I just left the Republican party

[Perd Hapley]

Hunter Rose,

I think it's like this:  the worshippers of Baal Peor wanted a god whom they could insult; a god who would not restrict their behavior in any way.  So they invented a god who wasn't much of a god at all.  Dressed-up atheism.

I don't know if the rabbi is saying that pagans such as yourself insult your gods, but I think he is saying that your gods don't demand anything of you, or that you practice obscure, primitive religions that you don't actually believe in.  That is, you worship gods that you know aren't there.  But, I have never heard this point of view before, so I might be interpreting him wrongly.

I won't tell you what Judaism is, you don't tell me what Paganism is.

I know the pain of other people dismissing your religion, and I've probably responded that way before, but it really doesn't make sense to say that.

Atheism:Atheism is the ontological position that contrasts with theism, including both the view of those without belief in the existence of deities, and the view of those who actively deny such entities exist. (from Wikipedia)

I thought ontology was the study of being, so I'm not sure how it fits in the above sentence.

[atek3]

Obviously people are free to cast votes for Humpty Dumpty if they want.  But if every conservative left the Republican Party the party would still be in power to some degree and it would be less responsive to conservative ideals.  What if Reagan had decided to run 3rd party?

Considering that Reagan ran huge deficits, increased taxes, expanded government spending faster than Carter or Clinton, and imposed protectionism, I don't really know.

atek3

[atek3]

Newt is a great historian and in a debate, he'd destroy his opponent.  I think he would invigorate the conservative spirit of our country.

Newt is another neo-con who's latest kick is teaming up with Hillary Clinton to increase meddling in Health Care.

atek3

[matis]

Fistful, the Constitution Party's emphasis on Christianity as the bedrock for running a government is alarming for a Jew who understands history.  And no what what the speaker wants you to hear, "Judeo-Christian Values" is code for "Christian Values"; you'll never hear those words spoken by a Jew.
____________________________________________________________________

AntiBubba,
I am a Jew who well understands this history.  Some of that history is, for me,  personal.  As a kid coming home from school I had, periodically, to map out my route as does a military scouting party.  So that I could make it home without encountering the "Frenchies" (this was Montreal, Quebec, Canada), Christians who when they caught me would punch me out while they called me "moodzie Juif".  That's French for "dirty Jew".

Of course at that age I knew nothing about the forty or so members of my family who were exterminated in Poland and Russia.  By Christians who committed the atrocities, or who eagerly aided and abetted, or who looked the other way.

I won't go into prior history.

Most of my Christian friends become quite uncomfortable should the discussion come around to past relations between Christians and Jews.


I will never forget and I well know it can happen again.


And yet I now use the phrase "Judeo-Christian".


Years ago I noticed that my voting pattern closely matched that of believing Christians.  Pretty much their values are my values.


Jews, like everyone else, have a tendency to live in the past -- instead of the here and now.

Here and now, in America, anti-semitism is found mainly among left-liberal Christians (and of course, Muslims).  They advocate for dis-investment in Israel, consider the poor Palestinians as the victims of the Fascist Israelis and so on.

But a striking feature of such Christians is that they don't really believe in Christ.

Like left-liberal Jews their religion is, more or less, socialism and they are dedicated to social activism.  Almost always on the wrong side.


I have found that Evangelical and Charismatic Christians usually are the friends of Jews.  And as far as Israel goes, they are usually better friends and supporters than are liberal-left Jews.  And MUCH smarter in their understanding of what is necessary for Israel's survival.  When the 2nd intifada began in 2000 and tourism, including that of Jews, dried up, these Christians kept coming to Israel -- to show their love and support and to spend their money to support Israel.

There are Christian organizations who collect funds in order to promote aliya (Jews from the diaspora moving to Israel).  One such Christian organization has actually purchased a ship to use for this purpose.

Do such Christians want to convert Jews?  Or is their concern connected to their interest in the Rapture?  For some Christians the answer is yes to both.

So what?

 
Only Jews so assimilated that they are ignorant of who they really are and what Judaism actually is -- only such Jews are vulnerable.  Whose responsibility is that?


So it is important to live in the here and now.  And here and now it is NOT Christians who threaten Jews.  At least it is not American Christians.

While liberal-left (and too many other) Jews are suspicious of Christians, they get all excited about any possible discrimination or persecution against Muslims.  While attacking Christianity, they rush to defend Muslims.


For a brilliant people who win all those Nobel prizes -- the people of the book -- how stupid can they get?


At least ten percent, some say over thirty percent of Muslims are Islamofascists.
Those percentages are multiplied by 1.2 billion Muslims in the world!  Do the math.
They hate and want to kill all infidels -- Americans, Israelis and especially, JEWS.

Hatred of America and Israel and of individual Jews is preached every Friday night in a very large percentage of Mosques.

American Muslims have already been apprehended with weapons and plans to attack Jewish institutions including Synagogues.

I have read that groups among American (and English and French and so on) Muslims are engaged in collecting addresses and information on ALL Jews.

Islam is once more on the March.

Do you know your history?  How about the history of the Islamic conquest of much of Europe and the world?  

They themselves say, "First the Saturday people, then the Sunday people."

And yet these Jews fear Christians, our natural allies, and are SO CONCERNED for Muslim rights.

As a kid, when accused of killing Christ, I would tell these idiots to bug off --  "I wasn't there and I didn't do it."

How about surfacing and living in the here and now?  American believing Christians  -" they weren't there and they didn't do it."


By the way, AntiBubba, what exactly is wrong with Christian values?

matis

[The Rabbi]

Obviously people are free to cast votes for Humpty Dumpty if they want.  But if every conservative left the Republican Party the party would still be in power to some degree and it would be less responsive to conservative ideals.  What if Reagan had decided to run 3rd party?

Considering that Reagan ran huge deficits, increased taxes, expanded government spending faster than Carter or Clinton, and imposed protectionism, I don't really know.

atek3

Really?  You must be remembering a different Reagan.  The Reagan I remember (and voted for twice) eliminated the upper categories of tax brackets and simpliefied them to three.  He faced down the air traffic controllers union and fired their butts.  He signed a bill to eliminate milk subsidies.  He ramped up the military and helped defeat the Soviet Union, saving billions in defense spending.  His policies increased tax revenues mainly by increasing GDP, not by increasing rates.

[grampster]

Please let me jump into this conversation for a second.

  First a "religion" comment:   As a gentile who is a Christian believer, I have received that which has been promised Israel from the beginning.  Therefore, Israel is my brother and my sister.  If not for Israel there would be no hope for the gentile.  There is counsel regarding this "grafting in" in the book of Romans for Christian gentiles regarding this.  The Apostle Paul was inspired to say this better than I.  Romans 11.  Pretty cut and dried imho.  I have a great respect and love for Israel.
  So, to speak of Judeo/Christian culture, there should be no fear in either camp.  Only rejoicing.  

History and the present tells us men have done much to each other using religion for their various political or monetary gain.  The evil done in the name of religion is not religion; it is Evil.  

Regarding Islam.  I am not familiar with the Koran.  I am told, however, that Muhammad's counsel to his followers were that if the infidel chose to live in peace with those of the Islamic faith, the followers of Muhammed must allow them to live at peace.  If that is the case, then those who promote "death to the infidel" fully and with no mercy, are apostates and should not be considered followers of that religion.  Again, not religion; Evil.

Now a political comment:  The problem then, is not religion but rather evil.  Unfortunately, the culture of the world today is to not acknowledge the existence of evil.  To do that would go against the notion that there is moral equivalence in all the cultures of man.  Therefore in the house of Equivalence, Evil stands on equal ground with Good.  If you think otherwise, look at the machinations of the UN.

The disputes of man should not be cloaked in religious definitions, but rather the struggle between good and evil.  I believe all men have a sense of the definition of both.  To argue about which is which is just another obfuscation of the reality of the struggle.

[The Rabbi]

I don't know if the rabbi is saying that pagans such as yourself insult your gods, but I think he is saying that your gods don't demand anything of you,

Quite right.

Actually, Rabbi, in my college days I started to look into wicca, and I discover-much to my surprise-that the qualities I found there were all the ones I had enjoyed as I grew up Jewish.  Ritual, holidays that celebrate over food, but especially the sense of immanence, the reawakening of the knowledge that G-d is everywhere, all around.

Antibubba,  involvement in Hillel (or most non Orthodox and many Orthodox orgs) would pretty much persuade any thinking person to become a Zoroastrian or who knows what else.  But the qualities that you mention, while certainly part of Judaism, are hardly the main core.  It is the imposition of a value system and standard of behavior often at odds with natural human inclinations, which defines Judaism or any religion.  As such Judaism demands sacrifice and self-abnegation. Sitting down to Passover seder is wonderful, but unless someone prepares for it properly (which is difficult and time consuming) he will not experience Passover.

[Perd Hapley]

Rabbi,

Did I overreach?  Is "your gods demand nothing of you" all you meant by your comment about dressed-up atheism?

[Antibubba]

matis,

   I have Christian friends, too, and a great many I'd entrust my life to.  What I fear is Christian Government.  Or any religious government-even a Jewish one.   It's why I'm here, and not in Israel.

How did Islam get brought into this?  I never mentioned Islam (but, no, I wouldn't want them running things either).  I am not MOST Jews.

*****
Rabbi, I understand those aren't the main values, but after Hillel I could find neither joy nor G-d in Judaism.  It took something outside it to bring me back in.

[atek3]

Really?  You must be remembering a different Reagan.  The Reagan I remember (and voted for twice) eliminated the upper categories of tax brackets and simpliefied them to three.  He faced down the air traffic controllers union and fired their butts.  He signed a bill to eliminate milk subsidies.  He ramped up the military and helped defeat the Soviet Union, saving billions in defense spending.  His policies increased tax revenues mainly by increasing GDP, not by increasing rates.

The much-heralded 1981 tax cut was more than offset by two tax increases that year. One was "bracket creep," by which just inflation wafted people into higher tax brackets, so that with the same real income (in terms of purchasing power) people found themselves paying a higher proportion of their income in taxes, even though the official tax rate went down. The other was the usual whopping increase in Social Security taxes which, however, dont count, in the perverse semantics of our time, as "taxes"; they are only "insurance premiums." In the ensuing years the Reagan Administration has constantly raised taxes  to punish us for the fake tax cut of 1981  beginning in 1982 with the largest single tax increase in American history, costing taxpayers $100 billion.

Creative semantics is the way in which Ronnie was able to keep his pledge never to raise taxes while raising them all the time. Reagans handlers, as we have seen, annoyed by the stubborn old coots sticking to "no new taxes," finessed the old boy by simply calling the phenomenon by a different name. If the Gipper was addled enough to fall for this trick, so did the American masses  and a large chuck of libertarians and self-proclaimed free-market economists as well! "Lets close another loophole, Mr. President." "We-e-ell, OK, then, so long as were not raising taxes." (Definition of loophole: Any and all money the other guy has earned and that hasnt been taxed away yet. Your money, of course, has been fairly earned, and shouldnt be taxed further

Income tax rates in the upper brackets have come down. But the odious bipartisan "loophole closing" of the Tax Reform Act of 1986  an act engineered by our Jacobin egalitarian "free market" economists in the name of "fairness"  raised instead of lowered the income tax paid by most upper-income people. Again: what one hand of government giveth, the other taketh away, and then some. Thus, President-elect Bush has just abandoned his worthy plan to cut the capital gains tax in half, because it would violate the beloved tax fairness instituted by the bipartisan Reganite 1986 "reform."

The bottom line is that tax revenues have gone up an enormous amount under the eight years of Reagan; the only positive thing we can say for them is that revenues as percentage of the gross national product are up only slightly since 1980. The result: the monstrous deficit, now apparently permanently fixed somewhere around $200 billion, and the accompanying tripling of the total federal debt in the eight blessed years of the Reagan Era. Is that what the highly touted "Reagan Revolution" amounts to, then? A tripling of the national debt?



How about deregulation? Didnt Ronnie at least deregulate the regulation-ridden economy inherited from the evil Carter? Just the opposite. The outstanding measures of deregulation were all passed by the Carter Administration, and, as is typical of that luckless President, the deregulation was phased in to take effect during the early Reagan years, so that the Gipper could claim the credit. Such was the story with oil and gas deregulation (which the Gipper did advance from September to January of 1981); airline deregulation and the actual abolition of the Civil Aeronautics Board, and deregulation of trucking. That was it.

The Gipper deregulated nothing, abolished nothing. Instead of keeping his pledge to abolish the Departments of Energy and Education, he strengthened them, and even wound up his years in office adding a new Cabinet post, the Secretary of Veterans Affairs. Overall, the quantity and degree of government regulation of the economy was greatly increased and intensified during the Reagan years. The hated OSHA, the scourge of small business and at the time the second most-hated agency of federal government (surely you need not ask which is the first most-hated), was not only not abolished; it too was strengthened and reinforced. Environmentalist restrictions were greatly accelerated, especially after the heady early years when selling off some public lands was briefly mentioned, and the proponents of actually using and developing locked-up government resources (James Watt, Anne Burford, Rita Lavelle) were disgraced and sent packing as a warning to any future "anti-environmentalists."

The Reagan Administration, supposedly the champion of free trade, has been the most protectionist in American history, raising tariffs, imposing import quotas, and  as another neat bit of creative semantics  twisting the arms of the Japanese to impose "voluntary" export quotas on automobiles and microchips. It has made the farm program the most abysmal of this century: boosting price supports and production quotas, and paying many more billions of taxpayer money to farmers so that they can produce less and raise prices to consumers.

And it goes on and on...

People that believe Reagan was 'good for liberty' listened to the rhetoric and not the policy.  Same with W Bush for that matter.

atek3