The next issue (also related to freedom): the very important debate between James Madison and Thoma Jefferson and the Bill of Rights. This little piece of history is of vast importance because it tells the story of the Bill of Rights in a compelling way. Without this story, idiotic people can think they have the rights to have all their needs taken care of without having to lift a finger,- as is the situation today in the USA. If people would know the story behind the Bill of Rights I don't think things would have decayed so much.



The Republicans have become shy of being accused of being "mean" if they are not willing to hand out free stuff to "needy," i.e. politically noisy, constituencies. In these circumstances, the conservative plurality is rendered disproportionately ineffective, and the power of the left enhanced

An appalling and shameless burst of authoritarianism can be found in The Myth of Ownership: Taxes and Justice, by Thomas Nagel and Liam Murphy [Oxford University Press, 2002]. Nagel and Murphy (on the Law Faculty -- a terrifying thought -- at New York University) not only reaffirm the thesis of Sunstein and Holmes that rights do not exist without the state and taxes, but they proceed to the logical conclusion that people simply have no right to their property, savings, and income, i.e. to the fruit of their own labor, "in any morally meaningful sense."

"Rights," (benefits) which serve to enslave or steal from others -- are claims of forced labor (violating the 13th Amendment as "involuntary servitude") against others -- are today mostly what people scream about when they demand their "rights."

A "right to a job" means that somebody else must be required to provide the job. A "right to medical care" means that somebody else, doctors and nurses, must be required to provide that care. These kinds of rights thus will either effect "involuntary servitude" on the part of employers, doctors, nurses, etc.,\\
As Brian Caplan put it: Free government money is a key foundation of long-term male unemployment and out-of-wedlock births. Reduce or eliminate that free government money, and you start a virtuous cycle of working class self-improvement. Males would be a lot more likely to find and hold a job. Women would be a lot more likely to focus on men's industry and dependability instead of aggressiveness and machismo.

some interesting comments on an article in Yahoo about: Racial divide runs deep in U.S. schools, study finds

Racial divide runs deep in U.S. schools, study finds

Comments:
When I was in college there weren't any blacks in my calculus courses, organic chemistry. Physics. None, nadda, zero! Plenty of blacks on campus but they were apparently working on other degrees that didn't involve any of the natural sciences, math or engineering

There were Whites, Asians, Indians and Hispanics.

Comment:
So it is the choice of the school to offer calculus and physics, not whitey keeping the minorities down. Go to your school boards and demand the courses to prepare students for college and quit blaming the system. You don't like it, change it.
Comment:
Oh good GRIEF!!! Here we go again. If a black kid gets kicked out of school, it's for BEING BAD, not for BEING BLACK. It's always whiteys fault that blacks are bad, commit crimes more, won't work, etc etc. Sick of it already.

Comment:
What an incredibly biased article. Maybe there's a reason behind the high rates of suspension. Black and Hispanic children are more likely to turn to the "hip hop" culture and cause trouble. I graduated in 03, am Hispanic, was in Gifted courses, and am now in the Air Force.

My comment: Many Hispanics have a work ethic that could would put most people to shame.
When I was in Collage, there was this one girl from Cuba that was really smart and a real hard worker. She had a FULL load of courses and still she got top grade in the classes we shared (Mathematics Physics etc.)

Green Techlet?

I agree Rav Shach was Gadol and I also agree that Rav Ovadia Yoseph is extremely smart. But the place where I would look for greatness in Torah --the Lithuanian Gedolim are not. Read a bit what they have written and you will see for yourself. However, I admit they can learn. That much I will grant to you. But does this level of learning justify the changing the halacha from one "must not" take money for learning Torah to one "must". Or changing the halacha to fight in a war of protecting the Jewish people-- milchemet mizvah (war of obligation)--in which you draft even a bride out of her bride-chamber. All the more so in this case in which learning Torah is not a petur (permission to refrain) from doing even the smallest mitzvah--much less this greatest of all mitvot.
[however I do admit that Torah Scholars do not have to go out to fix the wall of a walled city with everyone else. This is a true halacha in the Talmud. But serving in the Israel defense Force is in the category of protecting the Jewish people for which purpose one drafts even a bride at the minute of her chupa. I might mention in this context that learning Torah is not a petur from any mitzvah. If asked to do a mitzvah even the smallest mitzvah it is never a answer to say ''I am busy learning.'' This is simple Shulchan Aruch. All the more so for the greatest of all mitzvot-serving in IDF.


But I do admit Litvaks (Lithuanians) learn better than Religious Zionists. I still remember that stupid article in the main publication of Dati Leumi (Religious Zionist publication) arguing for techelt thread that was green!
What is wrong with this: Absorption of light. Water doesn't look blue; it is blue. It absorbs in the infrared and enough in the visible range that red wavelengths are absorbed before blue. So the farther away something is under water, the bluer it looks. Also the fuzzier and fainter because even clear water has suspended particles to scatter light. The deeper you go in the ocean, the bluer the scene gets (because red light from the surface is absorbed) and the darker.

divorce

divorce


In the Torah there are very specific instructions as for the get process. One is that the husband can't be forced (except in certain specific cases). In Eastern Europe there was a famous case (sorry I forget the name of the Rav--later note--R. Elchanan Spector of Kovno) of a husband being tricked into giving the get by promises and this was deemed to be forced.
However the Rema does mention in a teshuva different situations in which the husband can be forced. He does mention the question of danger. But he says playing cards or being mechalel shabat does not come into that category.
The next question is the money issue. This woman will almost certainly go to court to ask for half his assets and the court will in all likelihood grant this to her.
using a get as a weapon is not right I agree but using the power and might of the state as a weapon to steal from her husband is also not right.
This is stealing since the Torah does not grant to her half of her husband's assets so she is using the power to the state to steal. And stealing is forbidden according the Torah. Also there is a further question of the child but in this case the woman might be right for having the child with her. In general girls are with the mother and boys at a certain age with the father according to Torah law.
The next most pressing question here is rebelious wife (moredet). Simply put: the basic din of a rebellious wife is that she loses the ketubah plus the fruit of property she brought into the marriage (nichsai zon barzel and melug). In this case however she will surely try to steal most of his property. Why no rabbi thinks that stealing is a problem is a mystery to me.
And there the further question of why he does not want to go to a kangaroo court that he already knows what the verdict will be. I can't answer that question. especially when he know that what a beit din decides is in general not what the Torah says so it ha no din of a beit din.

my notes on renitzins husband:
Adam ZurMar 6, 2012 12:52 AM

I have a little thing I have thought about Gitin (Divorce) for a long time. It is the date. The sages established the date as from the time the present government began its reign. Counting from a different date makes the get not kosher. An example would be counting from the time of the beit hamikdash (from its building or destruction or from the time of a different government). These are all ways to posel a get. And though the present form is well established for along time,- but hey, so was the form of the get in the time of Rabbainu Tam established. That did not stop him from changing it. (Though I might not accept it, I would be very interested to know what R. Ovadiah Joseph would have to say about this. I don't always accept his conclusions but his halachic reasoning is very brilliant in general.)
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The Rebbetzin's HusbandMar 6, 2012 07:23 PM

Adam-
That's why we write למנין שאנו מונין. See Nachlas Shivah on Kesuvos, Siman 12, where he stresses this.
Reply

Adam ZurMar 7, 2012 02:33 AM

Thank you. That answers my question.
(At least according to Tosphot. But Tosphot always goes according to the opinion that when the reason for a law is null then the law is null. So along with tosphot (in gitin)and your answer this answers the question fully. My main question was really according to the Rambam. But at this point it seems like nit picking since i always go by tosphot anyway.
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Adam ZurMar 7, 2012 06:26 AM

I was also wondering about the issue of the fact that the husband appoints someone to write the get. I remember that the Tiferet Israel brings this question in the his booklet on Nashim. But I was wondering if there are other people that deal with this question. (To be clear: why does shlichut help in this case?)

In America you can go to jail for protecting yourself. The case of Jay Rodney Lewis.

in America you can go to jail for protecting yourself
The result of liberal agenda. The liberal stance on crime is part of a broader view that the way to protect the rights of all is to protect the rights of the obnoxious. After all, if you protect the free speech rights Islamic terrorists surely you've built a wall big and strong enough to protect the free speech rights of all.

The only problem is, what happens when the activities of the sociopath degrade the rights of others? Protecting the rights of the obnoxious protects only the rights of the obnoxious.

Read this: Lewis, a Kansas native, moved to West Des Moines in fall 2010 to take a job in an Internal Revenue Service call center.

A former security guard and law enforcement officer, Lewis also is a hunter and gun collector and came to Iowa with a permit to carry a concealed weapon.

Police reports and court records say Lewis’ troubles began shortly before midnight on Oct. 29. Lewis was headed home in his blue Ford Mustang, south on 11th Street toward Regency Woods Apartments in West Des Moines, when he came upon a Ford Taurus driven by James Scott Ludwick, 35.

Ludwick, a former soldier and convicted felon, was driving four people home from a Halloween party. Documents say Ludwick slowed; Lewis passed him. Ludwick sped up, and the cars raced down 11th Street until they came to Regency Woods. They collided when Lewis, in front and on the right, started to turn left.

Lewis said Ludwick and a passenger, Justin Lossner, got out of the Taurus and began punching the Mustang’s windows.

They backed off when Lewis pulled out his .380-caliber pistol. But they came back.

Lewis said he was outside his car, evaluating its damage, when he caught Ludwick and Lossner trying to sneak up on him from two different directions.

The recording of a 911 call made by Lewis begins with Lewis yelling at the two to “just stay where you are. Get back! Get back! I’m going to start shooting!”

There are exchanges of profanities while Lewis explains the situation to a police dispatcher. Then, “Get away from me. Get away from me!” And a bang.

911 call: Jay Rodney Lewis reports assault, shooting attacker

Ludwick was shot, Lewis said, when Ludwick turned away as if to retreat, then spun back and charged. Records say the bullet hit Ludwick in his chest above the right pectoral muscle, then tore through his right bicep.

Jurors found Lewis’ actions entirely appropriate.

“He gave them fair warning,” jury forewoman Nancy Alberts said. “Normally, anybody that would pull a gun on someone, you would think that they would stop. ... That wasn’t the case here. You could clearly hear on the 911 call where he warned Mr. Ludwick.”

Appendix:
He was in jail for four months and was found innocent by a jury.
But he lost his job and is now homeless.  All for protecting himself.

common sense

Common sense is a large topic. I tend to agree with Ann Rand on this topic that a trend in philosophy trickles down to everything else. . (E.g. With Rousseau's Anti-Reason Anti-Enlightenment ) Here also the general trend of Western philosophy was to look at anything that was common sense as being by definition not possible.
In American and English thought only the counter intuitive is considered true.

This is a sad development in philosophy starting from David Hume and continuing in the Anglo British school. I would welcome a return to common sense in the world.
Hume starts out with a simple mistake that has plagued philosophy since his time. He asks for a idea that is not based on the senses. He says if one could find such an idea it would disprove him. Then he finds this idea. Then he says it is meaningless instead of admitting his mistake.
That is not his only mistake.There is also his completely arbitrary claim that reason does nothing but perceive  contradictions. Where he gets this from is simple. He saw Euclid and was impressed so he decided philosophy had to follow the same path. In any case his claim is stupid and arbitrary.It is true that Euclid builds his system by means of simple axioms and then uses reason to perceive contradictions --but also he uses reason to build up claims and ideas that are ot based on simply perceiving contradictions. So Hume did not even understand Euclid.

On a separate topic here is an essay about another issue that Hume got confused in; http://www.uwgb.edu/DutchS/PSEUDOSC/Hume.htm

The problem the Baal Teshuva movement.

The problem with Kiruv and the Baal Teshuva movement.
It had a great idea in the beginning of teaching people to learn and keep Torah. And this is I admit a great thing.

The problem with Kiruv note 1 and the Baal Teshuva movement. The movement the movement to convert Reform and Conservative young college students into  by inviting them to Sabbath meals and show them an idealized picture of what Torah is about. The words "Baal Teshuva" means newly religious.] had its glorious honeymoon when old and young, comfortable and desperate, homeless and tenured all found that what they had in common was so compelling the differences hardly seemed to matter.

Until they did.

Revolutions are always like this: at first all men are brothers, and anything is possible, and then, if you're lucky, the romance of that heady moment ripens into a relationship, instead of a breakup, an abusive marriage, or a murder-suicide. The Baal Teshuva movement had its golden age.

Part of what all Baali Teshuva  had in common was they against: the current "System," (the whole thing evolved out of the 1960's mentality) and the principle of insatiable greed that made it run, as well as the emotional and economic problems that accompanied it.

The "System" that damages people, and its devastation was on display as never before in the early 1960's.
And then came people -- the psychologically fragile, the marginal, the greedy and cruel -- some of them endlessly needy and with a huge capacity for disruption. Others who had wanted to experience a Jewish society on a grand scale found themselves trying to solve parnasa ( money) problems by using the Torah and by fraud pretending to be teaching the ancient wisdom of the Talmud (which is great).
The fraud  is what I think destroyed the beauty of it all--but it might be the very system itself that is particularly open for abuse--very much like communism


And then there was the violence. The main modus operandi can best be described by Odysseus: "We went into villages and killed all the men and took the women and children". This is done not by violence, but rather stealth and cunning. Kiruv depended on the naivety of women, and teachers play the part of righteous sages. Then the woman comes to ask advice from the teacher about her husband. the answer for was to find out the level of observance of the husband. If it is more than the accepted amount, then they tell the woman the husband is a lunatic "meshuga." If the level of observance is less, then the husband is a heretic (apikorus). This way the woman and and her children become part of the community and the husband is discarded like trash. This was almost never do this with malicious intent but just by instinct.

Next is Aish and the different Kiruv  groups. In essence, debating today has become a rhetorical tool used to control questions through obfuscation. This is why debating, is very much a root cause of propelling our anti secular knowledge forward to the next level of insipidity. This was not the case in previous epochs. Not long ago people actually presented evidence supplied by history, data, facts, and used demonstrable proofs to demonstrate the validity of arguments. There seems little use in debating in groups like Aish that do not retain respect for truth. Ironically, debating the virtue and merits of truth, moral goodness or the nature of the good life is rarely something that those who sincerely practice such things feel compelled to do.
 Rav Shach wrote what he thought about Kiruv-- and it was harsh.
There is no board of review or  a process to decide integrity. And since there is no overseeing or checking for integrity, there is no integrity.

This is the problem with empowering people that have no sense of justice. It is the reason Reb Israel Salanter started the Musar movement. Without a sense of justice, what is the point? Just the opposite. Teaching people Torah when they are unjust just gives ammunition to bad people. Thus the teachers of think they are righteous because they suppose they are bringing people to Torah, but they themselves are unjust. The whole thing has become an Animal Farm with all the Orwellian nightmares associated with it.



(note 3) bringing them into orthodoxy enforces what every  schizoid tendencies.