Not speaking lashon hara/slander. But the equal importance of warning the public

 I can see the importance of not speaking lashon hara/slander but I think that this emphasis tends to diminish the equal importance of warning the public or individuals about dangerous friends or groups. There must be many more sources for this but the two that I recall off hand are Kamtza and Bar Kamtza by which the Second Temple was destroyed. Not so much for some individual transgression but the fact that no one objected. Also the events surrounding the concubine at Giva. It is not at all that some people in that one city had killed the concubine, but rather that no one in that city nor in the entire tribe of Binyamin objected.

See sefer hamidot [of Rav Nahman] the section on embarrassment. he brings there a statement from the sages that it is permissible to embarrass the religious authorities that make money off of the Torah [and what religious authorities don't?], and one must not stand before them, and the clothing they wear is like a saddle on a donkey. So we see that sometimes one must object. Certainly the Gra and Rav Shach objected to great evil, even though it is clear that no one paid any attention to what they were saying until this very day.

There is a lot of tension between the Schools based on Kant and those based on Hegel.

I see philosophy as a sort of orchestra conductor. That is one who is making all the separate aspects of the orchestra /reality to be one unified whole. So the Mind Body problem has been an issue since Descartes.

But 20th century philosophy is not a very good conductor. Especially when philosophy ventures into politics. The results are dismal. 

So I would like to recommend the Kant Fries approach of Leonard Nelson. However that is not to deny the value and important points of all the thinkers after Kant up until Hegel. [There is a lot of tension between the Schools based on Kant and those based on Hegel. And I wish I could decide which is right. But I can not. Each has good points. In fact one of the major objections to Hegel is the sorts of Marxist ideas that perverted his approach. Abusus non tollit usum."Abuse dos not kill use"

The "work book"

 The oddest sort of thing which pops up every time I take a look at the Russian Revolution is that the impression that people have of it being all about everyone getting an equal amount of stuff was not at all what it was about. It was about the industrial workers. And when they took power on Oct 24-25 that is what they in fact enforced. The "work book". If people did not have a continuous set of entries they went to jail. They did not receive "welfare". [The "soviets" were the elected representatives of the workers in the city. This was against the "zemstvos" --the elected representatives of the villages.]

There have been plenty of attempted takeovers of the USA by internal enemies that are welfare-takers. And they claim communism for their model. But what they are asking for is to be the masters, and the white people the slaves. They are not actually asking for communism.

And in fact I agree with the idea of work. That is to say I do not think that Torah ought to be a means to make a living. However that does not negate the idea of sitting and learning Torah. But that I think is a matter of trust in God. When one trusts in God, then I believe that often God provides. [Depending on how sincere the trust is.] But to sit and learn and extort money from the State seems to me to be not the Torah way.

Often one finds in kollels that they feel they deserve to get paid for learning Torah. I have never been able to digest that idea.

To me the idea of kollels and even religious leaders getting paid seems ridiculous. Trust in God I understand. But using Torah as a means to make money seems extremely offense to me.

And furthermore- I do not see any devotion to Torah in it. The whole religious business seems like a sneaky way trick. They pretend to not be using Torah to make money while that is exactly what they are doing. 

Since it is clear that using Torah to make money is forbidden, why not simply stop it in its tracks--once and for all?

Women and blacks against white men

 Many white men are accused by women of sin. The issue is addressed in the Gemara in Gitin pg 7.An amora was asked: "I can call the authorities against someone who is going around and slandering me, What should I do? Answer, ''Be silent and wait upon God.'' Thus, we see calling the police on people is not good. Blacks and women bring false accusations against white men as a matter of gaining credit for themselves.  Though they will not gain from this, still it is necessary to object. [As we see in the events of the concubine of Giva, and Bar Kamtza in Gitin. In these places we see that to object to evil is an obligation.] 

I can imagine that women that bring this endless stream of false accusations against men have not learned the laws of slander.

[But I know the general public does not know the laws of slander. So let me state some general principles.

Slander is speaking negatively [even if true] on anyone except with certain conditions. The conditions are   slightly different for sins between man and his fellow man and sins between man and God. For sins between man and fellow man to see it yourself, to rebuke beforehand, to judge the act according to the Law [Torah], to intend benefit not just to harm someone, that the benefit can not be gained in any other way. that worse punishment will not result that if he would be judged in a court that would go judge according to the Law (Torah.) 

The Gemara in Gitin pg 7 says how do we know that song is forbidden?

 The Gemara in Gitin pg 7 says how do we know that song is forbidden? It answers from one  verse. Then asks "Why not bring from another verse?" Answer: "From there we might think only by instruments is forbidden. How would we know that even by voice is forbidden? From the first verse." To Rashi Tosphot and Rav Yeshayah from Trani this means song in bars [drinking bars]. But to the Rambam all song in forbidden except songs of praise to God. But we see also in the Gemara that making songs out of verses is also forbidden. [See the Gemara where you see that making songs of any verses is forbidden not just the book of Song of Songs.]For this reason Sephardim had lots of Pizmonim [songs in their sidur in order not to be using verses of psalms to be making into songs.

The songs with verses however is worse. That is as the Gemara says about using verses as words for songs "They have made me a song to them." And this does not apply to Shir HaShirim alone but to any use of any verse to make a song. However there is a Gemara Yerushalmi הכל חולים לגבי שיר אפילן אישה זקנה Everyone is sick when they lack song, even an old woman. But not that is is a mitzvah.

So why do I write music then? Because I am sick. Betrayed by everyone I trusted. The religious world in particular. that I thought were righteous. My soul is sick from the fact that I wanted so much to learn Torah but was expelled from every single yeshiva that I wanted simply to sit and learn in. I would just walking and start trying to learn Torah and told to leave. But surprise was that there were the same places that were begging secular Jews to give them money because they had an open door policy for anyone that wanted to learn Torah. I found the opposite to be true. They were using the name of Torah to make money and try to gain power. The "Frum world" I found to be the exact opposite of authentic Torah. That just this, but in an astounding way, they did tremendous efforts to cause a divorce between me and my wife and later to rape my children. So the frum religious world I found to be anti-Torah.Opposed to true Torah Values. 

There is a kind of ambiguity in politics and philosophy that Kant was trying to solve.

 There is a kind of ambiguity in politics and philosophy that Kant was trying to solve. The idea was to eliminate speculation outside the areas of possibility of experience [not possible experience]. But that does suggest an intersection with politics. We might not know what is true justice? But what ever true justice is, is certainly not outside the area of possibility of experience. The answer of Kant has seemed weak since the first review by a critique on Kant by Schultz, his closest ally. I do not see how any other answer besides Fries is possible, That knowledge is not just from sensible perception or from reason, rather from a sort of core knowledge of immediate nonintuitive knowledge. [Fries and Beneke are thought to be of the empirical Kant first. But if you look at the friesian.com you will see that fries and nelson were non intuitive immediate knowledge first.] But as close to faith his seems, it is not faith--not a sort of knowledge based on extrasensory perception. Rather a source of knowledge that is not based on any kind of feeling or reason.

In the world of politics, the answers of philosophy have been incoherent. Ideas from Kant, do not appear to have brought any kind of clarity. It seems to me that there was a kind of flow from above of philosophy from the period starting from Kant to Hegel. But ideas about politics seem to have been focused into the founding fathers of the USA. So In fact Hegel saw the USA as the State of the Future.

Modern morality the opposite of the morality of the Bible.

 ''Sit underneath your place on the Sabbath day.''[Exodus the parsha of the Mann] שבו תחתיו ביום השבת.Rav Nahman explains this thus: that a person should thinks of himself as lower than his level. Even if he know his level, he should consider himself as less that than.[ LeM vol. I chapter 31]. I have found this advice useful in terms of learning. Instead of thinking I will understand everything perfectly, I rather imagine that in fact I will not understand, but that simply go on in the subject I am learning--whether in Gemara, Rashi, Tosphot Maharsha or Physics, and thus eventually in fact come to understand.

Pride is given too large a place in modern society. This is the opposite of Torah thought in which it is thought to be the worst possible sin to think of oneself as greater that he really is. The sin of Pride.

Modern morality the opposite of the morality of the Bible. [Modern morality is the morality of Satan,] Self Esteem is thought to be the greatest thing. In the Torah, it is considered the gravest of all sins, and that leads one to the bottom of hell.