In America the basic argument between the Right and the Marxists is from tractate Ketuboth page 9. That is do you go by חזקת השתא או חזקה מעיקרא the state of things now or the state of things before. That is do you assume conditions now always existed until you reach the point where you know they did not. I.e. prosperity, freedom, etc all the markers of Western Civilization. Until you reach the point of despair and poverty when you know these conditions did not apply.  

Or do you assume the state of mankind was poor and desperate short and brutal until something like the USA came along to make it different. [Even the age of Mozart does not count since it was only capitalism that made conditions of prosperity and freedom apply to everyone, not just the monarch.] 

Well clearly the Gemara holds that we go by the state of things before and you push that forwards as far as possible until something you know changed it. That is the Constitution of the USA.

Certainly Marxism did not make things prosperous or make people free in any country that has ever tried it. The long lines in Russia just to get a few groceries shows that.

So we know it was capitalism that changed the original conditions of mankind.

[The basic issue in Ketuboth is that a priest marries and then comes to court and says he found his new bride not to be a virgin. [i.e. no hymen]. So she is forbidden to him. But if a Israeli comes and says the same thing she is permitted to him because it is a ספק ספקא doubt of a doubt. Maybe she had sexual relations before Kidushin. Then she is permitted. But even if she had relations after Kidushin, it might have been against her will. So she is still permitted. 

Tosphot asks why not go by חזקת כשרות that every person starts out with. That is--they are Ok util you know otherwise. Tosphot answers because of חזקה מעיקרא the original state of things. That is..you assume she was a virgin until the very second you found out otherwise. That means after the Kidushin and so she is forbidden to the Koken,

So we see we go by the original state of things even when there is a present state of things against it.

[That is from Rav Akiva Eigger and Rav Shach.]

 

 Philosophy seems less interesting to me nowadays because I am upset about what is going on in the USA and I do not see philosophy as ever getting issues of government correct.

For some reason Plato, Kant, Leonard Nelson, Hegel may have been great and deep thinkers, but when it comes to political issues they did not seem to have that same degree of insight or talent.

The people that got politics right the founding fathers of the USA Constitution were not philosophers and they did not base their thought on philosophy. Rather they based their ideas on England and especially the Glorious Revolution of 1689.

It is not that the issues were all that different. Rather that the philosophers got the issues wrong. Hegel saw the terrible mess of the French Revolution but his solution seems to involve too much government. Kant also was dealing with the crisis of modernity of Germany after the old structures of society were changing. But his solutions also do not seem accurate--too much world government and or too much individual.

What ever Thomas Jefferson and James Madison got right, it was not based on philosophy. 

 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.

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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 that were destroyed because by the Emancipation Proclamation. If Lincoln had learned Torah, and especially the books of Ethics [Musar], then the whole issue would have been resolved without war.

 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.

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