Something I do not understand is these terrorist groups & their so called “moderate” supporters make no secret of the future they envision for everyone & what will happen if you don’t get in line & still these useful idiots support them. How can you have such cognitive dissonance or you must agree with the terrorists. Don’t get it at all. Sadly I think it is too late. Starting to think we will have to sort out “hiding places” (I hope for a distant future) because the way things are going it isn’t just the Jews who will need them.
Yes. I think a lot of that is sheer ignorance. They can’t imagine a world where they could possibly be treated bad. Most of these kids have never experienced war, a terrorist attack, that haven’t experienced food shortages or no electricity. They are entitled and stupid.
We are well past the crossroads I’m afraid. The insanity of people in the West parading through streets holding placards saying ‘We Love Hezbollah’ or ‘LGBTQ+ Support Palestine’ are like turkeys voting for Christmas. Useful idiots of the evil and corrupt Iranian regime and their proxies is all they are and they have little or no knowledge whatsoever of the Middle East.
Sadly Kelli, I think it is too late. The open displays of antisemitism we are witnessing is truly abhorrent. In the streets and in the universities of America, the U.K. are unbelievable. And the authorities do next to nothing about it.
My favorite book is "Man's Search for Meaning" in which the author, Viktor Frankl, endured the worst horrors of Auschwitz yet emerged with an essentially redeeming view of humanity. I have read and listened to this book numerous times.
Frankl discovered two broad categories of people, the decent and indecent man, and surprisingly, he found prison guards in the decent category and indecent men among the prisoners.
The book is short, maybe 120 pages, but nobody should give up on the search for the truth about mankind or God before reading Frankl's book.
As to God, the closest Frankl came to faith was his inclination to believe that there was probably a "super meaning" in the universe where contradictions find their resolution.
If Viktor Frankl is not a true saint, there is no significance to the term.
Kelli, on one level it's a horrible tale of sadistic cruelty, but Frankl doesn't dwell on the horrors as much as writers like Elie Wiesel in "Night."
Another incredibly hopeful (and true) story is "Son of Hamas," and I'm guessing you have read that. For anyone not familiar with it, I recommend you start with Jordan Peterson's podcast interview of the author. That's where I learned of it. And it was unlike any JBP podcast I've ever heard.
I recall you said you were raised in a religious home. I was not, and I believe that was of great advantage to me. Reading the Bible without preconceived notions starting at age 20 allowed me to form my own opinions while Southern Baptist-ficated friends were hamstrung by the notions of others.
Are you familiar with the work of Rob Henderson? He has come up with what I consider to be the most significant treatment of the phenomena you mention - well-off Westerners advocating for movements directly contradictory to their supposed values. He calls such behaviour "Luxury Beliefs", because they are meant to display status in a culture in which material display has become either passe, no longer possible or too easy to attain.
The ironic thing about Solzhenitsyn was that for all his suffering-begotten wisdom he became a Russian nationalist. Would he be a Putin supporter if he was still alive? I see a lot of him in Dugin.
Allllllll the horseshoes. I only discovered this concept earlier this year and as crazy as it sounds it makes perfect sense, especially for these current times.
These are such good points. Rob Henderson’s coining ‘Luxury Beliefs’ is brilliant. It’s cognitive dissonance explained. The need to place one’s self (if one is rich and entitled) above the rabble, is predicated on the fact that the signalers will never experience the consequences of what they profess.
And yes, in the end, Solzhenitsyn failed his own test. His last book ‘Two Hundred Years Together’ has been debunked by historians for wildly exaggerating the role of Jews in the Russian Revolution and for clear Jew hatred. He turned into a Russian Christian Orthodox nationalist and could not handle that his own countrymen and co-religionists were responsible for the horror he experienced. To sanctify his late in life ideology, he needed scapegoats. Reading that book broke my heart. He was a hero to my Ukrainian Jewish family; we are refugees from the Soviet Union. My great grandparents served decades in Siberia for being enemies of the Revolution. My parents bought his books with such pride, as free people in a free USA.
Your essays are wonderful. I admire your courage immensely. ❤️
My apologies for replying so late - I only just saw your encouraging message. Its lovely to see someone who knows about the Moomins! I spent my childhood with them before coming to Australia. Its no accident that Eastern Europeans in the West are perceiving the situation so clearly.
Brilliant. You are becoming one of my favorite contributors as you bring clear headed logic and the kind of moral clarity one wishes was more obvious to others.
Wonderful article. You ask important questions. I often wonder about the moronic lack of critical thinking. Meanwhile hubby and I went to an Oct 7 commemoration rally today held in front of Lumen Field— so Seahawks fans could see our posters of murdered 25 year olds and hear our chants. Some fans were supportive, most disinterested and the few who spat at us and said, “Free Palestine” were young and white.
The photo of Afghani women could be 2024. They have returned to the suffocating mandatory head to toe coverings. Even the eye opening is webbed so tightly, it is hard to maintain balance. It was shockingly awful when I tried one on in a seminar given by a Diplomat who spent time there. I feel great sorrow for any female born into their alternate universe. I suspect their entire lives are marred with abuse and kept only for breeding. " Breeders" is a word some Muslims have used for women, not my own. I believe so many young women were raped and murdered on Oct.7 in an effort to keep them from having children. I will always stand with Israel. I have tangled with many of the same theological issues as you, but believe I know good and evil when I see it. Aloha.
Kelli - read Tim Snyder's "Bloodlands" - more evil than you could tolerate there, and that's only this century. Humans are fallen - poverty, pillage, rape and murder are our natural state - what we in the west have built is the exception, but we look around and wonder why everyone isn't like us? Solzhenitsyn's later works were very critical of what the west was turning into - at the time I thought it was a bit ungrateful after us springing him from the Soviets, but I now see that he was an unflinchingly honest man telling it like he saw it.
Thank you so much, I understand exactly how you feel. I believe that it is crucial to be able to stay positive, even in light of the horrendous acts committed by Hamas a year ago. A lot of people seem to be morally confused (or corrupt), but people with moral clarity are able to see the truth. You certainly have moral clarity 🩷✨! Stay positiive 🌼🌷🌷!
I was interested to read your views on Christianity Kelli, you were fortunate to have been bought up in a Christian household……then you could make a choice to believe or not….. For the children and youth of today they have no basis for faith…..mental illness in children is at an all time high and rising, I think that if you fail to give children a belief system there is nothing for them to fall back on when the going gets tough, they have no resilience and absent parents are failing their children. The schools and universities are now where they get their religious view…..gender ideology, climate change etc etc….constantly bombarded with leftist views. So, now we have antisemitism….surprise surprise…..the future is looking grimmer every day, and the anti Christian, anti western beliefs push is part of that.
Hi Chrissy. I can’t talk for others but only myself. I def believe in a higher power, whether that is the universe or the power of good, I believe there is something greater than me. But I have never felt the need for a religion to tell me what is right or wrong. I always believed it was innate in us. But maybe it’s not. I’ve told my kids it up to them to follow the path that they want to. But I have taught them right from wrong. Not sure if that answers your question or not.
Kelli, it is altruism, self-sacrifice and selflessness that are at the root of all the evil in the world..
The Christians spent the last two millennia wiping out what the Greeks had championed. For a brief period, the Enlightenment swept away the mysticism of Christianity, and there was a flourishing of reason, science, technology and production, which raised man out of a life of misery and suffering.
Immanuel Kant promoted the vicious morality of altruism, but on a secular (non-religious) basis. His philosophy gave rise to Marx and others leading to the rise of communism, egalitarianism, nihilism and now wokeism. Those screaming for the destruction of Israel and civilization, as such, are carrying out what they have been told to do by their teachers, politicians and “so-called” intellectuals.
What is needed, Ayn Rand said, was not for man to return to morality, but to discover it; that is the morality of Rational Egoism, whereby a man’s life belongs to him; he does not sacrifice his life for the sake of others, or sacrifice others for his own sake, he lives by the judgment of his own mind and produces what he needs in order to live and trades with others to mutual advantage.
He does not live for some greater good, for greater good is a catch phrase for others to cash in on something that has been produced by others.
He lives a life of productive achievement, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life.
Thank you for your interest Kelli. And, above all I will not say “keep the faith”. An excellent article called “Faith and Force, Destroyers of the Modern World”, by Ayn Rand is available on the Ayn Rand Institute website, along with a host of other great material. I get the sense that Rand’s work might be of interest to you.
It is beyond my comprehension how these people can stand to be non-people to the entire world. Islam is a complete disgrace. Yet these women are a part of their own denigration?
It is easy to see that a lot of comments here sadly are in many points quite similar to that what "right-believing" Muslims are saying. For women, not-heterosexuals, Jews, "degenerate artists" a.o. it makes no difference if they are suppressed by "right-believing" Trumpists/Vances/MTGs or Muslims.
If the people "in the free West" are mentally unable to defend their freedom and parlour the same false bigoted "righteous"ness as "right-believing" Muslims do, it´s easy for the latter to find entry points here.
As well as you put the question "Why do you have to believe in God to get into heaven even if you are trying to be good", the question should be asked "Why does USA need a degenerated machismo person like Trump to fight unambiguously against Islamism ?", or "where is the sense of Trump supporting Israel against dark medieval Islam when he will let down Ukraine in favor of dark medieval Putin-Russia ?"
These are the real questions no one seems to tell, instead a rage on some too well-off kids having "luxury problems" or some de-orientated "LGBTQ-activists". It appears they´re not more following false "alternatives" than most/too many "grown-up"s.
Something I do not understand is these terrorist groups & their so called “moderate” supporters make no secret of the future they envision for everyone & what will happen if you don’t get in line & still these useful idiots support them. How can you have such cognitive dissonance or you must agree with the terrorists. Don’t get it at all. Sadly I think it is too late. Starting to think we will have to sort out “hiding places” (I hope for a distant future) because the way things are going it isn’t just the Jews who will need them.
Yes. I think a lot of that is sheer ignorance. They can’t imagine a world where they could possibly be treated bad. Most of these kids have never experienced war, a terrorist attack, that haven’t experienced food shortages or no electricity. They are entitled and stupid.
We are well past the crossroads I’m afraid. The insanity of people in the West parading through streets holding placards saying ‘We Love Hezbollah’ or ‘LGBTQ+ Support Palestine’ are like turkeys voting for Christmas. Useful idiots of the evil and corrupt Iranian regime and their proxies is all they are and they have little or no knowledge whatsoever of the Middle East.
I’m hoping it’s not too late for people to see the truth. Maybe it is.
Sadly Kelli, I think it is too late. The open displays of antisemitism we are witnessing is truly abhorrent. In the streets and in the universities of America, the U.K. are unbelievable. And the authorities do next to nothing about it.
My favorite book is "Man's Search for Meaning" in which the author, Viktor Frankl, endured the worst horrors of Auschwitz yet emerged with an essentially redeeming view of humanity. I have read and listened to this book numerous times.
Frankl discovered two broad categories of people, the decent and indecent man, and surprisingly, he found prison guards in the decent category and indecent men among the prisoners.
The book is short, maybe 120 pages, but nobody should give up on the search for the truth about mankind or God before reading Frankl's book.
As to God, the closest Frankl came to faith was his inclination to believe that there was probably a "super meaning" in the universe where contradictions find their resolution.
If Viktor Frankl is not a true saint, there is no significance to the term.
Just purchased it on audible. Thank you.
The one narrated by Simon Vance is the one I have fwiw. It's excellent!
Thank you. I will definitely look it up Michael.
Kelli, on one level it's a horrible tale of sadistic cruelty, but Frankl doesn't dwell on the horrors as much as writers like Elie Wiesel in "Night."
Another incredibly hopeful (and true) story is "Son of Hamas," and I'm guessing you have read that. For anyone not familiar with it, I recommend you start with Jordan Peterson's podcast interview of the author. That's where I learned of it. And it was unlike any JBP podcast I've ever heard.
I recall you said you were raised in a religious home. I was not, and I believe that was of great advantage to me. Reading the Bible without preconceived notions starting at age 20 allowed me to form my own opinions while Southern Baptist-ficated friends were hamstrung by the notions of others.
Anyway, happy trails, my friend! 😊❤️
Great book by Frankl. Thank you,
Are you familiar with the work of Rob Henderson? He has come up with what I consider to be the most significant treatment of the phenomena you mention - well-off Westerners advocating for movements directly contradictory to their supposed values. He calls such behaviour "Luxury Beliefs", because they are meant to display status in a culture in which material display has become either passe, no longer possible or too easy to attain.
The ironic thing about Solzhenitsyn was that for all his suffering-begotten wisdom he became a Russian nationalist. Would he be a Putin supporter if he was still alive? I see a lot of him in Dugin.
It’s a bit of horseshoe theory too I think. When you have gone as left as you can, where do you go from there?
Allllllll the horseshoes. I only discovered this concept earlier this year and as crazy as it sounds it makes perfect sense, especially for these current times.
These are such good points. Rob Henderson’s coining ‘Luxury Beliefs’ is brilliant. It’s cognitive dissonance explained. The need to place one’s self (if one is rich and entitled) above the rabble, is predicated on the fact that the signalers will never experience the consequences of what they profess.
And yes, in the end, Solzhenitsyn failed his own test. His last book ‘Two Hundred Years Together’ has been debunked by historians for wildly exaggerating the role of Jews in the Russian Revolution and for clear Jew hatred. He turned into a Russian Christian Orthodox nationalist and could not handle that his own countrymen and co-religionists were responsible for the horror he experienced. To sanctify his late in life ideology, he needed scapegoats. Reading that book broke my heart. He was a hero to my Ukrainian Jewish family; we are refugees from the Soviet Union. My great grandparents served decades in Siberia for being enemies of the Revolution. My parents bought his books with such pride, as free people in a free USA.
Your essays are wonderful. I admire your courage immensely. ❤️
My apologies for replying so late - I only just saw your encouraging message. Its lovely to see someone who knows about the Moomins! I spent my childhood with them before coming to Australia. Its no accident that Eastern Europeans in the West are perceiving the situation so clearly.
Brilliant. You are becoming one of my favorite contributors as you bring clear headed logic and the kind of moral clarity one wishes was more obvious to others.
Oh my gosh. Thank you so much. 🙏🏻🙏🏻
Wonderful article. You ask important questions. I often wonder about the moronic lack of critical thinking. Meanwhile hubby and I went to an Oct 7 commemoration rally today held in front of Lumen Field— so Seahawks fans could see our posters of murdered 25 year olds and hear our chants. Some fans were supportive, most disinterested and the few who spat at us and said, “Free Palestine” were young and white.
That’s the irony. White privileged kids thinking they know what they are talking about who are cheering for the real oppressors of Gaza.
The photo of Afghani women could be 2024. They have returned to the suffocating mandatory head to toe coverings. Even the eye opening is webbed so tightly, it is hard to maintain balance. It was shockingly awful when I tried one on in a seminar given by a Diplomat who spent time there. I feel great sorrow for any female born into their alternate universe. I suspect their entire lives are marred with abuse and kept only for breeding. " Breeders" is a word some Muslims have used for women, not my own. I believe so many young women were raped and murdered on Oct.7 in an effort to keep them from having children. I will always stand with Israel. I have tangled with many of the same theological issues as you, but believe I know good and evil when I see it. Aloha.
Kelli - read Tim Snyder's "Bloodlands" - more evil than you could tolerate there, and that's only this century. Humans are fallen - poverty, pillage, rape and murder are our natural state - what we in the west have built is the exception, but we look around and wonder why everyone isn't like us? Solzhenitsyn's later works were very critical of what the west was turning into - at the time I thought it was a bit ungrateful after us springing him from the Soviets, but I now see that he was an unflinchingly honest man telling it like he saw it.
And if you're not already reading Jonah Goldberg (https://thedispatch.com/newsletter/gfile/slog-and-sacrifice/?utm_source=ActiveCampaign&utm_medium=email&utm_content=Slog%20and%20Sacrifice&utm_campaign=The%20G-File_Paid%20Subscribers%20Only_Slog%20and%20Sacrifice), you should be.
All the very best to you and yours - we haven't lost this, we just need to turn it around a bit. Don't lose faith.
Thank you Tony.
Thank you so much, I understand exactly how you feel. I believe that it is crucial to be able to stay positive, even in light of the horrendous acts committed by Hamas a year ago. A lot of people seem to be morally confused (or corrupt), but people with moral clarity are able to see the truth. You certainly have moral clarity 🩷✨! Stay positiive 🌼🌷🌷!
I was interested to read your views on Christianity Kelli, you were fortunate to have been bought up in a Christian household……then you could make a choice to believe or not….. For the children and youth of today they have no basis for faith…..mental illness in children is at an all time high and rising, I think that if you fail to give children a belief system there is nothing for them to fall back on when the going gets tough, they have no resilience and absent parents are failing their children. The schools and universities are now where they get their religious view…..gender ideology, climate change etc etc….constantly bombarded with leftist views. So, now we have antisemitism….surprise surprise…..the future is looking grimmer every day, and the anti Christian, anti western beliefs push is part of that.
Hi Chrissy. I can’t talk for others but only myself. I def believe in a higher power, whether that is the universe or the power of good, I believe there is something greater than me. But I have never felt the need for a religion to tell me what is right or wrong. I always believed it was innate in us. But maybe it’s not. I’ve told my kids it up to them to follow the path that they want to. But I have taught them right from wrong. Not sure if that answers your question or not.
‘The heart is deceitful above all things.’
Kelli, it is altruism, self-sacrifice and selflessness that are at the root of all the evil in the world..
The Christians spent the last two millennia wiping out what the Greeks had championed. For a brief period, the Enlightenment swept away the mysticism of Christianity, and there was a flourishing of reason, science, technology and production, which raised man out of a life of misery and suffering.
Immanuel Kant promoted the vicious morality of altruism, but on a secular (non-religious) basis. His philosophy gave rise to Marx and others leading to the rise of communism, egalitarianism, nihilism and now wokeism. Those screaming for the destruction of Israel and civilization, as such, are carrying out what they have been told to do by their teachers, politicians and “so-called” intellectuals.
What is needed, Ayn Rand said, was not for man to return to morality, but to discover it; that is the morality of Rational Egoism, whereby a man’s life belongs to him; he does not sacrifice his life for the sake of others, or sacrifice others for his own sake, he lives by the judgment of his own mind and produces what he needs in order to live and trades with others to mutual advantage.
He does not live for some greater good, for greater good is a catch phrase for others to cash in on something that has been produced by others.
He lives a life of productive achievement, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life.
Thank you George. This is very interesting.
Thank you for your interest Kelli. And, above all I will not say “keep the faith”. An excellent article called “Faith and Force, Destroyers of the Modern World”, by Ayn Rand is available on the Ayn Rand Institute website, along with a host of other great material. I get the sense that Rand’s work might be of interest to you.
You must be familiar with Solzhenitsyn use of your subtitle
Yes. I am.
The poor little girl will one day have to shroud herself head to toe and be under the thumb of a male.
That’s if the Regime doesn’t kill her in captivity
It is beyond my comprehension how these people can stand to be non-people to the entire world. Islam is a complete disgrace. Yet these women are a part of their own denigration?
The divide between good and evil may pass through every human heart, as Solzhenitsyn says; but it passes very near the edge of quite a lot of hearts.
It is easy to see that a lot of comments here sadly are in many points quite similar to that what "right-believing" Muslims are saying. For women, not-heterosexuals, Jews, "degenerate artists" a.o. it makes no difference if they are suppressed by "right-believing" Trumpists/Vances/MTGs or Muslims.
If the people "in the free West" are mentally unable to defend their freedom and parlour the same false bigoted "righteous"ness as "right-believing" Muslims do, it´s easy for the latter to find entry points here.
As well as you put the question "Why do you have to believe in God to get into heaven even if you are trying to be good", the question should be asked "Why does USA need a degenerated machismo person like Trump to fight unambiguously against Islamism ?", or "where is the sense of Trump supporting Israel against dark medieval Islam when he will let down Ukraine in favor of dark medieval Putin-Russia ?"
These are the real questions no one seems to tell, instead a rage on some too well-off kids having "luxury problems" or some de-orientated "LGBTQ-activists". It appears they´re not more following false "alternatives" than most/too many "grown-up"s.