I believe the humanities are vital, and central to the ongoing conversation of higher ed. But only if they are honest. And they cannot be honest if the department and the institutional admins demand an ideological/political conformity. If they do demand such conformity, especially in defiance of observable facts and reality, and completely shut out discussion, they become useless and we get what we get.
Pano Kanelos here. Great to see you recently. This is exactly why we started the University of Austin. And I am delighted to announce that yesterday the State of Texas authorized us to become a four-year, degree-granting university. I would love to hire this guy. The exchange of ideas is the purpose of the university; the dominance of ideology is the death of the university. In these times of ambient nihilism, when everything seems to be falling apart, the only thing to do is to build. Build new institutions and infuse them joy, beauty, a passion for truth. Onwards!
Pano, I respect your sentiment here, but please don't. There are lots of out of work or side-lined professors who actually believe in Western Civilization, the precise thing that your university is supposedly dedicated to teaching and defending. A Marxist CAN NOT put truth first; it is a logical impossibility. Good people not taking radical ideas seriously and instead convincing themselves that "well, he's a Marxist but he supports academic freedom" is how our universities ended up where they are.
Brian, respectfully, I find saying a Marxist cannot put the truth first because it is logical impossibility. At its base, Marxism especially used as a technique is purely a tool to study class and economics. Please expand on it because it sounds like one of those Boogeymenn that is easily found across the political spectrum nowadays; a vile caricature of a designated enemy. For instance, hard right economic conservatives as described by hyper partisan liberals.
Enlightenment liberalism makes assumptions about what man is: man is a rights bearing creature who exists to exercise his individual will, and the governments exist for the purpose of securing that opportunity for as many individuals as possible.
Marxism makes even more extreme assumptions about the world, specifically that human society is a Manichean struggle between oppressors and the oppressed. Who fits into each box varies by the sub-species of Marxist; that the world is a struggle between these boxes does not. In that struggle, individual rights are secondary to the needs of the oppressed class as a group.
The committed Enlightenment liberal must balance a commitment to individual rights with a commitment to truth. This requires active work, but as the this view of man is closer to reality, it is at least doable. However, a Marxist's view of man is so skewed, so counter to actual human nature, he must essentially overturn his entire view of the world in order pursue truth.
Thanks for the response. I do fall into that subset of believers in class struggle, but is an economic and social belief married to Marxian analyst, not about what are humans; anyone who refuses to try to see the world as it is instead of cramming it into neat ideological boxes has problem. I can see beyond the faulty, often horrific, solutions suggested by many Marxists and some socialists, but people stay with their ideology beyond any reason because it makes it easy to think. Just cram reality into bits and shove it into their belief system. It is something you will find in any system of belief or practice.
I actually agree with you on this. I believe Marx provides a key addition to the Enlightenment philosophy of Locke / Smith / Ricardo can not accurately handle class conflict, group identity, or tribal tendencies. These are all functions of the group, but Locke et al are completely based on the rights-bearing, rational, self-interested, utility-maximizing individual -- that creature my field refers to as homo-economicus. This isn't man either. Man is a social animal. Where the ideological Marxists go wrong (and what produced so much carnage in the 20th century) was the belief that man was exclusively a group construct.
Reality incorporates both: man is an individual that participates in tribal and group identities. But in terms of damage to man and the world, it is those who veer too far in the group-identity direction that have done the most damage. Enlightenment liberalism has certainly damaged man spiritually, but it has at least produced material success. It took the communists to excuse wanton mass murder with no material upside.
The Marxist professor is an exception. The left wants to abolish classically liberal democracy by any and all means and replace it with the dictatorship of the leftist elite. And if a bunch of conservatives die in the process, too bad.
My experience with Marxism in the humanities (English graduate school in the 1980s/early 1990s) was twofold. On the one hand, explicitly Marxist literary criticism and literary theory was a discrete, well-defined approach to literary study (and one that was by then a bit long in the tooth). On the other, there was what was loosely termed just “Theory”, which in practice meant Derrida and Foucault and everybody spiraling out of the texts these two produced. In a word, Poststructuralism. Following Lyotard, good poststructuralists exhibited broad skepticism about the grand narratives such as Marxism, which posited a formal morality play or narrative. But once this skepticism began to be taken up by the identity mavens—the feminists, the race writers, the multiculturalists, the gender and queer theorists, poststructural skepticism was reserved only for the phallogocentric world and never trained reflectively back on their own positions. Lyotard’s experiment in self-criticism was abortive, it turned out.
Anyway, it was this skepticism trained on the normie world of phallogocentrists and scrupulously kept away from their internal project that formed the kernel of hypocrisy or inconsistency that has characterized cultural leftism ever since. That is how you end up with critical legal studies undercutting the very foundations that allowed the field its space to begin with.
I suspect that Rod’s young Marxist, like the very Old World boffin Herbert Marcuse, is sincere, but unimaginative regarding the direct implications of his mental framework. Yes—I always want to see Marxism studied, even sympathetically, in universities, but its programmatic effects on the very context in which it operates must be held constantly in view. It WILL bite the hand that feeds it. We just need to keep the chain mail on when we mess with it.
First rate! I don't suppose you'd care to share where you studied? and what? I went to graduate school in English for a glorious six weeks in the fall of 1976. I don't suppose it would do anybody any harm to say that it was at Yale, and tdhat to see tweedy second stringers like Hillis Miller parrot back Derrida and Barthes was horror comedy never to be forgotten. I knew it wasn't for me (academia) and have never regretted it, except, I suppose, when I was broke.
When I was an undergraduate I saw that it was quite possible for faculty members (though usually in discrete disciplines) to be friendly socially even though their politics were different. Marxists and liberals really could get along, but that was operant under the assumption that the Marxism was academic--that is toothless. The next generation of academics, my classmates say, weren't so much Marxists as Leninists.
Now, among these academics in different disciplines who could be be friendly there was indeed a common denominator, and that was atheism.
CLR James's The Black Jacobins, about the Haitian slave uprising/revolution, has been on my bookshelf for years. Marxist historian from Trinidad, James was educated in the classics and it shows. The book is a pleasure to read. As the years go on, that's becoming the most important criterion for me. James was also a cricket fanatic.
I can't exactly remember when I changed my major from English to Religion ('83 or '84) but it was precisely because I saw the writing on the wall regarding the politicization of the English departments.
I'm currently reading Rene Girard's 'Evolution and Conversion,' and in the introductory biographical chapter he talks about how he was part of the group that brought "theory" to America in 1966 as part of his work in the literary criticism of the time. He states that he was very surprised by how fast it caught on in the American universities and became fashionable, and that he quickly grew uncomfortable with its fashion. Girard states that Lacan was the one who wanted "to take over America,' but that most of the others thought he was just trying to attract attention to himself. He says that "the literature people really felt for [Lacan] and remained fascinated while the psychiatrists remained indifferent."
One gets the sense that while Lacan and his supporters had an agenda, some of the others in the "movement" had no idea the thing would take off like it did, and weren't thrilled about it. Girard certainly wasn't.
Derrida was a fairly thoroughgoing phenomenologist in the Husserl-Heidegger tradition when he started out. His meditations on the priority of speech vs writing remain fascinating to me and ought to be remembered as a permanent part of the history of philosophy.
Actually Freddie DeBoer, an avowed Marxist, is one of the most trenchant critics of wokeism. He, and apparently Harper, see the utter hypocrisy at the heart of the movement.
Old-school Marxists keep their eyes on the money, and they're typically able to see wokeness for the decadent capitalist distraction that it is. And likewise, I expect that they would also see how the focus on racial conflict is a distraction to prevent workers of all colors from coming together and soaking the rich.
Yeah—I tend to think that Marxism is excellent analysis and terrible prophecy. They don't know where to go, but they aren't all that wrong about the nature and dynamics of the system.
It has good diagnostic skills but terrible treatment plans. I have yet to have it explained to me how socialism cannot help but end up being statist, which is the same complaint I have against capitalism. And is why I lean agrarian/distributist -- I have no beef with markets, just with The Market.
I find it sort of funny how studiously people tend to ignore the things that Jesus said about money. I think that the magnitude of wealth disparities we see in modern societies is un-Christian, and also that such disparities themselves are a source of social instability. Aside from how big the pie is, fair division of the pie is an independently meaningful metric of its own.
I think that "socialist" might be best understood as a policy option: as in, Social Security is essentially socialist in nature. Most capitalists don't seem to be asking for a Randian libertarian dystopia. If with Belloc you're referring to distributism, then I agree that sounds good, from what little I know about it.
I have been a Christian my entire life and have never once heard a sermon on James 5. I almost didn't even know that passage was in the Bible until I heard T-Bone Burnett's song "Rich Man" (The Alpha Band) when I was in college!
You'll find a treasure of an article by Maurin, who if he's known at all today is known as a major figure in Dorothy Day's Catholic Worker movement. Maurin himself doesn't write too much, primarily an introduction to his listing of over a hundred passages in the Bible which command love and kindness to the poor, generosity on the part of the rich, and God's frequent announcement that He will take retribution on behalf of those well - to - do who don't live in this way.
This article is on the website of Southern Nazarene University, a Wesleyan institution, which delights me.
Presbyterian historical theology has a name for the following phenomenon which I don't recall, but the theologians own up to the truth of what happened: a hundred years ago, motivated by a wish to have nothing whatever to do with the German demythologizing theology which had by then conquered most of mainline American Protestantism, orthodox Presbyterianism idiotically withdrew from its previous involvement in helping the poor. Most other conservative Protestant churches did, too. My mother, who was born in 1921, remembered The Great Depression well. She said that one reason Roosevelt social democracy took hold with such unrelentingness was the disgusting failure of the churches to help as they were commanded to do.
I know that Timothy Keller wrote about this, as have others. The Maurin article doesn't just list the relevant Bible verses, it lists the verses in full.
To be fair Marxist-Leninism did have a commitment to racial equality. Now, part of this was tactical (it was perceived as a weak spot in the American and British polities) and part strategic (Lenin's analysis of imperialism, etc., etc.) But there's no reason not to call it sincere.
But the underlying sentiment there was a colorblind "we're all equal, it's the greedy capitalists/rentiers trying to divide us." Wokeness is, as Sethu says, precisely what the Marxists were complaining about. As evinced by how early the capitalists and rentiers jumped on the bandwagon.
Remember, though, that, as Books Do Furnish a Room Bagshaw tells Nick Jenkins, Marxism doesn't make any sense and honest Marxists will admit the fact. It was all too easy for socialists to elide their vaunted "scientific" analysis into ice people/sun people, etc., etc.
It is much the same with modern Neoliberalism's economics. It was used to strip "political" from the field political economy changing it to the field of economics. This is a reason why modern economics often gets it so wrong as it has been simplified into stupidity.
Guys like Harper and DeBoer, and the anti-woke Leftists who used to comment on Rod's TAC blog, are alert to the fact that today's woke Left has all but abandoned any robust concern for issues of class/economics. Just like in politics proper, those concerns have been replaced by IdPol. I have no reason to doubt their honesty, especially if they are of the sort who have been critical of this trend all along. Just as all conservatives are not created equal, neither are all Leftists.
It seems to me that economically more to the left and socially more to the right is sort of the synthesis we find in old-school Catholic social teaching.
snu.edu is the website of Southern Nazarene University, a Weslayan college. But on their site, they have an article by Peter Maurin, best known for his involvement with the Catholic Worker movement.
In his article, Maurin cites and reprints the over one hundred Bible verses which have to do with God's concern for the poor, His commands to well - to - do believers to be generous, and His promise of retribution to the arrogant rich.
It's extremely cheering, exhilarating, even. Meatball Reaganism still governs the instincts of too many conservative Christians on this matter.
this has been blatantly obvious for decades but for various reasons it was impossible for anyone to confront or admit it—for conservatives, the rot infesting the humanities didn't matter bc it had nothing to do with money and "those crazy kids will grow out of it" (as if ideology were a 70s wardrobe); for liberals, it is always socially and professionally toxic to disagree with anyone to their left because that could get them mistaken for a conservative (moral pollution) or skunk-sprayed with a bigotry accusation, thus they can only gaslight and/or whistle past the graveyard (no such thing as cancel culture! no one's teaching CRT!)
Great stuff. I.A. Richards in 1919 wrote a very famous letter to the editor of the Athenaeum (it was an anti-Bloomsbury device) in which he asserted, and then went on to demonstrate, that successful works of art make propositions impossible to make in any other way, and that their result was truth. This was the man who along with Eliot and F.R. Leavis revolutionized the study of polite letters in the last century. Try it on today, and when they stop laughing weep for what we have lost. The only kind of knowledge anybody has any respect for is STEM, and that means power.
>>>The only kind of knowledge anybody has any respect for is STEM, and that means power.
But that means the weakest kind of power. Any good college or university, whatever its intellectual proclivities, teaches its students how to analyze, reason, and to develop wisdom. This is the only real way to fight the propaganda and outright lies that are used by the advocates of all sides, not least today's modern neoliberals and conservatives.
I think that the destruction of higher learning is a combined effort of the modern American Corporate Neoleftism, Neoliberalism, and Conservatism. Making and keeping people unwise is to keep them disarmed and vulnerable to control.
I am using the description of Corporate Neoleftism and Neoliberalism deliberately to make a distinction from the nearly dead remnants of 20th century leftism and liberalism. I could almost certainly do the same to today's Conservatism.
I took two semesters of philosophy, Greeks through Kant, my freshman year, 50 years ago, with a very great teacher indeed. His final remarks in his final lecture were and are unforgettable. There is no such thing as a final philosophical position. Any conclusion is open to questioning. This was not a statement of skepticism. It was meant, I believe, and I accepted it, as an expression of hope.
Rod - thanks for your tips about visiting Budapest. I saw the Terror Museum, went to the restaurant by the embassy, and saw the bath at city park (though didn't enter). Also went up Buda Castle and the Citadel and toured Parliament and the Opera House.
"It is the first seemingly innocent step away from principle that frequently decides a career of crime. Corrosion begins in microscopic proportions."
"The ease with which destruction of life is advocated for those considered either socially useless or socially disturbing instead of educational or ameliorative measures may be the first danger sign of loss of creative liberty in thinking, which is the hallmark of democratic society. All destructiveness ultimately leads to self-destruction."
Dr. Leo Alexander, Medical Science Under Dictatorship, NEJM, 1949.
Frankly, I've been having my spell of being blackpilled lately.
I've watched US Evangelicals calling for the expulsion of all Christians from the Holy Land, for the first time since the Resurrection.
I've watched Zionist Jews and Dispensationalists advocating policies clearly based on the genocidal teachings in the Old Testament, demanded by Samuel, etc. I'd always placed those teachings on a shelf, as something that I don't know how to explain just now, but I thought the issue was academic, because Christians believe that God had finished with the Jews, and Jews seem to have rejected or outgrown those teachings (perhaps with the Talmud as their version of the New Testament). I was wrong on both counts.
I increasingly feel that I don't want any identification with Evangelicals, especially Dispensationalists. I don't want to see them as versions of the same religion. I distrust even non-Evangelical US Christianity.
It is possible to support Israel without being Dispensationalist, but it must be on similar terms to how one would support any other secular nation.
It is also possible to support Zionism, probably on the basis of the Jews as a people having been treated so terribly that they deserve a home.
However, use of Dispensationalism to defend those is heresy. It is not Christianity. It also tends to be linked to a particularly aggressive and intransigent militarism, which is morally un-Christian.
Yes, but (and I posted the link in an earlier string) Ben Shapiro responded to Col. Macgregor's famous interview with Carlson by saying nastily that the Israelis had no intention of fomenting war with Iran. I regarded this as significant because, whether or not true, he was certainly told to say it, and told to say it by Jerusalem. I rested just a tad easier after that, if only for a few weeks.
Hagee's been banging on that for how many years now? So many of his ilk are positively salivating at the thought of "at last! at last! We'll bring in Armageddon and the Second Coming, and we'll all be Raptured while all the evil sinners Left Behind (thanks LaHaye & Jenkins, for your pieces of trash) will suffer hideously while we sit up in heaven and gloat."
The End Times are coming. "No one knows, not even the Son, the day or the hour." And each of us will experience the End Times when we die. So, the best advice is to calm down and carry on: "Love the Lord your God with all your heart and mind and soul and strength and love your neighbors as yourself. This is the law and the prophets."
If you scroll down, note that Evangelicals have a +39 net positive percent view of Jews,
In the same chart, you can also see that Jews have a -40(!) net percent negative view of Evangelicals. Interestingly, Jews only view Mainline liberal Protestants and Atheists with a net positive sentiment. Make of that what you will
I see that calumny leveled broadly against Evangelicals all the time, and it is simply not true. Dispensationalists may take that viewpoint, but they are a narrow slice of Evangelicalism. The rest of us believe God loves and still has a plan for His Jewish people, which is the clear message of scripture. I have been sickened by the dismissive attitudes so many dispensationalists have shown towards the Jews, especially after the Oct. 7 attacks. It's veiled antisemitism and deeply unchristian.
Basically, dispensationalists believe God replaced the Jews with the Church, and they therefore apply any prophecies from the OT to the church. It makes for a weird view of the world, and as I said, they tend to be very hostile towards Israel.
Wait a second, though: as far as I'm aware, the Catholic and Orthodox view is that the Church is the New Israel—but that's not the Dispensationalism we're talking about?
That's not Dispensationalism. That sounds more or less like mainstream Catholicism, Orthodoxy, etc., although I'd be careful with "they therefore apply any prophecies from the OT to the church."
Dispensationalists are the subgroup of Evangelicals who are premillennialist (Catholics and Orthodox tend to be amillennialist), and believe that the Jews are still God's Chosen People, that there is a distinction between Israel and the Church, that Christians are not bound by Mosaic law but Jews still are, and that there is to be a future restoration of national Israel, and a rapture of the Church that will happen before the Second Coming of Christ.
Cathy, you have it backward: dispensational premillenialists do not believe God has replaced Israel with the Church, just the opposite! Among Christians, dispensationalists tend to be the most pro - Israel.
My grandmother was a Dispensationalist and a fervent, fervent Zionist. Two of her grandchildren married Jews. The belief that Christ will return in the generation Israel is restored is what Evangelicals find in the Bible (the "Fig Tree" passage) but it is incidental.
One thing that needs to be noted about Dispensationalism is that it was created in the UK and USA in the 1850s, and Evangelicals were involved with Zionism right from the beginning. Arthur Balfour was himself a Dispensationalist. The creation of the state of Israel is thus not necessarily a prophesied event, but an event generated to fulfill a prophesy.
It's like those Evangelicals who say that we should try to provoke nuclear war to bring about Armageddon.
The thing is that you can't force God's hand like that. I keep coming back to "the stone that the builders rejected". This is why I largely skip over the prophetic texts in the Bible - when they happen, they'll make sense - but at present all we know is that Christ will return. We should try to treat people decently, and work for justice and mercy, but independently of the membership of those people in groups that someone has sketched out in weird diagrams on the backs of brown envelopes
In any case, suppose one accepts the Dispensationalist view that Jews remain the Chosen People, and have to be gathered back in to Zion before the Rapture. OK, what happens if Israel is destroyed, and the Jews scattered again? Presumably they all go back to the drawing board?
In addition, who are the Jews? If the matrilineal line is taken, as declared by the rabbinate, it's quite likely that the Ashkenazim are not Jewish, but many of the Palestinians are. However, matrilineal descent was only defined in about 1200, and you get a different picture taking patrilineal descent. Or perhaps it means belief in Judaism? People who follow historically Orthodox Judaism, such as the Satmar, are now anti-Zionist. Perhaps they haven't been gathered in yet? I'm not defending any of those positions, just showing how ridiculous detailed identifications from Revelation, etc., are.
A couple weeks back, I had the unexamined and partly subconscious notion that the Jews are still theologically special, and your comments have helped show me that this is not a valid Christian view. So thank you for that.
As for who the Jews are, though: they were still recognizable enough to have been subjected to a massive genocide, weren't they? And Eve here posted a long great comment on the previous post explaning the entire history of how anti-Semitisim has been basically woven into the socio-cultural DNA of the West. So, I default to liking the Jews, for non-theological reasons, out of a basically contrarian instinct: the massive confluence of bad people who hate the Jews makes me want to like them.
The Ashkenazim most definitely are an ethnic group. They have Y-chromosome DNA mostly from the Levant, and X-chromosome DNA mostly from Central Europe. They're descended from about 350 people in about 1300, so any Ashkenazi is no more than, say, 10th cousin or something from any other Ashkenazi. They also have all sorts of things in common like the Yiddish language, music, food, etc.
I see. So does that mean that . . . they aren't Jews? It seems like almost a trivial question for a Christian to ask, of course, since we do not care what people's genes are. It's just that the worst sorts of people seem to make this kind of argument, so I'm not exactly sure what to do with that.
The Jews ARE still theologically "special" according to St. Paul. But this special quality, being "loved for the sake of the fathers," is not in and of itself salvific.
I was looking just now into the argument that Jewish identity should be patrilineally defined, because that's what the Torah says and also because with the matrilineal redefinition, four of Jacob's own sons would not be Jews (and certainly not many of Solomon's children, and so on). Any thoughts on that?
Of course, it is only of intellectual interest. I didn't understand what the Book of Ruth was for until I realized that she is David's grandmother—which is to say that the Messiah had Gentile blood.
You really need to talk to someone who knows a lot about Jewish history, because what I say is probably wrong.
My understanding is that in OT times Jewish identity was more just a question of joining the tribe, practising the religion, speaking the language, and then you were a member. Obviously, not many people actually did that, but it sometimes happened. Most nations were like that in antiquity.
At some point, it became patrilineal. The Zoroastrians, who are analogous to the Jews in some respects, have patrilineal identity. They don't accept converts, though. I think I vaguely remember reading that the Karaites (Jews who reject the Talmud, and just use the OT) and the Samaritans have patrilineal identity.
Later, because of inherent uncertainty about paternity, it was changed to matrilineal. I read somewhere that that was due to lots of Jewish women being raped at the time of the Crusades, but that's from a Jewish source that was very anti-Christian, so it might be wrong.
I've never heard of any evangelicals seeking to stoke nuclear war, and I have been involved in evangelical churches for 50 years. The idea of the Tribulation is one that is dreaded even if it is at some point inevitable.
Dispensational premillenialism encourages Christians to take all sorts of interest in Jews, far more than you'd find in churches which are amillenial.
Why don't you investigate the backgrounds of Jews who have become Christians? Most of the time, you'll find they came to believe in Jesus because some Evangelical reached out to them with the Gospel.
"Jews" presumably include a lot atheists/agnostics, who probably feel positively about Mainline liberal Protestants and Atheists.
It would be interesting to see a breakdown among religious Jews.
Orthodox Jews strongly disapprove of Christianity, not just because of the history of persecution, but because it is considered polytheism. Maimonides taught that Muslims may follow the Noahide laws, but Christians never do. I saw interviews with Orthodox Jews, and they said that they would visit a mosque as a tourist, or to a friend's wedding, say, but they must not enter a church under any circumstances. I've seen religious Zionists saying that Muslims can stay in Eretz Israel (Nile to Euphrates), as long as constantly degraded and humiliated, but Christians must be exterminated.
On the other hand, some right-wing Orthodox Jews might have friendly feelings for Evangelical Christianity. I'm not sure. I saw one Zionist rabbi saying that the important thing is to rebuild the Temple, and establish a purely Jewish Israel, now, and the debate about whether the Messiah is to come for the first or second time can be put off until it happens.
It is the myth that Evangelicals support Israel only because they think it has to be there for Christ to return. I repeat: the myth.
(Yes, I know "support Israel" and "support Jews" are different, but so many Jewish people take the support they receive from Evangelicals as stemming from that myth.)
Show one piece of evidence that is the reason for Evangelical support of Israel/Jews. I can show mountains to the contrary.
Yes, they do think Christ will return after Israel is established, but that is not why they support Jews. They would support Jews even if they did not believe the Bible says Christ returns in the generation Israel is established.
(edited to remove sentence about Sethu's post regarding said myth, written without seeing Sethu's further post - already made - where he said thet he was not too familiar with the finer distinctions.)
As I acknowledged somewhere in these comments, I don't know the intricacies of Evangelical thought, so I'm sorry if that brush was too broad.
Also, though, is it your view that a lot of the necons aren't motivated by that myth? If they believe that Christ will return after Israel is established, then that seems to me like a real motive to see Israel established. Personally, if I knew the conditions for Christ to return, then I would try to meet them.
To be clear, I favor the Jews, but I'm thinking about the ways that the religious and political-economic motives may intertwine and cloud judgment. Is there anyone in charge who desires Armaggedon?
Absolutely fair and my bad for not reading further before posting. I will edit, and note the reason.
s board that neocons are pieces of excrement is not one I agree with.
Evangelicals, and hence neocons who are Evangelicals, believe Israel is already established. "This generation shall not pass" can be interpreted to mean at least one person alive in 1948 will be alive at the return of Christ. There is no reason to go to war to establish Israel it has been done.
Relevant passage from Matthew 24 (also found in other gospels) 32- Now learn a parable of the fig tree; When his branch is yet tender, and putteth forth leaves, ye know that summer is nigh: 33 So likewise ye, when ye shall see all these things, know that it is near, even at the doors.34 Verily I say unto you, This generation shall not pass, till all these things be fulfilled.
There is cross referencing involved in why Evangelicals believe Israel is the fig tree, and believe it's budding is the founding of Israel but that is their belief.
I think one issue is that from the Catholic or Orthodox standpoint, there isn't any reason to believe that the fate of the Jews is any longer theologically relevant, so I don't accept some of the premises here. More than that, though (and more to the point at hand), I don't see any reason to think that your notion of Evangelical is the same as the powers-that-be's notion of Evangelical. I think we have every reason to believe that they will weaponize every thought they can get their hands on, and that you have a rather purer notion than they do. After all, they've never seen a fight that they don't like.
What would satisfy your notion of powers-that-be-Evangelical? Can you site a person with this power who wants to weaponize thoughts against Israel? What "reasons to believe" do you have?
So what? The New Testament is quite clear that because the Jews rejected their Messiah, God has rejected them. Exactly where in the New Testament do you find Jews speaking well of Christians?
You do find Jews' steadfast persecution of Christians, but that doesn't relieve Christians of the obligation to act in love toward them.
In my view, the fault lines have been massive all along, given that the only operational definition of being "Christian" is having been baptized in the names of the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost, and having self-professed faith in the aforementioned. But in what sense are sane Catholics and woke Catholics part of the same religion?—the notion that I am in any sort of meaningful communion with Biden or Pelosi (other than the general solidarity of humankind) is laughable. If you start thinking about it, the fragile pious lies don't really hang together very long—and hence my basic notion of discerning hearts rather than overt confessions. That is sturdy, a thing on which it is possible to build.
I haven't jumped on the Gaza train, but I've learned more about it from Jewish journalists and intellectuals who've become disillusioned and, in some cases, disgusted with the Jewish Zionist experiment and the degraded treatment of Palestinians. They provide an important history lesson that can't be found in mainstream media. Most of them are leftists, perhaps some are Socialists or Marxist, but it's difficult to categorize them as anti-Semites unless one believes they are self-hating Jews, but they're not. They're Jews who don't believe in the Zionist ideology. Much of anti-Semitism I've observed comes from the bipartisan establishment. Since Arab people and most Palestinians are Semites, that would make Nikki Haley, Ted Cruz, Lindsey Graham, most Republicans and Democrats in Congress - the list goes on and on- as anti-Semites. They hate Palestinians! They hate the fact that Palestinians haven't been totally displaced or killed by Israeli air raids. The hatred of Palestinians is palpable. One hears it from Israeli settlers, Likhud party members, and Fox News because there's no room for Palestinians in their zenophobic Zionist ideology. Yes, what Hamas did is awful, but am I supposed to believe Israel is the exemplar of liberal democracy? I don't know who the real ass*oles are among all the parties involved in the historical making of this calamitous event, but I do know it significantly predates the rise of the wokeness of the Progressives.
Well, yes, hmmm, one can argue that Arabs are Semites, so hostility to Arabs is antisemitism. However, "antisemitism" in general use means hostility to Jews, so I think it's better to use that meaning. One could use "Judaeophobia" if one really wishes.
Having said that, antisemitism is applied to so many things relating to the Jews and Israel as to be almost meaningless.
I would guess most are like me and supported a 2 state solution until I found out that Palestine doesn’t want that, they want eradication of the Jewish state and people. Whatever sympathy they might have had from me evaporated when they started chopping heads of babies and gouging out eyes. I’m a little emotional that way. Am
I recommend viewing The Grayzone YouTube channel, "People of Darkness" episode. It's hosted by two independent Jewish journalists. Aaron Mate's father, Dr. Gabor Mate, also, makes a short appearance and has some interesting comments and perspective. His grandparents were killed in Auschwitz. Give it a try and discern if it modifies your opinion.
I agree with you if people refer to October 7 as the starting point for the animosity between the two factions, but there's a long history to uncover prior to October 7 with an alternate narrative which gets buried by the well funded predominant narrative in our politics.
October 7 was the starting point of a new level of savagery. No one is denying their issues. It’s not like we haven’t known what has been going on or how sympathetic the press is to Palestine. I used to listen to NPR daily before I caught on to what they were doing. I wasn’t born yesterday.
Okay I was able to stomach about 20 minutes of that. Without being too rude about it, I thought it was garbage. Here’s my question to you; should Israel just let it go and revert to October 6? Should they just leave the region? No waffling, make your stand. I guess it’s because I had to go through so much in order to have my children: if my baby had been beheaded or burned to a crisp or my brother had an eye gouged out in front of his children I would want Gaza leveled to the ground. I really don’t understand this attitude; it seems similar to the coddling attitude towards criminals here since 2020. There is no going back from what Hamas has done. They have to be destroyed utterly. I was astounded that those commentators didn’t believe that Hamas uses innocents as human shields; right, they wouldn’t do that because we all know they are good people deep down. If you wish to point to the section where there aren’t just ragging on how terrible Israel is I’ll listen but I’m not going to sit through what appears to be a biased commentary.
I’ll gladly admit that I’m emotional, but I get to have my say regardless. Don’t kid yourself; that podcast host and his guest and the comments section were using highly emotional rhetoric to sway people into excusing savagery. I also note that you avoid the questions I posed.
Yours truly has been saying for years that the destruction of Iraqi Christianity was a feature, not a bug of Gulf War II. Saddam was and Assad is protector of Christian minorities.
Saddam was a nasty piece of work, but he managed to hold together a multiethnic and multireligious state.
Assad is much less nasty than Saddam was, and Syria is moving towards democracy.
I can't really figure out why the USA is so murderous towards Middle Eastern Christians. Can it really just be chance?
I'll sketch a few possibilities, although I don't really believe any of them:
1. The USA is the Antichrist.
2. The USA is controlled by Israel, which seeks to exterminate Christians.
3. The USA seeks to eliminate Christians from the Middle East, so that there will be less objection to massive bombing, etc., of exclusively Muslim countries.
4. The USA is controlled by Saudi Arabia, which seeks an exclusively Islamic Arabian Peninsula.
5. The USA is controlled by Evangelicals, who hate non-Evangelical Christians.
I think 1. puts us in the same basket with Hagee. I think the truth is somewhere in a combination of 2. and 5., though you can't say the U.S. is "controlled" by either.
I'll plump for #4 myself. Because Saudi Arabia says jump and we say how high. Including invading Iraq when the majority of the 9/11 terrorists, including its ringleader, were Saudi.
Pretty much. They set the terms for oil production, how much for how long. Third largest producer (US is #1, Russia #2) and largest oil exporter. Second largest oil reserves (behind Venezuela, which is why the US keeps an eye on that country's politics).
Plus Saudi Arabia is simply an unbelievably wealthy country: It's categorized as a World Bank high-income economy and is the only Arab country to be part of the G20 major economies. It supported Iraq in the Iran-Iraq War, and then backed Kuwait against Iraq, and helped finance our involvement in that war. It's also backed Pakistan heavily, and is suspected to have financed their nuclear weapons program, in exchange for nukes of its own in the near future. (No one talks about that much, do they?) And it's incredibly militarized for its size and population, with most of its weapons coming from US, France and Britain.
They are THE power - financially and militarily - in the Middle East.
It might be breaking down now, but I've noticed a sick alliance between Israeli and Saudi Arabia over the last few years. I don't mean to be glib, but it seems the only thing they have in common is hatred of Christians, and they're the USA's allies in the region. Arguably, they're the USA's only allies anywhere; otherwise the USA only has vassals.
The USA, Israel, and Saudi Arabia cooperated in their support for ISIS and al-Qaida in Syria, and the drive to replace the regime there with a Wahhabi despotism.
The commenter "Syrian Girl" sees them as a sort of theocratic axis of evil in the region. I can't say I'm particularly convinced. I do think they perhaps share a monochrome vision of national identity, though. The Middle East is a complex patchwork of religions and languages, and Saudi Arabia and Israel both oppose that, imposing a 1930s-style vision of national identity.
Please name a single Evangelical who has called for the expulsion of Christians from the Holy Land. It's possible that some nitwit did, but Eastern Orthodoxy has its share of nitwittery, too. I do not know of a single reputable Evangelical who has said that.
Put up, Rombald, withdraw the statement, or count on my coming back to denounce you as a liar.
I don't understand your hatred of any Christians, Rombald. The Bible teaches that it is the supernatural imperative of the Christian to love other Christians. I know that I love every Catholic, Orthodox, and Copt who believes in Jesus.
Whatever you think of American Evangelicals, it doesn't arise from the godly incumbency upon Christians to love other Christians. It isn't a spiritual mood which you should remain unalarmed about.
Huge numbers of Evangelicals, and right-wing people generally, advocate the expulsion of all Palestinians from Israel-Palestine. I'd guess that to be the position of the majority of US Evangelcials, although I have no data.
That includes most of the Christians in the Holy Land, and all those who have been there for centuries, perhaps since the time of Christ in some cases.
The number of Christians of Jewish origin is much smaller. Some are Evangelicals or Messianics, and recent converts, and others are Russian immigrants who have converted or returned to Orthodoxy. I haven't heard Evangelicals come right out and say they should be expelled, but they tend to have close ties with the Israeli religious far-right, which does advocate that.
Most kids today, I think, have no interest in "the humanities" because the humanities have already died, and it its place are a bunch of self-righteous, kind of dumb goons spouting nonsense. Really sad.
Sigh. I am a university professor of math. I mostly study and teach mathematical physics. The humanities and social sciences no longer exist as scholarly disciplines. They are almost entirely ideological drivel. Even in some sciences, wokism has invaded. Biological scientists must choose their words with great care when discussing biological sex even if only in a discussion of the evolution and reproductive habits of salamanders. (It may be considered bigoted to assert that biological sex in salamanders is binary.)
The vast majority of ideological nonsense is from the extreme left, but the right has not been entirely innocent. During the pandemic, a friend of mine who professes biochemistry at the University of Alabama was vilified by some students. In response to student questions about vaccines, he explained some basics about RNA and how it works. He told them that bad reactions to the vaccines, such as the occasional myocarditis, must surely be caused by the spike proteins themselves rather than the mRNA that catalyzes their production in our immune cells. He pointed out that mRNA, at normal temperatures, has a half life measured in hours rather than days and hence that the mRNA cannot persist in our bodies. He also debunked the idea, popular in ignorant conservatives circles, that mRNA vaccines have anything to do with "gene therapy". He was accused of being a lefty stooge duped by Fauci's propaganda. For God's sake! He was stating basic uncontroversial facts about the chemistry of nucleic acids that have been known since the 1950s and standard in every biochemistry textbook written since 1965 or so.
So far, I have been left alone. When I teach math and physics it is quite nonideological. I have not yet been accused of either rightwing racist opinions or lefty woke opinions about differential equations, electromagnetism, stress energy tensors, quantum mechanics, or anything else. That day may come.
I am sorry for what your friend went through. People should discuss academic differences in a reasonable manner, without vilification.
I believe it was learned late during Covid-19 that mRNA was modified. The nucleic acids in RNA and original mRNA are guanine, uracil, adenine, and cytosine, (with uracil differentiating RNA from DNA.) But for the vaccines, the uracil was replaced with pseudouracil. I've seen academic journals that flat out stat that pesudouracil is gene therapy. Information about pseudoracil may not have been available when your friend went through this.
I think the students misunderstood writings (called "conservative writings") about mRNA if they contended mRNA, rather than the spike proteins whose production it engenders, was the cause of such things in myocarditis in those who never had Covid-19.
It is false to say that the modification of the uracil in the vaccine mRNA was learned late during the pandemic. Long before the vaccines were made available the complete list of ingredients of Pfizer and Moderna vaccines was published and made public. Anybody who researched the info (I certainly did) knew that the uracil was modified.
The whole point of the modification was to slightly prolong the persistence of the mRNA so that it could exist and function for longer. The usual unmodified mRNA in our cells has a half-life of around 10 hours while the vaccine mRNA that incorporates pseudouracil has a half-life of a day and a half. RNA of any kind, and particularly mRNA is very fragile and unstable. That is why the nuclei of our cells must constantly produce the stuff. That is why the vaccines had to be stored at freezing temperatures. At normal temperatures, mRNA decays within hours.
Generally RNA is very unstable and the weakest points of the RNA chain are the uracil nucleotides. That is why our genes are based on the more stable DNA in which uracil is replaced by thymine rather than on RNA. Recall that a nucleotide consists of a nucleobase bonded with a ribose or deoxyribose and with one or more phosphate units. Thymine and guanine and cytosine and adenosine form stronger bonds with phosphates than uracill. There is a misconception that pseudouracil is manmade and is unnatural to our bodies. That is false. Some of our ribosomal RNA and transfer RNA incorporates pseudouracil. For mRNA, however, mammals and most animals use only ordinary uracil, though some yeasts and fungi make mRNA using pseudouracil.
As for "gene therapy", I would be VERY interested in reading any detailed scientific article that calls the mRNA vaccines "gene therapy" without inventing a totally novel definition of the phrase. Which journal articles have you seen? Every previous usage of the phrase "gene therapy" refers to actual modification of genes in cells or introduction of functional DNA in cells to replace the function of defective human genes. Rather obviously, humans don't have genes, defective or otherwise, that code for coronavirus spike proteins. Wikipedia's article on "gene therapy" discusses the different kinds and the history. You will see that nothing that has heretofore been called "gene therapy" could possibly apply to the mRNA vaccines.
Perhaps some lay people confused the terms "gene therapy" and "gene expression". The general sequence of DNA --> precursor mRNA t --> mature mRNA --> proteins is often called "gene expression". I have read articles (popular, not scientific) stating that the mRNA vaccines interfered with gene expression. But that is semantic nonsense. We have no such genes whose expression could be interfered with. Rather a new thing is introduced so that our cells could make spike proteins. And it only persists for a couple days.
In quick summary, the vaccines work like this: Recall that in the vaccines, the modified mRNA is encased in a lipid capsule which serves two purposes. The capsule somewhat stabilizes the mRNA and, very importantly, the lipid is recognized by immune cells as an invader. After the intramuscular injection, most of the mRNA is taken up by dendritic cells near the injection site. The powerful enzymes in the dendritic cells break down the lipid capsule releasing the mRNA, some of which finds its way to the ribosomes where it manufactures spike proteins. The dendritic cells then present sections of the proteins, called epitopes, on their outer cell membranes, and then go to the lymph nodes and bother T cells to appraise the epitopes and give proper instructions to B cells. If all goes hunky dory, by the time your body has cleared out the spike proteins (the time of which is very variable between individuals), your T cells have expertly directed the B cells to make a variety of antibodies that effectively bind to the spike protein. The best are the neutralizing antibodies that bind to the receptor binding domain at the tip of the spike. Such antibodies prevent the spike from adhering to cell membranes and hence prevent entry into cells. But even if antibodies bind to a different part of the spike and do not effectively block cell entry, they still tag the virus and draw the attention of the macrophages that patrol our bodies doing garbage disposal duty.
Great. But the reason for the disappointing performance of the vaccines is not in the skill of the vaccine designers, but in the fact that our immune systems do not develop great long term immune memory for coronaviruses. That is true also of natural immunity. Many people have had Covid multiple times. If infection by the real thing doesn't give long term immunity, it is hard to make a vaccine that does better. We are used to thinking of viruses as being like smallpox or measles or mumps or, usually, chickenpox. Those viruses are generally "once and done". Survive the disease or get a vaccine and you are usually immune for life. But other viruses, certainly coronaviruses, are not like that. Here scientists, and even more so the politicians and the media, failed to give people realistic expectations about the vaccines. We were falsely told that getting the vaccine would simply make us immune. Since they wanted people to get vaccinated, they grossly exaggerated what the vaccines can do. That doesn't mean that the vaccines, or natural infection, were worthless, just that the long term immunity is very partial and not good enough to prevent subsequent significant infections. Most people don't get all that excited about better statistics to not get a serious life-threatening case of Covid. They wanted a shot that would simply make them altogether immune. Also the vaccines didn't do much to slow the spread of Covid (neither did natural infection). One might have enough immunity to comfortably carry a viral load without getting significantly sick, but one was still contagious and able to spread the virus pretty well.
Thank you! This merits study on my part and will receive it.
(1) quick responses
(a) You stated, "It is false to say....learned late in the pandemic". Sorry..."I believe it was learned late" was meant to indicate uncertainty on my part.
(b) You stated "As for "gene therapy", I would be VERY interested in reading any detailed scientific article that calls the mRNA vaccines "gene therapy""
When I said "I've seen academic articles that state pseudouracil is gene therapy" I meant mRNA is said to be gene therapy in many articles I've seen. (Unartful phrasing, not all mRNA has pseudouracil) Examples of mRNA as gene therapy:
<<"For many years, it was generally accepted that mRNA is too unstable to be efficiently used for gene therapy purposes. In the last decade, however, several research groups faced this challenge and not only proved the feasibility of mRNA-mediated transfection with surprising results....">>
(2) The dozens of articles I've seen from medical researchers saying the spike protein does not go away soon have me really scared. I think you can google them. As a mathematician, statistics on excess deaths should interest you. Lots of articles there. Btw, I got J and J and got one J and J booster.
(3) But what is *very* important here - you spoke about a situation where a person was mistreated when he stated known science. That is really sad. Science is a discussion.
Thank you for the links. I will read them and get back to you if I find something interesting there to discuss. But even if credentialed expert scientists wish to use the phrase "gene therapy" for alterations of gene expression that employ mRNA, I still insist that it is semantically silly to use the phrase for the vaccines. Altering the expression of human genes is one thing, introducing coronaviral mRNA is clearly not that.
By the way, I got a bit in lecture mode discoursing about RNA and the immune system and such. I do, of course, push my expertise there. But besides the math and physics I do have a few semesters of advanced biochemistry under my belt. During the pandemic shutdowns, I had plenty of time to review that and research stuff and look up scientific papers. You won't be surprised to hear my opinion that the media did a TERRIBLE job explaining the science to us. I can't tell you how many times I read an article in the Washington Post or the NY Times that actually provided links to scientific papers that the article then proceeded to misquote. Often the paper they cited said the exact opposite of what the Times said it said.
I'm not sure it makes sense to worry much about the persistence of the spike proteins. It is mysterious how variable it is. I have read that some individuals are almost entirely free of the proteins after a couple weeks while others have significant amounts after a month and a half. It is speculated that those who had persistent amounts of spike proteins had a poor immunological reaction to the vaccines. Those who developed antibodies with good binding affinity to the spike proteins presumably cleared them more efficiently. But in the fullness of time, spike proteins are eiminated. In any case, the exposure to spike proteins from the vaccine is trivial compared to the exposure one gets from an actual infection.
There’s a Substack named ‘coffee and Covid’ that you may find interesting. I read it with a grain of salt but even I cannot help but notice a lot of people are dropping dead lately that include a lot of middle age and young people. Unexplained Illness is becoming a category unto itself.
It is interesting how Covid is essentially being ignored. I presume for economic reason, but who knows.
What that means is all the ways that could reduce the spread such as quarantines, masks, air filtration as well as any medications are either ignored or downgraded, and providing for them does cost money, probably taxes, and interferes with the markert. Of course, the CDC and government generally awful performance makes people not trust them especially when never admit any mistakes.
And so, people just keep getting sick, dying or being crippled when they should not be.
Professor Harper seems to want open dialogue and debate with those with different viewpoints. That's commendable and I hope that we see more like him but I fear that Professor Harper will be canceled one way or another. The new-New Left tolerates no dissent. And if history is any indication, once the Left assumes power, Harper will be among the first led to the killing fields.
When critical thinking is not allowed; there is really not much point to having humanities departments. They will likely no longer exist in a generation or two at most. Then they will return to their home as a small salon for the very wealthy.
I'm not sure "critical thinking" is a good term for what you mean. It think maybe the didn't come much into play, in my experience, till the entrenchment in the universities of left-wing critical theory. "Critical thinking" would then mean intersectionality (as it's called now), etc.
many decades ago those interested in genuine inquiry left the academy for private salon discussions. current universities are no longer where important discussions take place.
Re: The working class New Yorkers tearing into the guy tearing down posters - I sometimes feel we could use that approach elsewhere. Kindergarten teachers trying to "queer" the school? Maybe a physical ultimatum would put a stop to it.
But of course that's how you foment the ideological mobs in the street that were a hallmark of the late Weimar period, just before the Nazis took the reins.
17 These things I command you, that you love one another.
18 If the world hates you, you know that it hated Me before it hated you.
19 If you were of the world, the world would love its own. Yet because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you.
I believe the humanities are vital, and central to the ongoing conversation of higher ed. But only if they are honest. And they cannot be honest if the department and the institutional admins demand an ideological/political conformity. If they do demand such conformity, especially in defiance of observable facts and reality, and completely shut out discussion, they become useless and we get what we get.
Hi Rod,
Pano Kanelos here. Great to see you recently. This is exactly why we started the University of Austin. And I am delighted to announce that yesterday the State of Texas authorized us to become a four-year, degree-granting university. I would love to hire this guy. The exchange of ideas is the purpose of the university; the dominance of ideology is the death of the university. In these times of ambient nihilism, when everything seems to be falling apart, the only thing to do is to build. Build new institutions and infuse them joy, beauty, a passion for truth. Onwards!
Pano, I respect your sentiment here, but please don't. There are lots of out of work or side-lined professors who actually believe in Western Civilization, the precise thing that your university is supposedly dedicated to teaching and defending. A Marxist CAN NOT put truth first; it is a logical impossibility. Good people not taking radical ideas seriously and instead convincing themselves that "well, he's a Marxist but he supports academic freedom" is how our universities ended up where they are.
Brian, respectfully, I find saying a Marxist cannot put the truth first because it is logical impossibility. At its base, Marxism especially used as a technique is purely a tool to study class and economics. Please expand on it because it sounds like one of those Boogeymenn that is easily found across the political spectrum nowadays; a vile caricature of a designated enemy. For instance, hard right economic conservatives as described by hyper partisan liberals.
Enlightenment liberalism makes assumptions about what man is: man is a rights bearing creature who exists to exercise his individual will, and the governments exist for the purpose of securing that opportunity for as many individuals as possible.
Marxism makes even more extreme assumptions about the world, specifically that human society is a Manichean struggle between oppressors and the oppressed. Who fits into each box varies by the sub-species of Marxist; that the world is a struggle between these boxes does not. In that struggle, individual rights are secondary to the needs of the oppressed class as a group.
The committed Enlightenment liberal must balance a commitment to individual rights with a commitment to truth. This requires active work, but as the this view of man is closer to reality, it is at least doable. However, a Marxist's view of man is so skewed, so counter to actual human nature, he must essentially overturn his entire view of the world in order pursue truth.
Thanks for the response. I do fall into that subset of believers in class struggle, but is an economic and social belief married to Marxian analyst, not about what are humans; anyone who refuses to try to see the world as it is instead of cramming it into neat ideological boxes has problem. I can see beyond the faulty, often horrific, solutions suggested by many Marxists and some socialists, but people stay with their ideology beyond any reason because it makes it easy to think. Just cram reality into bits and shove it into their belief system. It is something you will find in any system of belief or practice.
I actually agree with you on this. I believe Marx provides a key addition to the Enlightenment philosophy of Locke / Smith / Ricardo can not accurately handle class conflict, group identity, or tribal tendencies. These are all functions of the group, but Locke et al are completely based on the rights-bearing, rational, self-interested, utility-maximizing individual -- that creature my field refers to as homo-economicus. This isn't man either. Man is a social animal. Where the ideological Marxists go wrong (and what produced so much carnage in the 20th century) was the belief that man was exclusively a group construct.
Reality incorporates both: man is an individual that participates in tribal and group identities. But in terms of damage to man and the world, it is those who veer too far in the group-identity direction that have done the most damage. Enlightenment liberalism has certainly damaged man spiritually, but it has at least produced material success. It took the communists to excuse wanton mass murder with no material upside.
“Hedonist experiential luxury resort”. This is an apt description of universities!
The Marxist professor is an exception. The left wants to abolish classically liberal democracy by any and all means and replace it with the dictatorship of the leftist elite. And if a bunch of conservatives die in the process, too bad.
My guess is not an exception. My guess is that he is simply slicker than most.
My experience with Marxism in the humanities (English graduate school in the 1980s/early 1990s) was twofold. On the one hand, explicitly Marxist literary criticism and literary theory was a discrete, well-defined approach to literary study (and one that was by then a bit long in the tooth). On the other, there was what was loosely termed just “Theory”, which in practice meant Derrida and Foucault and everybody spiraling out of the texts these two produced. In a word, Poststructuralism. Following Lyotard, good poststructuralists exhibited broad skepticism about the grand narratives such as Marxism, which posited a formal morality play or narrative. But once this skepticism began to be taken up by the identity mavens—the feminists, the race writers, the multiculturalists, the gender and queer theorists, poststructural skepticism was reserved only for the phallogocentric world and never trained reflectively back on their own positions. Lyotard’s experiment in self-criticism was abortive, it turned out.
Anyway, it was this skepticism trained on the normie world of phallogocentrists and scrupulously kept away from their internal project that formed the kernel of hypocrisy or inconsistency that has characterized cultural leftism ever since. That is how you end up with critical legal studies undercutting the very foundations that allowed the field its space to begin with.
I suspect that Rod’s young Marxist, like the very Old World boffin Herbert Marcuse, is sincere, but unimaginative regarding the direct implications of his mental framework. Yes—I always want to see Marxism studied, even sympathetically, in universities, but its programmatic effects on the very context in which it operates must be held constantly in view. It WILL bite the hand that feeds it. We just need to keep the chain mail on when we mess with it.
First rate! I don't suppose you'd care to share where you studied? and what? I went to graduate school in English for a glorious six weeks in the fall of 1976. I don't suppose it would do anybody any harm to say that it was at Yale, and tdhat to see tweedy second stringers like Hillis Miller parrot back Derrida and Barthes was horror comedy never to be forgotten. I knew it wasn't for me (academia) and have never regretted it, except, I suppose, when I was broke.
When I was an undergraduate I saw that it was quite possible for faculty members (though usually in discrete disciplines) to be friendly socially even though their politics were different. Marxists and liberals really could get along, but that was operant under the assumption that the Marxism was academic--that is toothless. The next generation of academics, my classmates say, weren't so much Marxists as Leninists.
Now, among these academics in different disciplines who could be be friendly there was indeed a common denominator, and that was atheism.
Historian Eugene Genovese was a Marxist but he got better as he aged.
CLR James's The Black Jacobins, about the Haitian slave uprising/revolution, has been on my bookshelf for years. Marxist historian from Trinidad, James was educated in the classics and it shows. The book is a pleasure to read. As the years go on, that's becoming the most important criterion for me. James was also a cricket fanatic.
Terry Eagleton—very much the Marxist—remains one of my favorite literary theorists.
I can't exactly remember when I changed my major from English to Religion ('83 or '84) but it was precisely because I saw the writing on the wall regarding the politicization of the English departments.
I’d out myself if I said where.
I'm currently reading Rene Girard's 'Evolution and Conversion,' and in the introductory biographical chapter he talks about how he was part of the group that brought "theory" to America in 1966 as part of his work in the literary criticism of the time. He states that he was very surprised by how fast it caught on in the American universities and became fashionable, and that he quickly grew uncomfortable with its fashion. Girard states that Lacan was the one who wanted "to take over America,' but that most of the others thought he was just trying to attract attention to himself. He says that "the literature people really felt for [Lacan] and remained fascinated while the psychiatrists remained indifferent."
One gets the sense that while Lacan and his supporters had an agenda, some of the others in the "movement" had no idea the thing would take off like it did, and weren't thrilled about it. Girard certainly wasn't.
Derrida was a fairly thoroughgoing phenomenologist in the Husserl-Heidegger tradition when he started out. His meditations on the priority of speech vs writing remain fascinating to me and ought to be remembered as a permanent part of the history of philosophy.
Actually Freddie DeBoer, an avowed Marxist, is one of the most trenchant critics of wokeism. He, and apparently Harper, see the utter hypocrisy at the heart of the movement.
Old-school Marxists keep their eyes on the money, and they're typically able to see wokeness for the decadent capitalist distraction that it is. And likewise, I expect that they would also see how the focus on racial conflict is a distraction to prevent workers of all colors from coming together and soaking the rich.
That's pretty much DeBoer's perspective. But it's honest at least, or anyway a hell of a lot more honest than wokeism.
Yeah—I tend to think that Marxism is excellent analysis and terrible prophecy. They don't know where to go, but they aren't all that wrong about the nature and dynamics of the system.
It has good diagnostic skills but terrible treatment plans. I have yet to have it explained to me how socialism cannot help but end up being statist, which is the same complaint I have against capitalism. And is why I lean agrarian/distributist -- I have no beef with markets, just with The Market.
I'm not Marxist, although I suppose I'll accept bits of Marxian analysis.
However, I'm a lot more sympathetic to dividing people up by rich and poor than by skin colour and weird sexual definitions.
I find it sort of funny how studiously people tend to ignore the things that Jesus said about money. I think that the magnitude of wealth disparities we see in modern societies is un-Christian, and also that such disparities themselves are a source of social instability. Aside from how big the pie is, fair division of the pie is an independently meaningful metric of its own.
Huge disparities in wealth are bad but so is socialism. Hillaire Belloc had it about right.
I think that "socialist" might be best understood as a policy option: as in, Social Security is essentially socialist in nature. Most capitalists don't seem to be asking for a Randian libertarian dystopia. If with Belloc you're referring to distributism, then I agree that sounds good, from what little I know about it.
I have been a Christian my entire life and have never once heard a sermon on James 5. I almost didn't even know that passage was in the Bible until I heard T-Bone Burnett's song "Rich Man" (The Alpha Band) when I was in college!
Go to snu.edu peter maurin
You'll find a treasure of an article by Maurin, who if he's known at all today is known as a major figure in Dorothy Day's Catholic Worker movement. Maurin himself doesn't write too much, primarily an introduction to his listing of over a hundred passages in the Bible which command love and kindness to the poor, generosity on the part of the rich, and God's frequent announcement that He will take retribution on behalf of those well - to - do who don't live in this way.
This article is on the website of Southern Nazarene University, a Wesleyan institution, which delights me.
Presbyterian historical theology has a name for the following phenomenon which I don't recall, but the theologians own up to the truth of what happened: a hundred years ago, motivated by a wish to have nothing whatever to do with the German demythologizing theology which had by then conquered most of mainline American Protestantism, orthodox Presbyterianism idiotically withdrew from its previous involvement in helping the poor. Most other conservative Protestant churches did, too. My mother, who was born in 1921, remembered The Great Depression well. She said that one reason Roosevelt social democracy took hold with such unrelentingness was the disgusting failure of the churches to help as they were commanded to do.
I know that Timothy Keller wrote about this, as have others. The Maurin article doesn't just list the relevant Bible verses, it lists the verses in full.
To be fair Marxist-Leninism did have a commitment to racial equality. Now, part of this was tactical (it was perceived as a weak spot in the American and British polities) and part strategic (Lenin's analysis of imperialism, etc., etc.) But there's no reason not to call it sincere.
But the underlying sentiment there was a colorblind "we're all equal, it's the greedy capitalists/rentiers trying to divide us." Wokeness is, as Sethu says, precisely what the Marxists were complaining about. As evinced by how early the capitalists and rentiers jumped on the bandwagon.
*eagerly. Autocorrect, hmph.
Isn't it awful? Autocorrect, I mean.
Remember, though, that, as Books Do Furnish a Room Bagshaw tells Nick Jenkins, Marxism doesn't make any sense and honest Marxists will admit the fact. It was all too easy for socialists to elide their vaunted "scientific" analysis into ice people/sun people, etc., etc.
It is much the same with modern Neoliberalism's economics. It was used to strip "political" from the field political economy changing it to the field of economics. This is a reason why modern economics often gets it so wrong as it has been simplified into stupidity.
Guys like Harper and DeBoer, and the anti-woke Leftists who used to comment on Rod's TAC blog, are alert to the fact that today's woke Left has all but abandoned any robust concern for issues of class/economics. Just like in politics proper, those concerns have been replaced by IdPol. I have no reason to doubt their honesty, especially if they are of the sort who have been critical of this trend all along. Just as all conservatives are not created equal, neither are all Leftists.
It seems to me that economically more to the left and socially more to the right is sort of the synthesis we find in old-school Catholic social teaching.
Yep. Which is why the Southern Agrarians found a kinship with the English Distributists.
"In Dixieland..."
It's a favorite book of mine.
snu.edu is the website of Southern Nazarene University, a Weslayan college. But on their site, they have an article by Peter Maurin, best known for his involvement with the Catholic Worker movement.
In his article, Maurin cites and reprints the over one hundred Bible verses which have to do with God's concern for the poor, His commands to well - to - do believers to be generous, and His promise of retribution to the arrogant rich.
It's extremely cheering, exhilarating, even. Meatball Reaganism still governs the instincts of too many conservative Christians on this matter.
this has been blatantly obvious for decades but for various reasons it was impossible for anyone to confront or admit it—for conservatives, the rot infesting the humanities didn't matter bc it had nothing to do with money and "those crazy kids will grow out of it" (as if ideology were a 70s wardrobe); for liberals, it is always socially and professionally toxic to disagree with anyone to their left because that could get them mistaken for a conservative (moral pollution) or skunk-sprayed with a bigotry accusation, thus they can only gaslight and/or whistle past the graveyard (no such thing as cancel culture! no one's teaching CRT!)
many conservatives have been battling this on university campuses for many, many decades.
Great stuff. I.A. Richards in 1919 wrote a very famous letter to the editor of the Athenaeum (it was an anti-Bloomsbury device) in which he asserted, and then went on to demonstrate, that successful works of art make propositions impossible to make in any other way, and that their result was truth. This was the man who along with Eliot and F.R. Leavis revolutionized the study of polite letters in the last century. Try it on today, and when they stop laughing weep for what we have lost. The only kind of knowledge anybody has any respect for is STEM, and that means power.
>>>The only kind of knowledge anybody has any respect for is STEM, and that means power.
But that means the weakest kind of power. Any good college or university, whatever its intellectual proclivities, teaches its students how to analyze, reason, and to develop wisdom. This is the only real way to fight the propaganda and outright lies that are used by the advocates of all sides, not least today's modern neoliberals and conservatives.
I think that the destruction of higher learning is a combined effort of the modern American Corporate Neoleftism, Neoliberalism, and Conservatism. Making and keeping people unwise is to keep them disarmed and vulnerable to control.
I am using the description of Corporate Neoleftism and Neoliberalism deliberately to make a distinction from the nearly dead remnants of 20th century leftism and liberalism. I could almost certainly do the same to today's Conservatism.
I took two semesters of philosophy, Greeks through Kant, my freshman year, 50 years ago, with a very great teacher indeed. His final remarks in his final lecture were and are unforgettable. There is no such thing as a final philosophical position. Any conclusion is open to questioning. This was not a statement of skepticism. It was meant, I believe, and I accepted it, as an expression of hope.
Imagine hearing that today.
Excellent point
Rod - thanks for your tips about visiting Budapest. I saw the Terror Museum, went to the restaurant by the embassy, and saw the bath at city park (though didn't enter). Also went up Buda Castle and the Citadel and toured Parliament and the Opera House.
"It is the first seemingly innocent step away from principle that frequently decides a career of crime. Corrosion begins in microscopic proportions."
"The ease with which destruction of life is advocated for those considered either socially useless or socially disturbing instead of educational or ameliorative measures may be the first danger sign of loss of creative liberty in thinking, which is the hallmark of democratic society. All destructiveness ultimately leads to self-destruction."
Dr. Leo Alexander, Medical Science Under Dictatorship, NEJM, 1949.
Frankly, I've been having my spell of being blackpilled lately.
I've watched US Evangelicals calling for the expulsion of all Christians from the Holy Land, for the first time since the Resurrection.
I've watched Zionist Jews and Dispensationalists advocating policies clearly based on the genocidal teachings in the Old Testament, demanded by Samuel, etc. I'd always placed those teachings on a shelf, as something that I don't know how to explain just now, but I thought the issue was academic, because Christians believe that God had finished with the Jews, and Jews seem to have rejected or outgrown those teachings (perhaps with the Talmud as their version of the New Testament). I was wrong on both counts.
I increasingly feel that I don't want any identification with Evangelicals, especially Dispensationalists. I don't want to see them as versions of the same religion. I distrust even non-Evangelical US Christianity.
Yes, it is heretical.
It is possible to support Israel without being Dispensationalist, but it must be on similar terms to how one would support any other secular nation.
It is also possible to support Zionism, probably on the basis of the Jews as a people having been treated so terribly that they deserve a home.
However, use of Dispensationalism to defend those is heresy. It is not Christianity. It also tends to be linked to a particularly aggressive and intransigent militarism, which is morally un-Christian.
Yes, but (and I posted the link in an earlier string) Ben Shapiro responded to Col. Macgregor's famous interview with Carlson by saying nastily that the Israelis had no intention of fomenting war with Iran. I regarded this as significant because, whether or not true, he was certainly told to say it, and told to say it by Jerusalem. I rested just a tad easier after that, if only for a few weeks.
Hey Ben, Moshe Weinowicz here. Yeah, you know, Israeli Minister of telling American Jews what to say.
Now Ben, listen carefully and write this down...
More or less. Yes.
Hagee's been banging on that for how many years now? So many of his ilk are positively salivating at the thought of "at last! at last! We'll bring in Armageddon and the Second Coming, and we'll all be Raptured while all the evil sinners Left Behind (thanks LaHaye & Jenkins, for your pieces of trash) will suffer hideously while we sit up in heaven and gloat."
The End Times are coming. "No one knows, not even the Son, the day or the hour." And each of us will experience the End Times when we die. So, the best advice is to calm down and carry on: "Love the Lord your God with all your heart and mind and soul and strength and love your neighbors as yourself. This is the law and the prophets."
It's very much a one-sided love affair too.
https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2023/03/15/americans-feel-more-positive-than-negative-about-jews-mainline-protestants-catholics/
If you scroll down, note that Evangelicals have a +39 net positive percent view of Jews,
In the same chart, you can also see that Jews have a -40(!) net percent negative view of Evangelicals. Interestingly, Jews only view Mainline liberal Protestants and Atheists with a net positive sentiment. Make of that what you will
The Evangelicals aren't interested in the Jews as such; they are waiting for what they think are certain prophecies to be fulfilled.
I see that calumny leveled broadly against Evangelicals all the time, and it is simply not true. Dispensationalists may take that viewpoint, but they are a narrow slice of Evangelicalism. The rest of us believe God loves and still has a plan for His Jewish people, which is the clear message of scripture. I have been sickened by the dismissive attitudes so many dispensationalists have shown towards the Jews, especially after the Oct. 7 attacks. It's veiled antisemitism and deeply unchristian.
Hm, okay: I'll admit that I'm not too familiar with the finer distinctions there.
Basically, dispensationalists believe God replaced the Jews with the Church, and they therefore apply any prophecies from the OT to the church. It makes for a weird view of the world, and as I said, they tend to be very hostile towards Israel.
Wait a second, though: as far as I'm aware, the Catholic and Orthodox view is that the Church is the New Israel—but that's not the Dispensationalism we're talking about?
That's not Dispensationalism. That sounds more or less like mainstream Catholicism, Orthodoxy, etc., although I'd be careful with "they therefore apply any prophecies from the OT to the church."
Dispensationalists are the subgroup of Evangelicals who are premillennialist (Catholics and Orthodox tend to be amillennialist), and believe that the Jews are still God's Chosen People, that there is a distinction between Israel and the Church, that Christians are not bound by Mosaic law but Jews still are, and that there is to be a future restoration of national Israel, and a rapture of the Church that will happen before the Second Coming of Christ.
Cathy, you have it backward: dispensational premillenialists do not believe God has replaced Israel with the Church, just the opposite! Among Christians, dispensationalists tend to be the most pro - Israel.
My grandmother was a Dispensationalist and a fervent, fervent Zionist. Two of her grandchildren married Jews. The belief that Christ will return in the generation Israel is restored is what Evangelicals find in the Bible (the "Fig Tree" passage) but it is incidental.
One thing that needs to be noted about Dispensationalism is that it was created in the UK and USA in the 1850s, and Evangelicals were involved with Zionism right from the beginning. Arthur Balfour was himself a Dispensationalist. The creation of the state of Israel is thus not necessarily a prophesied event, but an event generated to fulfill a prophesy.
It's like those Evangelicals who say that we should try to provoke nuclear war to bring about Armageddon.
The thing is that you can't force God's hand like that. I keep coming back to "the stone that the builders rejected". This is why I largely skip over the prophetic texts in the Bible - when they happen, they'll make sense - but at present all we know is that Christ will return. We should try to treat people decently, and work for justice and mercy, but independently of the membership of those people in groups that someone has sketched out in weird diagrams on the backs of brown envelopes
In any case, suppose one accepts the Dispensationalist view that Jews remain the Chosen People, and have to be gathered back in to Zion before the Rapture. OK, what happens if Israel is destroyed, and the Jews scattered again? Presumably they all go back to the drawing board?
In addition, who are the Jews? If the matrilineal line is taken, as declared by the rabbinate, it's quite likely that the Ashkenazim are not Jewish, but many of the Palestinians are. However, matrilineal descent was only defined in about 1200, and you get a different picture taking patrilineal descent. Or perhaps it means belief in Judaism? People who follow historically Orthodox Judaism, such as the Satmar, are now anti-Zionist. Perhaps they haven't been gathered in yet? I'm not defending any of those positions, just showing how ridiculous detailed identifications from Revelation, etc., are.
A couple weeks back, I had the unexamined and partly subconscious notion that the Jews are still theologically special, and your comments have helped show me that this is not a valid Christian view. So thank you for that.
As for who the Jews are, though: they were still recognizable enough to have been subjected to a massive genocide, weren't they? And Eve here posted a long great comment on the previous post explaning the entire history of how anti-Semitisim has been basically woven into the socio-cultural DNA of the West. So, I default to liking the Jews, for non-theological reasons, out of a basically contrarian instinct: the massive confluence of bad people who hate the Jews makes me want to like them.
The Ashkenazim most definitely are an ethnic group. They have Y-chromosome DNA mostly from the Levant, and X-chromosome DNA mostly from Central Europe. They're descended from about 350 people in about 1300, so any Ashkenazi is no more than, say, 10th cousin or something from any other Ashkenazi. They also have all sorts of things in common like the Yiddish language, music, food, etc.
I see. So does that mean that . . . they aren't Jews? It seems like almost a trivial question for a Christian to ask, of course, since we do not care what people's genes are. It's just that the worst sorts of people seem to make this kind of argument, so I'm not exactly sure what to do with that.
I have a soft spot for Hasidic Judaism, from what I've read.
If you're right about non-Christians accepting the logos, I'd tend to think of them in there.
It's like how I have a soft spot for the Sufis, although I'm quite convinced that Muhammed was a false prophet.
The Jews ARE still theologically "special" according to St. Paul. But this special quality, being "loved for the sake of the fathers," is not in and of itself salvific.
I don't think that's theological though, is it? The more salient thing that St. Paul says seems to be that in Christ there are no Jews or Gentiles.
I was looking just now into the argument that Jewish identity should be patrilineally defined, because that's what the Torah says and also because with the matrilineal redefinition, four of Jacob's own sons would not be Jews (and certainly not many of Solomon's children, and so on). Any thoughts on that?
Of course, it is only of intellectual interest. I didn't understand what the Book of Ruth was for until I realized that she is David's grandmother—which is to say that the Messiah had Gentile blood.
You really need to talk to someone who knows a lot about Jewish history, because what I say is probably wrong.
My understanding is that in OT times Jewish identity was more just a question of joining the tribe, practising the religion, speaking the language, and then you were a member. Obviously, not many people actually did that, but it sometimes happened. Most nations were like that in antiquity.
At some point, it became patrilineal. The Zoroastrians, who are analogous to the Jews in some respects, have patrilineal identity. They don't accept converts, though. I think I vaguely remember reading that the Karaites (Jews who reject the Talmud, and just use the OT) and the Samaritans have patrilineal identity.
Later, because of inherent uncertainty about paternity, it was changed to matrilineal. I read somewhere that that was due to lots of Jewish women being raped at the time of the Crusades, but that's from a Jewish source that was very anti-Christian, so it might be wrong.
I've never heard of any evangelicals seeking to stoke nuclear war, and I have been involved in evangelical churches for 50 years. The idea of the Tribulation is one that is dreaded even if it is at some point inevitable.
Not the Evangelicals I know.
Dispensational premillenialism encourages Christians to take all sorts of interest in Jews, far more than you'd find in churches which are amillenial.
Why don't you investigate the backgrounds of Jews who have become Christians? Most of the time, you'll find they came to believe in Jesus because some Evangelical reached out to them with the Gospel.
Fair enough; I have learned from the discussions here that my comment was too broad.
I wouldn't trust that survey.
"Jews" presumably include a lot atheists/agnostics, who probably feel positively about Mainline liberal Protestants and Atheists.
It would be interesting to see a breakdown among religious Jews.
Orthodox Jews strongly disapprove of Christianity, not just because of the history of persecution, but because it is considered polytheism. Maimonides taught that Muslims may follow the Noahide laws, but Christians never do. I saw interviews with Orthodox Jews, and they said that they would visit a mosque as a tourist, or to a friend's wedding, say, but they must not enter a church under any circumstances. I've seen religious Zionists saying that Muslims can stay in Eretz Israel (Nile to Euphrates), as long as constantly degraded and humiliated, but Christians must be exterminated.
On the other hand, some right-wing Orthodox Jews might have friendly feelings for Evangelical Christianity. I'm not sure. I saw one Zionist rabbi saying that the important thing is to rebuild the Temple, and establish a purely Jewish Israel, now, and the debate about whether the Messiah is to come for the first or second time can be put off until it happens.
It is the myth that Evangelicals support Israel only because they think it has to be there for Christ to return. I repeat: the myth.
(Yes, I know "support Israel" and "support Jews" are different, but so many Jewish people take the support they receive from Evangelicals as stemming from that myth.)
Show one piece of evidence that is the reason for Evangelical support of Israel/Jews. I can show mountains to the contrary.
Yes, they do think Christ will return after Israel is established, but that is not why they support Jews. They would support Jews even if they did not believe the Bible says Christ returns in the generation Israel is established.
(edited to remove sentence about Sethu's post regarding said myth, written without seeing Sethu's further post - already made - where he said thet he was not too familiar with the finer distinctions.)
As I acknowledged somewhere in these comments, I don't know the intricacies of Evangelical thought, so I'm sorry if that brush was too broad.
Also, though, is it your view that a lot of the necons aren't motivated by that myth? If they believe that Christ will return after Israel is established, then that seems to me like a real motive to see Israel established. Personally, if I knew the conditions for Christ to return, then I would try to meet them.
To be clear, I favor the Jews, but I'm thinking about the ways that the religious and political-economic motives may intertwine and cloud judgment. Is there anyone in charge who desires Armaggedon?
Absolutely fair and my bad for not reading further before posting. I will edit, and note the reason.
s board that neocons are pieces of excrement is not one I agree with.
Evangelicals, and hence neocons who are Evangelicals, believe Israel is already established. "This generation shall not pass" can be interpreted to mean at least one person alive in 1948 will be alive at the return of Christ. There is no reason to go to war to establish Israel it has been done.
Relevant passage from Matthew 24 (also found in other gospels) 32- Now learn a parable of the fig tree; When his branch is yet tender, and putteth forth leaves, ye know that summer is nigh: 33 So likewise ye, when ye shall see all these things, know that it is near, even at the doors.34 Verily I say unto you, This generation shall not pass, till all these things be fulfilled.
There is cross referencing involved in why Evangelicals believe Israel is the fig tree, and believe it's budding is the founding of Israel but that is their belief.
I think one issue is that from the Catholic or Orthodox standpoint, there isn't any reason to believe that the fate of the Jews is any longer theologically relevant, so I don't accept some of the premises here. More than that, though (and more to the point at hand), I don't see any reason to think that your notion of Evangelical is the same as the powers-that-be's notion of Evangelical. I think we have every reason to believe that they will weaponize every thought they can get their hands on, and that you have a rather purer notion than they do. After all, they've never seen a fight that they don't like.
What would satisfy your notion of powers-that-be-Evangelical? Can you site a person with this power who wants to weaponize thoughts against Israel? What "reasons to believe" do you have?
So what? The New Testament is quite clear that because the Jews rejected their Messiah, God has rejected them. Exactly where in the New Testament do you find Jews speaking well of Christians?
You do find Jews' steadfast persecution of Christians, but that doesn't relieve Christians of the obligation to act in love toward them.
In my view, the fault lines have been massive all along, given that the only operational definition of being "Christian" is having been baptized in the names of the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost, and having self-professed faith in the aforementioned. But in what sense are sane Catholics and woke Catholics part of the same religion?—the notion that I am in any sort of meaningful communion with Biden or Pelosi (other than the general solidarity of humankind) is laughable. If you start thinking about it, the fragile pious lies don't really hang together very long—and hence my basic notion of discerning hearts rather than overt confessions. That is sturdy, a thing on which it is possible to build.
"hearts rather than overt confessions"
There's definitely something to be said for that.
"...the notion that I am in any sort of meaningful communion with Biden or Pelosi (other than the general solidarity of humankind) is laughable."
Never mind the garbage that has been coming out of Rome, in full spate for the past three weeks.
I haven't jumped on the Gaza train, but I've learned more about it from Jewish journalists and intellectuals who've become disillusioned and, in some cases, disgusted with the Jewish Zionist experiment and the degraded treatment of Palestinians. They provide an important history lesson that can't be found in mainstream media. Most of them are leftists, perhaps some are Socialists or Marxist, but it's difficult to categorize them as anti-Semites unless one believes they are self-hating Jews, but they're not. They're Jews who don't believe in the Zionist ideology. Much of anti-Semitism I've observed comes from the bipartisan establishment. Since Arab people and most Palestinians are Semites, that would make Nikki Haley, Ted Cruz, Lindsey Graham, most Republicans and Democrats in Congress - the list goes on and on- as anti-Semites. They hate Palestinians! They hate the fact that Palestinians haven't been totally displaced or killed by Israeli air raids. The hatred of Palestinians is palpable. One hears it from Israeli settlers, Likhud party members, and Fox News because there's no room for Palestinians in their zenophobic Zionist ideology. Yes, what Hamas did is awful, but am I supposed to believe Israel is the exemplar of liberal democracy? I don't know who the real ass*oles are among all the parties involved in the historical making of this calamitous event, but I do know it significantly predates the rise of the wokeness of the Progressives.
Well, yes, hmmm, one can argue that Arabs are Semites, so hostility to Arabs is antisemitism. However, "antisemitism" in general use means hostility to Jews, so I think it's better to use that meaning. One could use "Judaeophobia" if one really wishes.
Having said that, antisemitism is applied to so many things relating to the Jews and Israel as to be almost meaningless.
I would guess most are like me and supported a 2 state solution until I found out that Palestine doesn’t want that, they want eradication of the Jewish state and people. Whatever sympathy they might have had from me evaporated when they started chopping heads of babies and gouging out eyes. I’m a little emotional that way. Am
I recommend viewing The Grayzone YouTube channel, "People of Darkness" episode. It's hosted by two independent Jewish journalists. Aaron Mate's father, Dr. Gabor Mate, also, makes a short appearance and has some interesting comments and perspective. His grandparents were killed in Auschwitz. Give it a try and discern if it modifies your opinion.
I will give it a listen but honestly I don’t know how people are able to equate the situation.
I agree with you if people refer to October 7 as the starting point for the animosity between the two factions, but there's a long history to uncover prior to October 7 with an alternate narrative which gets buried by the well funded predominant narrative in our politics.
October 7 was the starting point of a new level of savagery. No one is denying their issues. It’s not like we haven’t known what has been going on or how sympathetic the press is to Palestine. I used to listen to NPR daily before I caught on to what they were doing. I wasn’t born yesterday.
Okay I was able to stomach about 20 minutes of that. Without being too rude about it, I thought it was garbage. Here’s my question to you; should Israel just let it go and revert to October 6? Should they just leave the region? No waffling, make your stand. I guess it’s because I had to go through so much in order to have my children: if my baby had been beheaded or burned to a crisp or my brother had an eye gouged out in front of his children I would want Gaza leveled to the ground. I really don’t understand this attitude; it seems similar to the coddling attitude towards criminals here since 2020. There is no going back from what Hamas has done. They have to be destroyed utterly. I was astounded that those commentators didn’t believe that Hamas uses innocents as human shields; right, they wouldn’t do that because we all know they are good people deep down. If you wish to point to the section where there aren’t just ragging on how terrible Israel is I’ll listen but I’m not going to sit through what appears to be a biased commentary.
If you're too emotional maybe you shouldn't be commenting. More people with your ahistorical perspective and attitude is what can lead to WW III.
I’ll gladly admit that I’m emotional, but I get to have my say regardless. Don’t kid yourself; that podcast host and his guest and the comments section were using highly emotional rhetoric to sway people into excusing savagery. I also note that you avoid the questions I posed.
Yours truly has been saying for years that the destruction of Iraqi Christianity was a feature, not a bug of Gulf War II. Saddam was and Assad is protector of Christian minorities.
Yes, definitely.
Saddam was a nasty piece of work, but he managed to hold together a multiethnic and multireligious state.
Assad is much less nasty than Saddam was, and Syria is moving towards democracy.
I can't really figure out why the USA is so murderous towards Middle Eastern Christians. Can it really just be chance?
I'll sketch a few possibilities, although I don't really believe any of them:
1. The USA is the Antichrist.
2. The USA is controlled by Israel, which seeks to exterminate Christians.
3. The USA seeks to eliminate Christians from the Middle East, so that there will be less objection to massive bombing, etc., of exclusively Muslim countries.
4. The USA is controlled by Saudi Arabia, which seeks an exclusively Islamic Arabian Peninsula.
5. The USA is controlled by Evangelicals, who hate non-Evangelical Christians.
I think 1. puts us in the same basket with Hagee. I think the truth is somewhere in a combination of 2. and 5., though you can't say the U.S. is "controlled" by either.
I'll plump for #4 myself. Because Saudi Arabia says jump and we say how high. Including invading Iraq when the majority of the 9/11 terrorists, including its ringleader, were Saudi.
Is it still about the oil?
Pretty much. They set the terms for oil production, how much for how long. Third largest producer (US is #1, Russia #2) and largest oil exporter. Second largest oil reserves (behind Venezuela, which is why the US keeps an eye on that country's politics).
Plus Saudi Arabia is simply an unbelievably wealthy country: It's categorized as a World Bank high-income economy and is the only Arab country to be part of the G20 major economies. It supported Iraq in the Iran-Iraq War, and then backed Kuwait against Iraq, and helped finance our involvement in that war. It's also backed Pakistan heavily, and is suspected to have financed their nuclear weapons program, in exchange for nukes of its own in the near future. (No one talks about that much, do they?) And it's incredibly militarized for its size and population, with most of its weapons coming from US, France and Britain.
They are THE power - financially and militarily - in the Middle East.
It might be breaking down now, but I've noticed a sick alliance between Israeli and Saudi Arabia over the last few years. I don't mean to be glib, but it seems the only thing they have in common is hatred of Christians, and they're the USA's allies in the region. Arguably, they're the USA's only allies anywhere; otherwise the USA only has vassals.
The USA, Israel, and Saudi Arabia cooperated in their support for ISIS and al-Qaida in Syria, and the drive to replace the regime there with a Wahhabi despotism.
The commenter "Syrian Girl" sees them as a sort of theocratic axis of evil in the region. I can't say I'm particularly convinced. I do think they perhaps share a monochrome vision of national identity, though. The Middle East is a complex patchwork of religions and languages, and Saudi Arabia and Israel both oppose that, imposing a 1930s-style vision of national identity.
That's an impressive set of options, there. #1 in particular is rather charming in its simplicity.
Please name a single Evangelical who has called for the expulsion of Christians from the Holy Land. It's possible that some nitwit did, but Eastern Orthodoxy has its share of nitwittery, too. I do not know of a single reputable Evangelical who has said that.
Put up, Rombald, withdraw the statement, or count on my coming back to denounce you as a liar.
I don't understand your hatred of any Christians, Rombald. The Bible teaches that it is the supernatural imperative of the Christian to love other Christians. I know that I love every Catholic, Orthodox, and Copt who believes in Jesus.
Whatever you think of American Evangelicals, it doesn't arise from the godly incumbency upon Christians to love other Christians. It isn't a spiritual mood which you should remain unalarmed about.
Huge numbers of Evangelicals, and right-wing people generally, advocate the expulsion of all Palestinians from Israel-Palestine. I'd guess that to be the position of the majority of US Evangelcials, although I have no data.
That includes most of the Christians in the Holy Land, and all those who have been there for centuries, perhaps since the time of Christ in some cases.
The number of Christians of Jewish origin is much smaller. Some are Evangelicals or Messianics, and recent converts, and others are Russian immigrants who have converted or returned to Orthodoxy. I haven't heard Evangelicals come right out and say they should be expelled, but they tend to have close ties with the Israeli religious far-right, which does advocate that.
In other words, you can't name anyone. You can't name an organization. You're a liar.
Most kids today, I think, have no interest in "the humanities" because the humanities have already died, and it its place are a bunch of self-righteous, kind of dumb goons spouting nonsense. Really sad.
Sigh. I am a university professor of math. I mostly study and teach mathematical physics. The humanities and social sciences no longer exist as scholarly disciplines. They are almost entirely ideological drivel. Even in some sciences, wokism has invaded. Biological scientists must choose their words with great care when discussing biological sex even if only in a discussion of the evolution and reproductive habits of salamanders. (It may be considered bigoted to assert that biological sex in salamanders is binary.)
The vast majority of ideological nonsense is from the extreme left, but the right has not been entirely innocent. During the pandemic, a friend of mine who professes biochemistry at the University of Alabama was vilified by some students. In response to student questions about vaccines, he explained some basics about RNA and how it works. He told them that bad reactions to the vaccines, such as the occasional myocarditis, must surely be caused by the spike proteins themselves rather than the mRNA that catalyzes their production in our immune cells. He pointed out that mRNA, at normal temperatures, has a half life measured in hours rather than days and hence that the mRNA cannot persist in our bodies. He also debunked the idea, popular in ignorant conservatives circles, that mRNA vaccines have anything to do with "gene therapy". He was accused of being a lefty stooge duped by Fauci's propaganda. For God's sake! He was stating basic uncontroversial facts about the chemistry of nucleic acids that have been known since the 1950s and standard in every biochemistry textbook written since 1965 or so.
So far, I have been left alone. When I teach math and physics it is quite nonideological. I have not yet been accused of either rightwing racist opinions or lefty woke opinions about differential equations, electromagnetism, stress energy tensors, quantum mechanics, or anything else. That day may come.
I am sorry for what your friend went through. People should discuss academic differences in a reasonable manner, without vilification.
I believe it was learned late during Covid-19 that mRNA was modified. The nucleic acids in RNA and original mRNA are guanine, uracil, adenine, and cytosine, (with uracil differentiating RNA from DNA.) But for the vaccines, the uracil was replaced with pseudouracil. I've seen academic journals that flat out stat that pesudouracil is gene therapy. Information about pseudoracil may not have been available when your friend went through this.
I think the students misunderstood writings (called "conservative writings") about mRNA if they contended mRNA, rather than the spike proteins whose production it engenders, was the cause of such things in myocarditis in those who never had Covid-19.
It is false to say that the modification of the uracil in the vaccine mRNA was learned late during the pandemic. Long before the vaccines were made available the complete list of ingredients of Pfizer and Moderna vaccines was published and made public. Anybody who researched the info (I certainly did) knew that the uracil was modified.
The whole point of the modification was to slightly prolong the persistence of the mRNA so that it could exist and function for longer. The usual unmodified mRNA in our cells has a half-life of around 10 hours while the vaccine mRNA that incorporates pseudouracil has a half-life of a day and a half. RNA of any kind, and particularly mRNA is very fragile and unstable. That is why the nuclei of our cells must constantly produce the stuff. That is why the vaccines had to be stored at freezing temperatures. At normal temperatures, mRNA decays within hours.
Generally RNA is very unstable and the weakest points of the RNA chain are the uracil nucleotides. That is why our genes are based on the more stable DNA in which uracil is replaced by thymine rather than on RNA. Recall that a nucleotide consists of a nucleobase bonded with a ribose or deoxyribose and with one or more phosphate units. Thymine and guanine and cytosine and adenosine form stronger bonds with phosphates than uracill. There is a misconception that pseudouracil is manmade and is unnatural to our bodies. That is false. Some of our ribosomal RNA and transfer RNA incorporates pseudouracil. For mRNA, however, mammals and most animals use only ordinary uracil, though some yeasts and fungi make mRNA using pseudouracil.
As for "gene therapy", I would be VERY interested in reading any detailed scientific article that calls the mRNA vaccines "gene therapy" without inventing a totally novel definition of the phrase. Which journal articles have you seen? Every previous usage of the phrase "gene therapy" refers to actual modification of genes in cells or introduction of functional DNA in cells to replace the function of defective human genes. Rather obviously, humans don't have genes, defective or otherwise, that code for coronavirus spike proteins. Wikipedia's article on "gene therapy" discusses the different kinds and the history. You will see that nothing that has heretofore been called "gene therapy" could possibly apply to the mRNA vaccines.
Perhaps some lay people confused the terms "gene therapy" and "gene expression". The general sequence of DNA --> precursor mRNA t --> mature mRNA --> proteins is often called "gene expression". I have read articles (popular, not scientific) stating that the mRNA vaccines interfered with gene expression. But that is semantic nonsense. We have no such genes whose expression could be interfered with. Rather a new thing is introduced so that our cells could make spike proteins. And it only persists for a couple days.
In quick summary, the vaccines work like this: Recall that in the vaccines, the modified mRNA is encased in a lipid capsule which serves two purposes. The capsule somewhat stabilizes the mRNA and, very importantly, the lipid is recognized by immune cells as an invader. After the intramuscular injection, most of the mRNA is taken up by dendritic cells near the injection site. The powerful enzymes in the dendritic cells break down the lipid capsule releasing the mRNA, some of which finds its way to the ribosomes where it manufactures spike proteins. The dendritic cells then present sections of the proteins, called epitopes, on their outer cell membranes, and then go to the lymph nodes and bother T cells to appraise the epitopes and give proper instructions to B cells. If all goes hunky dory, by the time your body has cleared out the spike proteins (the time of which is very variable between individuals), your T cells have expertly directed the B cells to make a variety of antibodies that effectively bind to the spike protein. The best are the neutralizing antibodies that bind to the receptor binding domain at the tip of the spike. Such antibodies prevent the spike from adhering to cell membranes and hence prevent entry into cells. But even if antibodies bind to a different part of the spike and do not effectively block cell entry, they still tag the virus and draw the attention of the macrophages that patrol our bodies doing garbage disposal duty.
Great. But the reason for the disappointing performance of the vaccines is not in the skill of the vaccine designers, but in the fact that our immune systems do not develop great long term immune memory for coronaviruses. That is true also of natural immunity. Many people have had Covid multiple times. If infection by the real thing doesn't give long term immunity, it is hard to make a vaccine that does better. We are used to thinking of viruses as being like smallpox or measles or mumps or, usually, chickenpox. Those viruses are generally "once and done". Survive the disease or get a vaccine and you are usually immune for life. But other viruses, certainly coronaviruses, are not like that. Here scientists, and even more so the politicians and the media, failed to give people realistic expectations about the vaccines. We were falsely told that getting the vaccine would simply make us immune. Since they wanted people to get vaccinated, they grossly exaggerated what the vaccines can do. That doesn't mean that the vaccines, or natural infection, were worthless, just that the long term immunity is very partial and not good enough to prevent subsequent significant infections. Most people don't get all that excited about better statistics to not get a serious life-threatening case of Covid. They wanted a shot that would simply make them altogether immune. Also the vaccines didn't do much to slow the spread of Covid (neither did natural infection). One might have enough immunity to comfortably carry a viral load without getting significantly sick, but one was still contagious and able to spread the virus pretty well.
Thank you! This merits study on my part and will receive it.
(1) quick responses
(a) You stated, "It is false to say....learned late in the pandemic". Sorry..."I believe it was learned late" was meant to indicate uncertainty on my part.
(b) You stated "As for "gene therapy", I would be VERY interested in reading any detailed scientific article that calls the mRNA vaccines "gene therapy""
When I said "I've seen academic articles that state pseudouracil is gene therapy" I meant mRNA is said to be gene therapy in many articles I've seen. (Unartful phrasing, not all mRNA has pseudouracil) Examples of mRNA as gene therapy:
"mRNA: Fulfilling the promise of gene therapy"
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4817894/
(subheading) So what are mRNA and gene therapies and how do they work?
https://medium.com/swlh/mrna-therapy-a-new-form-of-gene-medicine-5d859dadd1e
<<"For many years, it was generally accepted that mRNA is too unstable to be efficiently used for gene therapy purposes. In the last decade, however, several research groups faced this challenge and not only proved the feasibility of mRNA-mediated transfection with surprising results....">>
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/20970469/
(2) The dozens of articles I've seen from medical researchers saying the spike protein does not go away soon have me really scared. I think you can google them. As a mathematician, statistics on excess deaths should interest you. Lots of articles there. Btw, I got J and J and got one J and J booster.
(3) But what is *very* important here - you spoke about a situation where a person was mistreated when he stated known science. That is really sad. Science is a discussion.
Thank you for the links. I will read them and get back to you if I find something interesting there to discuss. But even if credentialed expert scientists wish to use the phrase "gene therapy" for alterations of gene expression that employ mRNA, I still insist that it is semantically silly to use the phrase for the vaccines. Altering the expression of human genes is one thing, introducing coronaviral mRNA is clearly not that.
By the way, I got a bit in lecture mode discoursing about RNA and the immune system and such. I do, of course, push my expertise there. But besides the math and physics I do have a few semesters of advanced biochemistry under my belt. During the pandemic shutdowns, I had plenty of time to review that and research stuff and look up scientific papers. You won't be surprised to hear my opinion that the media did a TERRIBLE job explaining the science to us. I can't tell you how many times I read an article in the Washington Post or the NY Times that actually provided links to scientific papers that the article then proceeded to misquote. Often the paper they cited said the exact opposite of what the Times said it said.
I'm not sure it makes sense to worry much about the persistence of the spike proteins. It is mysterious how variable it is. I have read that some individuals are almost entirely free of the proteins after a couple weeks while others have significant amounts after a month and a half. It is speculated that those who had persistent amounts of spike proteins had a poor immunological reaction to the vaccines. Those who developed antibodies with good binding affinity to the spike proteins presumably cleared them more efficiently. But in the fullness of time, spike proteins are eiminated. In any case, the exposure to spike proteins from the vaccine is trivial compared to the exposure one gets from an actual infection.
Cheers and be well.
There’s a Substack named ‘coffee and Covid’ that you may find interesting. I read it with a grain of salt but even I cannot help but notice a lot of people are dropping dead lately that include a lot of middle age and young people. Unexplained Illness is becoming a category unto itself.
It is interesting how Covid is essentially being ignored. I presume for economic reason, but who knows.
What that means is all the ways that could reduce the spread such as quarantines, masks, air filtration as well as any medications are either ignored or downgraded, and providing for them does cost money, probably taxes, and interferes with the markert. Of course, the CDC and government generally awful performance makes people not trust them especially when never admit any mistakes.
And so, people just keep getting sick, dying or being crippled when they should not be.
Professor Harper seems to want open dialogue and debate with those with different viewpoints. That's commendable and I hope that we see more like him but I fear that Professor Harper will be canceled one way or another. The new-New Left tolerates no dissent. And if history is any indication, once the Left assumes power, Harper will be among the first led to the killing fields.
Well yeah, you can see right away why. Harper isn't really black and isn't really left. /s
"They meant well"
Another famous saying: "The road to Hell is paved with good intentions"
When critical thinking is not allowed; there is really not much point to having humanities departments. They will likely no longer exist in a generation or two at most. Then they will return to their home as a small salon for the very wealthy.
I'm not sure "critical thinking" is a good term for what you mean. It think maybe the didn't come much into play, in my experience, till the entrenchment in the universities of left-wing critical theory. "Critical thinking" would then mean intersectionality (as it's called now), etc.
Perhaps, open discussion or debate is a more accurate term.
Yeah, the term doesn't mean what it used to mean. On the popular level it just meant applying the logic of common sense, but no more.
many decades ago those interested in genuine inquiry left the academy for private salon discussions. current universities are no longer where important discussions take place.
Re: The working class New Yorkers tearing into the guy tearing down posters - I sometimes feel we could use that approach elsewhere. Kindergarten teachers trying to "queer" the school? Maybe a physical ultimatum would put a stop to it.
But of course that's how you foment the ideological mobs in the street that were a hallmark of the late Weimar period, just before the Nazis took the reins.
It's like the Spotlight revelations. I know for a fact there were baseball bats for sale in Boston in 2002.
Leftists in 2022: speech is unprotected violence
Leftists in 2023: violence is protected speech
See how it works?
I would put it as:
Leftists in 2022: their speech is violence
Leftists in 2023: our violence is speech
I like it!
Very important perspective on current events ; points out why society's foundation is crumbling
John 15:17-19
17 These things I command you, that you love one another.
18 If the world hates you, you know that it hated Me before it hated you.
19 If you were of the world, the world would love its own. Yet because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you.