Kelley Ross of the Kant Fries school of thought has commented on the idea that Kant must have been onto something since we see his idea in Quantum Mechanics.
The basic ideas that between two states the electron is really not doing anything. It has no classical values of position and momentum. So it really does seem very similar to Kant's Dinge An Sich. The thing in itself which Reason has no access into.
The advantage of the Litvak yeshiva is authenticity. It is not that Litvaks are very nice or that the Litvak world is so great. It is not that even all the doctrines are right.
Rather it is simply that it is the one address you can go to to find out what the Torah actually says. Not what people want it to say.
[In fact I had a pretty great experience in both of the Litvak yeshivas [Mir and Shar Yashuv] I attended, but the point I want to bring out here is that one's experience should not make any difference in evaluating the value. The fact in itself that all yeshivas based on the Gra and Rav Shach more or less apply the same principle that says basically that we simply want to learn and understand keep Torah. There is basically no alternative agendas.
The destroyed cities ruined by the Emancipation Proclamation are proof the South was right.
Besides that I just want to add for the sake of information, there is slavery in Torah. And Jesus also said that every word of Torah is true and will never be nullified right in the beginning of the Sermon on the Mount.
So to say that slavery is evil, one has to repudiate a both the Torah and Jesus.
Portland has shown once and for all that the South was right. The Proclamation of Emancipation was a ticking time bomb and now it has come time to explode.
I might add that the tzars also discovered this truth with freeing the serfs. [It did not take long for them to destroy the Russian Empire after that. ]
Legally anyway, the slaves were never freed because you would need the Southern States to agree to a Constitutional amendment by their own free will.
From a Torah point of view also there are only a few ways that a slave can be freed. But I am not sure that is applicable here since I think a government proclamation can free slaves but only if the proclamation is legally valid. Lincoln's was not.
So today what is possible? I suggest Rav Israel Salanter's idea of learning Musar (Ethics). This is in order to understand the basic principles of Torah. If Lincoln had learned Torah and especially the books of Ethics [Musar] then the whole issue would have been resolved without war.
I have thought for a long time that Rav Israel Abuchatzeira found a sort of "grace" with God in so far as whenever people came to him to get a blessing, it always [or most always] worked. I do not think he always knew how. He would have bottles of water that people would take home, and usually be saved from whatever problem they were facing. But if he knew how? I doubt it. [He was not all knowing as some people suggest.]
To me this seems to tie in with the very first lesson in Rav Nahman's LeM Vol I. Chapter 1. That when a person has grace with God his prayers are answered and even his requests --what he asks a favor from people-those are answered too. So how does one gain "grace". In that lesson Rav Nahman says is is by learning Torah with energy.
This brings the question is there anyone of the Bava Sali family around nowadays that is similar or worthwhile going to for a blessing? Probably. I would venture to say Shimon Buso, [a son of a daughter of Bava Sali] who lives in Jerusalem but learns in Netivot.
[But I ought to add that I think that any descendant of Rav Yaakov Abuchatzeira is worth going to to get advice and a blessing.]
That particular lesson of Rav Nahman says that learning Torah with energy bring together reason with faith. [The ח and נ ] but in the beginning of that section Rav Nahman says learning Torah combines the Nun and the Cheit. In the he says to merit to reason in the first place one needs to learn Torah with energy.
There is some cultist aspect to the religious world. This is even though as far as possible to tell, all they are doing is trying to follow Torah. Still there is a definite aspect of the Sitra Achra [Dark Side] that has taken hold of the religious world. It is almost as if there is a "for the sake of money" or other aspects there. While that is true, still it does not explain the issue. At any rate , in spite of the frum (religious world) making a song and dance of how they alone keep Torah (and so everyone ought to give them money), still there is some reason to avoid them if you value your family and life. For there is a aspect of the Dark Side that has taken hold of the religious world.
The problem is obviously that Torah is positive value and the most positive value. So זה לעומת זה עשה האלהים [the good side and evil side are parallel.] for every positive value there is a whole circle of negative value surrounding it. So what is going on is that the Dark Side is buried deep inside the religious world.