Slander is a prohibition in the Torah. There are exceptions like when you need to warn someone about a dangerous person. But as a starting point, one needs very urgent and good reason to be able to disparage another person. [I mean the starting position is never to say something negative about another person. Then based on circumstances, there might be a need and even a requirement to say something.]

One of the secrets of success I always thought that the Mir Yeshiva in NY had was the morning session where people would learn the laws of slander after the morning prayers. So there was a great awareness of the issues involved in speaking slander.

Just for clarity:

Lashon Hara can be just saying something negative --but is worse if it is with intention to cause damage or even can cause damage.  It is divided into בין אדם למקום ובין אדם לחבירו and the laws are different. For between man and God issues it is enough if the person is on that path in a constant way. Just just an accidental sin. Then one can say lashon hara and warn others. For issues between man and his fellow man, that is where you need some conditions to be able to say anything negative: for benefit, to see it oneself, rebuke, no other way to get that benefit, to be clear that what one think happened really did happen, it will not cause more damage that would come to the person if he was tried in court, that it really is clear according to the laws of the Torah.

Some examples: it would be forbidden for a woman to lie about her husband in court in order to get more money out of an alimony case. There are lot of reasons for that. One is that Lashon Hara even on true things still needs lots of conditions. All the more so lying about something is worse. And here it is with intention to cause damage.

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the kind of wisdom that Rav Nahman says comes from the Empty Space is Philosophy.

 I would assume that the kind of wisdom that Rav Nahman says comes from the Empty Space is Philosophy. I mean to say that there is something odd about philosophy in the first place that seems to retract common sense away from people, and yet does not qualify as simply  a false or man made wisdom with no connection to reality. What I mean is that something like psychology is simply pseudo science and a result of its practitioners delusions and their own childhood experiences. There is nothing real or objective about psychology in the first place. But philosophy is not like that. It deal with real questions, but questions that seem to have contradictory answers and which leads into some kind of mental traps. 

Psychology is insane people pretending to be doctors. But philosophy takes sane people and makes them insane.

[That is in its effect. On the other hand, it does appear that philosophy can help to limit or cancel other kinds of delusions. Particularity religious delusions. So is it possible to find some kind of balance? We see Robert Hanna in fact demolished 20th century analytic philosophy in its entirety--simply by pointing out its circular reasoning and other logical fallacies. But his suggestion of "Forward to Kant" seems difficult  to accept since Kant him is open to many schools of thought, particularity Neo-Kant [Marburg], Leonard Nelson, Hegel. 

 The main magic of the Litvak yeshiva is based on trust in God. When Torah is learned for its own sake, and not for the sake of making  a living, there is a sort of settling of the Divine presence.

But that magic disappears when the intention becomes for the sake of making money.

But ordination programs got introduced (even in the Mir yeshiva of NY itself). That seems to have been a mistake.

 But not the only one. Even the idea of  "kollel" itself to me seems to be a problem. I just do not think people ought to be paid for learning Torah. Religions just to be too much of a business. 

 

Slave revenge

 Slave revenge has nothing to do with bettering the living conditions of the slave as in the incident with the Nat Turner rebellion. It is simply a way of  "getting back"at former masters.

This is what is going on in the USA right now. Slave Revenge. An attempt to destroy the whites. Not better the blacks.

 The lesson to learn from the civil war is rhetoric. 20 years of rhetoric created the situation when young teenagers of both the North and South were anxious to kill the other. This same situation has existed in the USA from the 1960's until today when colleges  and high schools have been overwhelmed by teachers all too ready to demonize the USA, and lionize Communism and Socialism.

And now, as back then in 1861, this can not end peacefully. 

 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.]