The main problem with the aftermath of the Beer Hall Putsch was that
the NSDAP leadership got off too lightly. They should have been punished much more severely for attempting a coup d'etat. One of the main problems with the Weimar Republic was that the judiciary was not sympathetic to the regime and would punish the antics of the Far Right much less severely than they deserved.
Last time Anita Sarkessian (sp?) came up on this blog, I noted that the idea of rescuing a damsal in distress is a very old and compelling one for men and women despites its problems. I think that a lot of the problematic tropes in popular culture, video games, comic books, movies, are because the media aims for a broad rather than elite audience. Its given the audience what they want and more than a few men have fantasies about rescuing a girl/woman and getting romance/sex for their efforts. Many women also have romantic and sexual fantasies that are somewhat anti-feminist as the romance novel industry or 50 Shades of Grey demonstrate.
There isn't a good way to deal with this problem. Previous elites attempted to deal with the problem by censorship, by having the creators of culture conform to the proper ideology even if it went against the desires of the masses. Religious elites did this, Communists did this, and even we Americans did this with the Hayes Code and Comics Code. This hasn't worked. The other solution, hoping that people will be responsible about their popular culture consumption is not going to happen.
I think we that we are going to have to live with the fact that a lot of people have some rather problematic fantasies.
I'm aware of the popularity of Father Coughlin but I'm also aware of the popularity of Rush Limbaugh. Simply because Limbaugh is popular with millions of Americans does not mean he is close to pulling off a coup d'etat.
There were plenty of proto-Fascists in America during FDR's term. They did not work together and the Madisonian system was no more favorable to them than it was to the Socialists at the turn of the century. The attempted coup against FDR was more than a little laughable.
I think that America was not under much danger of falling under a spell of Fascism. Father Coughlin, Huey Long, and the America Firsters had a very large fallowing for sure but the American political system did not give them away to seize power. In contrast, the parliamentary systems of Italy and Germany gave their fascists the ability to seize power by winning one election or at least getting a plurality. Then they attacked the system from witihn.
If American fascists were going to gain power, it would have to be through a direct military coup. The United States military was very discinclined to engage in coup d'etat against any administration and did not have the man power either.
The GOP's continued resistance to universal healthcare is simply the most concrete evidence that they can not govern. I think the evidence is pretty clear that healthcare is one area where socialism really does work and the market does not. Nearly every other country in the developed world has some system of universal, government provided heatlhcare in place be it single-payer, NHS, or the Bismarckian system. Even Switzerland has it.
The Republicans will have none of this. They lie about death panels and Canadians and Europeans flocking to America to receive healthcare despite all evidence to the contrary. To them its the market or nothing unless you are old enough to be on Medicare or a veteran. You can't govern if you do not think the government could do anything right or only exists so you can enrich yourself at the expense of others.
What about Aristotles' Politics and Nichomechean Ethics? Plato tried to create the perfect political and social system in his Republic, it was probably the first work that tried to devise the mechanism for a utopian system. Aristotle realizing that humans are humans tried to figure out what work based on what we are not what we should be.
I'd also argue that the Talmud is the work of principled pragmatists. The Rabbis who wrote it debated about what the mitzvah of the Torah actually mean but at the same time tried to put in enough flexibility so that the letter of the law does not triumph over real life. So while the laws of Shabbat are strict, they can be violated for the sake of helping the sick or aiding a pregnant woman.
We almsot got Federal control over elections during the 1890s in Benjamin Harrison's administration. It was defeated because of GOP infighting. Basically, Rep. Henry Cabot Lodge of Mass., latter famous foe of the League of Nations, introduced a Federal Election Bill in order to prevent the disenfranchisement of African-Americans, who were basically all Republican at the time.
This. There is no evidence that a more statist version of HCR could pass through Congress. More likely, it would have died in committee and HCR kicked down the road for another fifteen years at least.
Zac, Judaism tends to speak of God in the negative. That is speak about God by defining what God is not. Its called negative theology. Its kind of like trying to explain really advanced scientific concepts to people without the background or education to really comprehend them. You have to reduced the complexity of the ideas to a certain extent so lay people can understand. Even very intelligent lay people might need to have certain scientific or mathematic ideas explained to them in the simplest terms possible.
Not all religions are based on around the worship of God or gods. The Dharmic religions are not really concerned with the divine but with a release from the cycle of suffering. Daoism isn't that much concerned with the divine either. Among monotheistic religions, Judaism is not overly concered with the nature of God or the afterlife as Christinaity and Islam are but with living a sanctified life through Halacha.
I'm not looking for an atheist that likes my religion, I'm just want one that will engage in a debate on the actual teachings of my religion rather than the actual teachings of another religion. If your going to subject Judaism to a critical analysis at least do it on Jewish terms rather than Catholic terms.
Most Jews are rather underwhelmed by the God of the Torah is evil argument and find the entire concept puzzling at best and insultingly aggravating at worse. The argument tends to be based off a couple of passages in the Tanakh and ignores large chunks of the rest of it.
Point, however God still describes himself as "I will be what I will be". This implies that God isn't static or complete in nature but can grow and change like anything else. If God can grow and change than that implies that God is not perfect because why would a perfect being need to do this?
I actually find the idea of God being imperfect more exciting and comforting than a perfect God. If God is imperfect than it is easier to relate to him.
My experience is that some of the more militant atheists attribute to all religions the aspects they see in the religion they hate the most. If they despise Evangelical Christianity the most, for whatever reason, than every religion has the same problems as Evangelical Christianity. Its the non-diffrentiation that makes discussion hard.
zic, your explanation of crafting the myth of Gods falls more into the pagan worldview that everything is up to fate and humans have little control over what they do and what happens to them. It goes against the monotheistic worldview. In all of the monotheistic religions, Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Sikhism, and Zoroastrianism, God has ethical standards and holds people to them. Some monotheistic thinkers lean closer to the idea of fate and pre-destination but generally most go towards the idea that people have free will and the capacity to control their worst desires if they put the effort into it. Its not easy but it is possible.
The idea of self-discipline and free will is especially important in Judaism. Judaism does not teach that being good or moral is easy, we actually think its very hard. Its why God describes the Torah as a blessing and curse when he gave it to Israel. Its a blessing because it creates a guideline for an ethical life. Its a curse because living an ethical life is not something that comes easily and requires sacrifice.
Not all of us religious people want to impose what we do onto other people like Evangelical Protestants or other religious groups. Nor do we necessarily want to convince atheists or other people who believe otherwise that our way of life is correct. Lots of us just want to be left alone to practice our religion without having to listen to lectures why our religion is wrong from believers of other religions or atheists.
The entire book of Jonah? God's rage at the oppression of the poor in Amos? God's frequently expressed concerns for the welfare of the poor, the widow, and the orphan in the Torah and the Prophets.
Lets look at Leviticus, which the "OT God is evil" crowd likes to site a lot as evidence. I'm using the JPS translation, specifically Leviticus 19. In Leviticus 19:9, people are told to leave food for the stranger and the poor around harvest time. Leviticus 19:13 is a command not to commit acts of fraud or to exploit laborers. Leviticus 19:14 expresses concern with the disabled.
The rest of Leviticus 19 is an expression of similar ethical concerns that leads ultimately to Leviticus 19:33, "When a stranger resides with you in your land, you shall not wrong him. The stranger who resides with you shall be to you as one of your citizens; you shall love him as yourself, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt: I the Lord am your God." This is a declaration of universal love as the supreme virtue.
If you think the Torah is at least semi-divine if not outright divine in origin, probably not. If its entirely of human origins, probably not either. People and presumably God use tenses to express meaning. The fact that Hashem uses the imperfect to describe himself to Moses is evidence that either God or the human writers of the Torah did not see God as perfect.
This might just be me but I've read the entire Tanakh or as Christians put the Old Testament and never understood where the God is evil thing comes from? From my reading, God comes across as good and concerned with justice, ethics, the welfare of the unfortunate and others aspects we generally associate with morality. Maybe as a Jew I just read the Tanakh differently from non-Jews. I also read the New Testament and found it underwhelming and not as moving as the Tanakh.
We have a different interpretation than you do and I do not find the Old Testament God is evil, New Testament God good cute or appropriate. Why don't you try to understand this from our perspective?
No not necessarily so, as I mentioned above Jewish thought doesn't necessarily see God as perfect or even good in the traditional sense. Judaism isn't really a theological religion and the nature of God played relatively little role in the thinking of the Rabbis. The Rabbis were more concerned with what God wanted, the commandments in the Torah, than the nature of God. The Rabbis that did tend to think about the nature of God were more or less content to define what God is not rather than what God is but the consensus is that God is not human and describing him as good or evil really isn't that helpful.
Jewish thought doesn't see God as evil, rather God is basically seen as being beyond human comprehension. The Rambam argued that God can only be described in the negative, by what God is not rather than in the positive. Its probably better to see God as being correct rather than good or evil from a Jewish point of view.
More than a few Jewish theologians actually argue that the idea that God is perfect is inconsistent with Judaism because the Torah doesn't present God as perfect.
On “On the Nature of Evil: A Question for the Hive Mind”
1. The Holocaust
2. The Atlantic Slave Trade
3. Stalin's dictatorship in the Soviet Union since he had so many imitators after him like Mao and Pol Pot.
On “The Principled Pragmatic Reader”
The main problem with the aftermath of the Beer Hall Putsch was that
the NSDAP leadership got off too lightly. They should have been punished much more severely for attempting a coup d'etat. One of the main problems with the Weimar Republic was that the judiciary was not sympathetic to the regime and would punish the antics of the Far Right much less severely than they deserved.
On “Driving Blind: The Humanities Die and Superman Returns”
Last time Anita Sarkessian (sp?) came up on this blog, I noted that the idea of rescuing a damsal in distress is a very old and compelling one for men and women despites its problems. I think that a lot of the problematic tropes in popular culture, video games, comic books, movies, are because the media aims for a broad rather than elite audience. Its given the audience what they want and more than a few men have fantasies about rescuing a girl/woman and getting romance/sex for their efforts. Many women also have romantic and sexual fantasies that are somewhat anti-feminist as the romance novel industry or 50 Shades of Grey demonstrate.
There isn't a good way to deal with this problem. Previous elites attempted to deal with the problem by censorship, by having the creators of culture conform to the proper ideology even if it went against the desires of the masses. Religious elites did this, Communists did this, and even we Americans did this with the Hayes Code and Comics Code. This hasn't worked. The other solution, hoping that people will be responsible about their popular culture consumption is not going to happen.
I think we that we are going to have to live with the fact that a lot of people have some rather problematic fantasies.
On “The Principled Pragmatic Reader”
I'm aware of the popularity of Father Coughlin but I'm also aware of the popularity of Rush Limbaugh. Simply because Limbaugh is popular with millions of Americans does not mean he is close to pulling off a coup d'etat.
There were plenty of proto-Fascists in America during FDR's term. They did not work together and the Madisonian system was no more favorable to them than it was to the Socialists at the turn of the century. The attempted coup against FDR was more than a little laughable.
"
I thought you were supposed to drink Tod hot?
"
I think that America was not under much danger of falling under a spell of Fascism. Father Coughlin, Huey Long, and the America Firsters had a very large fallowing for sure but the American political system did not give them away to seize power. In contrast, the parliamentary systems of Italy and Germany gave their fascists the ability to seize power by winning one election or at least getting a plurality. Then they attacked the system from witihn.
If American fascists were going to gain power, it would have to be through a direct military coup. The United States military was very discinclined to engage in coup d'etat against any administration and did not have the man power either.
On “On Conservative Strawmen”
The GOP's continued resistance to universal healthcare is simply the most concrete evidence that they can not govern. I think the evidence is pretty clear that healthcare is one area where socialism really does work and the market does not. Nearly every other country in the developed world has some system of universal, government provided heatlhcare in place be it single-payer, NHS, or the Bismarckian system. Even Switzerland has it.
The Republicans will have none of this. They lie about death panels and Canadians and Europeans flocking to America to receive healthcare despite all evidence to the contrary. To them its the market or nothing unless you are old enough to be on Medicare or a veteran. You can't govern if you do not think the government could do anything right or only exists so you can enrich yourself at the expense of others.
On “The Principled Pragmatic Reader”
What about Aristotles' Politics and Nichomechean Ethics? Plato tried to create the perfect political and social system in his Republic, it was probably the first work that tried to devise the mechanism for a utopian system. Aristotle realizing that humans are humans tried to figure out what work based on what we are not what we should be.
I'd also argue that the Talmud is the work of principled pragmatists. The Rabbis who wrote it debated about what the mitzvah of the Torah actually mean but at the same time tried to put in enough flexibility so that the letter of the law does not triumph over real life. So while the laws of Shabbat are strict, they can be violated for the sake of helping the sick or aiding a pregnant woman.
On “Voter Fraud Wheels A’ Spinning”
We almsot got Federal control over elections during the 1890s in Benjamin Harrison's administration. It was defeated because of GOP infighting. Basically, Rep. Henry Cabot Lodge of Mass., latter famous foe of the League of Nations, introduced a Federal Election Bill in order to prevent the disenfranchisement of African-Americans, who were basically all Republican at the time.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lodge_Bill
On “Jacobinning”
This. There is no evidence that a more statist version of HCR could pass through Congress. More likely, it would have died in committee and HCR kicked down the road for another fifteen years at least.
On “Sunday Morning Atheism”
Zac, Judaism tends to speak of God in the negative. That is speak about God by defining what God is not. Its called negative theology. Its kind of like trying to explain really advanced scientific concepts to people without the background or education to really comprehend them. You have to reduced the complexity of the ideas to a certain extent so lay people can understand. Even very intelligent lay people might need to have certain scientific or mathematic ideas explained to them in the simplest terms possible.
Not all religions are based on around the worship of God or gods. The Dharmic religions are not really concerned with the divine but with a release from the cycle of suffering. Daoism isn't that much concerned with the divine either. Among monotheistic religions, Judaism is not overly concered with the nature of God or the afterlife as Christinaity and Islam are but with living a sanctified life through Halacha.
"
I'm not looking for an atheist that likes my religion, I'm just want one that will engage in a debate on the actual teachings of my religion rather than the actual teachings of another religion. If your going to subject Judaism to a critical analysis at least do it on Jewish terms rather than Catholic terms.
Most Jews are rather underwhelmed by the God of the Torah is evil argument and find the entire concept puzzling at best and insultingly aggravating at worse. The argument tends to be based off a couple of passages in the Tanakh and ignores large chunks of the rest of it.
"
Pithy but largely correct.
"
Point, however God still describes himself as "I will be what I will be". This implies that God isn't static or complete in nature but can grow and change like anything else. If God can grow and change than that implies that God is not perfect because why would a perfect being need to do this?
I actually find the idea of God being imperfect more exciting and comforting than a perfect God. If God is imperfect than it is easier to relate to him.
"
My experience is that some of the more militant atheists attribute to all religions the aspects they see in the religion they hate the most. If they despise Evangelical Christianity the most, for whatever reason, than every religion has the same problems as Evangelical Christianity. Its the non-diffrentiation that makes discussion hard.
"
zic, your explanation of crafting the myth of Gods falls more into the pagan worldview that everything is up to fate and humans have little control over what they do and what happens to them. It goes against the monotheistic worldview. In all of the monotheistic religions, Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Sikhism, and Zoroastrianism, God has ethical standards and holds people to them. Some monotheistic thinkers lean closer to the idea of fate and pre-destination but generally most go towards the idea that people have free will and the capacity to control their worst desires if they put the effort into it. Its not easy but it is possible.
The idea of self-discipline and free will is especially important in Judaism. Judaism does not teach that being good or moral is easy, we actually think its very hard. Its why God describes the Torah as a blessing and curse when he gave it to Israel. Its a blessing because it creates a guideline for an ethical life. Its a curse because living an ethical life is not something that comes easily and requires sacrifice.
"
Not all of us religious people want to impose what we do onto other people like Evangelical Protestants or other religious groups. Nor do we necessarily want to convince atheists or other people who believe otherwise that our way of life is correct. Lots of us just want to be left alone to practice our religion without having to listen to lectures why our religion is wrong from believers of other religions or atheists.
"
The entire book of Jonah? God's rage at the oppression of the poor in Amos? God's frequently expressed concerns for the welfare of the poor, the widow, and the orphan in the Torah and the Prophets.
Lets look at Leviticus, which the "OT God is evil" crowd likes to site a lot as evidence. I'm using the JPS translation, specifically Leviticus 19. In Leviticus 19:9, people are told to leave food for the stranger and the poor around harvest time. Leviticus 19:13 is a command not to commit acts of fraud or to exploit laborers. Leviticus 19:14 expresses concern with the disabled.
The rest of Leviticus 19 is an expression of similar ethical concerns that leads ultimately to Leviticus 19:33, "When a stranger resides with you in your land, you shall not wrong him. The stranger who resides with you shall be to you as one of your citizens; you shall love him as yourself, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt: I the Lord am your God." This is a declaration of universal love as the supreme virtue.
"
If you think the Torah is at least semi-divine if not outright divine in origin, probably not. If its entirely of human origins, probably not either. People and presumably God use tenses to express meaning. The fact that Hashem uses the imperfect to describe himself to Moses is evidence that either God or the human writers of the Torah did not see God as perfect.
"
This might just be me but I've read the entire Tanakh or as Christians put the Old Testament and never understood where the God is evil thing comes from? From my reading, God comes across as good and concerned with justice, ethics, the welfare of the unfortunate and others aspects we generally associate with morality. Maybe as a Jew I just read the Tanakh differently from non-Jews. I also read the New Testament and found it underwhelming and not as moving as the Tanakh.
"
We have a different interpretation than you do and I do not find the Old Testament God is evil, New Testament God good cute or appropriate. Why don't you try to understand this from our perspective?
"
No not necessarily so, as I mentioned above Jewish thought doesn't necessarily see God as perfect or even good in the traditional sense. Judaism isn't really a theological religion and the nature of God played relatively little role in the thinking of the Rabbis. The Rabbis were more concerned with what God wanted, the commandments in the Torah, than the nature of God. The Rabbis that did tend to think about the nature of God were more or less content to define what God is not rather than what God is but the consensus is that God is not human and describing him as good or evil really isn't that helpful.
"
Jewish thought doesn't see God as evil, rather God is basically seen as being beyond human comprehension. The Rambam argued that God can only be described in the negative, by what God is not rather than in the positive. Its probably better to see God as being correct rather than good or evil from a Jewish point of view.
"
More than a few Jewish theologians actually argue that the idea that God is perfect is inconsistent with Judaism because the Torah doesn't present God as perfect.
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/11/25/an-imperfect-god/
"
Here is a link on the Jewish answer to Why Bad things happen to Good People by Rabbi Harold Kushner whose the Jewish expert on the matter.
http://www.tabletmag.com/podcasts/113001/harold-kushner-reads-job
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