RUTHFULLY YOURS

For centuries, Western classical music propelled listeners toward Christian salvation. Then Jewish music changed everything.

In his 1944 essay The Halakhic Mind, Rabbi Joseph Dov Soloveitchik makes a striking assertion about the directionality of time:

The reversibility of time and of the causal order is fundamental in religion, for otherwise the principle of conversion would be sheer nonsense. The act of reconstructing past psychical life, of changing the arrow of time from a forward to a retrospective direction, is the main premise of penitence. One must admit with Kierkegaard that repetition is a basic religious category. The homo religiosus, oscillating between sin and remorse, flight from and return to God, frequently explores not only the traces of a bygone past retained in memory, but a living “past” which is consummated in his emergent time-consciousness. It is irrelevant whether reversibility is a transcendental act bordering on the miraculous, as Kierkegaard wants us to believe, or a natural phenomenon that has its roots in the unique structure of the religious act. The paradox of a directed yet reversible time concept remains.

R. Soloveitchik leaves open the issue of whether the reversibility of time is a “natural phenomenon” or not. The question is not as far-fetched as it sounds: Five years after R. Soloveitchik finished this essay, the great mathematician Kurt Gödel showed (in a contribution to Albert Einstein’s Festschrift) that General Relativity implies the reversibility of physical time under special conditions. In any case, physicists have not yet succeeded in making time run backwards.

Eastern European chazanim found means to reverse musical time, in the service of the religious requirement that R. Soloveitchik identified. This was not a “transcendental act bordering on the miraculous,” to be sure, but the next best thing. Chazanut in this view was one of the great Jewish religious innovations of the early modern period. It is not merely symbolic but evocative, turning an abstract point of theology into an artistic event.

The high musical culture of Eastern European chazanut is a uniquely Jewish art form, but it is not sealed off hermetically from the ambient Western musical culture. Nonetheless it is uniquely Jewish both in form and—decisively—in function. I shall argue that althoughchazanut draws on elements of Western musical culture, it employs them in an entirely original fashion for a uniquely Jewish religious purpose. Eastern European synagogue chant evokes the reversibility of time in its most characteristic gesture, namely the “Phrygian” or Freygisch descent from the flattened 2nd of the scale to the 1st degree, or tonic note. To hear this move in the Freygisch (Ahavah raba) mode as transformation of the directionality of time, we must hear it in the context of the tonality of Western music, with its clear sense of time’s forward motion. The Freygish flattened half-step, I will argue, functions as an ironic reversal of the most characteristic gesture in Western tonal music: the ascent of the sharpened 7th degree of the ordinary Western scale, or leading tone, to the tonic. This is the most characteristic pointer to the forward motion of time in Western music.

NEW GLAZOV GANG: Mark Tapson on “Fighting the Culture War”
Why Conservatives need more filmmakers, songwriters and novelists instead of political lecturers.
http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/frontpagemag-com/mark-tapson-on-fighting-the-culture-war-on-the-glazov-gang/

Say that you get a tempting offer from a Nigerian prince and decide to invest some money in helping him transfer his vast fortune from Burkina Faso or Dubai over to the bank across the street. The seemingly simple task of bringing over the 18 million dollars left to him by his father hits some snags which require you to put in more and more of your own money.

Eventually you have invested more than you ever would have ever done up front just trying to protect the money that you already sank into Prince Hussein Ngobo’s scheme. And to protect your self-esteem, you go on believing that no matter what Prince Ngobo does, he is credible and sincere. Any failings in the interaction are either your fault or the fault of some third party. Anyone who tells you otherwise must be a Ngobophobe.

Now imagine that Prince Ngobo’s real name is Islam.

That is where Western elites find themselves now. They invested heavily in the illusion of a compatible Islamic civilization. Those investments, whether in Islamic immigration, Islamic democracy or peace with Islam have turned toxic, but dropping those investments is as out of the question as writing off Prince Ngobo as a con artist and walking away feeling like a fool.

Western elites, who fancy themselves more intelligent and more enlightened than the wise men and prophets of every religion, and who base their entire right to rule on that intelligence and enlightenment, are not in the habit of admitting that they have been played for fools.

The Arab Springers who predicted that the Muslim uprisings would bring a new age of secularism, freedom and an end to the violence between Islam and the West; are busy writing up new checks.

It’s not insanity; it’s the term that rhymes with a certain river in Egypt. The Brotherhood’s victory discredited the Arab Spring, which discredits the bid for Arab Democracy, which discredits the compatibility of Islam and the folks on Fifth Avenue. Follow the river back along its course and suddenly the Clash of Civilizations becomes an undeniable fact. It’s easier to give up and let the river of denial carry you further along until, five years from now, you find yourself explaining why Al-Qaeda ruling Libya is actually a good thing for everyone.

In 1993, Israel cut a land-for-peace deal with a greasy Egyptian bloke named Yasser Arafat. The Cairo-born Arafat would turn his gang of terrorists into a government and police force, and rule over an autonomous territory, in exchange for ending the violence. Clinton smiled beatifically as hands were shaken and a new era of peace was upon us.

Pundits in mainstream media and politicians everywhere deplore the lack of ethics in banking, business and sports. They are right to think so. Corruption, cronyism and lobbying for special tax breaks and regulation, designed to limit competition, are not habits or characteristics that should be abetted, or even abided. The financial collapse in 2007-2008, like a receding tide, revealed the debris of fraud that had become all too common in the banking industry. Domestic violence has no place in sports or anywhere else; it should be unacceptable in any civilized society.

Unethical behavior has become commonplace from Hollywood to our schools. Moral relativism has substituted for the values instilled from our Christian-Judea heritage. Political correctness prevents such behavior from being condemned by most politicians and many in the media.

But it is in politics where the ethically-challenged nature of our society is most visible. Media and political “do-gooders,” always afraid of offending the intolerant, have remained silent when it has come to the practices of the ethically-challenged Obama Administration. Three flagrant examples are symptomatic: The “fast and furious” gun-running travesty early in Mr. Obama’s first Administration, which has not gone away (a judge’s recent decision may explain Attorney General Eric Holder’s sudden resignation); Benghazi, which has been a surfeit of lies and dissembling comments for over two years, from Secretary of State Clinton and President Obama to the sycophants who work for them; and the IRS scandal, which ranks among the most dastardly acts of any administration, as that federal bureaucracy, with the greatest access to our most sensitive information, became a tool for political gain.

Ethics are the moral principles that govern our behavior, as individuals and, collectively. They teach us an understanding of essential truths, to differentiate right from wrong. They are seen in the Golden Rule, the principles embedded in the 10 Commandments, in acts of kindness and in phrases like “thank you” and “excuse me.” If they seem old fashioned, it is because they are. Times and conditions change, but universal truths do not, and neither does honor nor displays of respect.

Ethical behavior should be automatic. It should be instinctive, ingrained in our character, taught by our parents and in schools, from our earliest years. It is more behavioral than intellectual. Unlike Ovid’s Medea, when we see the “right way,” we should follow it. Can it be taught in business schools? Should legislators be required to take remedial courses in ethical behavior? Perhaps, but I suspect the damage would already have been done. Business schools are basically trade schools, with an emphasis on marketing, investing and accounting. Students should already be grounded in the mechanics of ethical behavior. Legislators, I fear, would politicize any course – discussing their preferred definition of words such as “inequality,” rather than attempting to fathom moral truths.

Visit the unfashionable suburbs, far from the sinecured theorists of ‘otherness’ and main-chance lobbyists, and observe their reaction to the hollow catchphrases that are the multiculturallist’s stock in trade. It is there you will find the Australia that daily tastes the bitter fruits of their betters’ warm-and-fuzzy efforts to re-make the world

There has been much talk and news coverage of Islam lately, which is understandable in the light of recent and shocking events, but Islam and is not the nub of the problem. Rather, the ‘religion of peace’ and its more agitated adherents are symptoms pointing to the greater disease of non-selective immigration — a policy foisted upon a nation by an arrogant elite insulated by wealth and background from the consequences of its collective insanity. Viewed from the other-worldliness of university common rooms, the monoculture of politically correct newsrooms and the citadels of careerism that are our governments’ departments of ethnic affairs, multiculturalism is a raging success. Three cheers for the falafel and please pass the latest grants!

But journey to the unfashionable outer suburbs and ask those who live there what they think of ‘common humanity’ and the many other hollow other catchphrases that are the multiculturallist’s stock in trade. You will soon learn all about the culture shock that has been forced upon them. Their complaints will be uttered sotto voce for the most part, because who wants to be branded an intolerant Aussie bigot, an enemy of progress and tolerance, a simple racist or something even worse? But the subdued volume of their complaints and observations does not diminish their validity, nor the irony. Remember, until Al Grassby made a government-financed industry out of “difference”, the post-WWII transformation of Australia’s demographic profile was perhaps the world’s best example of successful mass immigration, integration and acceptance. It is those New Australians, as once they were called, along with and their children and grandchildren and Australians of longer lineage, who must now taste daily with the bitter fruits of the experts’ policies.

Islam’s mouthpieces are never slow to swear their creed is devoted to peace and universal amity. Their assertions would be far more credible if only they were advocating the reformation of their faith, but only a suicidal imam would dare to say as much

Someone who read some of my recent online articles about Islam took exception to my point of view and to the way I had expressed it. We are all entitled to our opinions. Let me say that I did not start out with any jaundiced view about Islam. I used to put it, without rancour, alongside Buddhism, Hinduism, Shintoism, paganism, agnosticism and atheism and the many other ‘theological’ isms that could be listed.

To my mind, as a Christian, they were and are all wayward, but error is common and forgivable in human affairs. And, by the way, I didn’t specifically mention Judaism in my list because I treat it a little differently from the rest. It gave rise to rise to Christianity – so I think it is half right.

I am happy with my faith and, at the same time, am happy for others to practice theirs. Why, therefore, do I take exception to Islam, particularly when numbers of political and religious leaders outside and inside the faith proclaim its peacefulness? The answer is that I am deeply sceptical of its universal peacefulness. That’s it; nothing else.

My view is not based on Islam’s scriptures. True I have read accounts of Islamic scripture which argue that it is not peaceful but then, as a layman, you get into this endless and fruitless debate about violent passages in the Bible. Moreover, I would be very surprised if most prominent faiths were totally bereft of violent scriptural passages. My view is evidence based. There are too many contemporary examples of Islamic clerics preaching hate to dismiss them as entirely aberrant. There are too many contemporary examples of barbarous acts committed in the name of Islam to dismiss them as entirely aberrant.

You will know them by their fruits (ravenous wolves in sheep’s clothing), Christ perceptively said. But, really, we don’t need Christ’s words; though it is nice to have them. In the end, we all judge those around us on the basis of their actions. Actions speak louder than words, as the old saying goes. If it quacks like a duck and looks like a duck it is a duck; to add another old saying.

Too many environmentalists are actually nuts. There’s an old joke that environmentalists are “watermelons” since they’re green on the outside and red on the inside. The real problem is that too many of them are actually nuts, especially on climate issues.

I believe that protecting the environment is both a good thing and a legitimate function of government. But I’m rational. So while I want limits on pollution, such policies should be determined by cost-benefit analysis.

Banning automobiles doubtlessly would reduce pollution, for instance, but the economic cost would be catastrophic.

On the other hand, it’s good to limit carcinogens from being dumped in the air and water. So long as there’s some unbiased science showing net benefits. But while I’m pro-environment, I’m anti-environmentalist. Simply stated, too many of these people are nuts.
• Environmentalists assert that you’re racist if you oppose their agenda.
• Some environmentalists don’t believe in bathing,
• How about the environmentalists who sterilize themselves to avoid carbon-producing children,
• Or consider the environmentalists who produce/use hand-cranked vibrators to reduce their carbon footprint.
• There are also environmentalist who claim that climate change causes AIDS.
• And environmentalists put together a ranking implying that Cuba is better than the United States.

Then there’s the super-nutty category.
• The environmentalists who choose death to lower their carbon footprints.

Mansur’s argument is credible, but incorrectly states “The renowned Middle East scholar, Bernard Lewis, in “The Roots of Muslim Rage”[1] was possibly the first to point to an increasingly hostile attitude among Muslims in general, and Arabs and Iranians in particular, toward the West and, especially toward the United States.” The column by Lewis, who was far from the first, appeared in The Atlantic in 1990. Gisele Bat Ye’or’s “The Dhimmi: Jews and Christians Under Islam by Bat Ye’or and David Maisel (Jan 3, 1985)was earlier, as were the writings of Moshe Sharon, G.H. Jansen, J.B. Kelly and other scholars….rsk
Broadly speaking, the struggle within Islam is between Muslims who embrace the values of the modern world in terms of freedom, individual rights, gender equality and democracy on the one side, and Muslims opposing these values and insisting on a Sharia-based legal system on the other. Any Muslim who even questions this version of Islam they refer to as a heretic or, worse, an apostate to be killed.

For Muslims who embrace modernity, Islam is a matter of personal belief, not a political system.

A reformed Islam — greatly desired and sought after by swelling numbers of Muslims — cannot succeed without the support of non-Muslims.

A decade after operatives of al Qaeda attacked the United States, the Arab and Muslim world was seized by popular uprisings. The so-called “Arab Spring” erupted in Tunisia, swept into Libya and Egypt where dictators of long standing were toppled and, as of this writing, the regime of Bashar al-Assad in Syria appears doomed in a bloody stand-off against insurgents who are steadily gaining ground.

It is perhaps too early to state definitively that the “Arab Spring” is the direct consequence — which no one imagined — of hijacked jetliners flown into tall buildings in New York. Eventually, however, the political success of the Muslim Brotherhood movement, and its parties in the Middle East, might be viewed as the fall-out strategically anticipated by Osama bin Laden and his al Qaeda network if they hoped to precipitate a war. They may even have hoped that the war’s twists and turns would destabilize established regimes in the Middle East and North Africa to the advantage of the region’s Islamists.

The terrorist attacks on 9/11 did not erupt out of the blue. The nineteen hijackers of the four American jetliners were all Arab Muslims selected by the leadership of al Qaeda, and financed and trained for such an operation. Their mission was an act of war as carefully planned as the attack sixty years earlier on December 7, 1941 by the Japanese imperial navy on Pearl Harbor. The differences between the two acts of aggression were many, but the one striking fact was that the United States in both instances came to be viewed as the enemy to be drawn into war. The varying responses of the government and the people of the United States to these two acts of aggression also indicate how greatly American society changed in the intervening years.

What is of greater interest is that most Americans on that September morning were just as unaware of the intense turmoil raging within the Muslim world in general and the Middle East in particular, as they were in December 1941 of Japanese politics and of the extent to which Japan was already militarily engaged on the Asian mainland.

A young Orthodox rabbi of my acquaintance denounced Jews who exult in the mutual slaughter of Muslims from the pulpit on the Jewish New Year. He is of course correct: no-one should take pleasure in the death of noncombatants. One can, of course, be glad that one’s enemies are fighting each other; former Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir famously quipped about the Iran-Iraq War of the 1980s, “I want them both to win.”

Our problem, though, is quite different: Since 9/11 I have argued that the strategic plan of Islamist terrorism is to poison the Western soul with horror, by setting in motion atrocities too grim for the Western mind to bear. There is very good reason to believe that they are succeeding. Judging by the proliferation of the horror genre in popular entertainment, we are succumbing to horror by stages, as I contended in a 2009 essay for First Things. It is the “Black Breath” from Mordor that Tolkien described in The Lord of the Rings.

This is not simply the brutality of the pagan world employed by the Romans with their mass crucifixions as much as it was by Muslim conquerors of the Middle Ages: it is a refined and exquisite sense of horror learned by modern Muslims from the Nazis, whose example inspired the Muslim Brotherhood as well as the Ba’ath Party. Strictly speaking, the Muslim Brotherhood is nothing more than the Arab-language wing of National Socialism, and movements like ISIS a more radical version of the same thing, something like Ernst Röhm’s Sturmabteilung.

We have seen this throughout, and most recently in Gaza, where Hamas used every means possible to maximize its own civilian casualties in order to horrify the world. Whatever the circumstances, one should not rejoice in the death of civilians, but it is necessary to harden our hearts against an enemy who detects weakness in our delicate sense of humanity. Because we misunderestimated the nature of the enemy we confront, we have no means to prevent a humanitarian catastrophe on a frightful scale. We face an apocalyptic enemy, with a lot to be apocalyptic about.

On the next page are extracts from an essay I published about this in October 2011. The conclusions have not changed, except for one: Evil will oft evil mars, to quote Tolkien again. The Sunni-Shi’ite war could prove to be the grave of radical Islam if the West takes the appropriate measures. We must remember, though, that the target of radical Islam is not territory or power in the conventional sense, but the vulnerable Western soul. In this respect we should be afraid–very afraid.

Eric Holder’s left many baleful legacies: being censured by the House of Representatives; withholding subpoenaed documents, proving untruthful about a failed gun-walking caper in Mexico; failing to enforce laws on the books, from immigration to the elements of the Affordable Care Act; illegally billing the government for his own private use of a government Gulfstream jet; snooping on Associated Press reporters; giving de facto exemptions to renegade IRS politicos; and trying to create civilian trials for terrorist killers like KSM, one of the architects of the 9/11 attacks. But he will be known mostly for re-teaching Americans to think of race as essential, not incidental, to our characters.

He accomplished that unfortunate legacy in a number of ways. Holder waded into the Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown fatal shootings before all the facts were known in a manner no local public prosecutor would dare do so. He claimed that the unpopularity of Barack Obama was due to racial animosity, apparently forgetful that not long ago, in the era of Bush Derangement Syndrome, novels and movies were published and produced fantasizing about the assassination of George W. Bush, who was compared to Nazis and fascists, by everyone [1] from Al Gore [2] to John Glenn [3]. I assume Holder was then quiet about such alarming disparagement of his president; and also I assume that when Obama in 2009 had near 70% approval ratings, for Holder the nation was anything but cowardly.

Of course, Holder infamously called Americans “cowards” [4] for not being as obsessed in the same way with race as he was. He referred to African-Americans as “my people,” [5] a sloppy aside that might have gotten any other attorney general fired for such cheap ethnic chauvinism — except that his own boss had once called for Latinos to punish “our enemies” [6] and on the campaign trail had talked of “typical white person.” [7] Holder chose to drop the New Black Panther case [8] in a way that highlighted racial matters — apparently coming armed with clubs to a voting precinct is hardly unusual — in the same way that he suggested that those states that might require an ID to vote (in the manner we produce IDs to write a check or use a credit card) were racist, in the same way that he suggested that states like Arizona that wanted federal immigration law enforced were acting out of racialist motives.

In other words, in the reprehensible vision of Eric Holder, how we look governs who we are. He either believes in the desirability of such racialist exceptionalism out of cultural and historic ignorance — given the contemporary evidence of where bumper-sticker racial, ethnic and religious jingoism inevitably leads (cf. e.g., Iraq, Rwanda, the Congo, Serbia, Bosnia, etc.) — or he cynically assumes that the more the country is polarized racially, the more elites like himself are called on to adjudicate differences, and thus advance to positions that they might otherwise not have earned either by their prior record or their present display of minimal competence.