Far too many Westerners make the mistake of projecting their own views onto Palestinians without really understanding the Palestinian narrative. The “occupation” doesn’t refer to the West Bank and Gaza, and it never has. The “occupation” refers to Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. A kibbutz in the center of Israel is “occupied Palestine” according to most. “It makes no sense to a Palestinian to think about a Palestinian state alongside Israel,” Martin Kramer from the Shalem Center in Jerusalem said to me a few days ago. “From the Palestinian perspective, Israel will always exist inside Palestine.”“Making peace with the Palestinians is harder than making peace with other Arabs,” said Asher Susser, Senior Research Fellow at Tel Aviv University. “With the Palestinians we have a 1948 file as well as a 1967 file. With other Arabs we only have a 1967 file. The 1967 file relates to our size, but the 1948 file relates to our very being. It is nearly impossible to resolve because we cannot compromise on our being.”
The rest is here
Well and truly stated. Islam cannot accept free Jews living on the Ummah's land. They can be brought under Muslim protection and pay the Jizya. Of course there would be no state of Israel. But this can't be done without first slaughtering perhaps 25% of the population so that they know they have been defeated and feel humiliation. The other Jewish choice is death.
One more choice....become Muslim.
That's why nations don't exist by means of subjective emotional perception; they exist, or don't exist, within political reality. Political reality rests on physical reality.
Both the Palestinians who made the above assertions, that 'Israel doesn't exist'; and orthodox Jews (and others) who say the same thing that 'there's no such thing as a Palestine or Palestinians nor was there ever a nation called Palestine' and so on - are equally in error.
Nations and their citizens are political constructs. Completely political. They exist as sovereign nations by virtue of being accepted as sovereign over a particular geographic domain by the international community.
An interesting commentary on the nature of 'perception' is that in contradiction to the subjective perception outlined by both ardent Palestinians and ardent Judaic individuals, nations don't exist just because that particular nation and its inhabitants say 'I exist'.
Nations exist objectively rather than subjectively. They exist because other nations say: 'You exist'.
Such an assertion of 'boundaries', i.e., an acknowledgement that a particular geographic domain has an actual boundary line to its identity which sets up Internal Authority versus External Authority is vital to the existence of a nation. Without such physical boundaries, without that acknowledgment that 'we, this nation, extend only to this boundary', while You, A different nation, have authority outside our area...well, we'd all be an amoebic-like mass.
So, again, nations don't and can't exist within the subjective gaze. They exist only because Others exist - not phenomenologically, not subjectively, but objectively. Physically. Materially. Not conceptually.
The Arabs/Pals/Muslims are winning, and know it. Demographics are on their side. World opinion is on their side (no matter how hard that is to fathom), and oil money is on their side. They know it and there is no way they will compromise or accept anything other than the nonexistence of Israel.
Judaism is a dwindling and conflicted religion that is polarizing to near secularism on one side and fanatic orthodoxy on the other.
And the hate is infinite, and now bred in the bone for 3 generations.
There is only one way this can end in the long run, no matter what the short term heroics may be.
lori - those are alarmist views about Judaism. I really don't think it is a 'dwindling and conflicted religion'. Kindly provide some evidence.
Certainly it has different sections, from Orthodox to Conservative to Reform, and versions of each, but that is a healthy rather than weak system for it enables modernization, adaptation and yes, analysis of each mode's suitability for a particular population. That doesn't mean it is 'conflicted'.
Nor is it dwindling. Judaism is not a 'conversion' religion unlike Christianity and Islam which both seek converts. Judaism doesn't do this; it relies instead on a deep sense of communal belonging to instill in the younger generation, a commitment to that religion. I think this remains strong.
No, the Muslims are NOT winning. The problem is that their lifestyle, as outlined within their ideology, is not adapted to a modern economy or modern industrial world. They are, in an interesting sense, entirely dependent on the non-Muslim for technology, inventions, science, the use of reason. At the moment, oil can buy this rich largesse but when the oil runs out - where will they be without any capacity to deliver new technology for themselves?
Some Arab nations, eg, the UAE, already realize this and have moved out of a reliance on oil, and have begun to modernize their industries - and their ideology.
Many Muslims also realize this and are trying to reform their ideology; it's difficult because of the counter-action of Islamic fascism, but, there really is no choice. They can't remain dependent on the West to 'do the science'. They have to move out of tribalism and modernize.
So, your 'doom and gloom' scenario isn't, I suggest, very accurate.
A friend of mine recently returned from the Middle East with a geo political wall map of the world. It contained all the countries of the world - except one.
I read the end of the Book. Israel wins.
I like that comment.
Israel in the long run is doomed. The Gaza campaign, and the inevitable repeats in the future, may buy them a few years, but eventually they will be overrun by the barbarians from within and without. Everything good in Israel will be destroyed to the sound of cheering from most of the rest of the world. I hope Canada at least offers sanctuary to all Jews from Israel.
I hope Canada at least offers sanctuary to all Jews from Israel.
Posted by: randall g at January 28, 2009 12:28 AM
Amen, to that. I pray that our Almighty will provide hope, strength and peace to Israel. Barring that, however, the industriousness of the Jewish people would be welcome in Canada should a safe haven be needed.
Bang on ET
Follow the money! Judaism has always allowed the lending of money with the collection of interest. The jews also do not define God or believe in prophets (Jesus) opting for healthy debate and the pursuit of answers - science. Any Christian scientific pursuit was a death sentence until Luther, Knox and friends revolted against the Vatican in the late 1500 hundreds. They also kept their $ local and developed their own interest collecting banks. It wasn't until the mid 1900's that the Catholic church reluctantly allowed their the flock to get on board with the Jews and the Prods.
It wasn't until the 80's that muslims came up with an alernative to our style of bank - partnership as opposed to interest bearing loans. ET fails to mention that this tribalism (feudalsim) that is prevalent in the middle east today is also a system of slavery. The oil rich sheeks and extended family are so $ fat they can't get off the couch to study science so they pay a premium to us. The palestinian, Pakistani, Muslim Indian, Indonesian, etc. slaves can't afford to educate themselves or their families on the $2 bucks per hour they are making to extract the oil out of the sand or building and cleaning the Arab Chieftan's largesse.
I'm not too concerned about a debate on Palastenian occupation. The Palestinian hostility should be re-examined and re-directed.
Prod.
Lori>
Don’t know if this helps or not.
“According to the Jewish Agency, as of 2007 there were 13.2 million Jews worldwide, 5.4 million of whom lived in Israel, 5.3 million in the United States, and the remainder distributed in communities of varying sizes around the world; this represents 0.2% of the current estimated world population.”
http://www.jewishagency.org/JewishAgency/English/Home/
From wikipidia – I know!
“Israel is the only country with a consistently growing Jewish population due to natural population increase, though the Jewish populations of other countries in Europe and North America have recently increased due to immigration. In the Diaspora, in almost every country the Jewish population in general is either declining or steady, but Orthodox and Haredi Jewish communities, whose members often shun birth control for religious reasons, have experienced rapid population growth.”
0.2% of the world population seems like such an insignificant amout of culture, especially when compared to an almost 2 billion strong Muslim global population and a reported 500 million in the Middle East & North Africa doesn’t it?
But hell, why worry about the Jews when there’s a baby elephant in Africa or obscure insects in the Amazon to save.
Revnant Dream, I agree with you.
Wherever I am, I stand with Israel.
Well Knight, thanks for your contribution, I guess it supports my point about Judaism in general, which were based on personal observations and nonspecific things I have read, not actual numbers. Only 15 million... that's pretty small.
And I don't regard the fact that the only growth in Jewish populations comes from the Orthodox group as a good thing. Quite the opposite - it hides how drastic the decline in non-orthodox judaism has been.
And sorry Revnant Dream, the only book I believe in is the book of history. And that book is filled with tales of small cultural/national groups that have disappeared over the march of time.
Of course Judaism is strong way of proportion to its numbers, and there are cultural and historical reasons for this, many of which still apply. But the world's achangin', and not for the better, and I don't see any favourable signs with regard to the future of the Jewish state and jewish religion. The hordes will over run them.
And yes, Canada would be well-advised to take as many Jews here as possible. They will contribute in every way. But I expect that by that time idiotic multiculi/ liberal/democratic thinking will be expunged from their heart having seen how it has damaged them and the entire west. If not, then no thanks. go somewhere else. Incidentally, the Hindu are another group we are well advised to ally with in that same vein. They too have not yet forgotten the reality of cultural and religious warfare.
History = His Story (I know that's corny)
Reverabt, Storm - love your comments.
Lori check what Mark Twain said:
CONCERNING THE JEWS ...
The Essay
"If the statistics are right, the Jews constitute but one percent of the human race. It suggests a nebulous dim puff of star dust lost in the blaze of the Milky Way. Properly the Jew ought hardly to be heard of, but he is heard of, has always been heard of. He is as prominent on the planet as any other people, and his commercial importance is extravagantly out of proportion to the smallness of his bulk. His contributions to the world's list of great names in literature, science, art, music, finance, medicine, and abstruse learning are also away out of proportion to the weakness of his numbers. He has made a marvellous fight in the world, in all the ages; and has done it with his hands tied behind him. He could be vain of himself, and be excused for it. The Egyptian, the Babylonian, and the Persian rose, filled the planet with sound and splendor, then faded to dream-stuff and passed away; the Greek and the Roman followed, and made a vast noise, and they are gone; other peoples have sprung up and held their torch high for a time, but it burned out, and they sit in twilight now, or have vanished. The Jew saw them all, beat them all, and is now what he always was, exhibiting no decadence, no infirmities of age, no weakening of his parts, no slowing of his energies, no dulling of his alert and aggressive mind. All things are mortal but the Jew; all other forces pass, but he remains. What is the secret of his immortality?"
Thanks Ex-Lib. Mark Twain always reads like a draem.
Yes, yes, I know all these things. I know history. I know jewish history. I wish I was a believer in a greater desnity, but I'm not. My fear is that the social and cultural changes that permitted Jews to survive and thrive despite adversity are fading. Things change...
And especially this one bit of Twain's quote... " Exhibiting no decadence, no infirmities of age, no weakening of his parts, no slowing of his energies, no dulling of his alert and aggressive mind.".
That describes Ezra. If he was representative of the greater group, I would perhaps have more confidence in the future. However, it seems to me that Bernie Farber is more representative, and that line does not describe him.
I was once a panelist on a tv show, and the subject turned to the Middle East. The guests and host all talked about 1967 and Balfor and Gaza and whatnot.
Look, I finally piped up. All this is just chin music. The reason there's no peace in the Middle East is because THE MUSLIMS WANT TO KILL ALL THE JEWS.
They looked at me like I'd farted. I get sick of being the kid in the Emperor's New Clothes.
Nations and their citizens are political constructs. Completely political. They exist as sovereign nations by virtue of being accepted as sovereign over a particular geographic domain by the international community.
Posted by: ET at January 27, 2009 10:21 PM
No, ET, nations exist because they create and maintain the military capability to impose their will over a given geographical area. That is the meaning of the emblem of Irgun Zvai Le'umi: the Hebrew motto translates as "Only Thus." U.N. resolutions, international recognition, and other figmentary concepts had nothing to do with the creation of Israel. Israel was created by the Yishuv forcibly opposing Arab aggression and British duplicity.
As correctly summarised by poet Uri Zvi Greenberg:
The soft-minded notion that international recognition is the foundation of statehood is insidious BS.
charles macdonald - what you have said doesn't negate my view nor define it, as you so succinctly outline, as 'BS'. Indeed, your proposal lacks all moral and legal integrity.
Your definition of a 'nation' reduces it merely to the military or physical force to hold on to a particular geographic domain. I disagree. A nation does not exist only by physical force. It exists by virtue of law. There's an enormous moral and intellectual difference between brute force and the law.
Your definition of a 'nation' reduces it to one where any set of militants can move into a territory, claim it as theirs, and thus it becomes 'a nation'. Until the next set comes in and take it. And then the next. And then the next. And so on.
That's not how a 'civilized', if I may use the term, society operates. It doesn't operate by physical force to control a land, to control a person or persons. It exists by rule of law. Therefore, just as someone cannot, by force, grab my wallet filled with money and claim it as 'his property' because he's more physically powerful than me; or move into my house because he's more physically powerful than me...neither can nations be claimed as 'ours' by any and all physical force. So, the weak, the elderly, the young, have no rights in your world!
You are ignoring the rule of law. Nations exist because their role as 'sovereign' over a geographic territory is recognized as 'lawful' (not physically militarily superior) by the international community. There doesn't need to e any military to defend this nation; and if a military did take over a nation without the force to defend itself, it would not be recognized as a lawful action by the international world.
"and if a military did take over a nation without the force to defend itself, it would not be recognized as a lawful action by the international world."
ET, it still comes down to force. The "international world" has two choices in this situation:
1. Do nothing, and the conquerors continue to rule their de-facto nation.
2. Use force (and/or the threat of force) to take the nation back.
The military doesn't need to be sovereign to the nation being defended, but the allied force must exist somewhere in order to defend a nation. All governments and all countries exist through coercive force.
Watched the movie Munich last night. It is about the retaliation for the 1972 Olympics massacre. As I watched I was somewhat disturbed as I noticed not a lot has changed since then with the exception of new names and players. I am in favour of making Newfoundland the new Jewish state if they promise to muzzle Danny Williams.
ET, welcome to the real world. Ask yourself: "What difference does it make if France, or Albania, or Burkina Faso recognise my country?" Then ask yourself: "What difference does it make if my country lack a military sufficiently strong to enforce its writ throughout its territory?"
Whining about legal niceties and international recognition is just cocktail party jabber -- mere diplomacy, and I mean that in the most pejorative sense.
charles macdonald - no, I continue to disagree and I disagree strongly with you. And I'm not going to move into ad hominem as you do in this argument, when you refer to my comments as 'BS' or 'whining'.
I disagree with you by virtue of two important components of reality which you deny: morality and the law.
Morality isn't 'coktail party jabber'; it isn't BS; it isn't 'whining'. It's a necessary part of being human and a necessary part of being a society. The law is the same. To reduce the validity of living to brute force is to deny such basic achievements in our human history as the Magna Carta and the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution and its amendments. It is to deny fundamental rights of being human and to instead support only brute physical force as the agent of legitimacy.
I point to an excellent book on the difference between 'sovereignty' by force versus the rule of law by Jean Bethke Elshtain: Sovereignty: God, state and self.
The question is what makes authority over a territory legitimate? Power or Rule? When a military force, ie, a Sovereign, moves in and imposes that force on the people, this doesn't make them legitimate. It makes them totalitarian and your support of power without morality and the rule of law is a support for totalitarianism.
Instead of this Sovereign-as-Dictator, we have moved in our history to an acceptance of the nation as "an institutionalized, juristic entity that defines, both legally and normatively, the modern state".
To cut off the people from the law and the morality of it, is to accept tyrannicide. You consider the rule of law and morality to be peripherals, to be 'cocktail party jabber', to be 'whining'. I consider them to be the result of years of history that moved us out of brute force and into the rule of law, which limits the use of force, limits arbitrariness, limits the subjugation of people by brute force.
As for the international community, the rule of law rather than force as a definition of nationhood is enforced by military means, most certainly (NATO, NORAD etc); by economic sanctions; by refusal to acknowledge etc.
But your reduction of reality to exclude the realities that we humans have, by our use of reason and emotion, developed, namely law and morality, and reduce us to physical brute force is to hand us over to totalitarianism and slavery. I don't accept your world.
ET, Let me annotate:
I consider them to be the result of years of history that moved us out of brute force and into the rule of law, which limits the use of force (through threat of force), limits arbitrariness (through threat of force), limits the subjugation of people by brute force (through threat of retaliation through force).
As awful as it is to have to admit it, all the 'civilization' and 'law' and 'morality' we enjoy, we enjoy only because the people with the biggest guns decided we would all benefit if we play nice.
no, k stricker, I disagree.
The people with the biggest guns, i.e., the US, happen to operate under the rule of law and morality - as outlined in their constitution which is a document based on the rule of law and that laws foundation in morality.
You refuse to acknowledge these achievements, and they are achievements, of human beings, and instead reduce human activity to simple 'brute force'. I disagree; we have the capacity-to-reason and this alone trumps physical force.
As an example, your support of brute force would mean that the man who breaks into my home and robs me gets to keep what he stole because he's stronger than me. But our rule of law and morality says that such behaviour is unacceptable; he goes to jail.
No, it's not OK for me to attack him (brute force) and if I happen to be stronger than him, I get away with it. There's that mediation of the law.
Brute force operates only within the constraints of the law; not vice-versa. That's the achievement of our history. It's the substitution of the Law over Personal Will; the substitution of the constraint of the law over the agenda of the Powerful Will.
"Morality isn't cocktail party jabber...it's a necessary part of being human..."
"To exclude the realities that we humans have...and to reduce us to physical brute force is to hand us over to totalitarianism and slavery."
Quite. Here, from Egyptian television, a Muslim cleric narrates overtop of footage of Jews being brutalized, humiliated, starved and beaten:
"When the Germans revealed the treachery and the war of the Jews against them,
and the fact that they were spreading corruption in their country -- let us watch how oppressors are killed by the people they oppressed. What we have here are German graves, but let's watch what the Germans do to the Jews.
"These are corpses of dead humans and the shattered bones of Jews. Here we have a crematorium, in which the Jews were burnt.
"These are Jews who are being prepared to be burnt...Look: these are Jews dying of hunger or by gas. Look how they round them up and put them on trucks.
(An image of a starving, dying Jew is shown). "Note the humiliation on his face, Allah be praised. Abasement and humiliation were brought down upon them, and they became deserving of Allah's wrath. Look what starvation (the Germans) inflicted upon them. Look what humiliation.
"These are people being buried alive. Does this look like a human being? He is placed in a ditch to be buried alive. This is a pile of bodies. Ibn Mas'oud was right...
"...Look, this is a barbed wire, used to crush their bodies. He and five others will be hanged with a single chain.
"Concentrate on this, my brothers. Watch this...look, they are tying five heads together. These are bodies. Here they are drilling a hole in his back with a nail. This child awaits his turn. Watch their humiliation.
These are corpses, Allah be praised. The (Jews) are oppressors. They are being deported. Ibn Mas'oud was right when he said: 'All the oppressors are killed by those they oppress.' These are bodies, these are dead people, these are skulls, these are the bodies of the Jews being loaded like animals. Watch this tractor clearing away the corpses of the Jews, and these are the refugees awaiting their turn to be killed. A German soldier returns now, and you will see a Jewish woman kissing his hand. Notice what humiliation, fear and terror have struck her. See how much she is kissing his hand. Watch her humiliation -- this is what we hope will happen, but, Allah willing, at the hand of the Muslims."
http://hotair.com/archives/2009/01/27/pure-nazism-muslim-cleric-celebrates-the-holocaust-on-egyptian-tv/
ET..I must correct your statement. "orthodox Jews (and others) who say the same thing that 'there's no such thing as a Palestine or Palestinians nor was there ever a nation called Palestine' and so on"
the truth of the matter is Orthodox Jews and Chasidic Jews do not believe that Israel exists either. And those that keep insisting it does are infuriating G*d and are bringing misfortune to Jews around the world. True Torah Jews believe that their people must remain in exile until G*d says they can return, with the coming of the Messiah. Trouble is that the liberal reformed and conservative Jews got tired of waiting. The birth of "Zionism"
nuff said their....
edb. aren't they just lovely peace loving people? man the western people are stupid. the jews will still be here long after every muslim has ceased to exist. it is written.
"No, it's not OK for me to attack him (brute force) and if I happen to be stronger than him, I get away with it. There's that mediation of the law."
ET, your mistake is to separate the idea of force from the law. If you don't believe this, try selling "raw milk" to people who are aware of the risks associated with drinking "raw milk" (which hardly makes it a moral issue) and see how long it takes the police to show up with their guns to seize everything you own. They won't show up with their superior intellect, or their laws to seize everything, they will show up with GUNS. You cannot separate force from the law.
EBD, I tried to watch that last night but could not make it to the end. And that is not a one off - there is so much of that sh7t emanating from that part of the world - I do not see how anyone thinks you can have a rational conversation with such people. And no, there is no equivalent rabbi somewhere saying such unadulterated crap.
"Brute force operates only within the constraints of the law; not vice-versa. That's the achievement of our history. It's the substitution of the Law over Personal Will; the substitution of the constraint of the law over the agenda of the Powerful Will."
Also:
I'm sure the Romans were pretty proud of their achievements in that arena before their empire was toppled by brute force too. You're fooling yourself thinking there's anything permanent about these achievements, your belief that our modern law and morality could not be overthrown by a powerful and determined enemy.
Mr. Kilroi - I'm aware of a group of Orthodox Jews who reject the idea of Israel and are opposed to zionism, although I'm not sure that ALL Orthodox Jews follow that ideology.
K stricker - no, I don't separate the idea of force from the law. I say that force must operate WITHIN the rule of law not outside of it. With regard to your example of raw milk, the force of the police MUST operate within the rule of law and the rights of this farmer (whom I support) must also operate within the rule of law.
You are changing the theme of this debate. It began with charles macdonald's focus on military force as the only definition of a sovereign state. I reject that and continue to reject it.
My argument was based on our history of the development of the rule of law as authoritative over Sovereign Will, and the insistence that this rule of law had to have a moral base in the well-being of the people.
I never said that one regime, which operates within the rule of law could not be toppled by a brute force! After all, that is what Hitler did. That doesn't mean such an action should be allowed to stand as is, both by the people under that illegitimate rule - who would have the right of rebellion, and by the international world who would have the right to reject such an action.
Again, your insistence that Force Rules the World is one that I reject because it negates not only all our intellectual developments of the past 5,000 and more years; it negates the actual reason for societies to exist!
ET, I ignore neither morality nor the rule of law. Legitimacy comes after stability. I can quote authorities from Machiavelli to Roger Scruton, if you wish.
It is, of course, bizarre and incongruous to insert the rule of law as a precondition to statehood. None of the Arab or Muslim countries satisfy the requirements of the rule of law in the Diceyan-Wade sense.
Seriously, ET, if you wish to argue about legitimacy, de jure vs. de facto authority, etc., why don't you take some political science courses?
"I never said that one regime, which operates within the rule of law could not be toppled by a brute force! After all, that is what Hitler did. That doesn't mean such an action should be allowed to stand as is, both by the people under that illegitimate rule - who would have the right of rebellion, and by the international world who would have the right to reject such an action."
Indeed. And the international world did, in fact, reject that action. . .with great force! And that certainly would have amounted to absolutely squat if the rest of the world happened to be throwing spears and pikes at Hitler's army, and he was rolling over the rest of the world with tanks.
Law and morality only rule the world because most nations are generally in agreement (for very good reasons) that they will...or else!
"It negates the actual reason for societies to exist!"
Societies exist to protect individuals from force. They do this by using force. If you steal from another at gunpoint (the kind of force they're protecting you from) society puts you in jail (the kind of force they use to protect individuals).
If you think the legitimacy of the state has more to do with morality than force why are we still occupying land native North Americans clearly have a valid moral claim to? Why hasn't the international community done something about this injustice?!
charles macdonald - hmm; seeing as I taught such courses in university, then, I'm curious about your latest 'ad hominem' style of argumentation against me. Quite possibly, although I know you disagree, I do have some inkling about what I'm arguing here.
You wrote: "No, ET, nations exist because they create and maintain the military capability to impose their will over a given geographical area.
And: "As correctly summarised by poet Uri Zvi Greenberg:
In blood and fire Judaea fell!
In blood and fire Judaea will arise!
And "Whining about legal niceties and international recognition is just cocktail party jabber".
It seems to me from your above comments that you most certainly do ignore both morality and the rule of law.
You now state that 'legitimacy comes after stability'. Legitimacy according to whom and what? And what does 'stability' mean? Are you saying that the Taliban totalitarian dictatorship, which certainly provided stability in the sense that no individual dared to move, provided legitimacy of such governance? I certainly reject that. I refer you to the notion that the law is a feature of the rational foundation of our species, quite separate from the coercive nature of brute force.
"Sovereignty can never be above the law, but instead, must always be of the law" (Elshtain). That is, I reject Will, or Force, as a basis of sovereignty over a nation.
Power over a population isn't by brute force, as you advocate, but is limited by law and in a democracy, derives from the people. In tribalism - and a tribal political system IS legitimate in a no-growth non-industrial society, this power derives from the traditional structure of the people and is answerable to that tradition.
I certainly do insert the rule of law as a condition of statehood. The Dicey-Wade concept of administrative law, to keep government within boundaries to prevent abuse of the citizens is a requirement. The fact that the rule of law in Muslim countries may not be similar to our own (and Dicey and Wade focused on the priority of individual rather than collective rights) does not mean that those states do not operate under a rule of law - usually a combination of Sharia and civil law. Dictatorships reject the rule of law and operate under the Will of the Sovereign - and such Will operates outside of the Law.
kstricker - that's my point. Law and morality are the basic attributes of a legitimate nation. Not force. You've now moved your argument to assert that law and morality only exist due to a stronger force. Certainly force is required but not of and for itself, as charles macdonald has said, but only within the boundaries of law as I quoted above from Elshtain. A force that operates outside of the law gets 'called to account'.
No, societies don't exist to protect individuals from force. They exist because our species has a unique knowledge base; our knowledge is not genetic but learned. Therefore, we must live in a society for our knowledge is stored within the collective memory and actions of a society. Societies exist as knowledge-systems. They enable our species to survive since, again, we have no genetic knowledge base. Our knowledge of 'how to live' operates as normative habits which become laws, based on morality..of how 'best' to live. Nothing to do with force.
With regard to the natives, actually, by both reason and law, they don't have a moral claim to the land. They did not 'own' land but 'used' land (a very important distinction); furthermore, at least in Canada, all land was transfered by treaty. I presume you know the treaties of Canada, and the 1763 Royal Proclamation which forbade settling, purchasing and taking of native land without legal treaties.
Really? When did you teach political science, ET? I thought you were a professor of anthropology.
"Our knowledge of 'how to live' operates as normative habits which become laws, based on morality..of how 'best' to live. Nothing to do with force."
Well, if you actually believe what you're saying then you should believe that a modern anarcho-capitalist state would self-regulate based on our normative habits which have become laws based on morality, etc, etc. But based on past discussions we've had it's clear you don't. In fact, you challenged me to define what system of laws a society would have. And here you are now professing that this natural law you couldn't conceive of precedes force. I'm confused.
ET, Apologies in advance if I did happen to confuse you with someone else...
charles macdonald - one of my regular upper level courses was the economic, political and legal infrastuctures of societies and a major part of that was the transformation from the tribal to the democratic political systems and the transformation of political systems within the economic agricultural to industrial economic modes. OK?
k stricker - I have a terrible memory for things (ahh, age) but I can't believe that I would advocate an 'anarcho-capitalist state', understanding such a state as one that rejects the collective (the state) and instead operates only by means of individual agency.
My view of a society is that it is bileveled; it necessarily operates within two 'agents'; the collective which operates as memory, as normative rules and habits; and the individual. These two very different agents must both exist; they must collaborate and also, importantly, dissent.
The collective ooperates over a long period of time; it provides the normative rules; it provides stability and the capacity to reproduce the next generation. The individual operates in a short time span and provides the capacity to change and adapt and to remodel the next generation. If you privilege one OR the other, your society is in trouble.
I liked the Mark Twain comment on this thread the best.
It framed and distinguished the Jewish peoples from their mortal enemy’s in the Middle East beautifully. Whether people care to pay attention or not they are the same enemies of the western religions and cultures.
You can philosophize and study the economic, political, and geographic undercurrents in a stuffy, eccentric world of elitist snobbery all you want. The bones of the matter is that a vast army 2 billion strong, of an intolerant, prejudicial and unrelenting ideology is spreading throughout the planet with a core value of subjugating all people under its laws and ideals. Without compromises.
It would be wise I would think to base your support of these opposing forces on the facts that present themselves and the long term affect it will have on your own well being.
What’s amazing to me is that when you compare the Jews and the Muslims throughout history and today as leaders, innovators, good neighbors and welcome guests, people will still defend and support the Muslims over Jews.
500 million Muslims in the Middle East verses a global Jewish community of around 14 million?
The Jews have been our bankers and jewelers, our scholars and playwrights. They have dominated our scientific communities, educational systems and our pulp culture.
The Muslims march in our streets and demand blood, from anyone who is not Muslim! 500 million in the Middle East alone with oil wealth beyond imagining, and this is the best they can provide our society. Yea, yea the shieks get all the money – That’s the bloody point.
I know where my support lays.
Knight 99, I love what you wrote.
ET, there's no reason the collective you describe needs to exist as a separate entity based solely on brute force (the government) if you are correct. Just an observation. The government is the only thing authorized to arbitrarily apply brute force. By your theory, we shouldn't *stand* for that, but our society and others routinely do, so your point is moot.