Philosophy seems less interesting to me nowadays because I am upset about what is going on in the USA and I do not see philosophy as ever getting issues of government correct.

For some reason Plato, Kant, Leonard Nelson, Hegel may have been great and deep thinkers, but when it comes to political issues they did not seem to have that same degree of insight or talent.

The people that got politics right the founding fathers of the USA Constitution were not philosophers and they did not base their thought on philosophy. Rather they based their ideas on England and especially the Glorious Revolution of 1689.

It is not that the issues were all that different. Rather that the philosophers got the issues wrong. Hegel saw the terrible mess of the French Revolution but his solution seems to involve too much government. Kant also was dealing with the crisis of modernity of Germany after the old structures of society were changing. But his solutions also do not seem accurate--too much world government and or too much individual.

What ever Thomas Jefferson and James Madison got right, it was not based on philosophy. 

 Kelley Ross of the Kant Fries school of thought has commented on the idea that Kant must have been onto something since we see his idea  in Quantum Mechanics.

The basic ideas that between two states the electron is really not doing anything. It has no classical values of position and momentum. So it really does seem very similar to Kant's Dinge An Sich. The thing in itself which Reason has no access into.

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The advantage of the Litvak yeshiva is  authenticity. It is not that Litvaks are very nice or that the Litvak world is so great. It is not that even all the doctrines are right.

Rather it is simply that it is the one address you can go to  to find out what the Torah actually says. Not what people want it to say.

[In fact I had a pretty great experience in both of the Litvak yeshivas [Mir and Shar Yashuv] I attended, but the point I want to bring out here is that one's experience should not make any difference in evaluating the value. The fact in itself that all yeshivas based on the Gra and Rav Shach more or less apply the same principle that says basically that we simply want to learn and understand keep Torah. There is basically no alternative agendas.

The destroyed cities that were destroyed because by the Emancipation Proclamation. If Lincoln had learned Torah, and especially the books of Ethics [Musar], then the whole issue would have been resolved without war.

 The destroyed cities ruined by the Emancipation Proclamation are proof the South was right.

Besides that I just want to add for the sake of information, there is slavery in Torah. And Jesus also said that every word of Torah is true and will never be nullified right in the beginning of the Sermon on the Mount.

So to say that slavery is evil, one has to repudiate a both the Torah and Jesus.

Portland has shown once and for all that the South was right. The Proclamation of Emancipation was a ticking time bomb and now it has come time to explode.

I might add that the tzars also discovered this truth with freeing the serfs. [It did not take long for them to destroy the Russian Empire after that. ]

Legally anyway, the slaves were never freed because you would need the Southern States to agree to a Constitutional amendment by their own free will.

From a Torah point of view also there are only a few ways that a slave can be freed. But I am not sure that is applicable here since I think a government proclamation can free slaves but only if the proclamation is legally valid. Lincoln's was not.

So today what is possible? I suggest Rav Israel Salanter's idea of learning Musar (Ethics). This is in order to understand the basic principles of Torah. If Lincoln had learned Torah and especially the books of Ethics [Musar] then the whole issue would have been resolved without war.

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learning Torah with energy

 I have thought for a long time that Rav Israel Abuchatzeira found a sort of "grace" with God in so far as whenever people came to him to get a blessing, it always [or most always] worked. I do not think he always knew how. He would have bottles of water that people would take home, and usually be saved from whatever problem they were facing. But if he knew how? I doubt it. [He was not all knowing as some people suggest.] 

To me this seems to tie in with the very first lesson in Rav Nahman's LeM Vol I. Chapter 1. That when a person has grace with God his prayers are answered and even his requests --what he asks a favor from people-those are answered too. So how does one gain "grace". In that lesson Rav Nahman says is is by learning Torah with energy. 

This brings the question is there anyone of the Bava Sali family around nowadays that is similar or worthwhile going to for a blessing? Probably. I would venture to say Shimon Buso, [a son of a daughter of Bava Sali] who lives in Jerusalem but learns in Netivot.

[But I ought to add that I think that any descendant of Rav Yaakov Abuchatzeira is worth going to to get advice and a blessing.]

That particular lesson of Rav Nahman says that learning Torah with energy bring together reason with faith. [The ח and נ ] but in the beginning of that section Rav Nahman says learning Torah combines the Nun and the Cheit. In the he says to merit to reason in the first place one needs to learn Torah with energy.