In the comments to one of Amp’s posts there seems to be a bit of polite back and forth between some of the liberal and libertarian Alas readers. I have to say, I’ll probably disagree with libertarians to the bitter end but they’re my kind of conservatives. Actually, there are some Republican-type conservatives who are my type of conservative, but they seem to be getting more and more rare.
So what’s my type of conservative? People who will debate policy, ethics, and political philosophy without ever falling back on the excuse that their God told them so and that’s the way it is. It’s possible to argue with someone who says “the free market does a better job of predicting social needs than does the government,” but it’s just not possible to argue with someone who says “we should do X because God says so.”
Before I get accused of bad-mouthing people of faith (seeing as how I actually am one, it’d be pretty silly of me to bad-mouth them all in one fell swoop) I think there’s a nice overlap whereby a person’s politics can be influenced by their religious morals, but presuming to have a right to trod on anything in the name of religion is disgusting.
For instance, take the gay marriage debate. People who think that homosexuality is morally wrong can propose policies based on that, but I would expect them to offer evidence for their position that presents a basis for why people who don’t believe homosexuality to be morally wrong should be forced to conform to morals they don’t believe in. Perhaps they can offer statistics of death rates, or present a model for how society would be worsened by allowing gays to be married, but if there doesn’t seem to be an over-all social benefit to banning gay marriage I would think they would be capable of viewing it as a choice that people make like whether or not to drink beer, eat chocolate, not go to church on Sundays, or not believe in God; all of which are things that people of faith may or may not believe to be morally wrong and yet do not often advocate requiring by law. So being rational and recognizing that people have free will is great, even if you disagree with their choices and think they’ll be punished in the afterlife for them, but trying to force people to behave a certain way because you can is, in my opinion, morally wrong and damaging to society at large.
Thus I’m much more happy with libertarian-type conservatives than Republican-type conservatives..
THE ENEMIES OF DEMOCRACY: ISLAMOFASCISM, JUDEOFASCISM AND CHRISTIANOFASCISM
Thanks to the desperate, failing war on “terror” vindicated by an “ideological” clique made up of hysteric neocons mixed with oil-smelling corporate satraps & poorly waged by the pathetic George II The Appointed -a caricatural christianofascist, everybody’s aware of islamofascism, ie: Oussama & Co.
However not everybody realises that judeofascism is islamofascism’s perfect double. In the youess, for instance, judeofascism is not even identified by the average youessan due to massive bushist brainwashing delivered by Pravda-like media: FoxNews, CNN & al.
Still the threat is known to France which has been the victim of a fastidious, two-year smear campaign pretending this country was the latest embodiment of nazism raised from the dead.
The slander has been pervertedly articulated thanks to false assumptions & naked forgery. True there have been SOME anti-Semitic acts of violence on the French territory, almost all of them related to Palestine-Israel-patterned hatred imported from the Middle East over to France’s muslim & jewish communities. That kind of radicalisation HITTING BOTH SIDES is conjectural by nature: it will disappear once Palestine is given its elementary status & rights in compliance with UN resolution n° 181 (29 November 1947) (1), among an endless litany of similar resolutions.
First bit of intellectual dishonesty displayed by France-hating judeofascists: anti-Semitic violence only is worth their selective indignation, not racist violence as a whole & certainly not anti-Arab or anti-muslim violence. Closed-up in their bigotry, judeofascists won’t hesitate to count all kinds of alleged disputes reported by angry neighbours or jealous competitors as a deed of anti-Semitism, as long as the “plaintiff” claims to be jewish… Anti-Arab acts of violence perpetrated by radicalised jews is of no interest, of course. It goes without saying that acts of violence are an Arab or muslim monopoly. Far-right jewish militias as the Bétar (2) are not denounced, not even mentioned.
Even more vicious is the odious amalgam aiming at making any Palestine supporters feel “guilty” of anti-Semitism. Anyone who sincerely thinks the lack of a Palestinian State (for Atheist, christian & muslim Arabs) is the very root of intercommunitarian tensions, is automatically deemed to use a convenient alibi to spit out their anti-Semitic pulsions. If a Palestine supporter happens to be jewish or originates from a jewish background, then the guy is a “self-hating” jew !!! If a Palestine supporter happens to be an Israeli, then the guy is a traitor… One dare not think about a synagogue-going Israeli who’d be advocating a Palestinian State…The Union des juifs français pour la paix (French jews united for peace), a French jewish, Palestine-supporting organisation, are fought with ultimate adamancy before they could actually advocate their ideas; they are systematically attacked by the self-appointed ayatollahs of the most extreme fringe of the French jewish community. Even worse: Eyal Sivan, a French jewish, Palestine-supporting film-maker, was sent a 22-mm bullet in an envelope with a letter reading: “the next one won’t be sent by mail” !!! French jewish extremists -called sharognards in France (sharognard is homophonous with charognard, ie: carrion-eater (“carrionard”), vulture etc) due to Sharon’s credentials as a mass-murderer- feel now forced into ever increasing violence (verbal & physical) as the world finally acknowledge Israel’s foreign policy to be what it is: an unhuman occupation of Palestine & a very ominous portent for world peace (3).
Paradox: pointing out that neo-anti-Semitism DOES originate from Sharonist EQUATION of judaism with Israeli foreign policy, SHALL have you stigmatised by judeofascists as they refuse to acknowledge that their VERY behaviour is reinforcing that EQUATION. The most ridiculous instance of that paradox was brought by Jean Kahn -a former head of the CRIF (Conseil représentatif des institutions juives de France: Representative council of France’s jewish institutions)- as he demanded that any French jews “should identify themselves to Israel” (4) !!! No less… Israel’s colonial policy in Palestine must therefore neither be questioned nor even debated. If you do, then you will have to endure the wrath of Jean Kahn. If you are a pro-Palestinian jewish French, be prepared to face Monsieur Kahn’s fatwa & to be excommuniated by the CRIF. You will lose your jewishhood immediately & return at once to the simple state of vulgar Frenchhood. Judeofascists’ fatwas notwithstanding, many people refuse to associate the entire Hebrew people with a militaristic and greedy nation like Israel. They do not represent all jews by any means. Albert Einstein, a jew “by blood” (Agnostic by religion), deplored zionism and hated all forms of warfare and violence. To associate the entire jewish people with the police State of Israel and call it anti-Semitism to be anti-Israel is ludicrous & is insulting to non-Israeli Hebrews (whatever their religious obedience) -and is a form of outright racism. Monsieur Kahn & the CRIF are both concept hijackers & love to revel in their Stalinian shariah.
More witch-hunting: since “hippies”, “leftists”, “socialists” & “communists” are “the only ones” daring to claim that Israel’s policy in Palestine is a colonial one, then anyone disagreeing with ultralibéralisme in French (read: neoconservatism in English) is necessarily anti-Semitic. As a “consequence”, any greens, altermondialistes (another-world-is-possible activists), socialists & communists are labelled anti-jewish or jew-haters or judeophobes or even neo-nazis . Nice ideological wizardry, isn’t it? Now, according to that kind of “intellectual” imposture, christianofascists (Bush) & judeofascists (Arab-haters, Francophobes, Europhobes etc) all stand united in a new form of Stalinian McCarthyism which is actually their common shariah.
Welcome to the twenty-first century.
(1) UN resolution n° 181 – 29 November 1947
Palestine three-zone partition plan:
1. a 14.000-km2 “jewish”* State with 558.000 “jews”* and 405.000 Arabs
2. an 11.500-km2 Arab State with 804.000 Arabs and 10.000 “jews”*
3. an international-status zone (corpus separatum) including Jerusalem and Bethlehem with 106.000 Arabs and 100.000 “jews”*.
Resolution enforcement deadline: 1 October 1948. For the the First Arabo-Israeli War broke out on 15 May 1948, resolution n° 181 could never be enforced.
Votes of the UN General Assembly sitting in 128th Plenary Session.
1. Approval: 33 States (including France, the USA & the USSR).
2. Refusal: 13 States (Afghanistan, Cuba, Egypt, Greece, India, Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Turkey, Yemen)
3. Abstention: 10 States (Argentina, Chile, China, Colombia, El Salvador, Ethiopia, Honduras, Mexico, the UK**, Yugoslavia).
*Please note that the brackets and the lack of a capital J for “jews” and “jewish” is a sign neither of anti-Semitism nor of antijudaism. For I don’t see why Atheists should be the only ones to be granted the privilege of being written with minuscules only, I’ve chosen not to use capital letter for religious obedience: jewish, christian, muslim, buddhist etc.. As for the brackets, they simply mean that the word “jewish” is utterly irrelevant to name the non-Arab population settling in Palestine: some “jews” were absolutely secularised, hence the contradiction.
** the UK was seeking -in vain- to maintain its declining influence thanks to disorders wreaking havoc upon Palestine.
(2) The Bétar is a bunch of cowards whose favourite hobby is beating up Arab-looking people in Parisian streets at night.
(3) In a recent poll, 60 % of the Europeans claimed Israel to be the most dangerous threat to world peace. Iran, North Korea & the youessey all rank second: 53 %. Fifth: Irak 52%. Sixth: Afghanistan 50%. Seventh: Pakistan 48%. Eighth: Syria 37%. Ninth: Libya & Saudi Arabia 36%. Eleventh: China 30%. Twelfth: India 22%. Thirteenth: Russia 21%.
(4) in Le Monde, 6 October 2000.
If the choice is between Hell and chocolate, I’ll happily choose chocolate.
If God or heaven is the other option, I might choose coffee. Eternity sounds like it might be a drag.
PDP, I’m pretty much on the same page as you on this. I would just plain LOVE it if the primary differences between the left and the right were economic ones, because I think there can be honest disagreement and debate on those issues between people who want the best for the country.
On most social issues, sad though it may be, I really don’t. I find it hard to think of a reason to prohibit gay marriage that isn’t based either explicitly or covertly on bigotry.
Time and time again, I’ve had friends on the right talk to me about how the Democrats don’t really care about equality, they’re just paying it lip service to lock down the minority vote, the women’s vote, and the gay vote. My response is usually, “Look, if you think that’s what we’re doing, why not beat us at our own game? Take those issues away from us by being better on them than we are! Then we can all settle down, agree that everyone in America deserves the same basic rights as anyone else, and set about debating tax policy for a while.” Wouldn’t that be nice, eh?
—JRC
Nice post, PDP. This is my favorite thing about libertarians too, on aggregate. When you start basing arguments on God’s Plan independent of reason you’re in OBL territory, as far as I can see.
It seems to me that the first comment in this thread strays more than a bit from the topic of the post, but…
As a Jew who is no friend of Ariel Sharon, I’m interested to read that anti-Jewish attacks in France (some of which surely do have roots in the Middle East)should seemingly blamed on “judeofascism,” and not on the perpetrators of the attack.
It seems to me that the poster is suffering from the same misconception that effects adherents to Sharon and Arafat – that acts of violence against civilians (and especially children, as in the recent case of the French fire-bombing of the Jewish school, Jewish children killed in suicide bombings in Israel, or Palestinian children killed during IDF incursions) can somehow be condoned because the religio-political ideology of a government to which these individuals are somehow connected.
I agree that anti-Semetism and anti-Israeli sentiment are two seperate things, and that hard-line Israel supporters should remind themselves of this fact from time to time. But you’ll excuse me if I have little sympathy for France’s suffering under the attacks of “France-hating Judeofascists,” when it is in fact French Jews who are being physically attacked.
Also, I wrote something about news coverage of the Middle East conflict which covers my opinion pretty well. If you’d care to read it, you can find it here:
http://www.thegoodriddance.com/Articles/1018israel.html
As a Jew who is no friend of Ariel Sharon, I’m interested to read that anti-Jewish attacks in France (some of which surely do have roots in the Middle East)should seemingly blamed on “judeofascism,” and not on the perpetrators of the attack.
uh, just to clarify, PHil, I think the ranter was saying that those who hate France for the anti-Semitic violence there are judeofascists — i.e., they see the antisemitism, but miss the general anti-immigrant problem, and similarly the anti-Turk bias in Germany, etc. (s)he’s ranting about people who only notice bias when it’s anti-semitic bias . . .
for what it’s worth, my take.
PDP, it sounds like there’s a larger point here, and I’m not necessarily the one to make it, but I’ll try. You’re not a fan of intolerance of other people’s views and those with no genuine desire toward dialogue and consensus decision making. Here, I gather, you’re objecting to religious fundamentalists who not only cite God as their inarguable justification, but denigrate others as not “real Christians” or not “real Muslims”, etc.
Rather than citing God, some people cite other authorities they find inarguably compelling, such as constituional originalism and the “founding fathers”. Or when supply-siders use their own economic “basic principles” to inarguably justify their ludicrous views. There seems to be a common thread. I’m not sure what the term for these people is, but fundamentalism seems pretty close. Anyone got a better one?
ACM- I understand your point, but it seems to me that the “Judeofascist” tag was meant as more than a reprimand toward Jews who do not recognize the French’s attitiude toward non-Jewish immigrants – specifially, that many French dislike Arab immigrants just as much as Jewish ones.
The poster (or ranter) says: “True there have been SOME anti-Semitic acts of violence on the French territory, almost all of them related to Palestine-Israel-patterned hatred imported from the Middle East over to France’s muslim & jewish communities. That kind of radicalisation HITTING BOTH SIDES is conjectural by nature: it will disappear once Palestine is given its elementary status & rights…”
It seems to me that (s)he is saying that because these anti-Jewish attacks are made, supposedly, in the spirit of intifada, and not by “native” French anti-Semites, the solution to the problem is to have Israel change it’s policy toward the Palestinians. Doesn’t this take the onus off of the perpetrators of the attacks, and place it on the Israeli government, which, for all its real faults, had nothing to do with fire-bombing the school?
Sharon and his supporters (and other pro-Israeli hard-liners) attempt associate the entire Jewish diaspora with the Israeli govt’s policies, but this doesn’t mean that a bomber bears less responsibility for the act (s)he commiteed, which I think the ranter is implying (though perhaps unintentionally).
I don’t have an opinion of the first comment, when I hit those long, off-topic comments online that look cut and pasted I generally decide it’s time for the scroll bar.
Heh. Me too, John. I was actually kind of enjoying ignoring it.
—JRC
I considered deleting the article (which I more-or-less agree with the small points of, but it’s larger point makes me nervious) and replacing it with a link to an online version. But googling around didn’t turn up any copies of the article, surprisingly.
Edgewise, I think that’s a good point. Think of Reagan referring to “the magic of the marketplace,” for instance.
Yeah, sorry for egging on the off-topic discussion, but like Ampersand, the tone of that posting is really worrisome to me. Despite all of the author’s protests to this point, it seems to tread pretty close to anti-semetism (as opposed to simply anti-Sharon or anti-Israel sentiment), which made it difficult for me to ignore.
Anyway…
JRC wrote, “I’ve had friends on the right talk to me about how the Democrats don’t really care about equality, they’re just paying it lip service to lock down the minority vote, the women’s vote, and the gay vote.”
They really say that? I imagine it’s because they don’t care themselves and can’t believe that anybody else does.
I’ve been told that I can’t really dislike most pop music, that I just say I do because I’m a snotty elitist. I can’t wait for the explanation of why I don’t like lima beans.
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We’re all fundamentalists in some way or another. I think we all base our values upon some axiomatic first principles, and I think there’s a natural tendency to have an easier time perceiving those fixed (or fundamental) points in other people’s thinking than in our own, because we live so close to our own ideas and values. I’m generally sympathetic to libertarian arguments myself, but I have to be careful to continually remind myself that its core assumptions (call them “self-reliance” if you’re a fan, or “lack of compassion” if you’re not), like those of any political philosophy, ultimately rest upon unprovable value judgments.
PDP contends that “presuming to have a right to trod on anything in the name of religion is disgusting.” That’s a viewpoint that I largely share, but it rests on an assumption that God either does not exist or is indifferent to the general run of human political disputes. Someone who believes to the contrary may well be pleased to debate policy, ethics, and political philosophy, but they will view God’s laws not as an excuse to avoid arguments but as a base on which to build arguments. And they would probably find PDP (and me) to be as maddening a wall as he finds them.
Certainly, many religious people would disagree with his belief that it is preferable to allow other people to risk punishment in the next world rather than force them to behave according to certain rules in this world. And neither side of that argument will ever be able to produce any evidence to prove that their side is right; ultimately it comes down to what you believe, how many people believe as you do, and how much power over others that you all have.
It seems to me that the same is true for the points that Edgewise cites. Constitutional originalism is a controversial minority view, and it inarguably rests upon a value judgment as to how best to interpret the text. But so does any constitutional theory, and any individual case. Economic doctrines, similarly, are created from any number of assumptions and can reflect fundamental disagreements as to what the most basic goals of economic policy should be.
As for the first comment in this thread, I just took that to be spam.
We’re all fundamentalists in some way or another. I think we all base our values upon some axiomatic first principles […]
But we don’t all adhere strictly and literally to those principles, which is the defining attribute of fundamentalism.
In a world severely threatened by overpopulation, people disinclined to procreate should be celebrated.
Quickly, about the first “comment”: this looks a lot like what people post on Parisian Indymedia or any other French-language “alterglobalist” sites (it’s “altermondialiste” in “Molière’s language”), or some progressive French-Jewish blogs like Daniel Glazman’s Glazblog, which has posts in French (this is a good sample on the same topic), English, and even Yiddish (I assume, as I can’t read Hebraic characters).
This is to say that that kind of rhetoric is quite common in France. I won’t add anything, since I remember having a long and (and, alas, already off-topic) dialogue about it with John Isbell. Let me just say that, while I tend to agree with the core argument, I distance myself from the unnecessarily inflamatory and emphacized way it is expressed. Texts like this one block any possible discussion with moderate Zionists. Le Monde diplomatique‘s Dominique Vidal and Actualité juive‘s Jean-Yves Camus (a politologist specialized in the French far-right who is also a very observant Jew) write far better and rationally, and less partisanly, than that. Any ranting of this kind is lost on American public if it doesn’t involve the necessary information about the huge differences between the two societies and more precisely the very specific situation in French banlieues (“suburbs”).
PDP – since you self-identify as a “person of faith”, and since your views seem (to me) reasonable and rational, maybe you can help this non-believer to understand. I basically steer clear of arguments with Believers – as soon as it’s clear that their arguments rest entirely on a mythology that I can’t take seriously, no outcome better than an agreement to disagree is possible.
And I accept that their beliefs have this foundation. If you “really believe” all, or some fraction, of the mythology (of whatever flavor) – believe that it explains why we’re here and how we came to be here and what behavior is therefore incumbent upon us, even so far as to promote that kind of thinking on non-believers – if this is the foundation of your beliefs, then I accept your need to do it (just not my own need to succumb to it). But you, PDP, have said you’re a believer, but you don’t feel that your religious beliefs compel intrusion into the sphere of politics. OK, I like that – but how do you reconcile it, and how do you think that kind of thinking could be promoted to your fellow believers?
Respectfully,
–Carl
Carl, you ask a fairly complicated question, and I realize that you didn’t ask me, but it’s something I have thought a lot about. I am a religious Reform Jew (well, in the process of converting, but I’m trying to keep it simple). Judaism is kind of nice already because you can have it however you want it for the most part. But one of the main ideas of Reform Judaism is that the Torah, and the whole Bible in general, is of human authorship. That idea opens up for us the option of believing in God, but not really knowing what God wants or how God is expressed in the world. So we just come up with ideas and see how they compare to the ideas that others have had throughout history. Anyway, I’m kind of straying from my point here.
It seems to me that God wouldn’t even recognize the existence of human nations. We’re taught that God regards us all equally, and that we are to regard each other equally regardless of religion or anything else, so what would be the point of recognizing human nations? I can’t imagine that they’d be all that important to God, but they are important to us, at least in our current social state of mind (and by current I mean the one humans have held to for the last several thousand years). As long as we’re not engaging in nation-worship, we’re free to carry on politics as we will.
Given that people who aren’t religious have the same rights as people who are, keeping politics secular is the only acceptable way to do it right. What it seems to come down to is that to a religious person such as myself, secularized politics is the morally correct choice, and I consider it a moral duty to uphold and defend secular politics.
But I’m a member of a non-proselytizing religion, so I can’t really explain the other points-of-view, except to say that “Judeo-Christian” is, in my view, a grievous misnomer.
Thanks, Dan,
That helps, although I have a little trouble squaring it with my limited understanding of Jews (I’m one, myself, by descent if not belief) as “the chosen people”. But I guess I wonder – if you somehow came to believe that God _did_ want you to vote this way or that, would you? It’s fine to say you believe He wants you to make up your own mind – sure helps in a secular society – but if He didn’t? What about all the people from faiths that want some overlap (whether it’s abortion, marriage, capital punishment, etc.) with governmental function? How do we allow them to participate as full citizens without letting their religions dictate our civil policies?
They can participate as full citizens in as much as they can vote, run for office, communicate freely and try to influence others. They can try to create a majority that will vote and act in accordance with their religious views. However, those with the unpopular views must be protected. So we put legal barriers in place to prevent the idealogues from going too far and hope that they hold up. Having a working(ahem)system of checks and balances helps.
As for the “chosen people” thing, well that just refers to a legal contract (I use legal here in terms of religious law) with God that the Jewish people reportedly entered into at Sinai, whereby the Jews would model behavior that (as far as we know) God wants people to display. I guess it sort of means “chosen” to be an example, whether for good or for bad. Every descendant of the original Jews, as well as every gentile (though you don’t hear people talk about that too much…) proceeding from the initial entry into the contract, is endowed by God with the opportunity to enter into that contract themselves (or not). So it has entirely to do with choice on both sides of the contract. Did I expain it okay? I’ve only just really started studying it.
Here’s the problem: too many people (who tend to be Christians in the US) ignore the fact that if I’m doing something and it doesn’t harm you directly (i.e. smoking a joint, having sex in private, paying someone to have sex with me) there is NO REASON for you or society to prevent it. It’s not a political thing; freedom is better than repression, and these are examples of repression. But that’s got lost in the US these days.
Sadly there are those who believe that to allow those things to go on within the society that they share in reflects badly upon the society as a whole, and by extension, themselves. It therefore becomes their “moral duty” to eradicate those fairly harmless behaviors. They become issues of deep emotional significance for obvious reasons, and politicians and their mouthpieces pick up on that and use those issues to distract the public from the imbalance of influence (I hesitate to use the word “power” because it isn’t power, it’s just influence. People use the word power to make it seem more important than it is, as a tactic of intimidation and/or self-intimidation) that would otherwise be glaringly obvious in this country. Sex and drug and culture and profanity issues are used simply to light a fire of morality and righteous indignation under the otherwise cool and methodical mechanism of law. That’s why so many of the resulting legislations get slapped down by the courts. It’s because they shouldn’t exist in a free society. Then some jackass cries “judicial activism” or legislating from the bench” which is better phrased in most cases as “the courts doing their jobs.” That’s what I meant above when I said we put legal barriers in place and hope that they hold up. Most of the time I think they do.
I think that’s part of the reason that it’s illegal to pay someone to have sex with you, unless, of course, it’s put on film and distributed to a mass audience, in which case it’s protected. As far as I know, nobody’s tried to mount a truly rigorous challenge to laws against prostitution in the courts, that the higher courts have agreed to hear. I imagine there have been more attempts on the drug front, but I really don’t know. It simply underscores the need to protect those who hold views contrary to the majority, and contrary, I would say, to “community standards” (and what nonsense is that, really?).
Sorry, this post has gone in like, fifty directions.
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