Jewish Capitalism and Religious Liberty

 I would like to follow up on my previous post and consider the implications of what I wrote for Judaism. Does not Judaism have its own tradition of religious liberty, independent of Protestantism? For an explanation, let me turn to the example of Max Weber and Capitalism.

Much as I argued that Protestantism is a crucial ingredient for religious liberty, Weber famously argued that Protestantism played a critical role in the development of Capitalism. For Weber, Protestantism allowed for a “worldly asceticism.” Traditionally societies had operated on the assumption that labor was a curse. Most people were fated to be peasants with only a few having the opportunity to be aristocrats leading lives of leisure. The implication of this was that one worked only as hard as one needed to with the goal of having as much leisure as possible. If you managed to get some money, you should stop working.

In the Protestant model, work became the natural state of affairs for human beings. As such, even rich people, in no danger of starvation, should work. If you managed to get ahold of some money, you should not take an extended vacation. You should not even donate the money to support the Church. Instead, you should invest that money back into your business as capital. Instead of being saved through good works like charity, you are saved by being one of the Elect. A possible sign of being one of the Elect is that God causes you to be successful in business. From this perspective, being a capitalist is not contrary to the Protestant faith. On the contrary, capitalism is the logical fulfillment of Protestantism.

To be clear, Weber recognized that people engaged in capitalist-type behavior long before Protestantism. What Weber was arguing was that Protestantism created an ethical revolution where trade was seen as a principled moral good. Think of it this way, the medieval Church accepted prostitution as a necessary evil. This did not mean that being a prostitute was ok. On the contrary, being a prostitute was something that someone was ashamed of and only did for as long as it was absolutely necessary before trying to get out. Similarly, one was not proud to be a merchant and engage in something as “sterile” as trade. Instead, one made some money from trade before retiring and trying to “atone” for having resorted to such base activity.

In regards to Jews, Weber argued that they were “emergency” capitalists. There is nothing inherently capitalist about Judaism. Ancient Jews were not particularly involved in trade. It was only circumstances in Christian Europe, not anything within Judaism, that caused Jews to develop a capitalist element. Medieval Jews were cut out of most professions, so they turned to money lending. As such, Weber did not believe that Jews provided a model of principled capitalism to say that being a capitalist was a positive good.

In response to Weber, I would argue that it is possible for principles to evolve out of pragmatic necessity. For example, Isaac Abarbanel, living right before the Protestant Reformation, rejected the Aristotelian claim that money was sterile and therefore argued that usury was a positive good. Clearly, Abarbanel did not come to this position from an “objective” reading of the Hebrew Bible. This may have been self-interest, but that should not matter. Abarbanel, presumably, honestly believed that money-lending Jews like himself were morally superior to the Christian nobility responsible for the expulsion of 1492. If claiming that Jews were morally superior to Christians required one to believe that capitalism was a positive good, then we can add capitalism as the fourteenth principle of the Jewish faith.

To be clear, Jews never were in a position to bring about a capitalist ethical revolution by themselves. It is not as if, capitalism ever became acceptable just because the Jews did it. Furthermore, the Jewish experience with capitalism remained linked to their place within Christian society.

Much as Protestantism created the grounds not simply to engage in capitalism as a practical necessity, but as a matter of principle, Protestantism helped lay the groundwork for a principled support for religious liberty. This should be distinguished from a pragmatic tolerance where you refrain from murdering members of another faith because you fear they will murder you back. I would see the Jewish tradition of religious liberty, much like the Jewish tradition of capitalism, as being rooted in the Jewish experience as a persecuted minority. It can be argued that the fact that Jews have needed to support religious tolerance for pragmatic reasons, does not preclude the development of a principled belief in religious liberty that it is better for people to persist in their freely believed error rather than be coerced into the truth. An example of this can be seen in the Jewish disdain for missionary activity. Jews in the ancient world tried to convert non-Jews. During the Middle Ages, Muslim and Christian authorities did not allow Jews to try to convert Muslims and Christians. Today, Jews do not try to convert non-Jews and have even developed theological reasons to justify not trying to “save the souls” of non-Jews.

This does not change the fact that Jewish support for religious liberty came out of a distinct experience with non-Jewish cultures. If you are going to have Jews who support religious liberty on principle rather than as a simple matter of deeming non-Jews as beneath even missionary activity, then it will require someone with positive interactions with non-Jewish religions. An obvious candidate would be some kind of Philo-Semitic Protestantism that acknowledges some legitimacy to the Jewish experience.    

The Protestant Balance for Religious Liberty

 

Historically, there have been few principled defenders of religious liberty and, in truth, there are few today. To appreciate this, it is useful to consider the various factors needed to render religious liberty as something sensible. There is a balancing act here. One needs to believe that religion is important but that, at the same time, there is a value to having a personal conscious.

The obvious threat to religious liberty has been traditional religions themselves. If you believe in capital T TRUTH and that you are in possession of it, then why should you tolerate people who are in error? Worse, what if these people are not only obstinate in their heathen and heretical beliefs, but insist on passing their errors on to their innocent children or uneducated neighbors? From this perspective, working for the Spanish Inquisition can be seen as a humanitarian gesture. Your main job is to explain to people how they are in error. The only people who are going to be tortured or killed are those obstinate heretics who refuse to admit that they are wrong and have, therefore, brought their calamity upon themselves. 

To say that religion has often been a threat to religious liberty does not mean that secularism offers any protection. Keep in mind that to desire to protect religious liberty, one needs to still assume that religious beliefs and practices are actually important. One thinks of the example of Thomas Hobbes. Hobbes was a materialist if not an outright atheist. This did not mean that he supported religious liberty for atheists or anyone else. On the contrary, it was precisely because Hobbes rejected all religious dogma that he had no problem allowing the king of his Leviathan state to enforce whatever religion he chose. Since no religion is true, the only legitimate purpose for a religion is as a signaling device to demonstrate one’s loyalty to the regime. The king should make an official religion, the more ridiculous the better. The people who are willing to say that they believe this nonsense show that they understand the importance of everyone submitting themselves to the authority of one person as the only solution to the war of all against all. Those people who insist on maintaining their loyalty to some other absurdity, presumably because they actually believe it, are a threat to public order and need to be killed. For example, Charles I had to deal with English Puritans who cared about priestly vestments as well as incense and candles in church. Before long, these Puritans were also objecting to Charles’ right to tax. They then plunged the country into a civil war and chopped Charles' head off. All of this could have been avoided if Charles had been willing to properly crack down on religious dissent.

The confused association between secularism and religious liberty comes about because secularists have hijacked the term “religious liberty” in an Orwellian fashion and have used it to mean something quite different. The secularist version of religious liberty is a rigged “heads I win, tails you lose” game in which the State is not neutral regarding religion but actively secular. Religion is then banned from the public sphere to the privacy of the home. Parents may be allowed to personally be religious but with few resources to prevent their children from exercising their “religious liberty” and leaving the faith. If the metaphysics of gender ideology can be supported with public funds more easily than the metaphysics of the Trinity then you do not have religious liberty. 

In truth, religious liberty is an accidental outgrowth of the Protestant Reformation. While Luther and Calvin were not proponents of religious liberty and in fact were, in many respects, worse than their Catholic opponents, Protestantism personalized the process of salvation. Either one needed to affirm that only Jesus (and not the works of the Church) can save or be one of the Elect, chosen from before creation for salvation. If people are saved as individuals and not as members of any established church then forcing people to follow the dictates of even the “right” church is useless for actually saving souls.

The Protestant focus on individual salvation is crucial here because it allows for both components of religious liberty to simultaneously exist. Clearly, religion is important and people need to be allowed to practice the “right” kind in order to save their souls. That being said, since God has his own highly circuitous route to how people might come to believe the right things, people should be allowed to persist in their false beliefs until God, and not the State, shows them the light. To be clear, one does not have to be a Protestant, to be a friend of religious liberty. That being said, there are grounds to suspect the religious liberty bona fides of anyone who has not been influenced by Protestant thought.     

Racism or Confession as a Social/Political Skill

 

The beginning of Home Alone 2 offers us an excellent example of a well-handled confession on the part of Kevin's older brother, Buzz. 

One would think that Kevin has the moral high ground against Buzz, who instigated the fight during the staged Christmas pageant. What Buzz understands, though, is that this is not about what either he or Kevin actually did but about the legitimacy of the McCallister family as a social unit. What the rest of the family cares about is the fact that they were humiliated by Kevin and Buzz fighting, which showed everyone in the theater that the McCallisters are not a real family but a collection of individuals who place their petty egos over the common good. As such, the point of Buzz's speech is to acknowledge the authority of the family and apologize primarily to them. The fact that Buzz is insincere actually benefits his cause as it demonstrates his willingness to follow the rules of the family game and place them above any personal morality. 

Kevin makes the mistake of thinking that this is about personal morality. Buzz wronged him so he had the right to respond. Buzz was insincere with his apology so he is not obligated to apologize to Buzz. Since the family, is not about to punish Buzz, they are all in league with Buzz to humiliate him so he has no obligation to apologize to them. To bow to the authority of the family would mean giving up his moral claim of being wronged by Buzz. Kevin cannot place the family's interest over his personal hurt and, therefore, falls into Buzz's trap. It is Kevin ends up being seen as the wrongdoer in the incident and is sent to bed. In the end, Buzz, despite his dubeous morality, wins because he has superior social skills. One might even say that his lack of morality has helped him develop superior social skills in the sense of making the Machiavilian jump of recognizing the existence of a political mindset that is distinct and often contrary to conventional morality. 

In defense of the McCallister family, one could argue that they are right to punish Kevin. As a kid, Kevin is incredibly self-centered and focused on his personal dignity. He needs to learn the importance of family. (This is Kevin's emotional arc that is crudly shoehorned into both movies, in between having the Wet Bandits comically walking into his booby traps.)   

Let us now move to a scenario inspired by Bill Cosby. Imagine two students caught smoking in the bathroom. Both students are brought before the school administrator and asked to confess and apologize. It would seem that, as the students have both committed the exact same action, they should receive the same punishment with the confessional and apology being mere incidental parts of the story. In truth, the response of the student to being caught is actually more important than the infraction itself. As such, even minor differences in how students respond to being caught will have a greater effect on how they are punished than even their actual deeds.  

As we have seen with the case of Kevin and Buzz, when someone commits an infraction there are two wrongs committed. There is the action itself (whether fighting during a public recital, smoking in the bathroom or first-degree homicide) and then there is the challenge to the legitimacy of the social unit (whether the family or larger units such as a school or even a country). The implication here is that the transgressor does not accept the right of the social unit to impose obligations. Since societies tend to rely more on the soft power of people not being able to even conceive of rebellion in order to function than on actual coercion, the belief that one is allowed to break the rules is an even graver threat than the actual rule-breaking itself. This is one of the reasons why it is so important for courts to get defendants to plead guilty. The convict who admits that they were wrong and throws themselves at the mercy of the court, affirms the court's and, by extension, society's legitimate authority to punish. The crime that initially struck at the authority of society now comes to strengthen that authority.  

What happens when one of the students has a better instinctual understanding of the social theory of crime and punishment particulary as applied to white middle class people perhaps because they are themselves white middle class kids? As such, they are able to assume the proper contrite pose and tone that the white middle class administrators expect. Now, what if the other student is an inner society black kid who lacks the training to handle white middle class administrators? (Alternatively, what if the student is on the autism spectrum and struggles, in general to strike the right tone with neurotypicals?) 

If the white middle class kid gets away with a slap on the wrist and the poor black kid gets the book thrown at him, is that racism? the skin color of the students would not offer decisive proof as the school could point to a subtle but real distinction in how the students behaved. Furthermore, the fact that we are dealing with subtlties traps us into having to give the administration a lot of leeway to call things as they instictually see fit. To say that administrators should not be attempting to force middle class "white" values on students and to do so is racism is also far from obvious as the administrators can argue that part of their job is to teach students to function within a society run by middle class white people. Even if we disagree with them, the fact that they sincerely believe this and see themselves acting for the benefit of the black students makes it rather difficult to say that they are racists. 

    

Coming Out of the Closet to Claim Group Rights

Essential for understanding African American history in this country is the fact that, for hundreds of years blacks were persecuted as a group. It was not just that blacks were disproportionally targeted for slavery, lynchings, and ultimately the system of Jim Crow, these things were part of an organized conspiracy against black people for the simple reason that they were black. By the end of the 18^th century, whites had developed the sense that the new United States was founded as a white man’s republic and therefore required a rigid distinction between whites and blacks that kept blacks in a subordinate position. This racism served a practical purpose in that it gave American whites, who otherwise did not have much in common with each other a sense that they were bonded into a common project. (This is not to defend American racism. On the contrary, this is a reason to take racists seriously and not as mere rhetoric.) This belief in America as a white man’s republic obviously existed in a dialectic with the belief in America as the country of “all men are created equal.” It is to America’s credit that, in the long march of history, the belief in all men are created equal has tended to win out over the white man’s republic.

The fact that African-Americans have been persecuted as a group is important because it establishes at least hypothetical grounds for blacks to make demands from white society that go beyond the elimination of laws that outright discriminated against blacks. The fact that I have personally never owned slaves and no African American alive today has ever been formally enslaved in this country does not mean that I do not owe something to African Americans. As critical race theorists would argue, I have benefited from systemic racism. Perhaps I should be willing to accept non-discrimination laws applied to private businesses, affirmative action, or even allow for my tax dollars to fund reparations?

To be clear, there is a risk in having blacks pushing the claim to be a distinct group as the traditional argument for their civil rights rested on the premise that blacks were not really a group. On the contrary, the idea was supposed to be that the notion that the color of a person’s skin could affect a person’s identity was a ridiculous notion invented by foolish racists. If blacks are going to be so reckless as to undermine the entire case for their civil rights and claim that they really are different from white people, they might be left to reap the consequences.

It is interesting to compare the case for black civil rights to LGBTQ+ rights as it is hardly obvious that LGBTQ+ people can actually claim to be a group let alone a historically persecuted one. For one thing, their opponents generally tend not to see them as members of a group but simply as people engaged in an action. It is that action that is the source of the opposition.

Furthermore, LGBTQ+ people are not, in any obvious way born LGBTQ+. We can say that black is a meaningful group in large part because we can accept that a newborn can, in some real sense, be classified as black. (We can go around a maternity ward and point to the black, white, Asian, and Hispanic babies and say that they are all beautiful in God's eyes and that it is wonderful to have such diversity.) What does it mean to say that a newborn is LGBTQ+. Think of it this way; how many black teenagers have undergone the experience of coming “out of the closet” to their parents? “Mom and Dad, I want you to know that I am black.” To which the parents respond: “Are you sure that you are black. Maybe, if you listened to more country music, you will become white.” LGBTQ+ people historically have not been raised by LGBTQ+ parents with an LGBTQ+ identity. It would seem that this is merely something that they decide for themselves. As such, it should make no wider claims on heterosexuals beyond the right to be left alone.  

Consider the consequences of coming out at an even later point in life. It is hardly obvious that a forty-year-old man who comes out of the closet has really discovered his “true identity” that he has been hiding, perhaps even from himself, all along. On the contrary, this sounds like someone going through a mid-life crisis that has led them to take on a "new hobby." Such behavior should be tolerated with amusement but there is no need to grant the person any kind of moral support for they have not done anything virtuous. Note that this all assumes that our middle-aged out of the closet gay person has not abandoned a wife and children to pursue his gay lifestyle. If he has then he is liable for social condemnation and possibly even legal penalties.

If LGBTQ+ people are not a group then they cannot make a claim to be persecuted as a group. For that matter, it would not be possible for them to be discriminated against. To be clear, I agree that anti-sodomy laws were wrong as they violated personal liberty. Then again, I believe with equal conviction that drug laws are wrong. This is not because they discriminate against potheads and keep them from becoming their true high selves. I do not accept that Pothead counts as a meaningful group. Human beings should have the right to ingest substances. Similarly, human beings should have the right to engage in consensual adult acts whether it is sodomy or incest. To be clear, in none of these cases should the right to engage in an action be confused with a right to a job or to social respectability.   

Something that I find fascinating about the LGBTQ+ movement is how they have managed to turn what should be an argument against them in their favor. It is argued that the fact that LGBTQ+ people are usually not raised with an LGBTQ+ identity is one of the ways that they are persecuted. LGBTQ+ people grow up "deprived" of their "authentic" selves. They have to struggle against a heteronormative society that tries to inflict heteronormativity upon them tempting them to live "inauthentically." From this perspective, even the progressive parent who never consciously attempts to stop their child from assuming an LGBTQ+ identity is still guilty of anti-LGBTQ+ persecution merely for raising the kid in an "inauthentic" fashion on the assumption that they are heterosexual or cisgender. This is sort of like the frum-novel trope where the Jewish kid is raised by Gentiles who try to keep the "truth" of his Judaism from him only for his "Jewish spark" to shine through in the end. (Note that the claims of an authentic LGBTQ+ self and an authentic Jewish self are both metaphysical claims. As such, the First Amendment would require that the government take them as equally valid.)   

A practical policy implication of this argument that LGBTQ+ people are a group even to the point of claiming that LGBTQ+ kids exist, is a push to bring LGBTQ+ material into schools. The goal is to teach kids about LGBTQ+ practices but, more than that, they wish to teach that LGBTQ+ people are a legitimate group with the moral high ground due to their "authentic" living earned by struggling against the constraints of a persecuting culture. This leaves children with an obvious question: might they really be LGBTQ+? If they come out as such, they will be praised for showing the "courage" to be their "authentic" selves. The more there are children who can be convinced to do this, the easier it becomes to argue that LGBTQ+ people really are a group. If children really are born LGBTQ+ and only needed adults to give them the language and the support structure to come out of the closet in ways that are in "no way manipulative," then being LGBTQ+ must be a legitimate identity. As such, society must not only eliminate all laws that ban LGBTQ+ practices but also "atone" for the crime of not previously recognizing that such an identity existed. 

Arguably, this would require greater government action than rectifying American racism. Consider, blacks have never had to seriously struggle against people who refused to accept that there was such a thing as black people in the genetic sense. For LGBTQ+ people to receive their full rights as a group, it might be necessary, regardless of the First Amendment, that everyone must be forced to acknowledge that they really are a group. 

E. D. Hirsch Jr.'s Cultural Literacy: A Secessionist Response

 

E. D. Hirsch Jr. is one of my favorite education theorists. I find that cultural literacy makes intuitive sense to me with its emphasis on things that children should know. While Hirsch often gets accused of trying to promote "white education," his goal has been to help children of color. If you live in a society founded upon European culture and you wish to function within it then you are going to need to know the things that members of the dominant culture take for granted. This does not mean that there is anything superior about European culture nor does it mean that American culture cannot or should not change to reflect the greater diversity of its people. One adapts to the world around oneself.  

Having a common set of cultural references functions in much the same way as language in allowing for a functional democratic country. A monarchy can function and even benefit from the fact that the peasants in different parts of the country speak different dialects and would not understand each other even if they were to meet. A democracy, on the other hand, needs a population capable of deliberation to at least come to the belief that they are one people with a mutually understood common good that all parties can be trusted to sacrifice themselves for. In practice, this requires that people have a common language that allows them to understand each other. 

In truth, it is not enough that people speak a common language; to avoid people simply speaking past each other, it is important that people also have a common set of cultural references. For example, being familiar with Star Wars to the point that you take being called "rebel scum" as a compliment, shows me that you have a deeply ingrained sense that it can be legitimate to oppose certain kinds of authority. This can serve as a useful foundation for political cooperation. From this perspective, it makes sense to teach Star Wars in school in much the same way that we teach Shakespeare. (Schools can even use Ian Doescher's Shakespearian adaptations of Star Wars.)     

Following Hirsch, I am skeptical of claims to be able to teach critical thinking as it is difficult to evaluate. If students are unable to say who the American Revolution was fought against, I am inclined to assume, barring evidence to the contrary, that they are incapable of coming up with coherent arguments in favor of democracy or monarchy. Furthermore, my cynical self suspects that the push by schools to teach critical thinking is a cover for their failure to actually teach. If schools can pretend that they are teaching critical thinking (and there is no easy to prove that they are not teaching it) then the fact that they objectively fail to teach basic facts about the American Revolution cannot be used to reach the obvious conclusion that the school is a waste of the students' time as well as the tax payers' money and should be dismantled.

Similarly, it is a dead end to try to teach reading in the abstract. Students can never become good readers in general but only good readers of specific subjects from which they have mastered the necessary vocabulary and references. To do this, students need to do extensive reading in those subjects. Along the way, they should be aided by teachers who are themselves well-read in the particular subject and understand the particular vocabulary and references that are necessary to make sense of the material.  

An area where I disagree with Hirsch is that Hirsch favors a highly centralized school system with a set curriculum that does not change from teacher to teacher and school to school. To be fair to Hirsch, he is not a libertarian and has no prior commitments to limiting government authority. Furthermore, there are practical reasons to support top-down curriculums. It simply is not workable to expect teachers to design their own curriculums that are going to effectively teach state standards. It is one thing if teachers are simply expected to offer courses on their eccentric selves (not necessarily a bad method of teaching) to allow them the liberty of teaching whatever they think is worthwhile. If we expect teachers to fulfill specific goals then they should be given PowerPoints, videos, and assignments to teach that information. 

From a social or political perspective, it makes sense to not only insist that teachers in the same school teach a common curriculum but that all schools in a city, state, or even country teach the same curriculum. If you want a unified society or country then students are going to need a common set of things that they can assume that everyone else knows as well such as the English language or Star Wars.

As a secessionist, I believe that the diverse people currently living in the United States would be better served if the country were to be divided. This would end the culture wars and allow everyone to live in a country designed to suit their particular tastes. As such, I believe in the importance of cultural literacy but it serves a different purpose for me. Instead of using cultural literacy as a normative claim that everyone should have a set of common cultural references to allow them to function as part of one country, I see cultural literacy in positive terms. Where should we draw the lines for the different "un-United States?" A useful place to start a discussion would be to privatize education and see what kinds of curricula different schools would create. Those schools that developed similar curricula based on similar cultural references should likely remain as part of the same country. Those populations that clearly have different cultural references to the extent that they would not want their children taught in the other group's school system should split up. 

It is obvious to me that the Hasidim of New Square or Kiryas Joel should be given their own country. One can see this simply from the fact that they want a different kind of school curriculum for their children based on making sure that these children grow up without cultural references like Star Wars. I am also willing to accept that people who want their children taught a 1619 Project or a Howard Zinn version of the American Revolution should also belong to a different country from me. All of this can be done peacefully and would actually help different groups live with each other. I can be perfectly tolerant of people with radically different political values from mine when they live in a different country. It is when we have to share a country that we are at risk of conflict.