Worship of dead corpses would seem clearly to be a problem.

 There is little in the religious world that actually corresponds to Torah. Examples are plentiful. Worship of dead corpses would seem clearly to be a problem. And yet the herem the Gra signed addressing this exact problem is ignored. There are many other examples but open idolatry should seem to be clearly in violation of the Ten Commandments. So why are all the groups that are included in the herem [excommunication] of the Gra thought to be the highest examples of loyalty to Torah? Should not every one of their books be considered to be dirty? No. Rather considered the peak of loyalty to Torah! How much clearer could things be?

 Thomas Sowell on Slavery 

I looked at some of this and I can see his points. After all we know slavery in the Torah is nothing like slavery as practiced. For example if one has only one  pillow, he must give it to his slave. The slave can not be made worse off than the master. That is different from galley slaves. 

[However brilliant Thomas Sowell is I must mention that some of his points are less accurate as noted by Brian Caplan here.   

Besides this it occurred to me that Lincoln had the authority to free the slaves דינא דמלכותא דינא."The law of the state is the law." Though he clearly did not have authority to make war on the South.  Even though the law of the state is the law is applied differently by the Rishonim, still t least we have the Rambam who hold that if a king declares "Anyone who does not pay such and such a tax will be sold as a slave" that is valid. Thus with symmetry, he can declare slaves to be free.  

If that was a good idea or not is debatable. But to me it seems that it was valid. Not only that but a sell under duress is valid. So the fact that the Southern States signed the 14th ammendment under duress does not make it invalid.. The only aspect that one can complain about in the Civil War is that the union of the states was voluntary. So making a war to keep it together, seems absurd. 

And Lincoln's statement, "If slavery is not wrong then nothing is wrong", seems untrue. Maybe slavery is OK if slaves are treated right, while murder is wrong. Or making an unjust war might be wrong?  People get all excited about lots of different things. sometimes justified and sometimes not.

Nowadays I can see the point of the South that in freeing the slaves, there would be perpetual war against the whites. This seems fulfilled nowadays with the continuous attacks against the Constitution and all Western values. It is like letting the German Barbarians into the Roman empire. While at firt things seemed okay, but eventually it was a time bomb just waiting to explode.

Lets say for a similar example that a women agrees to get married to some man. And then at some point she wants to leave? Can he then bludgeon her to death? [As actually happens.]

And so what about the colonies making the war of Independence of the American Revolution? if you want to go with "No taxation without representation". Well from what could that be true? We know the king of England can not make taxes without the consent of Parliament. But the Parliament can make taxes as well as it pleases. And the American colonies were being taxed y Parliament as is the right of Parliament to do so. [And even the king agreed.] Where in the Magna Charta or the Provisions of Oxford does it say every person that is taxed has to have representation? So the Colonies were in rebellion exactly as the South was. What makes one right and the other wrong? If the South was wrong, then so was the American Revolution.

Rav Shach in Yerushalmi perek 2 halacha 5 in Peah and 2:11 in Laws of Peah

 I am still pondering this hard Rambam 2:11 in Peah. The owner of the field harvests the whole. He was supposed to leave 1/60 of the standing wheat to the poor. He gives from what was reaped to the poor. And if he gives most of what was reaped, that is not obligated in truma and maasar. [Truma is what is given t priests. Maasar is what is given to Levites. Clearly neither applies to peah which is the edge of the field which is given to the poor.] Only if he finished all the work [reaped and threshed], then he has to take truma and maasar and give to the poor.

Again what is this "most of what was reaped"? Normally  one can give his whole field as peah except for the first stalk. [Obviously of he does nothing with the field at all then it can not be "peah" i.e. the corner. There has to be some beginning work in order for the rest to be what was left 

So Rav Shach brings from the Yerushalmi perek 2 halacha 5 in Peah that if he even started to reap the 1/60, then the obligation of peah goes on the sheaves, not the standing wheat any more.

That helps a little. So now he can give the whole 59/60 as peah. But still I am wondering about the Yerushalmi itself. Why can he not just give what is left of the standing ears as peah and what in them does not make up the whole 1/60, to give the needed amount from what was reaped?  

Even though I am a beach bum, I am not saying that this is an ideal path. Just the opposite. If I could spend all day and night learning Torah I would.  And you can see the importance of this in the Nefesh HaChaim by Rav Haim of Voloshin (a disciple of the Gra.) Why I do not is the fact of the religious world is a mess of people that imagine themselves to be superior to all others by means of rituals that have nothing to do with Torah. [And it does help much by the fact that most "Torah scholars " are demons as brought many times in the LeM of Rav Nahman. though what this means is not clear, still one can be pretty sure this this ("demon") is not a complementary term.

The correction {tikun} to

 all this would be to heed the idea of the Gra who signed on the letter of excommunication. But that is ignored, and so the religious world ends up with this sort of characteristic of in outward rituals, all is well , inside there is a tiny invisible drop of cyanide.  

[And I must add that Rav Nahman himself was certainly not in the inclusive language of that letter, though many people think he was. 

[As for the religious world in general I must say that I discussed this with David Bronson for a few hours and after that he said, "Well since there are problems that we can not fix, let's sit and learn Gemara," and thus began our daily sessions for one hour in Gemara. And eventually I began to see that bitul Torah [not learning Torah when one can] is the source of many problems that people have including me. [Still I do not mean that the world of yeshivot is OK. Just that since no one really knows what is going on, we ought to sit and learn Torah as well  as we can--including not using Torah to make money.

 War is unpredictable. For some reason it seems that things were on the side of the North. In the battle of Chancellorsville, the Union general made an absurd mistake to give up a high ground with every possible military advantage  and go into the thick woods.  But it seems that mistake was the cause of General Stonewall Jackson being accidently shot and killed by his own men due to the darkness and thickness of the woods that made fighting in them incomprehensible. To that loss even General R.E. Lee more or less implied that after that,  the war was almost guaranteed to be lost.. 

Still it is hard to know. There is a verse in Proverbs ,"Woe to the land that a slave becomes its king." [as happened in the USA]. And there is a statement from the sages: "A person who does a favor for one who does not appreciate it is as one who throws a stone at Markulis." [Markulis is an idol whose worship was in the fashion of throwing stone at it.] And in the USA, it is hard to find a black person who is grateful to the USA for freeing them. Most hate the USA, and are determined to bring it down.  

I can not see why people don't learn Mathematics and Physics. Certainty most people are curious about the nature of reality.

 I can not see why people don't learn Mathematics and Physics. Certainty most people are curious about the nature of reality.  So why do they go into alternative subjects that they must know [at least subconsciously are mixed with delusions. Whether in politics or religion, what people say are poorly thought out delusions.- at least most.

All I can say is that they must think that these subjects [Mathematics and Physics] are too hard. So I suggest the saying the words in order and going on--- from the beginning to the end  and only after one has finished , then to review.

 And to believe that by saying the words/ the idea become absorbed in the subconscious.]

daughter of a Torah Scholar

 If you want to learn Torah there is this idea of the sages "to marry the daughter of a Torah "."

After thinking about this I can see that there is here not a hard fast rule. Good character is not the sole domain of daughters of Torah scholars. If fact, I was advised to take whom was available at the time who had been running after me for years. [Paula Finn.] And I think this was in fact a good choice. Rav Arye Kaplan was the first person to suggest to me to agree to marry her. I said, "But she is not a bat talmid chacham [the daughter of a Torah]! He answered, "If you wait for the religious, they will offer to you a baalat mum [one with a hidden defect.]".

He knew the reality of the religious as opposed to the abstract idea divorced from actual human beings.

[That is not the only example of his great skepticism about the religious world.]

On the other hand I must say that one needs to get married to a girl that is devoted to the idea  that her husband and children must learn Torah. If she is wishy washy about that, then it is hard to imagine one will learn Torah.

For the sake of clarity and openness  I should mention that I consider Physics and Mathematics as being in the category of Learning Torah as is clear in the Laws of Learning Torah in the Rambam, chapter 3 about the subjects defined in th first four chapters as eing in the category of Gemara.