What is Conservatism?

Let’s add this one to the Prager List

In traditional America, you could be anything you wanted to be if you worked for it.

In today’s America, you can be anything you want to be if you whine for it.

My Friends,

As passover ends and Easter beckons I wish you all peace and freedom that these to seasons represent. 

Well thanks for the promotion. A lot to live up to.

One of the basics taught in Christian churches, thanks to Martin Luther, is the simple trust that faith is enough. Calvinists make it even harder with the doctrine of predestination and proof of status by works and success. For Jews it is not any simpler and different. We are a querulous people and our greatest quarrels have been with G-d. Ask Job or Moses if they always got along with G-d. In spite of that, or perhaps because of it we were given the law on mount Sinai. It was a moment when history changed for ever. 

The idea that people could govern themselves with only guidelines from a superior power was so radical that even we, who were there and witnessed it, could not grasp that it was the path to true freedom. I fear that we now live in an age when freedom is discounted for bread and even conservatives and libertarians, who should know better, are folding when the culture comes after them. Jesus was tempted by Satan in the desert and the toughest, IMHO, was the refusal to give bread to the world. Jesus knew that man dos not live by bread alone but just giving bread was an act of tyranny and would lead to slavery. 

I hear it in the broadcast news, read it in papers, read it on the internet and hear it from students and it saddens me that so many who claim to know so much believe so little. We can and should question every thing about life. I believe it was Plato who said, "the unexamined life is not worth living". Others have said much the same. Hindus make you live it over until you get it right. Buddhists are certain you will never get it right unless you know the nine billion names of god and Islam just throws out free will for corporate thought. At least the LDS have their golden tablet as read by J. Smith through a top hat. 

I don't have any answers, only more questions that as I get older someday the answer will come and I will have no way to tell anyone what it is. G-d--Yes/No and the same for heaven and hell. I will be disappointed if there is no hell because of the number of assholes I helped send there. 

You're a Jew. You’re smarter than most of us. It’s your cross to bear, so to speak. You’ll do fine.



Very good point. It is difficult in this age of material abundance, and rising expectations of comfort, to justify why God matters at all. Science and technology, run via the free market, have provided us with riches that would make kings of old look like paupers.

God is now derided explicitly by those outside of religion and implicitly by those inside (in various libtardish ways that we’ve talked about before). One can kick out all means of support when one thinks one has it all. And when man becomes the measure of all things, how can we not help but become vain, corrupt, vile, and vulgar?

And I’m not saying I can make the case for God. I can’t. I’m not sure I want to. First off, I struggle with the idea of a benevolent God. Secondly, the people who scorn the idea of God fit into the category of “pearls before swine.” Any explaining or convincing is not worth the abuse.

Still, as a general outlook, there’s a part of me that would prefer mental caviar than the sugar-rush of the various cotton-candy ideologies (and lifestyles) of those who wear the label “secular” like a this-side-toward-street label on a trashcan. It may be nothing more than not knowing what is right but being sure as heck able to spot what is wrong.



LOL. We even do theological discussions better than anyone else.

I haven’t decided who’s worse, the atheist or the religionist who sells out to evil under the name of “diversity” or some such buzzword.

That’s the magic of Dennis Prager. I probably will buy that book and thus will read through Deuteronomy (once). He’s wise and trustworthy. And I would likely find it difficult to understand much of the bible without some kind of interpretation.

I wonder what translation Prager uses. I guess I could look back at the earlier two books. I assume it would be the same.



Mr. Flu made a point of addressing this as well. Let me state one assumption I have: God is larger than, and can’t be contained within, that autographed bible you can have shipped to you free for only $39.95 + tax. I’m not a ridiculer of religious observance. But I do think 90% of it can be explained as a social function.

I’ve come to understand via Dennis Prager the necessary role of ritual. But at the core I ask, “Why in heaven should I follow you when you don’t even know what your own religion is about?”

How did, for example, Jews ever become the bad guy among some Christians when (wait for it) Jesus himself was a Jew? There just seems to me to be a very large disconnect between the essence of Christianity and the typical understanding of it. Perhaps it’s the difference between the mass mind and the kind of mind spoken of in Psalm 46:10: “Be still, put down your phone, and know that I am God.” That's from a modern translation.

To me, the question concerns the centrality of ego or prestige in human nature. God can either be an amplification of all our conceits and self-involvement or, as in Matthew 16:24 (and perhaps as best portrayed by Francis of Assisi):



That’s a stunning difference that I wager 90% of Christians and Jews have forgotten or never came across as an idea. And it’s certainly unknown, unliked, or unpracticed because it is (especially in today’s world) at complete odds with how everyone thinks and acts.

Prager is very competent in both English and Hebrew so it is very possible he is the translator. I suspect it will be very similar to the JPS translation. There are nuances in Hebrew that can change meanings. Isaiah 7:14 fore example--Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign: The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and will call him Immanuel. However, the Hebrew does not say virgin. It translates as young woman in the JPS Bible. 

There is little doubt that the original translators knew Hebrew well enough to know the difference between young woman and virgin. I suggest the change was made with intent to "prove" Jesus divine heritage as suggested in the new Testament.  After 2000 years it should not shake anyone's faith but we do need a critical eye the reading scripture.

I think there are far and abundant reasons to believe in God than to believe in the magic of nothingness. That’s why I’m openly contemptuous of atheists. They are dishonest fools, while an overzealous religionist is typically just full of himself but honest otherwise. I probably don’t believe the fine-grain detail of much of Christianity, but the overall could certainly be true. Same with Judaism. Therefore, I think that most zealous Judeo-Christian religionists could well be right while an atheist can ever only be wrong and usually in a destructive and dishonest way.

People are well-practiced in handing out labels. If I’m not a full-fledged bible-thumper but do kinda-sorta believe in god, I’m an “agnostic” in the eyes of most. But I don’t view the world that way. I think God Almighty is so yuge that it’s not a question of which religion you believe, per se. It’s a question of whether you truly do believe God is much larger, esoteric, and mysterious than will fit in anyone’s tidy story.

It’s not wrong to look up into the night sky and be in awe of creation and the Creator with no need to necessarily cite bible-and-verse (although the two can, of course, be quite consistent). God as a social function of man holds no interest for me. God as a real and mysterious Being does.

I suppose that runs into my distinction of God as Real and religion as a human movement. I would say we just don’t have all that much information about what occurred in the life of Jesus. It would be very easy for later evangelists to stuff words into his mouth in order to forward a cause. And those who really do believe they are anointed by god with the Holy Spirit are not generally going to struggle too much with self-doubt.

Fake news is not a new thing. The thing I consider is that, assuming we are created beings in a created world, it certainly seems possible that god would reach out to us through a Messiah….just as he supposedly has done through various prophets. Jews might not be willing to accept a Messiah because they are too attached to grievance or the identity of themselves as the chosen ones. If a Messiah really does come, they would seem out of a job.

First and foremost, “God” is an expression of our egos, as typically practiced. He becomes not so much God Almighty but a mere identity. And when one identifies with the exalted, that’s a pretty exalted ego that comes out the other end. That can account for much of religious strife but is an element not at all unique to religion — a tragic forgetfulness that corrupt and dishonest atheists do not acknowledge.

Speaking of posters: