Category Archives: Judaism & Jews

Finding Free Will And Agency In … Auschwitz

Anti-Semitism, Free Will Vs. Determinism, Judaism & Jews, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Psychiatry

International Holocaust Remembrance Day fell on Tuesday, yesterday, “marking the passage of 70 years since the January 27, 1945, liberation of Auschwitz by Soviet soldiers.”

After conversing with a singularly self-centered, narcissistic Jew, I thought of another, very different and magnificent man, who survived the Auschwitz-Birkenau “extermination camps where an estimated 1.1 million people—mostly Jews from across Europe, but also political opponents, prisoners of war, homosexuals, and Roma—were killed in gas chambers or by systematic starvation, forced labor, disease, or medical experiments.” (The Atlantic.)

Viktor E. Frankl came out of Auschwitz to found the Third Viennese School of Psychotherapy. The philosopher and distinguished psychiatrist said this of his experience in Auschwitz: “In the camps one lost everything, except the last of the human freedoms, to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”

To plagiarize myself, “You can see why liberals have always preferred Freud to Frankl [my family included, whether they know it or not]. They retain a totemic attachment to the Freudian idea that traumatic toilet training is destiny.”

Dr. Frankl, who lost his wife in Auschwitz, but told so poignantly of finding her again in a little chirping bird that followed him—found free will and agency in … Auschwitz too.

UPDATED: Fade To … Black

Anti-Semitism, Crime, Israel, Judaism & Jews, Racism

As far as I can tell, not Megyn Kelly. Not Pamela Geller. Not the Daily Mail. Not the New York Daily News. Not ABC News, on and on: None of the above has mentioned that Calvin Peters, the anti-Semite who stabbed a Jewish young man at prayer, “at the world headquarters of Chabad-Lubavitch at 770 Eastern Parkway in Crown Heights,” was black.

Oh I did.

Well-trained Israelis posting in Hebrew on a Facebook chat opted for “the suspect.” RT went with “knife-wielding man.” (And no, Peters was not “disturbed;” he was just evil.)

So here’s the lede without the lies: Calvin Peters, a black, anti-Semitic layabout, who stabbed a Jewish student in the temple (at a Brooklyn temple), is dead. Killed by some very able cops. Kudos.

UPDATE (12/10): Facebook thread:

Maty Aksenton: “In Israel Hayom, where I read about it today, it was actually mentioned. But it was also said in the article that according to Chabad the attack was not motivated by antisemitism.
I don’t know how good is your Hebrew, but you can see it here by scrolling to page 27. scroll to page 27 in the digital newspaper.

Ilana Mercer: Israel Today does call the man black, but quotes the “community” as saying the stabbing did not occur against an anti-Semitic background.

Ilana Mercer Good paper; Maty Aksenton, I’ll add it to Resources: http://www.ilanamercer.com/newsite/resources.php#ISRAEL

Maty Aksenton: So, if the Chabad community claims that it’s not motivated by anti-Semitism, what reason do we have to believe otherwise?

Ilana Mercer : Sure, Maty Aksenton, reality should be ignored. The man was shouting “Kill the Jews,” but I guess that could have been a nervous tic.

Who You Gonna Call? Oath Keepers

Business, Free Markets, GUNS, Judaism & Jews, Private Property

If there’s something strange
in Ferguson
Who you gonna call?
Oath Keepers!
adapted from Ghostbusters

Sam Andrews, “Yale-educated attorney and former army paratrooper,” is the heroic founder of “The Oath Keepers,” which “claims to have active chapters in all 50 states, as well as an estimated 40,000 members – which,” according to Yahoo News, “would make it one of the fastest growing far-right organizations in the world.”

Sam and his merry men rescued damsel-in-distress Natalie DuBose, proprietor of “Natalie’s Cakes and More,” which “was broken into and looted” in Ferguson.

“I didn’t have the extra savings or extra money to replace everything that was destroyed,” she told ABC News following the vandalism. “The threat of not being able to take care of your children makes you feel like less than a human being.”
DuBose’s story caught Andrews’ attention. He was watching the news at home 40 miles away.
“I can’t even imagine a governor that would leave a woman like this and her business to burn, like they did,” Andrews said. “But I value this woman as much as anything I’ve ever seen in my life.”

“Dressed in full camouflage and armed with an assault rifle and handgun – [Sam] climbs to the roof of a dentist’s office to begin his nightly surveillance. … the Oath Keepers …is … taking up armed positions on the streets and rooftops with the intent of protecting local businesses.”

He says he’s here to defend “the best part of America, the creative part, the small businesses, the hardest working people in the United States of America. To defend them from arson.”

Oath Keeper Sam Andrews sounds right, not far right, as Yahoo “News” would have it.

… What separates the Oath Keepers from other militia groups is that they recruit men and women of the military and law enforcement – vowing to disobey “unconstitutional orders” from what the group sees as an increasingly tyrannical president and government.

But what do you know? More often than not, the police is not on the side of private-property owners and their protectors.

St. Louis County Police declined an interview with ABC News, but confirmed that it is investigating whether the Oath Keepers are breaking the law by providing security without a license.

This must lead one to a sneaky suspicion that with government controlled law-enforcement, serving and protecting private property is secondary to monopolizing the production of defense.

St. Louis County Police has an illiberal partner in who else but the “Anti-Defamation League Center on Extremism.” It “called the Oath keepers an ‘extremist, anti-government group.’”

What’s new?!

“Everything that they say [they] stand for is based on this notion that the world and the government is going to become a dictatorship to try to prevent Americans from having their freedoms,” said director Oren Segal.

Blah, blah, blah.

Your Life; A Playground For Rich Liberals

Business, Capitalism, Celebrity, Ethics, GUNS, Human Accomplishment, Judaism & Jews, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim

“Your Life; A Playground For Rich Liberals” is the current column, now on WND. An excerpt:

“Make sure it doesn’t happen in your state next,” warns Michelle Malkin, in “Rocky Mountain Heist,” a documentary in which the columnist puts her trademark shoe-leather journalistic sleuthing to work in exposing the Democrat-rigged “democracy” of Colorado. There, a group of well-heeled liberals used its power—and “every scheme possible”—to transform Colorado into a playground for the rich (and their liberal ideology) and a nightmare for “common” Coloradans.

Malkin, who once resided in our state, might already know that the dice are loaded against decent people in Washington, too. Take I-594, a gun-control measure which, we are led to believe, expresses the legislative will—even though it is, as The Zelman Partisans have noted, “the anti-gunners’ dream. Under the pretense of being ‘only’ a universal background check bill (common sense, you know!), it will criminalize nearly all transfers of firearms, including the most essential, innocent and fleeting. Loan a gun to a friend in need? Felony. Instructor hands a gun to student and student hands it back? Two felonies.”

The measure was “bankrolled by billionaires on the left,” among them former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg, and Microsoft billionaires Paul Allen, Steve Ballmer and, of course, Bill Gates. These busybodies—who reside in fortified castles and are cosseted by security details—raised millions and gave unstintingly to make it harder for ordinary folks to defend life and property.

It runs in the family. In 2011, we were menaced by another unfathomably wealthy “man,” who got behind an effort to bilk Washington-State businessmen and women of more modest means. The Service Employees International Union (state and national locals), the National Education Association, and Washington teachers union locals all united to champion a new income tax. The poster boy for this regressive measure was William H. Gates Sr., father of Microsoft founder Bill Gates.

The late Steve Jobs was not the only man who had no time for that excuse of a man, Bill Gates. Less well-known for his contempt for the patronizing Gates was hedge-fund founder Robert W. Wilson.

Having donated an estimated $600 million over his lifetime, Mr. Wilson was one of the most generous philanthropists in our country. Still, Wilson flatly refused to join what he derisively termed Bill Gates’ “worthless Giving-Pledge” charity.

And it was not only Gates’ showy, sanctimonious, very public giving that Mr. Wilson discounted.

But first—and against this background—let me add the following: The righteous give discreetly; the pious give publicly. Accustomed to the hedonism of Hollywood and the exhibitionism of cable news anchors, it may surprise some to learn that the manner in which most ordinary Americans give—anonymously—satisfies the exacting standards of righteousness specified by Maimonides. The 12th-century Jewish philosopher stipulated that the highest form of charity is practiced when “donor and recipient are unknown to each other.” …

… Read the rest. “Your Life; A Playground For Rich Liberals” is now on WND.