🚀 go-pugleaf

What a great, but too short, letter, David. (See below.)

"David Zeit" <davezeit@teleport.com> wrote in message
news:3B04ADFE.C5DB32AC@teleport.com...
> x-no-archive:  yes
>
> I do not know why you posted in alt.society.zeitgeist; but I for one
> blame the Jews for nothing. I think that would be like blaming all
> Christians for some things. I know good Christians and good Jews. As a
> matter of fact, some of my best...............relatives are Jews. Maybe
> having a Judiac background and being a Christian I see things from a
> different perspective. But I wonder why you think Jews are seen as being
> blamed for all the problems of the world? Sure, there are many vocal
> momzers who speak loudly against the Jews. But anyone with an IQ over
> room temperature knows what they say just isn't true. And just for the
> record not all Jews are doctors or lawyers. One of my cousins is a CPA.
> :-)
> Shalom and Peace.......if you'll forgive the redundancy there.

> > When you speak of  Jewishness as an explanation
> > of conduct, you undermine the  anti-Trotskyite,
> > anti-globalist, and anti-finance-capitalism cause
> >
> > Humanity cannot possibly win against the oligarchs,
> > unless a decisive number of good men agree to cooperate
> > in the task. Hitler was an enemy of power in the hands of
> > the common man.  His strategy was to divide and conquer.
> > The German Jews before World War I  were well along in
> > assimilation.  They represented a very powerful contingent
> > of the common man (I refer, not to Rothschilds, but to
> > middle-class Jews, Jewish professionals, Jewish scientists,
> > Jewish merchants, Jewish burearcrats etc.  When the infamous
> > agitator took up the scapegoating of Jews (as if every Jew
> > was the Rothschild's private  confidant, he broke the power
> > of the middle classes in two. In the same way, American
> > politicians have gained control by pitting one group against
> > another, so they will be to busy throwing brickbats that they
> > will not notice the well-dressed gentlemen from the banks
> > with their hands in our pockets.
<carve>

Hello David,

What variables brought me to post to alt.society.zeitgeist I can't say,
however a thoughtful letter from a man of good will is certainly
positive reinforcement ample to send me back again.
----- Original Message -----
From: "David Zeit" <davezeit@teleport.com>
Newsgroups:
alt.society.zeitgeist,israel.zionline,soc.culture.jewish,alt.politics.social
ism.trotsky
To: "Dick Eastman" <eastman@wolfenet.com>
Sent: Thursday, May 17, 2001 10:07 PM
Subject: Re: When you speak of Jewishness as an explanation


> x-no-archive:  yes
>
> I do not know why you posted in alt.society.zeitgeist; but I for one
> blame the Jews for nothing. I think that would be like blaming all
> Christians for some things.

Good, then you don't need my letter to talk you out of such
blame.  Of course it would be like blaming "all Christians" for
things or all of any group of individuals for anything that one
individual or two etc. has done.  Certainly that is elementary,
or should be.

> I know good Christians and good Jews.

Thank you for assuming that the word "good" does
not need further explanation.  I can't say I know anyone
well enough, but I give everyone the benefit of the doubt.
But we share this: we do not constrain our judgement
of a man by his membership in a group, especially a
group that is so hard to define and contains such diverse
elements.  I have strong love for the character of some
and such hurt and resentment at the conduct of others--
but these labels should not matter to an intelligent man
who is careful in critically self-editing the generalizations,
discriminations, abstractions and abstractions that occur
to him.

>As a matter of fact, some of my best...............relatives are Jews.
My Father grew up in Brooklyn on Putnam Avenue.  On his
block were 52 kids, most Jewish.  In 1952 we moved to California
(I was three) a place where ethnicity, at the time, did not matter
and was not thought about -- although the man across the street,
a Catholic (Epperson, he invented the popcicle --originally the
"Epp-cicle before he sold the patent) didn't talk with us for
years because he assumed we were Jewish like Larry Myers
across the street with his new 1955 Packard that I liked so much--
anyway I refuse to tell you how many of this or that group I
admire and how many I excoriate..

>Maybe having a Judiac background and being a Christian I see things from a
> different perspective. But I wonder why you think Jews are seen as being
> blamed for all the problems of the world?

In part, perhaps, because  I have read posts where someone claims "Jews are
responsible for all the problems of the world." (Not here on
alt.society.Zeitgeist, but this "guidebook" is on so many ngs -- I am
ashamed to tell you how many--and
two of them, alt. conspiracy and alt.conspiracy.vs-freedom,  are dedicated,
more or less, to looking for people behind "all the problems of the world."

>Sure, there are many vocal momzers who speak loudly against the Jews.
>But anyone with an IQ over room temperature knows what they say just isn't
true. >And just for the record not all Jews are doctors or lawyers. One of
my cousins is a >CPA.  :-)

Calling them momzers is charitable -- did I cut out the "baseball coaches"
from
my list--which I added to make the same point myself -- that's the way with
writing --  I overprocess to cover all bases, then I check myself and leave
out
the nuance and then someone like you --another heavy processor comes along
and catches me.  (I could say "Gavalt!" here, but would that be
pandering? --
and is "pandering" the right word -- is he going to ...

I am writing about a feature of our economic world, the structure of the
capital markets, the institutions, rules, mores, incentives  and practices
of high finance,
with the Adam-Smithian tendency for men of business (including those who
make their living hiring out money and floating other men's IOU's) to
"conspire
to set prices" (including --through a too cozy and clandestine a
relationship with the monetary authorities-- raising the price of loanable
funds (the interest rate) --
and some of the set of "investment bankers" are also of the set "Jewish" --
and people who get so made at the "system" that they could hit somebody just
might get fast and loose with their generalizations  .. and that is why I
attempted to sharpen a discrimination (between. the modern J.P. Morgan and
my old college roomate who now makes violins in Cincinatti for a living.)

>
> Shalom and Peace.......if you'll forgive the redundancy there.

AAAHHHG!  You end so soon?????!!!

I was already piling up books with quotations I wanted to insert as I went
along .. and the coffee isn;t even ready yet.  Isn't that just like a Jew,
or whatever you are.
So I'll give you the most interesting quote anyway --even though you didn't
fully earn it--so now  you'll owe me one. (In other words, thanks for
writing.  I hope you will do it again.)

My gratuitous quotation:

Hermann Raushning (former president of the Danzig Free State between the
wars, who know Hitler, but later broke and wrote some powerful books against
what Hitler represents (like The Revolution of Nihilism) --  anyway I am
quoting from his:
The Redemption of Democracy (New York: Literary Guild of America, 1941), Pp.
24-226

   "Anti-Semitism is a temptation to look for evil not in oneself but in
some other, exterior quarter.  It is flight from an intellectual and moral
demand upon oneself, refuge sought in a material claim upon another, whom
one can make responsible for one's own weakness and unhappiness.  Further,
anti-Semitism expresses the inclination of the present age to substitute
general exterior activity for spiritual transformation.   The evil that we
will not recognize in our own natures we combat in the shape of a plausible
personification.  We do it when we are no longer strong enough as human
beings to struggle with it directly.

   "Many elements unite in anti-Semitism:  hatred for an intellectually
superior social group that is felt to be alien, and has managed to aquire
exceptional influence owing to this superiority and to intellectual agility;
envy and fear that 'some day Europe may fall under their (the Jews') hands,
like ripe fruit,' as Nietzsche predicted; to say nothing of all the
primative emotions of economic envy, social resentment, and obtuse national
hatred for foreigners.  But none of these factors is the key to modern
anti-Semitism.  The Jewish mind has played an outstanding part in the
liberation of the human spirit.  It has done its share to turn this process
of liberation finally into the alliance between progress and barbarism that
staggered Sigmund Freud.  Owing to its historical vocation the Jewish mind
led the memorable struggle of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries for the
deflation of all values.  The Jewish mind, which in order to attain equal
civil rights had torn itself loose from the strongest of bonds, from the old
venerable authority that governed every aspect of life, became the model and
example of what utter absence of authority man might dare to aspire to.  In
an age when people were consciously seeking restraints and authority,
therefore, there were also  bound to be honest motives for combating the
most prominent representative of the struggle for emancipation, at the same
time that one fought against dissolution and for a new authority.

   "When the movement of ideological deflation reached its logical
conclusion and reversed itself, once again the Jews were the leaders who
called most audibly for a return from freedom to a new absolutism.  'It is
not liberation and development of the ego that are the secret and
commandment of the age.  What it needs, what it demands, what it will get,
is--terrorism."  Thus Thomas Mann, with the acute sensitivity to changes in
the human mind that this great artist always displays, makes his
revolutionist, Naphta, speak before the first World War.  'It is
uncharitable misunderstanding of the younger generation to suppose they find
their enjoyment in freedom.  Their deepest delight is in obedience.'  This
was the desperate situation in which the dialectics of the Western European
mind had involved us, the younger generation of the last war;   Mann
portrayed the hoplessness of it in his great picture of The Magic Mountain.
Here too he predicted the coming development.  It was the acute dialectiv
intelligence of the Jew that helped create the situation.  Here the liberty
to which he owed his political and social  equality reversed itself,
becoming thraldom and terrorism.  The paradox is that the Jew himself helped
to drown out the 'summons to Sinai.'

   "The whole domain of anti-Semitism is paradoxical.  This is so because it
is not merely a phenomenon of political and social life or of a special
historical situation, but has its roots on the transcendental level.  Even
the special rubber stamps used on the passports of the Jews in Germany
indicate the metaphysical fact that Israel is being persecuted as God's
chosen people.  This is not 'the civil war of a majority against a
minority,' and consequently also not a mere 'national calamity,' as Mommsen
put it.  Nor can anti-Semitism be terminated simply be restoration of
equality in the eyes of the law, or protection 'as well against infraction
of law as against administrative fraud.'  Greater exertions than this are
needed.  For the Christian there can be no anti-Semitism.  For him the Jews
even today are chosen people, who will find the endof their sufferings and
wanderings in complete restoration of their special character as chosen.
The Christian faith has always begun to disintegrate whenever anyone has tri
ed, as for instance Marcion did, to separate the Old Testiment from the New.
But what does this attitude of the Christian mean to the present day?  For
more than fifteen centuries the Christian faith has gone hand in hand with
pogroms and the ghetto;  only the great humanitarian revolution gave civil
equality to the Jews and put an end to the ghetto.  Is it not, therefore,
synonymous with a new ghetto when that revolution is attacked, and this from
motives of Christianity?  Is it not logical, then, that anti-Semitism has
also become a political demand?

   "Consequently the destiny of  Judaism will always be on the side of
revolution, of liberation, of dissolution.

   "But this conflicts with its true intellectual vocation, which is to
remain on the side of law, conservation, tradition, upon the great
historical road to higher humanity.  Only the Jews alone  can extricate
themselves from this tragic bewilderment.  No gentile can help.  He can only
respect the conflict, and expect the Jews to master it successfully.  For
Judaism is the strongest of the conservative forces.  It is the oldest root
of our Western tradition.  In fact, Judaism, along with Hellenistic
civilization and Christianity, is the imperishable substance of our
Christian Occident, the eternal 'summons to Sinai,' against which man keeps
forever rebelling.

   "This tragic confustion puts upon the Jew, most conspicuously among all
men, the burden of a never-ending-battle.  It is the perpetual contrast
between revolution and tradition, between liberation and bondage.  Each is a
vocation and a human destiny, though not always equally so.  Because he, of
all men, suffers most from this contrast, the Jew is in danger of being made
responsible for this insoluable conflict.  The impossible task fo being
human is what crude men rebel against through anti-Semitism."

I would say that Rauschning, with his "insoluable conflict" between
revolution and tradition, captures the zeitgiest of Europe -- but like I
said, I was raised in California during those golden years (1953-1967)  and
so I have experienced a life free of this conflict  -- a third way, a way of
individualsim and freedom (which depends on checks on both revolution and
tradition -- on "Europe think" -- but alas, today, in the United States,
"Europe think" has even taken over the West coast  -- and so instead of
individuals we come into contact with ipolititicized interest groups and
watchdogs enforcing diversity -- instead of the universal brotherhood of man
(and the contribution
of simple humble Christianity, of radical equality of all men in their
access to God and their relationship to him.)  I am not a religious man, but
I have Gandhi's (and Tolstoi's)
respect for the "love your enemy" "forgive your enemy", "turn the cheek"
"resist not evil" (i.e., don't take it upon yourself to kill all the "bad"
people etc.); don't lie, steal, covet etc. -- what everyone everywhere
always wants  everyone else to be (excepting, of course, themselves, whom
the world owes a little leeway because of unfairness  endured etc. ...).  If
I were a Christian I would go door to door like the Jehovahs Witnesses,
realizing that political tracts never get to the heart of the matter  --
but I write about the harm done by investment bankers anyway.

I hadn't realized how much Rauschning was saying to me until I
copied it just now.  I intended it merely as a stimulus to thought.

At any rate -- let me close with a personal note of my personal bias:

Unlike the identifier "banker" or "bureaucrat" or "salesman,"
the identifyer "Jewish" when applied to adult males flags
nothing more for me than an possible end to my intellectual lonliness
and a stimulating exposure to an intensity toward life that lifts me up;
 and too  I expect political views with a political orientation that can
vary form Noam Chomsky to Madeleine Albright, from Emma Goldman
to David Friedman, Milton Friedman, Ludwig von Mises, and
Murry Rothbard. (If these were all the  people in the world, I would
definitly be a sexist -- and notice that these gentlemen lineup with the
"third way" not considered by Rauschning.)

With warm regard,

Dick Eastman
223 S. 64th Ave
Yakima, Washington
Every man is responsible to every other man.

> Dick Eastman wrote:
> >
> > When you speak of  Jewishness as an explanation
> > of conduct, you undermine the  anti-Trotskyite,
> > anti-globalist, and anti-finance-capitalism cause