Thank you, Eric, for sending me Jerry Fresia’s book! I look forward to reading it.
Schug, what a wonderful memory of those old days! Thank you
for writing about them. I went back and looked over my files from that time and
could not figure out which student you were. But it warmed my heart to know
that I had succeeded in reaching you in that class.
While I was searching my files, I came across a talk that I
gave to The Radical Philosophy Association on April 19, 1986. It is called “Should
Marxists Give up the Labor Theory of Value?” I had completely forgotten about
it and if I can figure out some way to turn it into a computer file, I will
post it here on my blog.
Now that I am old, I have been thinking about hiring a
graduate student from UNC to work as my assistant and convert a number of
things like that into a form in which I can post them on my blog. I wrote a
good deal in those days without having any intention of publishing it and I
would enjoy having those materials available to anyone who wishes to read them.
That was a time when I spent a good deal of effort mastering the mathematical
literature on the modern reinterpretation of Karl Marx. I am convinced that
movement was intellectually important and ought not to be forgotten.
Well, I have had just about all I can take of television
commentary on the death of the Queen. I have nothing against the lady, but
there is a limit. Meanwhile, I await the outcome of the “special master”
kerfuffle. I am absolutely convinced on the basis of no evidence whatsoever
that the Justice Department has found Trump either selling or threatening to
sell secrets obtained by him from those classified documents, and if I am
correct, then that really will be the end of him.
It is, I suppose, an evidence of my irrepressible optimism
that I am becoming convinced the Democrats will hold the House and pick up two
seats in the Senate.
111 comments:
Apologies for the slightly longish post and excuse any errors as this is an OCR from a Google Book Search. It's relevant to the discussion about the labor theory of value. I hope you find it as interesting as I do.
Whately then makes some most important observations — It may be worth observing that in examining, framing, or altering definitions in Political Economy, you will find in most persons a tendency to introduce accidental along with or instead of essential circumstances. I mean that the notion they attach to each term, and the explanation they would give of it, shall embrace some circumstances generally, but not always, connected with the thing they are speaking of, and which might accordingly (by the strict account of an accident) be ‘absent or present, the essential character of the subject remaining the same.” A definition framed from such circumstances, though of course incorrect, and likely at some time or other to mislead us, will not unfrequently obtain reception, from its answering the purpose of a correct one, at a particular time and place. . . . .
“A specimen of that introduction of accidental circumstances which I have been describing, may be found, I think, in the language of a great number of writers respecting Wealth and Value; who have usually made Labour an essential ingredient in their definitions. Now it is true, it so happens, by the appointment of Providence, that valuable articles are, in almost all instances, obtained by Labour ; but still, this is an accidental, not an essential circumstance. 1f the aerolites which occasionally fall were diamonds and pearls, and if these articles could be obtained in no other way, but were casually picked up to the same amount as is now obtained by digging and diving, they would be of precisely the same value as now. In this, as in many other points in Political Economy, men are prone to confound cause and effect. It is not that pearls fetch a high price because men have dived for them ; but on the contrary, men dive for them because they fetch a high price.”
Thus Whately has sent a deadly shaft into the whole Economics of Smith and Ricardo. Smith begins his work by describing Wealth as the produce of “land and labour”; thus making materiality and labour as the essence of Wealth; and he entirely omits Exchangeability. Now, as a matter of fact, not twenty per cent. of Economic or Exchangeable quantities have any labour associated with them at all, and not five per cent. of Economic quantities have materiality and labour associated with them, which shows that materiality and labour are only the accidents of Wealth and Value. It is Exchangeability, which is the sole essence of Wealth, as the ancients unanimously held. The Economists also held that Exchangeability is the real essence of Wealth ; but they clogged it also with materiality, which is entirely inadmissible.
Whately then said that pearls do not fetch a high price because men dive for them, but men dive for them because men give a high price for them ; that is, it is not Labour which is the cause of Value, but Value which is the inducement to Labour; just as Condillac said before him; and this is the entire boulversement of the Economics of Smith and Ricardo.
Whately thus laid the foundation of that system of Economics which I have adopted and developed.
source: The History of Economics by Henry Dunning Macleod
Richard Whately
Richard Whately, 1787-1863
Regarding the documents: It seems there are pics of Trump lackeys loading similar boxes on the plane that took him to his summer home in Bedminster.
If you don't like what's on TV, turn it off or get rid of it.
When my partner and her son left 10 years ago, I gave her my TV set and I haven't bought one since. Too much crime news and too much sports: you like sports, I know, that they are just as alienating as news about royalty.
There are hundreds of alternative news podcasts on Youtube, which you can explore. I recommend Democracy Now and Jacobin, but I don't follow U.S. news all that closely and there are many others. Watching mainstream TV news is like eating junk food or drinking Coca Cola: bad for your health, in this case, mental health.
And there are always good books to read.
s. wallerstein does not pull any punches. That is what makes him so endearing.
Thank you, Marc.
Almost forgot. It's been 21 years since 9/11.
Professor and aaall,
Splitting hairs,regarding the documents, Trump is not actually going to sell the documents, he's going to mine the information within to monetize their content. He's keeping them just long enough to extract what's useful to him and will give them up when done or seized.
The leftist 9/11 includes Adorno's birthday and the coup against Allende.
If I were as evil as the Oval Loser and had at any time secret information on foreign leaders, I would not seek to profit directly by selling it. Instead, I would use it to extract concessions for my business from vulnerable foreign leaders.
I have not seen any mention of the possibility that he has retained electronic copies of secret documents. What would have prevented him from scanning them into encrypted computer files? Just because it's a crime? Might he have been so reckless as to direct some minion to do this?
@ John Rapko
On the morning of 9/11/2001, I happened to be in a grocery store picking up an item or two. The cashier said something about a plane and the World Trade Center or maybe it was vaguer than that, but I gathered something bad had happened. I recall asking whether it was an accident and being told it wasn't. At that point, walking to my car where I was going to turn on the radio, I recall thinking "I wonder whether this has something to do with Chile and Allende" --because 9/11/73 was indelibly lodged in my long-term memory.
Here it's 11-9, not 9-11. Does any other country besides the U.S. put the month before the date?
Today President Boric gave a moving speech remembering Allende and above all, his commitment to democracy and to a peaceful transition to socialism. Boric, like Allende, is a gifted orator. He also spoke of a government program to continue the search for people who were disappeared during the Pinochet dictatorship.
Human rights groups and family members of people disappeared or executed during the dictatorship marched peacefully as they always do on 11-9 to the Cementerio General where Allende is buried and where there is a monument to the disappeared people.
On the other hand, the usual suspects seized the opportunity to loot convenience stores,
break windows and throw molotov cocktails at police cars.
A day in the life.
It is, I suppose, an evidence of my irrepressible optimism that I am becoming convinced the Democrats will hold the House and pick up two seats in the Senate.
As my mother told me her mother used to say, Fun zayn moyl, in Gots oyer.
It would be a good idea to hire a philosopher looking for experience to get work and go through your many files or archive of work and salvage some of it with a document scanner or other camera device, some software will also scan hard text and turn it into electronic text to make this easier to archive.
You may have many scraps of materials in your files or papers stuck in old books or writing that could be regarded as pre-blog era materials that might have ended up in your current blog if you were writing like that then (observations of current events, letters, or memories, etc.). Maybe you have been blogging (writing continuously, relentlessly about all that matters) all your life and did not realize it until you retired and started self-publishing your views on The Philosopher's Stone and then it all became visible.
Queen Elizabeth's death at age 96 has unleashed what Todd Gitlin called a "torrent" of media images and videos and recycled memories and this will continue in the United Kingdom until September 19 funeral. It causes a very interesting condition called "digital overload" or nausea in reaction to more such news of the Queen expiring and "resting" in her Scottish palaces while they transport her oak casket to London where it will be buried in a church vault in order to be closer to heaven.
All this fuss and orchestration of national mourning rituals is really an overdose of the aristocrats, tradition and colonialist ceremony, with the smiling Queen probably leaving all her money and property to her dogs, horses, and rich relatives instead of returning some of it as reparations to indigenous peoples in America, Australia, New Zealand, America, or India and other former British colonies.
They shall now probably be putting the face of King Charles III on to Canadian currency, which is one good reason to stop using Canadian cash and go digital. Charles is also becoming King of Canada, and must find some ways to squeeze more money out of us all.
Coincidentally, today I started reading “How Democracies Die,” by Harvard Profs. Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, who have studied how democracies around the world are extinguished. On p. 5, they write: “Early in the morning on that fateful day, Allende offered defiant words o a national radio broadcast, hoping that his many supporters would take to the streets in defense of democracy. But the resistance never materialized. The military police who guarded the palace had abandoned him; his broadcast was met with silence. Within hours, President Allende was dead. So, too, was Chilean democracy.”
In the last chapter of the book, titled “Saving Democracy,” they state: “Comparing our current predicament to democratic crises in other parts of the world and at other moments of history, it becomes clear that America is not so different from other nations. Our constitutional system, while older and more robust than any in history, is vulnerable to the same pathologies that have killed democracies elsewhere. Ultimately, then, American democracy depends on us- the citizens of the United States. No single political leader can end a democracy; no single leader can rescue one. Democracy is a shared enterprise. Its fate depends on all of us.”
It is a sobering book, and I recommend it.
Actually, Allende did not call on people to directly resist the military coup. In his ultimate discourse he stated that people had the right to defend themselves, but they shouldn't sacrifice themselves (their lives). Soon after that, Allende committed suicide by firing a bullet to his head. Here are his very eloquent last words (in Spanish, but they can be translated no doubt).
https://rvl.uv.cl/noticias/5608-el-ultimo-discurso-de-salvador-allende-en-el-golpe-de-estado-difundido-por-radio-magallanes
Re Marc's comment above
I've heard Levitsky talk about the book (and am personally acquainted w/ him -- how is not relevant here), but I haven't read the book.
Levitsky's regional expertise is Latin America and Ziblatt's is Europe (W. Europe in particular, I think). Neither is, "professionally" speaking, an expert on U.S. politics. So they bring a somewhat different and probably broader perspective than an expert on U.S. politics would.
same speech in English
https://www.marxists.org/archive/allende/1973/september/11.htm
I can't let this post go without a comment -- particularly in light of Schug's comment. Schug, I think we were in the same class together. I remember the Wade Boggs talk. What really stood out to me was Prof. Wolff's comment about how lucky we all are to be able to see someone like Wade Boggs play baseball in our lifetime. I remember repeating that to someone who was not a Red Sox fan. They looked at me blankly. But I got it.
I must also let Professor Wolff know that you are definitely the mentor that we always (desperately) needed. I am positive that this extends beyond Schug and myself. I would sometimes dare to think what it might be like growing up in a household where you were my father. I imagined that I would be so much more ahead of the game than I was at the time. When I found your blog many years ago now, I realized that here was a venue where I could keep learning from you beyond the classroom. The beauty of the internet is that it allows this kind of connection and interaction. I believe that life is better because of it.
Professor Wolff, I know you are a fan of Kant. I am not. Kant's concerns are not my concerns. But there is that oft referenced quotation from Hannah Arendt about the pleasures of spending time with Kant. For me, I offer an amendment. When times are tough, I find it a pleasant respite to spend some time with Wolff. Thank you so much.
-- Jim
p.s.: Following Schug's example, other teachers at UMass who continue to influence and nurture me: William M. Johnston (retired), John (Jack) Fenton (deceased), Romand Coles (now at Northern Arizona U), Mary K. Meyer (now at Eckerd College, FL), William (Bill) Strickland -- worked with him on the Jackson for President campaign in 1988. I can't leave out Sut Jhally. And too many others to mention. Great thing about Bill Strickland was his brevity -- he would make a profound point in 3 or 4 words and it was drilled into your head forever -- at least it was for me. When I teach my students, I find the words of these teachers instinctively flowing out of my mouth. Who knows? Perhaps future teachers will carry these words with them. At least I hope so.
Marc, we coasted on norms until recently and lucked out at critical points - Washington/Adams, Lincoln, and FDR.
I lived for 30 years near the west end of LAX on 9/11. When I came home in the late afternoon I felt somewhat disoriented. I soon realized it was dead quiet due to the nation wide grounding of all air traffic. Never realized how much background noise the airport produced besides the takeoffs and landings.
Barney Wolff said...
„If I were as evil as the Oval Loser and had at any time secret information on foreign leaders, I would not seek to profit directly by selling it. Instead, I would use it to extract concessions for my business from vulnerable foreign leaders.
I have not seen any mention of the possibility that he has retained electronic copies of secret documents. What would have prevented him from scanning them into encrypted computer files? Just because it's a crime? Might he have been so reckless as to direct some minion to do this?“
The problem with such people is that they often can't even withdraw cash from an ATM. The 'bad kid' has probably never used a scanner in his life. In addition, I don't think he has read and evaluated all the documents himself. He is a specialist in manipulating people to help him in every situation. ("You're a good Republican. You know I need those 10,000 votes, damn it ..." )
Prof. Wolff,
About the talk you gave and would like to turn into a computer file. I assume you have it in paper.
A possibility is to read your talk to the speech software you currently use. Alternatively, you can have it scanned and read by an Optical Character Recognition software.
Either way, the result may require some proof-reading and formatting. If your hands are not up to the task you could outsource both things.
If the talk contains mathematical formulas maybe it is best to hire someone to enter them manually (Windows has a tool to write mathematical formulas). If the talk was scanned, your assistant can screen capture the formulas (Windows’s Snipping Tool).
A personal advice: make sure you personally proof-read the formulas.
Just for laughs.
https://www.cnn.com/videos/us/2022/09/11/bear-crashes-boys-birthday-party-mxp-vpx.cnn
aaall, has this ever happened in your neck of the woods?
Some may enjoy this interesting review of Charles Mills's paper on LOTR, which is rather less glowing than that of "the Professor":
http://branemrys.blogspot.com/2022/09/on-mills-on-lotr.html
Marc, all the time. My nephew has nightly bear visits. He has plum and apple trees so bear June to November. I ran one off my neighbor's apple trees. Black bears are everywhere.
aaall,
Wow, sounds pretty dangerous!
As I sit at my desk reading another brief, to which I must respond within 14 days, as the Summer slips into Fall, presaging that the leaves are about to begin falling from the trees, and I stare at my coffee mug bearing the message, “So many books, so little time,” I contemplate the discomforting question,, with Prof. Wolff, aaall, David Palmeter, and s. wallerstein, will this be the last Halloween, the last Thanksgiving, the last Hanukkah, the last Christmas, the last New Year’s Eve I will experience, and I return, with a sigh, to reading the poorly-reasoned, poorly-written brief my adversary has burdened me with.
Marc,
If you google "how long will I live'", you'll see several questionaires which ask things like your age, your height, your weight, whether you smoke or drink, maybe your blood cholesterol, whether you exercise, any diseases which you have, etc., and come up with a rough estimate.
I took several, and different tests give different results, but you get a general idea of how insurance companies, etc., (who don't like to lose money) calculate your chances of reaching extreme old age.
Late acknowledgement of Ahmed's comment at the top of the thread, which reminded me that I want to read this old book on value theory. The first 60 pages are about the various concepts of value in economics ("bonum utile"); the remainder looks to be a survey of the concept of value from a more general philosophical standpoint.
"So many books, so little time," indeed.
Michael,
Thanks. I was beginning to think nobody cared.
marc,
when I was practicing, I preferred poorly-reasoned, poorly-written briefs from my adversary. It was the well-reasoned, well-written ones that gave me trouble.
Speaking of which, a good example of a well-reasoned, well-written brief is that filed last week by DOJ seeking a partial stay of the Fla District Court's order enjoining the criminal investigation of Trump's purloined documents. I thought it was a brilliant brief. It's opposite was filed today by Trump's lawyers. In their defense, I have to admit that there isn't a helluva lot the could say in rebuttal. Of course, with the Trumpie judge and the Trump majority 11th Circuit, who knows?
s. wallerstein,
Thank you for the information, but I’m afraid to look – I might find out that my appointment in Samaria is earlier than I anticipated. Four of the seven factors are against me. The most exercise I get is typing legal pleadings and comments on this blog, and moving my Queen to checkmate.
Marc,
I just took this test. According to the results, I'm not going to make it to Kissinger's age, but I may make it to Chomsky's.
You'd get some points for playing chess. It's fairly easy to guess which answers are going to win you points.
https://www.livingto100.com/
A more interesting death is the passing of Jean Luc Godard who committed assisted suicide within the week of the Old Queen Bess demise. Philosophically one is puzzled whether JLG was a Satrean existentialist or a French Maoist. I guess his final act answered the question. As for the non-stop Royal soap opera to its very end, four words are sufficient: Pip! Pip! Good Show!
If the Democrats outperform in the midterms to extent you suggest, it will be interesting to see the effect on the Republicans. They could see this as an indication that they should abandon their path into increasing extremism and anti-democratic behaviour in recent years, or they could view it as showing that they need to focus even harder on evading democracy, overriding election results etc. I am not optimistic.
Re coverage of the Queen's death - I am British and in the UK, but I am surprised by some of what I hear about the extent of coverage in the US and elsewhere. I guess that this taps into a deep sense of nostalgia, and a deep desire for any news that isn't so gruellingly depressing and wretched as much of what is going on now.
The phrasing to "commit suicide" implies that choosing to end one's life is a crime or a sin.
Saudi King marks 9/11 anniversary: 'We lost many good pilots'
RIYADH — As in most countries around the world on September 11, a moment of silence was held in the Middle Eastern country of Saudi Arabia on Sunday. Theirs was 15 seconds long, one second for each Saudi national lost in the 9/11 terror attacks in 2001.
Ahmed,
I searched the internet to confirm that the statement you have published was issued, and found it on a website titled “Duffel Bag,” which purports to be a website which publishes military satire.
The statement is therefore apocryphal, and a very sick joke.
This was obvs not a real statement, as there are a bunch of reasons why S.A. wd never do
something of this kind, starting w the fact that the S.A. govt kicked OBL out of the country long before 9/11.
You know, LFC, you never miss an opportunity to criticize me.
I agree that based on Ahmed's prior comments on this blog I thought it unlikely that hw was the author of the statement, if it were apocryphal. However, nothing in his comment indicated this, and for readers who may not have been familiar with Ahmed's prior posts, they may have thought the statement was actually issued by the Saudi government, given the rather heinous behavior of Prince bin Salman in the past. I thought it important to clarify that the statement was indeed a hoax, and a poor one at that. Does that have your approval?
Marc
My comment was not intended as criticism of you or of your steps to determine that the quote was a hoax. Ok?
Marc,
It's not a joke, it's satire, which is an effective way of delivering a truth.
satire: the use of humor, irony, exaggeration, or ridicule to expose and criticize people's stupidity or vices, particularly in the context of contemporary politics and other topical issues.
Also, you didn't have to do a Google Search as the main page of the Duffel Blog says this:
The only satirical news for the U.S. military—since 2012. Featured in Military Times, WaPo, and The Wall Street Journal. “They’ve made a lot of fun of me and I’ve enjoyed every bit of it.”—Defense Secretary Jim Mattis
Also, did you notice that right after 9/11, all these Saudi organizations too numerous to mention started springing up like mushrooms after rain. CAIR, for example, was suddenly very active. These organizations had already been set up before the 9/11 attacks, which means they were funded by the highest level of Saudi Arabia in preparation for the backlash that would result from the attacks.
That was the point of the satire, to connect the 9/11 attacks to the Saudi royals.
Hope that makes it clear.
I'd point out that while OBL was kicked out of Saudi, the checks kept coming.
https://www.gao.gov/assets/a295879.html
I follow a satirical website called The Babylon Bee. The satire starts in the name. The first two below popped up in my RSS feed today. The rest are some I have saved. Enjoy.
Martha's Vineyard Resident Calls Police To Report A Hispanic In The Neighborhood Not Operating A Leaf Blower
"Hello, is this 911? Yes, there are brown-looking Latinx people outside my 20,000-square-foot seaside home, and they aren't even carrying leaf blowers," said a terrified Mavis McWhite to the dispatcher. "They aren't even holding so much as a rake. They're up to no good. I'm scared! Please send help!"
Democrats Remind Everyone That All The Money You Just Lost In The Stock Market Wasn’t Really Worth Much Anyway Thanks to Inflation
Speaker Pelosi spoke to constituents at a press conference, reminding them that 1.6 trillion dollars isn't what it used to be thanks to near record levels of inflation. "It's 1.6 trillion, what is that, like three barrels of oil?" said Pelosi. "$1.6 trillion is barely enough to remodel one of my kitchens. Calm down, everyone."
Young Communist Unsettled To Find Hammer, Sickle Represent Physical Labor
Christian Dutifully Prays For Her Enemies, But If God Wants To Smite Them, That’s Okay Too
Sesame Street Introduces Karl Marx Muppet
S is for seize the means of production
Progressive Mother Tells Daughter That She's Beautiful Just The Way She Is, Unless She's Trans In Which Case She'll Need Extensive Plastic Surgery
In my humble opinion, there are some subjects that do not avail themselves well of satire, which by virtue of their inappropriateness come off as sick jokes. I suspect that satire about 9/11, which suggests that from the Saudi Arabian point of view the real loss was of the 15 Saudi citizens who died in the plane crashes, would not sit well with the families and friends of the in excess of 3,000 people who died that day. Another subject that I, personally, do not think is appropriate for satire is the Holocaust. I was particularly offended, for example, by a monologue which Larry David, who is Jewish, offered while hosting SNL about a dating service at Auschwitz. Satire about tragedies is, in my opinion, in bad taste.
Marc,
In my humble opinion, there are some subjects that do not avail themselves well of satire, which by virtue of their inappropriateness come off as sick jokes.
It depends. There is the loss of life and then this happens (article is probably gated but the quote suffices):
Sept. 11 Families Accused Of Greed
Stephen Push was shocked when the first e-mails arrived. The senders had seen him on television talking about his wife, who died in the Sept. 11 attack on the Pentagon, and the federal plan to compensate families of the victims.
"We feel your grief, really," one e-mailer wrote. "I'm just wondering if we have to feel your greed too?"
"If $1.6 million is not enough for you, I hope you rot in hell," another wrote.
At this point, the sympathy vanishes, and then they become open to satire. Joan Rivers weighs in:
One notable 9/11 joke was one told by Joan Rivers, a major American comedian, in London in 2002. The joke concerned the widows of fire fighters killed in the attacks, who Rivers said would be disappointed if their husbands had been found alive as they would be forced to return money they had received in compensation for their late spouses.
In my opinion, it's acceptable because it's directed at the actions of a specific group of people.
Here, the satire is directed at the US government:
Additionally, the season seven episode "Baby Not on Board" features a scene in which the Griffin family visits Ground Zero, which Peter erroneously believes is "where the first guy got AIDS" Brian corrects him, informing him that it is the site of the September 11 attacks, and Peter responds, "So Saddam Hussein did this?" Brian explains that it was a group of "Saudi Arabians, Lebanese and Egyptians funded by a Saudi Arabian guy living in Afghanistan and sheltered by Pakistanis." Peter responds asking "So you're saying we need to invade Iran?"
I guess there were some people who found Swift's satirical suggestion that Irish children be consumed as food a bit too close to the mark. But that's just my modest proposal.
I was never a big fan of Joan Rivers.
Anonymous,
Thanks, I learned something new today, i.e., A Modest Proposal. In looking up what you wrote, I ran across this quote about satire from its author:
“Satire is a sort of glass wherein beholders do generally discover everybody’s face but their own; which is the chief reason for that kind reception it meets with in the world, and that so very few are offended with it.” — Jonathan Swift
Yes, Anonymous, I agree that it would be rather traumatic for the Irish parents of children who had actually been cannibalized in order to satisfy the British palate to read their trauma being satirized. Certainly in bad taste.
On a side note, the Supreme Court has accepted certiorari on a case which has philosophical implications, involving the First Amendment and freedom of speech and religion.
In free speech jurisprudence there is a “compelled speech” doctrine which prohibits government from requiring that citizens participate in certain speech. The doctrine was the basis of the S. Ct. decision overturning a New Hampshire law requiring that its license plates bear the message “Live Free or Die.” It was also the basis for overturning the requirement that all students in public schools recite the Pledge of Allegiance.
A woman in Colorado who designs web sites wants to advertise that she refuses to design websites for gay marriages. She asserts that preparing such messages violates her religious beliefs. This is an extension of the bakery case in which the baker refused to make wedding cakes for gay couples. Colorado has ruled that the website designer’s proposed advertising violates Colorado’s anti-discrimination civil rights law. The philosophical issue I see is the use/mention distinction. When the website designer is hired to prepare a website promoting gay marriage, is she “using” the language of the website design, or only “mentioning” it. I would maintain that she is only mentioning the language, which does not equate to her endorsing the message. Moreover, unlike the New Hampshire driver license case, or the Pledge of Allegiance case, which requires that the compelled message be expressed where ever the automobile owner drives the car, and in the case of the Pledge of Allegiance, the Amish students who objected were required to recite the Pledge every morning, the website designer is not being required to design the websites she objects to on a continuous basis. I hope the attorneys representing Colorado are aware of the use/mention distinction and raise it in their brief.
MS: You mentioned Larry David, and that reminded me of a recent episode of Henry Louis Gates’s TV show “Finding Your Roots,” in which David was one of the genealogical celebrities. Gates’s genealogical researchers found out that David had an ancestor who lived in antebellum Alabama, owned slaves, otherwise prospered, and fought (as an officer, I think) for the Confederacy. No current shame in that, so far as I’m concerned: you aren’t responsible for what some of your ancestors did a hundred or more years ago, in circumstances that I’m glad never to have been thrown into. (I don’t believe in original sin, regardless of when it has supposedly entered one’s bloodline.) But David seemed to think that this was funny. I believed he laughed about it and more or less shrugged it off. And that response lowered my moral estimation of that clown. (To be fair to him, he had some other, more decent family relations way back when in this country—and he and Gates were quick to point this out.) But the inappropriateness of David's finding a joke or a shard of cachinnating humor in everything turned me off, and continues to.
Fritz,
Thank you for that story about Larry David. I usually watch Prof. Gates' Finding Your Roots, but, thankfully, missed that one. It confirms my negative opinion of David. I expect Jews to be able to empathize with the suffering and oppression of other minorities. But a guy who could make a joke about Auschwitz obviously has no character. He was also a writer for the Jerry Seinfeld show, which had an episode about Jerry and Elaine making out in a theater during Schindler's List. Ugh.
Marc, I think you have it a bit wrong. Swift, an Irishman of sorts, was, as I remember, suggesting that those Irish who were starving could eat their own children. The British palate wasn't really involved.
Anonymous,
Jeez. The point is, whoever was proposed to cannibalize the Irish children in order to ameliorate the problem of starvation in Ireland, Swift was not satirizing a trauma that had actually occurred. His satire was effective precisely because he was proposing a solution that had not occurred. I dare say if the Irish were actually cannibalizing their own children, Swift would not have regarded it as a fitting subject for satire. This is the difference between Larry David's, Joan River's and the Duffel Bag purported satire - they were purportedly satirizing actual tragic events. Satirizing actual tragic events, at the expense of people who actually experienced those tragic events, or who are related to people who actually experienced those tragic evens, is, to my mind, in extremely bad taste, unlike Swift's Modest Proposal, which displayed his creativity and wit. Do you get the difference?
Marc, four bears stripped the apple trees a couple hundred feet west of chez aaall. May be of interest:
https://balkin.blogspot.com/2022/09/levinsonfest-on-can-this-constitution_01644823595.html
By way of Prof. Leiter's blog William Buckley enemy of academic freedom
[or how we got to here from there]. The NR/Pinochet connection is mentioned.
http://features.yaledailynews.com/blog/2022/04/04/figures-of-speech/
Pardon me, Marc, I obviously am in need of your expert correction. can't you ever give even a little bit of an inch? It gets very boring.
Anonymous,
Say three mea culpas, and four Hail Marys, and all will be forgiven.
“Should Marxists Give up the Labor Theory of Value?”
I wonder if that's the question, given that there isn't much of a question that the labor theory of value is a major pillar of traditional Marxian economics. Another question -- should Marxists be Marxists? If it comes down to this, then there is an interesting angle, that Adam Smith described the concept and underlying principle of this, and it was first conceived by ancient Greek and medieval philosophers. And so Marxists, 'we know where they got it from'. And yet also, with emphasis, the labor theory of value interlaced nearly every aspect of Marxian analysis. A slightly different point is that I gather Marx believed human labor was the only common characteristic shared by all goods and services exchanged on the market. In any case, probably Marxists are not going to give up 'the exploitation theory of capitalism', without it being confusing semantics to be calling themselves Marxists at all. Wait -- confusing semantics, is that something to give up?
'Also, did you notice that right after 9/11, all these Saudi organizations too numerous to mention started springing up like mushrooms after rain. CAIR, for example, was suddenly very active. These organizations had already been set up before the 9/11 attacks, which means they were funded by the highest level of Saudi Arabia in preparation for the backlash that would result from the attacks.'
I guess I'm not that knowledgeable about the financing and motives of the Council on American- Islamic Relations. But I'm also not Brigitte Bardot's husband. That's my attempt to hint around about whether you take yourself to be a Muslim-Bashing Bigot?
That's my attempt to hint around about whether you take yourself to be a Muslim-Bashing Bigot?
I'm a Muslim.
I guess I'm not that knowledgeable about the financing and motives of the Council on American- Islamic Relations.
Saudi Arabia's goal is to spread their Wahhabi/Salafi version of Islam. The 9/11 attacks were a means to that end.
One estimate is that during the reign of King Fahd (1982 to 2005), over $75 billion was spent in efforts to spread Wahhabi Islam. The money was used to establish 200 Islamic colleges, 210 Islamic centers, 1,500 mosques, and 2,000 schools for Muslim children in Muslim and Non-Muslim majority countries. The schools were "fundamentalist" in outlook and formed a network "from Sudan to northern Pakistan".
source: International propagation of Salafism and Wahhabism
I didn’t get the Brigitte Bardot reference. (All I know about her is that she haunted my adolescent daydreams.) So I Googled her. She has been fined several times for having published anti-Muslim comments and has supported Le Pen’s candidacy. Her current husband (she has been married 4 times) is a former adviser to Le Pen.
The 9/11 attacks were planned and carried out by Al Qaeda, the organization headed by Osama bin Laden. The attacks were not planned or carried out by the Saudi Arabian government.
The aim of the 9/11 attacks was not to spread the Wahabi version of Islam or any other version of Islam. The aim of the attacks was, in bin Laden's mind, to punish the U.S. for what Al Qaeda viewed as its intolerable and offensive presence in the Middle East, esp, though not only, the presence of U.S. soldiers in the same country as the Muslim holy places of Mecca and Medina. Bin Laden hoped that the attacks would cause the U.S. to withdraw from the Middle East and stop supporting what Al Qaeda saw as regimes that betrayed the extreme and twisted version of political Islam that Al Qaeda endorsed. Al Qaeda's longer range goal was the establishment of a new caliphate.
A good book on the history of Al Qaeda and the background of the attacks is Lawrence Wright, _The Looming Tower_.
Dear Marc
Re Auschwitz, the catastrophe ranks up there with the destruction of the Temple and the razing of Jerusalem by the Romans, Vespasian I think.
The Jews survived all, probably due to luck and determination if not G-d.
We commemorate Tish B Av,
I wonder if the Shoah should take its place in the pantheon of history if not ancient history.
There is a time to live and a time to die and a time to mourn and a time for life to move on.
Mourning morbidly the Shoah won't help the Jews survive and won't help Israel.
It blinds us to our own inner demons and we should let it go as hard as it may feel to do so
Sorry, Howard, I do not agree.
Never Forget!
I think the memory of the Shoah makes us label all our enemies as Nazis. There is a category called enemy of the Jews and so the Palestinians who are not Nazis and victims, to a degree of the Jews, are treated like Nazis.
Maybe things are different vis a vis our argument between Israelis and American Jews.
There is a tremendous feeling of solidarity when you stand with Am Yisrael on the streets of Jerusalem on Yom Shoah, but the memory of the Shoah enables our oppression of the Palestinians and becomes part of an ideology of victimizing
I'm a consequentialist when it comes to a lot of things and even the Holocaust
Maybe things are different in the Galut where we feel more prone to the heirs of Nazis, and it was a horrible horrible thing that happened.
It is long ago and to really remember it and commemorate it is to distort it.
I think we have to if not forget about the unthinkable, think about our memory differently
Howard,
I have to leave on a family engagement, but I will respond to your comment later tonight, because I believe it is important to respond.
I don't have time for a long comment, but what enables or drives Israeli policy toward the Palestinians, istm, is a set of political decisions that should be challenged on their own terms. I would not assign primary blame for those decisions to the way the Holocaust is remembered, and anyway trying to argue that the Holocaust should be "remembered differently," whatever that means exactly, is probably a losing battle. (Peter Novick wrote a bk that may bear on this that I'd like to read but haven't yet.)
Historical traumas take generations to process.
I know several children of people disappeared during the Pinochet dictatorship, that is, almost 50 years ago and the psychic scars are still evident. The psychological literature confirms that perception.
I once had a close relationship with a Holocaust survivor (she was a small child at the time of the Holocaust) and she'll never get over it.
African-Americans still bear the psychic wounds of Jim Crow and lynching, maybe even of slavery.
With the centuries people forget these things, but it's a long slow process that cannot be forced without inflicting further psychic damage on survivors, their children and their grand-children, all of whom bear the scars.
Howard,
This is an apropos topic for discussion, given the scheduled broadcast tonight of Ken Burns’ new documentary on the United States and The Holocaust.
I have the impression that you live in Israel, and therefore have better credentials than I regarding whether Israelis view the Palestinians as the equivalent of Nazis. I have not gotten that impression based on my reading and watching news reports about the interactions, often violent, between Israelis and Palestinians. And I will repeat what I have stated before on this blog: I do not automatically equate criticism of Israel’s policies as anti-Semitism per se. I have, myself, quite vocally, criticized Israel’s conduct, e.g., the disruption of Shireen Abu Akleh’s funeral, which I viewed as inexcusable. That said, it is also the case that for many people criticism of Israel is a proxy for anti-Semitism.
The fact that there are violent clashes between Israelis and Palestinians does not, in my mind, entail that the Israelis are equating the Palestinians with Nazis. The fact that such clashes occur is not surprising, given their turbulent history. On the other hand, however, it is important to remember that the mufti of Jerusalem, Hajj Amin Al-Husayni, spent the entirety of WWII in Berlin, promoting an alliance between the Palestinians and the Axis powers. He routinely broadcast anti-Semitic speeches. After the war, he avoided detention by the French military by escaping to Egypt, where he continued disseminating anti-Semitic propaganda.
After the war, the Israelis proposed sharing the land with the Palestinians, proposals which were repeatedly rejected by them. After the U.N. passed the resolution approving the partition, Israel accepted the partition; the Palestinians rejected it, vowing to drive the Jews into the sea, with the help of their Arab neighbors. While seeking such an objective does not equate to the pain and suffering inflicted upon the Jews by the Nazis, it does indicate a preference for their extinction, at least in Israel. So, it should come as no surprise that Israelis distrust Palestinians and their motives, (Notably, those who claim that Israel stole the land from the Palestinians never address the forced partition of India, which also occurred in 1947, by a Moslem minority, not indigenous to India, whose leader, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, stated, “We will see India divided, or we will see India destroyed.” Ben Gurion, the leader of the Zionist movement in Palestine, never said, “We will see Palestine divided, or we will see it destroyed.” The partition of India resulted in the largest mass migration of people in human history, with the deaths of millions of Hindus and Muslims in fratricidal clashes, far exceeding the deaths of Israelis and Palestinians in all of the their conflicts, combined.)
Even today, Hamas refuses to accept the right of Israel to exist and states in its Charter https://irp.fas.org/world/para/docs/880818.htm:
“The basic structure of the Islamic Resistance Movement consists of Muslims who are devoted to Allah and worship him verily [as it is written]: ‘I have created Man and Devil for the purpose of their worship [of Allah].’ Those Muslims are cognizant of their duty towards themselves, their families and country and they have been relying on Allah for all that.
“They have raised the banner of Jihad in the face of the oppressors in order to extricate the country and the people from the [oppressors’] desecration, filth and evil.
. . .
“The Islamic Resistance Movement is a distinct Palestinian Movement which owes its loyalty to Allah, derives from Islam its way of life and strives to raise the banner of Allah over every inch of Palestine. Only under the shadow of Islam could the members of all regions coexist in safety and security for their lives, properties and rights. In the absence of Islam, conflict arises, oppression reigns, corruption is rampant and struggles and wars prevail. …
. . .
(Continued)
“Hamas is one of the links in the Chain of Jihad in the confrontation with the Zionist invasion. It links up with the setting out of the Martyr Izz a-din al-Qassam and his brothers in the Muslim Brotherhood who fought the Holy War in 1936; it further relates to another link of the Palestinian Jihad and the Jihad and efforts of the Muslim Brothers during the 1948 War, and the Jihad operations of the Muslim Brothers in 1968 and thereafter.
“But even if the links have become distant from each other, and even if the obstacles erected by those who revolve in the Zionist orbit, aiming at obstructing the road before the Jihad fighters, have rendered the pursuance of Jihad impossible; nevertheless, the Hamas has been looking forward to implement Allah’s promise whatever time it might take. The prophet, prayer and peace be upon him said:
“The time will not come until Muslims will fight the Jews (and kill them); until the Jews hide behind rocks and trees, which will cry: O Muslim! there is a Jew hiding behind me, come on and kill him!”
(Brackets and parentheses in the original.)
There are those who criticize the claim of some Israelis that the God of the Hebrews has purportedly promised the land of Palestine to them, and therefore they are entitled to live there and control it. But which is more objectionable, a God who purportedly gifts a tract of land to a particular religious, ethnic group, or a God who authorizes killing all members of that religious, ethnic group, in the name of that God?
Howard, given the words in the Hamas Charter, can it be said that Israeli distrust of the Palestinians’ objective is unwarranted? Do they need, as you appear to claim, to resort to the Holocaust to justify that distrust? I don’t think so.
You state, “It [the Holocaust] is long ago and to really remember it and commemorate it is to distort it. I think we have to if not forget about the unthinkable, think about our memory differently.” Well, 88 years is really not that long ago. One can forget a verbal insult uttered even just a year ago. one can perhaps forget a punch in the face delivered some five years ago. But to forget the deliberate extermination of 6,000,000 people based on their religion, race and ethnicity – some by firing squads; some by deliberate starvation; many more by being gassed and incinerated – no such an atrocity cannot, should not be forgotten in a mere 88 years. No, not in a millennium. Never forget!
By the way, Marc, it's not 88 years since the Holocaust but 77, that is, there are still a good number of Holocaust survivors alive, people who, try as they may, cannot forget it.
Marc,
I'm afraid I must disagree with your statements about Partition (of India).
"by a Moslem minority, not indigenous to India"
Well, if you go back centuries, I guess they weren't indigenous, but I don't see what special relevance that fact has to anything. Muslims had been present in British India (as it then was) for generations and generations. Unlike the Israel/Palestine case, where the Jews had been in Palestine anciently, were driven into exile, and then only returned in any significant numbers -- if I recall correctly -- starting in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the Muslims had been in the Indian subcontinent continuously for generations. There was no exile, no diaspora, no return. Thus the two cases are not comparable on the facts. One can disagree about whether these two sets of facts have different moral implications, but on the ground, so to speak, the two cases are not comparable.
The partition of India resulted in the creation of two new, independent countries: India and Pakistan. Importantly, Indian political leaders accepted the idea of two countries, envisioned in the Mountbatten Plan of June 1947. Wiki: "The Muslim League's demands for a separate country were thus conceded [by the Indian Congress Party]."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Partition_of_India#Mountbatten_Plan
In the Palestine/Israel case, by contrast, the Palestinians and the Arab states obviously rejected the creation of two states that had been called for in UN Res. 181. The U.S. backed Res. 181, but the State Dept. wanted a UN trusteeship and the creation of two provinces but not two independent states. Despite this State Dept position, Truman recognized the new state of Israel on May 14, 1948. He didn't recognize a new Palestinian state bc there was none to recognize, bc the Palestinians at the time rejected the idea of partition. In the Indian case, to repeat, both sides accepted the idea of partition; in the Israel/Palestine case, one side accepted the idea of partition and the other side rejected it.
https://history.state.gov/milestones/1945-1952/creation-israel#:~:text=On%20November%2029%2C%201947%20the,mandate%20was%20scheduled%20to%20end.
I just don't see these two cases as comparable. No one has ever claimed that Muslims "stole" part of India from Hindus because they both were there for centuries and the Hindus, via the Congress Party of India, accepted the idea of partition. While I do not agree with those who use the language of theft in the Israel/Palestine case, one can see how Palestinians displaced from their homes in 1948 (regardless of whether they left during the fighting, expecting to return, or were pushed out, or some combination of the two) could view the matter differently.
P.s. as for dating the beginning of the Holocaust, yes there is disagreement. Some might say 1933; some might say 1938; some might say Sept 1939, Hitler's invasion of Poland and formal start of WW2 in Europe; some might say June 1941, Hitler's invasion of USSR; some might say the Wannsee Conference, Jan. 1942. (I'd probably be inclined to go w Sept. 1939, though I'm pretty sure the Ken Burns film premiering tonight will date it from earlier than that.)
Marc,
I did not say the Muslims had "a greater right" to Pakistan than the Jews had to Israel.
What I said was that the facts of exile, diaspora, and (partial) return (which facts existed, notwithstanding the continuous presence of Jews in Palestine) created a different situation on the ground. There were other significant differences, too, but that was one of the main ones.
You say the Indian subcontinent "belonged entirely to the Hindus for the prior 3300 years" before Partition (presumably). But you also note the Muslims had been there since the Moghul empire (and before). So how could the subcontinent have "belonged entirely" to Hindus? (Also, the Buddha was born in what is now India, if I'm not mistaken, and so there were also some Buddhists in the subcontinent. When I was there in 1994, iirc I saw some Buddhist temples, or whatever the technically correct term is [though more Hindu ones, for sure]. Possibly I also saw some Buddhist sites when I lived in what is now Bangladesh, what was then East Pakistan, as a child, but my memory is not *that* good. Anyway, it's a side point.)
You say I "claim to know a lot about history," but so do you; the claim is implicit in your comments. Since neither of us is a historian, what we claim, implicitly or otherwise, about the breadth and/or depth of our historical knowledge is irrelevant, istm.
P.s. There is a very sizable Muslim population inside India to this day. You can look up the number.
LFC,
Actually I understated how long India was under the control of Hindus prior to the Moghul Empire being founded in 1526. The Hindu civilization dates back to 5,000 B.C.E. I originally used 2,000 B.C.E., and then added 1,500 years, marking the invasion by Barbur. So, Muslims had lived in India, as a minority, from 1526 until 1947, a mere 420 years, compared to the continuous presence of Jews in Palestine from at least 900 B.C.E., and arguably form 1,200 B.C.E., through the Greek empire; through the Roman empire; continued through the Middle Ages; through the Ottoman Empire, until the partition in 1947 – a total of 2,847 years, compared to the Muslims’ 420 years in India. Even during the Babylonian Captivity, after the conquest of Israel in 586 B,C.E. by the Babylonians and their expulsion to Babylon, a significant Hebrew population remained in Israel (the lower kingdom). In fact their expulsion lasted only 47 years, since they were allowed to return to Israel after Cyrus conquered the Babylonians in 539 B.C.E.. Yet people do not question Pakistan’s right to exist, forced by a minority population on a country they clearly invaded, and which was created at the end of the barrel of a gun, versus the right of Jews to have their own county, in which they have been present for at least 2,847 years. These are historical facts, confirmed by archeological digs and documents written in Hebrew, not based on the Tanakh.
How are “the facts on the ground” different, so as to support the Pakistani narrative? The Muslims were not in India before the Hindus. They invaded India. They resided mostly in Northern India and the Punjab, and were always a minority. How are these “facts on the ground” significantly distinguishable from that of the Jews, whose presence in Palestine pre-dated that of the Palestinians who in point of fact never controlled their own state in Palestine, but from 1516 on were always either under the control of the Ottoman Empire or the British, and who were not threatened by the Jews at the point of a gun to give them the land on which they resided or else, until the Palestinians rejected the partition and the Jews had to defend themselves against the Palestinians and other Arabs who declared their intention to drive the Jews into the sea?
The population of Buddhists in India was always miniscule, compared to that of the Hindus. Buddhism did not take hold in India. It lasted from the 5th century to the 12th century, after which it all but disappeared in India, leaving behind the Buddhist temples that you saw. It fared far better in China and Japan.
I have read, and continue to read, a lot of history. You don’t need to have acquired a Ph.D. in history in order to be qualified to discuss history. It does not require a license, unlike law.
It's possible the two cases are not as starkly different as I've always assumed, though I would still maintain there are important differences; those differences, however, may not bear directly on the question of the "right to exist" (which I'm not raising, in either case). There are competing narratives of the relevant history w.r.t. the I/P conflict. If you read Rashid Khalidi's The Hundred Years' War on Palestine (which I haven't) you're probably going to get a rather different story than if you read, say, Dennis Ross, maybe (just to pluck a name from the ether, so to speak).
Though I don't have time right now to engage in further back-and-forth, a few seconds searching produced this piece, which might prove interesting though I'm not sure I agree, on a quick skim, with everything in it:
https://www.thearticle.com/should-we-compare-india-and-israel
An excerpt:
"There was no enthusiasm for Partition on either side: it was a British solution (‘divide and self-rule’) to growing strife and unspeakable atrocities on the ground. The (Hindu) Congress party wanted a state with equal rights for all. The ‘father’ of the new Muslim state, Muhammed Ali Jinnah, did not want a ‘moth-eaten’ Pakistan: his objective was a federal India with power-sharing, and autonomy for Muslim-majority provinces like Punjab and Bengal."
As things turned out, of course, what happened was Partition. The road to it was doubtless kind of tortuous, but I'm not as up on the details as I might be. In retrospect, things probably would have been better for the Indian subcontinent if India had somehow remained a single un-partitioned country. Hard to know for sure.
P.s. "moth-eaten" would refer to two geographically separate pieces of Pakistan with a lot of India in between the two pieces, which is of course what happened in 1947.
LFC,
Interesting article. Thank you for the citation.
Marc,
Your facts are all correct, except that you stop at secondary causes, short of the Causer of causes.
The Qur'an mentions both destructions of Jerusalem, and the rescuing of the Jews by Cyrus, but attributes it all to God's actions. Before that, there was another destruction, this one in your scripture:
Ah, Assyria, the rod of my anger
— the club in their hands is my fury!
Against a godless nation I send him,
and against the people of my wrath I command him,
to take spoil and seize plunder,
and to tread them down like the mire of the streets . . .
(Isa. 10:5-6)
See, not because they were Jews, but because they were being godless.
source: Assyria the Ax, God the Lumberjack: Jeremiah 29, the Logic of the Prophets, and the Quest for a Nonviolent God
Incidentally, a cursory read of the Qur'an might give one the impression that Allah does not like Jews. Nothing could be further from the truth. No, Allah does not like secularism, and it's mostly Jews that fit the bill. The fact that these are Jews is incidental. When Muslims are out of line, Allah clobbers them too, as we've seen recently in the Muslim deaths in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, etc. Allah was clobbering people long before Jews were in the world. You could say that the Allah of the Qur'an is an equal opportunity destroyer.
And how many have We destroyed from the generations after Noah. And sufficient is your Lord, concerning the sins of His servants, as Acquainted and Seeing. —Qur'an 17:17
Recently, this:
Albright, he first female Secretary of State in United States history, made the remarks during a 60 Minutes interview. Correspondent Lesley Stahl discussed with the then-United Nations ambassador how Iraq had been suffering from the sanctions placed on the country following 1991's Gulf War.
"We have heard that half a million [Iraqi] children have died. I mean, that is more children than died in Hiroshima," Stahl said. "And, you know, is the price worth it?"
"I think that is a very hard choice," Albright answered, "but the price, we think, the price is worth it."
No, those deaths were not caused by the US. But the US will still get punished because God worked his acts through the US. (Punished for its nature, not its acts.)
As for evidence of Jewish secularism, this:
Remarkably, Jews and people of Jewish descent represent less than 0.20% of the world's population, but they represent 22.4% of all Nobel laureates (208 out of 930).
These are not Jews reading Torah.
Incidentally, there is a battle in Israel between Haredi Jews and secular Jews. The Haredi Jews neither work nor serve in the army. The secular Jews see the Haredi Jews as parasites, while the Haredi Jews see the secular Jews as servants, to give them freedom to read the Torah.
Where you stand on this debate is what you think the purpose of life is. Me, I'm with the Haredis because the purpose of life is to seek God. Ideally, everyone would work and everyone would seek God in their spare time, but that's not how things work out. When people become secular, God subjugates them to the religious.
God has sealed the eyes of some people so they can cultivate this present world. If no one were blind to the other world, this world would be empty. It is this blindness that gives rise to culture and progress. Consider children, how they grow up recklessly and become tall, but when their judgement reaches maturity they stop growing. So the cause and reason for civilization is blindness, and the cause of devastation is sight. — Rumi (Discourses of Rumi)
Is Israel successful? From a worldly perspective, yes. Israel has a high per capita GDP and wonderful scientific achievements. But wasn't Israel supposed to be a "spiritual light unto the nations"?
That high per capita GDP is indicative of spiritual decay. Except among the Haredis (Kabbalists and others also.)
I have this book, The 10 Myths of Israel (I'm translating the title from Spanish since I have the book in that language), by the Israeli historian Ilan Pappé, now living in the United Kingdom.
Pappé claims (page 16) that while it is impossible to know the exact percentage of Jews living in Palestine previous to the rise of modern Zionism, it is probably between 2 % and 5% of the population.
Marc,
You're right. Moral character is the highest thing. Having said that, there is still the question of what the goal of life is. Here, Rumi weighs in:
Someone said: “There is something I have forgotten.
”Rumi replied: There is one thing in this world that must never be forgotten. If you were to forget all else, but did not forget that, then you would have no reason to worry. But if you performed and remembered everything else, yet forgot that one thing, then you would have done nothing whatsoever.
It is just as if a king sent you to the country to carry out a specific task. If you go and accomplish a hundred other tasks, but do not perform that particular task, then it is as though you performed nothing at all. So, everyone comes into this world for a particular task, and that is their purpose. If they do not perform it, then they will have done nothing.
You say, “Look at all the work I do accomplish, even if I do not perform that task.” You weren’t created for those other tasks! It is just as if you were given a sword of priceless Indian steel, such as can only be found in the treasuries of kings, and you were to treat it as a butcher’s knife for cutting up putrid meat, saying, “I am not letting this sword stand idle, I am using it in so many useful ways.” Or it is like taking a solid gold bowl to cook turnips in, when a single grain of that gold could buy a hundred pots. Or it is as if you took a Damascene dagger of the finest temper to hang a broken gourd from, saying, “I am making good use of it. I am hanging a gourd on it. I am not letting this dagger go to waste.” How foolish that would be! The gourd can hang perfectly well from a wooden or iron nail whose value is a mere farthing, so why use a dagger valued at a hundred pounds?
Still you offer another excuse, saying, “But I apply myself to lofty tasks. I study law, philosophy, logic, astronomy, medicine and the rest. ”Well, for whose sake but your own do you study these? If it is law, it is so nobody can steal a loaf from you, strip you of your clothes, or kill you—in short, it is for your own security. If it is astronomy, the phases of the spheres and their influence upon the earth, whether they are light or heavy, portending tranquility or danger, all these things are concerned with your own situation, serving your own ends. If it is medicine, it is related to your own health and also serves you. When you consider this matter well, the root of all your studies is yourself. All these lofty tasks are but branches of you.
For Soul there is other food besides this food of sleeping and eating, but you have forgotten that other food. Night and day you nourish only your body. Now, this body is like a horse, and this lower world is its stable. The food the horse eats is not the food of the rider. You are the rider and have your own sleeping and eating, your own enjoyment. But since the animal has the upper hand, you lag behind in the horse’s stable. You cannot be found among the ranks of kings and princes in the eternal world. Your heart is there, but since your body has the upper hand, you are subject to its rule and remain its prisoner. —Discourses of Rumi
In 2014, the BBC reported that in that year, Rumi was the best-selling poet in the US.
Why is Rumi the best-selling poet in the US?
This 807-year-old Persian mystic and dervish has a massive following in the US and around the world. Jane Ciabattari explains his enduring influence.
The ecstatic poems of Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi, a Persian poet and Sufi master born 807 years ago in 1207, have sold millions of copies in recent years, making him the most popular poet in the US. Globally, his fans are legion.
After I posted previously, I noticed this in the above article as one of the explanations of Rumi's appeal (bolding mine):
“Rumi was an experimental innovator among the Persian poets and he was a Sufi master,” says Jawid Mojaddedi, a scholar of early and medieval Sufism at Rutgers University and an award-winning Rumi translator. “This combination of mystical richness and bold adaptations of poetic forms is the key to his popularity today.”
The first of Rumi’s four main innovations is his direct address to readers in the rare second person, says Mojaddedi. “I think contemporary readers respond well to this directness.”
Rumi sticks the knife in and twists. It's that directness that I find appealing.
Post-Script:
As I indicated above, on Saturday I had a family engagement which called me away from responding to Howard’s comment. The engagement was my mother-in-law’s 87th Birthday. My mother-in-law was born in Katwicz, Poland, was raised Catholic and lived through WWII. She was four years old when Hitler invaded Poland. She told me about how horrible the war was, and that her father worked for a Jewish owner of a pharmaceutical company, something she expressed with pride. It is my wife’s understanding that her grandfather was killed fighting with the Polish partisans against the Nazis. After the war, my wife’s mother met a German four years older than her who grew up in Lodz, Poland, and had been raised Lutheran. When the Russians invaded Poland, he was captured and sent to a Russian POW camp in Siberia, at the age of 14. They immigrated to the United States, settled in Grosse Pointe, Michigan, where he worked as an electrical engineer for the Detroit Edison company. They raised their four children as Lutherans, although she told me that after the war she really had no use for religion. What mattered, she said, was a person’s character, not their religion. Suffering from mild dementia, she repeated this to me several times.
Correction:
Above I stated that Israel was the lower kingdom conquered by the Babylonians in 586 B.C.E. Actually, Israel was the northern kingdom conquered by the Assyrians in 722 B.C.E. The southern kingdom, where Jerusalem was located, which was conquered by the Babylonians was Judah
Marc,
Since you're into corrections, it's Reform Jews, not "Reformed" Jews as you put it above.
I was raised as a Reform Jew and the rabbis were very touchy about that common mistake.
s. wallerseein,
Aren't they Reformed in the image of godless atheists?
Just kidding.
Thank you for the correction.
My response to LfC's comment at 12:48 PM has been removed.
I wonder why.
s. wallerstein,
What’s the point of Prof. Pappe’s estimates of the Jewish population in Palestine before the promotion of Zionism, presumably sometime in the mid 19th century? Assuming his estimates are correct, what implication is he proposing to draw from those percentage estimates?
In 1860, the population of the indigenous Native Americans in the United States was 44,021, out of a total population of 31,443,321, or .14 %, far less than Pappe’s estimates of the Jewish population in Palestine. In 1880, the proportion had dropped to .13 (66,407 out of a total population of 50,155,783).
See
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_racial_and_ethnic_demographics_of_the_United_States
No one would suggest that given that Native Americans constituted such a small percentage of the total U.S. population that they were not entitled to own their own land, or be recognized as having their own nation. So why should a different conclusion be drawn from Pappe’s estimate that Jews constituted from 2% to 5% of the population in Palestine, which increased significantly thereafter due to the Zionist movement?
"The population of Buddhists in India was always miniscule [sic], compared to that of the Hindus. Buddhism did not take hold in India. It lasted from the 5th century to the 12th century, after which it all but disappeared in India, leaving behind the Buddhist temples that you saw."
The Maurya Empire under Ashoka (third century BCE) ranged from Afghanistan to Bangladesh. Ashoka converted to Buddhism (then relatively new) and sent missionaries throughout the empire.
Buddhism had a major presence in India until the university complex in Nalanda was destroyed by Muslims in the 13th century CE which marked the beginning of the decline of Buddhism in India. Buddhism probably made its way to China via Central Asia/Silk Road (Dunhuang caves) and what is now far northern India, Nepal, and Bhutan have had a significant Buddhist presence since early in the first millennium CE.
Folks in that part of the world have been sorting themselves into various polities for millennia. Both countries are artifacts of British Imperialism.
This may be of interest:
https://www.timemaps.com/history/south-asia-200bc/
Marc. the Native population of the Americas in 1860 was what it was because of nearly four hundred years of actual and constructive genocide. I don't see any comparison to Palestine.
aaall,
No question that the population of Native Americans in the United States was severely decimated by aggression against them by the U.S. But how their numbers became significantly reduced in comparison to the entire U.S. population is irrelevant to the point. The point is that the minuscule relative population, however it became minuscule, would not be regarded by you or anyone else as a legitimate basis to deny them the right to own land, or to have their own nation, or to be driven into the sea, as the Palestinians and their Arab neighbors threatened to do to the Jews in 1947.
Marc,
I don't know why your response to my 12:48 pm comment was removed, but it's possible that the Blogger platform is doing some glitchy stuff. Though that seems unlikely, it's prob not impossible.
LFC,
I thought that perhaps Prof. Wolff removed it, irritated with my closing remark that, "for a guy who claims to know a lot about history, you get a lot of your historical facts wrong" (or words to that effect). Also, my response to s. wallerstein regarding when the Holocaust began, as well as your response to me on the subject, have been removed, as well as my response to Ahmed about a punitive God. Maybe Ahmed is correct - the punitive God did not like my comments.
Marc,
How strange that Professor Wolff would have removed such comments!! It doesn't seem like him.
s. wallerstein,
I don't disagree, but why these three comments? Are you aware whether it has happened to any other commenter in the past?
Marc,
I have no idea why he would have selected those comments.
About that destruction of Israel thing...
Dermer suggests Israel should prioritize support of evangelicals over US Jews
Former Israeli ambassador to the US Ron Dermer suggested Sunday that Israel should prioritize the “passionate and unequivocal” support of evangelical Christians over that of American Jews, who he said are “disproportionately among our critics.”
“People have to understand that the backbone of Israel’s support in the United States is the evangelical Christians. It’s true because of numbers and also because of their passionate and unequivocal support for Israel,” Dermer said in an onstage interview at a conference organized by Makor Rishon, a news outlet affiliated with the national religious community.
So why this great love of Israel by evangelical Christians? I'm glad you asked.
The motives behind the modern embrace of Israel by the Christian right are not always clear. In Genesis 15:18, God gives the land of Israel to the Jews, and for most fundamentalist Christians that settles the matter. But Jews also play a tragic role in Evangelical eschatology. When Jews speak of their Messiah, Evangelicals interpret that to mean the false Messiah, or the Antichrist. It is the Antichrist, Evangelicals believe, who will occupy the Third Temple. The Prophet Jeremiah foretold the tribulation, or "time of Jacob's trouble," by which he meant the devastation of Israel. The nation will be finished off in the apocalyptic meeting between Christ and the Antichrist at Armageddon, which is also known as Megiddo, an archeological ruin in northern Israel. Those Jews who survive this catastrophe--only a hundred and forty-four thousand, according to some interpretations of the Scripture--will finally turn to Jesus as the true Messiah. Such refrains are frequently heard in Evangelical churches and on religious television channels, where Temple fever burns.
Meanwhile, we wait for the red heifer...
Why do a Pentecostal cattle breeder from Mississippi and an Orthodox rabbi from Jerusalem believe that a red heifer can change the world?
"Meanwhile, we wait for the red heifer..."
I thought it was a white buffalo.
Marc, I believed the analogy failed because the folks who would have denied the Indians fee title based on their numbers were the same folks who caused the low numbers. Sort of person who murdered his parents seeking mercy because he was an orphan sort of situation. On the other hand, Rome is long gone.
Four bears ran amuck on three of my apple trees the past two nights. Mom and a cub plus two yearlings. Must be careful.
aaall,
You missed my point. I was not referring to the people who were responsible for the decimation of the Native American population as being the people who would not claim that they had no right to own land, or have their own nation, as the correlates of those, who. based on the percentage population of Jews in Palestine would say the same of the Jews. Clearly, those responsible for the trauma inflicted on Native Americans would have no problem denying their right to own land, or a right to have their own nation.
Rather, I was referring to people on the left, like Prof. Pappe, who claim that because the Jewish population in Palestine in the 19th century was minuscule (3% to 5% according to Pappe) they were not entitled to have their own nation, that their population only increased as a result of the Zionist movement, which resulted in an influx which they claim resulted in the theft of the land from the Palestinians. As the title of Pappe’s book which s. wallerstein referred to indicates, Pappe was debunking as a myth that there was already a sizeable Jewish population in Palestine before Zionism resulted in an increase in that population. My point was that Pappe, and those on the left who share his perspective, would not say the same thing about Native Americans, that because their population was meager, regardless why that occurred, that their sparse population indicated they were not entitled to own their own land, or have a nation of their own. So why would they say that of the Jews in Palestine?
A word of caution. Don’t try to pick any apples, or throw a Birthday party with cupcakes, anytime soon.
I have quite a number of thoughts on the discussion that has lately occurred in the comments here. But none of that discussion is related to Prof Wolff's blog post to which the comments are attached, he has shown no interest in discussing these matters, and he has several times expressed his dissatisfaction with commenters engaging in long conversations that are unrelated to his posts.
Eric,
I thought that you were an anarchist of sorts and now you appear enforcing the rules, like a self-appointed deputy-sheriff.
Yes, I know that anarchists have rules, but those rules, I always imagined, arise from the collective practice of the people involved.
This world is weirder and weirder. Marc, who theoretically is a rather conventional liberal, actually is more of an anarchist (in the positive sense of the word) than the self-proclaimed anarchists.
If I live a few more years, I'm going to end up as cynical about human nature as my father was, but by now I understand completely.
Thank you, s. wallerstien. I'm an anarchist. Hooray!
s. wallerstein,
I have never said that I am an anarchist.
On the contrary, I have said I am not:
https://robertpaulwolff.blogspot.com/2022/01/moving-on.html?showComment=1641404479654#c8971080263587818945
I am not enforcing rules. I am resisting the urge to get sucked into a discussion I don't think Prof Wolff wants on his blog.
fwiw
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1922_census_of_Palestine
Sorry, Eric, there was no need to be so harsh with you as I was.
Marc, yes, Chomsky says that a condition, perhaps necessary but not sufficient for being an anarchist is that any affirmation of authority has to be justified rationally. I see no rational justification for not continuing with the discussion you initiated above. The fact that Professor Wolff does not want or enjoy such discussions does not constitute a rational justification for limiting or eliminating it since such discussion does not interfere with any discussion Professor Wolff tries to promote or otherwise sabotage the functioning of his blog. Anyway, Marc, you have something of the irreverence for authority and rebelliousness towards it that seem other necessary but not sufficient conditions for being seen as an anarchist.
I took a look at the link Eric posted to his prior comments about anarchism and wondered, "Who is Another Anonymous"? Then I realized that was me, before I came out of the closet and stopped using a pseudonym.
Eric,
I read your comments about anarchism and now I understand your position better.
The fact that Professor Wolff did not deign to answer your thoughtful, respectful and polite questions about one of his books points to the root of the reason why people like myself, Marc and aaall end up engaging in discussions which have nothing to do with Professor's original posts.
There is simply no give and take between Professor Wolff and those who comment here. If he were to answer questions about his thought and books and to guide the discussion, this problem, if one wants to call it a problem would not occur, because I believe all of us would be thrilled to engage in a fluid and living dialogue with Professor Wolff.
My take on anarchism, by the way, is that it provides a set of principles (such as that Chomsky proposes which I outline above) with which to criticize real existing power relations, but that if it were to be fully put into practice, it wouldn't work.
^In that case, that's incorrect; Prof. Wolff responded to Eric's question here. But when questions do go unanswered, that could simply mean that they were missed or forgotten about, or that Prof. Wolff was busy or disinclined to further discuss something he happens to have discussed extensively in other places, etc. I've also had one or two comments disappear before (not recently); it might've just been a glitch, but it might've also been a hint that I needed to dial things back a bit - which is fine. (It wouldn't have been the first time I managed to be irritating online.)
I get that the often-tangential conversations in the comments sections are enjoyable/addicting (and I'm at a loss to suggest any other decent venues for them, though we did toss around the idea of e-mail); but they aren't the main reason for the blog's existence, and Prof. Wolff has indicated that they are an occasional irritation which occasionally tempts him to eliminate the comments section altogether. Not trying to scold anyone or kiss anyone's ass here - it's just that moderation seems to be the key.
Just to put things in perspective, the thread at issue arose because on September 11, 2022, I submitted a comment noting that it was the 21st anniversary of the 9/11 attack on the Twin Towers and the Pentagon, resulting in the deaths of over 3,000 people. Given the magnitude of that event, I did not think it was inappropriate to note the anniversary.
This led to others noting that it was also the anniversary of the death of President Allende, and the birth of Adorno. Ahmed then quoted a purportedly satirical take on 9/11 from a website titled The Duffel Bag. I expressed my distaste at a purported satirical remark about 9/11, which then led to several comments about the nature of satire, to which I responded that I did not think that satire about actual tragic events was in good taste, as compared with Swift’s masterpiece, A Modest Proposal, which was not about an actual tragic event, but about an hypothetical event intended to reduce starvation in Ireland. I contrasted that with a “joke” which Larry David delivered on SNL about a dating service at Auschwitz. This led to a comment by Howard to the effect that he believed that continued emphasis on the Holocaust by Israelis was not conducive to peace (or words to that effect). Well, I am constitutionally unable to let any comment which appears to minimize the historical significance of the Holocaust pass without commentary. So I responded to Howard’s remark, which, because it referred to Israel, entailed discussing the Holocaust and Israel, and we were off.
I of course acknowledge that this discussion about the Holocaust and Israel had nothing to do with Prof. Wolff’s original post, which was posted on September 10. People were still commenting about his post on September 11, so I deemed it not inappropriate to note the 21st anniversary, and then one thing led to another. I meant no disrespect to Prof. Wolff. By the same token, I do not believe that any discussion about the Holocaust, in whatever context it arises, and its continuing effect on the world, can be deemed inappropriate. For anyone who has been watching Ken Burns’ documentary on the United States and the Holocaust, which opened with a timely discussion of the United States’ immigration policies, the Holocaust and its consequences on the world are still with us, and I do not believe that an apology is called for when the issue arises in a thread beginning with 9/11.
I've had my say.
Michael,
First of all, thanks for the link. Professor Wolff did not answer Eric's questions, but to a certain extent he answered why he would not answer them. By the way, on the heading of this blog Professor Wolff does claim to be an anarchist, so Eric's question in some sense was directed to the right person.
In this blog a group of people habitually discuss diverse issues, many of them having nothing to do with Professor Wolff's original posts. The people are all well-educated, left of center, well-informed about the issues they discuss, and a few of them, notably Marc, LFC and aaall go to great lengths to research the topics in questions.
Some of them such as yourself, Michael, write long, thoughtful and perfectly composed comments and someone like myself tries to get by by bullshitting as I've done all my life.
If Professor Wolff considers these discussions to be a "nuisance", that says something about him, not about the commenters.
By the way, the commenters are ultra-respectful of Professor Wolff. At times I criticize him, as I do here, but always with courtesy and respect.
However, if Professor Wolff decides to eliminate the comments section, he will be making a serious mistake and committing an injustice. There are numerous people who only comment about Professor Wolff's posts and they should not be excluded from commenting because there are a couple of people he considers to be "trouble-makers" such as myself.
So rather than closing the comments section, Professor Wolff, ban me and other malcreants, please. I've been banned and excluded before, from more places and venues that I'm going to bother to mention, beginning at age 8 from Jewish Saturday school, always because of my big mouth.
The other option is for you to learn to live and let live with the commenters who use the space of your blog to discuss issues which may not be of prime importance to you and who do that without insulting you and in any way interfering with your posts.
Nah, you're not a bullshitter, s.w.; from here you seem like someone who makes a point to speak truthfully where hot air and posturing are more the norm.
But while we're being hard on ourselves and our commenting styles, I'd like to share part of an excellent quote from Christine Korsgaard - I saved it when I found it on Prof. Leiter's blog, because it really struck a chord with me. (It says something about why I have a hard time being concise, haha.)
Above all, much philosophical writing is defensive. Many philosophers try to write in what you might call perfectly true sentences. A perfectly true sentence already contains all the qualifications it would need to make it perfectly true. It is unassailable. But it is often therefore unintelligible. What you should do is write something that is clear, and striking, and makes an immediately vivid impression on the mind, so that the reader can get hold of it. Then you can add the qualifications later. That's more like the way we think, and it's the way we should write. Why would someone try to write in perfectly true sentences? It's because he's afraid of his reader, whom he thinks of as ready to pounce. He thinks if the reader catches him saying something that isn't unassailable, then for sure he is going to get assailed.
Gotta run for now. Take it easy.
Good advice. That's how lawyers write. They assume what the are saying is true, and worry about the discrepancies later. I learned this in law school, where I originally wrote my examination answers like a philosophy student, and ran out of time. Once I got the hand of how to answer law exam questions, I did much better.
'If Professor Wolff considers these discussions to be a "nuisance", that says something about him, not about the commenters.'
I don't always pride myself on not being a nuisance, but I tarry with this point, about how 'a group of people habitually discuss diverse issues, many of them having nothing to do with Professor Wolff's original posts.' I am thinking there is a huge difference between being in tune with what Wolff is trying to do here, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, having a different agenda, and undermining his efforts.
'By the way, the commenters are ultra-respectful of Professor Wolff.'
That's great, if that's what he wants from the commenters. I think I might define 'respectful' in such terms as to include caring about what Wolff's own goals are for his own blog.
'However, if Professor Wolff decides to eliminate the comments section, he will be making a serious mistake and committing an injustice.'
Committing an injustice!! Well, but also, that's a bad thing?
'The other option is for you to learn to live and let live with the commenters who use the space of your blog to discuss issues which may not be of prime importance to you and who do that without insulting you and in any way interfering with your posts.'
This means 'tolerate my behavior, I'm not going to change'. Great, I think that's what Wolff will do to his dying day, and he'll be polite about it, but why are you such a loser?
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