The South was right.

The South was right. על אלה רגזה הארץ על עבד כי ימלוך the verse [Proverbs] says that "Because of what shakes the ground? Because of a slave when he rules." So you see the problem with having a slave rule. This I saw in the last presidency, and for that reason stopped looking at the news. For when a slave rules everything is destroyed.


However I admit that keeping the Union together was important. But to wage war on the South because of an unjust reason makes no sense. It would have been better to negotiate their reentry into the Union. Or else perhaps just leave things alone. After all the USA and Canada are neighbors. Would it have made sense to go to war with Canada just because they did not want to be part of the Union?


Besides that you can wonder if any slaves are actually free? The Federal government was never endowed with power to  take private property at random. The Congress can tax but simply to declare a persons property to no longer belong to him is not among the powers given to the Federal Government. (Nor does an amendment to free them apply when the South was forced to agree. Being forced to agree is not the same thing as agreeing.) Slaves can be set free by a document signed by the owner or by money or by injury of limb. But other than that they remain slaves.
And I want to add that the whole idea of slavery being inherently wrong seems false since now blacks are enslaving whites. [So clearly they do not think slavery is wrong.]] Not just making whites work for blacks by means of the welfare state, but now literally trying to enslave the whites. So the whole idea of slavery being wrong is not an sincere argument. Of course I think this was their intention all along as they told me openly many years ago.
Of course if whites submit, then they deserve what they get. Rather it makes more sense to resist. Do not submit under any circumstances whatsoever.

[I would think that there ought to be laws that people can protect their property. What is after all the point of the second amendment of not for that very reason. Not to grant a right, but rather to recognize a natural right a person has to property their person and property?

An idol that broke apart by itself, and the signature of the Gra on the letter of excommunication

In tractate Avoda Zara 41b there is an argument between R Yochanan and Reish Lakish about an idol that broke apart by itself. [I.e. by an earthquake or some other cause outside of just this: that its own worshipers or other idolaters broke it.]
Reish Lakish says its is OK. [That it its pieces are no longer considered to be part of an idol which is forbidden to receive benefit from].
On this the gemara asks from this Mishna: R. Yose said a Israeli who finds an idol grinds it into pieces or throws it into the sea. The sages disagreed and asked if just grinding is enough some can find the dust and use it. and we know that is not good from the verse לא ידבק בידך מאומה מן החרם ["..so that nothing from the herem will stick with you."] that says one can not derive any benefit from an idol.


For this reason it seems to me that the religious world that worships people ought to be avoided. It is not enough not to worship idols but also to derive no benefit from them. This would explain the signature of the Gra on the letter of excommunication [herem] since the laws of excommunication in fact entail this exact point.
The fact that this universally ignored does not make it invalid. Laws of the Torah are objective morality--that means not dependent on what people think or do.

The general approach of the Gra was no matter what the troubles are the answer is always just one thing: to learn Torah. This I would have to agree with even though I would expand the definition of learning Torah to include Physics and Metaphysics. That is well defined in the Guide for the Perplexed as referring to these subjects of the ancient Greeks. [Also on the first page of the Obligations of the Heart.] Metaphysics is not mysticism.

So the minimum would be to get through the two Talmuds, and the basic Physics up to String Theory. Metaphysics though I have a hard time to figure out what ought to be included. I am thinking besides Aristotle's books to include Kant and Leonard Nelson.

The religious world is a kind of Dark Side

The major problem I see in the religious world is a kind of Dark Side (Sitra Achra) aspect that seems to have settled on it and leaves its odor on everything. To some degree I thought I could avoid that by learning straight Torah in two great yeshivas the Mir in NY and Shar Yashuv.

But that turned out not to be as effective as I had thought. The reason is the verse in psalms סביב רשעים יתהלכון [round about go the wicked]. That is the Sitra Achra.

So as one tries to come to straight pure Torah as is learned in the Mir or Ponovitch, or any of the great Litvak yeshivas, there is this problem that holiness is surrounded by the Dark Side. And even if you manage to get inside the straight Torah world, the Sitra Achra (Dark Side) has anyway made its nest there.

What one might do is simply to get the essentials and go through them as best he can on his own. That would be the two Talmuds (with Tosphot and Maharsha on one, and the two side commentaries on the Yerushalmi]. [Or just even straight with no commentary at all in order to at least get through material at least once.] Then Rav Shach's Avi Ezri and Rav Haim of Brisk's Hidushei HaRambam. Those two books give one  a basic idea of how to get into the depths of the Talmud.

[I have mentioned before this that Rav Nahman of Breslov noted the problem with Torah scholars that are demons in the LeM I:12 and I:28. He hints to this also in LeM I:8. However the point here is bit different. He I am saying that as a result of Torah scholars that are demons the whole religious world is infected. So the cure is not simple. Normally one would go to  a straight Litvak Yeshiva based on the Gra in order to learn authentic Torah, not Torah of the Sitra Achra (Dark Side.) However it is nowadays hard to avoid the Sitra Achra even there.]

Dr. Kelley Ross was gracious to answer my question about the riots. He wrote: "It occurs to me that this is Antifa’s equivalent of the Tet Offensive.  They are hoping for war."


I think that means that Kelley Ross thinks the Left is hoping to dismantle the very Constitution of the USA and impose a socialist [Communist] dictatorship.

[The Tet Offensive was that that very idea. To attack cities in South Vietnam in order to cause the South to get rid of their government and accept Communism.

That sounds serious to me. I thought they were simply trying to burn down American cities. To dismantle the Constitution seems like it would be the worst disaster in human history. But anyway I have been thinking that a Mad Max scenario [where civilization collapses] is very much probable except for pockets of where Western Civilization will continue and prosper.

The odd position of time and space in the Bell's inequality does seem to have a lot to do with Kant. [That space and time are just ways of measuring things. But they exist like all dinge an sich (things in themselves)-they exist but reason has no access to understand them.].] [If the electron is here then it has no value for momentum. Not zero or anything else.Not just that there is conspiracy to keep us from knowing what it is.] That is,-- you first have to get out of the idea that there is action at a distance. All Bell's inequality means is that there are two possibilities, (1) things have no values in space and time until they interact. Or (2) action at a distance. But we know action at a distance is not true because of Relativity. So we are left with things having no classical values until measured.
SEE Gellmann There is nothing non-local about Einstein Podolsky Rosen


The idea that things have no value of space or time is not so strange. In Lemaitre's article in Nature 1931 where he discusses the big bang that he predicted he says that space and time had to have begun after the first quantum had already split into many others. So there is obvious some sub-layer underneath space and time. That is clear anyway from the Aronov-Bohm effect where you see that space has already a mathematical structure.


From other directions, Kant is being revived. Robert Hanna went through a painstaking rigorous detailed critique of 20th century analytic philosophy showing it is ready for the trash bin. [Even G.E. Moore.] But Neo Kantian-ism was discarded for other good reasons.
So by default one is left with Leonard Nelson's approach to Kant or Kelley Ross's synthesis of Nelson.

  Note that Nelson has been ignored almost universally.
On the other hand I can imagine that some might want to revive the other Neo Kant approaches of Marburg, Heidelberg or Husserl. Frankly, I would be happy with anything that would get back to Kant. [Robert Hanna seems to have a soft spot in his heart for Husserl. Still he says openly that he was refuted. There simply is no one left on the playing field except Kant and Leonard Nelson.]
Still that leaves the question about Hegel. To me it seems Hegel is fine if you understand him with McTaggart.
[I like McTaggart a lot, but I ought to mention that he provided a convenient target for those who wanted to attack Hegel and assumed McTaggart=Hegel. Also, they assume that the Metaphysical State was Hegel's, and you can see that Hobhouse thinks that way. Even though his critique on the Metaphysical State is not actually directly against Hegel. But seeing things in the former USSR without the force of the state I got a good taste  of a good argument for the state.  [Before the Soviet State, no one was going to have an American kind of Democracy in Russia and even today the whole idea seems absurd. You can not have an American kind of democracy without Americans! And that takes many years to develop that kind of mentality. Maybe it is DNA? or whatever. ]


[I wanted to mention that there is a lot of confusion about Bell. Bell's inequality does not
disprove causality. Rather it can prove one of two things. Either no causality or that things have no values in space and time until measured. Since we know there is causality because of GPS which depends on Relativity. So what we know now is things have no value in space and time until measured.  And that is not all that different from how Lemaitre explained the beginning of the universe where space and time did not exist until after there were already a bunch of quantum particles around. I saw this in the blog the reference frame [I think] later it became clear in my own study of QM, GPS is a nice proof of Relativity since it would not work unless both Special and General Relativity are true.
]

So there is something below time and space.

How do you have a beginning of the universe before there was even space or time. How can something start before something else when there is no "time"?

Yet that is exactly the idea of Lemaitre in an article about the expansion of the universe--the big bang. [The article was published in 1931 in Nature. That is: that  time and space existed only as statistical notions before there were lots of quantum particles.] [Lemaitre's original discovery of the expansion if the universe was from 1927.]


This fits well with the Aspect experiment which shows that nature violates Bell's inequality. That is-- there are no hidden variables. Particles have no values of space and time before they interact.
So there is something below time and space.