Updated: Your Godless Government At Work

Barack Obama, Bush, Christianity, Economy, Federal Reserve Bank, Government, History, Inflation, Judaism & Jews, The West

The excerpt is from my latest WND column, “Your Godless Government At Work“:

“…Your gut tells you that your government is not only economically bankrupt, but morally bankrupt too—detached from any ethical moorings.

Alas, ‘figures don’t lie, but liars can figure’:

The experts say the complete opposite: The values and virtues ordinary mortals hold themselves to don’t apply to government. The macroeconomic and microeconomic solitudes are governed by separate codes of morality. Never the twain shall meet. Or so the money mavens claim.

Whereas you’ll pay dearly for your profligacy; the government’s recklessness will be rewarded. Whereas your debt will wipe you out; government debt will lift us all up. The latter is ‘stimulating’; the former sapping. …”

The complete column is: “Your Godless Government At Work”

Update (Nov. 29, 2008): At the “Secular Right,” John Derbyshire, also the only interesting writer at National Review Online (there you go, Ilana, making friends again), has written a post about “Your Godless Government At Work.”

I like the way Derb neutralizes me with the “ravishing and brilliant” appellations. Duly subdued. As one of the few intellectually honest, brilliant, paleo-conservatives around, Derb, naturally, always has my attention. (There are quite a few brilliant paleos, but not all are intellectually honest.)

A couple of comments from one secular rightist (me) to another (Derb): Although not religious, I’m a defender of the so-called Judeo-Christian tradition. I’m not hostile to religion (except to Islam, which is a political system).

The main points of Derb’s post are:

Derb: “Any given theology is of zero interest to anyone outside the tribe.”
Ilana: You don’t need to be an able Talmudist to knock that logic down. Islamic theology, for example, is of considerable interest if only in showing naive westerners that it (and its adherents) is incompatible with their creature comforts and their very continuance. Therefore, Islamic theology is of some, limited interest to those outside the Umah.

Derb: Talmud “is all just tribal chanting.”
Ilana: The little Talmud I learned at school I liked and was good at. It’s fun, and doesn’t involve “elucidate[ing] what Rabbi So-and-so meant back in the 13th century.” At least not when studied in a secular school such as the Israeli secondary school I attended. It involved logic and law. A great deal of the logical method—pilpul—through which Talmudic scholars arrived at the law seemed to me to follow logic, and is thus more universal than tribal. Brilliant too.

For the reductionists who whittle down aggregate, Ashkenazi IQ to exogenous factors—breeding and natural selection—I venture that the study of Talmud must have contributed to innervating those dendritic connections in Jewish brains.

As a secular individual, Thomism and the Talmud interest me both as part of Western tradition. Talmud a little more, maybe, for tribal reasons (grin): in the context of my column, my readers (evangelicals) value the Jewish tradition. If I can show that the latter values freedom, why, then I can turn them against their leaders. I can also try and draw religious Jews away from leftism. That’s why I think JIMS’s impetus is important, because it might help save a few Jewish souls from the sins of leftism and convert them to the righteous philosophy of freedom.

So are Judaism’s texts—theological and other—merely a tribal affair? No. Are all the scholars who busy themselves with the respective texts members of the tribe?

(The same goes for the Hebrew Bible. 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. Paul Johnson (is he a member of the tribe?) agrees. In A History of the Jews, he 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.”)

The central error of anti-religion crusaders is that they consider the Jewish and Christian traditions systems of ideas, denuded of historical context, to be accepted or rejected on the strength or weakness of their intrinsic logic (or lack thereof). Judaism and Christianity, however, are who we are historically (the same is true, unfortunately, of followers of Islam). One can no sooner denounce them than one can disavow history itself.

And that would be irrational.

'India, Jihad’s Permanent Battleground'

Islam, Terrorism

The background to India’s woes is expertly narrated by Srdja Trifkovic of Chronicles Magazine. Hint: It all began with the invasion of Mo’s followers:

“Teams of heavily armed terrorists carried out seven coordinated attacks in India’s financial capital Mumbai (Bombay) on Wednesday evening and early Thursday morning. At least 78 people were reported killed and over 200 wounded, with the final toll likely to rise. Similar attacks by Islamic terrorists occur with depressing regularity in India (see Timetable at the end of this article). The disputed province of Kashmir notwithstanding, militant Islam sees the second most populous country in the world as “unfinished business”: having been ruled by Muslims once, it cannot legitimately revert to Dar al-Harb.

Prior to the Muslim invasions which started in the 8th century India was one of the world’s great civilizations. It matched its contemporaries in the realms of philosophy, mathematics, and natural science. It was a richly imaginative culture, one of the half-dozen most advanced civilizations of all time. Its sculptures were vigorous and sensual, its architecture ornate and spellbinding.

Muslim invaders began entering India in the early eighth century, on the orders of Hajjaj, the governor of Iraq. Starting in 712 the raiders, commanded by Muhammad Qasim, demolished temples, shattered sculptures, plundered palaces, killed vast numbers of men—it took them three days to slaughter the inhabitants of the port city of Debal—and carried off their women and children to slavery. After the initial wave of violence, however, Qasim tried to establish law and order in the newly conquered lands, and to that end he even allowed a degree of religious tolerance. Upon hearing of such practices, his superior, Hajjaj, wrote back:

You go on giving pardon to everybody, high or low, without any discretion between a friend and a foe. The great Allah says in the Kuran [47.4]: “O True believers, when you encounter the unbelievers, strike off their heads.” The above command is a great command and must be respected and followed. You should not be so fond of showing mercy, as to nullify the virtue of the act. Henceforth, grant pardon to no one of the enemy and spare none of them, or else all will consider you a weak-minded man.

In a subsequent communication, Hajjaj reiterated that all able-bodied men were to be killed, and that their underage sons and daughters were to be enslaved. Qasim obeyed, and, on his arrival at the town of Brahminabad, massacred thousands of men. …”

Read the rest of the post, “India, Jihad’s Permanent Battleground.”

‘India, Jihad’s Permanent Battleground’

Islam, Terrorism

The background to India’s woes is expertly narrated by Srdja Trifkovic of Chronicles Magazine. Hint: It all began with the invasion of Mo’s followers:

“Teams of heavily armed terrorists carried out seven coordinated attacks in India’s financial capital Mumbai (Bombay) on Wednesday evening and early Thursday morning. At least 78 people were reported killed and over 200 wounded, with the final toll likely to rise. Similar attacks by Islamic terrorists occur with depressing regularity in India (see Timetable at the end of this article). The disputed province of Kashmir notwithstanding, militant Islam sees the second most populous country in the world as “unfinished business”: having been ruled by Muslims once, it cannot legitimately revert to Dar al-Harb.

Prior to the Muslim invasions which started in the 8th century India was one of the world’s great civilizations. It matched its contemporaries in the realms of philosophy, mathematics, and natural science. It was a richly imaginative culture, one of the half-dozen most advanced civilizations of all time. Its sculptures were vigorous and sensual, its architecture ornate and spellbinding.

Muslim invaders began entering India in the early eighth century, on the orders of Hajjaj, the governor of Iraq. Starting in 712 the raiders, commanded by Muhammad Qasim, demolished temples, shattered sculptures, plundered palaces, killed vast numbers of men—it took them three days to slaughter the inhabitants of the port city of Debal—and carried off their women and children to slavery. After the initial wave of violence, however, Qasim tried to establish law and order in the newly conquered lands, and to that end he even allowed a degree of religious tolerance. Upon hearing of such practices, his superior, Hajjaj, wrote back:

You go on giving pardon to everybody, high or low, without any discretion between a friend and a foe. The great Allah says in the Kuran [47.4]: “O True believers, when you encounter the unbelievers, strike off their heads.” The above command is a great command and must be respected and followed. You should not be so fond of showing mercy, as to nullify the virtue of the act. Henceforth, grant pardon to no one of the enemy and spare none of them, or else all will consider you a weak-minded man.

In a subsequent communication, Hajjaj reiterated that all able-bodied men were to be killed, and that their underage sons and daughters were to be enslaved. Qasim obeyed, and, on his arrival at the town of Brahminabad, massacred thousands of men. …”

Read the rest of the post, “India, Jihad’s Permanent Battleground.”

What The Torah & Talmud Teach About Moral Hazard (Bailouts)

Free Markets, Hebrew Testament, Judaism & Jews, Justice

In “Jews Against Judaism,” I highlighted The Jerusalem Institute for Market Studies’ efforts to educate about Judaism’s philosophical affinity with the free market.

Now JIMS, with which I am affiliated, has inaugurated the Center for the Study of Judaism and Economics.

Delivering the inaugural lecture was Nobel laureate economist Professor Robert (Yisrael) Aumann. Professor Aumann addressed the role ascribed to economic incentives in the Torah and Talmud—for example, “unfettered price competition” and the imprimatur to collect on loans.

Professor Aumann also talked about the many discussions of the moral hazard problem in the Torah and Talmud, and how moral hazard is currently at the heart of the faulty proposals currently being offered to solve the current financial crisis. The term moral hazard is used by economists to describe the fact that when an individual, a firm or an institution is “insured”, there is an incentive to act less carefully and take harmful risks.

This should not surprise anyone who appreciates the centrality of justice in the Jewish tradition. What are economic laws if not natural laws? And what is the natural law if not immutable and just? It follows from this that to adhere to the economic laws of nature is to be faithful to truth and justice.

“Justice, justice shall you pursue.” (Devarim 16:20)