If you look at the history of England and the USA as one continuum

 If you look at the history of England and the USA as one continuum [instead of as two separate entities], you can see a pattern in which WASPs may endure unjust tyrannical rule for some period, but eventually get fed up with the nonsense.  Most people's are not like like, but rather this seems something unique to Protestant-Anglo-Saxons.  So no matter how much the Democratic party wants to impose on WASPs the rule of socialism on real Americans, the likelihood is that Americans are going to fight back.

And they probably should, because I just do not see socialism or communism in a good light. Even if its results where it has been tried had turned out OK, it still would be in my eyes as very wrong and unjust. All the more so that it never seems to work out very well without breaking a lot of eggs to the tune of at least 100 million broken egg shells.

What the USA needs now is a Boris Yeltzin moment to stand on the top of a tank and tell the Congress that we the people of the USA will not stand for Communism or socialism any more.

Rav Nahman wrote in the LeM that the wicked win in judgment in order that God should protect the righteous. So the fight for freedom from the socialism and communism is not over. It has just begun.

 Talking with God as one talks to a good friend [that Rav Nahman calls "Hitbodadut"]. Even though I assume most people do this automatically when a time of crisis arrives but with Rav Nahman of Uman this was a major goal in life. That is to spend as much time as possible praying to God and learning Torah. It just so happened that in a way that Carl Jung calls synchronicity that soon after I got this idea from the books of Rav Nahman that I also found myself in Safed in Israel surrounded by forests. So I actually has some opportunity to do this on a daily basis.

Now the actual idea of Rab Nahman was a bit different than a fellow by the name of Brother Lawrence who also talked with God all the time but that was amongst his regular chores. [See the book The Presence of God.] But with Rav Nahman the idea was to actually go out to the forests or any area where no one else is and to spend as much time as possible talking with God as a friend.

So you can ask the obvious question that there is no such commandment to do this. Learning Torah is what the Torah holds one ought to do all the time as the four volume of Nefesh Hachaim of Rav Chaim of Voloshin makes clear. Even so I can see the point of Rav Nahman since we do find that there is a commandments to pray to God in times of trouble. [See Nahmanides on the commandments ]. So Rav Nahman noticed that all of us are in times of trouble in spirit and body. The only thing is a lot of us do not realize it. So it is better to go to God and ask help even before the troubles begin.

I would like to recommend what one ought to at have finished once. The two Talmud and Midrashim [even with no commentaries] so that at least once he will have finished the entire Oral Law.

 I am noticing that as time goes by, it gets more difficult to spend time learning. I mean,- on one hand it was never all that easy- since by the time I got home from school, I was usually too tired to do much homework. But in any case, this seems to be universal. Only some rare individuals manage to grow and develop as time goes by. Leopold Vietoris wrote his last mathematical paper when he was 102 [or 103]. [He stopped skiing when he was 80, and he stopped mountain climbing when he was 90.] Beethoven as time went by just got better and better. The 9th is nothing like the 1st symphony.

But for most people like me it is hard to improve with age.

So as a minimum at least to keep the goals in mind, I would like to recommend what one ought to at have finished once. The two Talmud and Midrashim [even with no commentaries] so that at least once he will have finished the entire Oral Law. Then the entire Avi Ezri of Rav Shach at least one time from cover to cover in order to gain an insight into the depths of the Oral Law. Then in terms of the two other areas that some rishonim/mediaeval authorities recommend Physics and Metaphysics, I would say to get through the basic material at least up until String Theory. [That would means the two basic areas Algebra and Topology, plus the basic subjects leading up until String Theory--Relativity and Quantum Mechanics.] When Ibn Pakuda and the Rambam recommend metaphysics it is clear they meant Aristotle and his commentaries. But after that I am not sure, since philosophy seems to have taken some detours. The best I saw is the Kant-Fries-Nelson school. And I think Hegel is vey important, even though he is different from the Kant-Fries School. Each has some important points, but it is hard to see which are the important point to embrace, and which are the weaker points. How to separate the wheat from the chaff?  

It was pointed out to me that some parts of the Oral Law do not seem relevant. My answer to this is that learning Torah is more about the idea of holiness [or the idea of the numinous of the Kant Fries Nelson school.]

the best I saw was the Mir in NY, and Shar Yashuv was a pretty close second.

 Even though there is great good in the Litvak yeshiva world, it would be hard to point towards any kind of tribalism that I could agree with. The flaw of using a group as a guide for one's principles seems to me to be that groups have no principles, only individuals. [Besides once money got mixed up inside the world of Torah and Torah became a way to gain money and power, the juice just got drained from the battery.]] Rather it is best just to take the basic idea which is to learn Torah and leave off doctrines. That for one thing I did see as really great aspect of the Litvak world- no doctrines. Just: "Learn what learn Torah says and do it."  But the actual institutions certainly can be flawed. In any case, the best I saw was the Mir in NY, and Shar Yashuv was a pretty close second.

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In places like the Mir in NY and Shar Yashuv, it was thought that depth learning is for the morning and fast learning for the afternoon.]

 Rav Nahman of Breslov was against learning any kind of philosophy and I can see his point being that it never comes to any kind of conclusion. You can spend a lifetime just trying to untangle the arguments and still have gotten now where. However the Kant-Fries-Leonard Nelson system has found a certain amount of grace because in it there is a justification of faith plus an accurate way of showing the limits of reason and the limits of faith.

I mean, you can see to a great degree that just Torah with no Metaphysics at all tends to be a bit too narrow. It leaves too much room for delusions in areas that are not within the strict bounds of Gemara and Tosphot. 

But as far as Rav Nathan was concerned, the opinion of Rav Nahman was also against learning science and that is far less clear based on many places in the LeM where he emphasis seeing the wisdom in all things including physical. Plus his emphasis on faith in "the wise" {LeM I:60}. And that would have to include the gedolai Sefarad like Ibn Pakuda and the Rambam.

[I have to mention that the way of learning fast by saying the words and going on makes the most sense to me in this regard since not everyone is an Albert Einstein, and yet the way Ibn Pakuda and other rishonim hold this kind of learning is an obligation. So the path of fast learning is the best idea. However some sessions of review are also important, but how much to emphasize one kind of learning as opposed to the other is not clear to me. In places like the Mir in NY and Shar Yashuv, it was thought that depth learning is for the morning and fast learning for the afternoon.]

tractate Eruvin page 37

 There seems to be some kind of doubt about what "no choice" אין ברירה means. Does that means what one will choose in the future does not reveal now what he  chooses. Or does it even mean  even right now, what one chooses does not reveal what one has chosen. 

This comes up in tractate Eruvin page 37. Rava said the reason R. Shimon said, "the statement: 'the two portions [lugin] I will choose are truma' does not help," is not because there is no choice, but because it says ראשית (the first) meaning that the left offers have to be apparent.שייריה ניכרין."

The Gemara asks on Rava, "What about the mishna where R Shimon said: "When one says, 'the truma and maasar of this stack are in it,' is considered to have called the name and place of the truma and maasar and so it is valid." The Gemara answers its own question and says there there is an area surrounding the truma and maasar and so it is considered that the left over parts are apparent.

 Tosphot asks the the same question would apply even if the reason of R Shimon in the first statement would have been because of "no choice". [So the question of the Gemara should not have been on Rava, but on R Shimon himself no matter what the reason for the first statement of R Shimon would be.]

Rav Shach asks on this question of Tosphot the the difference ought to be based on the idea that "no choice" usually refers to the future [i.e. what ones will choose in the future is considered as if he choose it now. The second statement  of R Shimon refers to a case where he says he is setting the truma and maasar right now-but it will not be revealed where there are until he actually picks them out.