Rabbi Hillel The Elder Made Socialistic

Ancient History, Judaism & Jews, libertarianism, Morality, Socialism

As someone who’s fluent in Hebrew, educated in part in Israel at a time when kids learned their Hillel; I can tell the Jewish sage’s most famous quotation, on a presumably American quotation site, has been bowdlerized. The American version has been shortened and socialized.

Rabbi Hillel was a “Jewish scholar and theologian (30 BC – 9 AD).” His sayings always struck me as libertarian. Justice, after all, is libertarian.

Here’s the wrong Hillel a la America:

The correct Rabbi Hillel:

If I am not for myself, who will be for me?
If I am only for myself, what am I?
And if not now, then when?

In Hebrew, it’s very musical:

Milo On ‘The Wretchedly Unfunny Amy Schumer’

Education, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Political Correctness, Pop-Culture, Sex

From my “Mindless, Mirthless Millennial” post (yes, your kids, if you’re not careful):

Millennials likely don’t know what mirthless means. Most of them are pig-ignorant even when “educated” or “well-traveled.” As I continue to discover in my own interactions, Millennials are diversity hating, unless “diversity” is defined as skin color or some other overt, exotic, cultural, culinary or sexual display. Minds that are different Millenials cannot and will not abide. Conformity is their thing.

Similar findings are being reported by some of our smarter, and certainly iconic, comedians—satirists, really.

As was noted in “Race And The American Millennial’s Brain Rot,” “comedian Chris Rock recently confessed that he avoids doing his stand-up routine in front of millennial audiences. ‘You can’t say ‘the black kid over there.’ No, it’s ‘the guy with the red shoes.’ You can’t even be offensive on your way to being inoffensive.”

Jerry Seinfeld says he “avoids doing shows on college campuses. … College kids today are too politically correct.” His own daughter has been brainwashed into drone-like sanctimony. Via Entertainment Weekly:

“I hear that all the time,” Seinfeld said on The Herd with Colin Cowherd. “I don’t play colleges, but I hear a lot of people tell me, ‘Don’t go near colleges. They’re so PC.’”

Seinfeld says teens and college-aged kids don’t understand what it means to throw around certain politically-correct terms. “They just want to use these words: ‘That’s racist;’ ‘That’s sexist;’ ‘That’s prejudice,’” he said. “They don’t know what the f—k they’re talking about.”

The funnyman went on to recount a conversation he and his wife had with their 14-year-old daughter, which he believes proved his point.

“My wife says to her, ‘Well, you know, in the next couple years, I think maybe you’re going to want to be hanging around the city more on the weekends, so you can see boys,’” Seinfeld recalled. “You know what my daughter says? She says, ‘That’s sexist.’”

Your publicly schooled kids are heading toward the same insufferable condition.

Now Milo Yiannopoulos, who says “he’s a crusader in a righteous cause, opposing the cultural tyranny of the Left,” adds this:

In addition to policing video games, comic books, sci-fi movies, and college campuses, Yiannopoulos feels the Left is also winning the fight to define what’s funny, citing Chris Rock’s and Jerry Seinfeld’s complaints that comedians can no longer push boundaries when performing on campuses. “The only ones succeeding in comedy are the ones playing victim, the wretchedly unfunny Amy Schumers,” he says. “She explicitly sends the message that they should behave like a man—burp and fart and shit and have lots of sex. And these women are going to wind up lonely. If you give a shit about impressionable young women, you have to hate Amy Schumer.”

Other than that, the amusing Milo seems to have very loose sexual mores.

MORE Milo.

CNN Circles The Wagons Around Their Candidate

Hillary Clinton, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Media

BROOKE BALDWIN, host of CNN Newsroom and as partisan an anchor as the rest, moved quickly to shut down a line of inquiry about Hillary Clinton’s health, pursued by a DR. TIFFANY SIZEMORE. BALDWIN’s bookers clearly chose the wrong guest for her Clinton-friendly show.

BROOKE BALDWIN (HOST): Let me pivot back to the health records, Dr. Tiffany, and ask you this. As we talked about Hillary Clinton’s additional medical records to come out this week, also we’re hearing from the Trump camp that we should get some more information on his own health. When people pour through that, what do you expect to learn?

DR. TIFFANY SIZEMORE: One of my concerns, actually, is — and I want to be very blunt — pneumonia, which she has now, and what happened in 2012 are two distinctly separate things. However, the medical problems that Hillary had in 2012 are still significant medical problems. Having a blood clot in a vein in your brain is a pretty significant issue, especially when there’s been studies out that there’s a small subset of people who, when they have this problem, have chronic cognitive and decision-making impairment. So I do think —

BALDWIN: But what about [Donald] Trump? Sorry, I don’t know if I spoke —

SIZEMORE: I’m getting there. It’s OK.

BALDWIN: “OK, OK,” whereupon Brooke, who brooks no disagreement, moved on to her next, more compliant guest.

Dr. SIZEMORE won’t be called on again by bossy Brooke.

As one wag said, “When inquiry is shut down, it becomes advocacy,” or something like that.

A Youth’s Ignorance About Me, Islam & Ground Zero Of Private Property

Ilana Mercer, Islam, Kids, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, libertarianism, Political Philosophy, Private Property

To my post “Should A Vocal, Veteran Critic Of Islam ‘Conference’ In Turkey?,” the Libertarian Alliance’s Keir Martland offers the response of a patronizing youth, who has not read one word of the (analytical) writing done by this writer regarding Islam, over the years, aforementioned in the rhetorically titled post (aka “The Islam In the Room”).

Keir Martland’s reply can be distilled thus in its “substance” (there is nothing more to it):

“There, there, little woman, you are safe in Turkey. Every Muslim I met in Turkey was nice. The place is safe because I felt safe and say so.”

Well then. That settles it, doesn’t it?? (I said why the place was likely safe for the rest, but not for me.)

In his arrogance and condescension, Martland, moreover, appears to compare me, a longtime anti-war writer (see “The Curious Case Of WND’s Vanishing, Veteran Paleolibertarian” for similar flippancy), to the “bomb them back to the Stone Age” crowd. This, when he’s not deluding himself that an Islamic activist would bother to target him (who??), in the same way the Islamist would target me.

“I never once felt in danger or unwelcome either in Turkey,” Martland promises solipsistically.

A 20-something youth with practically no writings on the topic, Islam (and a condescending attitude toward those who’ve been thinking closely and writing publicly about the topic for ages), has nothing to fear from Islamists. (Surely being a conservative-libertarian should warrant a more realistic self-appraisal? Paleolibertarians are supposed to respect hierarchy, when earned.)

Martland’s flight of fancy is as though I were to imagine that my profile on matters Islam is like that of Robert Spencer or Andrew Bostom. While my political prescriptions, as a paleolibertarian, diverge from theirs considerably (not that Martland has bothered to discern that; he writes about my perspective from studied ignorance); as scholars, they know Islam better than I, are known by the Islamic world and are, consequently, targeted by it.

However, I certainly know how to apply my paleolibertarianism to the realities of Islam, better than this youngster (who’s done none of the work and is clearly ignorant about the “uncharitable views” he imputes to me and pontificates about).

More vapor from Martland:

Even if I did hold such views [presumably as mercer does] I would like to think that I wouldn’t turn down an opportunity to spend a week at the King David Hotel, hosted by a charming Jewish couple, with a hundred of the most radical libertarians in the world.

As he attends a conference informed by private property, the boy still fails to grasp the totally rational reason for my decision not to go to Turkey. Martland shows himself incapable of grasping what should be ground zero for a propertarian: the conservation of one’s prime real estate, one’s life.

Basically, emotion being Martland’s framework, he conflates my not going to Turkey to “conference,” with an insult to Hans Hoppe (whom I love). It totally escapes Martland that the prime consideration for me is making prudent decisions based on conservation of scarce—nay, irreplaceable—private property: my corporeal self.

And Martland, you are radical only in your own MIND. A Golda-Meir zinger comes to mind. It’s a relic from a time when false humility was at least still practiced: “Don’t be so humble, you’re not that great.”

As to Martland’s King David Hotel allusion. It could very well be random, but, to someone who knows the historical baggage, and has lived through a few wars in Israel (as chronicled in the 2003 column, “BETRAYING BRAVE BOYS”), the reference comes off as though our youth has just learned, in his history class, about the blowing-up of the King David Hotel during the British Mandate, and he thinks he can leverage it oh-so cleverly in making a parallel point.

“I understand that you have your views on Islam, just as I might – for supposition’s sake – have uncharitable views about Judaism and the Jews,” Martland intones sanctimoniously (stupidly, too, as he demonstrates zero knowledge about my views, at least he show no familiarity with them in his feelings-based post. And given his penchant for feelings-based woffle, I would not trust Martland to grapple honestly with my views on Islam).

So says a boy with little life experience, to say nothing of experience living in hotbeds of Islam as this writer has (mind you, these days Britain is more dangerous than Israel, where I grew up). So says a youth who’s written practically nothing meaningful about one of the defining issues of the day: the Western State as the enabler of Islam and its fractious faithful.

Also bandied about elsewhere in connection with my post, “Should A Vocal, Veteran Critic Of Islam ‘Conference’ In Turkey?”, is the pejorative Islamophobia. That’s of a piece with the Hillary nomenclature; the Left’s accusations of thought crimes are accompanied with a slew of big words to describe thought criminals. Now libertarians are getting in on the Left’s vile act.

Yes, in a conference about the sanctity of private property, Keir has thought not at all about the corporeal self, the starting point of private property. He then lectures me about “the Charlie Hebdo cartoonists [being] a vile group of cultural Marxists, not some brave freedom-fighters” (not that the two are mutually exclusive, but logic is not Keir Martland’s thing).

This is a common talking point—the Charlie Hebdo characters being leftist scum. It’s old hat. We’re all agreed long ago (probably before our second-hander was born), and, as usual, the aspect was covered in The Charlie Hebdo Hypocrites. Sure. We all hate the Hebdoites (although we do not want them dead; unless it’s life voluntarily taken in suicide). But the aim—mine, at least—is NOT TO END UP LIKE THEM (DEAD).

The cherry on the cake is when Martlan goes off the logical reservation completely. If you can stand the smugness:

I also hope that, if the Mises Institute was to put on a lavish conference in Bible Belt Alabama, hosted by for example Gary North, I would not turn it down for fear of encountering views and people with whom I profoundly disagree.

Not only does Martlan misunderstand whence private property originates (see above), but so, too, does he misconstrue the extension of the argument from self-preservation:

I will not go to Turkey, not because I disagree with Islam, but because, in my assessment, my life is not as safe or protected as it should be (unless the heroic Martlan gets some assault rifle training or hires Pamela Geller’s security detail; how gauche of me).

The comparison drawn between America’s Bible Belt (a hotbed of Christian terrorism) and Turkey I will not dignify. This crap has been given more coverage than it/he deserves.