184 Comments

1. DUTCH:

To quote a very great man:

“If you will not fight for right when you can easily win without bloodshed; if you will not fight when your victory will be sure and not too costly; you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all odds against you and only a precarious chance of survival. There may be even a worse fate. You may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish then to live as slaves.”

–Winston Churchill

and another:

“[I]f you yield to a threat, you do so in order to avoid war, and more often than not, you do not avoid war. For those before whom you have thus openly demeaned yourself by yielding, will not stop there, but will seek to extort further concessions, and the less they esteem you the more incensed will they become against you. On the other hand, you will find your supporters growing cooler towards you, since they will look upon you as weak or pusillanimous. But if, as soon as you become aware of your adversary’s intentions, you prepare to use force, even though your forces be inferior to his, he will begin to respect you, and, since those with which you were allied will now esteem you, they will be ready to help when you begin to arm, which they would never have done had you given up.”

–Niccolo Machiavelli
Discourses Book II, Chapter 14.

Not bad for a book written in 1517.

Oct 28, 2008 - 4:28 am 2. Joshua:

The elephant in the room, of course, is that we are speeding headlong toward a future where reprisals come in the form of mushroom clouds, devastated cities and six- or seven-digit casualty counts.

Oct 28, 2008 - 5:41 am 3. Fred from Canuckistan . . .:

Si vis Pacem, para bellum.

Still true today.

Oct 28, 2008 - 6:04 am 4. RWE:

I recently read the book “The Sixth Floor” on the Danish resistance in WWII. That underground had a history nearly the opposite that of the Czechs.

Denmark signed a nonaggression pact with Nazi Germany before the war under the belief that the country would be unable to resist Germany militarily. As time went on, the Danes moved from reluctant acceptance of the limited Nazi occupation to full fledged resistance. When the Nazis ordered all the Jewish people in the country rounded up, underground movements moved into high gear.

The Swedes begged Niels Bohr, the famed physicist, to defect. Bohr refused – unless all the Jews of Denmark would be accepted as well. The Swedes agreed and the Danes managed to smuggle around 95% of their Jews to Sweden.

Later in the war, as the Danish resistance gained capability, the Gestapo stepped up their operations and took over the Shell House, the newest Shell Oil Company building in Copenhagen for use as their HQ. Aware of the danger of air attack, they converted the 6th floor attic of the building into cells for high-value prisoners. As the Gestapo began rolling up their networks, the Danes begged the RAF to attack Shell house. Finally they did.

On the morning of the RAF attack of the prisoners was taken down to the 5th floor for interrogation. The Gestapo made the mistake of sitting him so he could look out the window with their agents in front of him facing the other way. The Dane looked past the Gestapo agents and saw in the sky 5 RAF Mosquitos inbound. He knew exactly what was going to happen next, got up and ran out of the room. He made it to the 3rd floor before the bombs hit and managed to get away completely. The Gestapo just watched him run away, no doubt wondering where he thought he was going, since he obviously could not get out of the building Most of the prisoners escaped.

Oct 28, 2008 - 6:10 am 5. Stones Cry Out - If they keep silent…:

[...] I wonder if an essay, the persistence of good might be also written to counter this. [...]

Oct 28, 2008 - 6:12 am 6. Pseudo-Polymath » Blog Archive » Tuesday Highlights:

[...] I wonder if an essay, the persistence of good might be also written to counter this. [...]

Oct 28, 2008 - 6:15 am 7. Herb:

“…mushroom clouds, devastated cities and six- or seven-digit casualty counts.”

Those come because somebody didn’t use enough 7.62mm and other small arms. We’ll not be able to talk with somebody like Amadenijihad because he can only be stopped when his heart stops. Most people in the West believe in rationality. It works in business and engineering but not in war. This is war. Rationality is applied to war as diplomacy assuming (or hoping) that it will work. It works if and only if the other party doesn’t want to die.

Mr. Whittle wrote a great essay on the need for and the existence of sheepdogs to protect the sheep of society (us) from the wolves that seek to devour them.

http://www.ejectejecteject.com/archives/000129.html

Sometimes the sheepdogs have to be allowed to work.

Sometimes the wolves will need to be angered.

That’s when the sheep need to recognize the nature of the wolf.

Sometimes the sheepdogs will need to be forgiven.

Oct 28, 2008 - 6:30 am 8. mika2k1:

Jews/Israelis have long memories. The American Imperialists will not be able to protect the Jihadists forever.

Oct 28, 2008 - 6:46 am 9. Fred 2.0:

If we had real peace, like that between Canada and the US, in Jerusalem, then having the Arabs in East Jerusalem in their own city or even their own country would make more sense.

We don’t particularly want more Arabs voting in our Israeli elections. And we have no reason to make them unhappy.

But we do have a right to our part of the Temple Mount. If we don’t assert our rights to this, we will lose respect and lose our country.

Appeasement leads to war, but compromise can lead to peace.

Oct 28, 2008 - 6:52 am 10. Mike Sylwester:

I remember seeing — on US television in about 1965 — the Czech movie about the Nazis’ attacks on the Anthropoids defending themselves in the church. The movie impressed me strongly. When I visited Prague in 1972, I made a point of going to see the church.

For the Czechs, that battle at the church is something like the Battle of the Alamo is for Americans.

I would like to see the entire movie again, but I am not aware that it ever has been shown on US television since the occasion when I saw it.

Oct 28, 2008 - 7:07 am 11. ricpic:

There was a Jewish leader whose whole political stance could be summed up in his phrase, “They must go!” The “they” being Arabs. His name is now anathema in the Jewish world. But he was right.

Oct 28, 2008 - 7:07 am 12. fred:

There can be no lasting peace with Islam. Islam only allows for a “hudna.” The intent of hudna, elaborated in Muhammad’s words, is to have a temporary truce at a time when the Ummah does not have the ability to defeat the kafir.

Hudna only exists to allow the forces of jihad to gather in strength and be able for the moment to pounce.

The West is totally crippled against this, because its leadership and its political, academic, and media elites do not read the Qur’an and ahadith. They know NOTHING about their enemies. Even the Jews living in Israel exhibit this torpor and sloth of the mind.

Nearly everyone is in denial about the problem. It’s going to cost us a lot.

Oct 28, 2008 - 7:15 am 13. programmer:

Wretchard writes:

In the end, as Camus observed, it is always innocence and not guilt that is called on to justify itself. Guilt doesn’t give a damn.

programmer ponders:

In some way that I can’t put my finger on, this is an incorrect thesis. Guilt is the tool used to fashion the narrative arc we are trying to cope with now. Very bright people are doing stupid things in an effort to assuage “our nations’s collective guilt” for…, well you can fill in the blanks. Guilt does not seem to me to have any evolutionary value at all, yet it is very powerful. It does cause humans to “give a damn.” It seems to be a built in trait that survives from generation to generation, with no apparent survival benefit to the “guilt bearers.” As a brilliant friend of mine would say, WTF?

Oct 28, 2008 - 7:23 am 14. DonB71InWA:

Just before reading this blog by Richard I read Bob Owen’s interview regarding William Ayers. After reading both I reflected on Senator Biden’s recent comment about a crisis that will arise to test Senator Obama should he become President.

Ayers and his ilk in their attempts to inflame anti-war fever counted on exacerbating a crisis to acquire power. Whether World War I in Russia or the food riots in pre-revolutionary France history is replete with instances where revolutionaries use these events to achieve their goals.

I avoid any temptation to join the tinfoil hat movement but these threads seem to weave a fabric that truly gives me pause. To me, Senator Obama is still largely a cipher. I do have concerns about what he says and the policies he proposes. What concerns me more though, is the pattern of association, friends and supporters that suggests to me that he shares at leaast their world view and goals if not (hopefully) their methods.

Up front, I admit that I risk sounding as irrational as that crazy relative who obessively emails me truther and ufo exposes’. But, I am nervous that the test suggested by Senator Biden (real or manufactured) may be used by then President Obama as a lever to move closer to the “utopia” so fervently desired by his more radical fans.

Oct 28, 2008 - 7:47 am 15. RWE:

“The West is totally crippled against this, because its leadership and its political, academic, and media elites do not read the Qur’an and ahadith.”

No Fred, that’s not quite it. They don’t choose to read those things because to do so would be to start of admitting that maybe there are other thoughts running in other people’s heads that are not right.

Modern Liberalism is based on the idea that “Everyone’s right.” There ain’t no bad guys and there ain’t no good guys; there is just you and me and we disagree.

To know your enemy would be to realize there is such a thing as enemies and that would prove to be a slippery slope, indeed. And it would inevitably lead to the conclusion that the Ghetto Culture Memes that drive so many black people today are bad as well. And so on, with Gay Culture, Latino Culture, Feminist Culture and so forth. And there goes the big circus tent they put up in the 60’s. And there goes their power base, poof.

Oct 28, 2008 - 7:50 am 16. Konyok:

OK, not a duality – a tripod of possibilities.

Denethor – driven mad by the image of Sauron’s omnipotence
Saruman – knowingly collaborating
Samwise – keeping his head down and getting ‘er done
(Can they get Georgian wine in the Shire?)

Oct 28, 2008 - 7:52 am 17. Brock:

No one wants to get in the playpen with bad guys.
True, but it misses the point. The critical difference between the modern Left and Harry Truman is that the Left would rather get out than be the bad guy. Keyser Söze for President.

It is the inescapability of reprisal that makes the public willing to take a chance on “getting along” rather than endure the inevitable response even to justified resistance.
Indeed. I’d feel a lot more comfortable voting for McCain if he anger management issues were more predictable. Every now and then he goes all magnanimous prior to unconditional victory, and it ruins everything.

Oct 28, 2008 - 8:30 am 18. Marcus Aurelius:

“There ain’t no bad guys and there ain’t no good guys; there is just you and me and we disagree.” Hehehe, the guy who wrote that song used to sip beers in a bar I worked at. His later works such as “Please Pass Da Schnapps” and “Da Bears Still Suck” were much better works!

Oct 28, 2008 - 8:30 am 19. Dave:

The gallants that assassinated Heydrich were sent on a mission concocted primarily to gratify Bene. No matter how successful they were or might have been, their efforts did nothing to reduce enemy capabilities.

In the Pacific, assassinating Yammamoto worked. Without his brains, the Japanese Navy was much less effective than it would have been otherwise. Enemy capabilities were reduced.

Moral of the story: Stick to business. Do nothing unless it reduces/eliminates the ability of your enemy to do you harm.

PS: As to how to operate when in territory occupied by a ruthless foe, see Fertig, Wendell W. “They Fought Alone”.

Oct 28, 2008 - 8:35 am 20. cedarford:

I was surprised in my travel to Czechoslovakia that Benes is apparantly detested – mainly because he is now seen as a complete stooge of Stalin that gave away part of the country to the Russians and made the communist takeover easier.

Not seen as the “Hero of Munich”.

The tour guide when we were going around Prague was asked a question about Lidice – and said that the Nazi atrocities were awful…but…the exile government set it in motion to benefit themselves by costing the lives of Czechs who couldn’t affect the war, and were just trying to keep a low profile until the war was over. The guide had heard from his parents and his wifes parents that Czechs knew the Germans were making savage reprisals against Soviet civilians who bushwhacked them, and were making every effort not to endanger themselves or other Czechs by triggering similar bloodbaths in the Bohemian Protectorate.

Looking at the history back in the US, I found Benes was unpopular and abdicated to a Czech government resigned to being under final German say. And went into London exile before the War started.
In the Protectorate, from 1938 to 1942, there were student protests, then temporary imprisonment of them by the Authoritarian government. But no acts of sabotage against or assassination or shooting at Germans. As the guide said, it appeared the Czechs were resigned to what they hoped would be yet another temporary occupation by an outside power, a familiar role. And meanwhile, they and the Germans largely had a “live and let live” approach.

Benes needed to prove that Czechoslovakia was worthy of pursuing its own nationality policy, and that he should be in charge of that policy. This was no easy task because, at home, there existed a legitimate government that Benes himself had recognized. This government was maintaining extensive and mutually benficial relations with the German occupiers. That is generally agreed on – that Benes thought a high profile attack on the Germans would bolster his image as a champion of his people, and he could return to power if the West or the Soviets ended up running Czechoslovakia next.

Just as torture works, remorseless atrocity and collective punishment works. I think Benes underestimated the bloodthirsty ferocity the Nazis had adapted against partisans and hostile civilian populations in the East. The Japanese held Indochina, with it’s formidable Vietnamese and Hmong fighters, with only 20,000 troops. Because as soon as they tried insurrection, the Japanese response to any troop attack was to march to the nearest large village or small town, and kill everyone. The insurgency stopped almost immediately.

Only in Communist-led resistance, where they gladly traded 1,000 innocent civilian lives to kill 12 enemy troopers, persisted. In the communist mindset, large casualties are acceptable because individual life is cheap compared to the importance of revolutionary macrotrends that are sought to be cultivated by partisan attacks and mass reprisals. Mao felt the same way as Stalin or Tito or their minions in France.

Why would Mao wipe out a Japanese convoy of no tactical or strategic value and lose a village of thousands in reprisal? Because both events are excellent outcomes from a communist viewpoint.

All armed resisters, whether during WWII or today, following the communist partisan model pursue the same goal. Namely to create a chaotic situation in an atmosphere of fear and intimidation that allows for no neutrality and that forces ordinary citizens to take sides. It worked for the Chicoms and the Algerians (who instead of communism, had Jihad as justification to accept mass casualties as tolerable and knowledge the French were obligated to be more restrained than Japs or Nazis were.)

After Lidice, and news that Hitler had initially ordered 10,000 Czechs shot at random but relented and only killed under 1200 including 200 at Lidice – the Czechs took sides. They themselves rooted out any partisans, and the Bohemia area was relatively quiet the rest of the war.

Benes did reap great gain from the Heydrich killing – he kept the support of the Brits and had gained Stalin as what he thought was his full supporter and benefactor who would ensure Benes was to be returned to full power. He was. Then the consequences of the assassination – the brutalities in Lidice and elsewhere that were the collective punishment meant to deter more such actions – gave Benes the excuse he wanted for cleansing and killing the Sudetan Germans (millions driven off their property, several thousand killed), cleansing Magyars, and forcing breakaway Slovakia back into the Union at Soviet bayonet point. (About the day after the Slovenes knew the Soviet Union was kaput, they started efforts to get out from under the Czechs and be free of them).

The Hero of Munich thought he had his victory.

Err..until his special friend Joe said “bye-bye!”.

Now most history books have assigned a low status to Benes. A nasty arrogant man in person, stooge of the Communists, and enemy to all ethnicities within Czechoslovakia but the Czechs. The one that triggered an avoidable slaughter by orchestrating the killing of the Procounsul in a time of relative piece. (But reviled more for his sellouts to the Communists)

All history books except ones, mainly published in America, dedicated to still lionizing Benes as the noble, courageous Hero-Victim of Munich – the one if he had only been listened to – would have stopped the slaughter of the Jews and 32 million other less important human beings.

Oct 28, 2008 - 8:37 am 21. programmer:

Dave says:

Moral of the story: Stick to business. Do nothing unless it reduces/eliminates the ability of your enemy to do you harm.

programmer reponds:

Interesting comment. In view of the successful “Petraeus gambit” in Iraq, killing Heydrich might have actually helped the Nazis instead of hindering them. Blurred the focus of Czech rage, so to speak.

Oct 28, 2008 - 8:46 am 22. Eggplant:

I know it’s almost an oxymoron. Here’s a link to an article by an honest MSM journalist writing about his profession:

http://abcnews.go.com/Business/Story?id=6099188&page=1

The Founding Fathers knew that the Freedom of the Press was essential for democracy to survive. This is why they protected the Freedom of the Press through the First Amendment. Our press remains free from government censor but unfortunately has fallen under the control of moonbats and prostitutes. Consequently the press is no longer free and the survival of our democracy is in doubt.

Oct 28, 2008 - 8:46 am 23. Ken Nelson » Blog Archive » Persistence of Stupidity:

[...] Fernandez deftly ties a WWII tale, with Jerusalem today and Dennis Kucinich’s naiveté.  He suggest evil persists because it works. True [...]

Oct 28, 2008 - 8:54 am 24. El Jefe Maximo:

I don’t know that killing Heydrich was the ONLY thing SOE did that was worth a damn. Killing Heydrich (a man born to be killed if ever there was one) was certainly useful, but when evaulating the usefulness of SOE as an organization, it should be remembered that every police and military asset the Germans and their allies had to devote to tracking down SOE agents, nets and assets was one less the Germans had to employ elsewhere — and those assets wound up being dearer in terms of numbers to the Germans than the allies.

Oct 28, 2008 - 8:56 am 25. mika2k1:

gave Benes the excuse he wanted for cleansing and killing the Sudetan Germans (millions driven off their property, several thousand killed)
==

Very good. But obviously not enough.

Oct 28, 2008 - 9:01 am 26. Eggplant:

Concerning the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich:

There is this ineffable thing called “honor”.

The Czechs still have honor because two of their own sacrificed their lives to kill a horrible monster.

Prior to WW-II, the Germans had a proud history. They like to think themselves as the “Volk der Dichter und Denker”. The German people included such worthies as Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Ludwig van Beethoven, Heinrich Heine, Carl Friedrich Gauss, etc. (the list is very long). Unfortunately that proud history was almost entirely wiped away by the abominations of the Nazis. The Germans of World War II would have been entirely without honor if it weren’t for a few people. I can only name two, i.e. Max Planck and Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg. The overwhelming majority of the German people followed der Führer lock step into the grave.

Oct 28, 2008 - 9:04 am 27. slimslowslider:

without a doubt c4 is a kraut. he will always try to soften the edges when it comes to where his true loyalties lie. i only wish we used the a-bomb (several of them) on the krauts.

Oct 28, 2008 - 9:08 am 28. ledger:

I cannot vote for a man that belittles the gravity of the holocaust.

I cannot vote for a man who is a puppet of Nazi helper George Soros.

I cannot vote for a man tells his partisan thugs to “get in their face.”

I cannot vote for a man whose supporters “mace” elderly women and others.

I cannot vote for a man who has his lawyers intimidate college reporters.

I cannot vote for a man who parties with PLO thug Rashid Khalidi.

I cannot vote for a man who consorts with terrorists Bill Ayers.

I cannot vote for a man who will gut the military.

I cannot vote for a man who wants spread propaganda via dubious new “Peace Departments.”

I cannot vote for a man who wants to redistribute other’s money.

I cannot vote for a man who is outwardly dishonest and hides his past.

I cannot vote for Barack Hussein Obama.

Oct 28, 2008 - 9:12 am 29. Doug:

Carolyn Glick needs to take Reality Therapy from Peggy Noonan and Chrisie Buckley.
—
Justice and Vote Fraud – WSJ.com

The lawyers at the Civil Rights Division are already falling into line. Justice recently decided to reverse a policy in place since 2002 to send criminal attorneys and other federal employees to monitor polling places. The decision came two weeks after a September meeting to which the Civil Rights Division invited dozens of left-wing activist groups to discuss voter “access” to the polls.

Justice has also failed to enter the fray in Ohio. As many as 200,000 new voter registrations in that state are suspect, yet Democratic Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner is refusing to follow the 2002 Help America Vote Act that requires her to verify these registrations. The Ohio Republican Party sued Mrs. Brunner, but the Supreme Court said the GOP lacked standing. Justice does have standing — it is charged with upholding that law — but has ignored the fight. The Justice excuse is that it isn’t appropriate to file litigation so close to Election Day.

Yet that hasn’t stopped the Civil Rights Division this month from filing a lawsuit against Waller County, Texas, to correct alleged violations of the Voting Rights Act; a lawsuit against Vermont for failing to report accurately on overseas ballots; and an amicus brief in a case filed by a civil-rights group that is suing to stop the Georgia Secretary of State from complying with voter verification rules. Justice’s election suits always seem to side with liberal priorities.

It doesn’t help Justice’s credibility that attorneys charged with supervising voting issues are avowed Barack Obama supporters. According to Federal Election Commission data, James Walsh, an attorney in the Civil Rights Division, has donated at least $300 to Mr. Obama. His boss, Mark Kappelhoff, has given $2,250 — nearly the maximum. John Russ, also in Civil Rights, gave at least $600 to Mr. Obama.

Oct 28, 2008 - 9:52 am 30. Ken Nelson:

#28 ledger…. most of your list makes sense to me. But the first one… when did Obama do that?
I know he doesn’t support Israel, but could that have been said instead?

Oct 28, 2008 - 9:58 am 31. Mike Sylwester:

Cedarford:
“Then the consequences of the assassination – the brutalities in Lidice and elsewhere that were the collective punishment meant to deter more such actions – gave Benes the excuse he wanted for cleansing and killing the Sudetan Germans (millions driven off their property, several thousand killed), cleansing Magyars, and forcing breakaway Slovakia back into the Union at Soviet bayonet point. ”
============

The expulsion of the Sudeten Germans from Czechoslovakia should not be attributed to Benes individually. The expulsion always has been supported by the overwhelming majority of Czechoslovaks.

The Sudeten Germans brought the expulsion upon themselves. They had plenty of opportunity to live peacefully in Czechoslovakia. They demanded all or nothing, and so they ended up with nothing.

Oct 28, 2008 - 10:10 am 32. mika2k1:

without a doubt c4 is a kraut.
==

He’s not a kraut. He’s a jihadi. The Nazi routine is subterfuge.

Oct 28, 2008 - 10:44 am 33. Doug:

Tarzan Obama

Oct 28, 2008 - 10:57 am 34. Morton Doodslag:

I think it may be true that there has never been a more poisonous alignment of malignant political ideologies than those of leftism and Islam. We see in the anecdote above about Jerusalem how the corrosive consequences that liberal appeasement typified by Livni with the Muslims will eventually lead to the victory of Islam. In the same manner that the Nazis were willing and eager to wage total war, total terror, and extermination against all enemies, the Muslims too under Islam are doing the same. While the majority of Germans certainly never had to shoot a weapon or exterminate an innocent life, virtually no Germans stood in meaningful opposition against the rise of Nazism. So to among the Muslims we see how a dedicated coterie of murderous terrorists, inspired by their heinous “holy” book the Koran, and the execrable life of Islam’s vile “prophet”, are willing and capable of leading the entire world to the brink.

Supremacist movements and terroristic ideologies such as Nazism or Islam probably must always be destroyed, not lived with. I do not think we will see an end to the spiraling horrors which Muslims will unleash on us until their ideology of Islam is crushed. Ominously, it took the entire world in opposition and massive relentless violence to crush Nazism, and this when Germany’s population only numbered in the 50 millions, and was largely limited to a single geographical locale. Compare that to the reality of 1.2 or so billion Muslims, dispersed to the corners of every nation on earth after massive efforts to expand their footholds, and we see the titanic challenge which faces us. Perhaps Islam is not so well organized or militarily powerful as the Nazis were, but with trillions at their ultimate disposal from unearned oil wealth, with tens of millions of them willing and eager to see our utter destruction, and the non-Muslim world utterly unaligned and unwilling to fight another titanic war to defeat the nightmare of Islamic fascism, civilization may not survive this latest and final Jihad. It will either end with the complete destruction of Islam, or the ultimate success of Islam Uber Alles, which ALL good Muslims pray for daily.

Oct 28, 2008 - 11:09 am 35. Mike Sylwester:

ledger (28)
“I cannot vote for a man who is a puppet of Nazi helper George Soros.”
===============

George Soros is a Nazi helper?

And Barack Obama is George Soros’s puppet?

I must say that you are using an odd decision-making process, ledger.

Oct 28, 2008 - 11:23 am 36. NahnCee:

I don’t see how working and tax-paying Jews moving out of Jerusalem to their version of the ‘burbs is any different than working and taxpaying Americans moving out of the ghetto’s of New York, DC and LA to escape the depradations of uneducated unemployed bad guys here in America. Isn’t the basic bottom-line that the bad guys in both situations are unemployed criminals that honest taxpayers just don’t want to be around?

The situation in America is about to become worse than that of “Arabs taking over Israel” because we have a Presidential candidate who is totally on-board with redistributing the wealth, which will mean taking even more money away from American taxpayers who have moved out of the inner cities and giving it to that group of people who have done absolutely nothing to deserve it. At least the Israeli government isn’t proposing to take Jewish wealth and redistribute it to Arabs living there just because they’re too dumb, ugly and lazy to make a life for themselves.

Oct 28, 2008 - 11:33 am 37. slimslowslider:

“He’s not a kraut. He’s a jihadi. The Nazi routine is subterfuge.”

well than i guess they both use subterfuge. they’re so alike.

Oct 28, 2008 - 11:35 am 38. Charles:

the problem of the czechs in the 1940’s is not dissimiliar to the the problem faced Israel in 60 AD. For Honor as in Churchhill’s line– “There may be even a worse fate. You may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish then to live as slaves.” –do you rebel against the romans knowing what their response would be and what had happened in 589 BC –or do you hold on to your temple and country and just wait out the Romans–in the knowledge that eventually the roman empire would go the way of all empires before.

Oct 28, 2008 - 11:37 am 39. mika2k1:

slimslowslider,

There’s a very easy giveaway. Listen to what they don’t say.

Oct 28, 2008 - 11:42 am 40. Charles:

You can sense the reality and awfulness of this choice when you read St. Paul’s Book of Romans. It was written about 59 AD — or within a year or so Britain’s queen Laodicea rebellion and destruction by the Romans and 10 years or so before Israel’s rebellion and destruction by the Romans.

The Romans themselves had just raised their emperors up to the Status of Gods–like the Egyptians before.

Oct 28, 2008 - 11:43 am 41. Jim Nicholas:

Programmer (#13)

You raise an interesting question about guilt:

‘Guilt does not seem to me to have any evolutionary value at all, yet it is very powerful. It does cause humans to “give a damn.” It seems to be a built in trait that survives from generation to generation, with no apparent survival benefit to the “guilt bearers.”’

Might guilt work evolutionarily like this?

Feelings are very contagious. Laughter tends to elicit laughter, even if we do not know what the laughter is about. Same is true of smiles, frowns, even yawns. Not only humans but also other species become agitated when they hear cries of pain or distress among their members. Maybe guilt is that distressing feeling we have when we cause pain in others. Since guilt is a painful experience, we try to avoid it by not hurting others. Thus, guilt promotes the cohesion of a group. Those who do not feel guilt can be very destructive to the group. And so groups of persons who feel guilt may be more likely to survive and pass on the capacity for guilt–pass on via either genes or memes.

Jim

Oct 28, 2008 - 11:47 am 42. mika2k1:

Charles,

Jesus and his followers did not carry weapons. Israel’s “rebellion” was instigated by the Romans. The Romans had bills to pay, and Israel was easy pickin.

Oct 28, 2008 - 11:50 am 43. Charles:

St Paul was pharasee with connections that went all the way into the temple in Jerusalem –ie he understood temple politics.

He was also a roman citizen.

Oct 28, 2008 - 11:56 am 44. Doug:

Fatwā’s
ht – fellowpeacekeeper

Oct 28, 2008 - 11:57 am 45. mika2k1:

St Paul was pharasee
==

Not by my reading. No, he was not a Pharisee. He was not even Jewish. Paul Tarsus was a paid Roman spy and agent. That’s where his connections to Judea start and end.

Oct 28, 2008 - 12:04 pm 46. Doug:

aka “Desert Rat”

Oct 28, 2008 - 12:06 pm 47. Mike Sylwester:

During the period from Jesus’ ministry until the destruction of the Temple, Jewish society included a significant movement of Jews who believed that the Temple had to be destroyed in order to fulfill Daniel’s prophecies about God’s plan to end the known world. This Jewish movement intentionally provoked the Romans to destroy the Temple. God would not establish the new world until after the Temple had been destroyed, and only the Romans could destroy it.

This Jewish movement was extremely irrational, guided by ancient prophecies proclaimed by hermits who interpreted visions and dreams.

In the year 60 AD it was entirely possible for a society to be governed by the Romans and to maintain a national temple that the Romans did not destroy. Only Jewish society had a movement that believed its temple would be destroyed soon as a divine sign that God was about to establish Heaven on Earth.

Oct 28, 2008 - 12:06 pm 48. mika2k1:

If anything, it was Jesus who was a Pharisee.

Oct 28, 2008 - 12:09 pm 49. Charles:

Not by my reading. No, he was not a Pharisee. He was not even Jewish. Paul Tarsus was a paid Roman spy and agent. That’s where his connections to Judea start and end.
……….
what and Meyer Kahane was a spy for Hamas?

Oct 28, 2008 - 12:11 pm 50. Bill in NC:

Paul (Saul) was a Pharisee (Jew) and Roman citizen, who had a conversion (was baptized) on the Road to Damascus. You could look it up. The rest is history.

Oct 28, 2008 - 12:11 pm 51. Eggplant:

Charles asked:

“do you rebel against the romans knowing what their response would be and what had happened in 589 BC –or do you hold on to your temple and country and just wait out the Romans–in the knowledge that eventually the roman empire would go the way of all empires before.”

I believe many of the ancient Jewish elders were advocating precisely that strategy. One could argue the main reasons why John the Baptist and Jesus were executed was due to concerns that they could agitate a Jewish mob into a violent uprising and trigger a Roman response. The Jewish elders had the examples of Carthage and Corinth showing that the Romans could be genocidal if provoked. Of course, the Romans did attempt genocide of the Jews after the Bar Kochba revolt. However it could be counter-argued that one of the things maintaining diasporic Jewish unity was the sacrifice and honor shown during the Second Uprising and Bar Kochba revolt.

The Jews did some things right: They’re still around, while the Roman Empire and the Nazis are long gone.

Oct 28, 2008 - 12:33 pm 52. Mike Sylwester:

Charles (49)
“Paul Tarsus was a paid Roman spy and agent. That’s where his connections to Judea start and end.”
===========

It’s more likely that Paul initially worked as a spy for the Temple’s guard force, which was concerned by the serious talk within the Jesus movement about the Temple being destroyed. After the execution of Steven in Jerusalem, Paul traveled to Damascus to find, investigate and eventually arrest members of the Jesus movement. By the time he arrived in Damascus, Paul claimed he had become a fellow believer and so he joined the movement.

Paul then became an apprentice of the disciple Philip, who led the believers who spoke Greek as their native language. Philip lived in Caesarea, not in Jerusalem, and was a malcontent within the movement.

Eventually Paul lost his belief that the Jews were God’s chosen people, and so he returned to Tarsus for several years and developed his own eclectic religion, which he propagated afterwards.

He eventually was arrested and condemned to death because he he tried to sneak a non-Jew into the Temple. This stunt perhaps had something to do with his previous spying activities for the Temple guard force. I don’t think Paul ever had spied for the Romans, but the Romans figured that Paul might be an excellent source of information, and so the Romans saved him from his imminent Jewish execution and took him away to be questioned safely in Rome.

Oct 28, 2008 - 12:38 pm 53. mika2k1:

The Roman tale of “The Paul Tarsus Story”, which is really what the “NT” is all about, is an edited and reedited story/narrative with the purpose of Roman political propaganda. The “Paul Tarsus” character, as presented in the NT, could not have been a Pharisee. That character could not have even been a Jew. The story of “Paul Tarsus” displays such profound ignorance as regards Jewish thought and practice that anyone who studied Judaism could tell you that the “Paul Tarsus” story and narrative is a Roman fraud.

Oct 28, 2008 - 12:46 pm 54. Roderick Reilly:

yes, I’m puzzled by “ledger’s” two entries implying that Obama is a Holocaust denier and that Soros is/was a “Nazi-helper.”

At best, unless we haven’t heard some tidbit proving otherwise, Obama may have associated with some people who would greet the Jewish Holocaust with a shrug as part of an “Anti-Zionist” stance, but that doesn’t amount to “Holocaust denial.”

Soros had to escape the Nazis as a youth, as I recall. I do not like Soros or what he has been doing with his money, but I find the “Nazi” thing to be odd and innapprorpiate.

Oct 28, 2008 - 12:51 pm 55. mika2k1:

Paul traveled to Damascus to find, investigate and eventually arrest members of the Jesus movement.
==

LOL. Damascus. Why not Karachi?

Oct 28, 2008 - 12:53 pm 56. Mike Sylwester:

mika2kl
“The “Paul Tarsus” character, as presented in the NT, could not have been a Pharisee. ”
==========

Any Jew could be a Pharisee. The Pharisees comprised a philosophical movement. Being a Pharisee was essentially not more difficult than for an American to consider himself to be a Democrat or Republican.

As a young man, Paul received his religious education from a Pharisee.

Paul’s teachings as they appear in the New Testament differed significantly from Jewish teachings. He was a heretic. That doesn’t prove, though, that he was not born, raised and educated as a Jew.

Oct 28, 2008 - 1:12 pm 57. Bill in NC:

As I recall, the New Testament covers several “characters” besides St. Paul. As certain as you are of — well, everything — mika, I am cerain that your presentation style is not as persuasive as you likely think it is.

Oct 28, 2008 - 1:17 pm 58. mika2k1:

Any Jew could be a Pharisee.
==

True. And most Jews, including Jesus, were Pharisee. But Paulus of Tarsus was not a Jew. If you want to understand why I say this, I suggest you learn the diff between Sukkot and Pessah. Armed with that basic knowledge, which is basic knowledge for EVERY Jew, go back and read the NT.

Oct 28, 2008 - 1:22 pm 59. Mark:

Wrichard writes: “The assassination of various Czech Quislings was considered and rejected.”

Such a fate, to have your name become a common noun for “nazi collaborator.”

Via Wiktionary:

“quisling”: Named from Major Vidkun Quisling, a Norwegian army officer and politician who collaborated with the occupying Germans during World War Two and was subsequently executed for treason.

As Wikipedia notes, In some European languages, the term “quisling” has become a synonym for traitor, particularly one who collaborates with invaders. The term was coined by the British newspaper The Times in its leader of 15 April 1940, entitled “Quislings everywhere.” The editorial asserted: “To writers, the word Quisling is a gift from the gods. If they had been ordered to invent a new word for traitor… they could hardly have hit upon a more brilliant combination of letters. Actually it contrives to suggest something at once slippery and tortuous.” The noun has survived; for a while during and after the War the back-formed verb “to quisle” (pronounced “quizzle”) was used. One who was “quisling” was committing treason.[3]

Oct 28, 2008 - 1:23 pm 60. Melissus:

What a thought-provoking post! Thank you, Wretchard.
How does one fight evil without becoming evil? That is the issue so far as I see it.
The other day a moral theologian was discussing with me the wrongness of dropping the atomic bomb (twice) on Japan to end WWII. I think dropping the bombs was a correct decision, and I argued, not very convincingly I’m afraid, that the evil of dropping the bomb was the least evil of several bad options that imposed themselves for the ending of the war. All indications were that the Japanese were so fanatical that breaking their will to fight, kill and die would cost as much as two million casualties on the American side, and many more on the Japanese side. (There were reports from Okinawa, if I remember right, that even school teachers and children were committing hara kiri, i.e., self-evisceration, to avoid being dishonorably captured by the American forces. That shows quite a bit of fanaticism.) I was lectured that the end never justifies the means. He who wants the good end (that of ending the cruel war) must in this context resign himself to unending war, and possibly the much crueler extermination of a greater mass of humanity either by combat or consequent starvation and disease, than the 160,000 killed by the two A-bombs.
Similarly, to defeat the Islamic,imperialist, creeping invasion of Jerusalem, one must be willing to be cruel or resign oneself to eventual loss of one’s home and the future of ones posterity.
Evil reaches an extreme point that neutralizes the good person’s capacity to defend himself before its onslaught without becoming evil. The absolute genius of evil: it defeats the good man by a perverse necessity.
Or so some think. I do not. I believe it is perverse to credit evil with more power than goodness. But I believe it, I can’t prove it.

Oct 28, 2008 - 1:26 pm 61. mika2k1:

Mike Sylwester,

Exactly how far did the authority of the Temple priests extend from the Temple? Why not Karachi?

Oct 28, 2008 - 1:26 pm 62. Old Blue:

Wretchard, are you tracking on the saga of Nick Meo in Afghanistan?

Oct 28, 2008 - 1:41 pm 63. NahnCee:

Blue – he wrote the one article that got him labeled something like “worst reporter ev-ah!”. What’s happened since then?

Oct 28, 2008 - 2:05 pm 64. Fred:

c-fudd is a case in point for “the persistence of evil.”

Oct 28, 2008 - 2:07 pm 65. wretchard:

How does one fight evil without becoming evil? That is the issue so far as I see it.

The role of the ordinary man is simply to survive, relying on evil to destroy itself like a ravening beast ripping its own body apart. If you were the average decent European during World War 2, unless luck gave you some special opportunity to fight the Nazis, the best thing you could do was simply to survive: to evade in your body and in your mind. Hitler and Stalin, truth to tell, did most of the rest to themselves.

But when you actually have the power to resist — as the Greatest Generation did — your problem becomes subtly different. A terrible burden, some would even call it a responsibility, falls on you to engage evil at the risk that it too may pull you down into moral damnation. As Tolkien might say, Power is a perilous thing. His metaphorical solution was to entrust power — and only temporarily — to entirely ordinary men who would put it away when the need was past and return to their gardening. The mystique of Cincinnatus and George Washington was that, like Sam Gamgee of LOTR, they could apparently see no use in it.

To recognize people who lust after power is the first skill of political discernment. And unfortunately, since America became globally pre-eminent after World War 2, a permanent class has come to see the exercise of power as their right; and the opportunity to remak the world according to their vision as their vocation. That temptation was held in check for as long as culture was anchored in the simple, while society itself was dominated by the Cincinnatuses. Today we no longer want to till the earth. We want to be cool.

Oct 28, 2008 - 2:10 pm 66. mika2k1:

what and Meyer Kahane was a spy for Hamas?
==

Charles,

Read this:
The Mythmaker: Paul And the Invention Of Christianity
By Hyam Maccoby

http://www.amazon.com/Mythmaker-Paul-Invention-Christianity/dp/0062505858

Oct 28, 2008 - 2:23 pm 67. mariner:

Mika2k1

“Jews/Israelis have long memories.”

Bullshit. Those idiots don’t even remember yesterday, let alone the lessons of history.

In the 1930s and 1940s the majority of European Jews flatly refused to see the evil that eventually destroyed most of them. They accommodated their mortal enemies and got slaughtered.

Today the majority of Jews in America (and apparently a sizable portion of those in Israel) are tripping all over themselves to accommodate “Palestinians” and their apologists, in denial of the fact that they are mortal enemies.

I’ve reluctantly concluded that, at least politically, Jews are the dumbest people of the face of this planet.

Oct 28, 2008 - 2:30 pm 68. Fletcher Christian:

The casualties in this war when it comes to its climax, after 1300 years, will not be in six or seven digits. They will be in ten; and this is only one of the possibilities.

I see three paths before the West, and also before the rest of humanity. As is often the case, the best is also the most difficult.

Path 1; business as usual. The West continues to allow the gradual takeover of the entire Earth by Islam; and it will happen – if only because the enemy breed like bacteria – not an entirely unapt simile – and we aren’t even replacing ourselves. Eventually, the global Caliphate comes to pass, and because Islam is fundamentally opposed to technology, science and learning we eventually run out of all the necessities of technological civilisation – and sooner or later, because of some major ecological change such as another Dinosaur Killer, the human race becomes extinct.

Path 2; we actually start doing something positive – actually several somethings – about the money tree that militant Islam has in its backyard, and also about the fifth column already resident in the West. Islam goes back to being what it was in the early 20th century and before; a nuisance, but essentially a group of barbarians with quaint customs that divide their time between killing each other and rubbing their foreheads in the sand five times a day.

Path 3; Three Conjectures – and no reader of this blog needs me to say any more about that. Except that victory will be Pyhrric; unlike the enemy, we have a conscience and this would scar the heart and soul of the free West for ever.

Path 2 is the best, IMHO, and also the most difficult. Path 3 is the second best, and actually quite easy to accomplish if we have the will. Path 1 is not acceptable.

Oct 28, 2008 - 2:49 pm 69. Pelted:

I’m a big supporter of Barry O. I am here not to throw any bombs, but because I have just written a post on my blog about why, despite the fact that I make a fair amount of money, I support Barack Obama. My friends seem to like it, but they’re mostly more liberal than me. So I am inviting some true-red conservatives to come over and attempt to rip me apart.

Oct 28, 2008 - 2:51 pm 70. Rick Smith:

Mariner,

Maybe not dumb, just tired. If they had the oil that their neighbors had they would probably be in a better position politically. Since the Carter administration they have become a political football, surrounded by enemies that have a economic hammer they don’t have. And the left has made heroes out of the Palestianins, a group of people shunned by all in the Mid-east as a people, but used for self-serving political reasons by their fellow Muslims. If they didn’t have Israel these jerks would be in a constant state of war with each other.

Oct 28, 2008 - 2:52 pm 71. Pascal:

So, you are saying, our leaders are either all potential Sullas, or Caesars studying what works for the dictator while laying low until Sulla does his Cincinnatus imitation?

Oct 28, 2008 - 3:35 pm 72. Aristide:

Melissus @60

The other day a moral theologian was discussing with me the wrongness of dropping the atomic bomb (twice) on Japan to end WWII. I think dropping the bombs was a correct decision…

In 1971 I was attending a conference at Stanford. Before attending a lecture by By Dr. Edward Teller, a friend and I were having lunch in the cafeteria. As it was crowded, a gentleman came over and asked if he and his wife could join our table. We quickly agreed. He was a Caucasian American doctor and his wife was Oriental. After finishing lunch, my friend and I, we went on the the auditorium to listen to Dr. Teller.

As the lecture went on, Dr. Teller was agonizing about whether dropping the bomb was the correct decision.

At that point the lady we had just had lunch with, stood up and said she was in Hiroshima the day the bomb was dropped and that it was the right decision!

Oct 28, 2008 - 4:06 pm 73. Pay Attention:

—despite the fact that I make a fair amount of money, I support Barack Obama.—

Actually, its because you are well off that you can afford to overlook the devastating effects that the One will have on the middle class. His approach will make a severe recession, possibly a depression as he taxes weak businesses. Giving new strength to labor unions by eliminating the secret ballot will kill even more jobs.

Yep, glad you got yours,,,,screw those who would like to be like you.

Oct 28, 2008 - 4:10 pm 74. Charles:

Jesus was a pharasee in the sense that he believed in the resurrection of the dead. Christians believe that Jesus himself rose from the dead.

What distinguished a pharasee from a saducee was that the latter only believed in the first five books of the bible. there could be miracles as in manna from heaven but no resurrection of the dead–because that didn’t happen in the first five books.

The pharasee believed in the resurrection of the dead because they believed in the rest of the OT. That included elija rising up into the sky.

Jesus for his part did not have nice things to say about the pharasees as a group — of his day.

Oct 28, 2008 - 4:24 pm 75. Konyok:

Oh so true, Wretchard.
We just want to be cool.

There is a condition that I term “The Hipster’s Dilemma.”

The hipster is a parasitic creature. He depends upon the chumps for sustenance and for definition. Whatever the chumps are for, the hipster is against. Confident in his abilities to talk his way through any trouble, delighting in his skill of twisting any truth into self serving irony, the hipster majestically strolls among the chumps with a secret smile.
Before the advent of modern mass society, the hipster maintained his numbers in a sustainable predator to prey ratio. His eccentricities were tolerated, and sometimes celebrated as genius, by a host population busy tilling the soil.
Unwisely, modern hipsters succumbed to the temptations of pop culture. Not content to savor the gag in solitude, the hipster became evangelical to gratify his greedy need for adulation and approval. As adolescence in the western world became unmoored from the economic demands of the family, a great cohort of youth seeking transcendence proved a heady temptation for the hipster.
This was ultimately unwise because, by definition, the parasitic hipster depends upon a healthy host body. Broadcast through the pop culture, the hipster code gradually supplanted the traditional culture, eventually resulting in the paradox of conformist non-conformity.
The hipster no longer has anything to rebel against. In this western age of miracle and wonder, it is the traditionalist who is the rebel, the orthodox who is the iconoclast. And it is the hipster who must enforce the pieties.

Ouroboros.

Oct 28, 2008 - 4:47 pm 76. Old Blue:

NahnCee, he’s getting ripped apart in the milblog community, and while they haven’t said anything publicly, the Telegraph is trying to do damage control. Meo’s been banned from further embeds with Americans, from what I’ve heard from a PAO in country, and he’s whining to other journalists in A’stan about his innocence.

It’s actually an interesting case of bloggers (including myself) making a lot of noise and getting noticed for it. We’ve been encouraging people to email Meo and the Telegraph and make a ruckus. It seems to be working.

Meo even complained in an article about his treatment at the hands of bloggers.

Oct 28, 2008 - 4:56 pm 77. nelson:

Both socialism and Islamism are systems that do not really know how to create wealth: they only know how to spread or distribute the already exisiting wealth. Both end up necessarily as slave economies. Islamism is more straightforward: it always consisted in spreading the wealth, but not exactly around, rather from the infidel to the true-believers: the Muslims, in their golden age, as most empires btw, started by raiding a place and eventually conquered it and enslaved the population. Islam, however, has a built-in problem: slaves cease to be slaves when they convert to Islam and, thus, Islam has to keep on conquering more places and enslaving more people because the number of Muslims also grows, and quite fast in such conditions. They’ll have a huge problem once the whole world has been conquered and the entire mankind is converted, because there’ll be no one around to enslave and they will have to find out how actually to create wealth.
Socialism works in two phases. The first is the “spread the wealth around” phase, during which the class of “wealth-spreaders” buys, with the money or property of the rich or of the well-to-do, the votes of the poor, of the not-so-well-to-do or even the less rich. In the meanwhile, this class or group entrenches itself in power, creates all the necessary mechanisms of a dictatorship or a police-state and, as soon as the first kind of “spreadable-wealth” is over, it begins to spread any wealth that can be extracted from the population in general to its own members.
Thus, any compromise with either Islamism or socialism, if one’s not a Muslim or a party-member, means nothing less than chosing to be a slave. Being a slave, however, is not necessarily that bad. After all, Greek slaves in Rome were valued as men of letters, teachers, philosophers and so on: they probably lived much better than most free Roman citizens. On the other hand, once someone was captured and enslaved by the Aztecs, his likely end was to be dragged to the top of a beautiful pyramid, have his heart ripped off with obsidian knives by the priests and the rest of his body sold in the butcher shops to be eventually cooked with tomatoes and chilli peppers.
So, it is all just a matter of knowing in advance, whether you are a Jew or, as the doomed Polish elite, a Catholic, a British or Russian POW during WW2, what exactly the Nazis or socialists, the Aztecs or Romans want you for.

Oct 28, 2008 - 5:06 pm 78. Tony:

Excellent post, Prof Wretchard, and also interesting erudition on our Biblical commentators Mika, Charles, et. al.

Bringing it back to the USA, there was no “anti-war” movement in the ’90’s when we were constantly at war, including many unilateral attacks with no Congressional reference let alone UN approval (Somalia, Sudan, Desert Fox, blah blah).

There is no “anti-war” movement against the ongoing slaughter of 15-16,000 Americans per year in Democratic-controlled regions, aka our inner cities. More Americans have been killed in Philly than have been killed in Baghdad since 2003, more Americans have been killed in Chicago than have been killed in the war in Iraq and Afghanistan combined this year.

Self-inflicted, America-hating weakness reigns in this political campaign. If the anti-war folks were rational, they would put the expense of the war against the expense of the failed New Deal and Great Society failures. They would look back and see the consequences of ignoring threats as the Democrats ignored Al Qaeda’s declarations and acts of war in the ’90’s.

Sarah Palin and Joe the Plumber are the new Anthropoids, they’re being killed for fighting back against self-hatred and foreign weakness.

Oct 28, 2008 - 5:36 pm 79. What Is Your God? » The Ethereal Voice:

[...] The Belmont Club… In other words, it would have been better if Benes had just left things alone. Just two weeks after [...]

Oct 28, 2008 - 5:46 pm 80. bogie wheel:

One minor quibble with the post:

Only a minority of the 105 children of Lidice ended up in the Lebensborn program. (And several of those died/disappeared therein.) The vast majority of the children, 82 of them, after weeks of horrible treatment and neglect, to say nothing of the psychological & emotional terror of having been torn from their parents and homes, were gassed to death in gas trucks in Chelmno.

I don’t have a redeeming coda to put on this comment because there isn’t one.

Oct 28, 2008 - 5:54 pm 81. cedarford:

Mike Sylwester – The Sudeten Germans brought the expulsion upon themselves. They had plenty of opportunity to live peacefully in Czechoslovakia. They demanded all or nothing, and so they ended up with nothing.

Actually, the history is quite different than you seem to believe. The Sudetan Lands were Germanic from Roman times. The Sudetans had always been a part of some Germanic regime until after WWI, when France – primarily – insisted that that part of German territory be given to the Czechs, as well as Slovakia and part of Ruthene in order to cobble together a new nation.

The vengeful victors also took the Rhineland, Alsace-Lorraine, and German territories to the East, including parts awarded to the newly created Poland – half the Silesian lands, and the Hanseatic territories which included Danzig.

There was never an option for Sudetan Germans, or honestly the Slovaks and Ruthenians – to live peacefully in Czechoslovakia. From the start, the Czechs repressed those minorities hard and barred them from autonomy or holding office or most gov’t jobs in the new nation.

From the start, Sudetan Germans then pitched for a return, like the Rhineland, like other Germans to the East now under foreign oppression – to Germany. The Slovaks were also very unhappy to be with the Czechs.

Moreover, ignored in the “Munich!” myth pitched only to credulous Americans, both the Sudetans and Slovaks had a legal case under “self-determination” clauses of the League of Nations, created from Wilson’s 14 Points of Freedom. And Brits opposing French over helping “freedom-lovers!!” – The Brits generally sympathetic to revanchist claims arising. A sense that the Victors had gone too far and, with both colonial empires weakened from the Great War, the Global Depression, and in great fear of the Russian-Jewish Bolsheviks that they knew had already killed millions and threatened West Europe – in no mood to get Britain in another war over lands not in the UK’s vital interest.

At Munich, remember, the Poles and Slovaks also backed Hitler’s effort to get minorities and seized land returned to self-determination. The outcome of which was not only liberation of the Sudetan Germans, but a return of Poles and Polish land to Poland, and Slovakia given autonomy from Czech oppression.

**************
Of course we know Hitler’s ambition went past legitimate efforts to reclaim lands and people taken from it by the WWI Victors…but the fact it was Hitler who went far past those legitimate grievances later does not magically make his earlier actions illegitimate in 20-20 hindsight. Or make a case that Poland, the UK, Slovakia should have had crystal balls that saw WWII, and thus “sided” with “The Hero of Munich”.

The idea that later actions that aren’t legitimate – then wipe away past actions that were legitimate basis for grievance is naturally beloved by Zionists. Who push the Munich!! myth hard and have used their sway with media and publishers in America to construct the Munich!! narrative and also create the “Legitimate Cleansing narrative” of Israel’s creation. From elementary school onwards, Americans are fed both myths to bolster sympathy for “America’s Special Friend”.

The “Legitimate Cleansing Narrative” was that Zionist cleansing of Palestinians in areas apportioned to the Jews was legitimized by Pals refusing the Partition Deal, then later acts.

For “people of the law” – their notion of law is very slippery.

Something like violating present law is justifiable if in the future, the people you screwed or bilk retaliate. Or do their own bad acts in the future – which then magically “cancel out” Zionist’s earlier bad acts.

But with a large Muslim population in the USA, thanks in large part to Open Borders Corporatists like Bush II, as well as the heavily liberal Jewish ACLU (what irony) – Americans will no longer have one-sided Zionist propaganda in their media or textbooks go unchallenged. In case no one at Belmont Club has noticed, Muslim Americans and much of our scholars are now not letting false Zionist claims go without rebuttal.

No more will Zionist lies such as these go unchallenged:

1. “A land without a people, for a people without a land”
2. 5 Arab armies suddenly attacked peaceful Israelis
3. Israel only wants peace. Arabs started the 5 major wars Israel has fought.
4. Compensation does not have to be given for any Palestinian land and property because all the Christian and Muslim inhabitants voluntarily left following Radio Broadcasts.
5. No Jews left Muslim lands voluntarily for Aliya. They were forced out, and stuff stole from them nullifies stuff we stole from Palestinians.
6. Unlike other Muslims, Israeli Muslims are real happy campers. Friendly neighbors, happy to be in a Jewish State that takes such good care of them.
7. Settlements and water appropriation is just reclaiming what was ‘traditional Jewish’ property.
8. Only Muslims are terrorists. Jews, as one of, if not the highest moral people on the planet…would never do such a thing.
9. Israel is America’s best, most loyal, most indispensible ally.

And part of the modern, and correct historical revisionism is rejecting the Jewish narrative about “Munich!” as the basis of the collective guilt of the West – thus causing the deaths of Jews because they failed to “stop Hitler” at a morally clear point and side with the Hero of Munich, Edvard Benes.

It wasn’t that clear at all.
And the use of Munich! as a “guilt trip” to make nations outside Germany guilty and complicit of “failing to save the Jews”
(and 32 million ‘lesser’ humans that never seem to be included in the discussion) is going away.
As is the Neocon use of Munich!
as code to incite conservatives that militarism is the best path – since “No More Munichs!” and thus preemptive war is somehow now our sacred obligation – so we won’t “fail Our Special Friends” like the bad Old Europeans did. That false narrative is now also under huge scrutinity after the Iraq debacle, the unraveling of long time alliances and influence America once had, and the destroyed Presidency of Bush.

We can see it in those last military Triumphalists now screaming “No More Munichs!” trying to rally the American people into the wisdom of starting a 3rd major war against Iran. To little enthusiasm or agreement that at this moment – Iran is a clear and present danger to Americans.

Oct 28, 2008 - 6:05 pm 82. bogie wheel:

Melissus @ 60:

Google “Paul Fussell” and “Thank God for the Atom Bomb.”

BTW, is the “moral theologian” one who is to be distinguished from the “immoral theologian”?

Oct 28, 2008 - 6:08 pm 83. NahnCee:

Blue – yes, I know those things. He sounds like TNR’s Franklin Foer and SCott Thomas Beauchamp when Beauchamp was busted over his made-up shit about Iraq. Long mewling “why meeeeeeee” with accompanying panting and hyperventilation. So that’s to be expected on his part — have his English media superiors done anything about recalling his ass or will they try to back him up, or just leave him to swing softly in the Afghan breezes?

I thought perhaps something concrete had happened, like he’d been fragged or kidnapped and beheaded since no one would lift a finger to protect him.

The thought crosses my mind that even if the Americans won’t embed him any more, would some weird politics in the UK make the Brits take him instead? There are still Brits in AFghanistan, aren’t there?

Oct 28, 2008 - 6:11 pm 84. outa my league:

So many Freds can be confusing.

Could the original Fred of long standing, the thoroughly analytical, yet ultimately pragmatic, original Fred be persuaded to badge and distinguish himself as Fred the Jesuit?

(No offense intended to the other Fine Freds in this Thread).

OML

Oct 28, 2008 - 6:39 pm 85. bogie wheel:

On a different but related tack:

Chad Michael Morrisette, creator of the Sarah Palin effigy-in-a-noose display, said: “I know if we had done it with Barack Obama, people would’ve probably thrown things through our windows.”

You can agree or disagree with Morrisette about the likelihood of a vandalistic and potentially violent response to an Obama-in-a-noose display … but it’s clear that Morrisette himself thoroughly believes, and has based his decision of whom to provoke (or not to provoke), on his perception that one course of action would result in unwelcome retaliation, while the other course of action would not.

In other words, “I’ll go ahead & piss off the people who won’t/can’t fight back.”

The LA Times reports: “Officials from the Secret Service, West Hollywood city code enforcement and the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department are scrutinizing a West Hollywood Halloween display showing a likeness of Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin hanging by a noose.

“But although the decoration may be offensive, it’s likely not in violation of any city, state or federal laws and is protected by the 1st Amendment, officials said Tuesday.”

I don’t think that the display constitutes criminal activity, either. But, just because something is legal doesn’t mean it’s right. (That said, I somehow doubt Mr. Morrisette will have his driving record, tax status, income figures, professional licenses, etc. dug up at lightning speed, published & broadcast everywhere and joked about on Jay Leno as a result of this incident.)

Which brings me to my questions as they relate to the original post:

(1) At what point are we as a society/culture when there is a very clear recognition by many that there are definitely some social/political/religious groups that will burn things & bust kneecaps (or worse) if offended or insulted, and some that will engage in little more than harmless griping when likewise offended or insulted … and that this very recognition leads to actively choosing some behaviors/speech and the avoidance of other behaviors/speech?

(2) If yours is the group widely recognized to be the P&Ming wimps, what is your recourse?

Oct 28, 2008 - 6:46 pm 86. outa my league:

It happened again, Cedarford.

McCain’s latest internal polling results, announced this afternoon, show McCain leading Obama in 4 of 5 key battleground states, and then what happened?

The DOW shot way way up, 2nd biggest gain ever.

You may think I’m Andy from Mayberry, but I’ve tied you up in Knotts, haven’t I?

oml

Oct 28, 2008 - 6:55 pm 87. nelson:

Isn’t it funny how easy it is to turn victimizers into victims and vice-versa? Bohemia, a Slavic kingdom since the Middle Ages, was conquered and exploited by the Germanic Habsburgs for centuries. That’s fine. But then, allowing “dirty” Slavs to rule over the worthy Germans of the Sudetan lands seems to be a bit too much. Slovakia was part of the medieval Magyar kingdom of Hungary. The real name of Bratizlava is Pozsony. Slavs were intentionally moved there by the Austrians who considered the Magyars unreliable. Anyway, when Czechoslovakia was created, Slovakia was composed not only of majoritarily Slovakian populated lands, but also of territories where the Magyars were a majority. When Hitler, to dismember Czechoslovakia (without, obviously, any intention ever of dividing and ruling or of throwing one ethnicity against the other), gave the Slovaks some kind of relative independence, he gave also some, but not all, Slovakian lands back to Hungary. Can you guess whether the Slovaks, so eager to be freed from the Czechs, were happy to lose part of their sacred soil to the hated Hungarian oppressors? Oh, BTW, Hungary paid for such kindness (and some other help with the Romanians and the Yugoslavs) by sending a whole army to help the Germans in Russia. It was shamefully massacred by the Red Army in less than two weeks, at the bend of the river Don, costing the country 200.000 men, that is, 2% of Hungary’s population. And the clever Hungarians, knowing they were getting into a war, should have made the most they could of their doctors, didn’t they? But since almost half of them were Jewish, well, they rather allowed more Magyars to die untreated, just in order to have the pleasure of killing 40% of the country’s doctors. Europeans always hated each other and all or most of them only hated the Jews (but not more than Slovaks hate Magyars, Magyars hate Romanians, Romanians despise Bulgarians, Serbs hate Croats and vice-versa and so on) because there were Jews everywhere, while there was not much sense, say, for a Portuguese to hate the Poles. Hating one’s neighbours (and the rest of mankind) is a deeply rooted continental habit. Actually, when Hitler immediately before the end, made it clear that the Germans deserved to be exterminated for having lost the war and for having let him down, he only proved that the pleasure of killing others trumps even individual or national survival. So, when you read people preaching hatred of a nation conveniently connected to Bolsheviks, Neoconservatives, Capitalists, the ACLU and so on, remember: it just begins with the Jews, it never stops with them. There’s really no such thing as a pure anti-semite. Whoever wants to exterminate the Jews always has a much longer wish-list. People who make gas-chambers don’t want to go jobless after the last Jew is killed. Ahmadinejad won’t be satisfied only with the bombs he needs to destroy “the zionist cancer”. He wouldn’t be satisfied even were he able to destroy both Israel and the US. It is always worthwhile to remember that Hitler’s true masterwork wasn’t the killing of 6 million “irrelevant” Jews or more than 20 milllion Russians and so on. No: his main accomplishment was the killing of 8 million Germans (10% of the population) and the destruction of more than a thousand year worth of cultural treasures in Germanic lands. That’s, by the way, what the Germans elected him for.

Oct 28, 2008 - 7:06 pm 88. mika2k1:

No more will Zionist lies such as these go unchallenged:
1. “A land without a people, for a people without a land”
2. 5 Arab armies suddenly attacked peaceful Israelis
3. Israel only wants peace. Arabs started the 5 major wars Israel has fought.
4. Compensation does not have to be given for any Palestinian land and property because all the Christian and Muslim inhabitants voluntarily left following Radio Broadcasts.
5. No Jews left Muslim lands voluntarily for Aliya. They were forced out, and stuff stole from them nullifies stuff we stole from Palestinians.
6. Unlike other Muslims, Israeli Muslims are real happy campers. Friendly neighbors, happy to be in a Jewish State that takes such good care of them.
7. Settlements and water appropriation is just reclaiming what was ‘traditional Jewish’ property.
8. Only Muslims are terrorists. Jews, as one of, if not the highest moral people on the planet…would never do such a thing.
9. Israel is America’s best, most loyal, most indispensible ally.
==

No more will Jihadifart’s lies such as these go unchallenged:
1/ “A land without a people, for a people without a land”

> Was true in the 19th century. Obviously not true today.

2/ 5 Arab armies suddenly attacked peaceful Israelis

> Correction, 5 Jihadi armies. None of these people are actually ethnically arab, just “arabized” thru Jihad.

3/ Israel only wants peace. Arabs started the 5 major wars Israel has fought.

> It’s actually 7 wars. And yes, the Jihadis started them all.

4/ Compensation does not have to be given for any Palestinian land and property because all the Christian and Muslim inhabitants voluntarily left following Radio Broadcasts.

> The only compensation the Jihadi deserves is total annihilation. That day will come. Not to worry.

5/ No Jews left Muslim lands voluntarily for Aliya. They were forced out, and stuff stole from them nullifies stuff we stole from Palestinians.

> Unlike Jihadi stolen loot, Jews outside Israel did not acquire their property thru force and conquest.

6/ Unlike other Muslims, Israeli Muslims are real happy campers. Friendly neighbors, happy to be in a Jewish State that takes such good care of them.

> No Jihadistans are ever friendly neighbors. Individual Jihadis in Israel live much better lives than they do in neighboring Jihadistans, but that will change soon enough.

7/ Settlements and water appropriation is just reclaiming what was ‘traditional Jewish’ property.

> Jewish property is what Jews say it is. Jihadis and their supporters notwithstanding.

8/ Only Muslims are terrorists. Jews, as one of, if not the highest moral people on the planet…would never do such a thing.

> As per prescription and example of muhmud, most terrorists are Jihadis. That is a fact.

9/ Israel is America’s best, most loyal, most indispensible ally.

> America is going bankrupt supporting their most loyal, most indispensable Jihadis and their Jihadistans. $2 trillion a year in support of Jihadi oil.

Oct 28, 2008 - 7:09 pm 89. wretchard:

(1) At what point are we as a society/culture when there is a very clear recognition by many that there are definitely some social/political/religious groups that will burn things & bust kneecaps (or worse) if offended or insulted, and some that will engage in little more than harmless griping when likewise offended or insulted … and that this very recognition leads to actively choosing some behaviors/speech and the avoidance of other behaviors/speech?

(2) If yours is the group widely recognized to be the P&Ming wimps, what is your recourse?

There will always be groups who will act with “uncompromising” militancy and sometimes, with savagery. Consider the following strategies. Strategy one: match the militants for extremism. Strategy two: do nothing. Strategy three: insist on a level playing field.

Strategy three is the best and preserves civil society. However, if society cannot preserve the level playing field then any group wishing to avoid extermination by militants will gradually retaliate with extremism of its own. This is the well known phenomenon of “polarization”. This is what happened in the former Yugoslavia and more recently, in Iraq. Once this happens in society it eventually breaks down. The situation in occupied Czechoslovakia was a classic case. When the rule of force began, the Nazis were fated to meet the Anthropoids. In Israel, unless something is done to treat all Israelis equally (and that means treating Arabs without discrimination both positively and negatively) then eventually things will break down or be partitioned.

In the US there is nothing remotely similar yet. But if certain trends are not reversed, maybe things will get there.

Oct 28, 2008 - 7:14 pm 90. Storm-Rider:

“Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!” Patrick Henry

“Live free or die.” Gen. John Stark – Hero of Bunker Hill

“Every citizen should be a soldier. This was the case with the Greeks and Romans, and must be that of every free state.” Thomas Jefferson

“The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.” Thomas Jefferson

“As our enemies have found we can reason like men, so now let us show them we can fight like men also.” Thomas Jefferson

“I have sworn upon the altar of God, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.” Thomas Jefferson

Gentlemen, I for one believe the time is coming where American people in great numbers will be choosing between liberty and death. I feel sorry for those who do not choose liberty; it is our birthright from God, and it is the heritage of our founders. Living as a slave to either Marxists or Islamists is not life, and there is no peace under tyranny. Better dead than red and better dead than bow down and pay jizya. If some of us die our posterity will bless us for the preservation of their freedom. Best case scenario however is the victory of human freedom over tyranny – to destroy the enemies of our God-given liberty. As General George Patton said: “Let the other poor dumb son of a bitch die for his country”, or in today’s world let him die for his perverted Islamist religion or his perverted Marxist religion.

Oct 28, 2008 - 7:39 pm 91. truepeers:

Programmer: Guilt does not seem to me to have any evolutionary value at all, yet it is very powerful. It does cause humans to “give a damn.” It seems to be a built in trait that survives from generation to generation, with no apparent survival benefit to the “guilt bearers.” As a brilliant friend of mine would say, WTF?

That’s because guilt is not a biological phenomenon; it is a cultural one: the emergence of language or culture cannot be adequately explained in (reduced to) “evolutionary” terms; the emergence of symbolic language was an event, communally memorable on a shared public scene, a scene with a dynamic (not hard-wired) center and periphery unlike anything previously in the animal world. It was a real Creation, whoever did the creating.

Guilt is much like resentment, one might say its flipside. However genuine the injustice from which our sense of guilt or resentment stems, we cannot think rationally about it while we are feeling guilty or resentful; we have to snap out of it first. Guilt is indeed delusional, even when it is deserved. Hence the genius of the Christian revelation in trying to get us beyond the ensuing impasse.

Guilt is the product of a certain way of relating to the shared public scenes of culture, of dealing with the fact that culture is inherently sacrificial, of recognizing the existence of victims whose physical consumption (whether in the past or anticipated in the future) will not rob of us of the symbolic meaning we have derived from them. Nominating a victim has given us some kind of symbolic meaning that helps bind us together against “evil” or even good; but this only means we can consume the victim and still have the meaning that binds us. The sign survives the thing. Whether we actually consume the victim, or just fear our potential to become Nazis (which is the basis of “white guilt”) our awareness of our (potential) violence makes us feel guilt.

If guilt is useful it is in pointing out a problem or danger, a real or alleged (or potentially alleged) injustice, and getting us to reflect, once we stop feeling guilty, on the nature of our shared humanity and why, for example, we are beings founded on a differentiation of good and evil, equality and freedom.

When I commit a sin, and recognize it, I can’t help but feel guilty; but eventually I can find redemption by snapping out of the guilt, i.e. finding the serenity to understand why I fell into sin and why there must be forgiveness in the world where we each have a part of evil. After all, there is no precise way to know how much guilt is my just reward. Anyway, such a lesson might help me next time to see a feeling or allegation of personal guilt as irrational, unearned, and thus help me more strongly to oppose genuine injustices that cannot be forgiven until stopped. In any case, guilt is a door towards greater self-understanding, precisely because it is delusional, because it begins in the mystery of human creation, and is a reminder that much about our condition cannot be rationally explained, reduced to evolutionary just-so stories. We will need the best of the Judeo-Christian religious tradition to help us fight the evil in our world, because this tradition has anthropological truth, whatever your particular take on the Creation and biological theories of evolution.

Oct 28, 2008 - 7:48 pm 92. F:

How can anyone say “so many Freds. . .” The more the merrier! F(red)

Oct 28, 2008 - 7:50 pm 93. F:

How can anyone say “so many Freds. . .”? The more the merrier! F(red)

Oct 28, 2008 - 7:51 pm 94. F:

How can anyone say “so many Freds. . .”? Perish the thought! The more the merrier! F(red)

Oct 28, 2008 - 7:51 pm 95. nelson:

Storm-rider,
unfortunately, there are many who are not so fond of liberty. The worst, however, are those who’d sacrifice their own(and everydody else’s)liberty for the pleasure of seeing some other group they hate being exterminated, or suffering more, or even suffering at least as much as they will. Anti-semitism is, obviously, bad for the Jews. But it is bad enough for non-Jews who, fascinated by Jew-hatred, are much less interested in what’s good for themselves than in what’s bad for the Jews. That’s why, for instance, an Ustasha would welcome an Iranian bombing of Zagreb given that Tel Aviv is bombed before.

Oct 28, 2008 - 7:52 pm 96. peterike:

Cford needs to clamp it. Ugh.

Meanwhile, as we stumble toward the finish line, I stumble upon a Sarah Palin endorsement from a former head of Ms. Magazine, and much more importantly, a Sarah Palin speech that is stunning in how good it is. And it’s a feminist — TRUE feminist — speech at that.

If she were a Democrat the stinking dirty media would be shouting this speech from the mountain tops. Meanwhile, I never even knew it happened.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2008-10-27/sarah-palins-a-brainiac/1/

Send it to every Obama voting woman you know.

The biggest consolation I have when pondering the potential Obama victory (though I’m not quite so sure about that now) is that in all Marxist takeovers among the first people put to the gun are the journalists.

I, for one, won’t shed a tear for them. As ye sow….

Oct 28, 2008 - 7:58 pm 97. F:

92, 93, & 94 — pardon the repitition — server hiccups. F

Oct 28, 2008 - 7:58 pm 98. Mike Sylwester:

Cedarford, you should recognize that practically the entire world, including Germany itself, has accepted the expulsion of the Sudeten Germans from Czechoslovakia. Few people besides yourself consider the expulsion to be illegal or unjust.

The Sudeten Germans’ refusal to live peacefully with the Czechs within the borders established by the European powers after World War One was a crucial factor in the outbreak of World War Two. Thus, the Sudeten Germans themselves made their own continuing presence inside Czechoslovakia a danger to international peace at the end of World War Two. In order for World War Two to be concluded, the Sudeten Germans had to be expelled, because their presence in that particular location had been a crucial part of the cause of World War Two.

No European country, including Germany, has challenged the expulsion as illegal or unjust. On the contrary, practically every European recognizes the obvious fact that Europe has been a much better and more peaceful region ever since the expulsion was accomplished.

The expulsion of the Sudeten Germans also served as a wise lesson to all ethnic minorities in Europe after World War Two. In Czechoslovakia itself, the Polish and Hungarian minorities resigned themselves to living peacefully within the established borders. The Slovaks lived peacefully with the Czechs, and when Czechoslovakia itself eventually broke up, the Czechs and Slovaks accomplished the breakup cooperatively and peacefully.

After World War Two, all ethnic minorities accepted the reality that their own historical presence and ethnic resentments were subordinate in importance to international peace. If any ethnic minority tried to provoke an international conflict, then a possible consequence might be the international community’s sanction of the expulsion of that minority.

Oct 28, 2008 - 8:03 pm 99. Mike Sylwester:

Cedarford (81)
“The ‘Legitimate Cleansing Narrative’ was that Zionist cleansing of Palestinians in areas apportioned to the Jews was legitimized by Pals refusing the Partition Deal, then later acts. For ‘people of the law’ -their notion of law is very slippery. Something like violating present law is justifiable if in the future, the people you screwed or bilk retaliate. Or do their own bad acts in the future – which then magically ‘cancel out’ Zionist’s earlier bad acts.”
=============

The establishment of Israel is morally and legally complex. We should recognize the many reasons why many people — especially Arabs in the region — consider that development to be blatantly unjust.

On the other hand, the Jews in the Moslem world had been humiliated, robbed and killed by Moslems for centuries before the establishment of Israel. And afterwards, hundreds of thousands of Jews were expelled from their homes throughout the Moslem world. These are crucial elements of the situation, and they should not be ignored by people who intend to make moral and legal judgements.

The role of the United Nations is crucial too. The UN established a legal place for the Jews in that area, but the Arabs rejected that decision.

Oct 28, 2008 - 8:37 pm 100. Mike Sylwester:

mika2k1 (61):
“Exactly how far did the authority of the Temple priests extend from the Temple? Why not Karachi? ”
============

The Temple leadership sent Paul to Damascus to investigate and arrest Christians.

Your question about Karachi is a question that interests only you, and not anybody else in the entire world.

Oct 28, 2008 - 8:41 pm 101. Charles:

A big story this week is shaping up to be that the LA times has blocked the release of the Rashid Khalidi tapes.
What’s not mentioned is that after barak came back from Hawaii this week the Governor of that state sealed the record of his birth. No one is allowed access. Why? One of the rumors swirling over at FreeRepublic is that that Frank Marshall Davis is Obama’s real father. Obama mentions Davis affectionately in his memoirs as a family friend. Davis was a noted McCarthy era communist and, uh, more. Sound over the top? Ok take a look at these photos of davis, and barak junior and senior.

Oct 28, 2008 - 8:49 pm 102. Leo Linbeck III:

Melissus,

Your moral theologian – in saying “the end never justifies the means” – is right. But, unfortunately, the question is much more complex than this simple statement would lead one to believe.

The problem is that most important actions – which are the focus of any moral discussion – rarely have a single effect. If the end is good, but the means have multiple effects, the morality of the action becomes much more complicated.

The classic (Aristotelian/Thomistic) framework for thinking about such problems is the Principle of Double Effect. It is a four-fold test for the moral status of a human action:

1. Is the action itself good, or at least morally neutral?
2. Is the intended effect (the one that is the main reason for the action) good?
3. Are the circumstances such that there are no other options?
4. Do the benefits of the good effects outweigh the minimized costs of the bad effects?

It is also important to note that, with respect to the second test, there is a big difference between intending something to happen, and foreseeing something will or is likely to happen. More on this in a moment.

With respect to the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, this is clearly an action that had multiple effects, some good, some bad. So the PDE can be used to think about the morality of this action:

1. Dropping a bomb during wartime is probably morally neutral. If you drop the bomb on the enemy headquarters, it is good. If you drop the bomb on a schoolhouse in a neutral country, it is bad. One could make the argument that dropping an atomic bomb on a city comprised mainly of innocent civilians is morally wrong, but that is not a slam dunk. Arguably, then, the use of weapons during wartime is generally considered morally neutral. So Hiroshima probably passes this test.

2. The intended effect of dropping the A-bomb was to end the war. This is clearly a good intention. It could be argued that one could foresee that innocent civilians would be killed. But, as mentioned above, foreseeing is not the same thing as intending. I might foresee that surgery to remove a burst appendix could kill the patient; but my intention is to save the patient’s life. So Hiroshima passes this test.

3. This is a tough one. There probably were other options other than dropping the bomb. But it is possible that the only way that the Japanese would surrender was through a display of overwhelming force. The best argument is that there was no other option that would bring the war to a fast conclusion. But while this is the weakest link in the pro-A-bomb argument, it is certainly plausible to argue that Hiroshima passes this test.

4. The good effects were saving millions of American and Japanese lives. The bad effects were destroying a city and probably killing thousands of Japanese. On balance, the benefits appear to outweigh the costs, so Hiroshima passes this test.

On balance, then, there seems to be a supportable argument that dropping the atomic bomb on Hiroshima was a moral act. But it is not a slam dunk, which probably accounts for its continued controversial status in discussions about the morality of war, and the use of atomic weaponry.

The only other thing I would add is that discussions about these topics should, IMHO, always be framed in terms of what we might do if faced with this decision. It is easy to fall into “Truman was good” or “Truman was evil” ad-hominem defenses or attacks, but they are neither instructive nor just. We should judge the actions, not the people.

Still, these sorts of questions are excruciatingly difficult. In the end, we should be judicious in proclamations on their morality, and while we should continue to ponder these questions, we owe deference and respect to the decision-makers who were legitimately empowered to make these decisions.

The final judge of their morality is a matter for God alone. And may He protect us all from ever being faced with such a soul-risking situation.

L3

Oct 28, 2008 - 8:59 pm 103. NahnCee:

Nelson – write on the blackboard 100 times:

“Paragraphs are my friend.”

Oct 28, 2008 - 9:26 pm 104. Ammo Guy:

There are so many great and little known stories of heroism and sacrifice from WWII and the Heydrich episode was always one of my favorites. I read the book “Seven Men at Daybreak” when I was a youngster and marveled at the dedication of those involved…and wondered if I was capable of such if so called upon. Was it worth it? As always, hard to say – who knows what the future held for one of Hitler’s favorites had he survived? Perhaps he would have prolonged the war thru various cruelties and unknown strategies…and that would’ve been a tragedy. Perhaps he would’ve seen the handwriting on the wall in 1944 and participated in the assassination plot against the Fuhrer…all unknowable.

What do you do when your occupier is incredibly brutal and has no limits on his behavior? Time and time again, history has shown that you can run a country or empire thru fear, intimidation and brutality – Mao, Stalin, Hitler, Saddam…the list goes on. I knew the minute I saw Yeltsin standing on a tank in 1991…and surviving…that the Soviet Union was doomed – Stalin would’ve found a sniper to shoot him and that would’ve been the end of that.

I’ve got no answers, but I ask myself…what would Churchill or Teddy Roosevelt do? Or Washington – imagine the future that awaited him had the English prevailed? I am grateful for such men and hope to see the like again in this great country.

Oct 28, 2008 - 9:34 pm 105. fred:

outta my league,

I am the original fred, but I am reluctant to qualify it any further, such as calling myself “fred the ex-Jesuit” or some such. I don’t want to invite any shots directed at the Society of Jesus, which I love dearly despite no longer being one of them. Maybe I should call myself “fred the ex hockey player” or something like that? Perhaps I should use that as a nom de guerre, because it describes my combativeness and laserlike wrist shots…

Oct 28, 2008 - 9:46 pm 106. mika2k1:

The Temple leadership sent Paul to Damascus to investigate and arrest Christians.
==

You might as well claim that the Temple leadership sent Paul to Rome to investigate and arrest Caesar. It would have just as much credibility.

Oct 28, 2008 - 9:52 pm 107. mika2k1:

The establishment of Israel is morally and legally complex.
==

It is no more morally and legally complex than the establishment of any other national sovereignty. The only moral and legal complexity that exists is in the minds of intellectual retards.

Oct 28, 2008 - 9:58 pm 108. JMH:

What do you do when your occupier is incredibly brutal and has no limits on his behavior? Time and time again, history has shown that you can run a country or empire thru fear, intimidation and brutality – Mao, Stalin, Hitler, Saddam…the list goes on. I knew the minute I saw Yeltsin standing on a tank in 1991…and surviving…that the Soviet Union was doomed – Stalin would’ve found a sniper to shoot him and that would’ve been the end of that.

But Stalin was gone, and he left the USSR in a bad state. A procession of thugs had beaten down the morale of even the core Communist Party. No one can rule alone. Every Stalin or Hitler or Pol Pot or Kahn needs a reliable set of henchmen who will, initially, see to the dirty work and, eventually, see to the overseeing of the dirty work.

A brutal society always degenerates into worse and worse conditions. It must create a very bleak outlook for those near the center of power, especially the younger ones. They can see the steady decline, and must start to wonder what sort of a worn out husk will be left for them to rule when the old fools currently in charge finally dodder off. At some point in the decline, the younger members of the inner circle just don’t give a damn any more. They realize there won’t be anything left for them within the system, and stop supporting it. Without their support, it collapses and something else – better or worse – fills the void.

Oct 28, 2008 - 10:15 pm 109. exhelodrvr:

mika,
“It is no more morally and legally complex than the establishment of any other national sovereignty”

That’s a ridiculous statement.

Oct 28, 2008 - 10:32 pm 110. mika2k1:

That’s a ridiculous statement.
==

Really? Then maybe you could explain why America’s sovereignty is any less morally and legally complex.

Oct 28, 2008 - 10:38 pm 111. exhelodrvr:

Leo,
“But it is not a slam dunk”

Likely a minimum ratio of 25:1 lives saved vs lives lost, perhaps as high as 100:1 or more(if mass suicides similar to what occurred on Okinawa happened on the main islands). That’s a slam dunk.

Oct 28, 2008 - 10:39 pm 112. Gary Rosen:

C-fudd’s knee-jerk anti-Zionist rant doesn’t quite square with the creepy, dishonest, graverobbing post he made on Roger’s blog today pretending to honor the memory of Dean Barnett. Dean was everything Fudd loathes – he was a Jew and a strong defender of Israel. We all know of course what Fudd *really* thinks of Dean and his co-religionists:

http://minx.cc/?post=66320

As for the poor Sudeten Germans, Fudd doesn’t give a flying f*ck about them, it is only a manifestation of his compulsion to suck off any savage (Hitler in this case) with murder in their heart for the Jews. We already know how he hailed the child-murderers of Hizbullah for their “heart and courage”. Blaming the Czechs and Poles for WWII is like blaming Megan’s Law on Megan, but it’s not surprising that Fudd takes his ethical cues from NAMBLA.

Oct 28, 2008 - 11:19 pm 113. newscaper:

Programmer earlier said a couple things I’d like to correct:

“In some way that I can’t put my finger on, this is an incorrect thesis. Guilt is the tool used to fashion…”

You’re misreading the poetic language — substitute “the innocent” for “innocence” and “the guilty” for “guilt”. Then it works exactly correctly.

Your followup can use some clarification too:
“Guilt does not seem to me to have any evolutionary value at all, yet it is very powerful.”

Game theory as applied to the evolution of cooperation has shown that the most successful strategy in what is called the “iterated prisoner’s dilemma” (where the players can “remember” and therefore keep ’score’) is what is called “tit for tat but sometimes forgive.”

The original mathematically justified strategy in the original one-off prisoners’ dilemma was “always betray”. In the more complicated version of the game “tit-for-tat” was more successful — betray if the other guy betrayed you last time, cooperate if he did last time.

The problem with that is the game becomes too easily locked into lose-lose.

But adding the occasional “forgiveness” allows a player to take a small risk by giving a second chance and ‘flip’ the game back to win-win mode for a while. Note this is *not* the same as a simplistic, pacifism — the idea is that overlooking the *occasional* failing of the other player can yield an overall net benefit — but being a fool in rewarding the reliably unreliable is suicide.

IOW, its fascinating to see that humanities’ moral development (up to a realistic Judaeo-Christianity?) does have an evolutionary/mathematical basis.

Back to your point about “guilt” — guilt facilitates forgiveness-seeking, and therefore the resumption of win-win cooperation. It *does* have an evolutionary use.

Whenever lefties are kumbaya babbling about altruism, pacifism and the collective good, don’t let their idiocy mislead you — real cooperation is not the opposite of competition — rather, real, smart, cooperation is a strategy that allows us to *compete* more effectively on a larger playing field.

Oct 29, 2008 - 1:08 am 114. Melissus:

bogie wheel:
BTW, is the “moral theologian” one who is to be distinguished from the “immoral theologian”?

Esteemed Bogie wheel: that moral theologian is not only moral but saintly. He is a personal friend and I can personally attest to his sanctity of life. It is a fact of life that sometimes the holiest of people are the farthest from understanding the subterfuges of evil. I resist the urge to expand on this thought. Suffice it to say that these genuinely good people have a real moral authority that then can confuse us lesser “saints”. Okay, just one example: the so called theology of liberation in Latin America, so rampant during Reagan’s presidency and unfortunately still smoldering in Mexico and elsewhere South of the border was nothing but dressed up Marxism gestated in Frankfurt Germany, from where it spread to the Catholic Seminaries in Spain, from where it was exported as the Gospel of Jesus Christ to Latin America. Good, innocent priests were the propagators of this travesty of Christianity. Innocent priests? Well, yes, at least at the beginning, when they where still idealistic young men being trained in the seminary. And this leads naturally enough into a reflection on our own public education in the US: is it not following a similar pattern?

Oct 29, 2008 - 1:10 am 115. bogie wheel:

[i]There will always be groups who will act with “uncompromising” militancy and sometimes, with savagery. Consider the following strategies. Strategy one: match the militants for extremism. Strategy two: do nothing. Strategy three: insist on a level playing field.[/i]

Okay, but what, in practical terms, constitutes “a level playing field” and what mechanism is there to achieve it?

I think we’ve all commented on what the far end of the trajectory looks like — Nazis vs. Operation Anthropoid for example — but what about the near end of the trajectory?

Let’s return to the Hanging Palin example, since I think it’s illustrative. The display has been widely publicized and has gotten some stern condemnation from people who are not exclusively conservatives. (All the panelists on “The View,” for what it’s worth, which may not be much …) Will all this verbal condemnation and national spotlight cause Mr. Morrisette to have a change in attitude and remove or alter the display? Not likely, IMO.

Because we appear to be dealing with someone who, as the old phrase goes, has no shame. Doesn’t respond to public excoriation even when those on his side of the ideological aisle are telling him this is by no means acceptable.

However, even with a lot of tongue-lashing and finger-wagging, nobody is actually going to DO anything to compel Mr. Morrisette to change his display. And that’s precisely what he is counting on. The law can’t touch him, and social condemnation has no impact.

Which means what? This particular episode is a piffle in the broad scheme of things. But insofar as it does belong to the broad scheme of things, I think it needs to be paid attention to. Because “others” are paying attention, too, as I think most here would agree.

Wayyyyyy before a society gets to Heydrich domination & bloodbath retaliations … it looks something like, say, Theo van Gogh getting assassinated on the street in broad daylight. And before it looks like that (perhaps, again, wayyy before), it looks something like … oh, a shameless dolt hanging a VP candidate in effigy as a Halloween display, and nobody else actually DOING anything about it.

John Adams once remarked that the U.S. Constitution is fit for only a moral & religious people, and that it could not govern any other. We had, in his day, a society with a lot of restraints that were NOT governmental ones. Which was why the Constitution worked (imperfectly in ideal terms, but remarkably well in historical ones).

But what of a society in which those non-governmental restraints have largely eroded? This is the thing I regret to say that too many Americans don’t seem to realize about our much-vaunted “individual liberties.” The Constitution protects and prefers, rightly so, the individual vs. the state. But should the individual be preferred and protected in all cases and all ways above non-state entities — the family, the neighbors, the church or synagogue, the town, the co-workers, etc.?

Because it seems to me that when an individual gets it in mind to push past all those non-state barriers, and intolerable disruption results, then the only power left to put a stop to that individual is the state. The bigger and harder the push from anti-social individuals, the bigger and harder the push-back from the state. The more anti-social individuals there are pushing and pushing, the more bigger and more powerful the state will become. No good can come from this.

So where do we, as a society, as individuals in the society, stop or divert this trajectory? How?

What specific mechanisms are available to the ordinary person when the guy (or group) next door or across town does something that, while it may be legal, is most definitely not right, and that guy or that group is impervious to shame?

Oct 29, 2008 - 3:34 am 116. Melissus:

Leo Linbeck III:

Good job! My moral theologian knows all you said, though I think it is great that you took the time to educate us or remind us. I can anticipate for you what my friend would say. Bonum ex integra causa, malum ex quacumque deffectu: for a good act to be such, there must be no defect (taint of evil) at all in the causalities that the moral agent lets loose or acts upon. (In our context of just war theory, non-combatant civilians are innocent, as opposed to combatants or warriors.) Now, killing innocents is intrinsically evil. Ergo, the atomic-bomb drop on a city full on non-combatants is intrinsically evil and may under no circumstances be done without grave sin. So the moral theologian regards your premise 1 (the inherent non-evilness of the act) as inapplicable to our case. He would reject your formal distinction of intention from the integral act itself (2). No way around this problem, according to him.
I am reflecting on the matter in a more radical way. The principle of double effect (PDE) is applicable to the medical doctor who amputates the gangrenous limb of his patient: he does in fact wreak serious though unintended damage on his patient. Outside the context of a death-threatening gangrene, the physician would be guilty of violence and subject to trial and imprisonment, and rightly so. I think that the situation of an on-going war (”in bello”)is essentially different. First of all, we are not dealing of a man-to-man relationship, but of two collectives over which stand two authorities. It is at this level that the moral act must be considered: not as two individual persons but as two super-tankers simultaneously negotiating a narrow strait in opposite directions. The captains of the super-tankers cannot be held to account for everything that subordinates and ship do in the same identical way that two men relating mutually. Likewise, Truman cannot be held to account for his human incapacity to determine exactly who will die and live. It is not a person-to-person act, but one that involves the collective. [And in fact, nations and states are always acting in this way. Laws essentially are made for the collective, for example, and may involve injustice for individuals (our system tries to ameliorate these effects with the courts, however imperfectly). Yet, no single legislator or law enforcer is considered personally responsible for the evil effect that a generally good law might have on a single individual.]
Second, it is not a question of avoiding evil absolutely, for in war we are ipso facto immersed to our necks in evil. It is simply unrealistic to demand absolute innocence in this sad but real-world context. I am convinced that dropping an a-bomb can be a lesser of very real evils and that a reasoning that absolutely impugns evil in this context to an act of “hard mercy” is itself questionable.
Thirdly, and perhaps most importantly, there is God. Yep. God. Our moral theologian surely believes that God is the Ruler of the universe, and that St Paul is not kidding in Romans 13 where he tells us without any ambiguity that the human ruler bears the sword not in vain.
Here I intend to connect with what I said above. The ship captain does not act as an autonomous individual, but as an authority. Theologically, public authority comes from God. A brief demonstration not linked to St Paul is in order. When Christ in his Passion is brought before the procurator to be tried, Pilate challenges him to speak but he remains silent. “What?” a startled Pontius Pilate retorts to his silence, “You do not answer? Do you not know that I have the power to crucify you or to release you?” Christ’s answer is charged with theological content. “You would have no power over me whatsoever, were it not given to you from above. That is why he [Judas Iscariot, probably] who handed me over to you is guilty of the greater sin.” I have paraphrased John 19:9-11. Three observations. (1) Christ DOES NOT DENY BUT AFFIRMS Pilate’s claim that “I have the power to crucify or to release you”. This has evident ramifications, by the way, regarding the legitimacy of capital punishment, as well as just war theory. (2) Furthermore, Christ affirms that this power or authority has its origin in God. (3) That this divine authority in which Pilate (or the public authority) participates from God qualifies his personal actions as procurator as good or evil. Pilate acts with divine authority, Judas Iscariot did not. Pilate is guilty not for exercising his authority, but for his abusive exercise of his authority. Judas is guilty more radically for usurping divine authority. Judas’s sin therefore is all the more evil insofar as he steals divine authority to kill as well as kills. Therefore the public authority’s act of war must be considered not just as a person-on-person relation, but as a public authority. I believe that this offers a basis for arguing that the just war theory as it stands is insufficient. There is a divine authority at play without which the tremendous authority of a ruler of a nation over the lives of his people and that of others would probably be impossible to manage without destruction to the ruler’s conscience.
This theological reality — the divine will — that is the ultimate real basis for public authority (beyond the elections, which mediate divine authority)is forgotten in our secularist world, where God is relegated to a parenthesis in public life. But if God is not present to the public conscience, then man, little pitiful man, must play God’s role, and mete out life and death according to his lights alone. A role too Godlike to be safe for any man to play, as WRETCHARD has reminded us above in his reflection to my first post.
If we do not have a God who is the absolute and final authority, then we are forced to be God. If forced to be Gods, then we have to figure out what is good or evil for ourselves. If this is the case, good people will be humble and merciful, and determine that everyone’s life is good and to be guaranteed. And evil people will be power-hungry and merciless, and determine that their own individual lives and liberties alone are to be guaranteed. The good will, in practice, have to abandon the running of the world to the unscrupulous, and the world becomes an evil place. Who are the unscrupulous? They have many faces: the Nazis, the Islamo-fascists, the fanatical-suicidal Japanese on whom we would wish to show mercy but whose attitudes and actions penalize us and them with death.
This “relative atheism” in moral theology (this excluding God’s actual authority present and active in our unbelieving world) is, I believe, why my saintly friend the moral theologian can be both saintly and conscientiously cede a war to evil people. Even theology has assimilated a certain unconscious atheism that does not allow it to recognize the real power over life and death that a ruler in fact receives from God so as to rule. [This has not always been so, but I would have to digress with a long parenthesis on St Augustine's just war theory, so let it pass.] An authority that Jesus Christ Himself does not fail to recognize in this most unworthy ruler, Pontious Pilate, who cruelly tortured and executed Him.
Now, if there is no Good God, then the world belongs to the wicked. But if the ruler believes he rules by the pleasure of a Good God, then he can on God’s behalf look evil in the face, and not blink. Drop that a-bomb! Yes, drop it! But only after checking out that list of conditions you gave us in your comment on just war theory. The ruler is not God, he is subject to God’s law, not above it. Like Pilate, Truman or whichever ruler has the authority to kill. Yes. But conditioned by God’s authority to kill or grant life. He acts not autonomously but under Goodness Himself. Therefore he does not destroy his conscience when he acts as a minister of God’s justice.
Now what do you think of that? Am I a Taliban? Must I be taken for a kook pushing a retrogressive theocracy? If God must play a central role in the conscience of a nation, does that mean that nation has to be theocratic in its government? This is precisely what the Left and the other Utopians would want us to believe. [This is why some would kill God, to take his place as absolute sovereign over the nation. Thus would Obama rule us. Paraphrasing the Scriptures, He would be our God, and we would be his people.] In fact, the founding fathers of the US were all believers in an omnipotent and omniscient God. How has that intrinsically damaged the US and its freedom enjoyed in its first two hundred years of existence? Not at all. I dare say it has guaranteed our freedom. The loss of freedom has rather coincided with the loss of Faith. Wretchard has reminded us that power corrupts. The atheist is precisely he who unhesitatingly declares God dead — quite a God-like act this, he would murder and bury God, putting Him out of sight and out of mind. The atheist is, like Judas, though perhaps with the best of intentions, usurping the role of God. He is defining reality for himself. He is exercising absolute power. He is corrupting himself ideologically. And even if our atheist is basically a good person, he must be stumped when he comes face to face with evil, whatever its mask, be it that of Islam and its creeping imperialism, or that of a Hitler, or that of the Leftist democrats. Only the ruler who does not fight alone, but under God, can resist the tide. Only the man under God can act with power without being corrupted by power. Only he can be at once humble and great.
How many readers have I scandalized, I wonder? To God is attributed all the evil of the religious wars, of the Inquisition, as well as that of our contemporary suicide-terrorist bombers. A fool’s mistake, I think. A man can dress as a boyscout when he commits a felony. That does not turn the Boyscouts into a confraternity of felons. Is it too much to distinguish authentic religion from inauthentic? to recognize the authenticity of a Mother Teresa of Culcutta from the fraud of a murdering suicide-terrorist bomber? Haven’t there always been frauds working evil under the camouflage of goodness? If Judas Iscariot was manifestly a fraudulent Christian, must we conclude that Christ to was a fraud? That all the other Apostles, indeed, that all other Christians are frauds?
Authentic — not inauthentic — religion is a principle necessary for freedom and its defense. Atheism and secularism on the contrary make the defense of freedom in the face of evil an impossible task for the good person who clings to his integrity, for atheism forces him to play the luciferian role of usurping God’s role in a universe in which God is supposed to not exist or be inaccessible.

Oct 29, 2008 - 3:43 am 117. Melissus:

bogie wheel: What specific mechanisms are available to the ordinary person when the guy (or group) next door or across town does something that, while it may be legal, is most definitely not right, and that guy or that group is impervious to shame?

Answer: religion. Let me clarify: AUTHENTIC religion. In the absence of religion, everything becomes bounded to this world, including all our dreams and aspirations. Therefore, our reality is reduced to the rat race of many struggling to obtain a finite quantity of goods. The vacuum of the absence of God and religion reduces our reality to a struggle of interests. To politics. Many have likened the Left to a religion. Yes, it is that because in the atheistic vacuum, there is nothing beyond this struggle for power: politics becomes our all. And politics becomes the criterion for all value judgments. What is good and what is evil? Good is that which fosters my/our interests, evil that which impedes our realizing them.
In the absence of authentic religion, what happens is that society is compressed horizontally. Everything becomes either theirs or ours, yours or mine; an object of eventual and necessary contention. Religion introduces the infinite, a third, a mediating space between the yours and the mine, full of possibility where human beings can place their hope and aspirations, and work to a common goal in solidarity. No longer psychologically and spiritually trapped in a zero-sum world, they can give of themselves gratuitously (read, “religiously”, without counting costs) to a common project, call it “salvation” if you like.
Now you ask about a “mechanism” to right this world’s wrongs, to make the shameless feel shame. Sorry. There ain’t none. This world is horizontal and finite. There will always be something lacking that makes our present reality fall short: the son that does not come out right, the nasty neighbor, … and things much worse. Religion is no worldly mechanism. What it does is change me, so that despite what the others do, I do not become like them but proceed vertically into the infinite, God. And, if I do this really well, I too change, and become a catalyst so that others change.
The saint knows that it is not him, but God and him walking together, who start to change the world. But I must change first. Only then do I become a channel by which the Infinite can penetrate into this world to change others, to visit the shameless with a new experience of His goodness. The sinner cannot recognize evil without previous knowledge of goodness: because evil is essentially a sin against goodness. Therefore, only be knowing good do I recognize evil when I act against the good. Likewise, the shameless must be visited by goodness or they will never be able to know that they do evil, and that their deeds are worthy of shame.

Oct 29, 2008 - 4:40 am 118. Louie723:

mika2k1: “You might as well claim that the Temple leadership sent Paul to Rome to investigate and arrest Caesar. It would have just as much credibility.”

Not quite. As you know, Roman authorities allowed the Jews to practice their religion at the time of Christ, and Syria was a province of the Roman Empire, as was Judea. Diaspora Jews paid the temple tax, according to historian Josephus. They turned toward Jerusalem to pray, and recognized the authority of the priesthood there. With letters in hand from the High Priest in Jerusalem, Saul would have had all the authority he needed to arrest Jewish heretics in Damascus.

Oct 29, 2008 - 5:09 am 119. Ursus Maritimus:

“They’ll have a huge problem once the whole world has been conquered and the entire mankind is converted, because there’ll be no one around to enslave and they will have to find out how actually to create wealth.”

Not a huge problem, and not one they haven’t overcome before:

Tammerlane. He became the leader of an Islamic country where there were no infidels to rob within thousands miles. What’s a poor ghazi to do? Well, he found a solution: Declare the neighbouring muslims to be false muslims and do the whole ‘kill the infidel’ schtick against them, including such personal inventions as the ‘pyramid of skulls’.

Oct 29, 2008 - 5:43 am 120. Mike Sylwester:

mika2k1 (106):
“You might as well claim that the Temple leadership sent Paul to Rome to investigate and arrest Caesar. It would have just as much credibility. ”
==================

I might as well say that if it were based on some historical evidence. Since there is no such historical evidence, I don’t say it.

I do say that the Temple leadership sent Paul to Damascus to investigate and arrest Christians, because that statement is based on historical evidence — The Acts of the Apostles.

You are free to say you don’t believe that particular statement in The Acts of the Apostles. You are not free to compel me to defend your wierd substitutions of other cities — Karachi and Rome — for the city of Damascus that does appear in that historical document.

Oct 29, 2008 - 6:08 am 121. Mike Sylwester:

mika2kl (107):
“It [the establishment of Israel] is no more morally and legally complex than the establishment of any other national sovereignty. The only moral and legal complexity that exists is in the minds of intellectual retards. ”
=============

Israel was established recently — 1n 1948. Thousands of Arabs who were expelled as a consequence of the establishment of Israel are still alive, and their families still live in refugee camps. The establishment of Israel is still disputed by a significant portion of the world.

Therefore we still have to grapple with the moral and legal complexities in ways that we no longer have to deal with the moral and legal complexities of the establishment other countries, such as the USA, Poland, Brazil, or any other country.

Europeans came into North America, which was populated by the American Indians, and established the USA. This development has many moral and legal complexities, but it happened several centuries ago and by now it is a done deal that is not disputed significantly by anybody. What happened in the case of Israel has some similarities, but it happened in 1948 and is still disputed significantly.

Oct 29, 2008 - 6:27 am 122. Charles:

106. mika2k1:

The Temple leadership sent Paul to Damascus to investigate and arrest Christians.
==

You might as well claim that the Temple leadership sent Paul to Rome to investigate and arrest Caesar. It would have just as much credibility.
…..
Acts 7
59While they were stoning him, Stephen prayed, “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.” 60Then he fell on his knees and cried out, “Lord, do not hold this sin against them.” When he had said this, he fell asleep.

Acts 8

1And Saul (St. Paul)was there, giving approval to his death.

The Church Persecuted and Scattered
On that day a great persecution broke out against the church at Jerusalem, and all except the apostles were scattered throughout Judea and Samaria. 2Godly men buried Stephen and mourned deeply for him. 3But Saul began to destroy the church. Going from house to house, he dragged off men and women and put them in prison.

Acts 9
Saul’s (St Paul)Conversion
1Meanwhile, Saul (St Paul)was still breathing out murderous threats against the Lord’s disciples. He went to the high priest 2and asked him for letters to the synagogues in Damascus, so that if he found any there who belonged to the Way, whether men or women, he might take them as prisoners to Jerusalem. 3As he neared Damascus on his journey, suddenly a light from heaven flashed around him. 4He fell to the ground and heard a voice say to him, “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?”

Oct 29, 2008 - 7:07 am 123. mika2k1:

With letters in hand from the High Priest in Jerusalem, Saul would have had all the authority he needed to arrest Jewish heretics in Damascus.
==

Nonsense. The Temple priests had zero authority to arrest people. Authority to arrest people lay in Rome and the local puppet kings/governors installed by Rome.

Oct 29, 2008 - 7:17 am 124. Mike Sylwester:

Thanks, Charles, for providing the historical evidence that the Temple leadership sent Paul to Damascus. It’s right there in Acts 9:1-2. It doesn’t say Karachi and it doesn’t say Rome — it says Damascus.

And it’s clear from this and other passages in the New Testament that Paul was a Jew.

Oct 29, 2008 - 7:28 am 125. Mike Sylwester:

mika2k1 (123):
“The Temple priests had zero authority to arrest people. ”
==========

Jesus was arrested in the Garden of Gesthemene by Temple guards.

mika2kl, you seem to believe that your own particular ideas always trump the evidence in historical documents.

Oct 29, 2008 - 7:30 am 126. mika2k1:

I do say that the Temple leadership sent Paul to Damascus to investigate and arrest Christians, because that statement is based on historical evidence — The Acts of the Apostles.
==

LOL. I suppose the same Jerusalem Temple leadership that was arresting people in Damascus was also financing Tarsus Paul’s heresy religion, his globe trotting in promotion of that heresy, and letter writing campaigns.

You’re not interested in history. You’re interested in promoting a propaganda tale written and rewritten by Rome for Romans.

Oct 29, 2008 - 7:31 am 127. mika2k1:

Israel was established recently — 1n 1948. Thousands of Arabs who were expelled as a consequence of the establishment of Israel are still alive, and their families still live in refugee camps. The establishment of Israel is still disputed by a significant portion of the world.
==

And all of it is irrelevant.

Oct 29, 2008 - 7:31 am 128. mika2k1:

Jesus was arrested in the Garden of Gesthemene by Temple guards.
mika2kl, you seem to believe that your own particular ideas always trump the evidence in historical documents.
==

No, it is you that believes in your own particular ideas and fantastic Roman propaganda tales that trump any logic, common sense, and historical evidence.

Oct 29, 2008 - 7:36 am 129. programmer:

Melissus,
As a poor old country boy, I really enjoyed your discussion of good vs evil and the existence or non-existence of GOD. However, in my simplistic view of existence as I float in the moment of now, survival of a species (in this case, humankind) is the ultimate test of good. Those species who blink into nothingness are gone, nicht wahr (I cannot attest to an afterlife except through faith, so I won’t argue that)? So those cultural characteristics that strengthen humankind’s chances of survival could be argued to be approved by GOD. Therefore, in the end, the last “tribe” standing is GOD’s chosen, even if they don’t recognize it as a gift from GOD. So, if we, as a nation, make bad choices that lead to our destruction, we will, in a sense have rejected GOD’s gifts. The trick is to recognize good and bad choices. What if, in the end, the followers of Mohammed or some amalgam of the Left and Islam, for example, are the ultimate survivors because of their choice of tactics and strategies? Will this demonstrate that they are the true follower’s of GOD’s path? I have to resort to faith at this point, and as a friend once told me, “I have read the Book. I know the end. We win.”

Oct 29, 2008 - 7:40 am 130. Konyok:

fred,

If I may presume, how about something like “hat trick” or other hockey hockey related.

Of course, there’s always “the poster formerly known as ‘fred’”

Oct 29, 2008 - 7:45 am 131. Pascal:

Mica, you keep making assertions such as nonsense, and referring to historical evidence yet provide none.

You seem to me to be a brief version of C4; both of you have no faith that “God will provide.” That remains sufficient for me to see reason enough for hatred of the faithful. You would look to create enmity where none should exist, speaking in a most uncompromising, nettlesome way. Keep it up buddy. You are a great preview of what the faithful have in store for them should the ObamaNation, SHRIH, come about.

Oct 29, 2008 - 8:06 am 132. mika2k1:

Mica, you keep making assertions such as nonsense, and referring to historical evidence yet provide none.
==

What historical evidence would you like me to provide you? The “historical evidence” scribed by Rome and Roman propagandists? The evidence that was erased by Rome and Roman propagandists. I know my own history and tradition, and I know when lies and contradictions are made in relation to that history and tradition.

That leaned Roman “Pharisee”, Poulus of Tarsus, and all the later Roman scribes and editors that followed in producing their Roman propaganda tale, do not even know the difference between Passover and the Feast of Tabernacles. The ignorance, illogic, lies, contradictions, are so rampant with The Story Of Poulus Tarsus, it takes volumes of books to dissect it all. Fortunately, there are people with the patience to do that. And I’ve already gave you reference to one such person. Hyam Maccoby.

Oct 29, 2008 - 8:30 am 133. slade:

Of course, there’s always “the poster formerly known as ‘fred’ – Konyoc

Little know composer of Purple Reign.

Oct 29, 2008 - 8:37 am 134. Bill in NC:

Mika does not believe in the divinity of Jesus, nor in (much of) the rest of the events described in the New Testament. It seems so anyway. Fine. He aggressively and impolitely insists that others think as he does. This trait is unfortunate and repels the reader. Though it does put him in good company with the Left in general and the other so-called monotheistic religion he otherwise seems to abhor.

Oct 29, 2008 - 8:38 am 135. mika2k1:

Mika does not believe in the divinity of Jesus, nor in (much of) the rest of the events described in the New Testament.
==

What I object to is lies and ignorance, and perpetuation of lies and ignorance. I’ll give you a simple example. The Hebrew word for ‘Christians’ is ‘Notzrim’. This word comes from ‘notzrei ha’brit’, ‘keepers of the Covenant’. Jesus and his sect were Nazorenes. They had nothing to do with Nazareth, because Nazareth did not even exist at that time.

Oct 29, 2008 - 8:58 am 136. WSL:

127 mika2k1: Thousands of Arabs who were expelled as a consequence of the establishment of Israel are still alive, and their families still live in refugee camps. Mika repeats an error that is commonly used to de-legitimize Israel’s existence.

A refuge is someone who fled his or her country to escape persecution. Almost no one in the “refugee” camps has done any fleeing. There are 2nd, 3rd, and in some cases, 4th generation residents living in these camps. Such folks are not refugees, but prisoners of a system that keeps them there so critics of Israel have an issue to condemn Israel’s so-called occupation.

Oct 29, 2008 - 9:01 am 137. Charles:

LOL. I suppose the same Jerusalem Temple leadership that was arresting people in Damascus was also financing Tarsus Paul’s heresy religion, his globe trotting in promotion of that heresy, and letter writing campaigns.
………….
after St Paul’s conversion on the road to damascus, naturally, the temple authorities wanted to kill him.
…………..
Acts 21
10After we had been there a number of days, a prophet named Agabus came down from Judea. 11Coming over to us, he took Paul’s belt, tied his own hands and feet with it and said, “The Holy Spirit says, ‘In this way the Jews of Jerusalem will bind the owner of this belt and will hand him over to the Gentiles.’ ”

12When we heard this, we and the people there pleaded with Paul not to go up to Jerusalem. 13Then Paul answered, “Why are you weeping and breaking my heart? I am ready not only to be bound, but also to die in Jerusalem for the name of the Lord Jesus.” 14When he would not be dissuaded, we gave up and said, “The Lord’s will be done.”

27When the seven days were nearly over, some Jews from the province of Asia saw Paul at the temple. They stirred up the whole crowd and seized him, 28shouting, “Men of Israel, help us! This is the man who teaches all men everywhere against our people and our law and this place. And besides, he has brought Greeks into the temple area and defiled this holy place.” 29(They had previously seen Trophimus the Ephesian in the city with Paul and assumed that Paul had brought him into the temple area.)

30The whole city was aroused, and the people came running from all directions. Seizing Paul, they dragged him from the temple, and immediately the gates were shut. 31While they were trying to kill him, news reached the commander of the Roman troops that the whole city of Jerusalem was in an uproar. 32He at once took some officers and soldiers and ran down to the crowd. When the rioters saw the commander and his soldiers, they stopped beating Paul.

33The commander came up and arrested him and ordered him to be bound with two chains. Then he asked who he was and what he had done. 34Some in the crowd shouted one thing and some another, and since the commander could not get at the truth because of the uproar, he ordered that Paul be taken into the barracks. 35When Paul reached the steps, the violence of the mob was so great he had to be carried by the soldiers. 36The crowd that followed kept shouting, “Away with him!”
Paul Speaks to the Crowd
37As the soldiers were about to take Paul into the barracks, he asked the commander, “May I say something to you?”

“Do you speak Greek?” he replied. 38″Aren’t you the Egyptian who started a revolt and led four thousand terrorists out into the desert some time ago?”

39Paul answered, “I am a Jew, from Tarsus in Cilicia, a citizen of no ordinary city. Please let me speak to the people.”

40Having received the commander’s permission, Paul stood on the steps and motioned to the crowd. When they were all silent, he said to them in Aramaic

Oct 29, 2008 - 9:01 am 138. Charles:

Acts 22

1″Brothers and fathers, listen now to my defense.” 2When they heard him speak to them in Aramaic, they became very quiet.

Then Paul said: 3″I am a Jew, born in Tarsus of Cilicia, but brought up in this city. Under Gamaliel I was thoroughly trained in the law of our fathers and was just as zealous for God as any of you are today. 4I persecuted the followers of this Way to their death, arresting both men and women and throwing them into prison, 5as also the high priest and all the Council can testify. I even obtained letters from them to their brothers in Damascus, and went there to bring these people as prisoners to Jerusalem to be punished.

6″About noon as I came near Damascus, suddenly a bright light from heaven flashed around me. 7I fell to the ground and heard a voice say to me, ‘Saul! Saul! Why do you persecute me?’

8″ ‘Who are you, Lord?’ I asked.

” ‘I am Jesus of Nazareth, whom you are persecuting,’ he replied. 9My companions saw the light, but they did not understand the voice of him who was speaking to me.

10″‘What shall I do, Lord?’ I asked.
“‘Get up,’ the Lord said, ‘and go into Damascus. There you will be told all that you have been assigned to do.’ 11My companions led me by the hand into Damascus, because the brilliance of the light had blinded me.

12″A man named Ananias came to see me. He was a devout observer of the law and highly respected by all the Jews living there. 13He stood beside me and said, ‘Brother Saul, receive your sight!’ And at that very moment I was able to see him.

14″Then he said: ‘The God of our fathers has chosen you to know his will and to see the Righteous One and to hear words from his mouth. 15You will be his witness to all men of what you have seen and heard. 16And now what are you waiting for? Get up, be baptized and wash your sins away, calling on his name.’

17″When I returned to Jerusalem and was praying at the temple, I fell into a trance 18and saw the Lord speaking. ‘Quick!’ he said to me. ‘Leave Jerusalem immediately, because they will not accept your testimony about me.’

19″ ‘Lord,’ I replied, ‘these men know that I went from one synagogue to another to imprison and beat those who believe in you. 20And when the blood of your martyr[a] Stephen was shed, I stood there giving my approval and guarding the clothes of those who were killing him.’

21″Then the Lord said to me, ‘Go; I will send you far away to the Gentiles.’ ”

(Paul the Roman Citizen)

22The crowd listened to Paul until he said this. Then they raised their voices and shouted, “Rid the earth of him! He’s not fit to live!”

Oct 29, 2008 - 9:07 am 139. mika2k1:

127 mika2k1: Thousands of Arabs who were expelled as a consequence of the establishment of Israel are still alive, and their families still live in refugee camps. Mika repeats an error that is commonly used to de-legitimize Israel’s existence.
==

WSL,

It was Mike Sylwester that came up with that nonsense, not me. See #121.

Oct 29, 2008 - 9:09 am 140. NahnCee:

fred – you were first. Don’t change. It’s the newbie’s who should know enough not to duplicate and choose a new/different name so as to avoid confusion. Unless, of course, they *want* to be taken for you and ride on your coat-tails.

Oct 29, 2008 - 9:09 am 141. mika2k1:

Charles,

Who was it that was sent by the Temple priests to arrest Paulus of Tarsus?

Oct 29, 2008 - 9:12 am 142. Dave:

Hey, how did this conversation get so far off
topic. That pink rhinoceros sure pops up in strange places.

But here is an example of the point I was trying to make earlier:

You are an OSS sniper behind enemy lines in WWII. You are in position at a public event.
On the stage are three Krauts. Heydrich, Herr Schickelgruber himself, and Erwin Rommel.
You only have two bullets. What do you do?

Answer, shoot Rommel twice just to make sure.
Funny little Fueherers and their wannabe favorites are a dime a dozen. First-rate Field Marshalls are hard to find.

Or to replace. Wipe out Hitler and Heydrich both and the Third Reich will continue as before. Kill Rommel and there is a large gap in enemy capabilities.

Sure, Rommel was a decent chap. Most enemy soldiers are. The other two needed killing real bad. But that would have to wait until a more appropriate time.

Oct 29, 2008 - 9:21 am 143. Charles:

Acts 23
23As they were shouting and throwing off their cloaks and flinging dust into the air, 24the commander ordered Paul to be taken into the barracks. He directed that he be flogged and questioned in order to find out why the people were shouting at him like this. 25As they stretched him out to flog him, Paul said to the centurion standing there, “Is it legal for you to flog a Roman citizen who hasn’t even been found guilty?”

26When the centurion heard this, he went to the commander and reported it. “What are you going to do?” he asked. “This man is a Roman citizen.”

27The commander went to Paul and asked, “Tell me, are you a Roman citizen?”
“Yes, I am,” he answered.

28Then the commander said, “I had to pay a big price for my citizenship.”
“But I was born a citizen,” Paul replied.

29Those who were about to question him withdrew immediately. The commander himself was alarmed when he realized that he had put Paul, a Roman citizen, in chains.
Before the Sanhedrin
30The next day, since the commander wanted to find out exactly why Paul was being accused by the Jews, he released him and ordered the chief priests and all the Sanhedrin to assemble. Then he brought Paul and had him stand before them.

Acts 23

1Paul looked straight at the Sanhedrin and said, “My brothers, I have fulfilled my duty to God in all good conscience to this day.” 2At this the high priest Ananias ordered those standing near Paul to strike him on the mouth. 3Then Paul said to him, “God will strike you, you whitewashed wall! You sit there to judge me according to the law, yet you yourself violate the law by commanding that I be struck!”

4Those who were standing near Paul said, “You dare to insult God’s high priest?”

5Paul replied, “Brothers, I did not realize that he was the high priest; for it is written: ‘Do not speak evil about the ruler of your people.’[a]”

6Then Paul, knowing that some of them were Sadducees and the others Pharisees, called out in the Sanhedrin, “My brothers, I am a Pharisee, the son of a Pharisee. I stand on trial because of my hope in the resurrection of the dead.” 7When he said this, a dispute broke out between the Pharisees and the Sadducees, and the assembly was divided. 8(The Sadducees say that there is no resurrection, and that there are neither angels nor spirits, but the Pharisees acknowledge them all.)

Oct 29, 2008 - 9:45 am 144. Charles:

Acts 23
12The next morning the Jews formed a conspiracy and bound themselves with an oath not to eat or drink until they had killed Paul. 13More than forty men were involved in this plot. 14They went to the chief priests and elders and said, “We have taken a solemn oath not to eat anything until we have killed Paul. 15Now then, you and the Sanhedrin petition the commander to bring him before you on the pretext of wanting more accurate information about his case. We are ready to kill him before he gets here.”

16But when the son of Paul’s sister heard of this plot, he went into the barracks and told Paul.

17Then Paul called one of the centurions and said, “Take this young man to the commander; he has something to tell him.” 18So he took him to the commander.
The centurion said, “Paul, the prisoner, sent for me and asked me to bring this young man to you because he has something to tell you.”

19The commander took the young man by the hand, drew him aside and asked, “What is it you want to tell me?”

20He said: “The Jews have agreed to ask you to bring Paul before the Sanhedrin tomorrow on the pretext of wanting more accurate information about him. 21Don’t give in to them, because more than forty of them are waiting in ambush for him. They have taken an oath not to eat or drink until they have killed him. They are ready now, waiting for your consent to their request.”

22The commander dismissed the young man and cautioned him, “Don’t tell anyone that you have reported this to me.”

Oct 29, 2008 - 9:48 am 145. mika2k1:

I’ll ask again, Charles. Who was it that was sent by the Temple priests to arrest Paulus of Tarsus?

Oct 29, 2008 - 9:50 am 146. Ammo Guy:

And yet Rommel was probably the leader you would most want to take over if Hitler and Heydrich were assassinated. Otherwise, those two make a martyr of the Desert Fox and use his death as an excuse to be even more brutal to those already oppressed. There were enough Wehrmacht officers looking for a way out in 1944 that a timely slug or bomb might have done the trick…in fact, Rommel’s suicide was a result of his possible knowledge of 20 July plot to kill the Fuhrer. If it was me, I wouldn’t have shot him.

Oct 29, 2008 - 9:57 am 147. Melissus:

Programmer: you’ve convinced me. Now try to convince my friend, the moral theologian!

Oct 29, 2008 - 10:05 am 148. Charles:

repubulicans will joking call obama the messiah. but I think there is truth to the position that obama may not actually legally be an american citizen. authorities in Kenya and hawaii have sealed birth records on obama now. jews from the second or third centuries on maintained that Jesus was the offspring of a roman and a jew. (and not born immaculately) St Paul was both a Roman citizen and a Jew–born of jewish parents.

We’re talking mixed loyalties.

obama addressed the question of his parentage jokingly by saying he was not born in Bethlehem but rather on Krypton. His father was Jorel.

Oct 29, 2008 - 10:05 am 149. Charles:

Acts 24
The Trial Before Felix
1Five days later the high priest Ananias went down to Caesarea with some of the elders and a lawyer named Tertullus, and they brought their charges against Paul before the governor. 2When Paul was called in, Tertullus presented his case before Felix: “We have enjoyed a long period of peace under you, and your foresight has brought about reforms in this nation. 3Everywhere and in every way, most excellent Felix, we acknowledge this with profound gratitude. 4But in order not to weary you further, I would request that you be kind enough to hear us briefly.

5″We have found this man to be a troublemaker, stirring up riots among the Jews all over the world. He is a ringleader of the Nazarene sect 6and even tried to desecrate the temple; so we seized him. 8By[a] examining him yourself you will be able to learn the truth about all these charges we are bringing against him.”

9The Jews joined in the accusation, asserting that these things were true.

10When the governor motioned for him to speak, Paul replied: “I know that for a number of years you have been a judge over this nation; so I gladly make my defense. 11You can easily verify that no more than twelve days ago I went up to Jerusalem to worship. 12My accusers did not find me arguing with anyone at the temple, or stirring up a crowd in the synagogues or anywhere else in the city. 13And they cannot prove to you the charges they are now making against me. 14However, I admit that I worship the God of our fathers as a follower of the Way, which they call a sect. I believe everything that agrees with the Law and that is written in the Prophets, 15and I have the same hope in God as these men, that there will be a resurrection of both the righteous and the wicked. 16So I strive always to keep my conscience clear before God and man.

17″After an absence of several years, I came to Jerusalem to bring my people gifts for the poor and to present offerings. 18I was ceremonially clean when they found me in the temple courts doing this. There was no crowd with me, nor was I involved in any disturbance. 19But there are some Jews from the province of Asia, who ought to be here before you and bring charges if they have anything against me. 20Or these who are here should state what crime they found in me when I stood before the Sanhedrin— 21unless it was this one thing I shouted as I stood in their presence: ‘It is concerning the resurrection of the dead that I am on trial before you today.’ “

Oct 29, 2008 - 10:10 am 150. Charles:

St. Paul’s vision of Jesus is a very similiar experience to what you’ll read about Moslems suddenly seeing Jesus in visions or dreams and converting. The reaction of Moslem authorities to conversion is similar to that of Jewish Authorities to Paul’s conversion.

An interesting discussion here of a coptic christian Father Zakaria Boutros

Oct 29, 2008 - 10:35 am 151. Charles:

Iraq To Share Results Of U.S. Raid Probe With Syria
October 29, 2008

Oct 29, 2008 - 10:42 am 152. mika2k1:

Five days later the high priest Ananias went down to Caesarea with some of the elders and a lawyer named Tertullus,
==

LOL! 5 days later a lawyer is sent. A lawyer!

Was Paul Tarsus also a lawyer?

Paul Tarsus, private citizen of Rome, a proud Pharisee, but a devotee of the Sadducee Temple priests. And a riot instigator. LOL!

Oct 29, 2008 - 10:54 am 153. mika2k1:

Caesarea
==

LOL! Why does the high priest himself, a lawyer, and some of the elders need to go down to Caesarea?

Oct 29, 2008 - 11:06 am 154. Charles:

LOL! 5 days later a lawyer is sent. A lawyer!

Was Paul Tarsus also a lawyer?

……….
I’m not sure that they gave out degrees in those days. St Paul was a very good lawyer, account & rabbi or Jew cubed as they say. A very competant man–the sort to make JAPS cringe. Orthodox Jews over at Free Republic are at pains to say that Meyer Kahane was not anti christian during his time in the USA. He was an ardent anti communist. His bombs were for the Soviet Union. Not until Kahane went to Israel did he become an ardent Jewish zeolot. The JDL of today is lead by hollywood throwbacks to the McCarthy era. Not Meyer’s style.

Oct 29, 2008 - 11:08 am 155. mika2k1:

I’m not sure that they gave out degrees in those days.
==

Let me know when you are sure.

Oct 29, 2008 - 11:16 am 156. truepeers:

Mika, old friend,

How do we explain Paul’s revelation if he was not a Jew, albeit one who had clearly fallen out of touch with Jewish teaching about moving beyond sacrificial thinking and towards reconciliation?

Only one who has been actively persecuting Christians can have had Paul’s revelation, which is the guilty realization that obsession with kicking heretics out of the nation becomes a form of worship and the consequent revelation that one’s victim, whom one can’t stop thinking about, is akin to a divinity, that Jesus is Godlike. It’s hard to see how a pagan could have come to this understanding – why would a polytheist care so much about the Christian “heresy”? – but a rogue Jew who is trying to find his way back to some kind of sacred order would seem to be the kind of person who would have had Paul’s revelation.

Oct 29, 2008 - 11:22 am 157. Eggplant:

Dave said:

“You are an OSS sniper behind enemy lines in WWII. You are in position at a public event. On the stage are three Krauts. Heydrich, Herr Schickelgruber himself, and Erwin Rommel. You only have two bullets. What do you do?

Answer, shoot Rommel twice just to make sure.”

I understand Dave’s reasoning but I don’t think I agree with it. Herr Schickelgruber’s regime was held together by his hypnotic power over the masses (alot like our Chosen One). If Schickelgruber had a sudden fatal accident, who would take over? Himmler, Goering or Doenitz? The German general staff would immediately have revolted against any of those replacements and begun negotiations with the Allies for an armistice.

Although it seems overly obvious, putting two rounds in Schickelgruber’s head is the obvious choice.

Oct 29, 2008 - 11:25 am 158. mika2k1:

So, Charles, which Temple priest was it who singed letters of arrest to arrest Paul Tarsus and bring him to arrest by the Temple guards?

Oct 29, 2008 - 11:27 am 159. mika2k1:

And Charles, why is it that none of the Sadducee Temple priests recognize Paul, their proud Pharisee devotee and Sadducee henchman, nor does he recognize any of them?

Oct 29, 2008 - 11:32 am 160. mika2k1:

How do we explain Paul’s revelation if he was not a Jew
==

That’s a nonsensical question. You don’t need a revelation to be a conniving liar. All you need is enough gullible people to believe you and that nonsense.

Oct 29, 2008 - 11:40 am 161. mika2k1:

Btw truepeers,

No Jew would ever refer to fellow Jews as “The Jews”. That’s just basic psychology 101.

Oct 29, 2008 - 11:54 am 162. truepeers:

You don’t need a revelation to be a conniving liar. All you need is enough gullible people to believe you and that nonsense.

-Well, we’re talking here about the founding moment of the Christian church, an institution that has survived and grown for 2000 years; seems to me some kind of substantial revelation into our humanity must be involved, whatever we think of the human or divine source of this revelation.

FWIW it seems to me that there is a very real limit in Judaism in that it does not provide for the deeply sinful Jew who has fallen out of the ritual or ethical order, lost a clear sense of the Covenant, what the Christian approach to sin, guilt, and forgiveness provides. Most Jews don’t need Christianity, but there are always a few who come to feel they need this Jesus-mediated road to personal salvation. That’s the context in which I understand Paul.

Oct 29, 2008 - 12:10 pm 163. Pascal:

Mica: “I know my own history and tradition, and I know when lies and contradictions are made in relation to that history and tradition.”

Yep. I wish to point out that mica may be ironically telling the truth here. This statement would fit Amalek quite well. The hater of God and thus hater of Jews and Christians in that order; Amalekites know the Jewish historical record better than many Jews. For instance, Eichmann could torture his Jewish victims because he often knew scripture better than they.

Mica, you try to sound Jewish in this thread, but your bile for Christians and their faith is consistent with what I’ve pointed out about you in other threads, and in a couple of posts at my own site.

Mica, as with C4, you have repeatedly made clear that your morality is centered on earth’s environment — creation — and not with God — The Creator. Those who worship the creation and not the Creator are, by that choice, Jews and Christians no longer.

So you may as well stop your Jewish charade mica. Your prior commentary belies your current front, and your attempts to raise enmity amongst the faithful marks you with the curse of Amalek.

Oct 29, 2008 - 12:45 pm 164. Pascal:

Correction: the posts at my site are not about mica personally, but rather predict and explain behavior such as mica has displayed on this thread (other than his dispute with C4).

Oct 29, 2008 - 1:23 pm 165. programmer:

Melissus,
I probably can’t convince your moral theologian. Were I you, I would choose to never be around him. He has clearly told you that the life that GOD has given him and you is worth nothing to him. He will die before defending himself or others. That is his choice. Free will and all that. But he is ignoring that he has been presented with a zen koan by GOD himself. Does he risk his soul by condoning killing to defend himself and others, or does he risk his soul by failing to support the stopping of the senseless death of others when he can? A lose-lose proposition, or so it seems. What is the sound of one hand clapping, so to speak. GOD gave each of us reason. He gave each of us free will. For myself, I believe that GOD judges each of us on how we use his gifts to make good decisions. And he expects us to recognize what means good intuitively, not just dither around with sophistry. To paraphrase Yoda, “There is no try, there is only do!”

As an aside, it is interesting how during this particular election, much thought and discussion arises around fundamental beliefs of what is good…and what is not.

Oct 29, 2008 - 2:32 pm 166. furious_a:

#42 – ‘Israel’s Rebellion’

“The rebellion of 66 AD, however, did not begin as a war of national liberation. It began as communal rioting in the seaport town of Caaserea — Greeks vs. Jews over an empty lot next to a synagogue. this inspired sympathetic rioting in Jersulem, and a ham-naded Roman attempt to quell the disturbances worsened them, instead. The result was one of those great wallows of siege, massacre, teacher, presecution, revenge, plunder, and self-destruction to which the Middle East is so often host.”
–P.J. O’Rourke “The 2,000 Year-old Middle East Expert”

Oct 29, 2008 - 3:24 pm 167. John:

Some historical clarifications:

Reinhard Heydrich was a career signals officer in the German Navy when he was cashiered, after a Court of Inquiry, by Grand Admiral Raeder for conduct unbecoming an officer [sexual misconduct].
He came to the SS via his wife, Nina, who got him an interview with Himmler through her godfather Freidrich von Eberstadt [a senior SS officer]. Himmler was looking to set up an intelligence service in the SS. Heydrich got the job, and became Chief of the SS Sicherheitsdienst [Security Service, SD for short]. He entered the police the same way Himmler did, by becoming deputy Chief to Himmler’s Chief] of the various German state polices, usually running the political police of each state himself. The last state police force to fall to Himmler was Prussia’s, which had been a fiefdom of Hermann Goering [who, incidentally created the Gestapo].

Heydrich, in 1939, combined the Gestapo, the SD and the Kripo [Kriminalpolitzei] into the Reichssucherheithauptamt [Reichs Main Security Office]. He did not command the Ordnungpolizei [Order Police] nor the Concentration Camp detachments. He was made Reichsprotector of Bohemia/Moravia [Czechoslavakia] in 1941, first deputizing for, then replacing Constantin von Neurath.

Heydrich planned the Final Solution and was charged with implementing it. He got the order from Goering. He had previosly developed the Einsatzgruppen operational model in Poland, and sent four such groups into the Soviet Union during Barbarossa. He chaired the Wansee Conference.

Heydrich, was was both a highly prficient violinist, as well as a world class fencer,and flew fighter planes in Norway, and in Russia [where he was shot down]. He spoke seven languages, and was responsible for several major intelligence successes, including kidnapping Stevens and Best, Operation Bernhard [the counterfeiting of British currency], Salon Kitty, as well as providing Stalin forged evidence that may have triggered the purge of the Red Army. He also faked the attack on the Gleiwitz radio station that Hitler used as a pretext to attack Poland.

Operation Arthropoid [not Anthropoid] was undertaken by the Czech government in exile for several reasons. First, Heydrich’s methods of carrot and really big stick were resulting in Czechoslavakia [read Skoda Works] playing an increasing role in German war production. Second, Benes was concerned that his government – in exile seem to have serious supprt in Czechoslavakia by Britain. Third, he expected Savage German reprisals, which he [and his government] believed would alienate the Czechs, drive them into increased resistance, and into closer cooperation with his government. He was mistaken. And the Czechs paid the price. In addition to Lidice and another village that were razed, some 5-6,000 Czechs were shot in and around Prague.

Oct 29, 2008 - 4:02 pm 168. Doug:

Gateway Pundit
– Busted… Obama Camp Was Providing ACORN With Donor Lists

Oct 29, 2008 - 4:52 pm 169. Konyok:

MAKE SURE BARRY DOESN’T GET LOST

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/us_elections/article5042571.ece

Oct 29, 2008 - 5:17 pm 170. mika2k1:

Well, we’re talking here about the founding moment of the Christian church
==

truepeers,

You’re confusing the Jesus and his Nazorenes followers with the Roman Imperialist Church. Contrary to what the Paulines would have you believe, Christians were not Roman Imperialists. Read about the Jerusalem Church and James brother of Jesus.

Oct 29, 2008 - 5:37 pm 171. mika2k1:

Mica, you try to sound Jewish in this thread, but your bile for Christians and their faith is consistent with what I’ve pointed out about you in other threads, and in a couple of posts at my own site.
==

Pascal,

My “bile” is directed at Imperialists. It’s true I have little patience for religious superstitions and lies, but as long as those superstitions are kept private and disconnected from Imperial political ambitions, I’m willing to live and let live.

As for Amalek, I’m a fierce Israeli/Hebrew nationalist. I understand why the Jewish religion is central to that cultural ethnic and national identity, and as long as it doesn’t get in face, again, I’m willing to live and let live.

Oct 29, 2008 - 5:46 pm 172. mika2k1:

..get in ^my face..

Oct 29, 2008 - 5:47 pm 173. Leo Linbeck III:

exhelodrvr,

My “slam dunk” comment had to do with all four of the tests. I agree that your ratios are probably right, but that really only has to do with the fourth test (proportionality).

However, I think the weak link is the third test: were there other alternatives? It is certainly easy to imagine other ways to get the Japanese to surrender; whether any of these were worth pursuing before dropping da bomb is, it seems to me, a reasonable question to ask.

But since I wasn’t there, and don’t know the options facing Truman, I return to my default position of giving him the benefit of the doubt.

BTW – what does your screen name stand for? Inquiring minds want to know…

L3

Oct 29, 2008 - 5:56 pm 174. Leo Linbeck III:

Melissus,

Most excellent post.

Thx for the Latin, especially the translation. I’m afraid the only Latin I remember is semper ubi sub ubi (always wear underwear). It has been very useful advice over the years…

Although I understand the argument for the intrinsic evil of dropping an atomic bomb on a city, I’m not sure I fully accept it. I come back to the crucial distinction between intention and foresight. If my intention is to destroy the military capability in Hiroshima, this is a good intention. Even if I foresee that it could kill innocent people, that does not, ipso facto mean that the act is evil (hey, I do remember more Latin!). However, if my intention is to kill innocent people, then the act is intrinsically evil.

So, I’m still not convinced by your theologian’s argument.

While I’m not scandalized, I have to admit there are two parts of your post the gnaw at me:

1. The notion of collective morality, including the statement “laws essentially are made for the collective.” I have always thought that laws were made to protect individuals. I have a concern that once accept judging the collective, we fall into a dangerous trap. I don’t want to accept the idea of collective guilt or collective innocence, perhaps because these notions have been terribly abused over the centuries. Are Jews collectively guilty for the death of Jesus? Are Germans collectively guilty for the Holocaust? Are American whites collectively guilty of enslaving blacks? Analogously, were Auschwitz guards innocent because they were obeying orders from the authorities?

It seems to me that morality is a way to categorize individual acts of individual actors. To be sure, those acts may impact many people, but any action is the act by a single person, or a group of people acting as individuals. Break this link, and you remove individual responsibility. Not coincidentally, this idea of individual responsibility also fits more closely to my notion of salvation: we are saved one at a time, not as a group.

2. While I fully agree on the importance of God as the ultimate source of authority, I believe that authority can be derived rationally as well. How do we know that the leader is dispensing God’s justice? Are we simply to rely on the fact they have been legitimately elected? Or that the ruler believes he is acting in accordance with God’s will?

As you imply, conscience is authoritative only if it consistent with God’s will. But, crucially, conscience is a judgment of reason, so we must exercise reason to properly form our conscience. This means that we cannot simply refer to God’s will; we must take the effort to learn God’s will. This involves reason, including the same tools of the mind that are employed (defectively) by secularists.

I admit these may not be fully formed, rigorous philosophical positions. But I wanted to share my unease with you, perhaps in the hope that you.

One final point: I find the third, “no other good option” test the biggest hurdle in capital punishment. I used to be strongly supportive of the practice, but given that we are rich enough as a nation to securely incarcerate a killer for life, my support has waned to the point where I no longer support its practice. I don’t accept that it is intrinsically evil, however, so there are still situations where it may be acceptable. My views have also evolved as I’ve witnessed how easy it is for the unscrupulous to manipulate the criminal justice system. This may all be too nuanced for many people’s taste, but since you raised it I though I’d share my perspective.

Thx for sharing your thoughts.

L3

Oct 29, 2008 - 6:59 pm 175. Dave:

Eggplant I understand your point too (#157).

However, for Schickelgruber’s demise to have
broken the hypnotic spell it would have had to have taken place earlier. Or so it seems to me.

As far as I can tell, Wild Bill Donovan seems to have made a concious decision to leave him intact until the war was won.

Wonder what would have happened had Generals taken over and tried for an Armistice? Our side might well have held out for unconditional surrender anyway. They all regretted not listening to Pershing back in 1918 and getting the German Army to surrender instead of having German civilians negotiate.

Oh well. Neither of us had to made the decision. Dunno about you but in my case I imagine that is rather fortunate.

See you on the next posting of interest. This one looks sorta played out.

Oct 29, 2008 - 10:26 pm 176. Melissus:

L3:
I appreciate your thoughtful observations.

Regarding “collective morality”, you’re absolutely right. I reject anything like Rousseau’s notion of a “general will” governing a nation. What collective conscience? It does not exist! What you have read reflects my inability to recall another nifty Latin formula from the philosophy of jurisprudence, so I carelessly expressed myself with the term “collective”. What I meant to say was that human laws are never formulated for individuals but for groups of individuals. The US Congress does not legislate laws for this individual John Smith, but for the nation as a whole, “the collective”; which unfortunately connotes collectivism, but that is far from my thinking. I agree that morality is of individual consciences. Now the individual leader (e.g., Truman) still has a moral and personal problem to resolve: he must either drop the a-bomb or do something else. However, as an individual VESTED WITH DIVINE AUTHORITY, he is in a fundamentally different category than the individual man acting without such authority. If our Truman makes an honest mistake, neither should his conscience torment him nor (I believe) will the Just Judge hold him to the same degree liable as He would an unauthorized man (like Judas). This I think is clear from John 19.

As to your second point: I think again you’re right on. But it is so far beyond my possibilities right now to come up with a comprehensive theory for moral action in the situation of war… That is what I would have to do to answer to my satisfaction (and probably to yours) the problems you raise. Who is the legitimate leader? FDR? Hitler? Emperor Hirohito? Again, you are right on about the centrality of reason’s judgment in the moral act, and this raises another difficulty, the soundness of our knowledge of the consequences of our actions. How can Truman be sure that the a-bomb is really going to be more merciful than a land invasion? He cannot possibly foresee all the consequences and complexities. And for the same reason, his conscience and God should not hold him to account in the same manner as the individual who kills in self-defense. Moreover, as one conscious of being God’s instrument that tries to do the divine WILL, he is psychologically and spiritually more capable of making some of the hard decisions that leadership sometimes requires. (Example: the captain of a stricken ship that must seal off watertight compartments still filled with hundreds of his men to save the rest of his ship; a terrible decision to have to make, which will torment him later unless he knows by Faith that he is not God and that only as a humble agent of Divine Authority he acts, imperfectly, for the best of all.) This is part of the reason that I brought up the analogy of the two supertankers: their captains cannot be held responsible, not in the same way, as two individuals without authority.

Moralists distinguish between ante bello (before the war breaks out) and in bello (in or during the war or in combat). Truman is in bello and evil is happening no matter what he does. NECESSITIES IMPOSE THEMSELVES. There is a fundamental moral law that where there is no freedom (due to necessity), there is no human (moral) act. For an act to be moral, it must be free, deliberate and its object good as such. But the necessity of in bello situations can, I think, attenuate freedom; and this my friend, the moral theologian, does not take into account. He demanded that the object be good in itself (but Truman’s act of bombing is not good in itself). I think that my friend abstracts the object from war’s chaos and rampant evil. If the house is burning down, I do not commit vandalism (an evil object) if I axe a door down so as to escape. Therefore, I do not think it is very fair to Truman to accuse him of deliberate murder as if he had a-bombed Japan in peace time. In bello situations often present us with options all of which are evil, and WHERE NOT TO CHOOSE IS ALREADY AN EVIL, AN EVIL WORSE THAN NOT TO CHOOSE (especially when charged as leader with the duty to govern and lead, one desists from leading so as not to do evil: this is a cop out, a culpable betrayal of duty). I hold that such a global necessity mitigates or even eliminates freedom to choose moral objects that are good per se, consequently and necessarily mitigating the evil in a moral action by attenuating one of its qualifying dimensions, that of freedom to choose (the other two are deliberation-awareness of the act-object, and the goodness or non-evilness of the act-object).

Now, do I think this global necessity removes all moral content from the a-bombing? Certainly not. But my friend did not duly take this in bello context into account, treating it as an ante bello context.

In all this argument with my friend, I have tried to attenuate his rigorist application of just war theory. My interest in doing this is not that of revisiting WWII. I am at bottom searching for a theoretical justification of the cruel war we must now wage against Islamo-fascism. It is a war to the death against patient fanatics, slaves of an ideology that teaches them to be ready to wait centuries to finally destroy our civilization and culture. I hold it impossible to win a war against such types unless we can morally justify exalting what used to be considered the warrior’s virtues: enthusiasm in effectively attacking and killing the enemy. What has happened to us that we are incapable of celebrating and exalting authentic military heroism? If we are not able to show a fanatical enemy that we are not only willing to kill him and all he holds dear, but that we ENJOY doing it, relish doing it, celebrate doing it, even organizing parades on 5th ave, NYC to rejoice in his ruin, then we will not be able to convince him that his fight and death is vain. AND WE ARE DOOMED, for we will never be able to defeat him definitively. We must eventually lose and die. That, not incidently, is the impact that Truman’s a-bombing had on the militarist Japanese fanatics. They looked to their future and saw the void. That destroyed their will to kill. War is of wills. Weapons and fists are secondary. But we have disarmed ourselves in our wills, and stand helpless and naked before the implacable will of the Islamo-fascist fanatic.

Bush killed many people, our mortal enemies, so he did evil? No! We must be able to say that he did good, and that our soldiers do good when they put down the enemy. Can you imagine going to a highschool football game and not cheering on your boys to victory because they “hurt” the other team’s players? How can our team win without enthusiasm in they’re hitting and tackling? But we have turned enthusiasm in war into an evil. We’re sunk, unless we can discover again the goodness and honor of soldiering and fighting for what we hold dear.

How can we recuperate our values and the enthusiasm necessary for their defense, even to the point of killing for them? The just war theory at most will show us how not to sin by excess in war. It is not about enthusing us for killing Huns, or Nips, or Islamo-fascists. I can think of only one way to see good in the grim task of war, and that is returning to seeing war as St Paul in Romans 13 and St Augustine in his own just war theory. The soldier, like Pontius Pilate, carries the sword on God’s behalf, and as God’s will should always be obeyed with joy and enthusiasm, so too should the soldier obey God’s will (expressed through his superiors) in pursuing and killing the enemy.

I hate writing all this. I too am a child of our too gentle culture. But I am being led to this conclusion by the bitter struggle we face against a remorseless enemy. I will be challenged: How can a God of love desire the death of an enemy? I won’t try to engage that here. But you can project ahead to see that my line of reasoning leads to a re-Christianizing of our culture so that we can fight such stern enemies. This probably elucidates some of my other posts above, my interest in religion, authentic, not inauthentic. Religion is the fundamental value that buttresses all other values, and justifies even war for its defense. The Islamo-fascists know this well, and hold a dangerous advantage over us with their inauthentic religion. It may be inauthentic, and therefore both absolute and irrational. But we right now have no religion, and therefore have neither the absolute nor rationality. We must get back some of that “good ole religion”.

You mention in passing another issue: that of capital punishment, basically offering me a penny for my thoughts. My personal conviction is that justice requires commensurate retribution: violation of an absolute value like human life requires “comparable restitution”, which has always been understood as forfeiture of the murderer’s life. If the capital punishment is justifiable, it is only on this basis, otherwise human life’s absolute value is destroyed in favor or a relative value (peace in the community, lower crime statistics, higher property values, etc.). If a man dies because he is reasonable expected to kill others for he has killed before, this reasoning does not seem that different from that of executing him for past violation of this world’s supreme value of human life. Both reasonings recognize that human life is sacred and its violation demands the commensurate satisfaction of capital punishment. Yes, I do believe, in principle, in the application of the capital punishment for “capital crimes”. I hold, moreover, that it is a duty (read: obligatory) to execute perpetrators of capital crimes. No, this does not mean I exclude the possibility of mercy, of suspending the sentence. My justification in suspending what I just called an obligatory punishment is again the idea of the judge’s (and the State’s) mediation of God’s authority. Because it is God and not the judge who is the origin of the authority of the death sentence, the judge, if he can reasonably hold the man to be sorry or reformed, can consign the case to the Supreme Judge. If there is no God or no mediation, then the human judge or tribunal would be unconditionally obliged to mete out the death sentence or ignore the supreme value of this world that is human life. My thoughts, for what they are worth, on capital punishment.

Have I managed to convince anyone that I am a religious fanatic? If that’s how I am coming off, I sure would like to hear from you.

Oct 30, 2008 - 3:25 am 177. sirius_sir:

There will always be groups who will act with “uncompromising” militancy and sometimes, with savagery. Consider the following strategies. Strategy one: match the militants for extremism. Strategy two: do nothing. Strategy three: insist on a level playing field. Wretchard@89

There is also a fourth strategy: up the ante well past the point your foe can even hope to match and thereby defeat him.

Once upon a time this is how all wars ended. And, “if certain trends are not reversed”, who’s to say it won’t one day be that way again?

Oct 30, 2008 - 6:11 pm 178. bogie wheel:

Melissus -
Thoughtful posts.

Many moons ago, I myself used to be a pacifist. I guess age done made me mean. My attitude now is more or less in the ballpark of … pray for your enemies, yes, but smoke ‘em if they make a move towards you.

Oct 30, 2008 - 6:57 pm 179. mika2k1:

Well, we’re talking here about the founding moment of the Christian church, an institution that has survived and grown for 2000 years
==

How come Jesus never caused any riots? How come everywhere Tarsus Paul goes he causes riots in the Jewish community?

Oct 30, 2008 - 9:24 pm 180. Storm-Rider:

Jesus said “love your enemy”, but Proverbs says “The fear of the Lord is to hate evil.” In my mind there is no conflict here. One can love his enemy and still hate the evil within; and destroy the enemy in self-defense – or in defense of national life and liberty.

Oct 31, 2008 - 7:37 am 181. Charles:

179. mika2k1:

Well, we’re talking here about the founding moment of the Christian church, an institution that has survived and grown for 2000 years
==

How come Jesus never caused any riots? How come everywhere Tarsus Paul goes he causes riots in the Jewish community?
……………
actually Jesus attack on the money changers in the temple sealed his fate.

The Gospel of John gives the most detailed account of the event.

“When it was almost time for the Jewish Passover, Jesus went up to Jerusalem. In the Temple courts he found men selling cattle, sheep and doves and others sitting at tables exchanging money. So he made a whip out of cords and drove all from the Temple, both sheep and cattle; he scattered the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables. To those who sold doves he said: ‘Get out of here.’ (John 2:13-16)

Matthew’s gospel does not detail the kind of animals that were being sold for slaughter, but it gives the same order of events.

“Jesus entered the Temple area and drove out all who were buying and selling there. He overturned the tables of the money changers and the benches of those selling doves. ‘It is written,’ he said to them, ‘My house will be called a house of prayer but you are making it a den of robbers.’” (Matthew 21:12-13)

The same account is given in the gospel of Mark who, like Matthew, also reports that Jesus accused those at the Temple of making God’s house into a “den of robbers.”

Mark 11:15-17

15On reaching Jerusalem, Jesus entered the temple area and began driving out those who were buying and selling there. He overturned the tables of the money changers and the benches of those selling doves, 16and would not allow anyone to carry merchandise through the temple courts. 17And as he taught them, he said, “Is it not written:
” ‘My house will be called
a house of prayer for all nations’[a]? But you have made it ‘a den of robbers.’

The “house of prayer for all nations” is a reference to
Isaiah 56:7
the ‘den of robbers’ is a reference to Jeremiah 7:11

Oct 31, 2008 - 7:51 am 182. Mastiff:

Mika,

Even though I agree with you for the most part, your comportment has been so boorish and self-satisfied that you have probably done more to alienate people here than has anyone other than the odious C4.

Communication depends on finding an initial common ground. Baldly asserting that Paul was not a Pharisee etc., and then ridiculing anyone who disagrees, is stupidity of the highest order. Please go away until you learn some basic Derech Eretz.

****

However, Paul was unlikely to be a Pharisee, for at least two reasons. First, the Pharisees and the Sadducees (the faction that controlled the Temple) were enemies; it is inconceivable that a high-ranking member of the Temple police would be a Pharisee.

Second, in four places in his Letters, Paul attempts an a fortiori argument, which is a staple of Talmudic logic and can be seen on nearly every page of the Talmud. In three of these places, the argument is flawed. This is akin to someone claiming to be a trained mathematician, and then forgetting the quadratic equation.

Paul claimed to be a Pharisee because at the time, the Pharisees were held in high esteem throughout the Near East for their scholarship, whereas the Sadducees were just one more ruling elite.

Nov 1, 2008 - 9:49 pm 183. mika2k1:

Baldly asserting that Paul was not a Pharisee
==

How’s this for a “baldly” statement:

Tarsus Paul was an Imperialist Roman agent, a Roman spy, a conniving Roman liar, thief, and murder. He was not a Pharisee. He was not a Jew.

Nov 4, 2008 - 11:10 am 184. mika2k1:

actually Jesus attack on the money changers in the temple sealed his fate.
==

Sealed his fate with the Romans, sure enough. As the attack was clearly directed at Rome and the use of Roman coinage. “Render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s, and unto God the things that are God’s.” Caesar and his coinage belongs in Rome, not in Israel, and certainly not the Temple.

Jesus was openly received and hosted everywhere he, his wife, his brothers and companions went. Never caused any riots. Yet, everywhere Paulus Tarsus goes, that Roman spy, liar, Imperialist propaganda agent, he causes riots in the Jewish community.

Nov 4, 2008 - 11:16 am

Sorry, comments for this entry are closed at this time.