Category Archives: Individualism Vs. Collectivism

'Conservatives For Killing Terri'

Bush, Individual Rights, Individualism Vs. Collectivism, libertarianism, Neoconservatism

“I can think of only two occasions on which I agreed with George Bush. Both involved the upholding of the people’s negative, or leave-me-alone, rights.
The first was his refusal to capitulate to the Kyoto-protocol crazies. Not surprisingly, some conservatives denounced this rare flicker of good judgment. And I’m not talking a ‘Crunchy Con’ of Andrew Sullivan’s caliber—he does proud to Greenpeace and the Sierra Club combined. No less a conservative than Joe Scarborough commiserated with actor Robert Redford over the president’s ‘blind spot on the environment.’ (Ditto Bill O’Reilly.)
The other Bush initiative I endorsed was the attempt by Congress to uphold Terri Schiavo’s inalienable right to life—a decision very many conservatives now rue.
Upholding rights to life, liberty, and property is a government’s primary—some would say only—duty. But, bless their cruel little hearts, this cast of conservative characters is at least consistent. It relished the launch of a bloody war in contravention of fact, law, and morality, and now, fittingly, it’s atoning for its incongruent attempts to forestall a killing…”

The excerpt is from my new WorldNetDaily.com column, “Conservatives for Killing Terri.” Comments are welcome.

Flying Free

America, Government, Individualism Vs. Collectivism, Liberty, Private Property

As travel by air becomes more tormenting, charter planes are going to become a viable option. In fact, I’d be investing in these companies now. As charter planes are used with greater frequency, more suppliers will enter the market to take care of demand. Eventually, prices will become more feasible.

Charter companies, I am sure, are putting together good packages as we speak, for business people who have to fly frequently. Or for people like me who tolerated the odd pat down, but refuse to let the Transportation Security Administration thieves steal my Rene Guinot toner and my powder compact.

I can’t afford a charter flight, but longtime reader Robert Rupard might change that. Other than his splendid reading habits, Robert is president of the charter “Wings Air“—it offers great rates. His motto: “On Wings Air, You’re Already There.” Fly with Robert, and you can avoid the mandatory molestations in the state-occupied airports. No lost Baggage either.

If you’re going to any of the destinations Robert frequents, be sure to make your reservations. Also check out my weekly column tonight, which deals with government goons gone wild in the airports. And while you’re at it, why not read a golden oldie, “Whose Property is it Anyway?”.

Updated Again: Job: Jewish Individualist

Individualism Vs. Collectivism, Judaism & Jews, Religion

I got thinking about the Book of Job after I heard La Coulter make fun of Howard Dean for choosing Job as his favorite New Testament reading!

Dean is an unsharpened pencil, but he’s right about Job; it’s unrivaled in Christian Holy Scriptures.

In case you wonder why I’m expounding on a book in the bible, a sidebar is in order: I’ve always thought of myself as a secular person. According to my mother, however, I’m religious. She says a person who is scrupulously just and upright is religious. (She’s biased, of course.)

According to Ann Coulter’s definition, I’m religious too. The definition is on page 266 of her book, Godless, which is the first of her books I’ve read. I bought Treason, because I think the thesis is spot on. The others—liberal this; liberal that —don’t interest me. I don’t regret reading Godless. It’s a lot of fun (the chapter about idiot environmentalists is super. With one exception perhaps (I wonder who?!), I don’t know of anyone who writes this cleverly and amusingly.

In any case, if we apply Coulter’s definition, I’m religious. It is: “Whatever your religious persuasion, if you believe we are distinct from the beasts, you’re with God. (Here are my Animals have no Rights essays, which, nevertheless, and contra Coulter, do not defer to a deity in the process of explaining why animals are without rights.)

In any event, I’m of a generation of secular Jews which knows and loves the Hebrew Bible as a tremendous literary, philosophical, and historical achievement. It’s unique. Those who have studied it (in Hebrew, as I have) know the 39 books for the vital, lively (very Jewish), earthy, pioneering, and fascinating works they are. There is nothing stuffy or pompous about the Hebrew Bible, either. In A History of the Jews, Paul Johnson writes: “The Bible is essentially a historical work from start to finish. The Jews developed the power to write terse and dramatic historical narrative half a millennium before the Greeks…

One glance at the Quran and you appreciate even more the power of the Hebrew biblical narrators. (If I were really religious, I’d believe the first five books were written by God, but that’s not what I was taught in a secular Israeli high school—that’s not where the evidence leads).

Back to the Best Book in the Bible: Is there anything in Christian Holy Scripture to rival the Book of Job? (And if there is, we know whence the inspiration came). Considering the period, it’s radical. Here goes:

A very righteous and prosperous man—in Jewish tradition, wealth acquired righteously is a blessing—is put through a succession of trials by God and victimized horribly. His kids are killed, his wealth taken, and he’s inflicted with a skin condition that makes him writhe in itching agony. Yet no matter what God throws at him, he 1) refuses to denounce God. 2) Insists, based on pure fact—and as the ultimate individualist would—that he, Job, is right and God is wrong. What’s more, in the end, God agrees with Job , confessing he was only trying him to see how deep Job’s faith was and how far he could be pushed.

Again, that’s radical. (Such a chapter in the Quran would have ended with a beheading—Job’s stiff neck would have been smitten.)

It’s hard to beat such an unorthodox concept, considering the times. Jews have a tradition of arguing with their God. Abraham haggled for the sinners of Sodom and Gomorrah and Jacob physically wrestled with the angel of God.

Still, besides libertarians, who today argues with authority? Nobody—unless that authority happens to be promoting libertarianism, Jeffersonian republicanism, or something that goes against the preordained religion of statism.

**
Update: A few readers set out to Christianize Job, in other words to reinterpret Hebrew Scriptures in accordance with Christian constructs and beliefs, alien in Judaism. They did so dogmatically too.

Well, well, scrape away the patina of piety and Christians behave like Muslim Replacement robbers; laying claim to a legacy that is first and foremost so utterly Jewish; written by Jews who, viscerally and intellectually, thought more like me than like any Christian.

Just as Christian thinking is foreign to me; Jewish thinking is manifestly foreign to my interlocutors. They evince no understanding of Judaism. When these particular Christians discuss the Hebrew Bible, they denude it of its Jewish essence and superimpose upon it the Christian articles of faith.

Don’t understand Judaism? Well and good. But just as I don’t lecture you about your scriptures; don’t pontificate about mine or rape them with Christian constructs that are to Judaism as universalism is to Islam.

Furthermore, so long as you can’t read the Hebrew Bible in the Hebrew, but rely on some stuffy King James translation, drop the authoritative tone.

Now, my particular animated take on Job—the one that so infuriated Christian literalists— happens to be an extension of my father’s thinking, an orthodox Rabbi and a brilliant scholar of Judaism. Acknowledged as such.

Job, of course, is a philosophical masterpiece. To the literalists who jumped out of their skins at my suggestion God was wrong and that the book all but implicitly concedes the point, let me say this: G-d doesn’t dispute that Job was right in his insistence he did not sin. By logical extension (deduction is something the great JEWISH sages practiced routinely), this would imply G-d was wrong to punish Job. Again: By restoring Job and admitting Job was innocent of all wrongdoing, by default, G-d (G-d of the Jews, that is) admits He was toying with Job.

Again, Job is a deeply Jewish book. Christians (and Reform rabbis) cannot be expected to have a feel for the Hebrew Bible and for Jewish theological thinking, which is very different from Christian thinking.

So how about it? Let’s see less ignorance and more of that Christian humility in your approach to scriptures not your own, about which you know so little.

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Updated Again:

A valued writer on BAB has written in to say, in a nutshell, that the magnificent Jewish bible—all 39 explosive books is nothing but a prelude, a preparation, for the New Testament and Jesus, which Jews regard as a mere prophet.

Yeah, Christians are as chauvinistic as Muslims about reinterpreting, misinterpreting, appropriating, and diminishing this pioneering, and uniquely Jewish text, to say nothing about centuries of experience. As misguided as they are about Jews and their bible, Christians are peaceful and very dear to this writer, so far.

But don’t push it. Positions such as this one, manifestly wrong and off-putting, will have no place on this Jew’s blog.

Let Private Property Prevail

Feminism, Individual Rights, Individualism Vs. Collectivism, Private Property

A new right may soon be minted by the nation’s “representatives”: the right to have one’s birth-control prescription filled. As a pro-life protest of sorts, pharmacists across the country are refusing to fill prescriptions for birth-control and day-after pills. In response to their posturing —and the bleating by “reproductive rights groups” — The Great Centralizers in the House and Senate have proposed a bill that’ll allow a pharmacist to refuse to fill a prescription only if a co-worker is on hand to pick up the slack. It goes without saying that a federal law, if passed, would further corrode the cornerstone of civilization: private property. The keys to the store belong with the owner of the pharmacy. The decision is his as to what goods he distributes. If an employee —the pharmacist —refuses to sell goods the owner stocks, the latter has every right to sack the saboteur. One doesn’t possess a right to have a prescription filled, but, equally, one also has no inherent right to stay employed while refusing to peddle the boss’s wares.
The market —not the meddlers —has the best solution: pharmacies that cater to women who use the pill and apothecaries that don’t. The former will employ people who’ll supply these clients; to the latter will flock workers who have an aversion to certain dispensing duties. (My guess is that preachy pharmacists —be they employers or employees —will have a negligible niche market.)
Inhabitants of the land of the free forget that criminalizing behaviors entirely licit in natural law legalizes the use of force against these innocents. (One consequence of the last is that hundreds of thousands of Americans languish in jail for ingesting, injecting, inhaling, or exchanging “unapproved” substances.)
By the same token, Weyco, a medical-benefits provider in Michigan, is just exercising its property rights by refusing to employ anyone who smokes. Inherent to private property is the right to include or exclude; associate with or dissociate from. States that “have passed laws that bar companies from discriminating against workers for lifestyle decisions” are infringing a proprietor’s property rights.
Companies (Investors Property Management in Seattle is another example) who don’t hire smokers are responding to the costs of having to provide workers with another bogus right: healthcare coverage. Their reaction is an example of the perfectly predictable consequences of regulation. It also showcases the immortality of those who clamor for regulation —American workers are all for compelling companies to pay for their healthcare, but want to ban businesses from screening out high-risk candidates.