Who Is Sheldon Richman, and Why Does He Hate the Constitution and American Greatness? and Why Does He Love Jihadis, French Communism, Godless Atheism, and Weird-Ass Epistemology?

In Part 1 of this 2-part interview, I chat with Sheldon Richman about his youthful enthusiasm for the Swamp Fox and his guerilla fighters; the Constitution as a betrayal of the American Revolution and the Articles of Confederation; defying YAF with Karl Hess at the March to the Arch; the positive externalities achievable by sitting next to Dave Barry; using Koch money to fight big business; Robert Bidinotto’s dark anarchist past; the perils of publishing Kevin Carson; going crazy for Thomas Szasz; the identity of Filthy Pierre; how to smoke like Gandalf; an atheist’s favourite Bishop; and which prominent Austrian economist experimented on Sheldon’s newborn infant.

In Part 2, we chat about the Israeli occupation of Palestine; u.s. intervention in the Middle East; the meaning of Jewish identity; the relation between libertarian individualism and social cooperation; the communistic theories of Frédéric Bastiat; the theologico-political merits of Spinoza; Nathaniel Branden and George H. Smith on atheism; Thomas Paine and Lysander Spooner on deism; the philosophical failings of the New Atheists; rehabilitating the cost-of-production theory of value; the uses of coherentist epistemology for both theists and atheists; reading Wittgenstein for relaxation; the advantages and disadvantages of Randian approaches to knowledge and concepts; the sordid truth behind the special effects in Roderick’s videos (and in particular, what the deal is with Roderick’s hair); Sheldon’s case against open Borders; and the shocking misuse of libertarian think tank resources to photocopy body parts (but who did it, Sheldon or Roderick? and which body parts? watch and learn!).


  1. I will do my best to get Sheldon attacked on Israel/Palestine here at PoT. Unfortunately, given my sympathy for his views, I can’t do the attacking myself, but every now and then, a Rabbi Bernhard Rosenberg shows up here to take….er, potshots at us, and I’m sure I can contrive a way to get Rabbi Rosenberg to declare Sheldon an anti-Semite and an apologist for terrorism, and to excommunicate him in the bargain.


    Has Sheldon never gone head-to-head with David Bernstein, Eugene Kontorovich, or Fernando Teson? That seems like a good recipe for a discursive train wreck (of the kind Sheldon is seeking).

    Libertarians tend to ignore the Israel/Palestine issue. Cato’s annual Human Freedom Index doesn’t even make reference to Gaza or the West Bank. It refers to “Israel” minus Gaza or the West Bank, but doesn’t count Gaza or the West Bank under any other description. See the coy map on p. 46.

    Click to access cato-human-freedom-index-update-3.pdf

    So Sheldon is in good company.

    I’ve always found it interesting the Objectivists take the Israel/Palestine issue far more seriously than (most) libertarians. I think they see, correctly, that something of deep philosophical importance is at stake in the dispute.

    I thought that Peter Schwartz had attacked Sheldon on Palestine in his famous critique of libertarianism, but though he quotes Sheldon, the criticism involves Sheldon’s general hatred for the State (Voice of Reason, p. 319), rather than his (Sheldon’s) anti-Zionism or his nihilistic defense of the rights of Palestinians. Schwartz does attack Rothbard on Palestine, so perhaps counterfactually, we could construe that as an attack on Sheldon: Schwartz would have attacked Sheldon if Rothbard hadn’t been available.

    But this suggests a way for Sheldon to get attacked: go after Objectivists, not libertarians. Write a critique of Elan Journo’s book in a prominent place.

    A somewhat more costly way for Sheldon to get some heat would be to try to enter Israel via Ben Gurion International Airport, and upon being questioned by the border authorities, to hand his questioners a copy of his Palestine book, explaining it as he does in the video above. I guarantee that that will work.

    Even better would be for Sheldon to demand a speaking engagement with one of the “free market” think tanks in Israel. To the best of my knowledge, all without exception defend the occupation:


    The next time Sheldon and I are in physical proximity, we should be sure to take a picture while I’m wearing some sort of pro-Palestinian paraphernalia. We can post it here and/or on Facebook, and see what happens.

    I suspect that it has occurred to Sheldon that ignoring him is much easier than refuting him.

    Liked by 1 person

    • Thanks, Irfan. (I think.) As my dear old zayde might have said, “Be careful for what you ask for.” David Bernstein used to snipe at me on Facebook, but that’s it. Maybe I should stop complaining.

      I’d be honored to pose in a picture with you anytime, as long as we wear masks.


  2. Had I listened to this interview maybe seven or eight years ago, I probably would, with some reservations, have agreed with Sheldon’s rejection of the concept of a “secular Jew.” But I no longer do.

    I had both a Muslim and a Jewish upbringing. My parents were Muslim, and I was raised as a Muslim, but I attended Jewish day camp every summer, and spent a decade in a Jewish family by the functional equivalent of common law marriage. In fact, “a decade” might understate things, because I’m still in some sense a member of my Jewish ex’s family; we still celebrate Passover and other Jewish holidays together. So in an extended sense, I’ve spent more than two decades “in” a Jewish family.

    Sheldon expresses skepticism that a non-Jew can become a secular Jew. I disagree. A non-Jew can become Jewish (by degrees) by spending time in a practicing Jewish household, as I have. By “Jewish,” I mean “have an appreciation for or affinity with things Jewish.” And by “things Jewish,” I mean things specifically Jewish, not Yiddish. Passover, Sukkot, Tisha B’Av, Rosh Hashana, and Yom Kippur are Jewish, not Yiddish; they have resonance for all Jews everywhere, from India to San Francisco, and everywhere in between. (My Jewish family steered clear of Hannukah and Purim, but I suppose the same could be said of them.)

    The Passover seder is my favorite example. Anyone who looks forward to celebrating Passover every year is somewhat Jewish, and many otherwise non-Jewish people do. It shouldn’t be hard to imagine a non-Jew’s entering a Jewish household, say, by marriage, participating in Jewish rituals like the seder at first simply to please (or appease) a Jewish partner, but then to have it “grow” on one. (I’m not saying it couldn’t go the other way; I’m just saying, one could in principle have an increased appreciation over time.) Now imagine such a person eagerly participating not just in Passover, but in Sukkot, Tisha B’Ave, Rosh Hashanah, and Yom Kippur. That seems more Jewish than the Judaism of a lot of Jews.

    As for being a secular Jew, it seems to me that all of the holidays in question have both a theological and a secular component. The two components are hard to disentangle, but with a little mental reservation, I think it can be done. An atheist can, after all, listen to the “Ode to Joy” in Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, and be (genuinely) moved by it despite the abundance of theistic references it contains. Some atheists might try, mentally, to censor those references out of their aesthetic experience, but one need not.

    “Secular Judaism,” it seems to me, names an aesthetic or quasi-aesthetic attitude toward Jewish ritual and celebratory life. People who can’t (or can’t quite) sign onto the “religious stuff” on a realist interpretation may nonetheless like the idea of participating in the rituals for their own sake, whether to cultivate a sense of nostalgia, or because there’s comfort to be had in going through the motions, or as a form of LARPing, or whatever. This view is closely related to what philosophers of religion now call “fictionalism” about religion.



    This may sound frivolous or even offensive to some, but the point is, if people can live (part time) in other sorts of fictional universes (Atlas Shrugged, Downton Abbey, Breaking Bad, Game of Thrones, PornHub), why not a religious one?

    Liked by 1 person

  3. Pingback: Nightcap | Notes On Liberty

  4. I think this hypothetical secular Jew would better be described as a philo-Semite. That person’s mother still wouldn’t be Jewish–and, sorry, rules are rules. The cultural things you mention are all religion-based, So Shlomo Sand’s point stands, I believe. That Jews worldwide celebrate Yom Kippur is no indication of a global secular Jewish culture. Quite the contrary. Of course people are free to identify as they wish, and others are free to recognize that identity or not. But I still think its a restricted club.


      • More moderately, I don’t see why there needs to be a “global secular Jewish culture” in order for someone to be a secular Jew. Sheldon of all people, Wittgenstein fan that he is, should recognise the possibility that “Jewish” is a family-resemblance concept.

        Liked by 2 people

        • Another thing: “secular” Jews attach immense importance to the idea that it is global; that’s part of the appeal. For them to think otherwise would devalue the identity.


          • “What is secular about it?”

            Well, if one is not oneself religious, why doesn’t that make it secular?

            “attach immense importance to the idea that it is global; that’s part of the appeal.”

            Doesn’t a family-resemblance concept count as universal? If what makes something an X is its satisfying some subset of the relevant criteria, then in satisfying one subset don’t I thereby connect myself to all Xs, including those who are Xs through satisfying a different subset?

            Of course this assumes that a family-resemblance concept counts as a genuine unity in a way that a random-grab-bag concept doesn’t. (By a random-grab-bag concept I mean something like: a thing counts as a Y so long as it is EITHER a palm tree, or an elephant, or a radio, or a midwestern state, or a prime number.) But family-resemblance concepts don’t seem to me to be mere random-grab-bag concepts; there is a network of affiliation that ties the criteria together, other than just someone deciding to stipulate them as part of a big disjunction.


            • It’s not secular because the things the person in question does have their roots in a particular monotheism and history. On the other hand, if the person routinely eats gefilte fish and kishka, that would be not Jewish but Yiddish. I don’t think Yemeni or Moroccan Jews eat those things. (Maybe with globalization they do now; the goyim eat bagels after all–oy!) The Yiddish don’t eat the Arabic foods that Arab Jews regularly eat. They may be of the same religious group, but they are of different secular ethnic groups. (As I’ve personally witnessed, the Ashkenazi Jews look down on the Mizrahi Jews and vice versa.)


              • Well, I just repeat my original questions:

                If what connects secular Jews is a tradition with “roots in a particular monotheism and history,” but the people so connected do not themselves necessarily hold any religious belief, why isn’t that enough to make them “secular Jews”? Why can’t secular Jews be connected by a tradition with non-secular origins?

                As for Yemeni Jews not eating gefilte fish — again, if Jewishness is a legitimate family-resemblance concept, why can’t one be connected to all of it by being connected to part of it? (That’s how actual families work, so why not family-resemblance concepts too?)


                • I’ll take one last word: blood. As Sand and others note, “secular Jews” seem to realize that as atheists and nonpractitioners they have nothing solid to rest their identity on and for that reason are drawn to dubious genetic theories about why Jews everywhere constitute a single people or race. Secular Judaism and Jewish nationalism are thus combined into a blood-and-soil ideology. That’s tragic.


                • But isn’t that just a symptom of their assumption that Jewishness can’t be a family-resemblance concept? Ditch that assumption, and neither common religiosity nor common blood is needed for common Jewishness.


                • The 1st word of the Torah בראשית contains a רמז/hint. Meaning words within words. בראשית … אש ברית. The first Book of the Torah addresses the subject of the Avot cutting brit “alliances” with other nations. Brit does not mean “Covenant”. The noise new testament never once brings the Name of HaShem, the 1st commandment of Sinai. This fraud bases its religion upon a belief system, I believe that Jesus son of Zeus is the son of God like Hercules. In both mythical stories Zeus raped and impregnated married women!

                  Rape and adultery qualifies as a Capital Crime in Jewish law. Offering a sacrifice not fit to offer to a governor or king, likewise the Torah abhors. Jesus son of Zeus had the holy shit beaten out of him before his “cruxi-fiction”. Since when does the Torah permit a “sacrifice” by dedicating it upon a cross rather than an altar?

                  The Gemara of Sanhedrin asks the famous question: What caused the floods in the days of Noach? Answer: false oaths, another of the 10 commandments. Hence what qualifies as the fire of the brit (אש ברית)? Swearing an oath in the Name. The noise new testament never includes the Name of HaShem. This belief system does not stand upon the brit faith as does the Torah.


                • Monotheism violates the 2nd Commandment of Sinai. If as the Muslims say their lives only one God, then its utterly absurd for the Torah to command: Do Not Worship Other Gods. The story of Egyptian slavery and Moshe centers upon the Egyptian worship of “other Gods”. No Torah commandment commands Israel to believe in this or that God(s)!


                • It seems to me that the imperative “do not worship other gods” is neutral on the question of whether other gods exist or not. A Jew, Christian, or Muslim can says “the Vikings worshipped Thor, and we do not” without implying that Thor was real. An atheist can say “monotheists worship one god, and polytheists worship many, but I don’t worship any of these gods” without implying that those gods are real. “Worship” is not a success-term in the sense of requiring a real object.

                  In addition to thinking that others can worship beings that you take to be nonexistent, there’s also the possibility of thinking that others can worship beings that you take to be real entities, but not gods (and thus no conflict with monotheism). Thus many of the early Christians thought that the Greco-Roman gods — that is, the beings that the Greeks and Romans worshipped as gods — were real, but that they were fallen angels rather than gods. (There’s a passage from St. Paul that implies this view, though there’s another passage that conflicts with it.)


                • As an atheist – praise God, I do not believe any any God. Who am I? Yet I, its the first word of all belief systems including: “I don’t worship any of these gods”. You have embraced a belief system called atheism.

                  Paul made a completely different reading of the Creation story, which he called Original Sin/the fall of Man from grace. This interpretation supported his thesis that the world needed Jesus son of Zeus to atone for the sins of Man!

                  Obviously Jewish interpretations of the Creation story do not accept the narishkeit of Paul’s interpretation. Judaism teaches that the story of Adam’s expulsion of Eden, goes in harmony with Noach’s expulsion from the land, to the unborn seed of Avram dwelling as refugee slaves in Egypt! Its a consistent theme of the Torah. Blessings vs Curses: ruling the land with righteous justice or existing under the harsh yoke of oppression as exiles in foreign lands. This interpretation defines the sum total of Jewish history.


                • “Since when does the Torah permit a ‘sacrifice’ by dedicating it upon a cross rather than an altar?”


                  I think you are barking up the wrong audience here. No one in the present conversation (apart from yourself) has any commitment to the sort of literalist theologico-legalistic minutiae that you’re trading in here. I’m not sure what your aim is in posting these arguments in this place.


    • An opinion by a Beer Sheva Israeli of politics and Torah within the Jewish State.

      Israel’s 3 No’s:











      Weigh the blessing within the Shemone Esri:







      Had real difficulty distinguishing between the blessings:




      Carry out justice – prohibition of any miscarriage of justice.
      No blasphemy – Prohibits a curse directed at the Supreme Being.
      No theft – Prohibits the wrongful taking of another’s goods.


















      To grasp the distinction which separates the ברכות between






















      • Apologies for the delay in approving your comment, mosckerr. Your comment went into our spam filters, and since I work 8:30-5 without access to the Internet, I can only approve comments at 24 hour intervals.

        NOTE: Anyone with editorial privileges at PoT should feel free to approve comments at their discretion. Given my new job, I will rarely be able to do so in a timely way.

        Liked by 1 person

            • Prayer involves more than simply reading words in a prayer book. My rav taught me that as the post Mishnaic scholars focused upon interpreting the Mishna, that the post sealing of the Talmud scholarship should focus upon employing the Talmud to interpret the k’vanna (roughly poorly translated as “Intent”) of the Siddur/prayer book.

              Hence when I bring a blessing of the Shemone Esri it follows with an interpretation of its “intent”.


          • Palestine has its origins from the Greko-Roman European empires. The name Balestine makes about as much sense as the opportunist Arafat claim that these Arab stateless refugees originated from the Philistine boat people who originally came from Greece! Arabs come from Saudi Arabia through the Mohammedan wars of conquest in the 8th Century CE! Arabs do not originate from Europe. During the period of the British mandate the only people who referred to themselves as “Palestinians” ( Jews can pronounce the letter P ), the Jewish people. Today’s Jerusalem Post went by the name Palestine Post during the years of the British mandate. For Arabs to refer to themselves as “Palestinians”, during the period of the British Mandate (the Ottoman empire referred to its Middle East territories comprising of Syria Lebanon, Israel, and Jordan – as Greater Syria, these Arabs would have effectively recognized the Balfour Declaration wherein Britain took control by League of Nations rubber stamp of “Palestine”. Such bogus revisionist history – utter and complete non sense! Not till early 1964 did Yasser Arafat opportunism embrace and accept the name “Palestine” and Palestinian people as referring to the Arab stateless refugee populations scattered across the Middle East.


            • When you say that Arabs cannot pronounce the letter P, you mean (or should mean) that Arabic speakers generally pronounce P the same way we pronounce B. It’s not as though the pronunciation of a letter is inherent to it. And I don’t see how precise choice of name or pronunciation is relevant to assessing the claims of people dispossessed from their homes.


              • No. They pronounce it like P was an F. The point being that the word – not native to the Arabic language. By pronouncing it as “Balestine” it mocks the foreign European etymology of this non Arabic word. The Ottomans ruled the Middle East for multiple centuries, the Turks while Muslims, similar to the Persians, both not Arabic people.

                The Arabs initiated the ’48, 67′ & ’73 wars. The Arabs lost these wars of Jewish extermination. In point of fact, no nation state of Palestine has ever existed in human history. The “their land” canard … both a lie and empty propaganda. Name the Capital of Palestine? Name a currency of Palestine? Both never existed. The problem which confronts supporters of Arab stateless refugees … I have my religion don’t confuse me with the facts. Non Arabs who buy into the Palestinian lies, treat these lies as their personal belief system. On par with Jesus son of Zeus.


                • As an anarchist I don’t care about nation-states one way or ‘tother, so the question of whether there was a historical Palestinian nation-state is one on which I don’t see much turning. I care about *individual* people and families who’ve been dispossessed of their homes, or who are currently being oppressed. “Palestinian” seems a handy way to refer to these people, since that’s how they’re generally referred to, but whatever. Call them Group 22LN16, and my concerns on their behalf would remain the same. (Likewise the “state of Israel” as an artificial authoritarian collectivity means nothing to me, though many individual Israelis mean a great deal to me. Ditto, mutatis mutandis, for the “United States,” the “United Kingdom,” the “United Nations,” or any other such dubious enterprise.)


                • The founding fathers of America limited the voting franchise to White land owning males. Roderick your personal political tastes do not give you Israeli citizenship any more than you can vote in Russia b/c of your socialist leanings.

                  Israel won our national independence through war, just as did the US. “Artificial authoritarian collectivity” … your quite correct “means nothing to me” Making an abracodabra declaration does not pull rabbits out of hats nor makes virtually all the nation states in existence across the planet cease to exist.


                • That seems a very long-winded and implausible way of expressing a great deal of disrespect, along with revisionist history in the worst sense of that term.

                  The question was, why do you refer to Palestinians as “Balestinians”? One answer you give is that Palestinians “cannot” pronounce the “P” sound. That’s actually pretty stupid–not stubid, but stupid. I know plenty of Palestinians, and they all have the capacity to pronounce the “p” sound. So it’s not a matter of ability.

                  The point is that there is no “p” sound in standard, traditional Arabic. There’s a “b” sound and an “f” sound. In Arabic, the relevant word is “Falastin” (not “Balestine”) which preceded the English word “Palestine” by centuries. (Contemporary Arabic is now starting to introduce the “p” sound, with a special letter for it.)

                  The Arabic “Falastin” does have a non-Arabic etymology, just as “America” has a non-English etymology. In and of itself, these facts prove next to nothing of historiographical, ethical, or political substance.

                  I have an Arabic name, “Irfan.” Non-Arabic speakers have trouble with the first vowel, the Arabic ‘ayn, which they (strictly speaking) mispronounce as “IRR fahn,” “URR fahn,” and “AIR fahn.” All three are as correct as they are wrong in English, which is why, when people ask me how my name is pronounced, I ask them how they think it’s pronounced, and then (odd cases aside) tell them that they’re right. I don’t dwell on their “inability” to pronounce ‘ayn. It isn’t an “inability.” It’s lack of habituation. At work, where speed is at a premium, I give my workmates permission to call me “Vic.” But nothing follows about my rights or about what I’m owed in justice follows from the pronunciation of my name. The same might be said, with appropriate changes, about Palestinians.

                  Your actual reason for referring to Palestinians as “Balestinians” is that you want to mock them and in doing so, deny that they have rights to just treatment as human beings. I find it sad that you’d waste so much space on trying to defend so retrograde a claim in so unpersuasive a fashion. But at least you have the chutzpah to come out and say so.


                • We Jews, meaning myself in this conversation, endured g’lut/exile as a people for well over 2000 years. Prior to 1948, the Israeli Independence War victory over 5 invading Arab armies, Jews endured the stateless refugee status as a people who had no country of our own. During this refugee status, the Jewish people had little or no rights that culminated in the systematic murder of 75% of European Jewry in the time span of about 3 to 4 years!

                  From this perspective – stateless refugees have no rights. Ya can not have one set of rules applied to Jews and a completely different set of rules applied to non Jews – that’s outright racism. During the latter years of the British mandate, after Britain returned this mandate back to the UN, established a year or so prior to Israeli national independence, the new UN post WW2 replacement of the defunct League of Nations, established by Wilson’s 17th point in his otherwise totally rejected post WW1 peace plan, (Senator Long rejected US participation in the League of Nations, and the Senate rejected the League of Nations treaty), Germany withdrew from the League in 1938.

                  The UN in 1947 by a 2/3rd majority recognized the Jewish right to self determination within the borders of the old British mandate, based upon the Balfour Declaration of 1917. All Arab countries unilaterally rejected Jewish self determination; on the day following the UN 2/3rd vote, David Ben Gurion issued the declaration of the new nations national Independence. On that same day, 5 Arab armies from different countries invaded the newly declared state named Israel, with the intent to complete the Nazi Holocaust. Arab leaders instructed the civilian Arabs to withdrawal from the lands of Israel, to get out of the way of the victorious Arab armies.

                  The Arabs failed to throw the Jews into the Sea, but not without trying. The Arabs who obeyed their Arab leaders and fled, became stateless refugees, which the UN offered assistance that extends to this very moment and day! Post Israeli Independence victory, in hysteria virtually all Arab and Muslim countries unilaterally expelled all Jews living in their countries. The difference between Israel and Arab/Muslim countries, Israel not only repatriated these, some 800,000 Jews expelled from Arab and Muslim countries, but it equally repatriated Arabs who remained within the Jewish state and gave this Arab minority population citizen rights! Not any other Arab or Muslim country repatriated their Arab refugee populations! Not Lebanon, Not Syria, Not Jordan, Not Egypt, Not Iraq, the 5 Arab countries who invaded the Jewish state on the same day as Ben Gurion declared Jewish independence and named the new nation – Israel.

                  The Arab countries have yet to repatriate their Arab refugee populations. UN refugee camps for Balestinians exist across the Middle East to this very day!


                • From this perspective – stateless refugees have no rights.

                  It seems to have escaped you that the “perspective” in question is that of the Nazis, and that it’s the perspective on which all of your comments here are based. From that Orwellian “perspective,” the slogan “Never Again” actually means, “Encore!”


                • Now the church like the Balestinians, exists as stateless refugees. We Jews have reconquered our ancient homelands. Xtians rot in exile/g’lut waiting for the 2nd coming of Jesus son of Zeus.


                • “I have an Arabic name, ‘Irfan.’”

                  “Irfan”? Holy cannoli! All this time I thought your name was “Irving.”

                  But the fact that your Arabic name begins with ” ‘ayn” does lend support to the theory that It Usually Begins With ‘ayn.

                  Liked by 2 people

                • Dave Schmidtz did once refer to me, in a seminar, as “Irving Khawaja.” The trouble it would have saved if that had actually been my name…

                  The last line of your comment wins the PoT Prize for Blog Comment Humor for 2020.


                • Germany initiated to European Civil Wars. Prussia no longer exists as a German state. Today Prussia, its part of Poland. Post WW2 the Allies unilaterally expelled some 15 to 18 million Germans from Poland and the Czech state. Berlin they divided.

                  The Jewish state, its about the size of the State of New Jersey! Germany about the size of a 1/3rd of the US other than Alaska. Ever here of the post Shoah Jewish declaration — Never Again? It refers to the European ‘Final Solution’. The EU seeks to negate the Israeli victory of the 1967 Six Day war. If their “2 State solution” can negate the 1967 victory whose to say that these Holocaust perpetrator States would not then attempt to negate the 1948 Israeli victory. Never Again – Europeans States have no say in determining the borders of the Jewish State any more that post WW2 Britain and France have the authority to again divide the Czech state as Chamberlain unilaterally did in 1938, waiving his scrap of papers declaring “Peace in our times”.


              • “Roderick your personal political tastes do not give you Israeli citizenship any more than you can vote in Russia b/c of your socialist leanings. … Making an abracodabra declaration does not pull rabbits out of hats nor makes virtually all the nation states in existence across the planet cease to exist.”

                Um … okay. I’m aware that I’m not an Israeli citizen. I’m aware that I cannot make nation-states cease to exist by reciting abra cadabra. I literally have no clue what your point is in reciting these obvious, but not obviously relevant, facts.


                • From this perspective – stateless refugees have no rights.

                  That sounds like a pretty awful perspective. Certainly it’s one that had catastrophically lethal consequences in the 20th century. So it seems like a perspective that nobody should adopt, or promote, or tolerate in political movements or regimes.


                  Sure. As with any inconsitency, this one can be resolved in either of two ways: if you have the same principle in two different cases, to be consistent you could deny it twice. Or you could affirm it twice. So, in the interest of consistency, why not adopt an ethical perspective that universalizes respect for the human rights of stateless refugees, whether Jews or Gentiles? Rather than adopting the (admittedly consistent) perspective that no stateless refugees have any rights that Might is bound to respect? Robbery and enslavement and mass murder are injustices; as a rule, I do not generally think that if one group of people is robbed or enslaved or murdered en masse, then other groups of people ought to endure the same later. (You know, just to be fair.) Do you? If so, why in the world do you believe that?


                • Respect for human rights etc. Unlike the sub human European barbarians who have committed war crimes throughout their bloody history against minority groups, Google what the vile king of Belgium did in Africa, how the British initiated concentration camps during the Boer War, how Europeans treat gypsies in Europe today in the 21st century! Israel places no restrictions upon Arab attendance to Israeli Universities. Arabs have sat in Israeli Knesset Cabinets, they have a justice on the Israeli Supreme Court, they have citizenship. Such respect Arab countries never showed Jewish refugees in their countries.


                • I agree that King Leopold’s conduct in the Congo Free State, the conduct of the British in the Anglo-Boer Wars (as well as the conduct of the both the British colonists and the Dutch/Afrikaaner settlers in South Africa more generally), and the widespread treatment of Romani peoples in many European countries are all pretty awful, and all of them violations of the human rights of their respective victims. (I don’t need to “google” these things to know or form a judgment about them.) I don’t think these crimes were committed by “sub humans” (they were done by human beings who could and should have been held morally responsible for their crimes against humanity), nor by “barbarians” (they were committed by people in power within affluent, highly urbanized nation-states and global empires; if you just meant “barbarian” loosely, to mean that they were violent thugs, — or I guess if you meant it classically, to mean that they were not Hellenes — then that much is certainly true). Nor were they committed by “the Europeans” collectively, either one at a time or all of them together at once. They were committed by specific, identifiable European individuals and political institutions. The folks who did these things merit condemnation for doing them, and should have been stopped from doing them at the time.

                  That seems like a pretty good reason to say that some European people and political institutions have been very bad at respecting the human rights of both (a) stateless refugees and migrants and also (b) settled indigenous peoples. Their victims had human rights that should have been respected but were not — to the infamy of those who violated those rights. It’s not much of a reason for any righteous person to conclude that Palestinian Arabs (either Arab citizens of Israel, or Palestinians living under occupation in the West Bank or Gaza) ought to be treated as having less human rights (let alone no rights) against the political might of a victorious state. You can resolve a double standard by defining standards of decency and humanity down to the lowest level, and excusing violence in one group because others have gotten away with it. Or you can resolve it by defining standards up for everyone, and rejecting the excuses for unjust violence on all sides. A righteous person would do the latter, not help themselves to excuses based on the former.

                  Liked by 1 person

        • Worked with Arabs in Beer Sheva. At that place of employment, we had a Jewish worker by the name of Pennie. Arabs can not pronounce the letter P, so everyone referred to Pennie by the name Bennie.


          • My father once had an appointment with a Palestinian colleague who, when he arrived, called to say that he was waiting in the “barking lot.” (My father, ever the wit, asked him what he was doing. A: “Barking.”) So yes, I’m more than familiar with the phenomenon. But I have plenty of Palestinian friends who refer without the slightest difficulty to “Pakistan,” “Paris,” Pepsi,” and “Dave Chappelle.” You’re trafficking in mythology. Arabs don’t lack the “ability” to pronounce the “p” sound, as though they suffered from some genetic quirk that rendered them incapable of doing so.


              • In other words, you’re now disavowing your own first reason for referring to Palestinians as “Balestinians.” The reason was that “Arabs can not pronounce the letter P.” Now, it turns out that they can, but only when they have a reason to do so. The Palestinians I was referring to live in Jerusalem and the West Bank. They didn’t have scatter very far to do what you said they couldn’t.

                We’re left with your other reason for referring to them as “Balestinians”: you want to mock them as rightless persons. So one reason was pseudo-linguistic, the other authentically nihilistic. Thanks for putting it on the record–whoever you are.


  5. I’ve come to the conclusion that “mosckerr” is either unwilling or unable to engage in consequent discourse here, since every attempt at engagement is met with a flurry of cryptic irrelevancies and evasions. I shall feed this troll no longer.


        • No. You have refused to address the issues which my comments have introduced. If you do not wish to discuss the issue, that’s your choice, but its dishonest to simply declare Quote/UnQuote: “He’s full of shit”, without bringing specifics as to what you disagree with.


          • Already did raise specifics on a relatively trivial issue, and your arguments are pure nonsense even there. A person who starts out by denying on blatantly fallacious grounds that people have equal rights isn’t worth arguing with. Your views internalize Nazi principles under the cover of opposing them. It’s too late in human history to waste time arguing with such people. I don’t “wish” to discuss the issue with you because your arguments are not worth discussing.


      • The problem with these ignorant reactionary Goyim, they fail (F) to differentiate between external event of foreign nations with their internal reactionary emotions and feelings. Irfan, for example, suffers from indigestion: “full of shit”, and projects his feelings of bloating upon me. Dude take some Pepto-Bismol, and directly address the issues which I raised. Making personal attacks upon me, this non logic has a name: Ad hominem.


        • Note: Ad hominem is a fallacy only if it’s part of an argument. Irfan wasn’t offering mosckerr an *argument* for anything, he was simply making a judgment, and he was addressing me, not mosckerr. And he didn’t need to justify his judgment to me because I’d already made clear that, and why, I agreed with it.


            • “Policy of Truth”. A nice declaration of rhetoric. What distinguishes truth from accuracy? We Jews, some of us – at least, 2 Jews 3 opinions and 4 synagogues – define the term truth as path. Path translates into the Hebrew term Halachah. After Napoleon freed European Jewry from the criminal Catholic church imposed ghettos, a crime imposed upon European Jewry for some 3 centuries, notice no Goy ever condemned the Catholic church for this vile war crime committed against humanity! So much for European “justice” as truth.

              We can all perhaps agree that Xtianity has no connection what so ever with truth. So how do ya’ll secular Goyim define truth? This particular Jew, an atheist praise God – the Gods i cannot at all comprehend any more than an ant can communicate in English. I simply do not know. Not a chemist or a physic major but my ignorance of these fields does not give me the authority to negate what they say. To do so equals hubris arrogance. Therefore “Halachah” defines truth as a path. You Roderick T. Long walk down a path of life as do I. But its hubris arrogance for you to negate the path of life which I walk upon and visa versa.


              • “notice no Goy ever condemned the Catholic church for this vile war crime committed against humanity”

                LOL. Condemnation of the Jews is pretty standard on all sides. “No Goy,” indeed. And you wonder why people think you’re full of shit.

                But I’m letting myself succumb to feeding the troll. Time to stop.

                “its hubris arrogance for you to negate the path of life which I walk upon and visa versa.”

                You are free to walk down your path of life. Enjoy your journey. Good-bye.


    • Roderick, by your own admission, my posting upon your blog, quite extensive and detailed. To date never received any substantive discussion upon my long response, other than you said you looked forward to read it. How can peoples from different countries address complex issues if foreigners like yourself don’t even take the time to read responses given in precise detail?


      • Talking about others, you point out correctly that Irfan addressed you with his ‘judgment’ that i was full of shit. Some Yidden, the Yiddish word for Jews, define talking to others with intent to degrade some third party other, myself in this particular case, as slander. Slander and hubris arrogance they go together. Tick Tock.


        • Don’t stop.

          I’ve blocked you, but with persistence like yours, who knows? Maybe you’ll break through. Your namesake Moses made it through the Red Sea, after all. No doubt you were put on this Earth for equally miraculous deeds. B’ezrat HaShem.


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