There are plenty of spoiled people who do not realize just how well they have it in Western Civilization. Some of them have recently been seen at protests at Columbia U, UT, and elsewhere. Western liberal democracies are as good as it gets--maybe someday something even better will come along. Living standards and personal freedoms are unmatched. The real oddballs among them would be killed in barbarous ways in some 2/3 or so of the world.
You conservatives have your own hate speech codes and accusations of racism, and they are just as awful as the liberals. The sources I use are not anti-Israel at all. They are anti-government. They criticize Israel's government not the people themselves unless they directly commit crimes. Progressives/leftists/mainstream conservatives equate society with the government.
This just shows you really don't understand where I am coming from. On both domestic and foreign policy I follow Mises, Rothbard, Hoppe, S Horton, P Buchanan, P Gottfried, C.S. Lewis, Samuel Rutherford, Francis Schaeffer and those pre New Deal conservatives of the New Right. My viewpoint falls in between paleo-conservative, paleo-libertarian, and traditional Christian theology on politics and economics. In that I more or less reject ideas coming as a result of the Progressive Era's managerial takeover, New Deal, Neoconservatism, and the Civil Rights Act.
John Birch wasn't all wrong. He was besmirched by mainstream Republicans of his day because he was so radical. He went overboard with his accusations of Eisenhower. Eisenhower wasn't a communist but communists had infiltrated much of the federal apparatus which was made clear later. That was the real issue of Birch. But he went crazy. But the Right should utilize their radicals to push the agenda. That is what the Left does with great success. Instead, the Right canceled him and allowed themselves and the country to drift ever leftward. This is just slander though. Leftists operate under Marcuse's ideology of Repressive Tolerance. They tolerate everything the Left does to deconstruct society. They wage war against everything the Right does to protect society and traditional morality. Chomsky and Zinn are concerned with the progress of Leftist regimes around the world that is it. Whereas, I am motivated by libertarian ideals of peace, freedom, and prosperity for everyone, and the Christian ideas that serve as foundations for them. In that I am going to try to think rationally about each group's actions to see if there is a way to maintain peace and de-escalate violence. Blessed are the peacemakers. I am also going to utilize methodological individualism so that I don't fall into the trap of basing my opinions on concepts like collective guilt or stereotypes.
Were the Israeli communities attacked in October located in Israel proper or in the occupied territories? I’ve not seen the matter discussed it makes no difference in terms of the vicious savagery involved but does provide some context the US has been telling Israeli governments it was a bad idea to build settlements in the conquered areas for 50 years So has the Israeli oppositioni
This is the kind of thing that shows it's not just about Gaza. True antisemitism is very much involved.
I know you approach it from a difference perspective and with different goals than Chomsky and Zinn do, but the policy is largely the same. And what you miss is that if followed, the result would be the same. They'd consider you a useful idiot. There's also a consistency in the underlying assumptions. You both start with the overwhelming assumption that the West is wrong and doing what it does for nefarious reasons and that its enemies are either right or at least doing what they're doing for good or at least defensible reasons. It's why you were surprised to learn that Palestians broadly actually harbor pretty terrible views. And the "collective guilt" red herring is silly. Nobody thinks Gazans or Palestinians are collectively guilty of anything, and I don't think Palestians broaldly worldwide should be punished for the acts of Hamas. (Of course, many DO think Jews worldwide should be punished for the supposed acts of Israel.) However, when a people install evil people into power and those evil people do evil things, it often hurts the people who empowered them. That's not guilt. It's a consequence of bad decisions. For example, is some German farmer who voted Nazi in the early '30s guilty of the Holocaust? No. But is it an understandable consequence of his bad decision that he faced pretty severe consequences for the acts of Nazi leaders during the war? Yes. I know you think most of the crazies who got Pete Rose'd by Buckley and his people should have been kept in the fold. There are two reasons why we can't do what you're talking about. First, the media makes that an impossibility. When leftist radicals do something crazy, Democrats are rarely asked to explain, justify, or condemn them. They can very cleanly disassociate from them whenever they need to. That isn't true of Republicans. Consider the Charlottesvill rally. Trump had to answer for it. When the current leftist radicals are using Holocaust-level rhetoric about Jews, Biden isn't called on the carpet for it. Second, we don't consider right wing radicals to be part of our cause. For example, I don't consider David Duke or Richard Spencer to be allies. They aren't just more extreme versions of me. They have a totally different agenda and different values from mine. In fact, they have a lot in common with the Left.
Here's the problem. If you find some kind of moral equivalency between a Western democracy and a people with a terrorist led fascist government there's a good chance there's anti-Semitism involved. Ignoring Hamas atrocities while finding fault over everything Israel does is a sure sign. You seem to like Megatron off Twitter. That guy is anti-Semitic
Sounds like the old East German judges at the Olympics before the collapse of the bloody Soviet Union.
You have identified the foundational belief of so many deluded people. These folks need to wake up and realize that Western Civilization = Western liberal democracies ----> the best form of society this world has seen thus far. Could something better come along some day? Perhaps, but it sure isn't Communism or Socialism -- those generally lead to misery, mass poverty, starvation, dictatorships, and genocides or fratricides. One of the root causes of the hatred of the West by naieve Westerners is psychological. It's self-hatred combined with envy. They are so overcome by the fact that they haven't done well, and the added fact that others are doing well, that they view the system they live in as inherently unfair and something that must be overthrown at any cost. Anything would be better than this, they incorrectly think. We're talking about losers and quitters who don't respond appropriately to their losses. When you take a loss in life (and you'll take plenty of losses over the course of life unless you're just "on the sidelines"), the appropriate thing to do is to get up, bounce back, figure out why you lost that one, and plan how to not let that happen again and to win the next one. The inappropriate response is to lash out at "the system" and the winners. Instead of looking at big winners as people to study and emulate in some way (and to get advice from), they look at the winners with hatred and envy. And they bind together with the other losers who are filled with envy and want to overthrow "the system" at any cost. This brings together widely divergent and contradictory philosophies that would otherwise want to kill each other.
It's self-hatred combined with envy In other threads, some people were talking about hating Austin Westlake High--this is the same reason why people hate them. Their Dads have achieved financial success, so why TF would you hate them for that...? This is also behind much of the national hatred of the USA seen in some third world countries.
And the sort of self-hatred and envy is behind a lot of the anti-Semitism and hatred of Israel. If you think like that (hatred of Jews and Israel), you need to see a shrink.
Seinfeld as a graduation speaker makes little sense. Younger employees where I work have no clue about the Seinfeld show. References to that show go completely over their head.
I agree. The show has been off the air for about 25 years. Frankly, he would have made a lot more sense at the graduations of the faculty members. He would have been ideal for my college graduation in '99. Having him at a graduation now would be like having a guy from MASH at my graduation.
As Montoya would say, You keep using those words Hunger Strike . I do not think it means what You think it means Princeton Hunger Strikers Quit - With a Hilarious Twist
