By: Jim DeMint, Jim Jordan, and Scott Garrett, Washington Examiner
If immediate measures are not taken, the national debt will soon be equal to the entire U.S. economy. At this moment, American opportunity threatens to be overwhelmed by our debt, and that’s a race we can’t afford to lose.
This dangerous dynamic has been steadily building up for decades, but Washington worsened the problem in recent years with a spending binge of costly bailouts, massive omnibus bills, and failed stimulus.
As a result, the debt burden has grown to previously unimaginable levels. When Nancy Pelosi became speaker of the House in January 2007, it stood at $8.6 trillion. Today, Americans must shoulder a national debt weighing in at a whopping $14 trillion, and the mountain grows larger every day. By the end of this decade, President Obama’s budget projections show the national debt nearly doubling its current size to $26 trillion.
These sobering numbers represent the path to bankruptcy, draconian tax increases, and economic stagnation. We refuse such a fate. Instead, we are offering a step-by-step plan to reduce spending and put the United States on course to renewed financial stability.
Known as the Spending Reduction Act, this bill makes major strides toward resolving the debt crisis by cutting $2.5 trillion of spending between now and 2021. Here’s how it works:
In the short term, the Spending Reduction Act makes $125 billion of immediate rescissions, which target money already approved by Congress, by cutting current spending back to 2008 levels and repealing the remaining funds from Obama’s failed “stimulus” package.
The largest step toward spending reduction begins with the start of the next fiscal year on Oct. 1. On that day, the bill further cuts non-defense discretionary spending to 2006 levels and implements a hard freeze through 2021.
This alone will save taxpayers $2.3 trillion. A portion of these savings come from reducing the size and cost of the civilian federal work force. Attrition will trim the work force by 15 percent, while salaries will go without automatic pay increases for the next five years.
Our plan’s overall reduction specifically targets more than 100 separate budget items and spending reforms, ranging from the elimination of duplicative education programs (saving $1.3 billion annually) to a 50 percent reduction of the federal travel budget (saving $7.5 billion annually).
These specific savings, when combined with additional reforms like ending Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac’s taxpayer bailout, total approximately $376 billion over the next decade.
America’s debt problem wasn’t created overnight, and implementing a complete solution will take both time and perseverance. With a healthy dose of courage from elected leaders, however, we can get America moving on the right track again.
Over the long term, balancing the budget will require lasting private sector job creation and robust reforms to entitlement programs that still operate on outdated demographic assumptions.
After passing the Spending Reduction Act, Congress must work to tear down barriers to job creation and make our safety-net programs sustainable for the 21st century. Only when all Americans have ample opportunity to earn success and build prosperity on their own will we enjoy lasting fiscal and economic stability.
Every component of our plan will undoubtedly raise the ire of one group or another, whether it is labor unions who want more benefits or Angora goat herders who want more subsidies. Such disagreements, while regrettable, inevitably rise when a nation confronts the kind of choices we now face. In fact, they will be a testament that Congress is finally making the tough yet responsible choices needed to maintain America’s standing as the greatest nation in history.
Whether Americans realize it or not, we are all running together in a race against time. Unless Washington takes swift action to cut spending, we will chain our children to debt and rob them of opportunity to reach for the American Dream. On its own, passing the Spending Reduction Act will not get us over the finish line — but we will get a $2.5 trillion head start.
Sen. Jim DeMint, R-SC, is chairman of the Senate Steering Committee. Rep. Jim Jordan, R-OH, chairs the Republican Study Committee (RSC), and Rep. Scott Garrett, R-NJ, leads the RSC’s Budget and Spending Taskforce.
Am I the only one that sees the total parallel of what is happening in America today and over the past 30 years compared to what happened in Germany in the late 1920’s and 1930’s? The Nationalist Socialists eventually controlled the educational system and the media to distort the truth and spread their propaganda of hate. Today the Federally controlled schools are teaching a different skewed version of history than what we were taught. None of the traditional or conservative views to love your country and its heritage are being taught like it was in my time. Now they promote non-traditional view points in the schools systems instead of the traditional views that made America what it used to be.
It is also obvious that the media is not reporting the truth but instead propaganda. This propaganda is promoting hate between the classes to help cause social unrest in which more rights can be taken away from the people by the government. The same happened in Germany put is was a racial and social hatred instead with the climax occurring with the burning of the Reichstag in which the government from the top took all control away from the people at the bottom which resulted in a dictatorship. This is just about the same “strategy” for lack of a better word is occurring today.
Today with the recent advent of the “Homeland Security” they can name just about anyone a “terrorist” inside the US as well as outside the US. It is just like what the Nationalist Socialists Germans did in the 1930’s to anyone they deemed a threat to spread the truth that was against their propaganda and then they were shipped away. On Oct. 17, 2006, President Bush signed a law suspending the right of habeas corpus to persons “determined by the United States” to be an “enemy combatant” in the Global War on Terror. That is a very broad definition which can be applied to anyone the gov’t wants. I am to a point where I a worried about sharing my feelings like I am now because it is obvious that history is repeating itself.
So again am I the only one that is seeing this? I have been studying WWII history for the past 10 years. Every time I turn on the news I am alarmed by the parallels of the past that so few know about because they are more concerned about American Idol than learning from the past. They just follow the herd.
As many were in disbelief of the absolute totalitarian control that occurred in Germany, something of a similar nature could occur in America? America is not immune to social unrest, dictoral control helped along by social unrest and the collapse of the dollar that had been in the making for many years. Also the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 has now be nullified by the H.R. 5122: John Warner National Defense Authorization Act in 2007. So this means that the president can now call out the Army, Navy, Marines and Air Force as a policing roll that the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 restricted only to the National Guard. So there are your “Brown Shirts” all ready to go and they don’t need to declare martial law anymore but instead a nation emergency is all that is needed. Martial law is when the military takes over control. A national emergency is where the gov’t stays in control in coordinates or controls the military plans as far as I can tell. It is ambiguous as to what exactly a national emergency is.
Additionally, I looked up the gov’t web sites, found out that the US tax revenues are only 2.5 trillion a year. The cost to run the gov’t in 2008 was 500 billion a year. Now in two years time it has grown to 1.5 trillion a year. This leaves only 1 trillion for national defense, infrastructure repair and all the entitlement programs that have grown since the FDR years. So now we need to borrow 2 trillion dollars a year instead of one trillion, thanks to the Healthcare bill an extra trillion needs to be borrowed, just to barely keep things going as they are. This is unsustainable.
Now with the developing countries such as China, India, Brazil, etc. the competition for the limited supply of oil in the world, now that peek oil has passed, will only create more friction between all countries. Just as the downturns in weather that caused food shortages over the thousands of years coincide with the outbreak of wars and the rise and fall of empires and nations the same goes for the natural resources a country needs to survive.
All the pieces are in place. We are all in for a world of hurt over the next 10 to 20 years if history repeats itself.
Please feel free to verify my findings yourself. I want to be wrong when it comes to things like this.
Thank you for your time.
Cutting the Budget in a meaningful way will piss off so many people that politically it’s the kiss of death. So they won’t do it in a real and meaningful way, so the real problem will be fudged and kicked down the road and it will implode Americas whole financial and economic system. I think it’s gone to far to be quick fixed or even fixed at all.
The dollar has no real value left to it and it is only because it still is the global reserve currency that is still maintaining any strength of acceptance. The Euro is in even worse shape. Who self destructs first Europe or America? Doesn’t much matter, does it?
Americans concerned over excessive debt or correct but who among them is willing to have the cuts and or higher taxes and higher interests in order to curb spending to reduce debt?
Catch 22: Won’t happen because American politicians are quite stupid and above all political cowards.
How can we know for sure?
Construed by whom?
I can live with your antisemitism because you are non threatening and even harmless, like the proverbial drunk who dances on tables with a lampshade on his head. A drunk for sure but occasionally an amusing drunk.
Arnold,
I just saw your “religious” comment. Whenever I post remarks on religious matters, they are in response to outlandish remarks by Israpundit posters. They post publicly, and I refute them publicly. I don’t sneak around and talk behind peoples’ backs.
My post got botted.
Shy Guy,
Yamit knows the context of the “Nazi” remark. If he were German instead of Jewish, his extreme nationalist attitudes would be construed as neo-Nazi. Also, I gave him that label after he labeled me as an “antisemite”, which is equally offensive as my comment. My wife is right, though — this name-calling is unproductive.
Lorenzo,
Thank you for your comment about the military. When corporations make their budgets, they have to consider costs vs. benefits. The military, to a large extent, seems to be exempt from such considerations. We are fighting against militaries that owe their greatest successes to men armed with box cutters, and we cannot defeat them with $150,000.000 airplanes. It seems our military is more concerned with handing out contracts to favorites, than with defending our country. As for other expenses, I agree with Arnold Harris that much Federal funding is going to social programs, such as schools, where the Federal government has no business. At the same time, I don’t believe they should simply pull the rug out from under these programs and dump them on the counties while denying those counties the ability to fund them. Some counties, such as those in northern California and Oregon, have to combat international drug cartels to enforce Federal laws; yet they are high unemployment areas without a sufficient tax base to equip the sheriffs to do this. By the same token, people with severe disabilities tend to live in poor urban areas that cannot afford to support them. They cannot be properly cared for by county levies. Some of the talk I hear from conservatives about “balancing the budget” is really thoughtless in this regard.
Every budget reducing plan exempts Medicare, Medicaid and the military. The military alone represents one half of the budget so even if the entire remaining government apparatus was closed down there would still not be any meaningful deficit reductions. It seems to me, and I am a supporter of the U.S. military, that it is clear that the U.S. cannot financially support the military in its present shape. It should be pointed out that the U.S. spends more on its military than the the rest of the world combined. This is just insane.
Congressman Cohen, is that you?
BO,
You are turning Ted Belman’s blogsite commentaries into a running theological argument. Ted told me he strongly dislikes that stuff on Israpundit. I’m too hardcase to have my feelings shattered by anyone. So if you want to have a private discussion with me over religion, American politics and the decay of the American economy, or whatever else doesn’t properly belong on Israpundit, my email address is arnoldharris@tds.net. If you contact me, I’d be more comfortable knowing your real name. Yamit contacted me that way, and like I do for everyone else, I keep his identity secret. The same for Olivia, a good writer of Israel-focused spy novels. But if you just want to be BO, I suppose I can live with that, even though the name I display here really is my own.
Now, about this Jewish identity stuff. According to the standards by which Yamit lives his life, you are not a Jew unless your mother was a Jew or you got converted by an Orthodox Jewish rabbi. That’s also the way the State of Israel is organized, possibly because nobody there wants us to have the same kind of Sun’a vs Shi’a fun and games that have beset Islam since just about the day after they buried the great prophet Muhamad, or the Orthodox vs Roman Catholic vs Protestant fun and games that split Christianity since Greek-speaking Romans of the late Empire invented Christianity and the Latin-speaking bishop of Rome stole the leadership for themselves — if I have my history right.
I have some deep-seating understanding of all this, because I was born an authentic Jew by halachic standards, my wife and I hot hitched by one of Chicago’s better-known Orthodox rabbis, Rav Meir Kahane sat as sandek during the brit ha-mila (circumcision) on the eighth day of life of my youngest son Ze-ev Stjepan Harris. That is a role of great honor, and Rav Kahane showed up in Chicago partially timed for just that event. That’s not the only reason I revere his memory 20 years after his assassination in New York City, but it was an event I will never forget. We gave all our kids Hebrew names because we were fresh out of Israel and still gung-ho about it all. “Stjepan” was the given name of Stefi’s father. (Pronounced Styepan; all the south slavic languages use “J” in place of “Y”.)
Even though I don’t do much for Jewish observance, I have read through the Soncino Chumash (the five books of Tora) over years of on and off shabatot helping make up a minyan at the local Lubavitcher shtiebel. Like all such places, it’s a little dump of a building near the campus of the University of Wisconsin-Madison. There’s hardly room to stand there at the bima for the Tora parashot, but that’s the history book of my Jewish nation, and I treat it accordingly. I don’t know anything about the Talmud stuff, and frankly, I’m not interested in it. Because like the Evangelicals, if it’s not in the Bible, I’m not interested in it as theology. If has to be the Bible, and not some mystery novel the ancient Greeks cooked up just because some of them got tired of worshiping their own ancient gods and decided instead to hijack ours.
Now here is way I think Yamit sees it, and if so, so do I: You really cannot be simultaneously a Jew and a Christian, no matter how much you fake it. You either believe in the divinity of Jesus, or you don’t. I don’t believe in any divinity except for that of ha-Shem, and I never will. Because our Jewish nation doesn’t conceptualize that way, so I don’t either.
Nearly all the people I know, live around, work with or even talk with are American Christians. Few of them try to convert me. The ones who do, I simply say to them.
“If you are so interested in the true faith of the Bible, then why don’t you start by studying a direct English language translation of the original Hebrew Tora? If that was the word of God in the time of Moshe, our great teacher, then why would it be invalid today? What we read is the real McCoy. What you are telling me is stuff made up by a lot of Roman-era Greeks who got tired of their own pagan gods and thought they would try their luck stealing our religion from us.”
Nobody who ever heard that response from me ever bothered me twice about Christianity vs Judaism.
Anyway, BO, I’m sure you know a little more about Arnold Harris now. So if you want to talk about this privately, stop taunting Yamit and get in touch with me via email, so Ted can get on with what Israpundit is supposed to be about.
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI
PS Yamit,
I’m sorry for having called you a Nazi, even though I was right. I’m also sorry for calling you an idiot. My wife just admonished me for using such language, and she is right.
Hillel presumed you knew Hebrew. I explained what the Hebrew root r-y-h means. Exodus 23:9: And ger, [him] you shall not
Duh! it means another Jew in the narrowest sense. Below are those who meet lesser degrees of acceptance but not love unless they become Jews in fact.
oppress—you, too, know the soul of ger, for you were gerim in the land of Egypt.
Exodus 23:31: And I will set your limits from Reed (“Red”) Sea to Philistine (“Mediterranean”) Sea, and from steppe (“Sinai Desert”) to the river (Euphrates), for I will give in your hand the yeshvei [of] the land, and you shall displace them (gerashtamo) from yourself.
What is the difference between yeshvei and gerim, those who must be displaced and those who must not be oppressed? The root i-sh-v means, “to stay, as in settlement.” Thus the yeshvei are the natives. The natives must be driven out because their hostility is inherently implacable: they, and even their remote descendants, will always remember that Jews took away their land. This is not an issue of land ownership, but of sovereignty: the country may have belonged to the Canaanites or the Palestinian Arabs, but now the state is Jewish. Modern Jewish rulers believe that Arabs will ignore the insult in return for generous aid, but the Torah’s author was infinitely wiser: if Jews want to be sovereign on this land, they must cleanse it of yeshvei.
The Torah economizes suffering: yeshvei have to be evicted (Exodus 23:31) and ravaged (Deut20:17), but not necessarily killed. After the Jews have cleared a country for themselves and uprooted the yeshvei, security issues will become less pressing and Jews can take measured risks. Deuteronomy 20, therefore, speaks of the wars which the Jews start voluntarily rather than by the divine commandment to take Canaan. In such wars, the natives need not be uprooted if they agree to submit to Jewish rule. If they did not defend themselves against the advancing Jews, such natives are allowed to remain, performing “labor duty for you and shall work for you” (Deut20:11). That law applies only to the towns far away from the Jewish population centers (Deut20:15).
The conquered people lack the high status of gerim, who are not to be abused. The labor duty in question was likely border defense, or perhaps public works in Jewish towns. Other than labor conscription, the conquered populations remain free and enjoy all property rights. Their major difference from the gerim is that the conquered populations may continue their pagan worship, as they do not live in the Land of Israel proper and so do not pollute it by their idolatry.
The Torah, particularly the section of Laws (Exodus 23 is a part of it), is not laid down in chronological order. Exodus 23:9 deals with a time later than 23:31. How do we know that? Exodus 23:10 speaks of Shmita, seventh-year rest for agricultural land. Settled agriculture was the last stage in the Jewish conquest of Canaan, after the land was taken from its original inhabitants. So gerim appear after yeshvei are displaced.
Who are gerim? They are not natives, as the natives had been exterminated or evicted already (yes, Jews are not nice). In the Biblical Hebrew, the cognate gur has an unquestionable sense of meaning, “to huddle together, to reside timidly.” That sense is very far from the toneless Modern Hebrew, to live. Even in the most aggressive sense, Psalm 56:6-7: “… all their thoughts are against me for evil. They iaguru secretly (or, from north – the left side in ancient coordinates)…” Likewise Psalm 140:3-4: “Who think evil things in their heart, every day iaguru conflicts. They sharpened their tongue like a serpent.” The main theme about gerim is timidity, submissiveness.
In modern terms, gerim must absolutely accept Jewish sovereignty. In ancient Judea, gerim were not oppressed, but neither did they have political rights. It is in this sense that the Torah speaks about Jews: “… for you were gerim in the land of Egypt.” Whether the Jews were slaves or ate meat from full pots, they lacked political rights in Egypt.
Rabbis traditionally had an even stricter understanding of gerim, as converts to Judaism. Such reading is semantically (though not etymologically) correct, as foreign religions were banned in Judea, and resident aliens had to practice Judaism. In particular, not even slaves or gerim were allowed to work on Sabbath, erect altars, worship idols, sacrifice to foreign deities, or drink blood; they adhered to the restrictions of Pesach and Yom Kippur. They submitted to the laws given to Jews on the Sinai, and acted like Jews in all practical matters except marriage.
The terms ger and i-sh-v converge in some situations, as when Abraham pleads with the tribe of Heth to allow him to bury his wife, who died in Kiryat Arba (in our days, the place of notorious Jewish settlement which “took the Arab land”). Genesis 23:4: “I am a ger and toshav with you.” Abraham, a great legal mind, is precise here: he is a submissive resident (ger) now, but will settle (toshav) this land. So Abraham insists on buying a cave for the burial instead of accepting the offer to receive it free.
Even toshav, a status higher than ger, relates inferiority. He is not allowed to partake of Pesach sacrifices (Exodus 12:45) unless he converts to Judaism and circumcises (12:48). He is just a bit higher than a slave (Leviticus 25:35, 40). His right to live in the Land of Israel is unquestioned, but his status is far below that of a Jewish freeman.
There is not a single instance in the Bible where ger lacks a clear sense of submissiveness.
Even toshav, a status higher than ger, relates inferiority. He is not allowed to partake of Pesach sacrifices (Exodus 12:45) unless he converts to Judaism and circumcises (12:48). He is just a bit higher than a slave (Leviticus 25:35, 40). His right to live in the Land of Israel is unquestioned, but his status is far below that of a Jewish freeman.
There is not a single instance in the Bible where ger lacks a clear sense of submissiveness.
What, then, is the meaning of “oppress”? We can only marvel at our lawgiver, who preceded every political theorist. The Torah differentiates between natural law and special rights. Oppression means depriving a person of what is inherently his: life and ownership. As for political rights, the rights to change or influence the Jewish character of the state—he doesn’t have them.
Jews were oppressed in Egypt, where we were slaves (Exodus 3:9). Syrians oppressed us so that we needed a deliverer (2 Kings 13:4-5). To our lawgiver, oppression was tremendously more severe than the mere absence of voting rights.
The parallel prohibition in Exodus 22:20 clarifies, “And ger, you shall not squeeze (toneh) or oppress him.” The word toneh (i-n-h) has a root cell cognate i-n-k (to suck), testifying to the reading, to squeeze out. What can be squeezed out of a person? Surely not his political rights, but life and property.
The important sense of the l-h-tz root for oppression is its communal character: in the word’s common usage, one polity oppresses another. When the oppression is between individuals, it is referred to as a-sh-k, such as, “You shall not trample upon (taashok) your neighbor” (Leviticus 19:13)
Go Learn Hebrew!
Hi, Yamit. Lots of words from you again. I appreciate them, but I wonder if you ever listen. Thanks, though; here I go…
Please disabuse yourself of both these lies.
(1) I have a Jewsish pedigree. It just happens to be on my mother’s mother’ FATHER’s side, so the Jews don’t accept me. That’s their problem, not mine. I am a son of Aaron, a descendant of Jacob and, as I have said for some time now, not Jewish.
(2) Who told you I believe in a Triune deity? I believe in no such thing. There is no “trinity” in the Bible. You must be thinking of the Three Musketeers. I don’t worship them.
Tell me that again with a straight face, while standing on one leg. Your 612 “commandments” are nothing but commentary — go study Hillel, and learn. There are two great commandments:
If you don’t believe me, ask Hillel: He reduces the matter to one commandment, the second, assuming you have sense enough to know the first already. Did Hillel ignore the “other 612”? No — he called them COMMENTARY, a mere expounding upon the first.
You Jews know what the commandments are, Yamit, just as the Christians do. Knowing the commandments, plus a quarter dollar, used to buy one a beer. Now it costs more. You said,
What BS! It’s as I said in my spiel to Arnold,
You have just done the common Jewish dodge. Your “neighbor” is the person next to you. Drop the gobbledegook, roll up your sleeves, and help him. The rest of what you said is, as Hillel would have said, “commentary”.
Thanks again for writing.
Bland if I recall you called me a Nazi.
Aren’t you a bit too apocalyptic?
The voluntary devastation of the Jewish population is not historically unique. Most Jews refused to leave Egypt during the Exodus, to leave Babylonia with Ezra, or to leave America for Israel. The divine plan for Jews is either to let us perish as a people, or to be left only in Israel. The messianic scenario involves substantially all Jews moving to the Land of Israel. The Bible recognizes King Cyrus a messiah even though most Jews refused to return to Israel; the messiah need not return everyone. There are two ways to assure that almost all Jews return: make everyone return, or make those who don’t return perish. Jews refused the first option, so we may be witnessing the second one unfolding.
First you don’t have the pedigree. ( Blood) Believing in a triune deity, puts you beyond the pale. Muslims are more Jewish than you in that regard.
Hundreds of commandments?
Love your fellow not neighbor? Love your neighbor and throw out the other 612 commandments and the heap of halacha. Don’t forget to baptize, too. Long before Christians adopted this commandment as their major tenet, Jews were told, “You shall love your fellow [man] just as yourself” (Leviticus 19:18). Not to the extent that you love yourself, but in the way you do. Your love for your fellow man should be in the likeness (cmo) of your love for yourself. An alternative reading is that you should love a man who is like you, your fellow man.
The critical difference between us and the Christians is whom we consider a fellow man. Modern Christians unrealistically pronounce all people fellows, and surely fail to treat them as such. But their own parable of the Good Samaritan is instructive: even a despised Samaritan could be one’s fellow if the Samaritan helped him. A fellow is one from whom help is expected. Such a definition surely excludes the Canaanites and Palestinian Arabs from the commandment to love your fellow.
What is the love enjoined to our fellows? The context clarifies: “You shall not oppress your fellow” (19:13), “You shall not hate your brother” (19:17), and the 19:18: “You shall neither take revenge, nor restrain [yourself to take revenge later] at the children of your nation.” This, by the way, refutes the claims that human vengeance is prohibited in Judaism, that it is reserved for the power of G-d only. Revenge is prohibited only against fellow Jews, on the double presumption of their general goodwill and efficient law enforcement. In such a society, revenge on the personal level was superfluous. But taking revenge on the enemies of Jews (even their distant offspring) is not merely a right, but an often-reiterated obligation: “a time to love and a time to hate, a time for war and a time for peace” (Ecclesiastes 3:8).
The commandment of love concludes a list which parallels the Decalogue, and is therefore comparable to the prohibition of jealousy (Exodus 20:13).
The prescribed love for one’s fellow is the absence of hatred, vengeance, oppression, and jealousy. While gerim must not be oppressed, fellows must also not be hated. The Torah distinguishes between several circles of people: the closer is the circle, the more rights are accorded to it. Extended family, a closer circle, enjoys still more rights: one must respect his parents. One’s own family, the closest circle, awards generous rights to wives. Later on, when Hebrew society became strong and gerim were fully integrated, the commandment of love was expanded onto them (Deuteronomy 10:19); converts were thereafter to be treated strictly on par with native Jews.
The Torah prescribes, “The ger who resides among you in your land shall be for you like a native, and you shall love him just as you love yourself” (Leviticus 19:34). You cannot be more compassionate than that. But why does the Torah, so short on words, reiterate, “in your land”? So that the ger absolutely recognizes the land as ours. And indeed the parallel Exodus 12:48: “And if a ger will reside with you, and will keep the Pesach to the Lord, let all his males be circumcised… he shall be like the native…” In order to be like a Jew, ger must be like a Jew: he must circumcise, keep Jewish customs, and to all purposes become a Jew. Then, sure enough, we must love him just as we love any Jew, including ourselves.
To summarize: Where it says, “You shall not oppress strangers,” the Torah enjoins us against arbitrarily taking the life or property of the submissive resident aliens who are loyal to Judaism. Where it says, “You shall love your fellow just as yourself,” the Torah enjoins a positive attitude toward one’s compatriots, toward like-minded people only.
Arnold,
Thank you for your frank reply. It really cuts through the bull and gets at the heart of the matter. Let me just excise the nugget of what you said here:
First of all, your Jewish religion:
You claim not to be religious; but that’s something of a cop-out. As Bob Dylan once sang, “You’ve got to serve somebody”. Practices aside, people feel and think all sorts of things; but their concept of reality only comes from a few sources; to whit, (1) common paganism (best exemplified by the Hindu cults), (2) Greek philosophy (from whence cometh Communism and atheism), (3) Hebrew religion (Judaism, Christianity, Mormonism and others) and (4) Anti-Hebrew religion, aka Islam. You are one of these; and I suspect that, at heart, you fall under Hebrew: Judaism, STRONGLY influenced by Greek philosophy & Paganism. I don’t know how much of a Shomer Torah you are. In all probability, I am more Jewish than you in practice; but I am not a Jew and certainly not religious. Be all that as it may, the WORLD sees you as a Jew and me as a mere nuissance.
As for your altruism, Jesus had some words about that. Torah teaches, explicitly and in hundreds of subsidiary commandments, that we are to love our neighbor as ourself. The common Jewish dodge to this, in Jesus’ time and today, has been to qualify who, exactly, God meant when he said “neighbor”. Jesus responded, in his tale of the “Good Samaritan”, that our neighbor is the person next to us — regardless of what we think of his spiritual, religious or ethnic condition. Today, the idea of “altruism” is a lofty-sounding bullsh_t word. It talks about concern for people far away, funnelled through vehicles like the Jewish National Fund, or the Red Cross, or the Society for the Protection of Public Defecators, or the US Government.
I’m not any more altruistic than you, Arnold, and I don’t want to argue about what a Good Samaritan I am or am not. That’s for God to judge; though if you want it in a nutshell, I will say I’ve done something but not much; and when I did something, I was only doing what my Master told me to do: I have no bragging rights before God. When I brought up the matter of Torah, I was holding it up as a standard not of what you or I DO, but of what is RIGHT — in an absolute and unshakeable way: We are to care for those around us, and be moved by their suffering.
Enter politics. Long ago, I accused Yamit of being a Judeo-Fascist, and he gnashed at me with his digital teeth because of it. You are the very first person, in the whole world, who has frankly admitted to being the same; and I honor you for it. You are a true Nationalist partisan, who would be in place in any uniform — from Crusader to Saracen to Zealot. You’re like those German Jews who fought so bravely for their “Aryan” neighbors in the First World War, who were later genuinely shocked that their comerades-in-arms despised them. If it were possible, Jews too would wear the swastika and the lightning SS; but these things are not to be: The lines were drawn in the heavenlies, and we fall on whatever side we are dropped.
Yes, you are right. The fangs are getting bared, on both sides –if, indeed, there are only two sides or any at all. The world is at war with itself, Jews are at war with one another, and Americans are at war with one another: a little bit now, but it is bound to turn very ugly very soon. Whenever this has happened in the past 2000 years, it’s been religious who have provided refuge, cared for the wounded, and maintained a semblance of authority and stability amid chaos. If you want a visual example, fictionalized of course, rent an old video of Soylent Green. In the world of chaos and hopelessness depicted there, it is not the US Government, nor the Red Cross, nor the Jewish Agency that people turned to: It was a Catholic priest, worn to the core, body, soul and spirit. Who else would be depicted? In “victory” scenarios, it’s the General Pattons and the Captain Kirks who save the day; but in times of hopelessness, it’s the shtetl, the Moravian commune, the Catholic monastery, the “JESUS SAVES” Rescue Mission. No government handouts there — just the “big family” of the Godly.
I was reading Daniel a few months ago, and noted that the Messianic Age will not be a time of rule by Messiah, but of rule by the People of Messiah. If you want to be one of those people, it’d be good to get in shape spiritually, because we have our work cut out for us in the days to come.
God bless and keep you, brother. And go to Israel — it’s safer there.
I never have claimed to be religious, BO. I am what I am, an American Nationalist and a Jewish Nationalist. I served the United States Army for three years late in the Korean War and its aftermath. I lived and studied in Israel in the early 1970s. I was trained and experienced in journalism and communications and in regional planning. For many years, I have supported myself and my family with a Web-based independent business largely on the strength of having taught myself to do large-scale database programming, at age 47 when I bought one of the first of the original IBM-PCs sold in 1981. Now I eat solely because I produce and earn. I scorn sympathy and altruism, neither of which I ever have gotten from anyone and neither of which I will offer anyone.
I’ll tell you what’s coming here, BO; and that will be some American version of Fascism such as developed in Europe wherever similar economic conditions were in place during the 1920s and 1930s. Chances are they won’t call it that. But that is precisely what they will get. People care about the civil liberties of other people only for as long as they have full bellies and a roof over their heads. The teeth and fangs come out when times get desperate.
The only cure for the very real problems you have cited is to reindustrialize the USA. That cannot happen unless and until the leadership of this country shuts off or seriously restricts imports of manufactured goods from China or any would-be Chinas, and also seriously restricts outflow of American capital. That, plus suppression of labor unions, would enable the re-opening of abandoned industrial buildings or the construction of new ones all across this once-great land, with useful jobs for scores of millions of Americans. Until and unless that happens, this will remain a commonwealth of borrowers without remaining credit, homeowners who cannot pay their mortgages, consumers who produce nothing of what they consume, and beggars looking for public handouts from bankrupt governments.
And our country damned well better do this quick, while there is still a sufficient if shrinking supply of fossil fuels which supply the population of this planet some 85 per cent of its energy to transport goods and people, heat buildings, supply chemicals for the myriad of plastics upon which modern life depends. Right now, Americans are again paying more than $3/gallon for gasoline. Projections from knowledgeable industry insiders are that in the face of still-growing demand for fossil fuels in China, India and other developing countries, prices will reach $4-$5/gallon within a couple of years, and not too long after that, the same kind of pump prices which Europeans have been paying for a long time. Re-industrializing a country which still has a continent-wide transportation system is one thing. Accomplishing the same thing with a transportation system starved for fuel is on a different scale of magnitude.
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI
Thanks, Yamit. You would have my wife work until she drops. My son is disabled, and cannot work; and at 62, I cannot find work. We tried for years, to help our son get a job he could handle; but there is none. I live in a college town, that has probably hundreds of people with advanced degrees that can’t find work. Our daughter left the country years ago, because there is no opportunity for her here. In China, she was self-supporting as a teacher, model and actress before marrying a businessman. In America, the only job she could get with her BA degree was selling tacos.
The nuclear family started falling apart in America in the mid-1800s, when small enterprises and farms gave way to big businesses that benefitted from the railroads. Just look at the US Census for, say, 1840 and compare it with 1860: Instead of “everyone living under his own vine and his own fig tree”, as it was in the early years of this republic, increasingly men were living away from their families at mines, lumber camps, etc. Today, few mothers can live at home because a man’s wages simply aren’t enough to support a family. Women have to work; and if they can’t afford day care, etc., they can’t have children.
None of the above was caused by a “welfare state”. It’s caused by “private (read, “monopoly”) enterprise, gone wild.
In the early years of my country, extended families lived near to one another and helped each other. In my family, one sister lives in Georgia, another in New Hampshire, another in Wisconsin and we live in Oregon — all because of job-related moves; and our children are being strewn to the four winds because of our globalist economy. Where does the “welfare state” fit into any of this? The main beneficiaries of the current “welfare state” of the Bush AND Obama administrations, have been bankers and others in the financial world, and CEOs of megalopolistic international corporations. What makes you think the solution is penalizing retirees and their children?
I appreciate your thinking and suggestion; but I don’t think it will work. I am not promoting the following as a solution, but it seems the way things are headed: The world is moving headlong into a bloody, world-wide conflagration in which the fat cats who have caused so much misery are tortured, drawn and quartered, dismembered and mutilated by angry mobs. Men will want to die, and death will not come to them.
Nobody will get raptured out of that; and no nation, not even Israel, will be exempt. I don’t look forward to it.
For Jews it’s lev: 26 and Deu 28
A suggestion:
Modern states destroyed nuclear families by creating welfare nets so that parents no longer depend on their children for sustenance. To their parents, children have become a source of increased housework in their young age, an irresponsible and troublesome crowd at school, an absentee household member in adulthood, and economically irrelevant when the parents retire. Not surprisingly, fewer families want children, and those who do generally just follow the traditional behavioral mold, which is by now devoid of sense. The government can still turn the tide. Children can be made useful to their parents, who will thus bear more of them.
The proper solution would be to cancel retirement welfare provisions, but instead tax the children specifically for their parents’ benefit, and reduce the tax significantly if the children reside at or near the parents’ home and help them with the household. True, bad children could skip the tax by moving abroad, but it is parental responsibility to bring them up as wine rather than vinegar. If the parents fail to rear their children properly, so they must suffer, as is the case with any error. A simple tax reform would immediately induce people to bear more children, educate them properly, and imbue them with work ethics early.
Yamit, I read you! I read you! I just wish you had a solution!
As for Harris, you may call yourself a Jew; but I wonder what religious planet you’re coming from. Torah explicitly tells us, over and over, to provide justice for the people and to make provision for the poor. You seem to think this is all to be tossed to the wind, so millionaires can continue to get tax breaks. You live in Wisconsin, but you seem to care little about the suffering of your fellow Wisconsinites. Perhaps you don’t belong there. Perhaps you should join Yamit in Israel, to live among the Jews whom you claim to care about.
In Oregon, we are all too familiar with homeless people, with jobless people, with soup kitchens and the like. As a sop to your obvious racial prejudice, I might add that the vast majority of poor here are white people, unlike, say, Milwaukee, WI. We have one friend in her late 60s who still has to work at temporary, part-time jobs that barely pay her gas — an educated, personable, experience secretary who can only find work as a care-giver. Another friend of ours had to live for years with chronic, unmedicated pain, because she fell through the cracks in the health care system (ironically, she didn’t earn enough to get into the program that is supposedly for poor people). Until her increasing pain prevented her, she worked a newspaper route to try to get enough for groceries to feed her and her terminally-ill, cancer-ridden mother. You talk so glibly about cutting this and slashing that, from your Shangra-la in Mount Horeb. On judgment day, you will have to answer to these people; and your claim to be “Jewish” will not get you anywhere.
Yamit, do you have a solution?
Is the dolar running out of gas to precipitate the “green” leftist black plague’s Cap & Tax b.s.?
Sowell: Fed Trapped in Endless Easing Cycle
Conservative congress? Ha Ha!
“Death gratuity for members of Congress”? We get taxed at death and they get payed? That’s what this is. It should have never been!
Where’s the pay cut for members of Congress?
Where’s the pension cut for members of Congress?
Where’s the staff allowance cut for members of Congress?
Where’s the housing allowance cut for members of Congress?
Where’s the subsistance allowance cut for members of Congress?
Where’s the transportation allowance cut for members of Congress?
I don’t see where they are eleminating the free haircuts, the free gym, the free mesages.
Conservative majority? Tea party supported?
There is a sucker born every day and the American people deservedly get what they deserve. Just like we do!
Interesting poll. The Black Plague will probably win a second term. Probabably won’t matter much as the situation is dire nomatter who is president and none have a clue or seem too!
I said way back that Obama had trapped the conservative Republicans in a no win situation.
To reduce debt you have to reduce spending. That hurts most citizens in some way. devaluation makes the rich richer the poor poorer and reduces much of the middle class down to poor or marginally poor. Raising interest rates is deflationary and could help to curb some inflation but is bad for business and will create even more unemployment. The states unlike the federal government can’t print money and will have to get more revenues from taxes and reducing services. Raising the debt ceiling will add to the national debt and add to the general debasing of the dollar.
Food prices will by the end of 2011 go up at least 20%. America already has almost 60 million families on food stamps. a 20% hike will add at least another 15 million on stamps. Soup kitchens ala 1933 are beginning to be a common sight across America.
Now if the conservatives and the Tea Party group don’t do their thing what happens? If they do the public will blame them for their pain. Obama blames them and many suffering Americas will agree.
Result Obama 4 more years.
Then the Fed has given 20 trillion to select banks and corporations for junk collateral under the table and behind the back of congressional oversight. 20 trillion of unaccountable handouts and bailouts. Sure it’s digital money but it our digital money and adds to the global money supply that has yet to filter into economies as long as it’s sitting in accounts but it eventually will be released into the money supply and inflation could hit triple digits. That would force a run from the dollar by everyone. Zimbabwe can weather such inflation because they have a secondary market ( black market) America does not.
Point is there is no possible fix in the short run for America and it may never recover.
Oil is pegged to the dollars is most commodities and as inflation and debasement of the dollar continues and inflation rises all commodities will rise accordingly aside from normal supply and demand and speculation. Wages reduced Joblessness increasing pensions bankrupted and the conservative complaining about health care?
This independent will vote for cutting then national budget, including all Congressional earmark spending and the entire system of pass-through Federal grants to states and local communities. And I will vote that way even if the states are bankrupted. Let the residents of each state vote increased taxes upon themselves if they truly desire more government services. Here in our state of Wisconsin, we have voted in a conservative Republican governor, who grimly intends to ax all sorts of state spending programs, and he is backed now by a conservative Republican state senate and a conservative Republican state assembly. So all this is exactly what will happen. As for local public services, I favor consolidation of just about everything on a countywide basis: public transit; law enforcement; fire and emergency services; public school districts. “If you cannot pay for it, don’t buy it” is a good rule of thumb either in private or public life.
In any case, there is no circumstance that I ever would vote for an African Moslem Socialist for president of the United States.
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI
My post got swallowed by the bot.
In Oregon and California, the State governments have excused themselves from having to balance the budget, by ordering legislators not to raise new revenue without the explicit consent of popular referenda. The Republicans brought about this mad way of government. If Washington starts pulling the funding rug out from under us, we are on the road to bancruptcy and ruin. In Oregon, our police protection has become such a joke that drug cartels have relocated here; and our schools have the largest classroom size in the country. The Republicans have their work cut out for them, to prove they deserve our trust. They can start, by seeing to it that we can get the schools and police protection we need. If they fail in this, then this registered Republican is voting a Democratic ticket in the next election. As for jobs, perhaps both parties plan to have us all working for Homeland Security — which seems to be our only growth industry. That was a Bush baby, and Obama has been feeding it to make it grow. I’m watching and waiting, and getting my pen ready for 2012.