In the West it is not known that one has a connection with one's parents.

 In the West it is not known that one has a connection with one's parents. But as you can see in Torah that this connection is not determinate of everything.  [that is to say if they command one to disobey  a negative commandment that has karet attached to it they must not be listened to. [You can see this in Naphtali Troup. A great sage in the time of Rav Haim of Brisk that simply did not get to be as well known, but also very deep. חידושי הגרנ''ט.

That is the legal aspect. However in a deeper sense clearly one should get an idea of what kind of parents he or she has. If they are wicked then it makes no sense to obey them. [That is not written into law which makes the only exception as when they are crazy.]

Why do I bring this up? Because I wanted to point out  an important idea of Isaac Luria that one's inner light comes from the mother and outer light from the father. That is to say the connection with one's mother is more felt since it is internal. But it is the light of one's father that provides the outer light which is the protective shield around one. So one simply does not notice it until it is gone.

So my feeling is that people are not as aware as they ought to be about their inner connection and outer shield that they have from their parents.

Reason and Freedom

 In Enlightenment thought Reason and Freedom are always linked. The trajectory of history is always supposed to go towards more freedom. This seems like a mistake. I saw what happens in NY when there is total freedom for everyone and absolutely no government control--during a blackout. This maybe has not happened recently so people forget what total freedom from government means. Even with little government control I saw in the Ukraine. When the police are not motivated and sit in their station relaxing--I got a severe taste of what happens not just when there is no government but little government.

The only reason I can see that people think this is good is they have never had to live through these sort of surrealistic nightmares 

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Rav Shach [Laws of Peah 2:11]

In the Torah there is an obligation to leave the corner of one's field of grain. That is called Peah. The Yerushalmi [The Gemara written in Israel], asks what if the first stalk that is cut was then burned. Rav Shach [Laws of Peah 2:11] explains this question to be based on a previous doubt of the Gemara if the first stalk that was harvested can be made into peah. The Gemara itself answers thus: Since it makes other talks obligated, it itself can not be obligated.

So the order of the Gemara would have to be thus: Can the first stalk be made into peah? And if you say yes then if it is burned then does one have to reap another stalk for the field to be obligated in peah. Then the Gemara answers the first question in the negative. That stalk can not become peah. So automatically we know the answer to the second question.

I can see the idea of the Gemara's question what if the first stalk is burned? You can find something like this in reading the Megilah."One who is obligated can cause others to fulfill their obligation." That is what it  seems the Gemara must mean. but on the other side of thing you can say lets say Grace After Meals for the sake of someone who has eaten bread though you have not.. But at any rate, you can see the question of the Gemara. If that first stalk causes the obligation  then if it is burned you would need to reap a new stalk..

There are definitions here. Poor means someone with no money a period of time. Poor does not mean anyone asking for money. In fact the Rambam has a long essay about the evil of the heads of the yeshivot that ask for charity in Pirkei Avot perek 4 mishna 3. 

deeper source of knowledge that is neither based on reason nor the senses. See: An Enquiry Concerning Hume's Misunderstanding

 Dr Michael Huemer has brought together arguments and added his own to show knowledge can not be based only on sense perception and not only on reason. Thus you would think that knowledge needs both,-- or perhaps a better approach is that of Dr Kelley Ross [the Kant- Fries School of thought] that there is a deeper source of knowledge that is neither based on reason nor the senses.

It occurred to me that this might very well answer a question in the Critique of Pure Reason where Kant shows that there must be a connection between the categories [of pure reason] and the sense perception data that comes in. [That he calls the Transcendental Deduction.] Yet it has been a source of difficulty to see that just because something Must Be So, why should it be so? [I mean that the data from the senses must be ordered by Reason,-- but how?

I think Dr Kelley Ross based on Kant, Fries, and Leonard Nelson shows this well.

[Hegel thinks that  Being leads up to Logos.  That is the structure of his whole system. [like Plotinus] So he surely believes there is this connection, but he has a different answer --that even sense perception is thought. His idea of what "thought" is a wider than the Hume definition that it is only what can be derived by definitions. You can see this approach in Cunningham in his thesis in 1910. But more than that, you might note that Hume's limitation on reason is assumed, but never proved. [as Bryan Caplan noted] (in: An Enquiry Concerning Hume's Misunderstanding ). He just says over and over that reason alone can only tell us about self contradictions of deductions from axioms. Something he learned from Euclid. As Kant showed that is not true. There are apriori truths not based on definitions. It does seem hard to see why it took such a long time for the implications of Fries and Nelson to be put together in a systematic way by Kelley Ross.--but I guess that is just the way things turned out. 

The implication of all this is simple--it gives justification of faith. And it also shows the approach of the mediaevals -that reason tells us what to believe in. [Not that there is just faith and reason in the Middle Ages, but that reason tells us what to believe in. ]

See Maverick Philosopher who hold the same way but not in so many words.

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I have never been very happy about Communism.

Even though there is some debate about China --especially due to their claim on the South China Sea and Taiwan I have to to say that I have never been very happy about Communism. But a lot depends on your starting point. If you are in a Western Democracy--Taiwan, Japan, Europe, England, the USA, Australia, etc. well then obviously a totalitarian communist dictatorship is a step down. But if one is in a situation of chaos and breakdown of civilization then you need some system that can bring order and peace even if it is totalitarian. I discovered this in the Ukraine where everyone said that things were better under the USSR than now.