“Known for his libertine lifestyle—including running a sex-cam business—he seemed an odd fit for the moral strictures of Islam. And he was.”
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Ilhan Omar was banging like 3 different guys and laundering campaign funds and committing immigration fraud, while wearing a hijab as a costume, long before Andrew Tate’s apparently opportunistic conversion.
But you probably can’t write an article trashing her because the psychotic religious fundamentalists who actually pose a threat to civilization, Democrats, would have destroyed your life.
You could also draw a comparison with many pop idols of the past 50-60 years with their narcissistic, amoral decadence.
Particularly today, rapper stars often have quite libertine lifestyles (or public personas, anyway). Their songs, or poetry or whatever you want to call it, celebrate raw, violent masculinity and the total male dominance over passive, weak females, who are referred to using the most vulgar, demeaning epithets imaginable.
The left is 100x more misogynistic than the right these days. Nothing is more patriarchal than believing fetishistic and delusional men when they say that they're really women, and giving them anti discrimination laws to enjoy their fetishes and delusions wherever they want. Even when those laws put females in danger and at a disadvantage.
“Do not give what is holy to the dogs; nor cast your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet, and turn and tear you in pieces." Matthew 7:6
I am not a Christian. But oddly enough all kinds of Bible quotes pop into my head these days.
And male prisoners bring housed in women’s prisons when all they have to do it say they identify as a women. Then we all scratch our heads and wonder how all these women prisoners are having babies.
Another consequence - pharma and plastic surgeons making the big bucks giving confused under aged girls and young women testosterone & double mastectomies. Nothing weird or wrong there! Because - Identity!
If you're talking about Loudon County, that's not accurate. The assailant was not transgender or "non-binary" or whatever. They were male identified, and their victim was their "girlfriend" or more likely, occasional sex partner, and they occasionally met up in the girls bathroom to fool around - apparently the guy got more aggressive and pushy abou the acts he wanted to do, which ended up in a pretty bad sounding assault and rape in the stall that they had once again met together in.
The questions around "trans" happened because of a few things: One, there were rumors that the assailant sometimes wore skirts (of the goth guy type), but nothing confirmed. They were not entering the bathroom under the guise of being a trans-girl however, or because of the school's policies to allow trans bathroom use that still would not have permitted him using the bathroom to hook up in, or as a lone male skulking in the bathroom waiting to assualt someone who was "allowed" in under the policy. They were entering the bathroom with another girl for non-bathroom purposes, because the girls' bathroom likely has locked stalls and more "privacy" (much in "my days" in high school we used the girls' bathroom to smoke cigarettes in).
The school, however proceeded to complete a series of bad actions around this kid to start with: first, he had assaulted another student in another school in the district. Rather than being expelled or otherwise, he was allowed to transfer to this school - and no one was given the heads up apparently about his past. Secondly, the school treated the parents of the victim poorly - withholding information, the delay in reporting the incident to police, and "policing" the parents response to the situation. Thirdly, once the rumours began that this was the result of the "trans bathroom" policy, the school got super defensive and denied publicy that any assaults had occurred since this policy was enacted - rather than being clear that there was an assault, but that it had nothing to do with the policy. Basically, the school thought it was more important to protect the trans bathroom policy than it was to protect the victim, and to take responsibiliy for how they mishandled the assailant to begin with, which ended up making the trans bathroom policy seem more suspect.
I think the boy's name has been withheld because he was 14. So, I do not know whether he was trying to go by a girl name at school or not. In this day and age of LGBTQ++WTF Alliances I am skeptical that any boys go to school wearing skirts and are not identifying as "trans" which is certainly a state of mind (mental disorder or social contagion). Sadly, I don't think any girls go to school with short hair now without it being understood that it is a signal that they think they "are boys". This is different from even 10 years ago.
Plenty of men who identify as "trans" explain their being into women as that they "are lesbians". So, I don't know. Did you read somewhere that he went by his own name and never a girl one?
It seems to be much more than wild teen sex gone astray as the judge put him on a sex offender list. "Citing the “scary” nature of the boy’s crimes and psychological reports, the judge said this was the first time she had ever required a minor to be put on the registry." https://thenewamerican.com/loudoun-county-transgender-school-rapist-found-guilty/
Even worse than these school bathroom policies are the policies that direct teachers to call kids opposite sex names the kids make up - without the parents even knowing - and then even against the parents's instructions when they find out. This is a serious psychological intervention. Here is a happy story of a school that backed down and reversed course from that policy: "What Happens When Schools Follow the Parents’ Lead?" https://pitt.substack.com/p/what-happens-when-schools-follow
This seems accurate BUT please if you must use “they” as a gender neutral third person try it singular: “they is sad” or “give them what they wants” etc... yes it sounds dumb but if it catches on it will make sense. “They are” achieves gender neutrality but is confusing.
Well, I don't know. Someone here has expanded/corrected the tg/bathroom Loudoun story so I'm not actually sure which parts of it are true, versus constructed or interpreted to fit some narrative.
The one thing everyone agrees, is that the boy was allowed to quietly transfer to another school, where he repeated the same behavior (sex with a girl, described as "rape").
There was also some kind of weird situation where the dad of the first(?) girl showed up at a school board meeting to complain about the lack of action against the boy, and they called the police and had him arrested.
The boy got off without any reprimand or intervention, whereas the dad of the victim was arrested. At least, that's how it was interpreted. This outraged a lot of people, and it led to parents running for office to get some of these Loudoun school board officials thrown out. Which they did.
I think you, like most people, misunderstand the term "patriarchy". People use the term for any system in which men mistreat women, and dump into this large, meaningless box traditional religious societies in which men are deemed to be the head of the family and the women are subservient to the men, as well as modern secular societies in which women bear men's children without requiring the men to help raise and support the children, and in which men can dress as women and invade women's spaces. No, patriarch is not such a large box. Men can abuse women in any system, and women can abuse men in any system (though the abuse can take different forms). Patriarchy, I would argue, is a system in which young men are sexually starved into submission to harness their particular strengths in service to the greater needs of the family, in an attempt to essentially make men "more like women" in the sense of being devoted to their offspring, and the mother(s) of their offspring. Patriarchy can include abuse, and it also affords greater protection to children and women, generally speaking. Look at homicide rates by country; the more "egalitarian" the society, the more likely women are murdered at a similar rate as the men. The more "patriarchal" the country, the less likely the women are to be murdered. Because we cannot paint reality into existence, i.e., legislate how society should be, but can only create with our laws incentives, sometimes the laws we enact to "help" certain groups end up actually hurting them, and vice versa. There are always trade-offs. So while in the past women weren't permitted to work in bars unless they were related to the owner, this was considered by some to be "anti-woman" so they changed the law to make us more "equal," so now women are expected to put up with harassment working in bars. The first was patriarchal, the second is not. Generous maternity leave/benefits lead to fewer employment opportunities for women, etc. There are definitely downsides to patriarchy, and to modern egalitarianism, for women specifically, but they are totally different, and I think it is important to draw a distinction.
Consider the prohibition on knowing who one is. The destruction of national history, cultural myth and social/spiritual connection. The gutting of education, community and industrial base. The looting of the economy. The capture and reduction of your national dialogue to a psyop. Living crisis to crisis no solution's forthcoming. Alway's waiting for the hammer to fall. The ongoing war to replace you and seize your country.--Pretend it isn't happening.
All good and relevant points. I used "patriarchy" because the left is supposedly fighting against all things "patriarchal". Laughably simplistic, and more than a little ironic, but some people buy it in droves. Ironically it's not Toxic Masculinity that's gotten us into this mess. It's indulgent and starry eyed Toxic Femininity and the bone headed notion that there are no differences at all between the sexes that has. We're all just blank slate Meat Legos who choose their "genders". Be kind! It'll be fine!
Rap culture is the exact same as the trans movement; over time it just creates more Democrats. That’s all they care about.
Although, admittedly, cutting people’s dicks off is an escalation when compared to simply celebrating music that encourages a life of crime and community destruction.
Bad social and financial policy and the exploitation of the consequences by the monster's imposing it. There is no Democrat/Republican, left/right, capitalist/marxist only we (they'd like to believe) small Citizen's of the Republic. (criminal, terrorist, white supremacist, homophobic, white nationalist, add your own.)
Example: Jacob Schiff (Congressman Adam Schiff's grandpa) and his Wall Street cohort's (remember Occupy?) funded Lenin and the Bolshevik's. If you believe Solzhenitsyn, the Bolshevik's weren't Russian, and in fact hated the Russian people and proved it by starving and murdering them by the millions. Why? Simple. Access to the Czar's treasury. Now consider the failure of elected American political leadership, the looting of the national treasury by Wall Street thug's, betrayal by our intelligence agencies, the ongoing Canadian/EU collapse of human right's and freedom, and the recent open display of hubris at Davos by criminal finance and draw your own conclusions.( Where are trillions in unaccounted for American tax dollars going?)
We're under attack because we're American's and because we believe in the freedom outlined in our Constitution. No one cares if you're a Muslim, a Jew, a Christian, Black, White, Gay, be anything you want. But be an American.
Further more. Why is there open discrimination and a sexist/racist war on white heterosexual males and why can't we talk about it? Why are young white males being drugged and butchered and denied access to higher education? Who is financing it, and who is getting paid to make it happen? (Again. Your tax dollars at work?)
Tate is being prosecuted simply because he has a sense of personal power and agency, successfully stuffed his pocket's and the press is being told to propagandize it. He, (like Assange, Snowden and Peltier) is just the object lesson of the moment. Most of the psyop is the creation of fear and confusion.
"We're under attack because we're American's and because we believe in the freedom outlined in our Constitution. No one cares if you're a Muslim, a Jew, a Christian, Black, White, Gay, be anything you want. But be an American."
I believe you said it better than I have ever heard it. That's exactly right; and what is needed to navigate the deterioration of our culture and those that hate the US. Thank you.
If you don't have a plan and a sense of personal agency and power you become a part of someone else's plan and find yourself manipulated and controlled by the power and aims of other's. The American Constitutional Republic, its Constitution, and the Bill of Right's it contains, is the empowering human vision informing the agency and consent of the FREE CITIZEN to be represented by elected political leadership directly responsible in conduct and action too the CITIZEN. That is the only legitimate political reality in the United States of America. The chaos and disintegration of American cultural/social/economic values American's are experiencing is the direct result of the failure and corruption of elected American political representation and leadership.----Hope this helps.
Just saying that just as contemporary white culture is not really very much like it’s pop stars, contemporary black culture is different from its rap stars. The average person in the street is nothing like these figures, and these figures are a tool to influence and shape the average person by convincing them everyone who’s anyone thinks a certain way. Also, isn’t it a long cited stat that the largest consumers of rap are 14 year old caucasians?
Consumers of culture is not the issue. The issue is the profane and pornographic sounds and imagery of rap and hip hop. They say ‘art’ reflects the culture- if so ‘black culture’ is debauched. The saddest thing at the recent Grammy awards was that the banal dance music of Beyoncé outpaced the number of awards received by all time Grammy winner, Hungarian-British conductor Georg Solti. That says everything about how mediocre the American culture has become.
You are being exceptionally disingenuous portraying hip hop, which is a culture unto itself, as Black culture in its entirety when I'm sure you know full well that Black Americans created, helped to create, or pioneered every major musical genre that emerged in America. And how can consumers of culture not be the issue when the industry necessarily responds to the tastes of consumers to ensure profitability? White youth and young adults are getting the exact sort of content from hip hop artists that they enjoy, and they know every word to every Top 100 hip hop song too. Hip hop is obviously the most popular of the major American genres at the moment which is due, in large part, to its appeal among youth of all races and ethnicities. But if you have little to no firsthand experience with Black American culture in its varying dimensions, or you're simply choosing to see only what you want to see, then of course you'd say something as vacuous as that. But I'm all too certain big names like Michael Jackson, Whitney Houston, Prince, etc aren't exactly unfamiliar to you but somehow they don't count as definers of Black musical culture.
I'll take Beyonce over Sam Smith any day; not sure that "white pop culture" is any better than "black pop culture." Not sure there is any virtue to be had in putting certain groups down; a wiser course of action is to search for any good you can find and emulate it. Be like the bee, searching out honey, and not like the fly . . .
There are/were many artists who don’t fall into that category (like everything else in the generalization world) but he was definitely guilty. Keep Your Head Up just gave everyone memory loss.
"the total male dominance over passive, weak females,"
It appears no one has ever told The Women in my family they were supposed to be weak and passive. Starting with Granny Stein (born 1862, raised 7 by herself after her husband died on the ND prairie). You could say many things about her. Weak & Passive AIN'T one of them. She passed that along to the rest of the women in our family.
It doesn't surprise me that a misogynist would convert to Islam. Some imams give classes to the faithful on how to beat their wives. The Dems/Socs love Islam. They call this violent, brutal religion, "The religion of peace." and these idiots actually believe it.
You could also keep going and note how popular rappers have been unchallenged in their egregiously misogynistic lyrics since at least the late 80's, but we didn't see any public uproar until we heard the word "homo".
When was that? From my recollection, it was Gangsta Rap that emerged in the early 90s and more or less dominated the genre throughout the decade that elicited what is still today the biggest and most sustained outcry from practically all corners. Today a lot of the catchier songs are heavily sexual and overly materialistic at most, but it doesn't come close to being as raw, violent, and explicit as the 90s stuff.
The only rapper I'm aware of in recent years to use a supposed newfound religious devotion in concert with a highly visible ideological profile is Kanye West
Touche. I thought this essay was a hidden finger writing a political message on the wall (in essence). Saying "I was surprised (and relieved) to find that the profile made no mention of Tate’s religion." and "As far as I was concerned, this was progress. So what if Tate was Muslim? People of all faiths do bad things and have bad ideas, and Muslims were no exception. Finally, we were normal." sounded like, "I don't care what the means are, the end is, after all, the goal I seek. That is woke politics in the kernal of a nutshell. IMHO. Censor, twist, celebrate and consider myself on a higher plane and fully justified. I will understand nothing and explain everything.
Since this guy is from Brookings the real objective was to convince everyone that we need to keep electing Democrats because otherwise Adrian Vermeule, Sohrab Amari, and Patrick Deneen, who I’m still not sure are real people, are going to seize power and roll down your street with tanks and force you to take communion.
I met a magical fairy yesterday who said she would grant me one wish.
"I wish to live forever" I said.
"Sorry" said the fairy, "That is the only wish that I'm not allowed to grant."
"Fine" I said, "then I want to die the day after Congress is filled with honest, hard-working, bipartisan men and women who act only in the people's best interests!"
"So what if Tate was Muslim? People of all faiths do bad things and have bad ideas, and Muslims were no exception. "
This is true but in modern times do other religions do bad things on the scale that Islam does? I am thinking of the gulf states who throw homosexuals off buildings chop off hands and heads, have public floggings and of course ISIS. When ISIS was at its zenith, they slaughtered any infidel they could lay their hands on and they murdered them in horrible fashions. They buried them alive, burnt them alive and dragged them behind trucks, raped women and children and then sold them into slavery. They murdered hundreds, thousands? Who knows?
And comprof and his left wing buddies defend these monsters and call Islam the religion of peace.
The author of today's essay conveniently ignores these abominations. Surely Bari edited this essay and would spot that the author is an Islamic apologist.
Yeah, it would be nice to think that there is a middle ground between the toss-the- gays-off- the roof philosophy of Islam and the gays-in-the=pulpit policies of liberal Christianity...sigh...
i often wonder when I see women covered. if they were not forced to do this would they? I used to shop at a bug discount designer shop. the dressing rooms was one big one with mirrors all around. I say covered women in there trying on all sorts of clothes and buying them. why?
Pictures are available from Iran circa 1979 prior to the revolution...not a burkha to be seen and bikinis at the beaches. That says all I need to know about the coverings being a choice.
Many of them are not forced to cover - some even go against their families' wishes for them to be more "modern." There is a certain comfort in not caring what people think of one's appearance, of hiding one's beauty. Of not letting men-at-large enjoy one's beauty, of controlling who gets to enjoy one's own beauty. And they try on clothes, and buy them, because they like to look good for their husbands at home, and for their girlfriends at get-togethers. Good questions.
She could be having sex with a German Shepard and comprof and the Socialists would love her and support her and criticize anyone who spoke out against her and her dog as a dogyphobe.
My supposition circa 1992 was that once we leave Christian ethics anything is allowable. On what basis do we have an injunction against bestiality? Personal preference? “Without God all things are permissible”. Doestovesky
The priests of Doestovesky's "god" are currently sprinkling Wagner mercenaries with holy water as they roll off to rape Ukraine. Western ethics came into being more in spite of Xtianity than because of it.
The report I heard said (as always) someone calling in a fake report about a woman being held against her will brought about the police raid. The woman in question claimed she was in no danger. That's the first I ever heard of Señor Tate. I suspect the prosecution is more about $$$$$$ changing hands and headline politic's than any actual legitimate moral concern. What's Dylan's old IDIOT WIND line: "..someone's got it in for me--they're planting story's in the press--who ever it is I wish they'd cut it out quick--but when they will I can only guess..."
The entire thing is another pay me false flag airball distraction. (Unless you're Andrew Tate.)
If you're interested in what this circus is actually about engage the f'k it gear, stretch your perspective and get your hand's on the Edward F. Edinger commentary on C.G. Jung's AION (short read). Actually feeling ballsy tackle AION itself.
Yes they actually filmed them having sex but it was deceptively edited so we don’t know if they really had sex even though there is a video of them having sex.
She paid one of her infidel lovers $400,000 for “campaign consulting”.
Kev, why to you answer this clown? He never gives a straight answer or engages in real debate. He probably believes that Bill Clinton, a misogynist sexual predator "Did not have sex, with that woman, Monica Lewinsky."
He defends the most vile Democrats/Socialist the antisemitic Muslims in the squad and the Socialist Party.
Fascinating, LP. I've asked Kevin Durant repeatedly if the person who recieved the money was her husband or if it was one of, ask KD said, her "infidel lovers."
Not defending anyone. Just looking to be factually accurate. Albeit antithetical to your worldview, it is important.
Lol. I've given straight answers and engaged in debate from Day 1. You just don't like when I do and point out your abject buffoonery, like bringing Bill Clinton and Lewinsky.
Why has he not answered? Do you have any insight re: this issue, LP?
Thank you for this link that itemizes what a rotten scofflaw Ilhan Omar is. 23 traffic citations! And that doesn't even count the last 2 years. This woman is a menace.
Dude, I'm circumcised. Heston wasn't. I know, because William Wyler confidentially asked me if that would impair Heston's authenticity. I told him, just eliminate the hardcore scenes and nobody will know the difference.
She hasn't been arrested because she IS the narrative in her Somalian MPLS ward; her constituents don't even like her anymore as she is the democrat, demographic 'chic'.
She committed marriage fraud by marrying(stuping) her brother to obtain citizenship and that is well known here in Minny. Taqiyya, the excusable muslim(correct me) way of lying to protect your goals.
Oh man, you're hilarious. From my home office in the foothills of the Olympic Mountains looking across the Strait of Juan de Fuca at Vancouver Island, I see very clearly how little anyone actually cares about confronting leftist politicians about all the shit they pull. But my comment was not serious; I don't know that Omar was fucking her own brother. That's just a scandalous rumor.
She's a protected class minority. She can break all kinds of laws, such as committing immigration fraud, and get away with it. It also helps that she managed to get elected to Congress. Congress reps can pretty much break any laws they feel like. R's as well as D's.
When you refer to Democrats, if you are referring to those in govt. who support our hidden govt. employees, I might agree with you. But there seems to be some Republicans who stand by and let the un-elected officials make policy and influence the media, esp. social media.
I’ve long read that a great appeal of Communism is not that as a faith that it is easy, but on the contrary that it is hard. We all instinctively want boundaries and rules. Freedom is good, but too much freedom is scary. Many of the freedom preaching Existentialists were Communists. Heidegger was a Nazi.
And our nation was not founded to protect the freedom to be a loud self indulgent moron. It was to protect the right to be a disciplined believer in some variant of Chritianity not allowed in Europe. Many of the colonies, in any event.
To be an adult is to take serious things seriously. Adulthood is in decline in our nation, so it is small wonder people are clinging in increasing numbers to cultish attachments; or, in this case, to what is seemingly stylistic posturing.
But Leftism is a cult. Rational thought and dissent are not allowed and all outsiders are hated and reviled.
I will add that it is odd to me that there can be HUGE internet trends I’ve never heard of. Until he giot arrested I had not heard of Andrew Tate. His following itself seems a bit cultish
We are atomized and lonely. Very little good comes of that without vigorous effort of a sort few seem willing to individually undertake. We are habituated to consuming, not creating, so the only question becomes which option on the shelf we will pick; and it is entirely possible nearly all are toxic.
I think honest Islam, Christianity and even humanistic Agnosticism are all largely healthy.
But everyone needs to be careful what they let in their minds, because much of the internet is a radioactive swamp.
I had heard of Tate and wondered what the fuss was all about. I watched one of his interviews. Tedious. Another fakir masquerading as a guru to the masses.
Seems like another guy running sex crimes businesses, and hiding it behind a facade of religion. A scam as old as “masculine” religions, it would seem.
I disagree. Communism is an anti-humanism. It is cruelty and hubris elevated to sacred values.
I myself believe in God, but if we view each religion as an effort at describing reality I think all are only partly right. Ethically, though, you don’t need much more than the Golden Rule, and even humanists can embrace that.
A lot of disagreement happens when we have completely different pictures in our heads. When I say Humanism I have Erasmus and people like him in mind, who opposed tyrannical theocracies.
And in the very rare cases I use the word Liberal I have people like Adam Smith, Thomas Paine, and John Stuart Mill in mind.
To my mind Communism is rooted in emotional imbecility and this is certainly common among intellectuals, many of whom are atheists. But stupidity is never inevitable. It is just common.
A rabbi. I listened to calls it unchosen obligations. The thought that there are some things in life that we just need to do whether we like it or not. I really love that concept.
Your post helped me recall something my late father said often to me while I was growing up. He liked to say 'No one should expect a blue ribbon for doing what one is supposed to do.' I love your rabbi's concept as well because it is an absolute truth.
'Rational thought and dissent are not allowed and all outsiders are hated and reviled.'
An excellent description of not only the Far Left, Barry - but of extreme Islam itself. With an angry violence component included. First manifested in Western eyes with the fatwa against Salman Rushdie in the late '80's (and attacked not long ago..), then repeatedly ever since with knifings in schools in Europe and the streets of London, terrorist attacks throughout the Continent (and of course, here) the killing of journalists who dare depict Mohammed in the wrong way, the crackdown on wearing the wrong clothes in Iran, the demolition of women's rights in Afghanistan - quite the rogue gallery's list of achievements. (Longer lists can be found elsewhere.) I haven't seen the progressive Left do that lately.
Our man Tate says it ' "feels like the last religion on Earth,” the only faith that stands a chance of mounting an effective resistance to moral decay and decline.' Yikes.
It looks like Tate wants not only masculine boundaries and discipline but perhaps to also be on the warpath - not a 'cultish' adult we would like to have around.
There are many moderate Muslims. In general, the world over, people are born into this faith and the overwhelming majority practice it peacefully. Best guesses are 10% are radical, 20% are somewhat supportive, and two thirds are decent people who abhor stupid and unnecessary violence.
Of course 10%, when there are perhaps a billion Muslims, is a huge number.
But Leftists are self selecting. You have to adopt their worldview and if you fail to pivot when they say pivot—as they do often—you get cast out as a heretic.
This is the thing; Muslims at least have holy scripture. The Left only has their Daily Cause, one utterly separated from principle and often commkn decency, whose only purpose is political power. There is no rest or peace in such an environment. Some Muslims are angry but most are not. They have a choice. Leftists do not. Nothing they claimed to believe last week can be safe from mandatory reversal the next.
I agree there are moderate Muslims, the vast majority are, which is why I stated extreme Islam. And extreme Islam will kill. It has before, it kills as we speak and will again in the future - and it appears it is that 'resistance' quality to it that attracts a nobody named Tate.
I hate today's iteration of Left progressivism, and how its stain has infected everything from newsrooms, corporate boardrooms and universities. It is insufferable. But to my knowledge at least, it has not killed anyone yet.
And the holy scripture you cite as a positive for Muslims does not seem to have energized their somewhat muted response worldwide against atrocities committed on their religion's behalf.
The Left in this country has caused the deaths of millions of people, from the New York Times refusal to report on the Holodomor, to a Cambodian genocide only made possible by what was at the time called the Imperial Congress run by Democrats, to the guy who ran over a bicyclist last week, then got out and stabbed him, in an act of random racist violence.
Todays Left stands in a firm and obvious line of idrological succession with the Soviets, Maoists, and even the Ethiopian Communists who created a famine everyone in the West cared about, but whose causes no one wanted to talk about.
I am happy to call anyone capable of rational and honest dialogue a Liberal, but among todays Democrats the few Liberals—like Gabbi Tulsard and Kristen Synema— who remain are unwelcome.
Well if you want to include today's somewhat illiterate generation of the radical left with their weird ideas with Stalinism and Mao that is your choice. But is that present rabble I'm referring to - not regimes in the past that had about as much to with the Communism of Karl Marx as the latest iteration of the GOP has to with Lincoln.
That this generation is violent is obvious. They just stormed the Oklahoma State House. They tried to storm the Arizona State House a year or so ago. They called Trumps murder everywhere for more than four years. In perhaps half a dozen cases white people have been killed in patently racist attacks, lije the Grannies in Wisconsin.
One can certainly point to crimes connectable to both sides, but to call the Left blameless or peaceful is a patent absurdity.
When everything turned upside down in 2020 I started looking for answers - I read/listened to Jordan Peterson, Sorab Amhari, Patrick Dineen, Ben Shapiro, Rod Dreher and especially Paul Kingsnorth. The common thread was that the only answer to the insanity was organized religion. I went back to my Protestant church and it was completely captured. I am in the process of converting to Catholicism - rediscovering the Church has re-ordered my life and helps me make sense of what is happening in the world.
Wouldn't it be great to see someone ask Huckabee at her next news conference if she believes in evolution, better still if it was a reporter from Fox..
We definitely see this trend within Judaism with secular Jews or Jews affiliated with less observant movements embrace (or return) to more Orthodox Judaism. As these weren’t my exact reasons for becoming more religious, I can’t comment directly, just wanted to affirm this is a pattern that plays out regardless of the religion involved. I’d be curious if there’s a similar pattern within Hinduism or Buddhism?
I was in the process of exploring reform Judaism as a religion that I might want to convert to. But I found exactly what you’re talking about. It has been captured by the woke and the progressives. When they wanted to know pronouns before I could take a class, I knew it wasn’t for me.
That’s the tendency for people to return to uncompleted tasks. (And maybe partly why I remarried my second wife!). The experiment I heard described was to give subjects problems to solve. Half were allowed to complete the solutions, the other half were stopped part way through. At the follow-up interview at which they got paid for participating, they were left for a little while in a waiting room. On the coffee table there were magazines and also a copy of the problem they were working on. Subjects who hadn’t completed the problem had a much higher tendency to pick it up—rather than magazines—than did the ones who had finished solving it.
I suspect that the same effect happens in people who return to religion after taking a respite from it. Probably part of the human operating system, latest release OSH 5783.5.
My wife is Buddhist and we go to the ceremony on holidays. Currently in Thailand and seen or heard nothing embracing the woke culture. From what I have seen, the Buddhist stay pretty true to the teachings. Unfortunately most of them align Democrats for voting in the US. In Thailand, most would just be happy for an opportunity to get to America and care less about politics.
Hard to tell. I really don’t know that much about Eastern religions, but I do know that they have a very different conceptual framework than Western ones.
Your path is very similar to mine. I found conservative thinkers (after being very leftist) and I went back to my church, fortunately not captured, and a renewed sense of community and conservatism has also really helped me find peace in troubled times.
My story is the same as yours. After a hiatus from my birth religion, Catholicism, I returned several years ago. It has helped me as well through hard times and a family tragedy. I often wonder what people who have no faith do, or what to they turn to when the worst happens. I pray for them as well. Take care.
I was raised in the Methodist church and wanted to find peace solace and answers during these last few turbulent years and couldn’t, because they too, are ‘captured’ and so we switched to a non denominational Bible church for the same reasons you are converting to Catholicism. It’s wonderful so far.
I too went looking among Congregational (New England Protestant) churches to attend during the past year or two- most are woke - but a few remain loyal to the traditional doctrine, that said, they are not well attended....when did Protestantism lose the plot and get side-lined?
As a Catholic, I am fearful that this current Pope is undermining the Catholic faith. He is, in my opinion, a communist and a lot of other Catholics think as I do. Fortunately, there are still some priests that are 'true' men of God and faith. But you have to search.
To RT’s comments I think human conscience is not enough because it’s still driven by human nature and sometimes human failure. And I get that’s why people leave organizations and organized religions. At some point faith has to become a personal and individual relationship with God that’s hopefully supported by a strong community of faith. That relationship adds a depth to conscious alone.
For Jeff I think the Methodist church declined over decades. I noticed it over the last decade where as an institution they sort of forgot about their overarching mission and just started worrying about other things - generally political. But the human condition is the human condition and the needs are the same regardless of skin color or or other physical characteristics. I’m really sad about it actually.
RT, I share your admiration for Sufism...but can't it be said that Sufi "masters" are themselves a sort of priesthood? I certainly see them in this way.
Actually, I sensed the presence of Thoreau in your brief discussion of Sufism. The Sufi poets, along with the Bhagavad Ghita, are, to me, the two most important sources for the naturalistic philosophy Thoreau articulates in Walden. That text was my pathway to Sufism, which I think you describe very well.
But I will suggest that both Thoreau and the Sufi poets see an intense connection to the natural world as the pathway to transcendence, as a means of being in the presence of God. So maybe you and I still are going to "kirk," even if it takes a different form than what were raised with. The theology and the architecture may vary, but the desire to be in the presence of God remains undiminished.
I respectfully disagree, Fannie. Organized religion is not the only answer, though it is for many. A very large component of adhering to any religion is faith (I would call it suspending your disbelief, but that's just me). I have faith in only one thing, my self belief in the logical, rational side of my brain. I leave it to that to sift through the 'insanity', to find the wheat through the chattering chaff - and work it out for myself. That has not always been easy.
But to me, I'd rather not have an organized anything guide me anywhere, especially one in which the central premise is the existence of an all knowing prophet who will do your thinking for you.
Thanks for your comment! I thought the article would be about people like you. I’m much more curious about your real embrace of religion than … whatever this article is about.
Until the first grade, my family had no religion. Then my dad became a born again Catholic and gave up boozing. I got sent to Catholic school, which I loved for a while. In an earlier comment, I mentioned my first grade teacher, a nun, who introduced me to a more mystical and less dogmatic interpretation of Catholicism.
I've always been curious, and have little desire for answers to the "big" questions. I believe that we can't ever really, truly know the nature of existence. Maybe through contemplation / meditation / prayer we might get a glimpse. It's fun for me to explore all of this, which is why strict religion holds no interest for me, although I do find other people's religious beliefs interesting.
That is interesting. I assume by "captured" you mean by woke ideology? If so, it might explain a trend I think I'm reading of conversions to Catholicism (even though it seems to be drifting along on the tide of woke also, but enjoys a reputation which has been more anchored in tradition).
Glad that you have found a home. But religion (of any stripe) is founded on a fallacy - all of them, every last one, are “constructs” of Man. They deserve no special consideration in the public sphere, and the Founding Fathers got it right. And Barry Cooper, your obsession with “Leftists” as being worse than just about anyone looks foolish - let’s just mock them for their pomposity, but be very afraid of radical Muslims who will kill us. The fatal flaw in Islam is that it’s not permitted to condemn a fellow member of the umma (the faithful). So, confronted by yet another mass murder bomb attack, muslims take refuge in pious protests that Islam is a religion of peace. They simply sound ridiculous.
Hi Fannie, welcome home! You might like a wonderful book by Frank Sheed, Theology and Sanity. If the Church (and to some extent any of the Abrahamic religions) see the world as it actually is - created by and watched over by the Almighty, then to deny Him is to deny reality and to deny reality is, well, not sane.
Yes, a few years ago, I seriously considered converting to Catholicism too, and began talking to a priest about it that had been recommended by a friend...only to discover that the priest was a transparent phony whose main aim was to keep me from figuring out that the modern priesthood is little more than a floating gay orgy, full of "retreats" and fancy costumes. It quickly became obvious that guys like me, who would notice things and ask questions, was the last thing they wanted in the Catholic Church.
Blessedly, not all priests are like your experience. That being said, finding a priest that is a 'true' man of faith is not easy. I was fortunate to find one. Interestingly, I didn't realize that when I met him 4 decades ago. I came to that conclusion after meeting up with him again and speaking with him about his journey, and mine, back to faith. I hope you find one; his faith and gentleness is a true gift to me in my journey.
I can't say I did, but I've been terribly disappointed in Christian denominations in general in the US. So far, I really haven't been able to find a church that takes the Gospel seriously. I've recently started going to a conservative synagogue. I'm not quite sure what it is, but the people there seem to take things seriously. Maybe I'm not phrasing it correctly, but that's how I perceive it.
I wouldn't necessarily say Christianity is the "culmination" of Judaism. That's what most denominations of Christianity would put forth, but I am not a doctrinal Christian.
Also, if both of these monotheistic traditions worship false gods, then what do you propose is the "true" god? It doesn't really add much to the conversation to say, "Oh yeah? What you believe is the highest good and ideal is wrong!" Ok... what now? Belief in Science? We see where that's gotten us the past few years. Belief in the self? Nietzsche had the same idea, I'm not sure how well that worked out. Belief in equality? Marx and Engels thought that one up too.
I actually think that that is a misunderstanding of the God presented in the New Testament. The "Old Testament God" would bring down wrath on those that broke His commandments, sure, but he was also the God who was talked out of sparing Sodom and Gomorrah if even one righteous person be found there. Jesus really didn't preach anything new (besides certain points like forbidding divorce). Really, Jesus re-phrased things like "love your neighbor" from the Torah. If anything, I would say that it is Jesus who brings more promise of condemnation and punishment that anything presented in the Old Testament. Jesus says to be perfect, to pluck out your eye if it causes you to sin, that he has not come to bring peace but a sword, and that those who hear the Word and do not act upon it are condemned to eternal punishment where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth, where the worm never dies.
That sort of visceral message isn't really found in the Old Testament, as far as I can tell. I may change my view on that. I've just started studying Hebrew to try and get a better understanding of the OT.
As to what exactly the scriptures refer to (in the earliest parts of Genesis, it refers to "Elohim" as if in a pluralistic sense at times), who knows? I'm still trying to figure that out lol
I once lived in a small dispersed residential community in the Cascade mountains. Across the street was a large mansion that had a number of men living in it. We eventually figured out that it belonged to the Catholuc church and was used as a retreat. The house next to it was not close (5 acre parcels) and had a hot tub in the back yard. I was talking to the wife of that household once who told me she'd stopped going in it by herself because she kept seeing one of those men hiding in the trees within her property watching her and it creeped her out. She had small children. She claimed the retreat was for priests who had been accused of sex crimes.
Same thing happened to me. While i remain steadfastly Protestant, the average age of our church is 60+. The progressive churches I used to long for hold little appeal for me anymore.
That all depends on what you mean by “religion”. I think all humans have a “religious” impulse, i.e., search for meaning/framework for seeing the world, etc.
Science is just a way of measuring things. Calculus is the measurement of moving objects, chemistry is the measurement of molecular particles, etc. To say that Science and Technology are are new religions is... well... a declaration of faith. Just like the shahada.
Also, the etymology of “church” comes from the Greek “ekklaisia”, meaning “gathering”.
Lastly, no miracles? Isn’t every day that we are alive on this planet a miracle? Considering the infinitesimally small chances of us being here, evolving the way we did and all that?
I am reading the book God Light and the author discusses the intertwining of science and religion. I guess my comment was more about, for me, feeling you were obliterating my experience of maybe wanting/needing/believing in the concept of organized religion. I do try to realize my experience isn't the experience of anyone else and not to force my ways on others. I guess that's how I felt, like your way of not needing religion was the way we should be. I might view the miracle of today as a god done deed...or maybe not. It can be both/and.
| Isn’t every day that we are alive on this planet a miracle? |
That's the paradox, isn't it. I look at an ant, for example, and think "this is absolutely amazing, an incredible creature with millions of cells doing whatever it's supposed to do" but then, boom, it's gone with a push of the thumb.
If there is some higher power, I'll concede it's more powerful than humans, but it's definitely not all-powerful because it can't make anything that lasts. Also, most of the known universe is cold and dead. Wouldn't a higher power want a universe teeming with life?
"it's definitely not all-powerful because it can't make anything that lasts." You seem to be assuming that God would want to make something that lasts but can not. Seems to me to be an unwarranted assumption. Also unwarranted is the assumption that said "higher power" hasn't made anything that lasts . . .
Good points. However, that is assuming we can understand God's purpose in creating the universe. As far as we can figure out, He did it simply because He thought it would be a good idea.
I think we can pose the same question as to what Generative AI would "do" (if GAI ever became a thing). What would be its motivation for doing things? Who knows, really? It would be a being that only slightly resembles the way human think/do things/perceive the world.
I'm not quite sure what Captain Kirk has to do with it. ("Kirk" is just "church" with a Scottish pronunciation).
I tried to find the source that links the Greek word "ecclesia" to the goddess "Circe". I did find one website, but it didn't seem to give an accurate etymological history. According to britannica.com, "ecclesia" comes from the ancient Greek for "gathering of those summoned" and has its roots in the Homeric agora. In other words, it was a word used for governmental/political purposes and was later used in the Greek New Testament (some 600 years later) as a way to describe those who would "gather" together. In fact, in many of Paul's letters he does not quite make the distinction between Jews who do not believe in Christ and those who do. Keep in mind that this was before Christianity had become an organized religion; it was still considered a fanatical sect of Judaism.
I'm not quite sure how I feel about miracles, but usually the defense I've heard for them is thus: miracles are simply an altering of the laws of nature by the creator of nature in a specific time and place. That is, if God is the watch-maker, then he can manipulate it if He so chooses.
As to our dimension being a frequency that is sometimes bled over into others... I don't know. That's a question for quantum mechanics if ever there is one.
Ekklesia was originally a political, not religious, term as it means "called-out gathering" and referred to the political assembly of citizens in Greek city-states.
The connection to something similar to 'Circe' is rooted in the name Cappadocian Christians in 5th century modern-day central Turkey gave their communities, 'Kyriakos oikos' (house of the Lord). They significantly influenced the translation of the Christian Bible into Gothic, wherein 'Kyriakos oikos' is rendered 'ciric'--which is 'kerk' in Old English and 'church' in modern English.
“You do not need religion to re order your life. All you need is a conscience”
And how do we acquire a conscience? The people that surround you. I was raised a Methodist and it was the people that made the church, not the religion. It was primarily my parents and grandparents that shaped my conscience but those wonderful, caring souls still influenced it in a positive way. I have many fond memories of hayrides, summer Bible school, dinner fund raisers, Wednesday night choir practice…
I get what you’re saying about religion, it’s been twisted many times by evil men and women but it’s the sense of community that is the universal attraction and even though I no longer attend church, I firmly believe that the vast majority of those that do make the world a better place.
It makes you wonder what happened to the people we know (think of a person who has truly done evil things, not out of mental illness, but out of agenda, maliciousness etc.) and you have to be curious if you could see their multigenerational heritage and how that shaped their "conscience". And then contrast those whose family lineage for many generations was imbued with love and light. I am not sure I totally ascribe to being born with a conscience except to say I am at an energetic, epigenetic, subconscious level a product of those before me. So family values passed on I believe can help or hinder a person's conscience. And having recently returned to church, it is about God on one level. And I got there because my co-worker and I were discussing the renewal of the church's mission. When I heard what she was sharing, I said to self, I think that sounds lovely. And due to the negative way the world feels to me, I am choosing love, light and a community of people who care...about God and by extension are living as Christ in how they related to me.
Religions are a product of human nature and a reflection of the people from whom they are drawn. They go in lock-step together. Read history from the middle ages and you'll find the barbarism exhibited by religion a mirror of the commonly accepted beliefs and practices of the people who are members - all with what they felt was good conscience, or at least aspiring toward those values at the time. We look at them as barbaric and savage but we are not them. Future generations will no doubt look at us the same way. Still there will be religion because it is a unifying social force that allows people to work organizationally together in much larger groups than they can in simpler tribes. Tribes can't stand against it.
Maybe I need a simple tribe. I have felt a tribe might not be a bad place to be! Or a cult, or the armed services. I do agree there is a lot of control in these groups. I am sure the government would like to control us this way, under the guise of goodness ha ha ha,...I think they have shown their hand through the pandemic for me to know the government doesn't care about me. When they told me to wrap my house in plastic, keep my doors and windows closed during anthrax, I said I want my tax money back. If that is the best you got, I will take my money and take care of myself ha ha ha....I must be getting old enough to become awake and cynical.
I would not force it which is I guess what I was saying. It felt forced through previous posts, like organized religion isn't the way to being conscious. I would say there are infinite ways to being in this world, and hopefully there is enough goodness to overcome badness. No one path is truth for me. I wasn't an organized religion person, until I wasn't. And who knows, this may change. I firstly get my sense of god in the earth, animals, my dog of all things. My hope is probably like yours, that the light will obliterate the dark. And there is a lot of people all over the place denying one's experience...just turn on the TV or go to a store and look at the go this way arrow or stand here arrow. It's pervasive in my experience. I work to hopefully not allow others to deny my experience and also to allow others theirs.
Just want to say I really love this conversation. The two of you talking about your beliefs is so much more interesting than the snarky, shallow article above. Thank you!
I think the common trait that psychopaths/sociopaths lack is empathy. They have no ability to put themselves in the position experienced by another. It allows them to imagine and carry out unimaginable cruelty to the rest of us.
Incidentally, apparently highly successful men and women often score very high on the the scale of psychopathology. Some guy wrote a book about it awhile back.
Your comments would be more powerful if you didn't deny people's beliefs/needs/wants. You state "you don't need" and then go on to tell others what they should do/think/believe. I am curious if you restating your beliefs in terms of "I don't need" and "I believe". I found it interesting that you had to in ways preach to us here to convert us to your way of being?
I agree conscience is key to living an ordered life. But if you have no Higher Authority than yourself or society's mores I think conscience can easily end up manipulated by the ego to confirm that things we really want are "good" and "right."
The higher authority you speak of always reflects society's mores at the time. Go back through history. And those mores are often misled by egos - maybe some else's if you aren't being misled by your own.
The largely aggregate consciousness of my peers, I suppose. The kind Leah and others are mentioning is a kind of a middleman in my opinion. It doesn't really add anything to the discussion - it just blocks the view.
Ever read Nisargadatta Maharj's "I Am That"? It's very interesting in a weirdly related way.
Oh, man, RT, you must have gotten out of bed on the wrong side to jump into this rabbit hole. Sort of like the guy who goes into an Irish bar and starts swinging.
Religion is a series of rules and regulations built around a core of nonsense, similar to astrology. "The sun goes around the earth," "the earth is 6,000 years old" etc. These pronouncements sound ridiculous to many people NOW but when they were made you had to accept them or else.
I understand that it's good for the spirit to sit in a beautiful building in quiet and contemplate life, the universe and everything else but the same thing can be accomplished sitting by a stream, watching the stars, or even looking out over a city.
I still have memories of being smacked on the face in Catholic school for asking "why?" too many times and not accepting the response "because god says so!"
I had an awesome nun as my first grade teacher who approached religion from a more mystical and less dogmatic place. I can track my free thinking, wide ranging spirituality back to her.
She was sweet and a great teacher. My life has definitely been better for having known her.
Absolutely! But a lay teacher in a public school would not have had license to talk to children about spirituality and the mysteries of life.
Side note, because I love to talk about her, "mystery" was one of her favorite words. She was a curious, inquisitive person and encouraged that in us. "Mystery" was a way of talking about things that could never really be settled, only contemplated. Of course she said this in a much more rudimentary way to us / me and other kids who were responsive.
I think the explanation for the lack of coverage on Tate's conversion is simpler than the author supposes, the media has for years treated Muslims with kid-gloves and views anything potentially critical of that faith as off-limits. I submit that if Tate had converted to some form of Christianity there would be an incessant drumbeat from the media of how Christianity is bad and draws malfeasants like Tate who want to return to the dark ages.
You kidding borsht is delicious you don’t have to be Jewish to enjoy borsht. But I can tell what the best is Chicken soup and Kneidlach, especially if you not feeling well. My later mother called in Jewish Penicillin it was a miracle cure for all our childhood ailments.
The phrase regarding Islam “They order freedom by constraining it” stuck out to me. I know nothing about Tate or his conversion, but isn’t our whole left-leaning society now about ordering freedom by constraining it? Limits on academic speech. Vaccine passports. Hell, Antifa supports vaccine mandates. So anarchists support forced medical treatment of shots that don’t stop transmission?
There seems to be this underlying societal suspicion of traditional religions and all who practice them (in some cases for good reason), yet our supposedly secular society is its own form of religion with rigidity to spare. Try to step outside its orthodoxy and find out for yourself.
“isn’t our whole left-leaning society now about ordering freedom by constraining it?”
It is and in the Church of Big Government, if you don’t conform, you’re declared a heretic, or the leftist preferred term du jour, racist. I wonder how long before they reinstate stake burning as the only suitable form of punishment.
I don’t know. We just had a rapist and child molester who pretends to be Catholic give an address to the entire nation. I think one article about a misogynist kickboxer who pretends to be Muslim won’t hurt.
What the author was afraid of is what applies to Tate - Islam is the perfect religion for a misogynist. Did we already forget ISIS and how they recruited disaffected young men? The appeal was in dominance over lesser people and permission to rape female captives of any age.
Yes, mainstream Islam has suppressed the violence, but one thing that ISIS was never accused of was not adhering to the Quran.
I guess the Taliban is selling our abandoned weapons to Russia and what I’m hoping comes next, since Israel is providing substantial support for Ukraine, is an alliance between Russia and the Palestinians. What will Democrats do then?
The article didn’t seem very honoring, rather general interest. Comments don’t exactly seem to be burnishing his image. Looks like he and Hunter Biden are neck and neck in the race to the bottom.
The only interview clip I've seen of Tate was him saying, "the state will come after me eventually because I have influence, and influence is the most important currency today."
I see a pattern here. One person does something. Writer thinks it might be a trend and finds other possible examples, but doesn't make a compelling case... talked to some people, etc.. I wonder to what extent this is driven by the need to "write something" and fill space. Helen Lewis talked about it in her interview with Bari last week... the relentless push to produce content.
Walter Kirn and Matt Taibbi discussed this recently in one of their podcasts. The trend of writers using weak sources for material and not really investigating the matter. The goal is to get clicks/reads not promote truth or facts. Before this article, I had never heard of Tate, but now a whole bunch of people are googling him bc of this essay. The appearance of fascination with him will be perpetuated.
Reading this as a religious Jew is interesting. We’re quite big on rules, and yet I have not met anyone who converted due to political reasons. I’d be curious if anyone knows of examples? Fascinating article and does align with anecdotal evidence from my life as far as friend who’ve embraced either stricter forms of Judaism (having been born a Jew) or embraced stricter forms of Christianity in their search for meaning.
My turn to Orthodoxy was concurrent with my becoming more politically conservative. Not surprisingly, both happened after 9/11.
I was thinking of commenting on yesterday’s article about the episode of The Last of Us (but didn’t) that the solution I’ve found to suburban isolation and modern loneliness is living an Orthodox Jewish life. I wish everyone could live in a community like mine; we help each other out; start meal trains for bereaved families and new moms; socialize and worship together; help community members find new jobs or life partners; visit our sick and bury our dead. Yes, it’s chock full of rules and restrictions. It’s also the most meaningful and fulfilling way I’ve ever lived, and I wouldn’t trade it for anything.
As far as I’m aware, only Satmar women (and perhaps some other Chasidic sects) shave their heads. None of the Chasidic or Modern Orthodox women I know shave their heads; we have all our hair underneath. Not all Modern Orthodox women cover their hair, but many do. Some wear wigs every day; others wear wigs only on formal occasions but for everyday covering, wear hats or bandanas, etc., which is what I do.
I have only seen one private residence that had two kitchens; the rest of us have one kitchen with two sets of utensils/dishes/etc. The lucky among us have two sinks and two dishwashers/ovens (but not stoves). You can make it work without two sinks; you just have to know how. Two refrigerators are nice for space, especially when you’re cooking ahead for lots of holiday guests, but not necessary for kashrut purposes, as it is heat that causes potential problems.
Reading the same exact article, what I found fascinating is that the author NOT ONCE referred to Judaism. When talking about demanding religions, it seems that Orthodox Judaism is the most demanding by far!
I wonder why he couldn't mention Judaism at least once...
To be fair, we’re historically extremely discouraging of converts, and most conversion programs take a minimum of a year, so it’s not surprising to me that examples of converts joining Judaism for the reasons mentioned in the article may not exist in the public consciousness. An article about secular Jews embracing more rigorous forms of Judaism could be written, as there are many examples, but from my perspective it’s outside the scope of what this article focuses on.
It’s not about rules per se. It’s more about politics and the rejection of mainstream culture and declining morality. Furthermore there’s a masculinity thing.
Certainly, Orthodox Judaism has many of the characteristics discussed here, but it is also perceived as a pacifistic lifestyle, clannish and family centric, walled off from mainstream society and living strictly by the Laws handed down from ancient times.
The author seems to be getting at a more defiant approach, conversion for political reasons. Tate advertises an aggressively masculine persona, the ultimate alpha male, the warrior.
I think some in Israel come close to this, the settlers in Judea and Samaria for example. People who live by their faith and carry a gun at all times.
I was gonna say, come to Israel, we’ve definitely got some pretty non-passive Orthodox Jews! I take your point especially in regards to the diaspora though.
It’s expensive and the salaries are low, lol! The quality of life is high, but there are significant compromises you have to make to live here if you’re used to w US or EU quality of life.
"Certainly, Orthodox Judaism has many of the characteristics discussed here, but it is also perceived as a pacifistic lifestyle, clannish and family centric, walled off from mainstream society and living strictly by the Laws handed down from ancient times."
Given what we (or at least I) see in society today, I have to ask, This Is Supposed To Be A Bad Thing?
Not really, more of an adherence to tradition. That said, the Orthodox Jews in New York have started manning up, applying for gun permits to defend themselves from the New Cossacks roaming the streets looking for Jews and elderly Asians to assault.
One of his standard gags dealt with playing golf. Someone asks him what his handicap is. He answers, “I’m a one-eyed Jewish negro. What’s yours?”
You’d have to ask Nellie why she converted, but if I had to guess, it would be that Bari was involved in the decision.
I have a lot of friends who admire Judaism a lot. Some talk about converting, but none have as yet. At least they haven’t told me they did. Beyond having Shabbos dinner with my cousins and going to the occasional seder or bar mitzvah, I’m not much of a practicing MOT. But there’s no getting away from the cultural end of it.
Exactly! Never heard of him until he was arrested. I follow Jordan Peterson very closely and these two keep getting put in groups together. How come I’ve never heard of him?
Life on earth is wild, unmanageable and scary. The existence of a higher power beyond humanity may or may not be true but, in any case, it is stabilizing. Secular belief in the goodness of humanity and political leaders of your persuasion may work for some people, usually those without major life challenges. But as you get older and notice politicians with skyrocketing net worth far exceeding anything they could possibly have legally made in their positions, questions about human nature arise. Then when friends drop you for various reasons, e.g. you are a “selfish” unvaccinated person or won’t say biological mens’ rights should trump womens ’…well, I’ll go with the other door, the higher power.
Being “exacting, masculine and vigorous” are not reasons to join a faith. This guy has joined another club to get a fresh set of fans and more attention.
Please send a writer to the south, come to my church, and you will see faith in reading, understanding and trusting in God’s word. The messages are love, forgiveness and reconciliation. The congregation is growing too.
Most of the protestant churches in the North have become so woke you might as well just go to a DNC rally. So off putting, I'm considering Catholicism.
True but then I'd miss the seamy entertainment value of clowndom on fully display. Riding the subway yesterday - a treat of the full panoply of the failure of liberalism with every stereotype of depravity on display, with just a touch of exhilarating danger. What more does one need?
Please talk to as many Catholic priests as you can. I returned to the faith after several years of 'hiatus' due to a priest I met MANY years ago and ran into again. (Coincidence? I don't think so.) These true men of God and faith are not easy to find even in the priesthood; but this man 'walked' and prayed me through the biggest tragedy in my old life. I hope you find one.
Speaking as a Jew without a synagogue, I drive past churches around here that have rainbow patterns permanently displayed. They post “Black Lives Matter” and “We believe in Science/Justice for refugees/blah blah blah” signs, as though to reassure passersby that they are not racist, xenophobic, vaccine denying gay-bashing Klansmen.
I wonder what kind of namby-pamby, liberal drivel passes for a sermon in these Houses of Liberalism. Is God ever mentioned? Is the family still a thing? Are children (if any) encouraged to identify as whatever gender they like this week?
Many if not most churches and synagogues here in the Northeast have lost the plot. Oh, there’s a few real ones left; the Baptist church next to my house is unabashedly traditional, though dying.
The Chabad House nearby espouses a strict, Orthodox practice of the Jewish faith and is strongly pro-family, though interestingly they welcome all comers.
I believe we are on the verge of a revival. Andrew Tate is a bit of an extreme, but highly intelligent and articulate. He is aggressively persuasive and, like Donald Trump, has struck a chord, has rattled the nerves of the entrenched powers.
It’s no wonder that he’s under attack, and likely to be killed by the Romanians (reports are emerging that he’s ill with something serious, and being denied proper treatment).
The Biden regime could send a representative from the Embassy to check on him, a common practice when a celebrity is arrested on shaky grounds. But they won’t. Brittney Griner got the royal treatment because of her race and politics. Tate will just be hung out to dry.
The rainbow flag and BLM crazy adoration is why I left my church. Didn’t leave my religion or beliefs, just the church for embracing fake causes that grifters use to make money.
The ex BLM leader is back in the news. Must need to remodel her millions dollar home in the exclusive white neighborhood. Omar was right in the phrase but should have been for CRT. It’s about the Benjamin’s.
I can't like this but I think you are on to something. Men have been under attack for years in our culture. To the point where for far too many women the terms masculine and mysoginistic are synonomous. That can't be good for natural procreation and blowback was inevitable. IMO these women have killed the golden-egg laying goose.
Terry, Chaim (and anyone else interested)—look up “Confessions of a Synagogue Hopper.” Bari’s dad, Lou, published it in the Wall Street Journal in ‘16 or ‘17.
I really like Chabad. I've participated in a Purim with them and attended a class. If my family didn't have such strong ties to Christianity I'd probably join Chabad. As it is I've stuck with the church I was raised in even though it has gone down hill.
I quit going to the two synagogues we were in, when the rabbis in both places spent more time bloviating about divisive topics like gun control and how mean Trump was to Muslims, than to teaching Torah and creating a shared, unifying experience. The other two synagogues we've gone to on occasion are just as bad. So yeah, it's either an orthodox synagogue miles away, or Chabad. Chabad is not bad but I don't have any social connections there, except that my wife now works in their preschool/daycare, so there's that. They're an interesting organization.
If you are an adult, it seems to me that it would be more honest to attend Chabad. If it’s a matter of faith (Jesus is the promised Messiah to the Jews first and then to the Gentiles), perhaps you could find a messianic synagogue and practice both.
I'm married with children and have a long line of pastors in my family. I'm actually named after my great great grandfather. It isn't as simple as to simply throw my hands in the air and convert and walk away from my ancestors, family, wife, church, etc.. I know that is how a lot of moderns think and operate but it isn't how I operate. I mean where would they bury me? On the opposite side of the cemetery, "we were an odd lot but that one yonder was odd as they come!" No, I'm committed to my lot. So I am where I am until God tells me to move on and may God have mercy on my soul if that's wrong. In the meantime I can enjoy both my church and Chabad and be honest with both as I have been.
That seems like a reasonable plan. If your Christian faith is intact it should only benefit by attending Chabad- even if the relatives think you’re a little nutty. Jesus was, after all, Jewish and practiced all the traditions thereof.
It took me forever to find the thread!! I ask your age because of your reference to family being connected to church. If you are young and still under your parents’ “payroll,” then it makes sense that family connections compel you to stay in that church.
Lack of religion leaves a void that many need to fill. Politics is one way to fill that space. Other ways might include science or art, distractions from the gnawing feeling that death will one day take you, and you have nothing to look forward to, even if that expectation is based on unverified stories or arcane books. This is understandable but a sad result of organized religion’s failure to compellingly hold up without blind faith. Sad. Very sad. We are short-lived creatures, painfully aware of our own mortality, products of our personal histories, and easily molded by established forces that check our boxes. This is such a dark post, and I hated writing it, but it is a seldom referenced thought that I keep buried as much as possible.
The climate change religion has all the themes of Judeo-Christianity---earth was once a garden until man sinned and destroyed it. Now we must suffer, deprive ourselves, do penance, pay indulgences. Believers believe without question and malign those who do.
Turns out we humans need something bigger than ourselves to believe in. After we decided, “God is dead, and we killed him”. (Nietsche), we had a pretty bad spell-- WW I, WW II, Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, Kim, so many others, all demanded allegiance to an all powerful state and no God. Have we had enough yet? I think so. God is faithful, he’s waiting for us, you.
True until the last sentence. Then you get into blind faith. This is where the disconnect is made, where doubt is so easily introduced. Some of us need a better reason to pick religion, or any particular religion to put our hearts into.
That's the entire point Rob. There is, and cannot be on this Earth, proof. It is strictly a matter of faith and whether or not one is capable thereof. I can't articulate properly what that means to the one who accepts faith but it opens doors. Not to certainty but to possibility.
I think at its most fundamental level, having a living faith (as opposed to an accessory one) comes down to our willingness to surrender our ego enough to trust in something Higher than ourselves, to cultivate that humility of spirit—trust in the existence, goodness, and wisdom of something (Someone) higher than we are. The endeavor of spiritual rebirth is unavoidably painful because human beings are averse, by nature, to challenging the deceptive certainty of our own egos, the pride of our own intelligence, the compelling yet selfish desires of our hearts. So having genuine faith requires a leap. Painful, yet worth it.
Rob, you expressed your thoughts beautifully. You are painfully aware of the human condition and it seems to me that you are either searching, or have spent a lot of time pondering. Where the journey takes you, I don’t know. My understanding of ‘the last sentence’ is that God calls everyone. We are born sentient beings with free will. It’s up to us to first hear the call and then to listen. It’s a very personal experience, and a profound one. I wish you all the best.
You meet a stranger on the street or a girl in a bar. Talking to them requires a bit of faith or a bit of stupidity. Choosing one will make you happier!
And blind faith is what is required; and comforts. We will never understand everything; we are not meant to. But I agree; finding a home in faith is important.
You forget earlier history where pious, all powerful rulers carried out large-scale atrocities in the name of religion.
The 30 Years War in Germany, the First Crusade, the St Bartholomew Massacres in France and the massacres of Boghdan Khmelnitsky in Ukraine match 20th century atrocities in everything but technology.
The idea that strict adherence to religious beliefs results in better human behavior is demonstrably false as any highschool class in world history will easily demonstrate.
What you speak of is church history. Churches run by flawed humans seeking power and tossing aside Jesus’ teachings. Adhere to his teachings and you won’t have strife. Love and Forgiveness.
Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition was a WWII song to give hope and inspiration to the men going into a nightmare to fight fascism.
The way I see it twisted now to say "Christians are dumb and violent" is a disgrace to the sacrifices of those veterans. Who include some in my family, so it's personal for me.
Total hogwash: "A Dios rogando y con el mazo dando" is from the first Spanish piece of literature, Cantar del Mio Cid, dating from the 13th century.
Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition came in response to Pearl Harbor, but matches exactly the tone of the Spanish refrain from 6 centuries earlier.
People often wrap themselves in a flag, as you did, when they have nothing intelligent to argue. Loads of atheists, including the Red Army and the Chinese insurgents, had much greater sacrifices in dead and wounded than any Western army in fighting fascism.
' I see it twisted now to say "Christians are dumb and violent"' we are all accustomed in these woke days to see language twisted to impute evils to people. "Silence is violence" and "domestic terrorists" are similar examples.
"we are all accustomed in these woke days to see language twisted to impute evils to people"
I appreciate the acknowledgement that your reference to a WWII fighting song was a historical twisting to attribute evil to Christians. That's what I found tone deaf and offensive. Ironic that you both acknowledge this and deny it in your comment.
Both of your quotations I find irrelevant to your claim that religious people aren't better than secular people, a belief that's impossible to quantify in any way so I wouldn't bother to even address it.
I don't think lack of religion leaves a void, it is removal of religion. That is, those who grew up with one but repudiated it. For those of us who never had one there is no void.
I have several times, when I've moved to a different part of the country gone to Meetup groups to meet new people. It's hard to find ones with people who like to read a wide variety of serious nonfictional topics. The reading club ones invariably want to read the latest woke best sellers. And many groups are basically for singles to meet. Usually there is one called "free thinkers" which I've tried several times. But turns out these seem to draw mostly born-again atheists. It feels like being in one of those 12 step programs you see as a trope in movies: "Hi, I'm Frannie and I used to be in the Four Square Church..." Nothing but religion bashing. Void is a perfect way to describe the holes in these people.
I would believe you that there was no void if I didn’t see thousands of adults around me in Seattle spending most of their free time stoned or drunk while simultaneously prancing about proclaiming how cool and super intelligent they are. As my good friend, a psychologist says, if you can’t stand to be sober, you’re running away from something.
It’s the conundrum of modernity. On some personal and social level, moving from a belief system based on shared myths to the nihilism implied by naturalism doesn’t really feel like moving from a position of weakness to strength, even if it is closer to reality.
Well, that may have a fragrance like mustard, but the actual plant they harvest seeds from is about knee high. I used to walk through fields of it as a kid.
I’m not sure what’s happening to Common Sense anymore. Perhaps it’s the name change, who knows. But lately, while a lot of posts appear, they are irrelevant and bizarre.
I guess somewhere people have heard of this Andrew Tate guy, but what is his importance? Nada, zip, nothing. Amazing someone can write a whole essay on irrelevance.
I’m not sure this is the work Bari set out to do. If it is, it’s the work of the work salad Kamala spews. But it sure isn’t work that I’m interested in.
Well said and Bari needs to tighten up what is posted. I didn’t subscribe to get this crap. Get back to basics or I will not renew. I can get this at CNN or the View.
Being the "most googled person in 2022" confers its own importance (for better or worse) and implies many many people have heard of him and, while you may have never heard of him, he did amass a staggering amount of influence amongst a certain demographic (mine -- 20-30s males) in 2022. And I can't get the guy out of my YouTube algorithm to save my life!
I enjoyed this essay because it discussed (albeit briefly) the underrated and underacknowledged "religious impulse" which appears to be hardwired into humans just like hunger, sex, etc. and is manifesting itself in the broader culture and institutions of the US at a level not seen in any of our lifetimes.
While I agree Common Sense was better, I also understand the impulse for BW+ to grow TFP which is sad to me but ultimately necessary.
That being said, TGIF is still my favorite email to get every week!
We are her transitional subscribers. We aren't who she wants to reach but stepping stones paying her bills at the moment. She didn't see a path to where she wants to be at WSJ or NYT because of the people obstacles in the way. So she's trying to grow her own TFP. But I he goal is the same. That's the conclusion I've come to.
This article reads like a high school English position paper. All over the board with random references to alleged authority figures to bolster the argument ending with a sweeping conclusion that was not even close to proving the initial topic of the paper. Was this an essay the writer used for a standardized test writing portion?
Let's just covert to common sense first. Religious or not surely we can find common ground in common sense. It's not common these days. But there was a lot more common 30 years ago.
I'm presuming most people excluding various corporations and politicians don't see war as making sense. Therefore this is common and sensible. I also presume that most people would not agree that Trans women should compete in women's sports or be in women's lockers. It's a common feeling among the majority of left and right. Click the like if you agree with just these 2 examples. Maybe you can add some others .
“Known for his libertine lifestyle—including running a sex-cam business—he seemed an odd fit for the moral strictures of Islam. And he was.”
————————————————————-
Ilhan Omar was banging like 3 different guys and laundering campaign funds and committing immigration fraud, while wearing a hijab as a costume, long before Andrew Tate’s apparently opportunistic conversion.
But you probably can’t write an article trashing her because the psychotic religious fundamentalists who actually pose a threat to civilization, Democrats, would have destroyed your life.
You could also draw a comparison with many pop idols of the past 50-60 years with their narcissistic, amoral decadence.
Particularly today, rapper stars often have quite libertine lifestyles (or public personas, anyway). Their songs, or poetry or whatever you want to call it, celebrate raw, violent masculinity and the total male dominance over passive, weak females, who are referred to using the most vulgar, demeaning epithets imaginable.
It is quite ironic, isn’t it, that the left generally embraces these rappers but yet their music is really completely anti-female.
The left is 100x more misogynistic than the right these days. Nothing is more patriarchal than believing fetishistic and delusional men when they say that they're really women, and giving them anti discrimination laws to enjoy their fetishes and delusions wherever they want. Even when those laws put females in danger and at a disadvantage.
And the ultimate consequence of such lunacy: a male raping a girl in the girls' restroom then the powers that be covering for him because transgender.
“Do not give what is holy to the dogs; nor cast your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet, and turn and tear you in pieces." Matthew 7:6
I am not a Christian. But oddly enough all kinds of Bible quotes pop into my head these days.
And male prisoners bring housed in women’s prisons when all they have to do it say they identify as a women. Then we all scratch our heads and wonder how all these women prisoners are having babies.
Good grief.
Another consequence - pharma and plastic surgeons making the big bucks giving confused under aged girls and young women testosterone & double mastectomies. Nothing weird or wrong there! Because - Identity!
"Chloe Cole v. Kaiser Permanente"
https://www.dhillonlaw.com/lawsuits/chloe-cole-v-kaiser-permanente/
Gender affirming care, LOL!
If you're talking about Loudon County, that's not accurate. The assailant was not transgender or "non-binary" or whatever. They were male identified, and their victim was their "girlfriend" or more likely, occasional sex partner, and they occasionally met up in the girls bathroom to fool around - apparently the guy got more aggressive and pushy abou the acts he wanted to do, which ended up in a pretty bad sounding assault and rape in the stall that they had once again met together in.
The questions around "trans" happened because of a few things: One, there were rumors that the assailant sometimes wore skirts (of the goth guy type), but nothing confirmed. They were not entering the bathroom under the guise of being a trans-girl however, or because of the school's policies to allow trans bathroom use that still would not have permitted him using the bathroom to hook up in, or as a lone male skulking in the bathroom waiting to assualt someone who was "allowed" in under the policy. They were entering the bathroom with another girl for non-bathroom purposes, because the girls' bathroom likely has locked stalls and more "privacy" (much in "my days" in high school we used the girls' bathroom to smoke cigarettes in).
The school, however proceeded to complete a series of bad actions around this kid to start with: first, he had assaulted another student in another school in the district. Rather than being expelled or otherwise, he was allowed to transfer to this school - and no one was given the heads up apparently about his past. Secondly, the school treated the parents of the victim poorly - withholding information, the delay in reporting the incident to police, and "policing" the parents response to the situation. Thirdly, once the rumours began that this was the result of the "trans bathroom" policy, the school got super defensive and denied publicy that any assaults had occurred since this policy was enacted - rather than being clear that there was an assault, but that it had nothing to do with the policy. Basically, the school thought it was more important to protect the trans bathroom policy than it was to protect the victim, and to take responsibiliy for how they mishandled the assailant to begin with, which ended up making the trans bathroom policy seem more suspect.
I think the boy's name has been withheld because he was 14. So, I do not know whether he was trying to go by a girl name at school or not. In this day and age of LGBTQ++WTF Alliances I am skeptical that any boys go to school wearing skirts and are not identifying as "trans" which is certainly a state of mind (mental disorder or social contagion). Sadly, I don't think any girls go to school with short hair now without it being understood that it is a signal that they think they "are boys". This is different from even 10 years ago.
Plenty of men who identify as "trans" explain their being into women as that they "are lesbians". So, I don't know. Did you read somewhere that he went by his own name and never a girl one?
It seems to be much more than wild teen sex gone astray as the judge put him on a sex offender list. "Citing the “scary” nature of the boy’s crimes and psychological reports, the judge said this was the first time she had ever required a minor to be put on the registry." https://thenewamerican.com/loudoun-county-transgender-school-rapist-found-guilty/
Even worse than these school bathroom policies are the policies that direct teachers to call kids opposite sex names the kids make up - without the parents even knowing - and then even against the parents's instructions when they find out. This is a serious psychological intervention. Here is a happy story of a school that backed down and reversed course from that policy: "What Happens When Schools Follow the Parents’ Lead?" https://pitt.substack.com/p/what-happens-when-schools-follow
Thanks, that's interesting. What is the source for your information?
This seems accurate BUT please if you must use “they” as a gender neutral third person try it singular: “they is sad” or “give them what they wants” etc... yes it sounds dumb but if it catches on it will make sense. “They are” achieves gender neutrality but is confusing.
There were about 144k rape cases last year. How many times did this happen? Who gave the accused cover?
Well, I don't know. Someone here has expanded/corrected the tg/bathroom Loudoun story so I'm not actually sure which parts of it are true, versus constructed or interpreted to fit some narrative.
The one thing everyone agrees, is that the boy was allowed to quietly transfer to another school, where he repeated the same behavior (sex with a girl, described as "rape").
There was also some kind of weird situation where the dad of the first(?) girl showed up at a school board meeting to complain about the lack of action against the boy, and they called the police and had him arrested.
The boy got off without any reprimand or intervention, whereas the dad of the victim was arrested. At least, that's how it was interpreted. This outraged a lot of people, and it led to parents running for office to get some of these Loudoun school board officials thrown out. Which they did.
What/where/when was this?
Virginia. Loudoun County. Look it up.
I think you, like most people, misunderstand the term "patriarchy". People use the term for any system in which men mistreat women, and dump into this large, meaningless box traditional religious societies in which men are deemed to be the head of the family and the women are subservient to the men, as well as modern secular societies in which women bear men's children without requiring the men to help raise and support the children, and in which men can dress as women and invade women's spaces. No, patriarch is not such a large box. Men can abuse women in any system, and women can abuse men in any system (though the abuse can take different forms). Patriarchy, I would argue, is a system in which young men are sexually starved into submission to harness their particular strengths in service to the greater needs of the family, in an attempt to essentially make men "more like women" in the sense of being devoted to their offspring, and the mother(s) of their offspring. Patriarchy can include abuse, and it also affords greater protection to children and women, generally speaking. Look at homicide rates by country; the more "egalitarian" the society, the more likely women are murdered at a similar rate as the men. The more "patriarchal" the country, the less likely the women are to be murdered. Because we cannot paint reality into existence, i.e., legislate how society should be, but can only create with our laws incentives, sometimes the laws we enact to "help" certain groups end up actually hurting them, and vice versa. There are always trade-offs. So while in the past women weren't permitted to work in bars unless they were related to the owner, this was considered by some to be "anti-woman" so they changed the law to make us more "equal," so now women are expected to put up with harassment working in bars. The first was patriarchal, the second is not. Generous maternity leave/benefits lead to fewer employment opportunities for women, etc. There are definitely downsides to patriarchy, and to modern egalitarianism, for women specifically, but they are totally different, and I think it is important to draw a distinction.
Consider the prohibition on knowing who one is. The destruction of national history, cultural myth and social/spiritual connection. The gutting of education, community and industrial base. The looting of the economy. The capture and reduction of your national dialogue to a psyop. Living crisis to crisis no solution's forthcoming. Alway's waiting for the hammer to fall. The ongoing war to replace you and seize your country.--Pretend it isn't happening.
All good and relevant points. I used "patriarchy" because the left is supposedly fighting against all things "patriarchal". Laughably simplistic, and more than a little ironic, but some people buy it in droves. Ironically it's not Toxic Masculinity that's gotten us into this mess. It's indulgent and starry eyed Toxic Femininity and the bone headed notion that there are no differences at all between the sexes that has. We're all just blank slate Meat Legos who choose their "genders". Be kind! It'll be fine!
I wonder if you could paragraph that. My aging eyes... particularly bad today, because dilated from optometrist visit.
"the women are subservient to the men" HAH! Any man who is married can tell you that never happens. We wish....
Ditto.
Well said.
Huh? Patriarchal?
Rap culture is the exact same as the trans movement; over time it just creates more Democrats. That’s all they care about.
Although, admittedly, cutting people’s dicks off is an escalation when compared to simply celebrating music that encourages a life of crime and community destruction.
Democrats are scumbags.
Bad social and financial policy and the exploitation of the consequences by the monster's imposing it. There is no Democrat/Republican, left/right, capitalist/marxist only we (they'd like to believe) small Citizen's of the Republic. (criminal, terrorist, white supremacist, homophobic, white nationalist, add your own.)
Example: Jacob Schiff (Congressman Adam Schiff's grandpa) and his Wall Street cohort's (remember Occupy?) funded Lenin and the Bolshevik's. If you believe Solzhenitsyn, the Bolshevik's weren't Russian, and in fact hated the Russian people and proved it by starving and murdering them by the millions. Why? Simple. Access to the Czar's treasury. Now consider the failure of elected American political leadership, the looting of the national treasury by Wall Street thug's, betrayal by our intelligence agencies, the ongoing Canadian/EU collapse of human right's and freedom, and the recent open display of hubris at Davos by criminal finance and draw your own conclusions.( Where are trillions in unaccounted for American tax dollars going?)
We're under attack because we're American's and because we believe in the freedom outlined in our Constitution. No one cares if you're a Muslim, a Jew, a Christian, Black, White, Gay, be anything you want. But be an American.
Further more. Why is there open discrimination and a sexist/racist war on white heterosexual males and why can't we talk about it? Why are young white males being drugged and butchered and denied access to higher education? Who is financing it, and who is getting paid to make it happen? (Again. Your tax dollars at work?)
Tate is being prosecuted simply because he has a sense of personal power and agency, successfully stuffed his pocket's and the press is being told to propagandize it. He, (like Assange, Snowden and Peltier) is just the object lesson of the moment. Most of the psyop is the creation of fear and confusion.
"We're under attack because we're American's and because we believe in the freedom outlined in our Constitution. No one cares if you're a Muslim, a Jew, a Christian, Black, White, Gay, be anything you want. But be an American."
I believe you said it better than I have ever heard it. That's exactly right; and what is needed to navigate the deterioration of our culture and those that hate the US. Thank you.
Will you clarify what you wrote, in simple, easy to understand terms? I'm not sure what you are getting at.
If you don't have a plan and a sense of personal agency and power you become a part of someone else's plan and find yourself manipulated and controlled by the power and aims of other's. The American Constitutional Republic, its Constitution, and the Bill of Right's it contains, is the empowering human vision informing the agency and consent of the FREE CITIZEN to be represented by elected political leadership directly responsible in conduct and action too the CITIZEN. That is the only legitimate political reality in the United States of America. The chaos and disintegration of American cultural/social/economic values American's are experiencing is the direct result of the failure and corruption of elected American political representation and leadership.----Hope this helps.
My sister is a Democrat, and she's not a scumbag.
Sorry mate; if she identifies as an existential threat, she is lucky to get off with just being called names.
Would you like to explain? Existential threat?
I'm sure that Kevin Durant? meant "the Left Wing of the Democrats" rather than "All Democrats along with their dogs and horses".
My sister does have a dog, no horses though.
I guess I'd rather guys cut their dicks off (once they are over 18) than murder people.
Uh.... who's talking about murder? That's quite a leap.
well I was referring to the rap lyrics that involve snuffing people, and the rap/ghetto culture that seems to encourage and celebrate gangland murder.
Contemporary Black culture is very coarse…and yet we’re urged to embrace it and study it and honor it. No thank you.
Just saying that just as contemporary white culture is not really very much like it’s pop stars, contemporary black culture is different from its rap stars. The average person in the street is nothing like these figures, and these figures are a tool to influence and shape the average person by convincing them everyone who’s anyone thinks a certain way. Also, isn’t it a long cited stat that the largest consumers of rap are 14 year old caucasians?
Consumers of culture is not the issue. The issue is the profane and pornographic sounds and imagery of rap and hip hop. They say ‘art’ reflects the culture- if so ‘black culture’ is debauched. The saddest thing at the recent Grammy awards was that the banal dance music of Beyoncé outpaced the number of awards received by all time Grammy winner, Hungarian-British conductor Georg Solti. That says everything about how mediocre the American culture has become.
You are being exceptionally disingenuous portraying hip hop, which is a culture unto itself, as Black culture in its entirety when I'm sure you know full well that Black Americans created, helped to create, or pioneered every major musical genre that emerged in America. And how can consumers of culture not be the issue when the industry necessarily responds to the tastes of consumers to ensure profitability? White youth and young adults are getting the exact sort of content from hip hop artists that they enjoy, and they know every word to every Top 100 hip hop song too. Hip hop is obviously the most popular of the major American genres at the moment which is due, in large part, to its appeal among youth of all races and ethnicities. But if you have little to no firsthand experience with Black American culture in its varying dimensions, or you're simply choosing to see only what you want to see, then of course you'd say something as vacuous as that. But I'm all too certain big names like Michael Jackson, Whitney Houston, Prince, etc aren't exactly unfamiliar to you but somehow they don't count as definers of Black musical culture.
Odd.
I'll take Beyonce over Sam Smith any day; not sure that "white pop culture" is any better than "black pop culture." Not sure there is any virtue to be had in putting certain groups down; a wiser course of action is to search for any good you can find and emulate it. Be like the bee, searching out honey, and not like the fly . . .
and yet you fall right into the trap of the "B" not the b. black is a color not a race
And racist.
Anyone who disagrees with the left is a racist. If you don't believe me ask a leftist.
And vulgar
I'm pretty sure I saw many on the right readily embrace several rappers who voiced support for or openness to Trump just a few short years ago.
Yeah you have to be a pretty hardcore racist to not understand the difference.
So if a rapper supports tax cuts and you support him then you support tax cuts.
If a rapper is telling men to sell drugs and treat women like whores and you support him, then you have a different agenda.
I'm not very familiar with Hip Hop and/or rap, but I'm not sure TuPac falls into the category you mention.
What category?
Misogynistic rap or hip hop. For some reason my reply didn't appear under the comment I was replying to.
There are/were many artists who don’t fall into that category (like everything else in the generalization world) but he was definitely guilty. Keep Your Head Up just gave everyone memory loss.
"the total male dominance over passive, weak females,"
It appears no one has ever told The Women in my family they were supposed to be weak and passive. Starting with Granny Stein (born 1862, raised 7 by herself after her husband died on the ND prairie). You could say many things about her. Weak & Passive AIN'T one of them. She passed that along to the rest of the women in our family.
It doesn't surprise me that a misogynist would convert to Islam. Some imams give classes to the faithful on how to beat their wives. The Dems/Socs love Islam. They call this violent, brutal religion, "The religion of peace." and these idiots actually believe it.
You could also keep going and note how popular rappers have been unchallenged in their egregiously misogynistic lyrics since at least the late 80's, but we didn't see any public uproar until we heard the word "homo".
When was that? From my recollection, it was Gangsta Rap that emerged in the early 90s and more or less dominated the genre throughout the decade that elicited what is still today the biggest and most sustained outcry from practically all corners. Today a lot of the catchier songs are heavily sexual and overly materialistic at most, but it doesn't come close to being as raw, violent, and explicit as the 90s stuff.
The only rapper I'm aware of in recent years to use a supposed newfound religious devotion in concert with a highly visible ideological profile is Kanye West
Touche. I thought this essay was a hidden finger writing a political message on the wall (in essence). Saying "I was surprised (and relieved) to find that the profile made no mention of Tate’s religion." and "As far as I was concerned, this was progress. So what if Tate was Muslim? People of all faiths do bad things and have bad ideas, and Muslims were no exception. Finally, we were normal." sounded like, "I don't care what the means are, the end is, after all, the goal I seek. That is woke politics in the kernal of a nutshell. IMHO. Censor, twist, celebrate and consider myself on a higher plane and fully justified. I will understand nothing and explain everything.
Since this guy is from Brookings the real objective was to convince everyone that we need to keep electing Democrats because otherwise Adrian Vermeule, Sohrab Amari, and Patrick Deneen, who I’m still not sure are real people, are going to seize power and roll down your street with tanks and force you to take communion.
Off topic:
I Wish To Live Forever ........
I met a magical fairy yesterday who said she would grant me one wish.
"I wish to live forever" I said.
"Sorry" said the fairy, "That is the only wish that I'm not allowed to grant."
"Fine" I said, "then I want to die the day after Congress is filled with honest, hard-working, bipartisan men and women who act only in the people's best interests!"
“You crafty little bastard," replied the fairy!
🤣🤣🤣🤣priceless
Love this one, Lonesome!
so so stealing this. so appropriate after last nights "speech"
LOLOL...thanks for the laugh.
Lol....
"So what if Tate was Muslim? People of all faiths do bad things and have bad ideas, and Muslims were no exception. "
This is true but in modern times do other religions do bad things on the scale that Islam does? I am thinking of the gulf states who throw homosexuals off buildings chop off hands and heads, have public floggings and of course ISIS. When ISIS was at its zenith, they slaughtered any infidel they could lay their hands on and they murdered them in horrible fashions. They buried them alive, burnt them alive and dragged them behind trucks, raped women and children and then sold them into slavery. They murdered hundreds, thousands? Who knows?
And comprof and his left wing buddies defend these monsters and call Islam the religion of peace.
The author of today's essay conveniently ignores these abominations. Surely Bari edited this essay and would spot that the author is an Islamic apologist.
Yeah, it would be nice to think that there is a middle ground between the toss-the- gays-off- the roof philosophy of Islam and the gays-in-the=pulpit policies of liberal Christianity...sigh...
i often wonder when I see women covered. if they were not forced to do this would they? I used to shop at a bug discount designer shop. the dressing rooms was one big one with mirrors all around. I say covered women in there trying on all sorts of clothes and buying them. why?
Pictures are available from Iran circa 1979 prior to the revolution...not a burkha to be seen and bikinis at the beaches. That says all I need to know about the coverings being a choice.
You can thank the ever incompetent Jimmy Carter for today's Iran which went from being Westernized to the 8th century brutal theocracy it is today.
God bless the Democrats!
Weak, internationally naive leadership is never good, especially for America. Canada is suffering through that as we write and it’s not going well.
Many of them are not forced to cover - some even go against their families' wishes for them to be more "modern." There is a certain comfort in not caring what people think of one's appearance, of hiding one's beauty. Of not letting men-at-large enjoy one's beauty, of controlling who gets to enjoy one's own beauty. And they try on clothes, and buy them, because they like to look good for their husbands at home, and for their girlfriends at get-togethers. Good questions.
Haha! Thanks, because you beat me to it re. Omar... She is a stain on my state.
She could be having sex with a German Shepard and comprof and the Socialists would love her and support her and criticize anyone who spoke out against her and her dog as a dogyphobe.
My supposition circa 1992 was that once we leave Christian ethics anything is allowable. On what basis do we have an injunction against bestiality? Personal preference? “Without God all things are permissible”. Doestovesky
The priests of Doestovesky's "god" are currently sprinkling Wagner mercenaries with holy water as they roll off to rape Ukraine. Western ethics came into being more in spite of Xtianity than because of it.
Touche'!
This is Not your fathers DFL.
Exactly
Eve hear of The Red/Green Alliance?
The report I heard said (as always) someone calling in a fake report about a woman being held against her will brought about the police raid. The woman in question claimed she was in no danger. That's the first I ever heard of Señor Tate. I suspect the prosecution is more about $$$$$$ changing hands and headline politic's than any actual legitimate moral concern. What's Dylan's old IDIOT WIND line: "..someone's got it in for me--they're planting story's in the press--who ever it is I wish they'd cut it out quick--but when they will I can only guess..."
The entire thing is another pay me false flag airball distraction. (Unless you're Andrew Tate.)
If you're interested in what this circus is actually about engage the f'k it gear, stretch your perspective and get your hand's on the Edward F. Edinger commentary on C.G. Jung's AION (short read). Actually feeling ballsy tackle AION itself.
Did Project Veritas confirm the 3 dudes?
Yes they actually filmed them having sex but it was deceptively edited so we don’t know if they really had sex even though there is a video of them having sex.
She paid one of her infidel lovers $400,000 for “campaign consulting”.
Kev, why to you answer this clown? He never gives a straight answer or engages in real debate. He probably believes that Bill Clinton, a misogynist sexual predator "Did not have sex, with that woman, Monica Lewinsky."
He defends the most vile Democrats/Socialist the antisemitic Muslims in the squad and the Socialist Party.
(Yes, I know, the Arabs are also semites.)
You must not be seeing all of the unintentional comedy he generates. And also he has created the opening for some of my best zingers.
😂😂
Maybe you should try and focus on intentional comedy first?
I believe it was her husband who was running the consulting firm?
Yes, adding "....and shit" to comments and fabricating quotes is truly comedic gold. A regular Oscar Wilde.
Was she married to that one while she was still married to her brother? I can't remember.
Fascinating, LP. I've asked Kevin Durant repeatedly if the person who recieved the money was her husband or if it was one of, ask KD said, her "infidel lovers."
Not defending anyone. Just looking to be factually accurate. Albeit antithetical to your worldview, it is important.
Lol. I've given straight answers and engaged in debate from Day 1. You just don't like when I do and point out your abject buffoonery, like bringing Bill Clinton and Lewinsky.
Why has he not answered? Do you have any insight re: this issue, LP?
First of all, his name is Kevin Durant?
Second of all, who are you and what have you done with the original comprof?
Basketball player? Just traded to the Suns?
Yes, at least on here. I'm sure that is part of his comedic repetoire.
Haven't done a single thing with the original Comprof. Amazing what people can see when they stop being mouth-frothing, Pavlovian, reactionaries.
I actually believe that is her new husband after he dumped his wife. Sleep with dogs and you get fleas.
Believe that was her husband, his consulting firm who recieved the money?
Did Project Veritas verify the voter fraud as well?
?
Would that make you feel better about yourself?
I feel great about myself.
Just interested in accurate, nonbiased, non ideological echo chamber information.
Don't think that's too much to ask.
Dude, you're the best.
I suggest you stop dealing in internet rumors and return to the fact-based community:
https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-factcheck-ilhan-omar-meme/fact-check-ilhan-omar-was-not-arrested-23-times-and-other-inaccuracies-in-meme-targeting-congresswoman-idUSKBN2AJ2CA
LOL Reuters. That’s like me providing a link to Steve Bannon’s website.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/NPC_(meme)
Bannon isnt that bad, you mean The Atlantic :-D
Thank you for this link that itemizes what a rotten scofflaw Ilhan Omar is. 23 traffic citations! And that doesn't even count the last 2 years. This woman is a menace.
The Somali population here in MN hates her and for good reason - too much taqqia in her life.
I wish they'd vote for someone else next time.
They do, it is just the democrat machine counting ballots instead of actual votes.
I watched Heston being Hur last night.
Dude, I'm circumcised. Heston wasn't. I know, because William Wyler confidentially asked me if that would impair Heston's authenticity. I told him, just eliminate the hardcore scenes and nobody will know the difference.
Yeah-You gotta work hard for that job.
The same story plays out again and again in evangelical Christianity.
Funny how Omar hasn't been arrested. I guess you, from your mother's basement, know more than the authorities.
She hasn't been arrested because she IS the narrative in her Somalian MPLS ward; her constituents don't even like her anymore as she is the democrat, demographic 'chic'.
She committed marriage fraud by marrying(stuping) her brother to obtain citizenship and that is well known here in Minny. Taqiyya, the excusable muslim(correct me) way of lying to protect your goals.
Oh man, you're hilarious. From my home office in the foothills of the Olympic Mountains looking across the Strait of Juan de Fuca at Vancouver Island, I see very clearly how little anyone actually cares about confronting leftist politicians about all the shit they pull. But my comment was not serious; I don't know that Omar was fucking her own brother. That's just a scandalous rumor.
She's a protected class minority. She can break all kinds of laws, such as committing immigration fraud, and get away with it. It also helps that she managed to get elected to Congress. Congress reps can pretty much break any laws they feel like. R's as well as D's.
Yep
I strongly agree. And, like, Mandonna probably has more followers and she's pretty out there.
When you refer to Democrats, if you are referring to those in govt. who support our hidden govt. employees, I might agree with you. But there seems to be some Republicans who stand by and let the un-elected officials make policy and influence the media, esp. social media.
Very true, Jim
What's up with the immigration fraud stuff?
Does James O'Keefe have any info?
Ahhh Kevin beautifully put!
I’ve long read that a great appeal of Communism is not that as a faith that it is easy, but on the contrary that it is hard. We all instinctively want boundaries and rules. Freedom is good, but too much freedom is scary. Many of the freedom preaching Existentialists were Communists. Heidegger was a Nazi.
And our nation was not founded to protect the freedom to be a loud self indulgent moron. It was to protect the right to be a disciplined believer in some variant of Chritianity not allowed in Europe. Many of the colonies, in any event.
To be an adult is to take serious things seriously. Adulthood is in decline in our nation, so it is small wonder people are clinging in increasing numbers to cultish attachments; or, in this case, to what is seemingly stylistic posturing.
But Leftism is a cult. Rational thought and dissent are not allowed and all outsiders are hated and reviled.
I will add that it is odd to me that there can be HUGE internet trends I’ve never heard of. Until he giot arrested I had not heard of Andrew Tate. His following itself seems a bit cultish
We are atomized and lonely. Very little good comes of that without vigorous effort of a sort few seem willing to individually undertake. We are habituated to consuming, not creating, so the only question becomes which option on the shelf we will pick; and it is entirely possible nearly all are toxic.
I think honest Islam, Christianity and even humanistic Agnosticism are all largely healthy.
But everyone needs to be careful what they let in their minds, because much of the internet is a radioactive swamp.
I had heard of Tate and wondered what the fuss was all about. I watched one of his interviews. Tedious. Another fakir masquerading as a guru to the masses.
Seems like another guy running sex crimes businesses, and hiding it behind a facade of religion. A scam as old as “masculine” religions, it would seem.
The Venn diagram of humanism and communism is a circle.
I disagree. Communism is an anti-humanism. It is cruelty and hubris elevated to sacred values.
I myself believe in God, but if we view each religion as an effort at describing reality I think all are only partly right. Ethically, though, you don’t need much more than the Golden Rule, and even humanists can embrace that.
The main thing they have in common is the narcissistic megalomaniacal motivation behind each ideology.
The end result of communism is always anti-human, as you said, and I would suggest that the endpoint of humanism is always communism.
But this is a discussion that could take decades so let’s just agree to somewhat disagree and move on so as not to waste precious resources.
😂😂🙏🙏
A lot of disagreement happens when we have completely different pictures in our heads. When I say Humanism I have Erasmus and people like him in mind, who opposed tyrannical theocracies.
And in the very rare cases I use the word Liberal I have people like Adam Smith, Thomas Paine, and John Stuart Mill in mind.
To my mind Communism is rooted in emotional imbecility and this is certainly common among intellectuals, many of whom are atheists. But stupidity is never inevitable. It is just common.
Secularization... Creates new ways of being religious- this needs more emphasis. Never a true statement
I had not heard of Tate until Greta supposedly "owned" him on Twitter.
Excellent Barry! Well said.
Everything is about diversity until it comes to diversity of thought.
A rabbi. I listened to calls it unchosen obligations. The thought that there are some things in life that we just need to do whether we like it or not. I really love that concept.
I’ve seen it put as “none of us are expected to complete the work but none of us are exempt from it.”
Your post helped me recall something my late father said often to me while I was growing up. He liked to say 'No one should expect a blue ribbon for doing what one is supposed to do.' I love your rabbi's concept as well because it is an absolute truth.
'Rational thought and dissent are not allowed and all outsiders are hated and reviled.'
An excellent description of not only the Far Left, Barry - but of extreme Islam itself. With an angry violence component included. First manifested in Western eyes with the fatwa against Salman Rushdie in the late '80's (and attacked not long ago..), then repeatedly ever since with knifings in schools in Europe and the streets of London, terrorist attacks throughout the Continent (and of course, here) the killing of journalists who dare depict Mohammed in the wrong way, the crackdown on wearing the wrong clothes in Iran, the demolition of women's rights in Afghanistan - quite the rogue gallery's list of achievements. (Longer lists can be found elsewhere.) I haven't seen the progressive Left do that lately.
Our man Tate says it ' "feels like the last religion on Earth,” the only faith that stands a chance of mounting an effective resistance to moral decay and decline.' Yikes.
It looks like Tate wants not only masculine boundaries and discipline but perhaps to also be on the warpath - not a 'cultish' adult we would like to have around.
There are many moderate Muslims. In general, the world over, people are born into this faith and the overwhelming majority practice it peacefully. Best guesses are 10% are radical, 20% are somewhat supportive, and two thirds are decent people who abhor stupid and unnecessary violence.
Of course 10%, when there are perhaps a billion Muslims, is a huge number.
But Leftists are self selecting. You have to adopt their worldview and if you fail to pivot when they say pivot—as they do often—you get cast out as a heretic.
This is the thing; Muslims at least have holy scripture. The Left only has their Daily Cause, one utterly separated from principle and often commkn decency, whose only purpose is political power. There is no rest or peace in such an environment. Some Muslims are angry but most are not. They have a choice. Leftists do not. Nothing they claimed to believe last week can be safe from mandatory reversal the next.
I agree there are moderate Muslims, the vast majority are, which is why I stated extreme Islam. And extreme Islam will kill. It has before, it kills as we speak and will again in the future - and it appears it is that 'resistance' quality to it that attracts a nobody named Tate.
I hate today's iteration of Left progressivism, and how its stain has infected everything from newsrooms, corporate boardrooms and universities. It is insufferable. But to my knowledge at least, it has not killed anyone yet.
And the holy scripture you cite as a positive for Muslims does not seem to have energized their somewhat muted response worldwide against atrocities committed on their religion's behalf.
The Left in this country has caused the deaths of millions of people, from the New York Times refusal to report on the Holodomor, to a Cambodian genocide only made possible by what was at the time called the Imperial Congress run by Democrats, to the guy who ran over a bicyclist last week, then got out and stabbed him, in an act of random racist violence.
Todays Left stands in a firm and obvious line of idrological succession with the Soviets, Maoists, and even the Ethiopian Communists who created a famine everyone in the West cared about, but whose causes no one wanted to talk about.
I am happy to call anyone capable of rational and honest dialogue a Liberal, but among todays Democrats the few Liberals—like Gabbi Tulsard and Kristen Synema— who remain are unwelcome.
Well if you want to include today's somewhat illiterate generation of the radical left with their weird ideas with Stalinism and Mao that is your choice. But is that present rabble I'm referring to - not regimes in the past that had about as much to with the Communism of Karl Marx as the latest iteration of the GOP has to with Lincoln.
That this generation is violent is obvious. They just stormed the Oklahoma State House. They tried to storm the Arizona State House a year or so ago. They called Trumps murder everywhere for more than four years. In perhaps half a dozen cases white people have been killed in patently racist attacks, lije the Grannies in Wisconsin.
One can certainly point to crimes connectable to both sides, but to call the Left blameless or peaceful is a patent absurdity.
I’ll leave it there.
When everything turned upside down in 2020 I started looking for answers - I read/listened to Jordan Peterson, Sorab Amhari, Patrick Dineen, Ben Shapiro, Rod Dreher and especially Paul Kingsnorth. The common thread was that the only answer to the insanity was organized religion. I went back to my Protestant church and it was completely captured. I am in the process of converting to Catholicism - rediscovering the Church has re-ordered my life and helps me make sense of what is happening in the world.
I like how Sarah Huckabee Sanders put it in her SOTU reply--- we aren’t divided by left and right, we’re divided by normal and crazy.
So very insulting.
Wouldn't it be great to see someone ask Huckabee at her next news conference if she believes in evolution, better still if it was a reporter from Fox..
We definitely see this trend within Judaism with secular Jews or Jews affiliated with less observant movements embrace (or return) to more Orthodox Judaism. As these weren’t my exact reasons for becoming more religious, I can’t comment directly, just wanted to affirm this is a pattern that plays out regardless of the religion involved. I’d be curious if there’s a similar pattern within Hinduism or Buddhism?
I was in the process of exploring reform Judaism as a religion that I might want to convert to. But I found exactly what you’re talking about. It has been captured by the woke and the progressives. When they wanted to know pronouns before I could take a class, I knew it wasn’t for me.
That’s an interesting observation, Chaim. It has strong overtones with the Zeigarnik effect:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zeigarnik_effect
That’s the tendency for people to return to uncompleted tasks. (And maybe partly why I remarried my second wife!). The experiment I heard described was to give subjects problems to solve. Half were allowed to complete the solutions, the other half were stopped part way through. At the follow-up interview at which they got paid for participating, they were left for a little while in a waiting room. On the coffee table there were magazines and also a copy of the problem they were working on. Subjects who hadn’t completed the problem had a much higher tendency to pick it up—rather than magazines—than did the ones who had finished solving it.
I suspect that the same effect happens in people who return to religion after taking a respite from it. Probably part of the human operating system, latest release OSH 5783.5.
One of my Jewish friends referred to the local Reform Synagogue as "The First Church of Moses. " I always found that amusing.
My wife is Buddhist and we go to the ceremony on holidays. Currently in Thailand and seen or heard nothing embracing the woke culture. From what I have seen, the Buddhist stay pretty true to the teachings. Unfortunately most of them align Democrats for voting in the US. In Thailand, most would just be happy for an opportunity to get to America and care less about politics.
Hard to tell. I really don’t know that much about Eastern religions, but I do know that they have a very different conceptual framework than Western ones.
Your path is very similar to mine. I found conservative thinkers (after being very leftist) and I went back to my church, fortunately not captured, and a renewed sense of community and conservatism has also really helped me find peace in troubled times.
Good choice Felina hope you find peace there, it’s a good place to start
My story is the same as yours. After a hiatus from my birth religion, Catholicism, I returned several years ago. It has helped me as well through hard times and a family tragedy. I often wonder what people who have no faith do, or what to they turn to when the worst happens. I pray for them as well. Take care.
I was raised in the Methodist church and wanted to find peace solace and answers during these last few turbulent years and couldn’t, because they too, are ‘captured’ and so we switched to a non denominational Bible church for the same reasons you are converting to Catholicism. It’s wonderful so far.
The Methodist Church has been totally taken over by the "woke" crowd. Decent people should abandon it.
I too went looking among Congregational (New England Protestant) churches to attend during the past year or two- most are woke - but a few remain loyal to the traditional doctrine, that said, they are not well attended....when did Protestantism lose the plot and get side-lined?
Actually, a long time ago. Social activism became the religion.
As a Catholic, I am fearful that this current Pope is undermining the Catholic faith. He is, in my opinion, a communist and a lot of other Catholics think as I do. Fortunately, there are still some priests that are 'true' men of God and faith. But you have to search.
Enjoy!!!
To RT’s comments I think human conscience is not enough because it’s still driven by human nature and sometimes human failure. And I get that’s why people leave organizations and organized religions. At some point faith has to become a personal and individual relationship with God that’s hopefully supported by a strong community of faith. That relationship adds a depth to conscious alone.
For Jeff I think the Methodist church declined over decades. I noticed it over the last decade where as an institution they sort of forgot about their overarching mission and just started worrying about other things - generally political. But the human condition is the human condition and the needs are the same regardless of skin color or or other physical characteristics. I’m really sad about it actually.
RT, I share your admiration for Sufism...but can't it be said that Sufi "masters" are themselves a sort of priesthood? I certainly see them in this way.
I sense in you a fellow Thoreauvian. Am I right?
Actually, I sensed the presence of Thoreau in your brief discussion of Sufism. The Sufi poets, along with the Bhagavad Ghita, are, to me, the two most important sources for the naturalistic philosophy Thoreau articulates in Walden. That text was my pathway to Sufism, which I think you describe very well.
But I will suggest that both Thoreau and the Sufi poets see an intense connection to the natural world as the pathway to transcendence, as a means of being in the presence of God. So maybe you and I still are going to "kirk," even if it takes a different form than what were raised with. The theology and the architecture may vary, but the desire to be in the presence of God remains undiminished.
I respectfully disagree, Fannie. Organized religion is not the only answer, though it is for many. A very large component of adhering to any religion is faith (I would call it suspending your disbelief, but that's just me). I have faith in only one thing, my self belief in the logical, rational side of my brain. I leave it to that to sift through the 'insanity', to find the wheat through the chattering chaff - and work it out for myself. That has not always been easy.
But to me, I'd rather not have an organized anything guide me anywhere, especially one in which the central premise is the existence of an all knowing prophet who will do your thinking for you.
Thanks for your comment! I thought the article would be about people like you. I’m much more curious about your real embrace of religion than … whatever this article is about.
Do it. I've been down lots of rabbit holes that other people find dark, but I find fascinating.
Religious background?
Until the first grade, my family had no religion. Then my dad became a born again Catholic and gave up boozing. I got sent to Catholic school, which I loved for a while. In an earlier comment, I mentioned my first grade teacher, a nun, who introduced me to a more mystical and less dogmatic interpretation of Catholicism.
I've always been curious, and have little desire for answers to the "big" questions. I believe that we can't ever really, truly know the nature of existence. Maybe through contemplation / meditation / prayer we might get a glimpse. It's fun for me to explore all of this, which is why strict religion holds no interest for me, although I do find other people's religious beliefs interesting.
That is interesting. I assume by "captured" you mean by woke ideology? If so, it might explain a trend I think I'm reading of conversions to Catholicism (even though it seems to be drifting along on the tide of woke also, but enjoys a reputation which has been more anchored in tradition).
Glad that you have found a home. But religion (of any stripe) is founded on a fallacy - all of them, every last one, are “constructs” of Man. They deserve no special consideration in the public sphere, and the Founding Fathers got it right. And Barry Cooper, your obsession with “Leftists” as being worse than just about anyone looks foolish - let’s just mock them for their pomposity, but be very afraid of radical Muslims who will kill us. The fatal flaw in Islam is that it’s not permitted to condemn a fellow member of the umma (the faithful). So, confronted by yet another mass murder bomb attack, muslims take refuge in pious protests that Islam is a religion of peace. They simply sound ridiculous.
Hi Fannie, welcome home! You might like a wonderful book by Frank Sheed, Theology and Sanity. If the Church (and to some extent any of the Abrahamic religions) see the world as it actually is - created by and watched over by the Almighty, then to deny Him is to deny reality and to deny reality is, well, not sane.
Yes, a few years ago, I seriously considered converting to Catholicism too, and began talking to a priest about it that had been recommended by a friend...only to discover that the priest was a transparent phony whose main aim was to keep me from figuring out that the modern priesthood is little more than a floating gay orgy, full of "retreats" and fancy costumes. It quickly became obvious that guys like me, who would notice things and ask questions, was the last thing they wanted in the Catholic Church.
Anybody else have this experience?
Blessedly, not all priests are like your experience. That being said, finding a priest that is a 'true' man of faith is not easy. I was fortunate to find one. Interestingly, I didn't realize that when I met him 4 decades ago. I came to that conclusion after meeting up with him again and speaking with him about his journey, and mine, back to faith. I hope you find one; his faith and gentleness is a true gift to me in my journey.
I can't say I did, but I've been terribly disappointed in Christian denominations in general in the US. So far, I really haven't been able to find a church that takes the Gospel seriously. I've recently started going to a conservative synagogue. I'm not quite sure what it is, but the people there seem to take things seriously. Maybe I'm not phrasing it correctly, but that's how I perceive it.
I understand completely. It's tough to find that 'comfort'; but when one does, it's another little miracle. :-).
I wouldn't necessarily say Christianity is the "culmination" of Judaism. That's what most denominations of Christianity would put forth, but I am not a doctrinal Christian.
Also, if both of these monotheistic traditions worship false gods, then what do you propose is the "true" god? It doesn't really add much to the conversation to say, "Oh yeah? What you believe is the highest good and ideal is wrong!" Ok... what now? Belief in Science? We see where that's gotten us the past few years. Belief in the self? Nietzsche had the same idea, I'm not sure how well that worked out. Belief in equality? Marx and Engels thought that one up too.
I actually think that that is a misunderstanding of the God presented in the New Testament. The "Old Testament God" would bring down wrath on those that broke His commandments, sure, but he was also the God who was talked out of sparing Sodom and Gomorrah if even one righteous person be found there. Jesus really didn't preach anything new (besides certain points like forbidding divorce). Really, Jesus re-phrased things like "love your neighbor" from the Torah. If anything, I would say that it is Jesus who brings more promise of condemnation and punishment that anything presented in the Old Testament. Jesus says to be perfect, to pluck out your eye if it causes you to sin, that he has not come to bring peace but a sword, and that those who hear the Word and do not act upon it are condemned to eternal punishment where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth, where the worm never dies.
That sort of visceral message isn't really found in the Old Testament, as far as I can tell. I may change my view on that. I've just started studying Hebrew to try and get a better understanding of the OT.
As to what exactly the scriptures refer to (in the earliest parts of Genesis, it refers to "Elohim" as if in a pluralistic sense at times), who knows? I'm still trying to figure that out lol
I once lived in a small dispersed residential community in the Cascade mountains. Across the street was a large mansion that had a number of men living in it. We eventually figured out that it belonged to the Catholuc church and was used as a retreat. The house next to it was not close (5 acre parcels) and had a hot tub in the back yard. I was talking to the wife of that household once who told me she'd stopped going in it by herself because she kept seeing one of those men hiding in the trees within her property watching her and it creeped her out. She had small children. She claimed the retreat was for priests who had been accused of sex crimes.
You sound like a man who's been there!
Where music and passion are always the fashion!
Welcome home!
Same thing happened to me. While i remain steadfastly Protestant, the average age of our church is 60+. The progressive churches I used to long for hold little appeal for me anymore.
I started the conversion to Catholicism right before 2020.
I no longer identify with the Catholic Church, but I think I needed the organization and structure to help guide me.
Very true. Religious zealots abound in every faith, both traditional and secular.
You might want to read up on Catholic Social Teaching.
That all depends on what you mean by “religion”. I think all humans have a “religious” impulse, i.e., search for meaning/framework for seeing the world, etc.
Science is just a way of measuring things. Calculus is the measurement of moving objects, chemistry is the measurement of molecular particles, etc. To say that Science and Technology are are new religions is... well... a declaration of faith. Just like the shahada.
Also, the etymology of “church” comes from the Greek “ekklaisia”, meaning “gathering”.
Lastly, no miracles? Isn’t every day that we are alive on this planet a miracle? Considering the infinitesimally small chances of us being here, evolving the way we did and all that?
I am reading the book God Light and the author discusses the intertwining of science and religion. I guess my comment was more about, for me, feeling you were obliterating my experience of maybe wanting/needing/believing in the concept of organized religion. I do try to realize my experience isn't the experience of anyone else and not to force my ways on others. I guess that's how I felt, like your way of not needing religion was the way we should be. I might view the miracle of today as a god done deed...or maybe not. It can be both/and.
| Isn’t every day that we are alive on this planet a miracle? |
That's the paradox, isn't it. I look at an ant, for example, and think "this is absolutely amazing, an incredible creature with millions of cells doing whatever it's supposed to do" but then, boom, it's gone with a push of the thumb.
If there is some higher power, I'll concede it's more powerful than humans, but it's definitely not all-powerful because it can't make anything that lasts. Also, most of the known universe is cold and dead. Wouldn't a higher power want a universe teeming with life?
How do you know the universe isn’t teaming with life?
"it's definitely not all-powerful because it can't make anything that lasts." You seem to be assuming that God would want to make something that lasts but can not. Seems to me to be an unwarranted assumption. Also unwarranted is the assumption that said "higher power" hasn't made anything that lasts . . .
Not just that nothing lasts, but also the tremendous amount of energy required to keep something alive and even then it slowly decays and atrophies.
Good points. However, that is assuming we can understand God's purpose in creating the universe. As far as we can figure out, He did it simply because He thought it would be a good idea.
I think we can pose the same question as to what Generative AI would "do" (if GAI ever became a thing). What would be its motivation for doing things? Who knows, really? It would be a being that only slightly resembles the way human think/do things/perceive the world.
At most, you could only say what such a being hasn't done, not what said being cannot do. Lack of evidence isn't tantamount to lack of ability.
I'm not quite sure what Captain Kirk has to do with it. ("Kirk" is just "church" with a Scottish pronunciation).
I tried to find the source that links the Greek word "ecclesia" to the goddess "Circe". I did find one website, but it didn't seem to give an accurate etymological history. According to britannica.com, "ecclesia" comes from the ancient Greek for "gathering of those summoned" and has its roots in the Homeric agora. In other words, it was a word used for governmental/political purposes and was later used in the Greek New Testament (some 600 years later) as a way to describe those who would "gather" together. In fact, in many of Paul's letters he does not quite make the distinction between Jews who do not believe in Christ and those who do. Keep in mind that this was before Christianity had become an organized religion; it was still considered a fanatical sect of Judaism.
I'm not quite sure how I feel about miracles, but usually the defense I've heard for them is thus: miracles are simply an altering of the laws of nature by the creator of nature in a specific time and place. That is, if God is the watch-maker, then he can manipulate it if He so chooses.
As to our dimension being a frequency that is sometimes bled over into others... I don't know. That's a question for quantum mechanics if ever there is one.
Ekklesia was originally a political, not religious, term as it means "called-out gathering" and referred to the political assembly of citizens in Greek city-states.
From this source
https://earlychristiantexts.com/should-ekklesia-really-be-translated-as-church/:
The connection to something similar to 'Circe' is rooted in the name Cappadocian Christians in 5th century modern-day central Turkey gave their communities, 'Kyriakos oikos' (house of the Lord). They significantly influenced the translation of the Christian Bible into Gothic, wherein 'Kyriakos oikos' is rendered 'ciric'--which is 'kerk' in Old English and 'church' in modern English.
“You do not need religion to re order your life. All you need is a conscience”
And how do we acquire a conscience? The people that surround you. I was raised a Methodist and it was the people that made the church, not the religion. It was primarily my parents and grandparents that shaped my conscience but those wonderful, caring souls still influenced it in a positive way. I have many fond memories of hayrides, summer Bible school, dinner fund raisers, Wednesday night choir practice…
I get what you’re saying about religion, it’s been twisted many times by evil men and women but it’s the sense of community that is the universal attraction and even though I no longer attend church, I firmly believe that the vast majority of those that do make the world a better place.
It makes you wonder what happened to the people we know (think of a person who has truly done evil things, not out of mental illness, but out of agenda, maliciousness etc.) and you have to be curious if you could see their multigenerational heritage and how that shaped their "conscience". And then contrast those whose family lineage for many generations was imbued with love and light. I am not sure I totally ascribe to being born with a conscience except to say I am at an energetic, epigenetic, subconscious level a product of those before me. So family values passed on I believe can help or hinder a person's conscience. And having recently returned to church, it is about God on one level. And I got there because my co-worker and I were discussing the renewal of the church's mission. When I heard what she was sharing, I said to self, I think that sounds lovely. And due to the negative way the world feels to me, I am choosing love, light and a community of people who care...about God and by extension are living as Christ in how they related to me.
Religions are a product of human nature and a reflection of the people from whom they are drawn. They go in lock-step together. Read history from the middle ages and you'll find the barbarism exhibited by religion a mirror of the commonly accepted beliefs and practices of the people who are members - all with what they felt was good conscience, or at least aspiring toward those values at the time. We look at them as barbaric and savage but we are not them. Future generations will no doubt look at us the same way. Still there will be religion because it is a unifying social force that allows people to work organizationally together in much larger groups than they can in simpler tribes. Tribes can't stand against it.
Maybe I need a simple tribe. I have felt a tribe might not be a bad place to be! Or a cult, or the armed services. I do agree there is a lot of control in these groups. I am sure the government would like to control us this way, under the guise of goodness ha ha ha,...I think they have shown their hand through the pandemic for me to know the government doesn't care about me. When they told me to wrap my house in plastic, keep my doors and windows closed during anthrax, I said I want my tax money back. If that is the best you got, I will take my money and take care of myself ha ha ha....I must be getting old enough to become awake and cynical.
I would not force it which is I guess what I was saying. It felt forced through previous posts, like organized religion isn't the way to being conscious. I would say there are infinite ways to being in this world, and hopefully there is enough goodness to overcome badness. No one path is truth for me. I wasn't an organized religion person, until I wasn't. And who knows, this may change. I firstly get my sense of god in the earth, animals, my dog of all things. My hope is probably like yours, that the light will obliterate the dark. And there is a lot of people all over the place denying one's experience...just turn on the TV or go to a store and look at the go this way arrow or stand here arrow. It's pervasive in my experience. I work to hopefully not allow others to deny my experience and also to allow others theirs.
Just want to say I really love this conversation. The two of you talking about your beliefs is so much more interesting than the snarky, shallow article above. Thank you!
I think the common trait that psychopaths/sociopaths lack is empathy. They have no ability to put themselves in the position experienced by another. It allows them to imagine and carry out unimaginable cruelty to the rest of us.
Incidentally, apparently highly successful men and women often score very high on the the scale of psychopathology. Some guy wrote a book about it awhile back.
Your comments would be more powerful if you didn't deny people's beliefs/needs/wants. You state "you don't need" and then go on to tell others what they should do/think/believe. I am curious if you restating your beliefs in terms of "I don't need" and "I believe". I found it interesting that you had to in ways preach to us here to convert us to your way of being?
I agree conscience is key to living an ordered life. But if you have no Higher Authority than yourself or society's mores I think conscience can easily end up manipulated by the ego to confirm that things we really want are "good" and "right."
The higher authority you speak of always reflects society's mores at the time. Go back through history. And those mores are often misled by egos - maybe some else's if you aren't being misled by your own.
The largely aggregate consciousness of my peers, I suppose. The kind Leah and others are mentioning is a kind of a middleman in my opinion. It doesn't really add anything to the discussion - it just blocks the view.
Ever read Nisargadatta Maharj's "I Am That"? It's very interesting in a weirdly related way.
Oh, man, RT, you must have gotten out of bed on the wrong side to jump into this rabbit hole. Sort of like the guy who goes into an Irish bar and starts swinging.
I hear you. I have to avoid cabbage too. ;-)
Religion is a series of rules and regulations built around a core of nonsense, similar to astrology. "The sun goes around the earth," "the earth is 6,000 years old" etc. These pronouncements sound ridiculous to many people NOW but when they were made you had to accept them or else.
I understand that it's good for the spirit to sit in a beautiful building in quiet and contemplate life, the universe and everything else but the same thing can be accomplished sitting by a stream, watching the stars, or even looking out over a city.
I still have memories of being smacked on the face in Catholic school for asking "why?" too many times and not accepting the response "because god says so!"
I had an awesome nun as my first grade teacher who approached religion from a more mystical and less dogmatic place. I can track my free thinking, wide ranging spirituality back to her.
She was sweet and a great teacher. My life has definitely been better for having known her.
would you have the same feeling if she were not a nun?
Absolutely! But a lay teacher in a public school would not have had license to talk to children about spirituality and the mysteries of life.
Side note, because I love to talk about her, "mystery" was one of her favorite words. She was a curious, inquisitive person and encouraged that in us. "Mystery" was a way of talking about things that could never really be settled, only contemplated. Of course she said this in a much more rudimentary way to us / me and other kids who were responsive.
I think the explanation for the lack of coverage on Tate's conversion is simpler than the author supposes, the media has for years treated Muslims with kid-gloves and views anything potentially critical of that faith as off-limits. I submit that if Tate had converted to some form of Christianity there would be an incessant drumbeat from the media of how Christianity is bad and draws malfeasants like Tate who want to return to the dark ages.
Just imagine if he’d converted to Judaism.
Luckily it’s really difficult and a ton of work to ACTUALLY convert to Judaism. One cannot just claim to have faith.
Learning to like borsht might be the biggest hurdle of all.
You kidding borsht is delicious you don’t have to be Jewish to enjoy borsht. But I can tell what the best is Chicken soup and Kneidlach, especially if you not feeling well. My later mother called in Jewish Penicillin it was a miracle cure for all our childhood ailments.
😂😂😂
True enough, Joe. You will not see a depiction or likeness of Mohammed on the airwaves of CNN, Fox or anyone else anytime soon..
I had the exact same thought whilst reading the article. CNN would blast it all over the news.
The phrase regarding Islam “They order freedom by constraining it” stuck out to me. I know nothing about Tate or his conversion, but isn’t our whole left-leaning society now about ordering freedom by constraining it? Limits on academic speech. Vaccine passports. Hell, Antifa supports vaccine mandates. So anarchists support forced medical treatment of shots that don’t stop transmission?
There seems to be this underlying societal suspicion of traditional religions and all who practice them (in some cases for good reason), yet our supposedly secular society is its own form of religion with rigidity to spare. Try to step outside its orthodoxy and find out for yourself.
“isn’t our whole left-leaning society now about ordering freedom by constraining it?”
It is and in the Church of Big Government, if you don’t conform, you’re declared a heretic, or the leftist preferred term du jour, racist. I wonder how long before they reinstate stake burning as the only suitable form of punishment.
Tate is a distasteful nut. Who cares why he converted to Islam? Why are we honoring this guy with an article?
I don’t know. We just had a rapist and child molester who pretends to be Catholic give an address to the entire nation. I think one article about a misogynist kickboxer who pretends to be Muslim won’t hurt.
So true, Kevin Durant...Our Pedophile-in-Chief is the poster boy (one of them anyway) for the rot that pervades our "elites."
You’re a card Kevin 🤣🤣🤣
What the author was afraid of is what applies to Tate - Islam is the perfect religion for a misogynist. Did we already forget ISIS and how they recruited disaffected young men? The appeal was in dominance over lesser people and permission to rape female captives of any age.
Yes, mainstream Islam has suppressed the violence, but one thing that ISIS was never accused of was not adhering to the Quran.
I guess the Taliban is selling our abandoned weapons to Russia and what I’m hoping comes next, since Israel is providing substantial support for Ukraine, is an alliance between Russia and the Palestinians. What will Democrats do then?
😂😂
Same thing they're doing now - ignoring the alliance between the Pals and Iran.
The article didn’t seem very honoring, rather general interest. Comments don’t exactly seem to be burnishing his image. Looks like he and Hunter Biden are neck and neck in the race to the bottom.
Because he’s influential.
The only interview clip I've seen of Tate was him saying, "the state will come after me eventually because I have influence, and influence is the most important currency today."
I see a pattern here. One person does something. Writer thinks it might be a trend and finds other possible examples, but doesn't make a compelling case... talked to some people, etc.. I wonder to what extent this is driven by the need to "write something" and fill space. Helen Lewis talked about it in her interview with Bari last week... the relentless push to produce content.
Walter Kirn and Matt Taibbi discussed this recently in one of their podcasts. The trend of writers using weak sources for material and not really investigating the matter. The goal is to get clicks/reads not promote truth or facts. Before this article, I had never heard of Tate, but now a whole bunch of people are googling him bc of this essay. The appearance of fascination with him will be perpetuated.
But the thing is.. what are they not examining/reporting on while discussing the actions of one person most of us don't give a whit about?
I would love a podcast where nothing was said at all.. silence
Reading this as a religious Jew is interesting. We’re quite big on rules, and yet I have not met anyone who converted due to political reasons. I’d be curious if anyone knows of examples? Fascinating article and does align with anecdotal evidence from my life as far as friend who’ve embraced either stricter forms of Judaism (having been born a Jew) or embraced stricter forms of Christianity in their search for meaning.
My turn to Orthodoxy was concurrent with my becoming more politically conservative. Not surprisingly, both happened after 9/11.
I was thinking of commenting on yesterday’s article about the episode of The Last of Us (but didn’t) that the solution I’ve found to suburban isolation and modern loneliness is living an Orthodox Jewish life. I wish everyone could live in a community like mine; we help each other out; start meal trains for bereaved families and new moms; socialize and worship together; help community members find new jobs or life partners; visit our sick and bury our dead. Yes, it’s chock full of rules and restrictions. It’s also the most meaningful and fulfilling way I’ve ever lived, and I wouldn’t trade it for anything.
Beautiful. The same in my church. People need a social structure, not tiktok.
I envy your faith.
Anna - thanks for that description. It's not how I live exactly (some parts, yes) but I can appreciate and admire the benefits of it.
do you shave your head and wear a wig? do you have two kitchen for meat and milk? different sets of dishes. I am curious
Bestuvall:
As far as I’m aware, only Satmar women (and perhaps some other Chasidic sects) shave their heads. None of the Chasidic or Modern Orthodox women I know shave their heads; we have all our hair underneath. Not all Modern Orthodox women cover their hair, but many do. Some wear wigs every day; others wear wigs only on formal occasions but for everyday covering, wear hats or bandanas, etc., which is what I do.
I have only seen one private residence that had two kitchens; the rest of us have one kitchen with two sets of utensils/dishes/etc. The lucky among us have two sinks and two dishwashers/ovens (but not stoves). You can make it work without two sinks; you just have to know how. Two refrigerators are nice for space, especially when you’re cooking ahead for lots of holiday guests, but not necessary for kashrut purposes, as it is heat that causes potential problems.
Did I answer all your questions? :-)
The 3 dots.
Reading the same exact article, what I found fascinating is that the author NOT ONCE referred to Judaism. When talking about demanding religions, it seems that Orthodox Judaism is the most demanding by far!
I wonder why he couldn't mention Judaism at least once...
To be fair, we’re historically extremely discouraging of converts, and most conversion programs take a minimum of a year, so it’s not surprising to me that examples of converts joining Judaism for the reasons mentioned in the article may not exist in the public consciousness. An article about secular Jews embracing more rigorous forms of Judaism could be written, as there are many examples, but from my perspective it’s outside the scope of what this article focuses on.
He also didn’t talk about Christianity, Shinto, Hinduism, Buddhism, Wiccan, etc.
Maybe he knows little about it?
It’s not about rules per se. It’s more about politics and the rejection of mainstream culture and declining morality. Furthermore there’s a masculinity thing.
Certainly, Orthodox Judaism has many of the characteristics discussed here, but it is also perceived as a pacifistic lifestyle, clannish and family centric, walled off from mainstream society and living strictly by the Laws handed down from ancient times.
The author seems to be getting at a more defiant approach, conversion for political reasons. Tate advertises an aggressively masculine persona, the ultimate alpha male, the warrior.
I think some in Israel come close to this, the settlers in Judea and Samaria for example. People who live by their faith and carry a gun at all times.
I was gonna say, come to Israel, we’ve definitely got some pretty non-passive Orthodox Jews! I take your point especially in regards to the diaspora though.
I want to be in Israel.
It’s expensive and the salaries are low, lol! The quality of life is high, but there are significant compromises you have to make to live here if you’re used to w US or EU quality of life.
Yeah, but someday, somehow I’ll get there. Some things are more important than money.
Cheers!
"Certainly, Orthodox Judaism has many of the characteristics discussed here, but it is also perceived as a pacifistic lifestyle, clannish and family centric, walled off from mainstream society and living strictly by the Laws handed down from ancient times."
Given what we (or at least I) see in society today, I have to ask, This Is Supposed To Be A Bad Thing?
Not really, more of an adherence to tradition. That said, the Orthodox Jews in New York have started manning up, applying for gun permits to defend themselves from the New Cossacks roaming the streets looking for Jews and elderly Asians to assault.
Check out JPFO.org
Gonna call that A Good Thing. I recall reading in the Roman Empire having Jewish guards was considered a status symbol.
I’d be curious if anyone knows of examples?
My guess is that the author made it up from a few isolated examples. Paint with a broad brush much? I found this essay laughable.
Not exactly political, but Sammy Davis, Jr. converted in the 50s:
https://www.quora.com/Why-did-Sammy-Davis-Jr-convert-to-Judaism?share=1
One of his standard gags dealt with playing golf. Someone asks him what his handicap is. He answers, “I’m a one-eyed Jewish negro. What’s yours?”
You’d have to ask Nellie why she converted, but if I had to guess, it would be that Bari was involved in the decision.
I have a lot of friends who admire Judaism a lot. Some talk about converting, but none have as yet. At least they haven’t told me they did. Beyond having Shabbos dinner with my cousins and going to the occasional seder or bar mitzvah, I’m not much of a practicing MOT. But there’s no getting away from the cultural end of it.
I’m not sure where things become political.
Mohammad Ali used to be Cassius Clay. and the cynical explanation for that conversion had to do with avoiding the draft for Vietnam.
Edit: just an example of political conversion.
Interesting! I’d forgotten about him, he’s definitely one of our more famous converts.
Marilyn Monroe and Liz Taylor, too.
Oh, yeah.
"In 2022, Andrew Tate was the most googled person in the United States."
Who?
Exactly! Never heard of him until he was arrested. I follow Jordan Peterson very closely and these two keep getting put in groups together. How come I’ve never heard of him?
He's the Patron Saint of incels.
Yeah, apparently I’ve been living under a rock. I’ve never heard of him. Looks like I haven’t missed much.
Good site optimization.
That made me laugh.
Same.
Life on earth is wild, unmanageable and scary. The existence of a higher power beyond humanity may or may not be true but, in any case, it is stabilizing. Secular belief in the goodness of humanity and political leaders of your persuasion may work for some people, usually those without major life challenges. But as you get older and notice politicians with skyrocketing net worth far exceeding anything they could possibly have legally made in their positions, questions about human nature arise. Then when friends drop you for various reasons, e.g. you are a “selfish” unvaccinated person or won’t say biological mens’ rights should trump womens ’…well, I’ll go with the other door, the higher power.
Beautifully stated. Thank you.
Being “exacting, masculine and vigorous” are not reasons to join a faith. This guy has joined another club to get a fresh set of fans and more attention.
Please send a writer to the south, come to my church, and you will see faith in reading, understanding and trusting in God’s word. The messages are love, forgiveness and reconciliation. The congregation is growing too.
Most of the protestant churches in the North have become so woke you might as well just go to a DNC rally. So off putting, I'm considering Catholicism.
Another reason to move south, Bruce.
How many do you need?
True but then I'd miss the seamy entertainment value of clowndom on fully display. Riding the subway yesterday - a treat of the full panoply of the failure of liberalism with every stereotype of depravity on display, with just a touch of exhilarating danger. What more does one need?
I like your style, Bruce.
Surely somebody other than yourself on that subway had to a true conservative! I think they're hiding in plain sight..enjoying the perceived danger.
Please talk to as many Catholic priests as you can. I returned to the faith after several years of 'hiatus' due to a priest I met MANY years ago and ran into again. (Coincidence? I don't think so.) These true men of God and faith are not easy to find even in the priesthood; but this man 'walked' and prayed me through the biggest tragedy in my old life. I hope you find one.
Speaking as a Jew without a synagogue, I drive past churches around here that have rainbow patterns permanently displayed. They post “Black Lives Matter” and “We believe in Science/Justice for refugees/blah blah blah” signs, as though to reassure passersby that they are not racist, xenophobic, vaccine denying gay-bashing Klansmen.
I wonder what kind of namby-pamby, liberal drivel passes for a sermon in these Houses of Liberalism. Is God ever mentioned? Is the family still a thing? Are children (if any) encouraged to identify as whatever gender they like this week?
Many if not most churches and synagogues here in the Northeast have lost the plot. Oh, there’s a few real ones left; the Baptist church next to my house is unabashedly traditional, though dying.
The Chabad House nearby espouses a strict, Orthodox practice of the Jewish faith and is strongly pro-family, though interestingly they welcome all comers.
I believe we are on the verge of a revival. Andrew Tate is a bit of an extreme, but highly intelligent and articulate. He is aggressively persuasive and, like Donald Trump, has struck a chord, has rattled the nerves of the entrenched powers.
It’s no wonder that he’s under attack, and likely to be killed by the Romanians (reports are emerging that he’s ill with something serious, and being denied proper treatment).
The Biden regime could send a representative from the Embassy to check on him, a common practice when a celebrity is arrested on shaky grounds. But they won’t. Brittney Griner got the royal treatment because of her race and politics. Tate will just be hung out to dry.
The rainbow flag and BLM crazy adoration is why I left my church. Didn’t leave my religion or beliefs, just the church for embracing fake causes that grifters use to make money.
The ex BLM leader is back in the news. Must need to remodel her millions dollar home in the exclusive white neighborhood. Omar was right in the phrase but should have been for CRT. It’s about the Benjamin’s.
I can't like this but I think you are on to something. Men have been under attack for years in our culture. To the point where for far too many women the terms masculine and mysoginistic are synonomous. That can't be good for natural procreation and blowback was inevitable. IMO these women have killed the golden-egg laying goose.
Jason Whitlock has some great podcasts on the negative impacts on Matriarchal culture.
Terry, Chaim (and anyone else interested)—look up “Confessions of a Synagogue Hopper.” Bari’s dad, Lou, published it in the Wall Street Journal in ‘16 or ‘17.
It’s wonderful.
I really like Chabad. I've participated in a Purim with them and attended a class. If my family didn't have such strong ties to Christianity I'd probably join Chabad. As it is I've stuck with the church I was raised in even though it has gone down hill.
I quit going to the two synagogues we were in, when the rabbis in both places spent more time bloviating about divisive topics like gun control and how mean Trump was to Muslims, than to teaching Torah and creating a shared, unifying experience. The other two synagogues we've gone to on occasion are just as bad. So yeah, it's either an orthodox synagogue miles away, or Chabad. Chabad is not bad but I don't have any social connections there, except that my wife now works in their preschool/daycare, so there's that. They're an interesting organization.
How old are you?
Why do you ask?
If you are an adult, it seems to me that it would be more honest to attend Chabad. If it’s a matter of faith (Jesus is the promised Messiah to the Jews first and then to the Gentiles), perhaps you could find a messianic synagogue and practice both.
I'm married with children and have a long line of pastors in my family. I'm actually named after my great great grandfather. It isn't as simple as to simply throw my hands in the air and convert and walk away from my ancestors, family, wife, church, etc.. I know that is how a lot of moderns think and operate but it isn't how I operate. I mean where would they bury me? On the opposite side of the cemetery, "we were an odd lot but that one yonder was odd as they come!" No, I'm committed to my lot. So I am where I am until God tells me to move on and may God have mercy on my soul if that's wrong. In the meantime I can enjoy both my church and Chabad and be honest with both as I have been.
That seems like a reasonable plan. If your Christian faith is intact it should only benefit by attending Chabad- even if the relatives think you’re a little nutty. Jesus was, after all, Jewish and practiced all the traditions thereof.
It took me forever to find the thread!! I ask your age because of your reference to family being connected to church. If you are young and still under your parents’ “payroll,” then it makes sense that family connections compel you to stay in that church.
Lack of religion leaves a void that many need to fill. Politics is one way to fill that space. Other ways might include science or art, distractions from the gnawing feeling that death will one day take you, and you have nothing to look forward to, even if that expectation is based on unverified stories or arcane books. This is understandable but a sad result of organized religion’s failure to compellingly hold up without blind faith. Sad. Very sad. We are short-lived creatures, painfully aware of our own mortality, products of our personal histories, and easily molded by established forces that check our boxes. This is such a dark post, and I hated writing it, but it is a seldom referenced thought that I keep buried as much as possible.
The climate change religion has all the themes of Judeo-Christianity---earth was once a garden until man sinned and destroyed it. Now we must suffer, deprive ourselves, do penance, pay indulgences. Believers believe without question and malign those who do.
Turns out we humans need something bigger than ourselves to believe in. After we decided, “God is dead, and we killed him”. (Nietsche), we had a pretty bad spell-- WW I, WW II, Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, Kim, so many others, all demanded allegiance to an all powerful state and no God. Have we had enough yet? I think so. God is faithful, he’s waiting for us, you.
True until the last sentence. Then you get into blind faith. This is where the disconnect is made, where doubt is so easily introduced. Some of us need a better reason to pick religion, or any particular religion to put our hearts into.
That's the entire point Rob. There is, and cannot be on this Earth, proof. It is strictly a matter of faith and whether or not one is capable thereof. I can't articulate properly what that means to the one who accepts faith but it opens doors. Not to certainty but to possibility.
Well said, Lynne.
I think at its most fundamental level, having a living faith (as opposed to an accessory one) comes down to our willingness to surrender our ego enough to trust in something Higher than ourselves, to cultivate that humility of spirit—trust in the existence, goodness, and wisdom of something (Someone) higher than we are. The endeavor of spiritual rebirth is unavoidably painful because human beings are averse, by nature, to challenging the deceptive certainty of our own egos, the pride of our own intelligence, the compelling yet selfish desires of our hearts. So having genuine faith requires a leap. Painful, yet worth it.
You are 100% correct. The leap is painful, but oh so worth it. Take care.
Rob, you expressed your thoughts beautifully. You are painfully aware of the human condition and it seems to me that you are either searching, or have spent a lot of time pondering. Where the journey takes you, I don’t know. My understanding of ‘the last sentence’ is that God calls everyone. We are born sentient beings with free will. It’s up to us to first hear the call and then to listen. It’s a very personal experience, and a profound one. I wish you all the best.
You meet a stranger on the street or a girl in a bar. Talking to them requires a bit of faith or a bit of stupidity. Choosing one will make you happier!
And blind faith is what is required; and comforts. We will never understand everything; we are not meant to. But I agree; finding a home in faith is important.
You forget earlier history where pious, all powerful rulers carried out large-scale atrocities in the name of religion.
The 30 Years War in Germany, the First Crusade, the St Bartholomew Massacres in France and the massacres of Boghdan Khmelnitsky in Ukraine match 20th century atrocities in everything but technology.
The idea that strict adherence to religious beliefs results in better human behavior is demonstrably false as any highschool class in world history will easily demonstrate.
"Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition"
"A Dios rogando y con el mazo dando"
What you speak of is church history. Churches run by flawed humans seeking power and tossing aside Jesus’ teachings. Adhere to his teachings and you won’t have strife. Love and Forgiveness.
Ok that one really frosts me.
Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition was a WWII song to give hope and inspiration to the men going into a nightmare to fight fascism.
The way I see it twisted now to say "Christians are dumb and violent" is a disgrace to the sacrifices of those veterans. Who include some in my family, so it's personal for me.
Total hogwash: "A Dios rogando y con el mazo dando" is from the first Spanish piece of literature, Cantar del Mio Cid, dating from the 13th century.
Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition came in response to Pearl Harbor, but matches exactly the tone of the Spanish refrain from 6 centuries earlier.
People often wrap themselves in a flag, as you did, when they have nothing intelligent to argue. Loads of atheists, including the Red Army and the Chinese insurgents, had much greater sacrifices in dead and wounded than any Western army in fighting fascism.
' I see it twisted now to say "Christians are dumb and violent"' we are all accustomed in these woke days to see language twisted to impute evils to people. "Silence is violence" and "domestic terrorists" are similar examples.
"we are all accustomed in these woke days to see language twisted to impute evils to people"
I appreciate the acknowledgement that your reference to a WWII fighting song was a historical twisting to attribute evil to Christians. That's what I found tone deaf and offensive. Ironic that you both acknowledge this and deny it in your comment.
Both of your quotations I find irrelevant to your claim that religious people aren't better than secular people, a belief that's impossible to quantify in any way so I wouldn't bother to even address it.
Mobs of every type commit atrocities. It requires no blind faith to be thus.
Add all those up and they aren't even a rounding error compared to Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot and all the other champions of "The God That Failed".
Improve your knowledge of history:
30 Years War killed 1/3 population in Germany
Boghdan Khmelnitsky killed 750,000 Jews
St. Bartholomew Massacres exterminated the Protestant population in France
Nowhere near a rounding error
Which God are you referring to, NC?
There are many..
I don't think lack of religion leaves a void, it is removal of religion. That is, those who grew up with one but repudiated it. For those of us who never had one there is no void.
I have several times, when I've moved to a different part of the country gone to Meetup groups to meet new people. It's hard to find ones with people who like to read a wide variety of serious nonfictional topics. The reading club ones invariably want to read the latest woke best sellers. And many groups are basically for singles to meet. Usually there is one called "free thinkers" which I've tried several times. But turns out these seem to draw mostly born-again atheists. It feels like being in one of those 12 step programs you see as a trope in movies: "Hi, I'm Frannie and I used to be in the Four Square Church..." Nothing but religion bashing. Void is a perfect way to describe the holes in these people.
I would believe you that there was no void if I didn’t see thousands of adults around me in Seattle spending most of their free time stoned or drunk while simultaneously prancing about proclaiming how cool and super intelligent they are. As my good friend, a psychologist says, if you can’t stand to be sober, you’re running away from something.
Brilliant from your friend. And on point.
It’s the conundrum of modernity. On some personal and social level, moving from a belief system based on shared myths to the nihilism implied by naturalism doesn’t really feel like moving from a position of weakness to strength, even if it is closer to reality.
Don't bury it. Reflect on it until that which is dark becomes enlightening. Then grasp that mustard seed and watch it bloom into the tallest of trees.
Maybe "redwood seed"? Mustard only grows to about three feet max.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salvadora_persica#Description
Salvadora persica is a small tree or shrub with a crooked trunk,[3][need quotation to verify] typically 6–7 metres (20–23 ft) in height.
Well, that may have a fragrance like mustard, but the actual plant they harvest seeds from is about knee high. I used to walk through fields of it as a kid.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mustard_plant
See the family classification: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brassicales
I’m not sure what’s happening to Common Sense anymore. Perhaps it’s the name change, who knows. But lately, while a lot of posts appear, they are irrelevant and bizarre.
I guess somewhere people have heard of this Andrew Tate guy, but what is his importance? Nada, zip, nothing. Amazing someone can write a whole essay on irrelevance.
I’m not sure this is the work Bari set out to do. If it is, it’s the work of the work salad Kamala spews. But it sure isn’t work that I’m interested in.
Well said and Bari needs to tighten up what is posted. I didn’t subscribe to get this crap. Get back to basics or I will not renew. I can get this at CNN or the View.
Exactly, and I don’t watch those two.
There are so many issues facing America or even the world, and we get some guy 99% have never heard of?
The comments are so much better than the article. Scroll up for a pretty civilized discussion about faith, dogma, and spirituality.
I though about unsubscribing because the content is really lazy lately but comments keep me going.
Being the "most googled person in 2022" confers its own importance (for better or worse) and implies many many people have heard of him and, while you may have never heard of him, he did amass a staggering amount of influence amongst a certain demographic (mine -- 20-30s males) in 2022. And I can't get the guy out of my YouTube algorithm to save my life!
I enjoyed this essay because it discussed (albeit briefly) the underrated and underacknowledged "religious impulse" which appears to be hardwired into humans just like hunger, sex, etc. and is manifesting itself in the broader culture and institutions of the US at a level not seen in any of our lifetimes.
While I agree Common Sense was better, I also understand the impulse for BW+ to grow TFP which is sad to me but ultimately necessary.
That being said, TGIF is still my favorite email to get every week!
I’m not sure this type of essay grows the site.
And this guy discussed is as relevant as Santos which the media is so keen on pontificating unrelentingly. Neither adds value.
Same here on TGIF. Good comment for the rest.
Nobody bats 1.000
We are her transitional subscribers. We aren't who she wants to reach but stepping stones paying her bills at the moment. She didn't see a path to where she wants to be at WSJ or NYT because of the people obstacles in the way. So she's trying to grow her own TFP. But I he goal is the same. That's the conclusion I've come to.
Kinda harsh.
Really? Why?
This article reads like a high school English position paper. All over the board with random references to alleged authority figures to bolster the argument ending with a sweeping conclusion that was not even close to proving the initial topic of the paper. Was this an essay the writer used for a standardized test writing portion?
Let's just covert to common sense first. Religious or not surely we can find common ground in common sense. It's not common these days. But there was a lot more common 30 years ago.
I'm presuming most people excluding various corporations and politicians don't see war as making sense. Therefore this is common and sensible. I also presume that most people would not agree that Trans women should compete in women's sports or be in women's lockers. It's a common feeling among the majority of left and right. Click the like if you agree with just these 2 examples. Maybe you can add some others .
The 10 common senses!!