Glibertarians.com 2019 Archive

Category: Jews

  • De Bello Die Nativitate

    Today my daughter came home from school and presented me with this work of art she began composing while on her lunch break:

    I have never been prouder.

    Uncle Sugarfree suggested it needs more bile, however. Happy Holidays!

  • Great Glib Debate Series: Biff vs. Ozymandias

    And now, for your reading pleasure, the next installment of the debate competition for the ages!  Vote for the winner here.

     

     

    Question as asked:

    Given the existence of a nation-state and some form of Western representative government (think bicameral, parliamentary or some variation thereof), is multiculturalism or assimilationism preferable for the health of the nation and its people?

    Expansion: What “preferable” means will largely be left up to the debater to establish.  It could mean material prosperity, stability, personal or cultural identity; just argue convincingly to your point.

    Multiculturalism – numerous populations from disparate cultures living alongside one another within the nation while retaining much of their cultural distinctiveness.  The proverbial “salad bowl”.  Assimilationism – numerous populations from disparate cultures shedding or deemphasizing most of their cultural distinctiveness to adapt to the prevailing “majority culture”.  The proverbial “melting pot”.

    Biff defends multiculturalism, Ozy defends assimilationism.

     

     

    Biff:

    America has been multicultural since its inception. The very idea of freedom of speech, freedom of religious practice, and freedom of association are all foundational components of the United States, and all clearly support the idea of a multicultural nation. The cultural practices of colonial Georgians differed widely from colonial Virginians, much less the residents of the New England colonies. Concepts of individual liberty and freedom require multiculturalism. Demanding that all citizens adhere to a limited set of cultural ideas is the exact opposite of the type of freedom the United States sought (and still attempts, though often poorly) to provide its citizenry.

    Think of your favorite style of food – French, Italian, Thai, Indian. Now imagine how bland life would be if you could only ever get one of those. Multiculturalism means you can walk down the street and pick up a set of tacos on one corner and sushi at the next. No matter how much you like burgers and fries, after a while it gets boring. Variety is the spice of life.

    Multiculturalism means you get to celebrate (or just as importantly NOT celebrate) Diwali, or Yom Kippur, or Christmas, or Ivana Kupula, on any other Holiday you wish. It means (((They))) can get Chinese food and go to the movies on December 24th and 25th every year. It means you can even celebrate a made up Holiday like Kwanza (and really, aren’t they all made up?).

    Many have claimed Multiculturalism has its drawbacks – clashing ideas from different cultures have been the root of many conflicts over history, but it’s not multiculturalism’s fault – quite the opposite. True multiculturalism has an ingrained respect for other cultures where supremacy of one culture over another isn’t needed. It also demonstrates a true faith in your own culture in that your support of your own culture (born into or adopted) is sufficient that it can withstand differing opinions, viewpoints and traditions without feeling the need to suppress them or attempt to ban them outright. Much like the closely related theory of free speech, the best response  to objectionable cultural practices is exposure to alternate viewpoints and practices.

    Assimilation is for Star Trek villains – or for Bernie fans trying to streamline deodorant options.

     

     

    Ozymandias:

    Multiculturalism is an ideology doomed to failure because it is by its very nature antithetical to the concepts that undergird a nation-state. In short: the ‘salad bowl’ riposte to the ‘melting pot’ analogy ignores the fact that both need a container of some kind, be it ‘a bowl’ or ‘a pot.’ In either case, that vessel constitutes the extant culture into which the ingredients must be mixed and without which you merely have a mess of ingredients on the floor.

    To quote a Glib regarding language: “meanings have words” – and not the other way around, as it is commonly expressed. The same idea applies in the context of the nation-state. Nations don’t get created and then decide to pick and choose which cultures they’ll let in: nation-states are the byproduct of an extant culture. Through most of history those cultures that rose to sufficient heights or grew to sufficient size were almost always tied to an ethnicity and/or a dominant religion and a particular patch of dirt on the Earth.

    It was the United States that changed this conception with the creation of a nation-state steeped in Enlightenment ideas, founded explicitly against the notion of the European, ethnocentric model, to wit: France is where French people live; Italy is for Italians and Spain is for Spanish peoples, etc. The U.S. was founded by various European cultures, each in enclaves sufficient to allow them to grow, up against the pressures of raw nature with an indigenous culture, in which the “melting pot” concept could begin to take hold. Ideas such as rugged individualism inhered in the very nature of the undertaking to come to the New Land and “find one’s fortune.’ The ‘pot’ of the melting pot was already cast before the U.S. was even a political entity.

    By contrast, the evidence of the failed experiment of multiculturalism is everywhere in Europe. This is because the idea that immigrant culture can be imported, yet retain all of its own antecedents, misses the mark for a host of reasons, all related to the “bowl” into which these new cultures must be poured.

    1.     Cultures – i.e. collections of relatively homogenous groups of human beings – are deeply influenced by their environment, including weather, mountains, plains, desert, etc. We seem to have lost touch with this simple, ineluctable fact of life, especially in urban centers, where food magically appears, now that only 2-3% of our population help feed the other 97%.

    2.    Cultures always, always, include ways of solving disputes; there are objectively – measurably – better ways to resolve disputes. In Afghanistan, for example, honor culture demands the killing of the eldest son in response to certain offenses. This is decidedly NOT a good way of resolving disputes if we place any value on human life. Courts are a better way, for just one example.

    3.    No culture can expect to survive, to maintain the “pot” or “bowl,” if the ingredients themselves are allowed to alter the bowl, or destroy it at their whim.

    4.    In a bowl with different ingredients, the radishes shouldn’t get to enslave the avocado because that’s what ‘radish’ culture demands.

    5.    The US explicitly chose assimilation, even with people with a very similar common heritage, namely, Mormons. Statehood was explicitly conditioned upon giving up bigamy. One may argue about whether that specific choice was necessary, but the fact is that the US made historical choices to preserve the distinct characteristics of culture over the “salad” approach.

    None of this even begins to address issues such as language, which includes means of commerce and currency that must be fairly constant for the nation-state to survive. The ascendancy of American English as the lingua franca for the world is not a historical birthright. It is a result of deserved U.S. cultural ascendancy across a range of important areas of human relations, from international aviation, to computers, commerce, science and other technology, including medicine, and on and on. If those gains in civilization mean anything, they certainly indicate the need to preserve the underlying character of the culture that produced those gains.

     

     

    Vote!

     

  • Great Glibs Debate Series: PieInTheSky vs. Larry Joe

    Our inaugural matchup: Pie vs. Larry Joe! Remember, the Survey Monkey will be open for 24 hours here.

    The question as it was posed to them:

    Given a general libertarian perspective on bodily autonomy taken as a prerequisite, assume an individual has absolute ownership of his own DNA.  Imagine a cloning machine exists such than an individual can take a personal DNA sample and clone a perfect copy of himself.  If someone decides to create clones of himself specifically to kill them, is that murder, or is the clone an extension of that person’s body and, therefore, not murder?
    Pie will argue that it is murder, Larry Joe will argue that it isn’t.

     

    PieInTheSky:What does “an individual has absolute ownership of his own DNA” truly mean? Keeping with the premise, we can assume the DNA can be seen as a form of IP.

    What is DNA? DNA is simply information, data. It is codified in a certain way in organic matter, part of all living things, but, in the end, it is information.

    What is a human? Is an individual just information? I argue against that assumption. An individual is defined as more than just information. A 23andme database does not have the same moral value as the human who spat in a tube. And while we can delete the database, we cannot delete the human. Your DNA does not define you fully. Who looks at a person and sees some DNA?

    A human is an independent sentient biological organism, directed in development by DNA and environment and random chance. From a libertarian perspective, a person’s moral value goes well beyond the bits of data codified in DNA. No one says “all unique DNA configurations have the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness”.  A human has a body, a mind, a consciousness, self-awareness – these are the basis of moral consideration. It does, in fact, contain DNA information, but it is much more than the information in itself. The moment a clone is made, it is an independent organism with the above characteristics. While the biologically stored information is the same as the original, the being is separate. The DNA is incidental at best.  Personhood is not defined by unique stored information, and as such a clone is not its DNA, so it is not under the ownership of the original DNA donor. There is no reason to think they would be.

    Contributing information does not give you right to kill. While children are solely composed on the DNA of the parents, it does not mean the parents can simply jointly decide to kill them at any point through life. DNA data configuration is not relevant in decisions of personhood.

     

     

    Larry Joe:

    Surely some would say, “to create a human life simply to kill it is certainly immoral and murder!” They may be correct with regards to the morality of such an action; but ought it really be considered murder?

    The main defense of this most libertarian of libertarians, wishing to kill a piece of himself for sport, is that we already exclude from murder many classifications of killings of humans. Self-defense of one’s own (or another innocent’s) life is a widely recognized right and justification for killing. Defense of one’s domicile, as reflected in numerous “castle” laws placing the burden of proving malicious intent on the state, is another. In a legal sense we often distinguish murder from manslaughter, typically lacking the “malice aforethought” required for murder. Finally we reach the two most relevant distinctions, those with a murkier moral position and greater social disagreement: suicide and abortion.

    The general libertarian perspective of bodily autonomy is supportive of the right to self-determined suicide; it is in essence the ultimate example of such a right. The act of suicide itself is legal in most of the world, with support for assisting a person in committing suicide gaining support in some U.S. and Australian states, Canada, and some European countries, depending upon circumstances. While many may morally oppose committing or assisting in suicide, there is a growing legal movement toward decriminalization.

    Abortion is a divisive issue with a long history of being considered a moral offense.

    In contrast to the moral considerations, note that abortion is legal (up to various stages of gestation) without a justification in nearly every country in the Northern Hemisphere. Even one of the crowning jewels of classical liberal legislation, the United States Bill of Rights, is interpreted as protecting the “fundamental right” to abortion under the “penumbra” of the right to privacy. The Bill of Rights faces enough attacks; must we libertarians undermine it too?

    Given the numerous exceptions to human killing being considered murder, it seems presumptuous to assume that the killing of a clone must be considered such. If one has complete authority over one’s DNA, how can the government justifiably restrict actions taken to property created through that DNA? How can one justify the killing of a fetus, up to the point of partial delivery, without also permitting the killing of a clone created expressly for that purpose? The moral character of a psycho clone killer is certainly up for debate, but for the government to consider him a murderer is a bridge too far.

    Vote!

  • Jewsday Tuesday: Lepers, Levites, and Laments

    The Torah reading this week is from the jawbreakingly named “Behaalotecha,” which basically means, “Roll up for the Mystery Tour.” And talk about weird and scattered.

    We start with Aaron getting orders from Yahweh to light the tabernacle’s candelabra every day. But not just any old candelabra- Yahweh is a god of taste, refinement, and distinction. THAT candelabra has to be made of hammered gold, presumably by a hammered goldsmith. But Yahweh is never simple, and the instructions start getting more and more ornate. The next thing that has to be done is getting the Levites assembled. But before they can assemble, they have to ritually bathe and shave themselves. Not just their beards, we’re talking full Brazilian. Dingleberries are common in the desert, but they are not kosher fruit. Once cleaned, shaved, and assembled, all the other Jews have to surround them and do the Wave. I am not bullshitting, this is the stuff that Yahweh thrives on, much like Moses and macaroni pictures. Afterwards, the Levites are supposed to lay hands on a couple of calves, and in the inverse of the Christian ritual of healing via laying on of hands, the calves are killed.

    Nothing is simple with Yahweh.

    Now this seems like a lot of work for Aaron, but the whole point is that the Levites now have to pitch in and do this work as well, interspersed with bathing and shaving and getting the Wave. It’s no fun being a Levite.

    In the manner of a book written by an Aspie, suddenly we’ve changed the subject, and now we’re talking about Pesach. See, there’s weird taboos about touching dead bodies, and a bunch of guys who touched dead bodies (I think they were people with legitimate functions, not corpse-fuckers) pointed out that because they were ritually unclean and had to sit outside the city for 7 days, they missed all the Pesach fun. They said to Moses, “This sucks! Here we are doing our jobs, following the rules, and what happens? We get punished for it! We want the goddamn 4 cups of wine and matzo brei!” Moses, being the corporate lackey that he was, nodded and said, “Yeah, that’s a good point. Let me kick this one upstairs and see what the Boss says.” Moses got past the secretary and managed to ask the Boss, “OK, these guys are doing what we’re telling them to do, how do we deal with this?” Yahweh, who despite other flaws was a reasonably competent HR manager, thought about it and responded, “Good point, I guess we hadn’t thought that one through. Tell ya what, if someone misses out on the Pesach fun because they touched a body or they were on a long trip and couldn’t get back in time, we can have a Make-Up Pesach. We’ll make it, I dunno, maybe a month later. yeah, that’s the ticket. But let me be clear- this is for corpse-touchers and frequent flyers only. If you missed the fun because you were procrastinating, fuck you.”

    SCREEEECH! We change the subject again, now to tents, clouds, and trumpets. Not just any trumpets, hammered silver trumpets, presumably made by a hammered silversmith. This is all the shit involved in telling the Jews when to stay and when to get moving, using hammered silver trumpets as the signal. I mean, 40 years wandering around, that’s going to take some direction, and the bugle hadn’t been invented yet. Of course, bugles are brass anyway, and that’s kind of insulting to Yahweh. In any case, after a year in the same spot, the Jews all started moving again.

    SCREEEEECH! Just as you were getting comfortable… Jews start whining and complaining. First, they whined at Yahweh. “Manna for breakfast, manna for lunch, manna for dinner, we’re getting damn sick of this. And all the walking! Isn’t there a nice chair somewhere and maybe some meat? Kreplach would be nice, but a brisket would do.” That pissed Yahweh off a bit, and he returned the favor by raining down fire. So the whining got redirected to Moses, who was lacking in the raining-down-fire department. There were six hundred thousand whiners involved in this, which was a bit much for Moses to handle alone. So he did what any good middle manager would do and complained to HIS boss. “These people are driving me fucking nuts. I can’t get anything done because I’m busy listening to one whiner after another.” Yahweh nodded and said, “OK, I’ll authorize a headcount increase. Hire seventy people for the Complaint Department. And by the way, I have a little trick up my sleeve…” Remember the famous Mencken quote about the definition of democracy? Well, it wasn’t original with him, Yahweh got there first. And channeling a speech from the future (omniscients can be ruthless plagiarizers), Yahweh said, “We’re going to get meat. We’re going to get so much meat. We’re going to get so much meat, you’re going to be so sick and tired of meat, you’re going to come to me and go ‘Please, please, we can’t eat any more meat.’ You’ve heard this one. You’ll say ‘Please, Yahweh, we beg you sir, we don’t want to get any more meat. It’s too much. It’s not fair to everybody else.’ And I’m going to say ‘I’m sorry, but we’re going to keep getting meat, getting meat, getting meat, we’re going to make the Children of Israel great again.’”

    And to prove his point, Yahweh inundated the Jews with quail. They set upon it like a freshly-baked stoner on a plate of chocolate chip cookies. “Poultry, this is more like it!” As always, though, Yahweh was a consummate asshole and managed to infect all the quail with the Plague. “HAR HAR HAR, THE JOKE IS ON YOU, WHINY HEBES!”

    SCREEEEEECH! Just when you think there’s a theme developing, we suddenly change directions again. Moses’s sister, Miriam, and his brother, Aaron, started their own complaints. “That fucking brother of ours married a shiksa, but he still gets all the glory while we get bupkis.” Do NOT dis Yahweh’s favorite middle manager because that’s gonna piss Yahweh off royally. And it did. So Miriam get hit with leprosy. This freaked out Moses, who said to Yahweh, “Look, she’s a meddlesome Jewess, but she IS my sister. Can you let up a bit before her hands fall off or something? And since you left Aaron alone,  we might be open to a sex discrimination suit. Satan does have all the lawyers, after all…” In the interests of worker morale and staying out of court, Yahweh said, “Look, she has to be taught a lesson. How about she just has leprosy for a week?” Moses thought about that, and said, “Yeah, I guess a suspension is better than termination.” So Miriam had to stand outside the city for a week until it went away, and she managed to save most of her hands and feet. Aaron still skated. For now.

    Yahweh has a tough job, head of HR.

     

     

  • Jewsday, uhhhhh, Thursday

    The Judenrat of Lodz.

    A question that gets asked a lot is, “Why is it that Team Blue’s turn toward anti-semitism has not significantly driven Jews out of the party?” It’s a reasonable question, and I gave a partial answer some time ago in a Jewsday Tuesday, a desire among the upper and upper middle classes to demonstrate their virtue as a way of expiating their feelings of guilt over their good fortunes, all encouraged by actual Jewish traditions of charity and “healing the world.” There’s also the concept (very flawed) of the “self-hating Jew”; this is a particularly ridiculous term for a real phenomenon, given that the people who are described this way generally think quite highly of themselves, they just dislike OTHER Jews. But it goes a bit beyond all that, I think. Since people love drawing historic parallels, I’ll do the same by reminding us of the Judenrat.

    The Judenrat came about during the ghettoization of Europe under the Germans. The basic concept was a group of Jews selecting themselves as intermediaries between the Germans and the ghetto residents. The Judenrat would essentially act as a local government to make sure that the ghetto residents behaved themselves and didn’t piss off the Germans too much by acting up, or Yahweh forbid, rebelling. By this means, they hoped to curry favor with the Germans by helping to enforce German law and restrictions within their community. This sort of structure had a long tradition in European Jewish areas for much of the period of Christian rule; it was not an innovation of WWII, although its formalization (if not its authority) was dictated by the Germans.

    Whence, then, derived their authority? The Judenrat were mostly populated by rabbis and other prominent citizens (upper class and upper middle class- sound familiar?), who felt that “go along to get along” was the best policy- of course, the fact that they had their social positions (and fortunes) at stake had no bearing on their decision to bow down to the Powers That Be. Perish that thought. The basic concept was the rationalization of cooperating with one’s enemies for some sense of reward.

    It might be monetary, it might be survival with other people being killed, it might be a sense of moral self-satisfaction. Hey, if others suffer but you prosper or at least escape the fate befalling your community, what’s wrong with that?

    The historian Hannah Arendt caused great consternation by observing:

    Wherever Jews lived, there were recognized Jewish leaders, and this leadership, almost without exception, cooperated in one way or another, for one reason or another, with the Nazis. The whole truth was that if the Jewish people had been really unorganized and leaderless, there would have been chaos and plenty of misery but the total number of victims would hardly have been between four and half and six million people.

    Unintentional libertarianism, but nonetheless, her point was sound.

     

    Here’s excerpts from meetings of the Judenrat of Bialystock (source: Yad Vashem):

    More than eight months have already passed since the fence made a special “kingdom” for us, the Jewish ghetto. In this “kingdom” the Judenrat carries out the duties of a “government,” and we, the Jewish police, must carry out the difficult task of keeping order and maintaining quiet in the ghetto. I asked Engineer Barash several times to arrange talks with the population of the ghetto. The thing is this: the regulations of the authorities are not being properly observed. Perhaps I am at fault myself, I am too soft and moderate, and our people do not take into account that we are Jews. The evening curfew is not observed punctually: one must go to bed at 9 o’clock, one is not allowed to be in the street. Not keeping the regulations may cause somebody to be shot; and Jews often take a walk after the curfew hour. The yellow badge is not worn properly, one forgets it in front, and the next forgets it at the back. The same happens about the black-out. There have been cases of whole houses lit up like for a celebration. There has already been a tragic case in the ghetto: a woman was shot in her home when the room was badly blacked out. The Jews are a stiff-necked people. Street-trading never stops, especially on Kupiecka Street, and all our efforts do not help. That shows the need for a firm hand. There are telephone calls from the 4th [Police] Station outside the ghetto that Jewish children have been caught without yellow badges and without papers and that can cause a tragedy on some occasion. Parading up and down the street with children in colored baby carriages could also cause much annoyance. Let the mothers stop doing it.

    Groups of Jews gather around the gates of the ghetto and don’t go away even when the Germans chase them off, and the Jews might even be shot. Cleanliness is not satisfactory either. Thousands are spent on cleaning, and it is dirty again by the next morning; people don’t take care, they don’t want to know that that is a danger. And again, thousands of Jews go to work, work in the sweat of their brows, and at the same time many others avoid work in various ways. The house committees are obliged to hand over such cases so that the members of the Jewish Police need not catch passers-by in the street and start fighting with Jews. That brings no credit either to the population or to the Jewish Police. If things go on like this for much longer, there is likely to be a catastrophe, for anyone who wants to live must work!

    I am full of admiration for the close harmony that reigns between the members of the Judenrat. Differences of opinion simply do not happen. All our decisions and actions are unanimous.The Judenrat did not start out as what it is today: It developed in time as it worked, thanks to the efforts of its first members who created everything that we now have. As I said, we were not chosen by anybody. The respected Eng. Barash convinced us to accept the great and difficult duties because he understood the needs of the hour. Now it has become a government, so to say, with all the offices, departments, ministers. The official chairman, Dr. Rosenman, walks around by himself to find workers for the Germans. He has gone through a great deal. His most important contribution was to have appointed the respected Eng. Barash, because the Rabbi did not have the strength to do everything that was needed. I do not wish to praise the individual, what matters to me is the job, the achievement. The respected Eng. Barash is the prime minister in our “government,” as well as the minister of the interior, minister of industry, because in the ghetto everything must be concentrated in one hand. Industry, for instance, is connect with the Wehrmacht, so it becomes a matter of foreign policy. Sometimes we are surprised how he gets it all done, how it all works out. It seems like Divine intervention, particularly in the past few weeks. Everything gets done in the best possible way. The other responsibilities, it seems to me, are carried out by the other members, but it is the spirit, the direction, which is the most important thing….

    What is our direction? In matters concerning the community we try always to reach agreement, compromise, so that everybody may be satisfied. From now on we shall have to stand by the letter of the law! Let him who is fearful and fainthearted return to his house! We shall have to cling to this principle if we wish to stay alive. And the ghetto must remain a productive element as well.

     

    By contrast, here is a transcript from a meeting of the resistance fighters of the Bialystock ghetto (source: Yad Vashem):

    It’s a good thing that at least the mood is good. Unfortunately, the meeting won’t be very cheerful. This meeting may be historic, if you like, tragic if you like, but certainly sad. That you people sitting here are the last halutzim in Poland; around us are the dead. You know what happened in Warsaw, not one survived, and it was the same in Bendin and in Czestochowa,and probably everywhere else. We are the last. It is not a particularly pleasant feeling to be the last: it involves a special responsibility. We must decide today what to do tomorrow. There is no sense in sitting together in a warm atmosphere of memories! Nor in waiting together, collectively, for death. Then what shall we do?

    We can do two things: decide that when the first Jew is taken away from Bialystok now, we start our counter-Aktion. That nobody will go to the factories from tomorrow, that none of us is allowed to hide when the Aktion starts.

    Everybody will be mobilized for the job. We can see to it that not one German leaves the ghetto, that not one factory remains whole. It is not impossible that after we have completed our task, someone may by chance still be alive.

    But we will fight to the last, till we fall.

    …Here in Bialystok we are fated to live out the last act of this blood-stained tragedy. What can we do and what should we do? The way I see it the situation really is that the great majority in the ghetto and of our group are sentenced to die. Our fate is sealed. We have never looked on the forest as a place in which to hide, we have looked on it as a base for battle and vengeance. But the tens of young people who are going into the forests now do not seek a battlefield there, most of them will lead beggars’ lives there and most likely will find a beggar’s death. In our present situation our fate will be the same, beggars all.

    Only one thing remains for us: to organize collective resistance in the ghetto, at any cost, to let the ghetto be our Masada, to write a proud chapter on Jewish Bialystok and on our Movement.

    I know which group (((I))) would be in.

     

    And here is a speech from the head of the Vilna Judenrat given to the ghetto residents about arming themselves and the necessity of common-sense gun control (source: Yad Vashem):

    A few days ago I went to the Gestapo and spoke to the Commander of the SD there about the revolvers. I may tell you that he is not at all stupid. He said to me: “From an economic point of view the ghetto is very valuable, but if you are going to take foolish risks and if there is any question of security, then I will wipe you out. And even if you get 30, 40 or 50 revolvers, you will not be able to save yourselves and will only bring on your misfortune faster.”

    Why did I call you together? Because today another Jew has been arrested for buying a revolver. I don’t yet know how this case will end. The last case ended fortunately for the ghetto. But I can tell you that if it happens again we shall be very severely punished. Perhaps they will take away those people over 60, or children… Now consider whether that is worthwhile!!! There can be only one answer for those who think soundly and maturely: It is not worthwhile!!!

    As long as the ghetto remains a ghetto those of us who have the responsibility will do everything we can so that nothing shall happen to the ghetto. Nowadays a Jew’s whole family is responsible for him. If that is not enough, then I will make the whole room responsible for him, and if even that is not enough – the apartment and even the building.

    You will have to watch each other, and if there are any hot-heads then it is your duty to report it to the Police. That is not informing. It would be informing if you were to keep silent and the people were to suffer.

    This really sounds eerily familiar.

     

    Lest I imply that the Judenrat were irredeemably and universally evil, allow me to briefly mention Dov Lopatyn, the head of the Judenrat of the Lakva Ghetto in Belarus. The Germans informed the Judenrat that the people of the ghetto were to be murdered, but that if the Judenrat cooperated, they would be spared. Lopatyn refused, and immediately set into motion a plan for resistance. When the Germans entered the ghetto, the Jewish leaders set the Judenrat headquarters on fire as a signal. The ghetto resistance ambushed the Germans, and fought them with every weapon at their disposal and no hope of survival. Indeed, the majority of ghetto inhabitants were killed, but at least they managed to inflict some casualties. Over a thousand ghetto inhabitants escaped during the battle. Most escapees were also found and killed, but Lopatyn joined the Communist resistance and over the next couple of years, managed to take out some measure of vengeance against the Germans before being killed in battle. Some people are capable of learning.

    Some are not.

     

     

  • Q’s Brain Toilet the Fourth: Wobbly H

    Special delivery!  One set of random vignettes for glibertarians.com!  Please sign here.

    Progressivism as Millenarian Cult

    I’ve alluded to this several times in the comment section and finally got around to consolidating my thoughts into something (semi) coherent.  I believe that modern Progressivism functions much in the same way as a Millenarian cult.  For those not familiar, Millenarian cults have been around for basically as long as humans have been around.  The etymology of the word is not 100% clear, but it seems to stem from the claim from Revelations that the Second Coming will usher in a reign of perfection for 1000 years.  This is the Christian version, but these types of cults go back much further than that.  The basic idea is that there will be a sudden and fundamental shift in which all of society is transformed, usually after some kind of catastrophe (war, natural disaster, plague, etc.) and afterward, the righteous will live on in a Utopia.  ISIS was a Millenarian cult in that they were open about wanting to goad the West into a “war to end all wars” that would bring about the perfect Islamic society.  Progs, I believe, have crossed into this arena in that much of their behavior is overtly, and often pointlessly, antagonistic to their ideological enemies.  For example: immigrant caravans.  These are quite obviously being organized top-down by prog NGOs and non-profits, then covered extensively by the DemOpMedia.  Why now?  They could have been doing this for 8 years during Obama and he likely would have bent over backward to accommodate them and bring the people in.  Instead, they pull this stunt during Trump’s admin in which his primary campaign plank is ending illegal immigration.  They’re trying to provoke a response and I believe it goes far beyond political gamesmanship.  They are, quite literally, on a Mission from G-d (or whatever higher power they ascribe to) and crave war.  You see it everywhere in the DemOpMedia; times when it would makes sense in every way to try and deescalate, they turn things up to eleven antagonizing for seemingly no reason.  Their ratings and reputation continue to find new meanings of rock bottom; but those are temptations of Babylon.  They have a greater purpose, they must bring about the Apocalypse at any cost.  Only then can Bad Orange Man and his army of sub-human Deplorables be wiped from the Earth once and for all.  Then, my brothers, sisters and non-binary otherkin, the great World to Come will be upon us and we will bask in the warm, healing glow of perfect society.  

    Better Living Through Chemistry: Prescription Edition

    In a previous Brain Toilet, I outlined the best OTC supplements for life enhancement, now I move on to prescriptions.  A few words of caution: I strongly recommend conferring with a physician before undertaking any of these treatments.  The last thing I want on my conscience is some foolish Glib trying one of these cavalierly and ending up disabled or dead.  Ultimately, you are responsible for what you put in your body, but please be careful.  One more note, it is (mostly) legal to order these meds over the internet as long as they aren’t scheduled.  If they’re scheduled/controlled, all bets are off.  I take no responsibility for your decisions; once again use your best judgement.  Basically, don’t take these drugs, ever.  Good thing I have a friend who can tell me all about their effects.

    Cabergoline – I have flogged this miracle drug in the comment section before so you should be mildly familiar with it.  This is an ergot derivative dopamine agonist, specifically of the D2 receptor.  Approved treatments are Parkinsons’s and RLS, but it is sometimes used off-label for depression and used recreationally for sexy fun time.  You see, this drug suppresses prolactin, the hormone responsible for the male refractory period; meaning if you take it for a couple of weeks, your prolactin level will drop basically to zero and you will be able to ejaculate over and over with little to no break in between.  Watch out for signs of impulse control disorder or DAWS.  Use caution, but my friend says it’s totes worth it.    

    Topiramate – This is an anti-epileptic drug that is also sometimes used for bipolar as well.  It is also notorious for rapid and massive weight loss, so much so that it’s sometimes used off-label for antipsychotic associated weight gain.  My friend says this stuff works as advertised and fast.  No one really knows why it does this, but concerted effort is required to make sure the weight stays off once the drug is no longer being taken.  The list of side-effects is also about 2 miles long so caveat emptor.

    Various Serotonergic Drugs for Premature Ejaculation – This is not a problem my friend has traditionally had issues with so a grain of salt is likely needed here, but these drugs’ ability to delay ejaculation for men quick on the trigger is very well documented.  If you suffer from said problem and you’d like to treat your gal/guy to longer rolls in the hay, this could be a solution for you.  Each flavor seems to have different levels of activity though, ranging from fluvoxamine (minor delay if at all) to clomipramine (he/she wants to be fucked until the next arrival of Haley’s Comet).  These drugs are very well studied so you can find mountains of information on them.

    Trazodone – Another antidepressant, but not of the serotonergic variety, this guy does not cause the same sexual issues as the previous ones and his primary off-label use is for insomnia.  A low dose (50 mg or so) should be enough to send you to dreamland post haste with minimal drowsiness the next day.

    Things Worse Than Hitler

    • Using water instead of milk for hot cocoa
    • People who continue to text/talk on the phone while at the counter of a business
    • Dewpoints above 70F
    • Granny panties
    • Tube socks
    • Jar Jar Binks
    • Charles Preston’s crossword puzzles
    • Meaningless MBA corporate buzzwords
    • The destruction of one of your favorite places on Earth by a shithead land developer but you can’t get too mad because it’s capitalism after all and time marches on
    • Girls that don’t keep things fresh “down there”
    • Real Salt Lake
    • Hipsters who like things “you’ve probably never heard of bro”
    • Nike soccer balls
    • Juniper, unless harnessed in gin
    • And of course, DRUMPF (am I doing this right?)

    The End… ?

    Until next time sweet Glibs.  Look both ways before you cross the street, always brush your teeth and wrap your whacker before you attack her.  You have been subjected to yet another peristaltic ejection from Q’s brain, make sure you wash your hands before you eat.

     

  • Economics Corner with Paul Krugman and Winston’s Mom

    Hey fellas?  How ya been?

    Here’s tonight’s drivel from your favorite Nobel Laureate!

    A peculiar chapter in the 2020 presidential race ended Monday, when Bernie Sanders, after months of foot-dragging, finally released his tax returns. The odd thing was that the returns appear to be perfectly innocuous. So what was all that about?

    The answer seems to be that Sanders got a lot of book royalties after the 2016 campaign, and was afraid that revealing this fact would produce headlines mocking him for now being part of the 1 Percent. Indeed, some journalists did try to make his income an issue.

    This line of attack is, however, deeply stupid. Politicians who support policies that would raise their own taxes and strengthen a social safety net they’re unlikely to need aren’t being hypocrites; if anything, they’re demonstrating their civic virtue.

    This criticism is perfectly valid as Bernie’s entire message is the wealthiest among us should pay for every tom, dick, and harry snatch of a government program that he never seems to have an issue supporting.  If he himself makes more money than nearly all Americans and programs where he can pay more in taxes than is required by law, yet fails to do so demonstrates hypocrisy on his part. He can’t even say he donated to charity, as he donated a pittance compared to what he made.  Bernie is no saint and neither are you for defending him.

    But failure to understand what hypocrisy means isn’t the only way our discourse about politics and inequality goes off the rails. The catchphrase “the 1 Percent” has also become a problem, obscuring the nature of class in 21st-century America.

    Focusing on the top percentile of the income distribution was originally intended as a corrective to the comforting but false notion that growing inequality was mainly about a rising payoff to education. The reality is that over the past few decades the typical college graduate has seen only modest gains, with the big money going to a small group at the top. Talking about “the 1 Percent” was shorthand for acknowledging this reality, and tying that reality to readily available data.

    But putting Bernie Sanders and the Koch brothers in the same class is obviously getting things wrong in a different way.

    This is absolutely correct.  The Kock brothers donate generously to charity, as well as have a number of foundations in their name, including educations grants, research, k-12…. How much did Bernie donate again?

    True, there’s a huge difference between being affluent enough that you don’t have to worry much about money and living with the financial insecurity that afflicts many Americans who consider themselves middle class. According to the Federal Reserve, 40 percent of U.S. adults don’t have enough cash to meet a $400 emergency expense; a much larger number of Americans would be severely strained by the kinds of costs that routinely arise when, say, illness strikes, even for those who have health insurance.

    $400?  Sounds like a personal problem.  Even I have $2000 in cash hidden in my ass.

    So if you have an income high enough that you can easily afford health care and good housing, have plenty of liquid assets and find it hard to imagine ever needing food stamps, you’re part of a privileged minority.

    But there’s also a big difference between being affluent, even very affluent, and having the kind of wealth that puts you in a completely separate social universe. It’s a difference summed up three decades ago in the movie “Wall Street,” when Gordon Gekko mocks the limited ambitions of someone who just wants to be “a $400,000-a-year working Wall Street stiff flying first class and being comfortable.”

    Even now, most Americans don’t seem to realize just how rich today’s rich are. At a recent event, my CUNY colleague Janet Gornick was greeted with disbelief when she mentioned in passing that the top 25 hedge fund managers make an average of $850 million a year. But her number was correct.

    One survey found that Americans, on average, think that corporate C.E.O.s are paid about 30 times as much as ordinary workers, which hasn’t been true since the 1970s. These days the ratio is more like 300 to 1.

    Why should we care about the very rich? It’s not about envy, it’s about oligarchy.

    With great wealth comes both great power and a separation from the concerns of ordinary citizens. What the very rich want, they often get; but what they want is often harmful to the rest of the nation. There are some public-spirited billionaires, some very wealthy liberals. But they aren’t typical of their class.

    Its not about millionaires like Bernie.  No, the problem is billionaires.  You’re starting to sound like this guy.

    The very rich don’t need Medicare or Social Security; they don’t use public education or public transit; they may not even be that reliant on public roads (there are helicopters, after all). Meanwhile, they don’t want to pay taxes.

    …but…but…muh ROOOOOOAAAAAAAADZ.  Billionaires never use ROOOOOOOOAAAAAAADZ.

    Sure enough, and contrary to popular belief, billionaires mostly (although often stealthily) wield their political power on behalf of tax cuts at the top, a weaker safety net and deregulation. And financial support from the very rich is the most important force sustaining the extremist right-wing politics that now dominates the Republican Party.

    Well shit.  Could it be prominent politicians in the Democrat Party, like Bernie, having anything to do with that?

    That’s why it’s important to understand who we mean when we talk about the very rich. It’s not doctors, lawyers or, yes, authors, some of whom make it into “the 1 Percent.” It’s a much more rarefied social stratum.

    None of this means that the merely affluent should be exempt from the burden of creating a more decent society. The Affordable Care Act was paid for in part by taxes on incomes in excess of $200,000, so 400K-a-year working stiffs did pay some of the cost. That’s O.K.: They (we) can afford it. And whining that $200,000 a year isn’t really rich is unseemly.

    But we should be able to understand both that the affluent in general should be paying more in taxes, and that the very rich are different from you and me ­— and Bernie Sanders. The class divide that lies at the root of our political polarization is much starker, much more extreme than most people seem to realize.

    Last I checked, with a single exception, none of the billionaires you are lambasting are running for president.  The number of billionaires is also such a tiny number in comparison to the general population that simply taking their money will never pay for his programs.  No, he will have to tax people like him, like you and nearly everyone else to pay for turning the entire country into a marauding gang of whores.  When given the chance to pay more than his “fair share” of taxes, or even to charities that do a lot of good helping the poor and downtrodden, he chose not to.  This is what makes him a hypocrite, because he knows better than everyone else who actually produced anything of value to society and was rewarded with wealth beyond what any one person might require, until it cums to his own money.

    Which is fine for you to defend him, you advocate the same bullshit he does, and as it turns out, you also donated absolutely nothing to charity, either.

  • Economics Corner with Paul Krugman and Winston’s Mom

    Here’s the link.  Apparently Krugabe thinks Trump is trying to kill us all.

    There’s a lot we don’t know about the legacy Donald Trump will leave behind. And it is, of course, hugely important what happens in the 2020 election. But one thing seems sure: Even if he’s a one-term president, Trump will have caused, directly or indirectly, the premature deaths of a large number of Americans.

    C’mon now, that doesn’t sound the least bit hyperbolic.  Its not like somebody is going to put a black bag over my head, and tie me up and beat me…..well at least not somebody from the Government.

    Some of those deaths will come at the hands of right-wing, white nationalist extremists, who are a rapidly growing threat, partly because they feel empowered by a president who calls them “very fine people.”

    I see you support your claim with a link to Vox.  I’m going to escalate this by throwing Jihadwatch at you!

    Some will come from failures of governance, like the inadequate response to Hurricane Maria, which surely contributed to the high death toll in Puerto Rico. (Reminder: Puerto Ricans are U.S. citizens.)

    Reminder:  Puerto Rico received $16 Billion last year to recover from Hurricane Maria.  Assuming the population statistics from the Census Bureau are correct that is approximately $5007 per Puerto Rican in response to a single event…

    Some will come from the administration’s continuing efforts to sabotage Obamacare, which have failed to kill health reform but have stalled the decline in the number of uninsured, meaning that many people still aren’t getting the health care they need. Of course, if Trump gets his way and eliminates Obamacare altogether, things on this front will get much, much worse.

    But the biggest death toll is likely to come from Trump’s agenda of deregulation — or maybe we should call it “deregulation,” because his administration is curiously selective about which industries it wants to leave alone.

    Krugman — or maybe we should call Krug”man”…

    Consider two recent events that help capture the deadly strangeness of what’s going on.

    One is the administration’s plan for hog plants to take over much of the federal responsibility for food safety inspections. And why not? It’s not as if we’ve seen safety problems arise from self-regulation in, say, the aircraft industry, have we? Or as if we ever experience major outbreaks of food-borne illness? Or as if there was a reason the U.S. government stepped in to regulate meatpacking in the first place?

    Now, you could see the Trump administration’s willingness to trust the meat industry to keep our meat safe as part of an overall attack on government regulation, a willingness to trust profit-making businesses to do the right thing and let the market rule. And there’s something to that, but it’s not the whole story, as illustrated by another event: Trump’s declaration the other day that wind turbines cause cancer.

    Yeah, because meat is the same thing as aircraft.  Besides, organizations outside of government are more than capable of providing food safety standards.  Not like there are any cultural or religious standards that have thousands of years of success that we can point to.  In Krug”man’s” world, it was the great salmonella outbreak of the 1940s that nearly eradicated (((them))).

    But when it comes to renewable energy, Trump and company are suddenly very worried about supposed negative side effects, which generally exist only in their imagination. Last year the administration floated a proposal that would have forced the operators of electricity grids to subsidize coal and nuclear energy. The supposed rationale was that new sources were threatening to destabilize those grids — but the grid operators themselves denied that this was the case.

    So it’s deregulation for some, but dire warnings about imaginary threats for others. What’s going on?

    Part of the answer is, follow the money. Political contributions from the meat-processing industry overwhelmingly favor Republicans. Coal mining supports the G.O.P. almost exclusively. Alternative energy, on the other hand, generally favors Democrats.

    There are probably other things, too. If you’re a party that wishes we could go back to the 1950s (but without the 91 percent top tax rate), you’re going to have a hard time accepting the reality that hippie-dippy, unmanly things like wind and solar power are becoming ever more cost-competitive.

    I see you linked to Forbes.  Wanna see what else Forbes has to say about the market viability of hippie-dippie, unmanly things like wind and solar power?

    A study by the University of Texas projected that U.S. energy subsidies per megawatt hour in 2019 would be $0.5 for coal, $1- $2 for oil and natural gas, $15- $57 for wind and $43- $320 for solar. Many of the renewable energy subsidies come in the form of a Production Tax Credit (PTC) of 2.3 cents per kilowatt hour. Wholesale prices for electricity in 2017 were between approximately 2.9 cents to 5.6 cents per kilowatt hour. Therefore the wind production tax credit covers 30% to 60% of wholesale electricity prices.

    …that means it is only competitive because of the scale of subsidies.  That means it is not competitive.  So how does Krug”man”end it?

    Whatever the drivers of Trump policy, the fact, as I said, is that it will kill people. Wind turbines don’t cause cancer, but coal-burning power plants do — along with many other ailments. The Trump administration’s own estimates indicate that its relaxation of coal pollution rules will kill more than 1,000 Americans every year. If the administration gets to implement its full agenda — not just deregulation of many industries, but discrimination against industries it doesn’t like, such as renewable energy — the toll will be much higher.

    So if you eat meat — or, for that matter, drink water or breathe air — there’s a real sense in which Donald Trump is trying to kill you. And even if he’s turned out of office next year, for many Americans it will be too late.

    WERE ALL GONNA DIE….putz.

  • Pi Day Afternoon Links

    Not my best showing. It was not even a little bit good.

    Brett escaped his SMITH-family overlords only to be re-apprehended by his employer. If his comments on the meetings he’ll be in today are any indication, I suspect he’ll be returning to the… uh… “welcoming embrace” of the SMITHs before too long. Luckily for you all, my coworkers have been temporarily tamed by a tidal wave of sugar and fat thanks to my office’s 6th annual Pi Day (our first annual Pi Day was just me baking a shitty blueberry pie and telling everyone Pi Day was a thing). My ability to pie crust is significantly better and I’ve gotten weirder with my choices. Anyway, enough about my attempts to manipulate my coworkers with carbohydrates. To the news!

     

     

    And I suppose a wee bit of music goes here, no?

     

  • Jewsday Tuesday: A Field Guide to Team Blue Anti-semitism

    Disclaimer: there’s a lot of Israel stuff in here- do NOT take that as meaning I support any sort of US involvement there, but I selfishly admit that it is the only spot on Earth that would accept me as a citizen, other than the US. And it’s absolutely no libertarian paradise, but in the context of the region, it’s Libertopia. So I admit some bias, but I’m an American, not an Israeli.

    I love field guides. I use them for mushroom hunting, and there’s similar ones for birding, rock collecting, and other flavors of nature observation. So it’s well past due to start assembling a guide to spotting anti-semites. And since the world has turned upside down recently, with Leftists now being pro-war McCarthyites, I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that anti-semitism has become much more of a Team Blue phenomenon. So I think there’s a need to help in both identifying species and also warn against false identifications. Like any good field guide, I’ve tried to pack this with photos.

    First, we need to look at the things that can bring down anti-semitism charges that are misidentification. For example, politicians and candidates have suffered accusations of anti-semitism because they attacked Jewish donors to political parties. Call out Sheldon Adelson (who actually is a statist toad) and you’ll hear yelping. Going the other way, attack Tom Steyer or George Soros and ditto. So we need to be careful to see the bullshit here. Likewise, political candidates who portray their Jewish opponents (especially incumbents) clutching tax money can expect a call from the ADL. But grabbing and using taxpayer money or big donations and payoffs ARE legitimate things to attack an opponent about. These anti-semitism accusations are dishonest. So how can we identify the real thing?

    It’s hard because of verbal camouflage. Many Team Blue politicians and activists like to recite the mantra, “I’m not an anti-semite, I just oppose Israel because of their oppression of Palestinians and failure to give them an independent state.” Now, perhaps in some cases, this could be true. In other cases, it’s a nod-and-wink. How can one distinguish this honestly?

    There’s a relatively simple way- if you care about oppression (and I think the idea of Israeli “oppression” is rather arguable, but let’s assume it arguendo), then you’ll be speaking up about Israel, you’ll be speaking up about Turkey, Iraq, and Syria’s oppression of Kurds and failure to give them a state, you’ll be speaking up about China and its oppression of Tibetans and Uighurs and failure to give them a state, you’ll be speaking up about Russia and its oppression of Chechens and failure to give them a state, you’ll be speaking up about Jordan, Lebanon, Egypt, and Syria’s oppression of Palestinians and failure to give them a state (both now and pre-June 1967)… and of course, you speak out against the Palestinian Arab policy of capital punishment for selling real estate to Jews (not to mention their capital punishment for converting from Islam or being gay).

    But if the only thing you’re speaking up about is Israel, and you’re silent (or nearly so) on the rest, I think it’s safe to conclude that you’re an anti-semite, and that your pro-Palestinian Arab stances are outrages of convenience. So assume anyone called out in this Guide has been exclusive in their hatred for Israel, and one can reasonably conclude that hatred of Jews is the common factor.

     

    If you use terms like “apartheid,” that’s usually a clue, though it’s possible that you just don’t know what that word means (and choose to ignore the above-mentioned Palestinian Arab policies). If you clearly do and you use it to sell books, you’re an anti-semite.

     

    If you oppose US government loan guarantees and military aid to Israel, believe that the US should not have any military involvement or obligations there that aren’t defense of the US, and that’s part of an overall view that the US shouldn’t be doing those things anywhere, well, if that makes you anti-semitic, then I’m anti-semitic. If on the other hand you oppose these in Israel’s case, but make no mention of the same stupid waste of tax money elsewhere, well, good on ya, Adolph, we know what you are.

     

    If you like to say that US involvement in Middle East wars is at the behest of the Jews, then you’re a poster boy for Stormfront. Well, OK, this is mostly Team Red revanchists. But I had to throw that in to be fair. And a bit of searching would likely come up with Team Blue players promoting those same tropes.

     

    If you attend a church for 20 years where the minister regularly preaches these sort of anti-semitic tropes, call him your mentor, and hang out with virulent Jew-haters, you’re an anti-semite.

     

    If you start riots against Jews leading to actual deaths, you’re probably an anti-semite.

     

    Hank Johnson is an interesting case. He makes anti-Jew pronouncements, but is it because he’s anti-semitic or because he’s profoundly stupid?

    “There has been a steady [stream], almost like termites can get into a residence and eat before you know that you’ve been eaten up and you fall in on yourself.”

    If you ban Jewish symbols from your marches, but Islamic and Christian symbols are A-OK, I think the presumption of anti-semitism is not unreasonable.

     

    If your idea of a fun media event is to blot Israel off the map, yeah, you’re anti-semitic. Add in the age-old “dual loyalty” accusation, while claiming to be a voice for Arabs living in the West Bank and the sighting is confirmed. 


     

     

    Bonus Link: Larry Miller’s extremely witty recent history of Israel. It’s almost two decades old now, but is just as funny and current as it was when it was written.