Liberals do not Build, they Oppose and Propagandize.

Religious studies professor, small college in northern New England, 1980’s. Affirmative action is what got him there, as few Jews attended or taught at that college, it having a reputation of being a WASP stronghold.

I began to understand that he was building a platform in strategic opposition to a real or imagined establishment. He was exploiting the power differential between teacher and student and feeding on our ignorance, or at least, our youth.

At an interfaith meeting, the Jewish concept of matrilineal descent came up. He announced, “no one knows the source for that”, then he looked around the room, smirking and sneering. 

I wondered at the sneering, and at that statement. If you have ever been to a Passover Seder, you know that Judaism does not work like that. Lively debate while pouring over sacred texts and oral tradition keep people up sometimes through the night at that feast which is seminal to the Jewish year. Jews across the spectrum celebrate the Seder, and you would be hard pressed to come away from such a celebration thinking that Jews do just about anything without copious references to text and even rancorous debate.

And there he was, smirking at scripture, mocking tradition, and sneering at us.

That tipped me off to a dynamic that made me lose trust in higher education, and in Affirmative Action, which really does lower standards of education, it turns out.

It takes a while to internalize basic assumptions of a community that you are new to. I am an orthodox Jew now, I live in a world in which people regard themselves as links in a chain of tradition. This begets people who see themselves as in a state of growth towards that tradition, constantly working upon themselves to perfect themselves in light of an external tradition that they strive to share with others and pass down to the next generation.

 I also saw this with the Christians at that college. Their menschlichkeit - that's Yiddish for interpersonal good characteristics - was in glaring opposition to the abrasive culture that this former liberal just took for granted. The Christians indeed had strong opinions, and they would enter into debate with me about hot topics, but they were respectful of me, they did not destroy a person, like liberals do. They were the first to tip me off that you do not need to be in a state of constant interpersonal battle, a state that threatens your relationships, by the way.

This dynamic of interpersonal respect does not exist with relativism. Relativism begets an inter-personally abrasive culture. Be forewarned about this space of competition and intellectual anarchy in which individuals are competing to be the next small set of gurus, but will not offer you community or intellectual honesty, only the imposition of their own ego and stream of consciousness. That stream of consciousness is unique to them, it cannot be shared with you.

“I cleaned my kitchen for Passover to the extent that I felt comfortable”, Ally told me. She grew up Reform, was inkling towards tradition, but could not give up the idea that it all had to be her choice, she had to have the final say. She emphasized the word "I", with a certain self-worship, and I wondered, how was she going to be in a relationship with anyone if her stream of consciousness was the deciding factor? Would she suddenly submit to another’s stream of consciousness? If she would ever find a partner, would she be in a state of constant debate with him?

 (I looked her up. At age 50, she was single with a ten year old child. No partner, no compromise.)

It is one thing to act in your home as you wish, it is another to have a position as a professor in which you are expected to prod students to research and think, and instead, to portray Judaism as you wish it were in order to knock down the so called establishment.

But he had become the establishment, I began to realize. He was in a position of influence. It was the traditionalists who were the beleaguered ones. 

At that interfaith meeting, the other students, mostly secularized protestant, were shocked at his answer - huh? Judaism does not know what it is doing? It made Judaism look foolish -  if anyway you are on thin ice in a secular protestant culture, keeping your Judaism in spite of the blessings that America has bestowed, why on earth are you holding on to something that you have no clue about?

He was glad to do it, to shoot down tradition, especially with no one present to defend it. It spurred me on to study sacred texts and speak with those who do keep tradition - and when I made that choice, to study and listen, and not just to impose and propagandize,  I realized I was no longer liberal.

That is because liberals are all about impression and feeling and imposing, not facts.

That professor's sneer that day was not a one time thing. He also would declare that HIS kind of intermarriage was the right kind, as those who intermarry and raise kids in both Judaism and Christianity are...sneer sneer...not going about it the right way, the right way being HIS way of course. He expressed ignorance about other key issues, even something as basic as - the Hebrew language is made of three letter roots. He expressed surprise at this. 

Yet no one was there to evaluate him, he was protected because at that time he was a member of a minority, he could have called "racism!" if he was questioned.

I was in a small gathering that included him, and he mocked the conversion ceremony to orthodox Judaism, he said, "I know a reprehensible story of a woman in Germany who was converting to Judaism, and the Rabbis asked her, 'if you wanted to re-arrange your furniture on the Sabbath, are you allowed to?'" Again, that sneer and smirk.

And I stood up. I demanded to know what was wrong with that question. I said, "In Judaism, there are the rituals and the ethics, he was asking about Sabbath observance," and I countered, "So he asked her that, what is wrong with that?"

Two professors and two students were at that table. I was the only one standing up to him.

He responded with a fumbling, "um, well maybe that is not such a good example."

Huh? He went from, "listen to this reprehensible story" sneer, smirk, scoff, mock, to, "um, well, um...."

Now if a non-Jewish student had mocked a Jewish ritual, she would have been accused of antisemitism. This is how Affirmative Action actually increases the very racism it is claiming to prevent - somehow it is okay for a Jewish "professor" to mock Jewish ritual, seeding contempt for rituals he did not agree with into the college environment, thus increasing contempt for the very religion he was supposed to be teaching about and representing.

In the end of the day, you gotta pity someone living in intellectual anarchy, fumbling for propaganda, trying to prop up his own position, which he himself can hardly grasp. 

In that moment I defied a sneering establishment figure in a power differential over me who (you can see in an adjoining blog) mocked me to my face in front of other students at other times, and I still found the strength to defy - and he crumbled. I defied false narratives, I defied mockery, scoffing and sneering, I defied Affirmative Action and the real degradation of educational standards, plus the increase of racism, it has caused.

And I pity him.

Question what liberals are feeding you. It is tragic that academic standards have been lowered, spurring students to study on their own, having felt betrayed by the very system that was supposed to nurture their intellectual aspirations, not mock them.

A similar dynamic is taking place with the group that calls itself "Women of the Wall", which provokes Jewish women who pray traditionally at the Western Wall, Jerusalem. They are not building anything new and good, they are provoking, they are in strategic opposition to the Other, and of course only in front of TV and social media. This group was given an area called the Robinson's Arch just 100 meters away, but no, they must "see and be seen" as their leader has declared, raising their voices loudly when the women who pray traditionally are trying to concentrate, the circus goes on.

After the Holocaust, there were Chassidic groups that were nearly decimated, 70 years later they are burgeoning. That swell in the ranks was due to positive growth, through cleaving to scripture and tradition in a egoless fashion.

Relativists cannot swell their ranks, for they compete among themselves, only a select few  have the charm and platform to impose on others.

Relativists are intellectual bullies. Know your Trojan horse, know what you are dealing with.

And, as the sage Hillel said, "go learn."

 

 

Do not Poll Liberals, Observe Them, Here is Why

 

As a walkaway from the liberal left and the democratic party, I am here to declare: do not poll liberals, instead, observe them.

And when you observe liberals, you will see that they indeed believe in borderwalls.

 

Liberals fear being dubbed racist, bigoted, or sexually repressed, and they are affected by relativism, which means that there is no solid reality, everything is invented and depends upon what most people think.

 These two factors are the intellectual pivots on which liberals turn: fear of being dubbed bigoted, and the conviction that reality is constantly being re-invented.  

 Thus, if you ask a liberal, “do you support a wall on the Mexican border in order to protect US citizens from unvetted in-migration?” They must say “no” for two reasons: they fear being dubbed racist, plus, they are relativists creating a new reality.

A third more minor factor: liberals do not build, they confront any existing establishment. 

For example, Brookline Massachusetts is surrounded by the walls of zoning laws and public schools only open to their residents. There is a “Metco” program, in which kids from inner city schools attend for free, but only those students who pass an exam. Thus, Brookline schools are exclusive, surrounded by a very real wall.

 

In 2010, 48,700 of its residents were of voting age. About 60% are registered democrats, that is 29,200. According to one poll, approx 90% of democrats say that they oppose the border wall. So you would expect 26,300 Brookline residents to say they oppose the border wall.

 

Now, look for any activism on the part of Brookline residents in favor of allowing anyone from any surrounding town to attend these schools. How many residents of Brookline have petitioned the town hall, the legislature, written letters to the editor of local newspapers, in favor of breaking down the wall that surrounds their schools?

 

You would expect to see 26,300 signatures on a petition to open up the public schools to all residents of all surrounding towns. You would expect 26,300 signatures on a petition to change zoning laws to the following - on each Brookline street, there will be two six storey apartment buildings with twelve apartments each for low income housing.

 

Where are these petitions? Answer - they do not exist.

 

In fact, according to their actions, all Democrats in Brookline support borderwalls.  They chose Brookline precisely because it is indeed surrounded by zoning walls.

 

There are thus two reasons that liberals who in fact dwell within walls will say they oppose the borderwall - dread of being dubbed racist, and a conviction that words shape reality, and do not describe reality.

 

Plus, liberals do not confront governments south of the Mexican border and demand the following: "govern your people justly so they will not have to flee to the USA." 

This is because liberals are taught to confront the "establishment", it does not occur to liberals to build.

 

Liberals of today tell you that you cannot build, that there are shadowy powers out there, grave and huge, that you must topple, and you cannot. 

That keeps you in fighting mode. 

This attitude of confrontation and provocation will "work" for you if you are directly connected to the purse strings of such activism, but if you are not getting a paycheck from this, this attitude will degrade your own ability to build in your own life.

 

The truth is that there is no "Establishment". 

You can build.  

Liberals activists do not want you to find this out.

 

Liberals live in a world of impression and feeling, not fact. Their fear of being dubbed "bigot" thwarts their ability to think and question. They have no skills to build, only to confront and demand from the so called "establishment" instead of building something better.

 

It is not hypocrisy as much as a deep rooted fear and intellectual atrophy.

 

So, go ahead and build the border wall, because it is how liberals live that is essential, not what they are too frightened to admit.

 

Liberals DO support Walls, Globalism is Elitism, Love Your Neighbor First is Correct Nationalism

  Witness to Liberal - Think, Here are Some Reflections

 

Themes of this essay:

Liberals do want border walls, they are just afraid of being called racist. 

Globalism is actually elitism, and decidedly not open- mindedness. 

Liberal elitism leads to mean-spirited interpersonal interactions. 

Doing good really means starting with your neighbor - that is correct nationalism, and no, it is not racism.

 ---

 

The nineteen seventies and eighties, Brookline Massachusetts - we were liberal and therefore enlightened. 

That meant there was a “system” that was somehow responsible for ills, and if we just bash the system, or cash in on it, we would be successful.

I began to understand that liberals are actually a small elite, but the process of realizing that was itself an act of separation from the liberal weltanshaung that was itself taboo. Being liberal was not only correct, it was such a basic assumption that questioning its assumptions was an act of apostasy unthinkable. But I am getting ahead of myself.

 

Brookline Mass boasts beautiful homes, with “no overnight parking” and only two hour parking during the day on its streets, even if you pay at a parking meter, you must move your car after two hours or get ticketed. Growing up, I thought this was just so the street cleaners could work at night so we would wake up to clean streets. I later understood that this was a systemic form of exclusion and snobbery. No parking means no hospitality  - no vagrants, no people in need who could rent an attic or basement in one of the stately homes in case they had fallen upon hard times. Fall upon hard times, you are out and forgotten. 

When liberals declare they are opposed to a border wall with Mexico, well, they do not live like this, they have their own walls of zoning laws, exclusive public schools that are decidedly not open to anyone else, high taxes. So I realized: anyone who is living in such walls has no right to oppose a border wall, so go ahead and build it.

 

Liberals who make their living as college professors, writers, artists, lawyers, politicians, activists, journalists, etc, are actually the finest capitalists. In the USA, they are benefiting mightily from enrichment via the very capitalism they claim to loathe.  As they are disconnected from the hard work of maintaining a business, they can express contempt for the capitalist system that has in fact enriched them. You can never ask: "what if you were a blue collar worker?", because that would never happen to them, and if it happened to any of their acquaintances, they would simply exclude them from the liberal social circle. 

Liberals are without borders, that is, a liberal’s community is the community of leftist intellectuals, and decidedly NOT the blue collar workers that make their lives livable by providing necessary services, and decidedly NOT any friends who could not make it in those circles.  The local factory is closing?  People out of work? They could care less. So "open minded", their very locals who are not part of that elite do not matter.

 

Should you ask, but hey, would you really like to be a college professor in a poor socialist country? A journalist where everyone is living in large cement blocks? A politician in a place where there is a limit on the hours per day of running water and electricity?  The answer, if they can imagine it, is that their artistic or professorial gifts are so great that the poor would support them. They will stay richer than anyone else anywhere they are.

 

I felt this also affected the sexual behavior of the people I grew up with. I was present to hear a story of a college girl cheating on her boyfriend, and how “middle class” he was to be jealous and hurt. Since she cheated on him by sleeping with a woman, that was cool, right? The other liberals were sneering along with her, in dismissive contempt for the pain he felt. When I countered, “but I can understand how he feels!” they simply froze. No retracting anything, no, “come to think of it it must be painful to be cheated on”. Nope, it’s all part of liberal elitism and the arrogant attitude that they will always win.

 

I then considered the ethic of sexual purity. Then I found true Christians. Then I reconnected with my Jewish roots.

 

President Donald Trump is a warm-hearted  moral capitalist. He reinvigorated New York city with his building projects and the subsequent jobs he created (liberals and leftists have contempt for “jobs”).  He hired women, black and Jews before it was fashionable to do so.  Prison reform should have been a liberal value, but liberals are too busy bashing “the system” to consider such a project. He accepts his daughter’s conversion to Judaism. He wants things to work.

 

The classic liberal was a good thing, I knew them in the 1970’s. Coming from prosperity, the classic liberal seeks to share the blessings of good housing and education with the poor. 

 

But the classic liberals did not protect themselves from the radical left. They did not hang on to the ethics of sexual purity, free speech, or true pluralism. 

So, it is President Trump who is the true inheritor of what used to be the classic liberal - wanting good for all, and starting with the members of your own community.