Ayn Rand was right that human created morality is not any more satisfying that human created physics. Either physics is true objectively without any reference to who is looking at it or it is not true at all. And the same with moral principles.

 https://friesian.com/sunwall2.htm Even though Mark Sunwall shows that Ayn Rand had a good point in her knocking of Kant, I still see the importance of his approach if you combine that approach with the Friesian idea of non intuitive immediate knowledge. Faith and reason are the key to a healthy and wholesome person. But faith alone goes off into insanity, and reason alone goes off into emptiness. While this third source  of knowledge is not the same as faith, but it does provide a basis for it as Otto and Kelley Ross have pointed out.

We sadlly live in an age of deep ignorance and darkness. This is not from a lack of ideas, but rather the ideas of madmen have taken over. [religious madmen and secular madmen and fem-nazis ] The internet can be one hand a great help in finding  good info, but also helps silence dissidents. So in academic philosophy you will find tons of sophisticated sounding garbage but no mention of the Friesian school.

I have been aware for some time about the problems that Kant came to answer. But his answers were not satisfying to anyone. Ayn Rand was right that human created morality is not any more satisfying that human created physics. Either physics is true objectively without any reference to who is looking at it or it is not true at all. And the same with moral principles. The three answers to this that I have found compatible and acceptable are Fries, Hegel, Michael Huemer. All three accept that reason recognizes universal principles including the principles of moral truths. However Fries does not call this faculty that knows the axioms of universals "Reason" but the effect is the same. Huemer is the most clear, but tends to ignore the problems that Kant was addressing. Hegel is on board with the idea that reason recognizes universals. The dialectic does not go with empirical knowledge correcting reason, but with reason correcting reason-and that seems weak, Hegel does not want any part of the Universe to be immune from Reason--that is why he is using his approach. I can see his point, but in fact human knowledge progresses only by reason's theories and empirical facts to test those theories.   

The critics of Kant were sometimes people that agreed with his desire to find a solution to what amounted to the mind body problem and others who were anti enlightenment like Georg Hamann. 

Rav Nahman I think was referring to Kant in a highly negative way. i have thought about that reference for a while and I was never sure whom was referred to but now i think it was probably Kant--even though both Kant and Rav Nahman limited reason. Kant limited it to the phenomenal world. Rav Nahman more or less dismissed reason completely. To Rav Nahman the smarter one is, the more stupid he really is.  [Rav Nahman at in LeM I is quite positive about reason, but in LeM II showed its downfall if taken too far. ]

 How could using Torah to make money be ok? One is not allowed to learn Torah for money, nor teach for money. מה אני בחינם אף אתם בחינם THE gemara brings down that God says: "Just as I taught Torah [to Moses] for free, you also must teach Torah for free." Maybe a rav was brought in in order to make decision about law? But that can not be so either, כל דיין שנוטל שכר לדון כל דיניו בטילים "Any judge to receives money to judge, all his decisions are invalid."

 Even though in Israel, there is ''מזונות'' money that the ex-wife gets after a divorce, That is not in accord with the law of the Torah. this is odd because the ''rabbanut'' has authority over marriage and divorce.

After divorce, she gets $1000 if she was a virgin and $500 if not,-- but not a continuous stream of cash; nor automatic custody of the children.

[Just for information-- a widow gets money until she remarries but not a divorced woman.] That is not the only thing that bothers me about the state of affairs in the religious world. I also do not think any religious groups should get money from the state.  I see this a being against the spirit of the law not to make Torah into a shovel to dig with. Making Torah into away to make a living is at least against the spirit of the law and perhaps also against the letter of the law. [The idea of not getting money to learn Torah is a ore issue. people can find permission for this in the Kesef Mishna, but to me it looks like the results are negative. See the commentary of the Rambam on Pirkei Avot where that statement comes up in chapter 3 or 4--not in the first chapter where it appears at first. ]

 I do not think Communism is gone, but rather exchanged places between the US and the USSR. I mean this however in a slightly modified form. For under strict Marxism, the enemy as the non working class. Now however in the US, the enemy is the  working class. Also Russia is not really the sort of democracy of the US, It still is largely a top to down system

The list of severe sins in Torah are not generally known. Good examples are lashon hara [slander] and bitul Torah [not learning Torah when one is able]. In neither of these am I a shining example of how to be careful. But I try. Sadly most public discourse is lashon hara. But there is permission because of the need to warn people about danger. And in fact I depend on that permission. But even legitimate warnings are ignored in the tidal wave of lashon hara that affects all public discourse. 

As for bitul Torah I am no shining example, At some point, I discovered the opinion among some Rishonim about Physics and Metaphysics --being in the category of learning Gemara,

But you could claim that that is somewhat of a stretch. -Especially when it seem to be in direct contradiction to open gemaras about staying away from Greek wisdom. Still I have got a few poskim/authorities to depend on,  and that is enough for me. [However, I do not expand the definition of learning Torah infinitely, but rather confine it to the Oral Law (as given over through the sages of the mishna and gemara), and the Written Law [Old Testament]]

judicial reform in Israel

 One thing that the people against the judicial reform in Israel did not learn was the Federalist Papers about why you can not have a judiciary branch of government that is independent of the will of the people. an independent judiciary branch of government that can nullify [and has often ] nullified the will of the people as expressed by their elected representative is tyranny. In fact, for a very long time I have wondered about political debates in the USA itself that seem unconnected with the Constitution. And this I think is the reason why ''civics'' was are requirement in all schools--even for people that were not planning on going into government service at all. That was so that everyone should have an idea of what it takes to create a just society. Nowadays that knowledge is lost as political debate is reduced to slurs and lashon hara/slander.

Tyranny is what happens when one class [like judges] gets to appoint themselves into positions of power  with no accountability to the people. [Religious authorities have the same problem, as we see in the LE.M volume 1 chapters 12 and 28 of Rav Nahman concerning the problem with Torah scholars that are demons. ] 

Seeking truth rather that loyalty to the group

 Seeking truth rather that loyalty to the group ought to be of prime importance. However for most people, their bread and butter depend on loyalty to the group. Therefore to have seeking truth, individuality, self criticism of one's self and one's group have to come from the group itself--i.e. to be born into a society that stresses individuality is the only way one can come to value truth seeking above all other values.

It must have been some what of a leap  of faith for the Rambam to include the importance of Physics and Metaphysics in the Mishna Torah [Laws of Talmud Torah chapter 3] and the Guide [introduction] where as the simple ''peshat'' of the Gemara is to exclude all ''Greek wisdom'' with extreme prejudice. You have to say that seeking of truth was more important to the Rambam that going along with what everyone else was saying.  [This approach began with Saadia Gaon and Josef ibn Pakuda author of the Obligations of the Hearts.   ][Also see intro to the book Euclid translated to Hebrew by a disciple of the Gra.]

But how to go about this is unclear. On one hand learning fast--saying the words and going on is for me the only way I could get into math and physics at all. But there is also the importance of understanding and review;--and so far I have not really figured out a way for that to work except what I was doing while at the Polytechnic Institute of NYU--reading and saying every word and every page forward and backwards. That certainly helped me getting my A's in the Physics and getting through the Math. But that is slow, and leaves one without the big picture. for a year i have been doing the in depth learning by doing one chap and then review of all previous chapters. then going on to the next chapter and then going back to all previous chapters. But in another period, i just took  to doing a chapter in a Joos ''Theoretical Physics'' 40 times. Then at some point i discovered listening to lectures on utube seems to help-- like harpreet bedi on homology, and susskind on physics TO listen to lectures by an expert is the best way of all the above ways of doing in depth learning.