The plus side of the establishment of Israel…
This topic contains 177 replies, has 7 voices, and was last updated by 
-
Jake,
The jist of what you’ve said in the last two posts is absolutely correct…with exception to the causation of the mess we encounter in Iran and U.S. Academia.
You wrote (again, Bullwinkle):
(Too bad the free marketplace of ideas was not the least bit efficient)
I keep telling you, through clenched teeth and increasingly ruined dental work, that there is no free marketplace of ideas in a Theocratic dictatorship like Iran. Otherwise, the government would be Secular instead of run by Ayatollahs and all viewpoints could be freely expressed, not just Shia Islam, but Sunni Islam, Judaism, Christianity, Zoroastrianism, Ba’hai-ism, Atheism, Secular Humanism, even Jedi Knightism if there are any George Lucas fans over there.
And our own marketplace of ideas in the U.S. is distorted because the schools children attend from K to 12 have a captive audience to unionized teachers and administators more interested in retaining cream-puff positions than in instruction of children in subject matter that will build young minds and prepare them to think and act in independent adult life.
And our Universities are propped up with heavy State and Federal subsidies and contracts, on top of students subsidized with Federally-undrwritten student loans. Combined with the institution of tenure, this all serves to keep the same Professors in their Professorships and Honorary Chairs for generations, who then propagate Postmodern, Subjectivist, Marxist, and Wokeist Frankfort School “Critical Theory” nonsense.
Professor Thomas Sowell has often and rightly pointed out that tenure is no longer a way of assuring academic freedom, but is now a means of establishing new elites who then spread rotten non-thought and suppress dissenting thought:
Under this curriculum of subsidized and tenured Academia, Enlightenment ideals of Rational Thought, the Socratic and Scientific Methods, Individual Rights, Limited Government, Equal Justice Before the Law, expansion of the moral community to all Sapient beings, Free Market Economics, are all under attack, with every resultant good thing about The West, the U.S. and Israel barbarized with them.
From Academia, all of this trashing of Enlightenment ideals filters down to other institutions such as the Teachers’ graduate schools, the courts, philanthropic foundations, Non-Government Organizations (NGOs), business and management, human resources, theater, motion pictures, the literary and publishing fields, and Cyberspace culture.
Rational people have their work cut out for them and Israel and Jews are the prominent coalmine canaries for our nation and world’s perilous sit-rep. How they go, the rest of us shortly will follow.
-
This reply was modified 1 year ago by
TheEncogitationer. Reason: Addendums of verbiage for clarity
Unseen, the announcement you posted occured in time before the video I posted of the reporter contradicting the speaker.
Also, the statistics on the deaths came from two contradictory sources, the Hamas Government Media Office that reported more deaths, and the Hamas Ministry of Health who reported less.
And the Ministry of Health based it’s death counts on both hospital records and “reliable media sources” (whatever that means.)
This is tantamount to believing Jesus was born, lived, died, and was resurrected based on an alleged 500 witnesses recounted in four contradictory Gospels that were all written 50 to 90 years after the alleged events took place and which have all been written and re-written untold numbers of times in approaching 2000 years.
If the source of the information is questionable, action based on the information is questionable as well.
Everyone is dogpiling on Israel, accusing them of genocide (there is no such thing as “quasi-genocide’,) boycotting their products, and in the U.S. and Europe, they are blocking traffic, trashing up campuses, accosting and attacking Jewish students, businesses, and synagogues, and dredging up the most ugly Anti-Jewish tropes that led to real, full-bore genocide…all based on an information nothingburger!
You have said one good thing though in all of this:
If there are Palestinians who are sick of Hamas and Fatah and every other faction of the Palestinian Authority that has brought them misery, tyranny, and death, then, yes, we do need to give those Palestinians guns and any other small arms they need to get rid of their tormentors, so that Palestinians may at last experience peace, freedom, and prosperity, side by side with their Jewish cousins.
-
This reply was modified 1 year ago by TheEncogitationer. Reason: AutoFill error
Unseen,
If history decides that the American student protests are on the wrong side of history, it will be the first time. They were right about civil rights in the 60’s and about the war in Vietnam. They tend to have a keener perception of what’s right than their elders, when they become a mass movement.
Age and numbers have nothing to do with right and wrong, and there can be both right and wrong in any movement.
The Civil Rights Movement was right to fight Jim Crow but not to replace it with Crow Jim.
The Women’s Movement was right to fight Neanderthal men, but not to replace them with Vampiras.
The Peace Movement was right to oppose the Vietnam War, but not to call honorable Veterans “baby-killers” and pose on North Vietnamese guns like Jane Fonda and be dupes for the Soviets and Red China.
Likewise, concern for Palestinians should not mean hating and destroying Israel and Jews.
-
This reply was modified 1 year ago by TheEncogitationer. Reason: Tense agreement
Jake,
I’m not a Floridian (I believe that is Robert who is Floridian), but I do know from obsidian.
It’s a volcanic rock that is very sharp when broken and is still used to this day to make surgical blades.
In a class on primitive skills, when flintknapping obsidian into arrowheads or blades, we were required to wear long sleeves, leather gloves, and safety goggles. Even then, tiny fragments would hit the face and make shaving-style cuts. We probably should have used welding masks, but at least we didn’t lose fingers or eyes as primitive peoples probably once did in our past.
One thing is for sure: I would never go under any blade or medical instrument, obsidian or otherwise, of this quack Dentist Imam! Making death threats under cover of prayer should be grounds for malpractice, not to mention exclusion from polite society.
Oh, and the “monkeys and pigs” rhetoric is standard in majority-Muslim societies.
-
This reply was modified 1 year ago by TheEncogitationer. Reason: Spelling
-
This reply was modified 1 year ago by TheEncogitationer. Reason: Addendum
-
This reply was modified 1 year ago by
You must be logged in to reply to this topic.