I remember reading years ago that a fundamental difference between Left and Right is that the Left views politics as the ultimate value, the source of meaning and goal of power, while the Right is generally more grounded in religious values, family and friendship.
I have yet to hear a single example of a Conservative family member rejecting anyone on the basis of political differences. It's always the other way around.
There is no doubt that the Hebraic Idea of a God who is just is far and away the most influential idea in Western intellectual history, in the absence of which our liberal ideals and institutions could never have been established nor long maintained. Nor is there any doubt that the Bible is the primary document of our whole culture and civilization.
These two truths need to be explored in our schools and colleges, keeping in mind that a culture--any culture--that is not transmitted from one generation to the next will quickly disappear.
Thanks, Michael. You are very kind. I don't have many fans.
That piece by the way is from my book "Three Uneasy Pieces (about the Bible and History)" which has a couple of other things in it that you might find interesting: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08PLX2W61
And whenever I read the words "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness," I'm reminded that it was a paraphrase of John Locke's "life, liberty, and the pursuit of property." Locke's emphasis on individual rights is often contrasted with Rousseau's emphasis on the interests of the collective.
The founders were wisely guided by the principles of Locke in crafting the Bill of Rights.
👏👏👏 An excellent article by Batya! MSNOW embarrassed themselves when they scoffed at the idea that our rights come from God not government. The government certainly is supposed to protect our rights, but they don’t provide them to us. The creator of the universe does. Batya writes with eloquence here about about how graciously George Washington receives Jewish immigrants who arrived in the United States. These folks had been used to their rights being given to them only by the whims of European monarchs. But George Washington assured them that in America that would never be the case. They had inherent natural rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness that were recognized in America not because a King felt like it, but because Jews like everyone else, had these rights just by virtue of being born given to them by their creator, a King of a different kind-the King of Heaven. He expressed his wish that all Americans would embrace their Jewish fellow citizens and assured them bigotry and discrimination against them would never be tolerated. They would also be free to practice their religion without fear.
Liberals and leftists will never understand this principle. But American Jews understand it very well because it allowed to live in peace and prosperity and free from government persecution in our glorious republic! Rights granted by God was something England, France, Germany, Italy, Russia, Poland, Spain, Portugal, and Ukraine would never give them. But the United States did. Jews by the way also played an important role in the American Revolution. Both fighting for and financing it. Haym Salomon bankrupted himself investing every penny he had in the American Revolution. None of this is to say Jews never faced discrimination in America. They did most certainly did. There was open discrimination against Jews in employment and public accommodations. Ivy League universities put strict quotas on the number of Jews allowed to enroll as students. Jews were barred from coming to the United States by the strict national origin quotas of the 1924 Immigration Act. Anti-Semitic hate groups like the Ku Klux Klan, the German-American Bund and the American Legion were very popular. Many prominent Americans were antisemitic including Henry Ford, Charles Lindbergh, William Randolph Hearst, T.S. Eliot, and Father Charles Coughlin. In 1862, General Ulysses S. Grant had expelled the Jews of Tennessee, Kentucky and Mississippi with General Orders No. 11. An order which President Abraham Lincoln quickly countermanded.
I would also mention the horrific lynching of Leo Frank in Marietta, Georgia in 1915. Frank was wrongly convicted of murdering a Christian girl named Mary Phagan. But the Governor of Georgia at the last minute commuted his sentence. The people of Marietta were furious and a mob of them broke into the jail, kidnapped him and was extrajudicially executed him by hanging. Among those in the lynch mob was the former Governor of Georgia Joseph Mackey Brown. After Frank’s body was cut down, a man in the crowd named Robert E. Lee Howell desecrated Frank’s body by stomping on his head and face. The men who perpetrated the lynching called themselves The Knights of Mary Phagan. They would later help to inspire the rebirth of the Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s. Attorney, newspaper editor and writer and future U.S. Senator from Georgia Tom Watson, in particular did much to stir up hatred against Frank in his paper The Jeffersonian. Nor were the founding fathers entirely free of antisemitism. John Adams and Thomas Jefferson both made antisemitic statements in private letters for example. Nonetheless, in spite of all this Jews thrived in America and made many invaluable contributions to our nation. Prominent Jewish Americans would include: Haym Salomon, Judah P. Benjamin, Levi Strauss, Betty Friedan, Dr. Jonas Salk, Albert Einstein, Norman Mailer, Stan Lee, Milton Friedman, Rabbi Stephen S. Wise, Louis Brandeis, Bob Dylan, Ruth Bader Ginsberg, J. Robert Oppenheimer, Bernard Barauch, Larry Kramer, Abbie Hoffman, Bernie Sanders, Noa Tishby, Montana Tucker, Julian Edelman, David Schwimmer, Liev Schreiber, Rob Reiner, Martin Landau, Leonard Nimoy, Barbara Bain, Jared Kushner, Michael Schwerner, Andrew Goodman, Bret Weinstein, Ben Shapiro, Abraham Ribicroff, Jacob Javits, Milton Shapp, Joe Lieberman, and Josh Shapiro among others.
The Left and the Demos are becoming godless people, they hate god, the hate the flag yet they allow Islamofascism to thrive. How do they reconcile that?
If the government gives us our rights, the government can decide to take them away. To believe that our rights are inalienable and given by a higher power diminishes the government’s power over us. This tension is huge and must be decided on the side of the truth of this document. Our society and civilization hinges on this.
I remember reading years ago that a fundamental difference between Left and Right is that the Left views politics as the ultimate value, the source of meaning and goal of power, while the Right is generally more grounded in religious values, family and friendship.
I have yet to hear a single example of a Conservative family member rejecting anyone on the basis of political differences. It's always the other way around.
There is no doubt that the Hebraic Idea of a God who is just is far and away the most influential idea in Western intellectual history, in the absence of which our liberal ideals and institutions could never have been established nor long maintained. Nor is there any doubt that the Bible is the primary document of our whole culture and civilization.
These two truths need to be explored in our schools and colleges, keeping in mind that a culture--any culture--that is not transmitted from one generation to the next will quickly disappear.
100%. The Torah is the OG magna carta.
OG?
"Original Gangsta"
It's okay, I'm still learning to talk to the cool kids myself! 😂
Oh. In that case OG Genesis: https://shorturl.at/GX6gV
Whoa, I'm not THAT cool! Seriously, Luke, that was a wonderful article. Thanks!
Thanks, Michael. You are very kind. I don't have many fans.
That piece by the way is from my book "Three Uneasy Pieces (about the Bible and History)" which has a couple of other things in it that you might find interesting: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08PLX2W61
Jews (and everyone else) should also remember Reagan's words that freedom is never more than one generation from extinction.
👏👏👏
Wonderful work, Batya!
And whenever I read the words "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness," I'm reminded that it was a paraphrase of John Locke's "life, liberty, and the pursuit of property." Locke's emphasis on individual rights is often contrasted with Rousseau's emphasis on the interests of the collective.
The founders were wisely guided by the principles of Locke in crafting the Bill of Rights.
George Washington was so wonderful, as is our country.
👏👏👏 An excellent article by Batya! MSNOW embarrassed themselves when they scoffed at the idea that our rights come from God not government. The government certainly is supposed to protect our rights, but they don’t provide them to us. The creator of the universe does. Batya writes with eloquence here about about how graciously George Washington receives Jewish immigrants who arrived in the United States. These folks had been used to their rights being given to them only by the whims of European monarchs. But George Washington assured them that in America that would never be the case. They had inherent natural rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness that were recognized in America not because a King felt like it, but because Jews like everyone else, had these rights just by virtue of being born given to them by their creator, a King of a different kind-the King of Heaven. He expressed his wish that all Americans would embrace their Jewish fellow citizens and assured them bigotry and discrimination against them would never be tolerated. They would also be free to practice their religion without fear.
Liberals and leftists will never understand this principle. But American Jews understand it very well because it allowed to live in peace and prosperity and free from government persecution in our glorious republic! Rights granted by God was something England, France, Germany, Italy, Russia, Poland, Spain, Portugal, and Ukraine would never give them. But the United States did. Jews by the way also played an important role in the American Revolution. Both fighting for and financing it. Haym Salomon bankrupted himself investing every penny he had in the American Revolution. None of this is to say Jews never faced discrimination in America. They did most certainly did. There was open discrimination against Jews in employment and public accommodations. Ivy League universities put strict quotas on the number of Jews allowed to enroll as students. Jews were barred from coming to the United States by the strict national origin quotas of the 1924 Immigration Act. Anti-Semitic hate groups like the Ku Klux Klan, the German-American Bund and the American Legion were very popular. Many prominent Americans were antisemitic including Henry Ford, Charles Lindbergh, William Randolph Hearst, T.S. Eliot, and Father Charles Coughlin. In 1862, General Ulysses S. Grant had expelled the Jews of Tennessee, Kentucky and Mississippi with General Orders No. 11. An order which President Abraham Lincoln quickly countermanded.
I would also mention the horrific lynching of Leo Frank in Marietta, Georgia in 1915. Frank was wrongly convicted of murdering a Christian girl named Mary Phagan. But the Governor of Georgia at the last minute commuted his sentence. The people of Marietta were furious and a mob of them broke into the jail, kidnapped him and was extrajudicially executed him by hanging. Among those in the lynch mob was the former Governor of Georgia Joseph Mackey Brown. After Frank’s body was cut down, a man in the crowd named Robert E. Lee Howell desecrated Frank’s body by stomping on his head and face. The men who perpetrated the lynching called themselves The Knights of Mary Phagan. They would later help to inspire the rebirth of the Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s. Attorney, newspaper editor and writer and future U.S. Senator from Georgia Tom Watson, in particular did much to stir up hatred against Frank in his paper The Jeffersonian. Nor were the founding fathers entirely free of antisemitism. John Adams and Thomas Jefferson both made antisemitic statements in private letters for example. Nonetheless, in spite of all this Jews thrived in America and made many invaluable contributions to our nation. Prominent Jewish Americans would include: Haym Salomon, Judah P. Benjamin, Levi Strauss, Betty Friedan, Dr. Jonas Salk, Albert Einstein, Norman Mailer, Stan Lee, Milton Friedman, Rabbi Stephen S. Wise, Louis Brandeis, Bob Dylan, Ruth Bader Ginsberg, J. Robert Oppenheimer, Bernard Barauch, Larry Kramer, Abbie Hoffman, Bernie Sanders, Noa Tishby, Montana Tucker, Julian Edelman, David Schwimmer, Liev Schreiber, Rob Reiner, Martin Landau, Leonard Nimoy, Barbara Bain, Jared Kushner, Michael Schwerner, Andrew Goodman, Bret Weinstein, Ben Shapiro, Abraham Ribicroff, Jacob Javits, Milton Shapp, Joe Lieberman, and Josh Shapiro among others.
The Left and the Demos are becoming godless people, they hate god, the hate the flag yet they allow Islamofascism to thrive. How do they reconcile that?
The most dominant tenet of contemporary progressivism is that all rights are government grants.
If the government gives us our rights, the government can decide to take them away. To believe that our rights are inalienable and given by a higher power diminishes the government’s power over us. This tension is huge and must be decided on the side of the truth of this document. Our society and civilization hinges on this.
Exactly correct.
Thank you for this! Knowing the source of our rights is vital to being a USA citizen.