Affirmative Action breaks two of the Ten Commandments.

 

 

Christians struggle with understanding scripture. They study and question and often have unresolved issues with their faith.

Bible study can be a struggle - but it does not warp one's mind.

Liberal ideology does.

Brookline Massachusetts in the 1970's and 1980's, most of us were Jewish, or part Jewish like me, liberal, and ensconced in comfortable neighborhoods with "no parking overnight" signs on every street.

I thought the no parking overnight was so the street cleaners could have it easy.

But that was not the case, which I only found out later.

We were all for affirmative action, because it was only fair to compensate for past injustice via giving small breaks to minorities.

But affirmative action turned out not to be a small break. It actually hurt the minorities it claimed to help.

I thought it would be - college entrance means a white student with grade point average of 3.6 versus a black student with a grade point average of 3.4. Give the seat at college to the black student, they are practically equal, and we are just compensating for prejudice.

But when I arrived at college, 1985, I could not escape the fact that the black students were struggling in ways that were out of proportion to their presence on campus.

The black students from south America and Zaire were excelling.  They were from wealthy families and had never benefited from affirmative action; their skills, smarts and talent got them that college seat.

The American black students at Middlebury College were not keeping up. A popular black student who flunked and transferred to a state school so upset the students that a huge meeting was called to discuss it.

What conclusions could you come to? Since you could NEVER question affirmative action without being dubbed racist, you have to conclude either that the system is so inherently corrupt and racist that it could never be fixed and needed to be smashed, Marxist style - an angry and warped way of thinking indeed. And a cynical call to revolution.

I began to wake up to the injustice of being unable to question affirmative action, and saw that plenty of minority students were thriving because they had earned their seat via merit. I then considered that affirmative action is theft (taking away a deserved college seat and giving to one who does not deserve it) and falsehood. 

I wanted to demand from someone, anyone: "who thought this horrible system up, and why are we intimidated from questioning it with the threat of being dubbed racist?" 

I wanted answers for why I was set up to have to believe in a system that many minorities themselves do not believe in, that makes you fearful of questioning, that when you finally wake up out of it you realize that your previous way of thinking was warped, and I came to realize:

Affirmative Action breaks two of the Ten Commandments: it is theft and it is false witness

When Christians struggle with their faith, they read, debate, pray, and reflect. 

But Bible study does not warp one's mind.

Liberalism does.

And the no parking overnight in Brookline Mass?  that was to keep vagrants out in a not-in-my-backyard fashion - just another sign that liberals bet that none of the policies they dream up will really affect them.

Charles and Diana and Chastity

 Of course none of us really know anyone else's inside story.

So the following is not a deep analysis of the relationship between Prince Charles and Lady Diana Spencer.

 

It is a statement on chastity and its deeper meaning.

Evidently, the future king of England was instructed to marry a virgin. 

He apparently was not instructed as to what that means.

Those societies and individuals who protect chastity have an entire culture, both social and personal, built around the maintenance of healthy boundaries between men and women.

Protecting virginity is not simply in order to preserve an intact hymen. It involves a whole range of personal characteristics that prevent free interpersonal socializing between men and women.

Chaste societies limit interaction between men and women. When a man and woman interact, they should be focused on a goal, and not bantering freely, not sharing deep feelings, and not in isolation from others and in no area that could lead to intimacy.

Men and women who believe in chastity are modest in their demeanor and in their interactions. They are naturally guarded.

Lady Diana Spencer was known as "shy Di". Evidently she had not had a boyfriend, not due to her surrounding culture, but uniquely so due to her insecurities borne of a sensitive nature, a nature that would eventually lead to the whole world adoring her loving and charitable nature.

In a traditional society, she would have fit right in, but she was at odds with the upper crust British set in which one is expected to shine at social occasions with witticisms, fashion and culture. Getting attention is considered a good thing, strutting and one-upmanship to be admired. The heir was often seen in such social situations in his youth, and fitting in well to that milieu.

Do witticisms, fashion, high culture and outshining others in a one-upmanship fashion in social situations amount to promiscuity? 

What is the connection?

Well there is a connection. Social competitiveness and climbing can easily lead to attraction between men and women and then to relationships - and those relationships that are borne of social climbing are part of efforts in outshining the Other. Besting the other, competing and winning is the goal, love is secondary, should it exist at all.

Part of the future king's adultery was that he and his mistress had bested Diana. Enough said.

One-upmanship pervades social interactions in British high society already, as it does in liberal society in America. It continues in other parts of life - including the bedroom.

Diana went on to devote her passion to advocating for children and in promoting charitable work. She was not into social one-upmanship, but devoted to helping others.

I believe Diana's love affairs were a product of her pain and not commensurate with her nature. We will never know if she would have married David, the man she was killed with, but the affairs she did have were disastrous for her.

And that is because Diana's nature was a chaste one.

It is a cynical hypocrisy that any man is instructed to marry a virgin but not appreciate one, nor behave himself in a chaste fashion, with all the personality traits and social mores that accompany the virtue of chastity. 

There is a connection between chastity and charity, and between competitive socializing and promiscuity.

And one who has a chaste nature, wed to one who decidedly lacks it, can only make for a situation that ends in tragedy.

 

How Abusers Manipulate

Abusers and manipulators lead you to draw your own conclusions, making you feel that you figured out something on your own.

 By leading you to draw your own conclusions, then you became a voluntary participant in their manipulation. It is thus becomes not their fault at all, it becomes your doing.

You need also to understand the difference between being tactful in order to be a mensch and spare someone's feelings, and bending the truth because you are in fear of the manipulator's anger and consequences that they may mete out, including threats of deprivation or public embarrassment.

Being tactful is a wonderful thing to do. But if you find yourself inventing white lies and spending energy bending the truth because you fear the other's expression of anger and its consequences, then you are being manipulated.

Here are some real life examples:

A harried sounding school administrator calls the mother of a child at their school, "your ex husband told us that you do not send her report cards to him, his lawyers sent us a copy of your divorce agreement and we consulted our lawyers who concluded that he has a right to the report card, so we will be sending a copy to him from now on."

See how this administrator had already drawn a conclusion without hearing the mother's side.

The mother responded, "ok, fine." and the conversation ended there.

Note how the administrator did not even try an easier route, like just calling the mother directly and saying "hey, your ex wants a copy of the report card sent directly from the school, is that okay?"

But the administrator, who was normally a nice woman, expressed the signs of having been manipulated - she sounded harried, and she did not give the other side a chance to speak. She also did not show any tact to the mother, in telling the mother how the admin of that school and its lawyers were involved.

The ex husband had succeeded in embarrassing his ex wife. It was mental abuse by proxy. 

The mother wisely just said "okay" and did not offer her view or in any way say anything that could escalate the situation. Even if she had said, "but I do send him a copy of the report card", which was true, that could have escalated the situation, as it would have thrown doubt upon the ex husband's truthfulness and the school administration's professionalism.

Here is another example:

A divorced single mother remarries a man who lovingly helps raise her daughter from her first marriage.

The daughter tactfully downplays her step father's role in her life when she visits her biological father. Over the years, she lets him believe that the step father is a minor character in her life.  This is in response to her biological father's expression of curiosity about her life and her sixth sense that she should be tactful.

Then the biological father hears that his daughter wishes to attend the stepfather's birthday celebration. He also hears his daughter's son refer to the stepfather as "saba", which is Hebrew for "grandfather".

The biological grandfather is referred to by the Yiddish "zaide", so different words were used for each grandfather. The third grandfather, that is, the father of the husband, was referred to in the English "grandpa". 

Should the biological father respond with a heartfelt wish that he hopes he is still appreciated even though his daughter wishes to attend the celebration, and hopes he is not being supplanted in the grandson's mind by the step father, that would be fine.

But a disturbing expression of anger in the form of a harsh facial expression, tone of voice, and adding, "you have no other saba, I am the saba, I will be angry if you call him saba!" to a child, with the mother under stress in trying to figure out how to placate the biological father....that crosses the line from the call for tact to the need to recognize abusiveness.

The Decline of the American secular Protestant family, 20th century America

 

Let me tell you my inside story of witnessing an extended American Protestant family over three generations in contrast with a Jewish family.

This lack of cohesion of the American family opened up American society to many problems, including:

- The public school was able to indoctrinate, in place of parents. 

- Teens sought affection in the form of sexual activity whereas just a generation before their parents were able to wait til marriage, no problem. 

Contrast between two families:

1920, Dorchester Massachusetts, the Goldstein family was hard at work eking out a living. The oldest daughter Bessie had to leave school at the age of 16 and work in a factory to help support her parents and eight siblings. She withstood both anti-semitic comments as well as was told the following: "you Jews are lucky, your husbands come home at night. Ours go to the pub after work."

Bessie's mother had put her children to bed every night with stories from the Bible and from the Chassidic Jews in Eastern Europe, overcoming adversity with faith. The Messiah would come, and we will all be together in Jerusalem some day with their call to remember. Do not forget.  You marry and bring children into the world as it is a mitzvah and anyway our numbers are often getting decimated, with the pogroms a fresh memory.

1920, Vergennes Vermont, the Bridge family home boasted fine rugs, graceful furniture, household help. They had two daughters, of course you do not want too many children, they may muss the furniture.

The Bridges attended church every so often, with a lackadaisical attitude concerning religion. You were a good citizen because it was the right thing to do, but no Bible study permeated the rooms of their stately home. You married right after normal school for girls or trade school for boys, because that was accepted, that was done. The next generation graduated college and got married right after college.

Goldstein family - you are expected to give tithes, help people out, and your home is open. Uncle Shaya crowded in to their small apartment and slept in the living room after he returned from World War I until he found a place of his own. 

 

Bridge family - you are expected to give tithes to the church. The home is well manicured and an overnight guest is close to an anathema.

Siblings in the Goldstein family had a sense that they would be helping each other out all the way down the road, in the Bridge family, siblings were competitors of each other,  each expected to make it on their own by pulling themselves up by their own boot straps. You could not have too many children as each one eventually inherits either the fine china or the fine silverware, too many siblings would make dividing up the estate impossibly unfair, plus mussing the fine rugs.

 

As the economy changed and as their hard work paid off, the extended Goldstein family graduated from penury to attaining the American dream. The second generation bought homes. As they kept the Jewish Sabbath and Jewish holidays, they would get together often. They were not looking for personality clashes, in fact, they would brush off such friction as the goal was the success of the whole. They saw the success of their siblings as a reflection of themselves, a strong family would confer yiches, that is, good family background, making it easier to get the matchmaker to propose a good match to you.

The Bridge family assumed you would find a marriage partner on your own merits. Individual achievement is what counted. A sibling who is floundering, not only would that not reflect negatively on you, as it would in the Goldstein family, but it would almost make the other sibling look better in contrast. There simply was no motivation within the New England American Protestant family to see to the success of their own family members, as there was in the traditional Jewish family. 

As the economy changed and the Bridges were not accustomed to discomfort, the second generation chafed at how difficult it was to make a living. A feeling of unfairness permeated two of the three siblings who did not have the standard of living that their parents had. The third sibling had married a man with inherited money, so she did not feel this pinch. One sibling became a liberal democrat, feeling that the government should provide better, the other became a conservative libertarian, which caused further friction between them, and both were somewhat bitter, waiting for their ship to come in. Oh they worked, but they could not fathom why the dollar did not go as far.

The Goldsteins remembered the Exodus from Egypt at their Passover Seder, in which family members were reunited for better or for worse, they remembered their hard work, and felt a sense of gratitude and the continual need to nurture a strong extended family which would ultimately reflect well on them, besides being charitable. They were pulling themselves up by their bootstraps in a communal way.

 

The Bridge's remembered their previous wealth with a certain bitterness. It did not occur to them to pull together as they had been raised with the idea of pulling yourself up with your own bootstraps completely on your own. There were cousins who only lived a four hour drive away whom they never met. What good would it have been? None whatsoever, as you needed to spend your time and energy grooming yourself for individual success. 

Which values would better suit the individual, the community, and even the United States of America?

Individuals who are not well supported have less to offer society. Rugged individualism may have had its place in some circumstances, but not here. 

The lackadaisical attitude, borne of living a stable life, would lead to not questioning the infiltration of political correctness into the educational system. The American Protestant was not paying attention, favoring aesthetics and the assumption that society is pretty stable. 

Their kids returned from public school completely foreign to them.

The Jewish community is notorious for its constant internal debate, breakaway synagogues and schools are founded as robust debate begets robust urgency and robust building. Let alone the emergency attitude that permeates Judaism in general, celebrating holidays like Passover, Purim and Chanukah in which we celebrate not having been decimated, and the call to remember. Do not forget.

Take a vacation from a Jewish community and you will return to see two new synagogues and three new schools that were founded while you were away. Many of these start in basements, as philosophy is more important that finery.

The Goldstein family may have much in common with many immigrant families who pulled together, kept their eye closely on education, and preserved their heritage.

The modern American liberal Protestant just did not have these values. So they declined.

 Do not rest on your laurels. Do not imagine that having made it in America, you can be more individualistic. Who knows? Maybe the Protestant family in the 1800's also had familial and communal supportive values that were lost with their growing wealth.

 Remember what worked, and what caused a sharp decline, and let's learn from this: 

-  Keep up your familial and communal support. Getting together with family members should not be an act of competition and one-upmanship but seen in light of the success of the many is my success also.

-  Take the religion you inherited seriously, read up on it, study it at home even if you are not a believer, your kids should know their religious heritage even if they question aspects of it. No one should be illiterate in their religion.

-  Ask your kids what they learned that day/week in school. Be robust in your child rearing and in the values you want to impart. I know too many liberals who were surprised and hurt at how their own children morphed into the unrecognizable. I saw this in the lackadaisical and a little too comfortable secular American Protestant. 

So please - be robust in your family and community building, and in your religious literacy. The success of the many is yours as well. 

Remember. Do not forget. 

Time to build something else, despite liberal self-loathing, and love America again. I am an orthodox Jew, living in Israel, grateful for the refuge that the USA gave to my forebears, and praying for the USA to redeem itself, and fast.

I have both WASP and Eastern European Jewish roots.

The above is my story. I am witness.

I am a descendant of Puritan leader John Bridge, as well as of the Moses Sofer, a scribe in Poland who, it is said, when he wrote, fire leapt from his pen. Two illustrious ancestors, but John Bridge leaves a statue and scant family memory, my Jewish cousins take pride in the Moses Sofer and try to live up to his memory.