heirs to the founders who first framed the duty of government to protect the rights of citizens, and we should not be distracted by convolutions of the PC arguments. We should go right to the heart of the matter. The PC multiculturalist stance is one of radical hatred for Western culture and values, and for the civilization that it has built. If we love our culture and if we want to sustain it, if we love our very lives, then we must stand up for the right of self-defense on the individual and national level. We should frame this as a moral argument.

Israel, like any other sovereign state has the moral right, nay, the moral obligation to defend the lives and property of her citizens. When the Hamas terrorists fired that first rocket across the border with Israel, they were asking for war. Now they have it. Although the IDF has gone out of its way to reduce civilian casualties in Gaza, the moral responsibility for these casualties belongs to Hamas, and Hamas alone. It is they that began this war without regard to the lives and property of the people in whose name they claim to govern. As is typical of terrorists, Hamas has actually shown no interest in, nor concern for the people they claim to represent. If they had, they would not have attacked a country that has superior armed forces.

It is Hamas that wanted this war and Hamas that started it. Israel must now finish it, and should do so decisely, with moral clarity. A decisive victory using overwhelming force to root out and destroy Hamas will do more to reduce civilian casualties and the ongoing misery of the Palestian people than will years more of tolerating the intolerable. Israel's moral mistake is not in finally responding to attacks upon her people and their property, it is in tolerating the Hamas attacks for so long.

The Baby and the Bathwater III: Losing My Religion

Recently, I have been writing about the concerns that the Engineering Geek and I have about our synagogue membership. I wrote about how the rabbi's sermon on Rosh Hashanah caused me to think about his assertion that the organization is indeed a community, and I wrote more about that in light of my experiences when it felt like community and how that changed.

In the first of these posts I also wrote this: "Reform Judaism has a well-developed set of traditions." And I said I'd return to this idea in a future post. This is the promised post.

"Reform Judaism has a well-developed set of traditions."
For those who know anything about the early Reformers, those in Germany, and those in the United States, this may seem like an odd statement. Many Jews, Reform and otherwise, believe that the early Reformers threw the baby out with the bathwater, that they not only deprived the past of a veto, but also of a vote. In short, many believe that the phrase "Reform tradition" is an oxymoron. The Pittsburg Platform (1885) threw out kashrut (the dietary laws), as well as the ritual laws, in favor of a focus on the uniquely Reform virtues of Ethical Monotheism. Thus the Reform Movement entered the period know as Classical Reform.
During this time the service was mostly in English, nobody wore kippot (yarmulkes), synagogues were called temples (the reformers were not waiting for the rebuilding of the original in Jerusalem) and we were to be Jews at home, Americans on the street. In short, it looked like Reform got rid of tradition entirely. Tevye the Milkman was an embarrassing Ostjude (Eastern European Jew); an example of all that was wrong with unenlightened Orthodoxy. Reform tradition? It's as antiquated as a fiddler on the roof!

But, what was once a reform, if it lasts a hundred years, becomes a tradition.
And as Reform Judaism has been taught and passed down from one generation to another, a certain worldview has developed. (I see it in my husband, who is fifth generation Reform--from Austria to Cincinnati to San Franscisco). Of course, the Reform I was taught, from the New Union Prayerbook, had evolved from the High Classical Reform of the Union Prayerbook. After the Shoah, we had all become Zionists, and we understood the meaning of the People of Israel in a more traditional way. Hebrew had become more common, Bar Mitzvah ceremonies had been restored, Bat Mitzvah ceremonies added, and the use of ritual objects was no longer discourged.

At the same time, important aspects of the Reform worldview continued to appeal. Ethical monotheism--the idea that the ethics of the prophets--justice, righteousness, acts of loving kindness--combined with the rational worldview of the Enlightenment, was held to be the standard of behavior. The ritual commandments that the early reformers threw out wholesale were to be observed by the educated choice of the individual. The Chem Geek Princess is old enough to have been taught Ethical Monotheism as the essence of Reform Jewish life, but she is young enough to have been brought up with more ritual than was common in Reform Jewish households in my generation. The Boychick's formal Jewish education has been sadly lacking in Ethical Monotheism, which might give the mishmash of half-understood ritual some organizing idea that would last a lifetime. (This is why I homeschooled his Jewish education and Torah Talk at the Shabbat table-- I taught him a more comprehensive way of being Jewish).

And the truth to be told, I also think the early reformers did throw the baby out with bathwater. There is much to be said for the beauty and symbolic importance of ritual in the lives of human beings. Ritual defines who we are and who are not as we rub up against other cultures. Symbols send powerful messages of the meaning of our identity as Jews directly to the soul. When I wrap myself in the tallit--the prayer shawl--and say in Hebrew: "Eternal One, you are very great! Arrayed in glory and majesty, you wrap yourself in light as with a garment, you stretch out the heavens like a curtain." I feel that I am wrapping myself in light, that I am clothed in the majesty and glory. That I dwell in the midst of endless possibilities.

And when I wrap my middle finger with the tefillin straps and say in Hebrew: "I will betroth you to me forever. I will betroth you to me with righteousness, with impeccability, with loving-kindness, with compassion; I will betroth you to me in faithfulness, and you shall know (physically, emotionally, spiritually) G-d"; I bind myself to G-d, Torah and Israel. But I bind myself also to those prophetic ethical precepts that I say--I bind myself as a Reform Jew with a very particular understanding of the prophetic values. I not only hear in them the voices of my rabbis and teachers, as well as the the voice of the long past; I also hear the call to be a moral human being, even in places where there are no moral human beings.

So although I understand the resurgence of ritual in Reform, I sense that I am losing my religion. The observance of half-understood ritual presented as an optional mishmash, combined with the loss of the organizing principle of Ethical Monotheism, is not a shortcut to a strong Jewish identity. The younger generation is losing an appreciation for both the baby and the bathwater. They are not being trained in the rubrics of ritual practice that will last a lifetime and uphold them during hardship and duress; and neither are they being given the ethical foundation that would give them the guts to stand up against evil and oppression. The moral fiber of Reform sensibility has been replaced with a schlock-rock, touchy-feely, short-cut to spirituality that is unlikely to survive assimilationist pressures from the dominant secular society.

Digression: In reading that last sentence, I see that I am placing myself squarely in the grand Jewish tradition. Ever since Jacob, who worried on his deathbed that his children would no longer be Jews, every generation has so worried. But will we hear the response, as Jacob did: "Sh'ma Yisrael . . . Listen, Israel (Jacob's G-d-given name), the Eternal is our G-d, the Eternal is One"? Will our children have the intestinal fortitude to so proclaim if they are pressed to the wall when they have not been taught the prophetic voice? When Judaism is reduced to an "our crowd" version of a country club?
See what I mean?

I see no harm in bringing back Hebrew. I see no harm in the use of carefully chosen ritual.
But I see great harm in losing the central tenents of Reform Judaism: Rational adherence to the Prophetic voice, crying out for Justice and Righteousness; in short, the precepts of Ethical Monotheism. Ritual observances should be carefully taught. The symbolic nature of the ritual should be elucidated, so that it is not misunderstood as a magic short-cut to holiness, or to the desired end of strong Jewish identity and the comcommitant moral absolutes and sensibilities that make up the Jewish worldview.

And speaking of those sensibilities: Reform Judaism has beautiful ritual and practice of its own. These include strong teaching from the Bimah, a firm tie to the American ideals of Liberty and Justice, and the ethical message expounded in beautiful English and a tradition of majestic choral music.

Nothing reminds me more of the Ethicial Monotheism inherent in the Reform tradition than these words, carried over nearly intact from the Union Prayerbook to the New Union Prayerbook:

" . . . Fervently we pray that the day may come when all shall turn to You in love, when corruption and evil shall give way to to integrity and goodness, when superstition shall no longer enslave the mind, nor idolatry blind the eye . . . then shall Your kingdom be established on the earth and the word of Your Prophet fulfilled . . ."

And I'd love to hear the majestic and beautiful old German-Reform melodies to Yigdal and Adon Olam, Especially the High Holy Day melodies.

Not hearing them for years on end: That's me in the corner . . . losing my religion.

Moral Courage and the Flawed Human Being

As I mentioned last week, one of the excellent keynotes at the New Mexico Summer Institute on Gifted Education, was the very last one: Elizabeth Nielsen and her husband, Dennis Higgins, who gave the presentation on Moral Courage.

Elizabeth is a professor of Special Education at UNM. She is my 'doc' advisor. Dennis is an adjunct professor at UNM, as well as the teacher of a twice-exceptional (gifted/with a disability) program in the Albuquerque Public Schools. They are both national speakers and experts on gifted education. Elizabeth coined the term "twice-exceptional" or 2X, as it is called around here. (My research interest for this doctorate in Special Ed/ Neurospychology is in the area of the neurospychology of visual-perceptual differences in gifted people and gifted people with Autism Spectrum Disorders).

As I said in my post Catching Up!, I saw the Moral Courage keynote before-- last year at the 2006 ALPS conference. But this is one of those rare presentations that is worth seeing several times because the issues it addresses are profound ones for those of us involved in any way with the education of children. At a time when moral relativism has become the norm in the secular education of children, Elizabeth Neilsen's insistence on the importance of teaching moral courage--what it is, how it is made manifest, and the cost to the individual--is an important contribution that, in itself, is a demonstration of moral courage. And more, it is a challenge to us, not only as educators of all sorts, but as human beings, to examine the example we set for each other and for children in our professional, social and personal lives.

The presentation itself consists of three parts:

• an analysis of morally courageous action based on the work of business ethicist, Dr. Rushworth Kidder (Wikipedia article here).
• methodologies for teaching moral courage through books, film and music
• live demonstrations of some of these lessons

But the power of the presentation is really the music and slide shows that are used throughout to engage the audience through real-life examples of moral courage. This is teaching that engages the intellect and the heart and (dare I say?) the soul.

Part of the power of this presentation for me is that it caused me to begin the examination of my own ethical behavior. According to Dr. Kidder, there are five universal core moral principles. They are:

• honesty (a.k.a. truthfulness, integrity)
• fairness (a.k.a. justice)
• respect (tolerance and respect for self, family, others, and respect for life itself)
• responsibility (a.k.a. self-discipline)
• compassion (a.k.a empathy, mercy, love, generosity)

In order to behave ethically, a person must demonstrate all five of these. If even one value is not being practiced, a person cannot be said to be ethical in practice. This certainly gives me room for pause. If even one of these is absent? Whoa! I can see that there is definitely room for continual self-examination. Complacency and moral courage appear to be mutually exclusive. And I expect I have some work to do within myself as the Jewish world enters into the month of Elul, a time for reflection and repentance.

Further, to demonstrate morally courageous action, a person must uphold these principles by taking action in the face of significant personal risk. Actions of moral courage, then, are not for the faint of heart. In fact, the very word "courage" comes from the French word "cour" which means "heart" and implies strength of heart.

As I was watching the presentation and thinking about the examples provided, I noticed that one discussion of importance was not made, using the very human examples provided. That discussion was that no person is perfectly ethical all the time. We are, all of us, flawed human beings. In the context of the presentation, this is understandable because the aim of the talk was to present the definition of moral courage most straight-forwardly and in a small period of time, and then to present ways to begin a discussion with children.

But, but, but...!

Popular culture has a really superficial way of dealing with moral absolutes. In the time of my public education, it had become fashionable to dismiss the moral dimension in the historical analysis of individual action because each exemplar was flawed in some way. In plain English, we were not allowed to have heroes. For example, if a student expressed admiration of Abraham Lincoln as 'the Great Emancipator', s/he was told that Lincoln expressed ambivalence about freeing the slaves. That Lincoln was actually discussing his primary responsibility as president to protect and preserve the Union was dismissed as too subtle for us. Or maybe it was too straight-forward?

We see the same kind of refusal to see moral exemplars anywhere in the way people are treated in the press. There seems to be an urge to bring a person down at any cost, almost as if to say that since every person is flawed, there can be no action at a higher moral level. In this way, we can evade our own moral responsibilities. This way of thinking brings the idea of moral relativism to an absolute low. (Sorry, I could not resist the oxymoron).

It is precisely because of this penchant that we should talk about the fact that flawed human beings can, with great effort and at great cost to themselves, face their flaws and become determined to act on their moral principles anyway in a situation in which they face considerable risk. In fact, one of these risks is of exposure of one's personal flaws by people who wish to discredit the act of moral courage. It seems to me that a significant part of moral courage is the ability to see oneself as flawed, the examination of one's own moral weaknesses, and the personal resolve to take a stand despite it all.

Certainly, when educating young children about moral courage, we must allow the children to have heroes. And we are likely to present the moral actor in a more unidimensional way e.g. Martin Luther King was a hero because he spoke up for justice in the face of oppression. Period. (He was a hero. He did stand up). But when we are educating older children, we can and should present exemplars with more complexity. This can be done using biography and literature both. For example, Oscar Schindler, who saved lives during the Shoah, had many flaws. He was a shady dealer in business, he was a womanizer, etc. And yet, he stood for the value of life itself at a time when many people who were less obviously flawed remained silent.

By having these kinds of discussions, we innoculate our children against the terrible cynicism out there. The cynicism that tells us not to stand out, not to act, because we are not perfect ourselves. And they give us a sense of hope that, despite our flaws--maybe even because of them--if we have the courage to face our own weaknesses, we can do something important in the world.