“What has shocked Jews much more than the atrocities of Hamas are the atrocities committed by Progressives.”
Sorry, but this essay is far too optimistic about a wake up call for progressive Jews, or, indeed, Progressives in general. If you live and believe in the world as described by The NY Times, MSNBC, and NPR, then it’s all Netanyahu’s fault, or perhaps Trump’s fault. It may not be a scientific study, but among my friends and relatives I see no sign at all of doubt about their blind loyalty to Progressivism.
Agreed. There has been no "wake up call" about the whole ideology and political movement at large. Conquest's First Law of Politics* is "Everyone is conservative about what he knows best."
And about thing you know best, when reading about it, you have Michael's Crichton's "Gell-Mann Amnesia" - "... you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know."
What this means in practice is that, for every progressive (yes, I mean every, I've confirmed this with 100% validity with every progressive acquaintance) there is that one subject area they know best which for them represents their personal dissent and heresy from the current year fashionable progressive ideological consensus orthodoxy, which codes not just by ideological default as "conservative" but in the inherent natural and practical (i.e., trans-ideological) manifestation of small-c conservatism regarding the indispensable elements of merit, excellence, success, and effectiveness in human activities.
For this one topic, they know that 99% of all the other progressives are just completely wrong.
However.
They see this more in the emotional color of sorrow and anguish and disappointment with a hope of persuasive redemption than in the color of anger and contempt with determination to reject and distance.
Because.
They look at all the rest of the stars in the progressive constellation of belief and they get amnesia about how wrong the progressives were about the one thing they know, and they too don't know anything much about the subject matter of all those other beliefs, so they "turn the page" to the next belief, and forget what they know.
And pretty much every progressive Jew I've read or heard from in the past few weeks has just become 'conservative' about the thing they know best, what it feels like to realize one's loved ones and oneself are genuinely the object of murderous Jew-hatred, and your so-called ideological allies not only don't have your back, they rationalize, justify, and support it. Openly. To your face. Not a day after a thousand murders.
But it's just their One Thing. And they turn the page, and forget what they know about that one thing, and still go on swallowing all the rest of the pernicious nonsense.
*Handle's First Law: "The better the quote, the more likely it's apocryphal."
My sense of it is that being identified as university-trained Progressive is an intrinsic mainstay in secular Jewish Identity - and as such is near impossible to shake off. Evangelicals and Catholics are the enemies of Progress.
The whole point of the progressive movement is to win liberation from God's laws. Their goal is to be liberated and to commit collective suicide in a dreamy, fun, and hazy way. The day 2 plan is basically to ascend to Halle-Boppe. This is something a lot of people have trouble understanding, so they want to posit that it's all part of a convoluted plot to control all the world supply chain of fertilizer or something. No: the point is their concept of the beautiful death.
I hope I can give you reason for optimism: until October 8 I always thought progressives, though often misguided, had their hearts in the right place and I even donated regularly to some of their causes and voted for some of them. Now I see clearly that is not true and possibly never was. I have stopped all financial patronizing of the leftist candidates, and leftist media, and will support in elections whichever party is more likely to destroy the progressives. Hopefully there are a lot more like me out there.
Progressives are only where they are now because there are too many cowards on the left to call them. Also, they have always been hesitant to speak on islam as they do Christianity.
JJS_FLA: "Evangelicals and Catholics are the enemies of Progress."
Indeed. Christian conservatives are worse than Hamas-Hitler and by virtue of their mere existence commit atrocities daily. Conversely, this Hamas thing will blow over. "Who remembers the Armenians?"
I see no reason for optimism here at all. The people who think like you, Arnold, are mostly over the age 50 and will be almost completely gone inside of 40 years, and their political power is already waning rapidly and will gone completely within a decade. The Israelis will be on their own by early next year as the political pressure builds on the Biden Administration to stop supporting them.
I'm inclined to agree support for Israel will weaken but I'd say that's far from certain and most likely won't change much. History suggests those under 40 will move to the right [as they get older].
history suggests as people get older they cling harder to what offers them stability in their own lives -- that may not map to right or left in the present day. I am a millenial under 40, I see a pretty stark split in my friends who have children and those who do not (the ones who have children are not posting about israel or palestine). I can see both sets of friends ossifying in their views. The ones who live a suburban life will likely remain apathetic -- what offers them stability in their lives. And the ones who live an urban life will likely remain vehemently pro-palestine -- this is the opinion that offers more rewards in large cities like LA and NYC. I believe because of the holocaust, and bc the civil rights leaders only shifted to pro-palestine after 1968, most boomers are pro-israel. Gen X is a blind spot for me. But most millenials and gen-z i've encountered are pro-palestine or apathetic.
I don't disagree with any of that but I added a couple words to the end of my previous comment to clarify what I meant a bit. While new adults are likely to be more for Palestinians, I still think as adults age they are more likely to switch towards Israel than the other direction.
There is a PSYCHOLOGY that is the primary driver of Leftism much more-so than any IDEOLOGY....and this has been poorly understood by conservatives who tend to take at face value the supposed CAUSE embraced....which changes to suit the fashions of the day. It is a psychology of middle class people wanting to FEEL virtuous but in a cost-free way. FEELING virtuous whilst actually carrying on with their essentially selfish personal agenda....their self-interest in other words. Progressivism has always been a mostly middle-class intelligentsia pose....al the way from Marx and Engels (or perhaps earlier still).
I have often said that if ever holding trendy Progressive opinions came to have painful costs to the middle-class holder of those opinions themselves (rather than costs they impose on people lower down the social scale) the whole thing would disappear....as the puff of windbaggery that it has always truly been. Whether Progressive Jews will now see things more clearly....well we shall see?
The thing most to fear about Islam is not that it rejects multiculturalism. It is Islam's Mafia-like culture, under which anyone who leaves, argues against, or mocks the faith gets murdered and the crime covered up.
Parts of the progressive movement share this characteristic but not as strongly. On the other hand most progressives are shockingly naive about the fact that they're high on Islam's target list. If they have any hope of redemption it is that they may come to realize it and fight back.
Those are features of many belief systems, religious and secular alike. Bolsheviks and Maoists in the hall of fame too. And where do you think we get the words infidel and heresy and blasphemy and apostasy and excommunication? Whether or not one assesses it as enlightenment, when belief systems start to mellow out in this regard of fidelity enforcement mechanisms, (e.g., Kling's "Basic Social Rule / Fundamental Rule of Social Morality: Reward Cooperators and Punish Defectors") they start to die.
I call this "Ideological Carcinization".
Just like nature keeps taking creatures and evolving them into crabs - because the crab layout is the optimally-toughest one possible for a creature filling that niche - human cultures keep taking belief systems and augmenting them with the same fidelity-enforcement mechanisms - because cultures compete too, only the toughest survive, and the same tough cultural enforcement mechanisms work on human social instincts which can be treated like "natural laws" because they tend to be more or less universal given their prehistoric origins.
Biological life tries to solve various problems under the constraints of natural law, and there are natural, optimal solutions to certain problems. So, just like certain artificially engineered objects trying to solve the same problem with mathematics and trial-and-error will seem 'biomimetic', different kinds of living creatures can independently adapt toward the same solution over and over in biological history, a process called convergent (also recurrent) evolution. If a large creature is to swim fast, hydrodynamics dictates an ideal shape and weight distribution. Similarly for flying. Any big piercer like a large claw, talon, or pointed tooth tends to have the same shape, and so forth.
Well, "mafia-like" cultures that punish defectors and heretics with maximally ruthless and merciless methods also tend to be the winners in the long run. Indeed, to the extent one enjoys living in a culture that has relaxed these penalties substantially, it is often because the dominant culture / belief system / "state religion" does not face much competition and can afford to slack off on the ruthlessness and put it in mothballs until needed once more.
Agreed. And that is why I believe that strong border enforcement and laws that make it hard to immigrate without assimilating are necessary to a free society. And the Biden administration has defeated them on purpose because they don't want us to stay free.
I remember after 9/11 hearing someone say that this is not Islam-at-full-strength, but Islam in its death throes. Perhaps this was merely a wish to make things parallel with Christianity.
Still, a stunt like that - does not seem like it would come from a religious culture that was secure in its role in the world and its enduring value.
I don't know if we'd see it if it was happening - the winding down or "mellowing out/withering away" of Islam - but it seems certain that the death of a religion is a very messy thing.
"But in modern times, Jews and Christians no longer use religion to justify or to sanctify violence."
I wish this were true, but it's not. If you had said "relatively rarely" instead of "no longer" you'd be right, and maybe that was what you meant to say. But sadly the distinction is important because the relatively rare exceptions still do real damage.
Isaac Chotiner's recent interview with Daniella Weiss is an example. Yes, her views are shared by only a smallish minority of Israeli Jews, but it is a significant enough minority to have made the openly racist, theocratic thugs Ben-Gvir and Smotrich into government ministers. The moral picture is more complicated than any of us would like to believe, and those who rightfully criticize the modern left for the oversimplification that leads to its moral distortions ought not oversimplify ourselves.
This is not true also for a much more salient reason: namely that there is plenty of justification and sanctification of violence by Progressives, including the very example mentioned by our host in this post, and Progressivism is too much like a religion to exclude it from consideration here.
I like your insights on the three languages of politics because they feel impartial, but sentences like, “It turns out that Progressives support a Palestinian cause that seeks not peace and dignity for all but to drive Jews out of the Middle East completely” feel absolutely removed from reality. I’m sure some progressives are saying this, but do you have any survey data at all that shows that anywhere close to a majority of progressives are saying this? All I’ve heard is a calls for cease fire and settling things diplomatically.
The meaning of “Progressive” is, like all political labels, a bit fuzzy, but my understanding is that the term implies being of an anti-colonial, trans-gender, defund-the-police, whiteness-is-racism mindset. So, someone on the left who wants Israel to continue to exist but just wants the killing to stop would, by definition, not be a Progressive.
Good point. The Progressive’s claim that “offense is in the eye of the beholder” is belied by their defense of the “from the river to the sea…” chant, and their claim that it doesn’t *really* call for genocide.
Progressives routinely run interference for the radical left with their “nothing to see here” game. So, for example, we are first told that CRT is strictly a legal theory that is not being taught and will never be taught in K-12. Then it’s: “Okay, yes. A few CRT tenets are being taught in grade school, but only in one or two locations.” Then: “Well, yes, thousands of schools are teaching CRT tenets, but just as one possible lens through which history can be viewed.” Finally it’s: “Yes, CRT is being taught and should be taught, and anyone who disagrees is racist.”
I think there is a change in perception on the left of center. People didn't realize how much the activists on this issue have a "by any means necessary" attitude. Calling for one secular state with Palestinian right of return is one thing, but defending stuff like the butchery of pregnant women as a means to that end is not what people expected from them.
Re Iran, regime change is about as realistic as it would be in North Korea. It would be a nuclear bloodbath. They've been months away from a bomb ever since Trump left the deal. They are here to stay, just like Russia and NK. The alternative is mushrooms over Tehran and Tel Aviv.
The nuclear deal was not some idealistic progressive boondoggle. Trump's own cabinet was in favor, Tillerson and Mattis spent like a year delaying and deflecting his efforts to kill it. The only way one could hope to manage Iran was to keep them non nuclear, now it's too late for that.
As the Burkean conservative tradition teaches us, not every problem has a cure that's better than the disease.
"Calling for one secular state with Palestinian right of return is one thing, but defending stuff like the butchery of pregnant women as a means to that end is not what people expected from them."
A one state/right of return solution is, via demographics and genetics, the same as pushing the Jews into the sea.
That's why Israel won't do it.
Of course if you can't understand that reality it just seems like the Jews are being unreasonable and oppressing the Palestinians in a decades long apartheid. And if that's the truth and all non-violent means of chaining it have been exhausted.....
Only when we recognize that the Jews and Palestinians can't live together because they are too genetically distant and the demographic problem is too big can we accept that what Israel has done it the least bad option.
I agree that a single secular state wouldn't be at all viable, the Jews hate the Palestinians too much and the Palestinians hate the Jews *way* too much. Having them all inside one border would be a disaster. But being a one-stater isn't obviously morally wrong in the way that being a real "river to the sea" nut is.
Not sure what you're talking about with the genetic thing, most Jews in Israel are Mizrahim who are extremely close to Palestinian Arabs genetically.
I detect an "HBD" vibe... recommend Reich's Who We Are and How We Got Here as a counterpoint to the Sailer-type stuff if you've been marinating in that
I have less confidence in the effectiveness of any nuclear deal with Iran than you do. I think we can trust the Mullahs about as far as we can throw them.
There is no best alternative. The JCPOA was toothless, however. The Iranians gave up nothing. They had already solved the problem of enriching uranium to weapons grade level and you can't remove that ability with a treaty, and this treaty didn't even require the Iranians to give up their equipment used to enrich it, either. All it required of the Iranians is that they promised not to enrich it beyond a certain level, but no one could hold them to that promise since there was no enforcement mechanism other than a reinstituting of sanctions, which hadn't stopped them before the treaty was signed.
And yet, they remained in compliance with the terms of the agreement until the US withdrew. (They only signed in the first place because they were hurting from the sanctions.)
Arms control treaties tend not to have enforcement mechanisms in the sense you mean. There was no penalty if the US or Russia violated START. Arms control agreements are promises, the penalty for violation is being perceived as untrustworthy.
Oh, sure, they kept promising to not enrich uranium further, but only fools really believed them. There were no mechanisms to ensure they kept the promise. The agreement was toothless, thus meaningless.
There were plenty of inspections Yancey. The US has very sophisticated tech for detecting enrichment.
Edit: And it's become clear in the aftermath that they did not have anything unknown to us, we know how much HEU they have now and none of it was enriched during the years of the deal.
Calling for a secular state with the right of return for whomever says they once had a house in Tel Aviv is another way to destroy Israel. Don’t kid yourself.
“Combined with the failure of our so-called “leaders” to integrate newcomers into our wider society is why Britain, like other Western democracies, has imported and failed to dilute tribal grievances from abroad.”
That statement seems to remove from immigrants any semblance of agency when it comes to assimilation, something that I find profoundly misguided.
I think if we were to read that charitably we should take it to mean that the leaders have encouraged living apart, either through DEI type stuff, pushing multi-culturalism, allowing certain ethnic immigrants to live under their own rules via refusing to enforce the law against them, etc.
It is a charitable reading, but following that path insures that assimilation does not occur. You cannot be part of the larger society, if you insist on violating not only its norms but it’s laws.
That's the point, or at least what I think the quoted author's point was. The leaders actively did things that made assimilation less likely to occur, in fact discouraging assimilation. The "so-called 'leaders'" are not the good guys in that sentence :D
This is just me but as a lifelong center left person I always knew the ‘progressive left’ was crap. First of all, BLM told us who they were in Ferguson. A bunch on lying grifters. Hands up don’t shoot never happened. And they announced their antisemitism fairly early. Then came the idiocy of gender ideology and its real harms along with the virtue signaling of pronoun posting. I can go on but I saw thru this stuff very early.
It just made me laugh to know that Ibram Kendis institute had produced nothing. Because it’s a scam.
The Jew hate seen by progressives seems very familiar, a lot like Trump hate. It’s Jewish Derangement Syndrome, growing out of years of Trump Derangement Syndrome, itself so often supported by Jews, including atheist Jews like Sam Harris, willing to support Dems stealing the election to stop Trump from winning. Power line links to great talk by him.
TDS grew from Bush hate (BusHitler!), when Bush Derangement Syndrome was coined, growing out of Reagan hate.
Jews who hate Trump, most of them in the US, won’t be changing their minds quickly. As Neo writes “a mind is a difficult thing to change.” Few who argue really ask themselves if they could be wrong.
> What has shocked Jews much more than the atrocities of Hamas are the atrocities committed by Progressives. It turns out that Progressives support a Palestinian cause that seeks not peace and dignity for all but to drive Jews out of the Middle East completely. Progressives say that the “context” justifies rape, murder and kidnapping of innocent people. Under the doctrine of intersectionality, Progressives manage to link support for Islamic theocrats to LGBTQ rights.
Reality as experienced by an Allist...it must be a trip, no wonder everyone on both sides is so shocked by these events.
Progressives haven’t changed a bit. But center left seems to be changing. Progs though are likely only 10% of the population. The other part of the left, especially immigrants, are moving right. From what I can see.
I was raised hard left. My conversion took me about ten years. To be fully red pilled. Mind you it was less existential then. The left hadn’t started actively killing people yet. At least in Canada. Many people are seeing through it finally.
Sadly, none of this is surprising. People need to see that most of our Political institutions and their employees are for sale. Corruption, greed and outright stupidity drive Western Governments. Behind every Leftist cause is usually a Grifter, Marxist or a Narcissist.
"Imagine if on college campuses there were students marching around in Ku Klux Klan hoods shouting racist slogans. And imagine they were doing this right after the death of George Floyd. That is what the pro-Hamas demonstrations feel like to Jewish students."
or imagine if a crazy mentally ill trans person shot up a preschooll and right after you had protests and riots PRO trans.
which literally happened.
or how about decades of violent crime from blacks on whites, death toll in the tens of thousands, and yet we get.... BLM riots.
I suspect you're being quite naive Arnold. I sympathize with your horror towards the Progs, but it's been ongoing for quite sometime and no, it won't stop just because for now Jews are on the receiving end.
Does anyone know of a political party with leading figures who
* blame Hamas for the deaths of Palestinian civilians, rather than rewarding Hamas by calling for an Israeli cease fire, and who, before recent events,
* talked about how to handle Iran, with a more negative outlook on the nuclear deal and a more positive outlook on promoting regime change,
* supported the Supreme Court’s ruling against racial preferences in college admissions rather than colleges’ attempts at evading the ruling,
* supported restoring order at the border,
* talked about America’s past with pride, not shame, and
* believed in resisting rather than appeasing radical young leftists.
Is there such a party? Probably not. Otherwise the mainstream news would be replete with accounts of that party being praised for its leaders' insight and moral clarity before Oct. 7.
“What has shocked Jews much more than the atrocities of Hamas are the atrocities committed by Progressives.”
Sorry, but this essay is far too optimistic about a wake up call for progressive Jews, or, indeed, Progressives in general. If you live and believe in the world as described by The NY Times, MSNBC, and NPR, then it’s all Netanyahu’s fault, or perhaps Trump’s fault. It may not be a scientific study, but among my friends and relatives I see no sign at all of doubt about their blind loyalty to Progressivism.
Agreed. There has been no "wake up call" about the whole ideology and political movement at large. Conquest's First Law of Politics* is "Everyone is conservative about what he knows best."
And about thing you know best, when reading about it, you have Michael's Crichton's "Gell-Mann Amnesia" - "... you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know."
What this means in practice is that, for every progressive (yes, I mean every, I've confirmed this with 100% validity with every progressive acquaintance) there is that one subject area they know best which for them represents their personal dissent and heresy from the current year fashionable progressive ideological consensus orthodoxy, which codes not just by ideological default as "conservative" but in the inherent natural and practical (i.e., trans-ideological) manifestation of small-c conservatism regarding the indispensable elements of merit, excellence, success, and effectiveness in human activities.
For this one topic, they know that 99% of all the other progressives are just completely wrong.
However.
They see this more in the emotional color of sorrow and anguish and disappointment with a hope of persuasive redemption than in the color of anger and contempt with determination to reject and distance.
Because.
They look at all the rest of the stars in the progressive constellation of belief and they get amnesia about how wrong the progressives were about the one thing they know, and they too don't know anything much about the subject matter of all those other beliefs, so they "turn the page" to the next belief, and forget what they know.
And pretty much every progressive Jew I've read or heard from in the past few weeks has just become 'conservative' about the thing they know best, what it feels like to realize one's loved ones and oneself are genuinely the object of murderous Jew-hatred, and your so-called ideological allies not only don't have your back, they rationalize, justify, and support it. Openly. To your face. Not a day after a thousand murders.
But it's just their One Thing. And they turn the page, and forget what they know about that one thing, and still go on swallowing all the rest of the pernicious nonsense.
*Handle's First Law: "The better the quote, the more likely it's apocryphal."
My sense of it is that being identified as university-trained Progressive is an intrinsic mainstay in secular Jewish Identity - and as such is near impossible to shake off. Evangelicals and Catholics are the enemies of Progress.
The whole point of the progressive movement is to win liberation from God's laws. Their goal is to be liberated and to commit collective suicide in a dreamy, fun, and hazy way. The day 2 plan is basically to ascend to Halle-Boppe. This is something a lot of people have trouble understanding, so they want to posit that it's all part of a convoluted plot to control all the world supply chain of fertilizer or something. No: the point is their concept of the beautiful death.
I hope I can give you reason for optimism: until October 8 I always thought progressives, though often misguided, had their hearts in the right place and I even donated regularly to some of their causes and voted for some of them. Now I see clearly that is not true and possibly never was. I have stopped all financial patronizing of the leftist candidates, and leftist media, and will support in elections whichever party is more likely to destroy the progressives. Hopefully there are a lot more like me out there.
Progressives are only where they are now because there are too many cowards on the left to call them. Also, they have always been hesitant to speak on islam as they do Christianity.
Progressive ideology is a mere religion itself.
JJS_FLA: "Evangelicals and Catholics are the enemies of Progress."
Indeed. Christian conservatives are worse than Hamas-Hitler and by virtue of their mere existence commit atrocities daily. Conversely, this Hamas thing will blow over. "Who remembers the Armenians?"
Agree. I think liberal center left are horrified but not true progressives.
I see no reason for optimism here at all. The people who think like you, Arnold, are mostly over the age 50 and will be almost completely gone inside of 40 years, and their political power is already waning rapidly and will gone completely within a decade. The Israelis will be on their own by early next year as the political pressure builds on the Biden Administration to stop supporting them.
I'm inclined to agree support for Israel will weaken but I'd say that's far from certain and most likely won't change much. History suggests those under 40 will move to the right [as they get older].
history suggests as people get older they cling harder to what offers them stability in their own lives -- that may not map to right or left in the present day. I am a millenial under 40, I see a pretty stark split in my friends who have children and those who do not (the ones who have children are not posting about israel or palestine). I can see both sets of friends ossifying in their views. The ones who live a suburban life will likely remain apathetic -- what offers them stability in their lives. And the ones who live an urban life will likely remain vehemently pro-palestine -- this is the opinion that offers more rewards in large cities like LA and NYC. I believe because of the holocaust, and bc the civil rights leaders only shifted to pro-palestine after 1968, most boomers are pro-israel. Gen X is a blind spot for me. But most millenials and gen-z i've encountered are pro-palestine or apathetic.
I don't disagree with any of that but I added a couple words to the end of my previous comment to clarify what I meant a bit. While new adults are likely to be more for Palestinians, I still think as adults age they are more likely to switch towards Israel than the other direction.
There is a PSYCHOLOGY that is the primary driver of Leftism much more-so than any IDEOLOGY....and this has been poorly understood by conservatives who tend to take at face value the supposed CAUSE embraced....which changes to suit the fashions of the day. It is a psychology of middle class people wanting to FEEL virtuous but in a cost-free way. FEELING virtuous whilst actually carrying on with their essentially selfish personal agenda....their self-interest in other words. Progressivism has always been a mostly middle-class intelligentsia pose....al the way from Marx and Engels (or perhaps earlier still).
I have often said that if ever holding trendy Progressive opinions came to have painful costs to the middle-class holder of those opinions themselves (rather than costs they impose on people lower down the social scale) the whole thing would disappear....as the puff of windbaggery that it has always truly been. Whether Progressive Jews will now see things more clearly....well we shall see?
https://grahamcunningham.substack.com/p/are-we-making-progress
The thing most to fear about Islam is not that it rejects multiculturalism. It is Islam's Mafia-like culture, under which anyone who leaves, argues against, or mocks the faith gets murdered and the crime covered up.
Parts of the progressive movement share this characteristic but not as strongly. On the other hand most progressives are shockingly naive about the fact that they're high on Islam's target list. If they have any hope of redemption it is that they may come to realize it and fight back.
Those are features of many belief systems, religious and secular alike. Bolsheviks and Maoists in the hall of fame too. And where do you think we get the words infidel and heresy and blasphemy and apostasy and excommunication? Whether or not one assesses it as enlightenment, when belief systems start to mellow out in this regard of fidelity enforcement mechanisms, (e.g., Kling's "Basic Social Rule / Fundamental Rule of Social Morality: Reward Cooperators and Punish Defectors") they start to die.
I call this "Ideological Carcinization".
Just like nature keeps taking creatures and evolving them into crabs - because the crab layout is the optimally-toughest one possible for a creature filling that niche - human cultures keep taking belief systems and augmenting them with the same fidelity-enforcement mechanisms - because cultures compete too, only the toughest survive, and the same tough cultural enforcement mechanisms work on human social instincts which can be treated like "natural laws" because they tend to be more or less universal given their prehistoric origins.
Biological life tries to solve various problems under the constraints of natural law, and there are natural, optimal solutions to certain problems. So, just like certain artificially engineered objects trying to solve the same problem with mathematics and trial-and-error will seem 'biomimetic', different kinds of living creatures can independently adapt toward the same solution over and over in biological history, a process called convergent (also recurrent) evolution. If a large creature is to swim fast, hydrodynamics dictates an ideal shape and weight distribution. Similarly for flying. Any big piercer like a large claw, talon, or pointed tooth tends to have the same shape, and so forth.
Well, "mafia-like" cultures that punish defectors and heretics with maximally ruthless and merciless methods also tend to be the winners in the long run. Indeed, to the extent one enjoys living in a culture that has relaxed these penalties substantially, it is often because the dominant culture / belief system / "state religion" does not face much competition and can afford to slack off on the ruthlessness and put it in mothballs until needed once more.
Agreed. And that is why I believe that strong border enforcement and laws that make it hard to immigrate without assimilating are necessary to a free society. And the Biden administration has defeated them on purpose because they don't want us to stay free.
I remember after 9/11 hearing someone say that this is not Islam-at-full-strength, but Islam in its death throes. Perhaps this was merely a wish to make things parallel with Christianity.
Still, a stunt like that - does not seem like it would come from a religious culture that was secure in its role in the world and its enduring value.
I don't know if we'd see it if it was happening - the winding down or "mellowing out/withering away" of Islam - but it seems certain that the death of a religion is a very messy thing.
Funny, the Muslims say it's our culture that's the one in the death throes. Trouble is, they're right.
"But in modern times, Jews and Christians no longer use religion to justify or to sanctify violence."
I wish this were true, but it's not. If you had said "relatively rarely" instead of "no longer" you'd be right, and maybe that was what you meant to say. But sadly the distinction is important because the relatively rare exceptions still do real damage.
Isaac Chotiner's recent interview with Daniella Weiss is an example. Yes, her views are shared by only a smallish minority of Israeli Jews, but it is a significant enough minority to have made the openly racist, theocratic thugs Ben-Gvir and Smotrich into government ministers. The moral picture is more complicated than any of us would like to believe, and those who rightfully criticize the modern left for the oversimplification that leads to its moral distortions ought not oversimplify ourselves.
Violent extremists exist everywhere. But they don’t LEAD anywhere except in Islam.
This is not true also for a much more salient reason: namely that there is plenty of justification and sanctification of violence by Progressives, including the very example mentioned by our host in this post, and Progressivism is too much like a religion to exclude it from consideration here.
I like your insights on the three languages of politics because they feel impartial, but sentences like, “It turns out that Progressives support a Palestinian cause that seeks not peace and dignity for all but to drive Jews out of the Middle East completely” feel absolutely removed from reality. I’m sure some progressives are saying this, but do you have any survey data at all that shows that anywhere close to a majority of progressives are saying this? All I’ve heard is a calls for cease fire and settling things diplomatically.
The meaning of “Progressive” is, like all political labels, a bit fuzzy, but my understanding is that the term implies being of an anti-colonial, trans-gender, defund-the-police, whiteness-is-racism mindset. So, someone on the left who wants Israel to continue to exist but just wants the killing to stop would, by definition, not be a Progressive.
You haven’t heard ‘from the river to the sea’. Or if you have you think it’s about swimming? Did you see what the DSA has devolved into?
Good point. The Progressive’s claim that “offense is in the eye of the beholder” is belied by their defense of the “from the river to the sea…” chant, and their claim that it doesn’t *really* call for genocide.
Progressives routinely run interference for the radical left with their “nothing to see here” game. So, for example, we are first told that CRT is strictly a legal theory that is not being taught and will never be taught in K-12. Then it’s: “Okay, yes. A few CRT tenets are being taught in grade school, but only in one or two locations.” Then: “Well, yes, thousands of schools are teaching CRT tenets, but just as one possible lens through which history can be viewed.” Finally it’s: “Yes, CRT is being taught and should be taught, and anyone who disagrees is racist.”
Yes thanks. It’s pretty clear what from the river to the sea means. Any denial of its genocidal intent is pure lying.
Excellent piece
I think there is a change in perception on the left of center. People didn't realize how much the activists on this issue have a "by any means necessary" attitude. Calling for one secular state with Palestinian right of return is one thing, but defending stuff like the butchery of pregnant women as a means to that end is not what people expected from them.
Re Iran, regime change is about as realistic as it would be in North Korea. It would be a nuclear bloodbath. They've been months away from a bomb ever since Trump left the deal. They are here to stay, just like Russia and NK. The alternative is mushrooms over Tehran and Tel Aviv.
The nuclear deal was not some idealistic progressive boondoggle. Trump's own cabinet was in favor, Tillerson and Mattis spent like a year delaying and deflecting his efforts to kill it. The only way one could hope to manage Iran was to keep them non nuclear, now it's too late for that.
As the Burkean conservative tradition teaches us, not every problem has a cure that's better than the disease.
"Calling for one secular state with Palestinian right of return is one thing, but defending stuff like the butchery of pregnant women as a means to that end is not what people expected from them."
A one state/right of return solution is, via demographics and genetics, the same as pushing the Jews into the sea.
That's why Israel won't do it.
Of course if you can't understand that reality it just seems like the Jews are being unreasonable and oppressing the Palestinians in a decades long apartheid. And if that's the truth and all non-violent means of chaining it have been exhausted.....
Only when we recognize that the Jews and Palestinians can't live together because they are too genetically distant and the demographic problem is too big can we accept that what Israel has done it the least bad option.
I agree that a single secular state wouldn't be at all viable, the Jews hate the Palestinians too much and the Palestinians hate the Jews *way* too much. Having them all inside one border would be a disaster. But being a one-stater isn't obviously morally wrong in the way that being a real "river to the sea" nut is.
Not sure what you're talking about with the genetic thing, most Jews in Israel are Mizrahim who are extremely close to Palestinian Arabs genetically.
The Jews don’t hate the Palestinians; they hate the terrorism. There is a big difference.
I too had thought "cousins fighting" but recently learned that Israelis are closer to Lebanese and Druse than to Palestinians:
https://nitter.net/razibkhan/status/1722594913538232495#m
These are very fine distinctions, the amount of genetic difference between branches of the same continental population group is tiny.
It's all fine differences, though, so we're told.
I detect an "HBD" vibe... recommend Reich's Who We Are and How We Got Here as a counterpoint to the Sailer-type stuff if you've been marinating in that
I have less confidence in the effectiveness of any nuclear deal with Iran than you do. I think we can trust the Mullahs about as far as we can throw them.
To return to a theme from my OP, part of the question is what's the best alternative. A 2015 invasion of Iran?
There is no best alternative. The JCPOA was toothless, however. The Iranians gave up nothing. They had already solved the problem of enriching uranium to weapons grade level and you can't remove that ability with a treaty, and this treaty didn't even require the Iranians to give up their equipment used to enrich it, either. All it required of the Iranians is that they promised not to enrich it beyond a certain level, but no one could hold them to that promise since there was no enforcement mechanism other than a reinstituting of sanctions, which hadn't stopped them before the treaty was signed.
And yet, they remained in compliance with the terms of the agreement until the US withdrew. (They only signed in the first place because they were hurting from the sanctions.)
Arms control treaties tend not to have enforcement mechanisms in the sense you mean. There was no penalty if the US or Russia violated START. Arms control agreements are promises, the penalty for violation is being perceived as untrustworthy.
Oh, sure, they kept promising to not enrich uranium further, but only fools really believed them. There were no mechanisms to ensure they kept the promise. The agreement was toothless, thus meaningless.
There were plenty of inspections Yancey. The US has very sophisticated tech for detecting enrichment.
Edit: And it's become clear in the aftermath that they did not have anything unknown to us, we know how much HEU they have now and none of it was enriched during the years of the deal.
Calling for a secular state with the right of return for whomever says they once had a house in Tel Aviv is another way to destroy Israel. Don’t kid yourself.
“Combined with the failure of our so-called “leaders” to integrate newcomers into our wider society is why Britain, like other Western democracies, has imported and failed to dilute tribal grievances from abroad.”
That statement seems to remove from immigrants any semblance of agency when it comes to assimilation, something that I find profoundly misguided.
I think if we were to read that charitably we should take it to mean that the leaders have encouraged living apart, either through DEI type stuff, pushing multi-culturalism, allowing certain ethnic immigrants to live under their own rules via refusing to enforce the law against them, etc.
It is a charitable reading, but following that path insures that assimilation does not occur. You cannot be part of the larger society, if you insist on violating not only its norms but it’s laws.
That's the point, or at least what I think the quoted author's point was. The leaders actively did things that made assimilation less likely to occur, in fact discouraging assimilation. The "so-called 'leaders'" are not the good guys in that sentence :D
Assimilation is a bad thing according to progs.
This is just me but as a lifelong center left person I always knew the ‘progressive left’ was crap. First of all, BLM told us who they were in Ferguson. A bunch on lying grifters. Hands up don’t shoot never happened. And they announced their antisemitism fairly early. Then came the idiocy of gender ideology and its real harms along with the virtue signaling of pronoun posting. I can go on but I saw thru this stuff very early.
It just made me laugh to know that Ibram Kendis institute had produced nothing. Because it’s a scam.
The Jew hate seen by progressives seems very familiar, a lot like Trump hate. It’s Jewish Derangement Syndrome, growing out of years of Trump Derangement Syndrome, itself so often supported by Jews, including atheist Jews like Sam Harris, willing to support Dems stealing the election to stop Trump from winning. Power line links to great talk by him.
TDS grew from Bush hate (BusHitler!), when Bush Derangement Syndrome was coined, growing out of Reagan hate.
Jews who hate Trump, most of them in the US, won’t be changing their minds quickly. As Neo writes “a mind is a difficult thing to change.” Few who argue really ask themselves if they could be wrong.
> What has shocked Jews much more than the atrocities of Hamas are the atrocities committed by Progressives. It turns out that Progressives support a Palestinian cause that seeks not peace and dignity for all but to drive Jews out of the Middle East completely. Progressives say that the “context” justifies rape, murder and kidnapping of innocent people. Under the doctrine of intersectionality, Progressives manage to link support for Islamic theocrats to LGBTQ rights.
Reality as experienced by an Allist...it must be a trip, no wonder everyone on both sides is so shocked by these events.
Progressives haven’t changed a bit. But center left seems to be changing. Progs though are likely only 10% of the population. The other part of the left, especially immigrants, are moving right. From what I can see.
I was raised hard left. My conversion took me about ten years. To be fully red pilled. Mind you it was less existential then. The left hadn’t started actively killing people yet. At least in Canada. Many people are seeing through it finally.
Sadly, none of this is surprising. People need to see that most of our Political institutions and their employees are for sale. Corruption, greed and outright stupidity drive Western Governments. Behind every Leftist cause is usually a Grifter, Marxist or a Narcissist.
"Imagine if on college campuses there were students marching around in Ku Klux Klan hoods shouting racist slogans. And imagine they were doing this right after the death of George Floyd. That is what the pro-Hamas demonstrations feel like to Jewish students."
or imagine if a crazy mentally ill trans person shot up a preschooll and right after you had protests and riots PRO trans.
which literally happened.
or how about decades of violent crime from blacks on whites, death toll in the tens of thousands, and yet we get.... BLM riots.
I suspect you're being quite naive Arnold. I sympathize with your horror towards the Progs, but it's been ongoing for quite sometime and no, it won't stop just because for now Jews are on the receiving end.
Does anyone know of a political party with leading figures who
* blame Hamas for the deaths of Palestinian civilians, rather than rewarding Hamas by calling for an Israeli cease fire, and who, before recent events,
* talked about how to handle Iran, with a more negative outlook on the nuclear deal and a more positive outlook on promoting regime change,
* supported the Supreme Court’s ruling against racial preferences in college admissions rather than colleges’ attempts at evading the ruling,
* supported restoring order at the border,
* talked about America’s past with pride, not shame, and
* believed in resisting rather than appeasing radical young leftists.
Is there such a party? Probably not. Otherwise the mainstream news would be replete with accounts of that party being praised for its leaders' insight and moral clarity before Oct. 7.
Ken