Most people are sensitive to spiritual things to more or less degrees but can't tell when it is real and when it is not.

I have said it a million times. The Torah as it stands with the Talmud is a neat system.


But if we think further into this issue we can see that it is a common feature of cults to have great public faces and hide and a whole string of hurt and broken lives that it leaves in its wake. This has to be at least a warning sign that religious Judaism is has become a cult. It is not just because some people abuse it that it is bad. In what way is it any different from the Divine Light Mission or Adi Da? In what way is it different that any Eastern Cult?

The warning signs are there.

The way  cults work is by a process called Confabulation. This means that there are spiritual phenomena. But even normal sane people can confuse spiritual phenomena with illusion. You don't need to be mentally ill to do this. It is in all people. Because most people are sensitive to spiritual things to more or less degrees but can't tell when it is real and when it is not.
This is where the leader come in. He can create in people the illusion of spirituality. This is a collective venture.
(This was like the type of things that Adi Da would do.) This does not imply holiness. Doing miracles or giving people powerful spiritual experiences does not imply holiness.

Pseudo-Torah

Pseudo-Torah just has a distinctive tone and structure. If there was a debate about something I know nothing at all about, like the metrical structure of Tang Dynasty Chinese poetry, I'd be able to tell in ten minutes who were the real scholars and who were the charlatans. Real scholars look at the totality of the Talmud; charlatans rely on stories and anecdotal evidence. Real Torah scholars know what constitutes being an expert (I will not write that here right now), and rely on the findings of experts. Charlatans cite people with irrelevant credentials, or marginal credentials as if they were on a par with the real Torah scholars on the other side. Charlatans pile on accusations that they were being unfairly treated and complain that important questions are not being addressed, when even a cursory examination of the literature shows that they are.

Since this is a little abstract I should probably give a few examples. The best examples I knew were the Roshei yeshiva of the Mirrer yeshiva in NY. The knew the Talmud inside and out with an amazing level of expertise and depth. Shelomo Haliua the acting Rosh yeshiva of Chaim Berlin also.
I also met a lot of people that were far from that high level but were aspiring towards it and working towards it.

Usually the roshei yeshiva of Litvak yeshivot are very good. Both in character and in Torah knowledge. The Litvaks are the Gold Standard. 

(1)I want to mention what I think are two problems in Kant plus a few other thoughts.

) I want to mention what I think is a problem in Kant. Problems in Kant is a wide subject and has given rise to many schools of thought. Some people because of these problem simply go out a form new schools. At any rate my problem is that the self is for Kant on the level of the "thing in itself" (dinge an sich ). But if this were so then moral obligations could apply to oneself. It is a basic characteristic of morality that it refers to obligations towards others. [Kant's ethics is the categorical imperative.]
[Actually I saw later in the Gra (Eliyahu from Vilnius) that morality consists of three parts: obligations (1) towards God, (2) towards others (3) towards oneself..]

This question of course depends on the conception of self of the Enlightenment. (See Allan Bloom in his Closing of the American Mind for a thorough treatment of this topic) If we think of the self as the soul as per the Middle Ages this might not be a problem.

) Brian Caplan mentioned an important point--that if we can know things only by deductive reasoning and the information of the senses, then moral values are impossible for the simple reason that the "is- ought" boundary can't be penetrated. [And Kant seems to accept only these two types. If we add immediate non intuitive knowledge to Kant (as we can according to Dr Kelley Ross) then this problem disappears.]

) The realm of nature is the realm of freedom of the will. God created the world in such a way that the rules of nature would unfold by themselves until such a time that a being would evolve that would recognize God and by prayer could reach out to Him and receive help. But this spiritual aspect of things is not a part of nature, but above it. But freewill is an inherent part of nature. So the realm of freedom is not the thing in itself. This is another problem I have with Kant.

) A further problem is that I think you need reason to perceive but not be implanted with structure. One basic answer to Kant's problem how is synthetic a priori possible is immediate non intuitive knowledge.  And this can be falsified in theory which makes it actual knowledge. But how can you falsify it in practice? It perceives unconditioned realities. [I think I asked this question to Kelley Ross and he answered it and I posted the answer on this blog somewhere.]


I hope people don't take this in the wrong way. Kant is the most important Philosopher since Aristotle. The fact that there are problems is similar to the kinds of problems we have in Talmud. It  means we have lots of quality time to spend working out the problems.

I have written a little about Reb Shmuel Berenbaum in some essay long ago. But just to recount in short a little of my experiences at the Mir in Brooklyn.  The Mir was one of the Ivy league in those days. [Other people like Reb Moshe Feinstein were more into halacha [Jewish law].

 One of the best books to come out of the Mir is the Sukkat David which was simply the classes [shiurim] of the first level class in the Mir --for first year students. Yet it is a great book and in fact even in Israel when people what to learn a little about how to learn they go to the Sukkat David.
My first year there I finished up tractate Yevamot which I had started in Far Rockaway. The thing is that for some strange reason I think my own learning fell at the Mir. I may have learned longer hours--but the intensity of learning for me was lacking. While at Shar Yashuv (in Far Rockaway) I could be in the mountains with the Friefeld family in some empty beit midrash, and learn all day long with extreme intensity. Most of my learning during my Far Rockaway years were with the Gemara, Rashi, Tosphot and the Beit Yosef and Tur which I used as commentary on the Gemara. When Tosphot was unclear to me, I learned the Ritva and Rosh and other rishonim (Mediaeval authorities) to help me figure out what Tosphot was saying. Often the other rishonim [first authorities i.e mediaeval commentaries] would say different things than Tosphot, but learning them helped me put the idea of tosphot into context. In Far Rockaway also there was the presence of Reb Naphtali Yeger who had a really great way of learning. It was completely different that the regular way of looking at the Chidushei HaRambam (by Reb Chaim Soloveitchik) or other achronim.

 In fact, the whole idea of finding the yesod ( foundations) was completely wrong in the eyes of Reb Naphtali. (Don't put something into Tosphot that is not there. Don't put outside principles into Tosphot. If you can't understand Tophot without putting in some principle that he does not say there, then that means you don't understand Tosphot.)

Any extra word or idea that you had to put into Tosphot to make it make sense, simply meant that you did not understand Tosphot. What he did was make me repeat the Tosphot--not word for word, but explain what he was saying from beginning to end. And during that process, I would notice some glitch in the reasoning of Tosphot. It was in these glitches that Reb Naphtali used to uncover the infinite layers of depth in Tosphot. The answer to a glitch would seems to make the glitch disappear, but bring another question in its turn; and the answer to that question would bring another answer in its turn. The usual amount of sub-levels that Reb Naphtali discovered in a Tosphot in this way was about twenty. In the Mir this was unknown. And in Israel I discovered to my great disappointment that people were dogmatic believers, but not devotees of the Talmud.





Back to the Mir. I went to Reb Shmuel's class right when I came into the Mir. This was not usual because most people had to start at the first level and work their way up. I don't know why I was accepted for the highest class.(Maybe just kindness to me.) His way of learning was very deep, but it was the Reb Chayim type of approach which I mentioned.  In the hands of Reb Shmuel, this was a great approach. (It can be abused. People can make up yesodot principles all day long and stick them into any given Tosphot or Rambam all day long.  You can always force any given text to say anything you want any time.) But Reb Shmuel had this logically rigorous type of way of going deeper and deeper into the subject but again he was starting with the basic Reb Chayim approach. Personally let me say I was coming from Beverly Hills High School with  zero experience with this Brisk type of learning. I had no way of deciding between Brisk and Naphtali Yeger. To this day both approaches seem to me to be valid. But when I do my own thinking into a Tosphot, I usually take the Naphtali Yeger approach simply.
My second year in Mir they started learning Ketubot which I had just finished in Far Rockaway. So I joined a group doing Shabat instead.-

Reb Shmuel Berenabum- loved the Gemara and learning and living it is what he was about.
He lacked the highly negative traits of  dogmatic believers.

But let me just say for now that the few short years I was at the Mir were an amazing experience. So I want to put down a few memories that are not on the other essay.
First in the home of Reb Shmuel there was little in the way of ornaments. Mainly there were walls lined with books. And he really lived a Talmudic type of existence. I used to come over there on Shabat and on Motzai Shabat [Saturday Night] with my violin and play for the family and also tell bedtime stories to the children. But his basic entertainment was to learn Gemara. The rebitzin [his wife] would clear the table and after havadala and he would learn Talmud.
The music I played on the violin was in general classical music. [Mozart,  Handel, ]




I have not said much about how he learned. It is true that it was very much based on Reb Chaim Soloveitchik. But he had a depth to him. Once I was in a shiur in Zevachim and he was giving over some idea--a "yesod" type of the type that you see in the Chidushei Harambam of Reb Chayim Soloveitchik. And one person brought in another way to on the surface seems also to fit. But Reb Shmuel showed how it would not work. I.e. to use the "foundation" idea of Reb Chaim, you need a great deal of depth that most people don't have.

Reb Shmuel was very strict about Lashon Hara. Let me just say that he was not judgmental. He was not interested in being a frumy [religious] policeman.




I did not go to university at the time but after some years I asked him about university, and he said if it for parnasa (making a living) it is fine. I tried to say that it is a mitzvah in itself. I tried to bring sources from the Guide For The Perplexed and the Gra, but he simply said, "Only if it is for parnasa."

I might mention that sometimes the questions and issues that he raised were the same as you find in the Mishna Lamelech on the Rambam.

Don't get the impression that I was good disciple.-I am a barbarian. I live and eat like a bear. If I learn Gemara it is not because I think it is scientifically accurate. It is rather because I think it contains a holy core which I like. I am no where near the idea that all truth is in the Talmud. Nor is it infallible. It greatness lies to two areas. One is explaining verses of the Torah. The other area it is great in is  Law.

But though I admire Reb Shmuel let me just say that I am basically Reform. I have great interest in the Divine truths of the Torah and Talmud, but my real teacher was my father and his copilot my mother. It is his understanding of God and Torah that informs my beliefs. It is the understanding of Torah and what it means to live a decent upright life that I gained from my parents that is determinate. I know from my parents and their friends what it means to be a Jew. And the world of the Talmud to me is an important part of that if it is done with "Daat" common sense and equilibrium with Music and science and other aspects of life that constitute being a full human being, a mensch.

evil cults

 You can have a evil cult that is an offshoot of a religion that teaches good things. And also a good cult in a religion that teaches bad things. Right now I want to deal with both these questions in short order.
Section (1): The question of religion. A religion needs a few requirements. If it teaches things about the physical world, then, we need to ask if what it says actually corresponds to reality? [External consistency].  Is it self consistent? [Internal consistency.] If it teaches some moral system, does this system correspond to what common sense tells us is moral? This is called "phenomenal conservatism." That is, things are the way they seem unless some convincing piece of evidence show otherwise. This is a forgotten principle in the world of philosophy, but none the less it is very important. It seems to me that murdering 10 million people for the fun of it is wrong and if a religion teaches otherwise then it is up to the religion to bring convincing evidence.
I will say here my own point of view so you know where I am coming from. I think all people don't care about evidence. People care about being part of a group. This desire to be part of a group goes against even the instinct for self preservation as we see in the 15,000 Kamikazes in World War Two. Their group was more important to them than their personal survival. All the more so when it comes to group identity, people don't care about logic or evidence (especially to Americans to whom books are just words). The only time this can change is when group identity itself is that of believing in material or logical evidence as it is the case in the Judaism of Maimonides.


Cults. Today instead of cult let me deal with cult apologetics. Because of group identity people will ignore and twist evidence that goes against what their cult says. The only way I can imagine how to change this is to join a group that believes only in following logical evidence or material evidence e.g. Maimonides. I.e. there are beliefs in areas that there is no evidence or scanty evidence. But these beliefs are contingent on evidence. it is understood that any future evidence can change the nature of belief. E.g creation something from nothing. To Maimonides if this would be disproved we would have to accept it. This is a serious statement for him because to him the entire Torah rests on Creation ex nihilo. That means that if it would be disproved, then the Torah itself would lose it foundation. [The view of Maimonides is what is known as Monotheism.

That is that God made the world something from nothing, and he is not the world nor is the world him.According to the Torah God has no substance nor form, and so he did not create the world from his substance. He created in יש מאין from nothing. ex-nihilo.
Cults try to pretend they keep Torah by doing lots of external rituals while their inner core is טרף and נבלה. That's the reason the Gra put his signature of the document of excommunication.



 God would never ratify the message of a false prophet. That so
many religious leaders  and teachers  fell under the spell of Nathan from Gaza  attests
to the fact  he was not a peripheral figure in the mystic circles, but his influence with regards to the movement’s adoption and approach to
the kabalah of the Ari   was  decisive. This taken by itself
represents should represent a devastating blow to the propagandists of a new
movement, but when coupled with the other little known facts about the
origins of these mystic circles should lead any and all Jewish people desirous of being
led to the truth that this movement was nothing but a successful deviation of
historical Torah. I do not want to go into it in detail. But it is simple to draw the line between the dots.

Torah and Freedom

  My idea of a just society is that of a circle of freedom contained in a larger circle of government. The purpose of government is to protect the inner circle of freedom where people have a right to be left alone.
  To be as brief as possible let me just say that the question of creativity and freedom in relation to Torah and Talmud is a immense project. It means first of all dealing with the origins of the idea of freedom being a good thing--and the critiques of Nietzsche and Rousseau against the Rational Enlightenment {that advocated the rule of Reason}. Any possible answer would have to answer this critique of freedom and defense of creativity.

The participants in this debate are John Locke, Machiavelli, Hobbes, Jonathan Swift, Rousseau, Nietzsche,  Marx.
Locke was pro freedom. The rest not. Hegel was in the middle. Not I think as people understood him.


Rawls did a noble task of trying to find some middle path, but Habermas blew him into smithereens. Kant did a good job in opening up a path between these paths. But his work is still in great need of elucidation. and how it could apply to Torah also is not clear.





My personal take on all this goes back to the argument between Aristotle and Plato about universals. I am basically with Plato on this which means I go by Socratic ignorance that what we think we know we really don't know at all. And Platonic knowledge--that there are things we do know but we don't know that we know. For me this opens the area of civil society in which people have the right to be left alone and government to led the lives the what to lead and make the contracts and relationships with others that they want to make. Their individuality is realized not as part of a group or a nation but as part of their own family and circle of friends. This is the area of Freedom and free will. In this area there is Divine service.

I deplore abuse and misuse of the Torah. Like any work of literature, the text has meaning, words have meaning.

I can't ignore the question of what to do with a text. Do you go by (1) Charity (i.e. one gives it an interpretation that makes more sense to him) or (2) "He meant what he said?" This questions comes up in many texts that either I believe in fully or at least believe they are inspired. Take for example the Torah. Or the Talmud or Plato.
  My attitude towards this is based on my experience with the side commentary in the Talmud called Tosphot. But also on a separate group of experiences that happens to me when people ask my advice about something or other. Also I like to look at the wide message of a text. This later idea I got from English literature classes.
  My first set of experiences with Tosphot is "He meant what he said."  But then inside of what he says is always contained something that looks like a glitch. But you go over it until you see the meaning in such a way that the glitch was actually not a glitch at all; but you see that you thought it was a glitch because you did not understand it perfectly. This has given me confidence in the "He meant what he meant" approach always even in Torah or anything that I read. But I have seen that often when people asked me for advice I would say exactly opposite things to different people-because of whom I was talking with. Different and even opposite pieces of advice apply to different people.


The problem with the (2) charity approach is that any text can say anything you want it to say.

  The third way of context I learned in my English literature classes in Beverly Hills High School with some great teachers.
Take for instance the Five Books of Moses. The context is clear. The basic approach is clear. The theme of these Five Books is clearly united.

Just in case this needs a explanation let me just say what Torah is not about first. It is not about Pantheism. It is not about Learning Torah. It is not about minutia that you can pick out from halacha books. It is not about the length of girls skirts. It is not about belief in any tzadik/saint including Moses.
It is about what King David said to Golath, "You come to me with a sword and a spear and I come to you in the name of the Lord God of the armies of Israel who you have insulted this day."
The basic theme of the Torah is the importance of Israel coming into the land of Canaan and building the Temple there and keeping all the commandments of God.

Habermas: On Israel (Considered by many to be the foremost philosopher of this generation.)

Habermas: In one respect, Muslim terrorism still possesses a certain outmoded characteristic in that it revolves around murder, around the indiscriminate annihilation of enemies, women, and children—life against life. This is what distinguishes it from the terror that appears in the paramilitary form of guerilla warfare
Compare the new terrorists with partisans or conventional terrorists, for example, in Israel. These people often fight in a decentralized manner in small, autonomous units, too. Also, in these cases there is no concentration of forces or central organization, a feature that makes them difficult targets. But partisans fight on familiar territory with professed political objectives in order to conquer power. This is what distinguishes them from terrorists who are scattered around the globe and networked in the fashion of secret services. They allow their religious motives of a fundamentalist kind to be known, though they do not pursue a program that goes beyond the engineering of destruction and insecurity. The terrorism we associate for the time being with the name "al-Qaeda" makes the identification of the opponent and any realistic assessment of the danger impossible. This intangibility is what lends terrorism a new quality.

(Habermas is considered by many to be the foremost philosopher of this generation. They might be right

The thing I must say about these people is their forte is in discovering fallacious logic. This includes their ability to discover the falsities in philosophical, political and economic thinking in most American universities and includes the falseness and self contradictions in Marx, Rousseau and almost all philosophers after the Enlightenment. The interesting thing is they never discover a flaw in Medieval thinking. The reason is there never is. Medieval thinkers made damn sure never to write anything that could be a million miles near circular reasoning. [Here I only refer to first level Medieval thinkers like Maimonides, Tosphot, Aquinas and Anselm. I don't mean second level people like the Ramban ( Moshe Ben Nachman) that did make mistakes in logic.] Also I don't mean they did not make mistakes at all. Obviously they did-but not in logic, only initial assumptions.
Incidentally just as side note: The Jews are not outsiders who invaded and colonized Israel; they are a native people whom the legal government allowed to return, as legal immigrants, to their ancestral homeland. The Zionists were given sovereignty, again by the legal government, over only that part of Palestine with over 60% Jewish population, so rule of the majority was followed. The Arab response to this LEGAL establishment of a nation by a NATIVE people was a War of Genocide, which failed. Bottom line, as I've EXPLAINED numerous times, is that the Arabs themselves have created the situation they're in by refusing to make peace after their attempt to ethnic-cleanse a NATIVE people from Palestine failed.

How to learn Kabalah the best idea is to go to just about any descendant of Rav Yaakov Abuchatziera.

How to learn Kabalah
prerequisite: It is necessary to have learned a lot of Talmud. First of all learning Talmud has a effect of purifying one and also just to understand the Kabalah the basic background of the Talmud is necessary.

Step (1): The first thing to do is to avoid the charlatans [They use kabalistic jargon to sound profound.]
Step (2): The next step is to learn the Eitz Chayim עץ חיים{a two volume work called the Tree of Life} of Issac Luria. It helps to learn all the writings of Rav Isaac Luria, but if you know the basic Eitz Chaim, you already know the basic structure of the Kabalah. The rest is just filling in the gaps. Now if you have come to this step the next step --and this is the step which everyone fails in--is the books of Shalom Sharabi. The major work is the Nahar Shalom [נהר שלום] printed at the end of the Eitz Chayim (עץ חיים). The problem here is simple. The Nahar Shalom [נהר שלום] is a vast system and it is hard to figure out how one part relates to the other. There are a few keys like when you read the word "chaya"often you know you are talking about Atzilut [Emanation].
At any rate, even here there is a major debate between the Ashlag and his disciple who wrote the comments on the printed Eitz Chaim. Between these two giants I dare not say anything.
As far as the present day  teachers of Kabalah --  most is  from Shabati Zvi and has little to do with real Kabalah. [You can not find the books of Natan, the false prophet of the Shatz in print but they are in microfim. Somehow most of new ideas of the Shatz and Natan from Gaza got into all books of Ashkenazim. I do not know how it happened, but it is easy to see.] [Not that I think anyone should read that stuff.]



So to get a unadulterated idea of Kabalah you really have to go to Rav Isaac Luria straight.



Now as for the kabalah of the Moshe Cordovaro and Medieval kabalah and the Heichalot the best bet to to go the Avraham Abulafia. Personally, I think Avraham Abulafia rivals Luria in greatness.

[As for people to learn from, I think the best idea is to go to just about any descendant of Rav Yaakov Abuchatziera.]

STEALTH JIHAD-Psychological Warfare. Humanity is at risk.

STEALTH JIHAD
 Get control of the schools. Use them as transmission belts for Islam and current Islamic propaganda. Soften the curriculum. Get control of teachers' associations. Put the Islamic line in textbooks.
 Gain control of key positions in radio, TV, and motion pictures.

 Break down cultural standards of morality by promoting Islam in books, magazines, motion pictures, radio, and TV.
 Infiltrate the churches and replace revealed religion with "Islamic" religion. Discredit the Bible and emphasize the need for intellectual maturity.

 Eliminate Christian prayer or any phase of religious expression in the schools on the ground that it violates the principle of "separation of church and state."


 Dominate the psychiatric profession and use mental health laws as a means of gaining coercive control over those who oppose Islamic goals.
 Discredit the Christian family as an institution.

Radicalize society. Help create an atmosphere in which when a man has an argument with his wife or a neighbor with another neighbor the automatic reaction is to go to the courts.

This year may prove to be the culmination of Islam's many years of infiltrating our educational institutions, and trade union organizations and attempts to dis-stabilize America relationships one with another. The effects of the poison of Islam is having the desired effect of undermining the Christian basis of the USA.
_____________________________________________________________

 But I can ask that people that see this process going on should do whatever it takes to stop this because I think the fate of mankind itself is in the balance. I should say that I see this process as corroding the very essence of humanity. And when I see people that see this process and do nothing I get frustrated.
Normally I would not say anything about this. After all there are some problems inside of Christianity. But at some point I began to realize that if Islam would have its way the whole world would look like Saudi Arabia and the Sudan. But not before they had atomized Europe and the USA. The very thought of it sends shivers down my back. How can people stand by and watch the destruction of Western Civilization in equanimity. It is not their concern? Or maybe they think that Islam  is a source of compassion and virtue and their daily rhetoric about destroying Christendom and all Judaeo-Christian civilization is just empty words? Or was is it they saw "It's a small world after all," in Disney Land  and they think teh whole world is just lovey dovy and everyone just wants peace and virtue.?

What has undermined the essence of America.

(I tried to find information about this from a friend who is a former KGB agent, but he was not involved in this type of activity, so he knew nothing about this side of the KGB.)
  Subversion and creating instability in the U.S.A. was a large part of the KGB. However my friend's modest part was simply to listen to radio broadcasts from the West and tell his superiors if anything interesting was mentioned. [No James Bond stuff.] Incidentally, he hates Communism even more than me--which is quite a feat. I have deep hatred of any totalitarian systems. On the other hand you can understand his point of view. He lived under Communism so he witnessed the evil of the system first hand. He incidentally did not think that the KGB had the ability to undermine American society all on its own. So I bring here information from another KGB that thought that it did. Also from my point of view the type of civil society that exited in America no longer exists there. Something obviously has already destroyed the very nature of America. This makes me wonder, "what could have caused this?" So here I present my essay on this subject)



[The way the KGB did this is by becoming or recruiting leaders of movements that are involved in destabilizing America like Christan pastors of liberal Protestant churches and the homosexuals and feminists. For example, just think about homosexuals. Years ago this was something dirty and sick that something someone did privately. Now it is a public movement. Why? People need to start asking "Why?" The question is not if homosexuality is a sin or not. But why is this political movement?]




(I want to mention that I have seen the results of what he is talking about in America. But this would require a whole different essay. Like I heard from a veteran of WWII: "The America I fought for no longer exists."}

Here is just one example from todays news (on Overlawyered blog) which shows this: Texas honor student jailed for missing too much school”

by Walter Olson on May 27, 2012

“Diane Tran said she works both full-time and part-time jobs, in addition to taking advanced and college level courses,” and her parents have “split up and moved away” leaving her in charge of a younger sister, which make it hard to keep to the exact school day. Judge Lanny Moriarty did not seem sympathetic: “If you let one run loose, what are you gonna’ do with the rest of ‘em?” [CBS Atlanta]

This a perfect example of Legal Positivism which is in exact opposition to the very basic principles of natural rights that America was founded on.
This example show the basic American principle of justice today: "heteronomous relativism." This gives near or complete totalitarian force to any person that has a position in any branch of the America government. The main enemies of America today are the people in the America government.






Bezmenov "It’s a great brainwashing process, which goes very slow[ly] and is divided [into] four basic stages. The first one [is] demoralization; it takes from 15-20 years to demoralize a nation. Why that many years? Because this is the minimum number of years which [is required] to educate one generation of students in the country of your enemy, exposed to the ideology of the enemy. In other words, Marxist-Leninist ideology is being pumped into the soft heads of at least three generations of American students, without being challenged, or counter-balanced by the basic values of Americanism (American patriotism).

The result? The result you can see. Most of the people who graduated in the sixties (drop-outs or half-baked intellectuals) are now occupying the positions of power in the government, civil service, business, mass media, [and the] educational system. You are stuck with them. You cannot get rid of them. They are contaminated; they are programmed to think and react to certain stimuli in a certain pattern. You cannot change their mind[s], even if you expose them to authentic information, even if you prove that white is white and black is black, you still cannot change the basic perception and the logic of behavior. In other words, these people... the process of demoralization is complete and irreversible. To [rid] society of these people, you need another twenty or fifteen years to educate a new generation of patriotically-minded and common sense people, who would be acting in favor and in the interests of United States society."



also see:http://iusbvision.wordpress.com/2011/05/13/former-kgb-agent-yuri-bezmenov-how-the-kgb-demoralized-propagandized-and-indoctrinated-youth-using-schools/


As a final note to my readers I want to mention a ray of hope I have seen. Somehow or other there are in some American universities a few very powerful analytic philosopher and thinkers, like Brian Caplan and Michael Huemer and Kelly Ross. When I see people like that on the horizon it gives me hope for America. I think Caplan is the most analytic. Ross is the greatest builder. Huemer is the greatest architect of a political argument and the ability to perceive the flaws of logic of all philosophers since Hume.

Also see: you tube Yuri Bezmenov: KGB Psychological Warfare and Subversion Strategy.

The way to save America is simple. One word: Bible. For Christians this would be the Old and New Testament, Aquinas, and Augustine and learning John Locke. For Jews this would be the Musar [books fromthe Middle Ages explaining the moral principles of Torah]. The difference between Jews and Christians I respect. I know there are questions about the spiritual realm that I don't understand. But I know that America needs the holy Torah. Period. [And obviously getting rid of Islam from American soil.]

How the KGB influenced American Universities--the question of survival of the USA

The question of survival of the USA
[for more information: http://uselessdissident.blogspot.com/2008/11/interview-with-yuri-bezmenov.html]

I have noticed for a long time that the villain in all American movies is always the businessman or an American scientist, never a real criminal. I also noticed a shift in American universities starting from the 1960's when the social science and humanities departments of American universities began to teach radical Marxism under the code name "social justice" or as "progressive liberalism."
Until this very day, the regular staple of the diet of the political pseudo sciences is Hegel, Marx, Rousseau, Freud, Nietzsche;-- never actual ideas that America was founded on. They will never even mention the Second Treatise of Civil Government of John Locke. This is the founding document of America. You would think it would have some place in a political science course. No? Instead it is treated like the plague. May Marx and Lenin save us from thoughts of economic and personal freedom.

The problem is that all three branches of American government have now united to form one monolithic government. There is no more division of power. What the president want the states to say, they say. What he wants the Supreme Court to rule they rule. Whatever he wants passed in Congress is passed. They're all working together to create a new type of Soviet America.
Recently Arizona decided not to put the president on the ballot because he was not born in the USA, yet by coercion he was forced to concede.

Simply put the America people are no longer in control of their government.



"Bezmenov [a former KGB agent who defected to Canada and was murdered by the KGB] stated that he was also instructed not to waste time with idealistic Leftists, as these would become disillusioned, bitter, and adversarial when they realized the true nature of Soviet Communism. To his surprise, he discovered that many such [idealistic Leftists] were listed for execution once the Soviets achieved control. Instead, Bezmenov was encouraged to recruit such persons as were in large circulation, established conservative media, rich filmmakers, intellectuals in academic circles, and cynical, ego-centric people who lacked moral principles."

He also explained that the main (84%) efforts of the KGB was to subvert American values. Marxism was brought to America shores during the 1960s and those students are now in power. He says that the job of subverting America has already be accomplished and over accomplished. The USA is the last country of freedom. This is the last breath of freedom. It will fail unless Americans wake up now and force the government to abandon the communists system that is already in the USA.





What I do not like about the USSR is based my basic idea that people have a right to freedom, but also on stories I heard from Irina(a Ukrainian woman who just passed away). She remembered how when the Communists got power over Russia, the Communists came into her city and simply and plainly took everything in sight--cows, grain, all food stuffs, and whatever they wanted. This was Communism in real life--not how it is displayed in American textbooks.







From http://www.usnews.com/news

"The material in the Vassiliev notebooks corroborates the suspicion that Hiss was a longtime agent of Soviet military intelligence. That echoes the findings of Venona Project analysts, who concluded years ago that the code name "Ales" in the intercepted Soviet cables was "probably Alger Hiss."
The KGB files also corroborate that Julius Rosenberg, who was executed for espionage in 1953 along with his wife, Ethel, was indeed a Soviet agent.
Other Americans are vindicated by Vassiliev's KGB notes. For instance, they say that Robert Oppenheimer continuously refused to help the KGB, much to Moscow's frustration. After a public investigation into his loyalty, Oppenheimer lost his U.S. security clearance. Like many other accused "Red sympathizers," he spent the rest of his life defending his reputation. The Vassiliev documents concur with numerous other sources that show it was other scientists and technicians on the atomic bomb program who helped the Soviets develop a nuclear weapon."

Why does Kant want morality to be universal?

Why does Kant want morality to be universal? The reason is that he wants its existence to be perceived by reason. And reason perceives universals. (note 1) Now some universals are laws like laws of math. Some universals are other types of predicates. But Kant knows that he can't make morality into a universal like laws of math. Remember he was highly influenced by Hume. So he wants the universal morality to be a universal "ought".

 He also wants a certain ambiguity about its nature, but not about its existence. This is his opinion for dinge an sich (things in themselves). ("Unconditioned realities" in the language of philosophers.)

 Use the modification of Kant by Hegel. With Kant by himself you can't get reason to perceive the character of ethical laws. You need Reason to get to where Kant is trying to go.
[I should mention you always need to modify Kant. The surface level of what he says is sometimes wrong. But if you look into the deeper idea behind the words he is often implying a true and deep idea.]






  That personal freedom and economic freedom are valuable really seems to be  from  the separation of realms and different grounds of validity.

[note: The third formulation of the Categorical Imperative is “the Idea of the will of every rational being as a will that legislates universal law.” (4:432)]

At any rate, let me just say that I think the human problem needs a lot more that political or economic solutions. The problem is not just the dimension of morality, but the basic question what is the meaning of life? (This was the primary question of the 1960's, and sadly the answer to most people was political Liberation movements or fanatic Jewish or Eastern religious cults.)

I admit I have no great answer for this. But I do have an idea. It starts with  Maimonides. Because Maimonides managed to mediate between the two poles of Reason and Faith and formed a kind of synthesis or lightening rod. With him there is no contraction between Aristotle and the Torah.

The ground of holiness is different from that of reason. The radical Maimonides synthesis between Torah and Aristotle seems to me to need some improvement. First of all I am a Neo-Platonist. This is by education and also it is the way I think. Reading Plato when I was a teenager it think contributes to me tendency to say unpopular opinions and not be afraid to do so. I think clearly the example of Socrates contributed to this. But at any rate, I see spiritual reality just as real as atoms and molecules.


The thing which complicates this issue is often a doctrine that seems promising, seems to have a long string of crazy people attached to it. Since what makes spirituality interesting is its human element --it is impossible to separate it from the actions of people following a certain doctrine. What I mean is if the Talmud  was just some intellectual exercise that had nothing to do with people, then first of all they would not be interesting. So the fact that they have to so with people means that people following their teachings have to indicate to us to some degree the qualities of that doctrine.

However I do agree with Maimonides in that we should deny ‘there are good reasons for the polarization between faith and knowledge (which became an empirical feature of European modernity). There are no such reasons, on Maimonides' view,

The question is of course why is there no conflict? Is it because because Jewish theism – proved hospitable to and incorporated rational inquiry from the beginning, in the form of Greek philosophy.

However there is a ground of spirituality that is different from reason. The ground of spirit and the ground of reason in some way are in conflict because the principles are different but they are not in conflict in that both are important parts of what it means to be human.
If this is not clear just think of a circle of values. The closer you get to the top the more numinous value you have and less form. The more towards the bottom the more form and less numinous content

Notes
(note 1) Universals. I have (let's say for an example) two white pieces of paper in front of me. Do they have something in common? Yes. Whiteness.  So Whiteness is a universal. It is something that individuals have in common.

Appendix: One reason why Kant ought to be important to people is he provides a nice modification of Plato and neo Platonism. This is to where Jewish Philosophers were trying to go after the Rambam, [e.g. Crescas and Abravenal,] The Rambam was going pretty much with Aristotle and this seems to me to be a problem because knowledge of the physical form does not give knowledge of universals plus some basic problem in the Metaphysics. Maybe the Rambam can account for these problems? It would be nice to know if he does. But I do no have  Guide with me to do the research to see if he does. [I mean it is likely that he did hint to some answers in the Guide but I have not heard that anyone has found such hints.]

Where there are Muslims, things go "Boom!"

Iran’s chief of staff vowed Sunday to eliminate Israel.
As usual in the media there is not a peep.
The problem here is simple cause and effect. Where there are Muslims, things blow up. Most Jewish and Christian people don't have explosives in their underwear. Let's see now, who attacked us on 9/11? Muslims. Who was the attempted shoe bomber? A Muslim. Who attacked the USS Cole? Muslims. So, who should we be watching? Buddhists? Catholic nuns? I don't think so!!


In face of the Muslim threat to the continuance of Human Life on Earth, I suggest that people should prepare a survival kit. And in particular, I recommend the essay of Dr. Leonard Horowitz on the how to protect oneself in case of a Terrorist Chemical or Biological attack. Also notice the covertness blog I have a link to which has lots of good suggestions.
http://www.tetrahedron.org/articles/apocalypse/bio_chem_guide.html

I should mention it is a good idea to be part of a community in which people care about each other.  This is the reason there are communities that I decided to leave when I saw this kind of relationship between people was publicly advertised, but in fact missing. In fact, I have become wary of people that are too friendly. Over friendliness is the first most important sign that someone has something up their sleeve.

The problem with Muslims I think is that they are de-evolving. This would probably be because  of lack of female choice. Female choice is an important part of evolution. When the females choose the best guys the species improves. Muslim women have not had female choice so it is inevitable they would degenerate into a sub species, while the rest of the human species evolves upward.

Now this does not seem like a John Locke kind of concept of the common rights of man. But for that to work mankind would have to be one species. And we are rapidly evolving into two different ones.
The West is becoming Homo Occident. Muslims are becomes Homo Simia

.
After all the most basic assumption in all American universities (outside of the natural science departments) is relativism. The trouble with relativism is not just that is is wrong, but that it is self refuting. It makes a claim that you can't make a claim about truth values that is independent of the person making the claim. So it denies its own claim to truth.
I quote [http://www.euvolution.com/euvolution/useless.html]: Today's postmodern philosophers deny the very existence of science, nature and truth, largely because their favorite verbal abstraction of "equality" is undermined by the brute statistical reality of human biological differences. The philosopher Richard Rorty recently informed us in Atlantic Monthly that " 'The homosexual,' 'the Negro,' and 'the female' are best seen not as inevitable classifications of human beings but rather as inventions that have done more harm than good." Therefore, according to Rorty, many deconstructionists "go on to suggest that quarks and genes probably are [inventions] too." You have to be as eminent a philosopher as Rorty to believe that the category of "the female" is a mere social convention.:


The way one might defend moral relativism would be by saying a claim about moral claims is a meta moral claim and not a moral claim in itself. It is about the set of all moral claims, and thus not self refuting.  See John Seale in his refutation of all relativism. But his refutation does not seem to apply to moral relativism
The aspect of orthodoxy that is bad is that it makes fanaticism into a norm. And then goes out of its way to claim that that is not what it is doing. This is a new invention and has nothing to do with traditional Judaism.

I think there is a deep spiritual reality inside the Torah and Talmud.

This was a question asked of me a few years back and my answer:

 (from the beginning of this May 4.5.12):"First, I am in need of some kind of deprogramming. I attended aish ten years ago for ten months and have never been able to shake the feeling that I am a bad person for not being orthodox. Any suggestions?
Second, do you believe or think that the Torah was actually given to Moses on Mt. Sinai? Everything I read in the academic world (James Kugel and some of his footnotes, David Carr at Union Theological, several others here and there) tells me that Orthodox Jews are mistaken in this belief. Also, the Greeks began the idea of authorship and it it is even likely that until Hellenic times no one said that Moses wrote the Torah. But once they gave authorship out, the Jews gave the Torah to Moses.
Third, are all of us ex-aishers suffering cult like symptoms of guilt and fear? Are all Jews suffering this as well? What is the future of Orthodoxy? I think it will always “pretend” because the community matters so very much. But what do you think?"


Torah from heaven is not the same as Torah from Sinai.
The Written and Oral Torah are inspired from Heaven. That has nothing to do with the physical location of where there were written. From what we know from the Rambam many parts of the Torah are allegories and were never meant to be taken literally. That includes Genesis.
Genesis was meant to tell us Creation ex nihilo. (That already cancels Orthodoxy. The irony is they like to claim others are falsify Torah.)





First Torah from Sinai is often confused with the issue of "Is the Talmud from Sinai?"
Part of the problem in the Orthodox world is that they succeeded in spreading the claim that everyone in Europe accepted that the Talmud was from Mount Sinai. This stacks the deck for Orthodox Judaism.
But it is false. No Jews in Europe thought the Talmud was given at Mount Sinai. The very idea in itself is ludicrous. Jews thought it is a great book that explains with great logical rigor how to keep the Torah. Saying it is a great book is not the same as the claim that it is from Sinai. No Jewish people in America thought the Talmud was from Sinai before the fanatic Orthodox came. The way the got people to believe this is by the fact that faith is a good. When it gets too expensive people don't buy it. The orthodox paid people to believe it by the promise of sex, shiduch, and money.

[My parents and all their friends had never heard of the idea that Talmud was from Sinai and if it had been mentioned they would have laughed.]


However being influenced by Plato and Kant (I believe in the world of Forms), I have to admit that I think there is a deep spiritual reality inside the Torah and Talmud [numinous is the current word for it]. (The dinge als sich selbest- the thing in itself.) Normally I would have just gone with Schopenhauer on this question and called God "the Will" and be done with it [i.e. an irrational force]. But according to later writings of Schopenhauer the the thing in itself is multidimensional. The irrational will is just one dimension. So I am led back to the basic idea of God being good in the long run. i.e the God of Moses, Job and Plato.
First I think holiness belongs to the realm of the thing in itself.
note: Things-in-themselves are the way that reality exists apart from our experience, our consciousness, our minds, and all the conditions that our minds might impose on phenomenal objects.

The Talmud excels.

The Talmud rocks!

The separation of milk and meat is in fact based on verses. This is one area in which the Talmud excels. Even if I think the Talmud is not perfect, but it excels in certain areas; and understanding verses is one of those areas. Though I am not holding in that subject matter right now, in working out in a logically rigorous manner the meaning and the laws of different commandments the Gemara [Talmud] does an excellent job, and in fact the only job.



It has been many years since I looked at that subject but so I don't remember the exact idea but just for an example of the way the Gemara looks at verses from a rigorous perceptive look at Bava Metzia at the end of chapter 11 and the many long Tosphot there.