Natural man is a primate. A smart primate.

It is somewhat disconcerting to see that Thomas Jefferson had tremendous faith in the common man. And the inherent goodness of the common man. As many people in WASP [White Anglo Saxon Protestant] societies did, they thought that goodness that was grafted onto natural man is inherent. [Stuart Mill made the same mistake.]

Thousand of years of society believing in the Law of Moses, made Western Civilization. Not natural man. Natural man is a primate. A smart primate. Good at using his intelligence to get what he wants. Instrumental reason, not moral reason.

But when it came to the issue of people attacking the USA, he was unequivocal. Exterminate them. So he was no dreamer in the clouds. If people want peace,-- well that is one thing. But people that want war, he was clear what to do about it.

This is a good lesson for today. There are people that want to bring down the USA. Thomas Jefferson would have not doubts about what to do with them.   [The issue came up when settlements on the borders of the USA in it smaller extent then were being systematically attacked.]

common sense.

Often a tzadik merits to one but not more than one main idea. Some "Aitza" piece of advice that can help all others.
But this goes further than just tzadikim.
Mozart wrote a lot of music but there  was only a few of a major masterpieces. Eine Kleine Nacht Musik. The Jupiter Symphony. The Magic Flute.

Rav Nahman actually merited  to a few major pieces of advice for people that each one is in itself a masterpiece. Private conversation with God, Tikun Klali, Seder HaLimud.

My own dad had a  wealth of great invention that he came up with while working for the USA government. But I would have to say the major thing that my parents had that is a contribution to all mankind [if one can get a handle on its essence] is their kind of common sense. Or balance.  There is something to learn from every great person. And furthermore there is a kind of common sense how to avoid the frauds..

Trust in God.

Trust in God involves an awareness that human life is inherently hard. There are customs that help but even with all the customs and good habits still there the basic fact does not change that things are hard. [For example speaking the truth at all cost, is great habit and and help and protection. But in the long run it is limited.] The only thing that can really help is God's will. He has to want to help. And if He wants to help, then help will come.But to gain this can only come indirectly. There is nothing one can do that will bring help automatically. Rather all one can do is hope for God's help. But there is one thing that in fact does bring about that God should want to help. That is trust.
So the best idea in all situations is to gain an attitude of trust in God.

[I have mentioned this subject before. The major areas of clarification about it comes from the book of Navardok Madragat HaAdam, The Obligations of the Hearts, and the Gra on Mishlei. And also Rav Nahman in the Lem II in the lesson concerning Shavuot. There Rav Nahman explains the idea of "making a vessel" for the blessing to have something to flow into.]


One thing you see in Chovot Levavot [Obligations of the Hearts] is that there is a difference between medicine cures and working for a living. He treats these two areas differently. On the subject of a cure and King Asa's seeking doctors, Ibn Pakuda [the author of Obligations of the Hearts] says the sin was to seek doctors at all. [That is as surprise since most people think that one can seek doctor's help but trust in God. The Obligations of the Hearts does not go with that possibility. But when it comes to making a living, he is on board with making effort. So it must be that he is thinking the cure issue and the making a living issue are separate.] 

Human worth

Human worth depends mainly on deeds. Evil deeds makes that value disappear. Treason, the present day attempt to overturn the USA to turn it into a communist dictatorship with the whites being the slaves is not a good deed. So everyone involved in this attempt, or even agrees with it by silence, has lost their human worth.
So what needs to be done is to get rid of the so called Democratic party which is really just an attempt to overthrow the USA. 

If gentiles think they have moral codes better than the Bible, well their moral codes anyway change with the direction of the breeze every ten years.

Sex is an important issue but hard to get right. Rav Nahman of Uman suggested a correction for sexual sin --saying the ten psalms 16,32,41,42,59,77,90,105,137, 150.
But as Sefardim noticed during their 2000 year exile in Muslim lands that the only real way to get to sexual purity is by being married immediately that one comes of age.

[In some areas this was necessary for other reasons.]

That is as soon as the boys were 13 and the girls 12, they were married off. Usual the actual arrangements about who marries whom was made many years before that. Just the actual marriage only happened by the boy was 13 and the girl 12.

And even though the men could marry many women, still the arrangement was usually just one wife to one man. 
In Torah law, a man can have many wives and even many girl friends. And in fact we see many great people in the Bible had several wives and concubines. Like Kalev ben Yefuna [Chronicles I 2:46] [Caleb, the friend of Joshua ]

If gentiles think they have moral codes better than the Bible, well their moral codes anyway change with the direction of the  breeze every ten years. and then they think their ideas of morality are eternal,

[Marriage in Torah is not a "sacrament." It does not make sex holy. Nor even allowed. What it does accomplish is to make obligations on the man and other obligations on the wife. The same act of sex that is permitted after marriage is also permitted before marriage. The only difference is to the Ramban it is permitted period. To the Rambam there is lacking a positive command to marry. That is however not prostitution. So Christians have things about sex very mixed up.
That is what comes from lack of study of the Old Testament. When Christians talk about study of the Bible, they never get into the exact laws of the Bible.

So that was when TRW contacted my dad to design the infrared apparatus to put into the satellites.

I wanted to put into perceptive. My dad was not at all part of the space program at first. Americans were focused on getting into space. So from 1960 until 1965 he was in business for himself. [He had invented a super sharp copy mate machine]. So his invention of the infrared telescope was simply in his past at that point. [Life Magazine July 26 1954 pages 24-26](https://books.google.co.il/books?id=D1QEAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA24&source=gbs_toc_r&cad=2#v=onepage&q&f=false) Sure the USA and the USSR were desperately focused on getting ahead of each other in space. Only at some point the USA decided it needed infrared satellites over the USSR as an early warning system.[In case the Soviets decided to launch --God forbid]. So that was when they contacted my dad to design the infrared apparatus to put into the satellites. By the end of the 60's that job was done, and then they put him in charge of a different satellite program--laser communication between satellites.

[That was never implemented until the 2000's when TRW got back into the space program. Before that, TRW was out, since a spy was discovered there working for the KGB. So TRW lost all its contracts at that point. But my dad had already left at that time. My dad left because his work on the laser was finished and he decided to tackle other challenges.]

global warming

It helps to get an idea of the "big picture" as the Gra said [brought in the introduction to the Translation of Euclid into Hebrew by a disciple of the Gra.] One single lack in any of the seven wisdoms will result in a hundred fold lack in understanding of Torah.

For me getting to know the big picture was a kind of amateur interest in Dinosaurs. [Surely the fascination of all young kids--but it stuck with me even after childhood.] But just by getting to know the environment of the dinosaurs I happen to have an idea of what the carbon dioxide levels were back then   and also world wide temperatures. So the whole global warming scare always seemed to me to be less than meaningless.