Modern liberalism morphed into campaigns to desensitize and disturb

 I attended two country clubs. Each time, I was a guest of a member.

People can attend upscale country clubs if they have the financial means to do so.

That means either they were born affluent, become affluent, or befriend an affluent person who can bring you in on a guest pass.

It is elite, but accessible to a wide variety of people.

I discovered that the liberal world I grew up in, Brookline Massachusetts, 1970's and 1980's, was an elite, but it was not accessible to all. 

Someone always had to lose. There was a sub-movement to desensitize, break down the walls. This sounds good when giving more opportunities to talented members of minority groups. 

But this included breaking down the walls of one's personal boundaries, ie, grooming for sexual liberation, and it included plotting offense against conservatives and traditionalists.

The current backlash against what liberalism has become is because we grew up in it and know its goals - it is decidedly not to live and let live, but to desensitize. From the feminist who took the abortion pill on air, to the so called Women of the Wall group who stage provocations at the Western Wall in Jerusalem, liberalism has become an act of provoking anything they declare to be the establishment.

What they cannot fathom is that there is no establishment. That is a myth to keep people in a state of agitation, resentment, bitterness, ready to engage in social activism in opposition to an imagined Other.

The so called main prayer area of the Western Wall in Jerusalem is actually a tiny fraction of the Wall. The whole Robinson's Arch area went unused, there are areas in the Arab open markets that have access to the Wall, and there are underground areas that are used for prayer.

This provocateur group is fueled by the myth that there is an establishment. That the main place of prayer is where traditionally observant Jews have gathered for milennia - but it is only the main area because people have built it. The alternative groups could very well gather at the open Robinson's Arch area, which is actually more visible from many vantage points, or find more private places to gather.

 Their leader said that they want to "see and be seen", a voyeuristic attitude that contradicts the inspiration for prayer.  

They have been told that their loud hand clapping, yelling, screeching, waving their books in the hair, dancing, is disturbing the prayers of the traditionalists, but those who register this complaint may not fully understand that to disturb is precisely what the modern liberal wants to do.

 Eighth grade, Runkle school, Brookline Mass, 1894. Michelle (not her real name) complained that the history teacher would stand disturbingly close to her. Another male teacher would joke with her that when she grown up, he wanted to marry her. She was bothered by this. But that was the point, to desensitize the boundaries between men and women.

According to the feminist who took the abortion pill on camera, she admitted that she is at odds with pro-choice feminists who at least admit that abortion is a serious decision to make, she declares that abortion should be absolutely no big deal, not disturbing at all. 

Here is her quote:  "There seems to be a concern that the process of taking the pill was not done with grave contemplation. People think it needs to be something that’s hard to do (ie - disturbing), and is traumatizing in some capacity. Some folks have been upset that it was “so callous.” It’s interesting that there are people who totally support abortion but believe it should be something that’s private and serious (read - disturbing) with your doctor. There’s this culture around what abortion should be like, and how it should feel that really dictates the narrative about the procedure."

She knowingly disturbed in order to desensitize. Dull the emotions that declare that a boundary has been breached. 

She adds that it should be just fine to use abortion as a form of birth control.

To cause disturbance is to desensitize basic decent boundaries - of modesty between men and women, of respect for holy sites and ritual, of respect for human life. 

That is what liberalism has become, and that is why there is a backlash headed by those who grew up in it.

So to be a liberal today is to think that you are part of an elite, but it is not the elite of a country club, but of a clique that disturbs, provokes, and offends.

Modern liberalism robs you of personal happiness in order to provoke your activism

      The sexual revolution was sweetened with the idea that people who love each other will be unhindered by needing to be married in order to express affection.

The assumption was - sex will still be a respectful act and will only make people happier and freer.

This quickly spiraled down into a push to desensitize sexual activity. Free sex would unhinge social shackles. If one feels disturbed that they crossed a line in their sexual behavior, the remedy for that was decidedly not to listen to one's feelings and put limits on one's behavior,  but to quash these feelings by engaging in ever more free sex.

The assumption changed to -  if you feel disturbed by promiscuity, someone brainwashed you to feel that.  

The so called solution was to suppress your modesty, your boundary-feelings, the very feelings that should have alerted you to a crossed boundary.

Sexual repression was replaced with feeling repression.

The real solution is, in Jordan Petersen's words, "we have to be very very very careful with sex."

Chastity until a committed relationship is probably the best path.

      Interfaith marriage was to reveal the underlying humanity among all people and jettison the shackles of religion when it came to limiting who one can marry. Jew should marry Christian, Catholics should loosen up about whether someone is in communion or outside communion. 

The assumption was -  you can intermarry interfaith and still have a strong  family.

 But this quickly spiraled down into family tensions and a creation of organizations devoted to supporting the intermarried, and ultimately tense, family situation.  

The assumption changed from, you will still have a happy and stable family to: tension is a sign of intelligence. 

 Of course some intermarried families are harmonious, it depends upon the assumptions going into the marriage. I was witness to tension among supposed liberals.

The common thread in the above two examples is that the liberal weltanshaung transformed from an ideal of what can add to people's happiness.

People were not in fact happier.

And since they could not go back to how things were, returning to a chaste culture would be admitting sexual repression, returning to a conservative view of marriage would be an exclusive attitude, the underlying assumption changed to the following:

 If you are too happy you will not be in a state of agitation in order to stage the next social revolution.

 The pursuit of happiness itself was jettisoned.

As usual, the modern liberal lifestyle robs you of personal happiness that results from sexual limits and a strong family in order to goad you into bitterness and agitate socially.

For the liberal relativist, social situations are a tyranny

For the liberal relativist, social situations are a tyranny.

Social situations are a venue for building your platform and for pontificating.

 Off hand comments made in social situations are what is expected to shape your world view, not reading primary sources, not investingating the accuracy of news stories or rumors.

 The modern liberal is conditioned to make conclusions based upon impression and feeling.

Those impressions and feelings are dictated through who is more powerful socially, who is more dominant in a social setting.

 This dominance can take the form of people actually behaving in pleasantly, stroking you to make you feel heard and then coming in with the trump argument that wins you over due to their charm or due to their dominance in a social situation.

 When I met the Chassidic Rabbi in Burlington Vermont, all those years ago,  he brought me a piece of paper and a magic marker and asked, "could you please write a sign for me, my English isn't so good."

In a split second I realized - this guy cannot manipulate me. He had spoken Yiddish at home, Arabic on the streets of Morocco, and gone to Brooklyn to yeshiva at the are of 13.

English was his third language, but it was more than that, he spoke straight, with no packaging or manipulation.

On that Sabbath afternoon, he pulled out a five books of Moses and started learning with a visitor. The question came up, how could Jacob our forefather ask for a sign from God, was not that a sign of lack of faith?

 The Rabbi said, "Jacob was a tzaddik (saint) so it  must have been okay."

The visitor said, "you can't say that, him being a tzadik makes the question okay? You can't say that."

The rabbi furrowed his brow and stroked his beard in thought.

He was not trying to outsmart anyone, get them to be on his team or vote for his party or get someone to be his activist.

He was just sharing greater truths that were infinitely larger than him. and that made him act kindly in an interpersonal manner - unhlike the liberals I had grown up with.

When your world view is shaped by off handed comments made in social situations, nothing is really true, nothing is likewise false, so accuracy is less important than your delivery and ability to impress.

"Liberals have it easy, follow liberal ideology no matter how much blood is spilled" - paraphrase from the book Holy Days.

Better to be connected to higher truths than ideologically possessed and pushing an agenda, an agenda that may not even be so good for you.

Liberals want your bitterness and will not tell you how to solve many social problems

In most situations in life, when one makes mistakes, one is expected to walk through each step one made and discover what one did wrong in order to improve any given situation for the future.

If a nurse makes a medication error, she is called to the nurse manager to go through step by step all the factors that contributed to her mistake, and there is, most of the time, something she could have done differently that was completely in her control to prevent the mistake.

Even in cases where there were extreme external factors, the nurse is expected to be level headed and focused and able to withstand external pressures so as to not make an error in medication administration.

But since today's liberal wants you to be frustrated, today's liberal will take issues that they favor and project any problem out to some huge social problem that can nary be fixed.

For example, they will blame date rape on, say, "the patriarchy" or on "rape culture'. Blaming on things so huge and unfixable, the victim becomes victimized yet again.

It is the rare huge social problem that causes a nurse to make a medication error.

But when faced with subjects say like date rape, unplanned pregnancy, family dysfunction, or poor educational standards, the liberal will blame "rape culture", "toxic masculinity", "sexism" and "systemic racism" instead of walking one through what steps can be taken to prevent and treat social problems.

What steps can be taken to prevent a medication error?

1 - the five "rights" - right patient, right medicine, right dose, right time, right route.

2 - no tolerance for intimidation by the patient or a visitor to alter these five rights.

What steps can be taken to prevent date rape?

1 - Awareness of the following: alcohol lowers your inhibitions. There is an urge for sexual behavior starting in the early teens. Some music, clothes and actions provoke sexual frustration. 

Therefore:

2 - Train your kids from a young age to favor being at home and getting to bed early. Socializing happens in the home under parental supervision. You do not send your teenage daughter to visit her male friend, even if they are "just friends" alone away from parental supervision. You do not leave kids home alone. By the time your kids are teens, they will be in the habit of socializing under parental supervision at home.

3 -  You do not attend parties. See #1 and #2 above.

4 - Drinking alcohol and dancing to suggestive music breeds a culture of sexual frustration. Since you have trained your kids to socialize at home, they will not even know about this possibility.

5 - engaging in sex before marriage is unthinkable. Not forbidden, but unthinkable. Or in Jordan Petersen's words, "you have to be very very very careful with sex." Very.

Just a few basic assumptions will prevent tragic social situations.

But liberals want you to have bitter experiences, become embittered, and be ready to spring to fight causes that do not even benefit you.

Are you sure those are all the needs you have?

Being a revolutionary, I mean.

You sure you have no other needs than to be an activist and change society? And, are your sure YOU can be the one to do that?

You were groomed to be an activist. You were decidedly not groomed to evaluate whether or not your activism was wanted or even necessary.

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.