No, Nancy MacLean, Autistic People Do Not Become Libertarians Because They Lack Empathy

I must confess that since reading Nancy MacLean's Democracy in Chains, my opinion of her has only lessened. To move away from her incompetence as a historian or an economist, I would like to discuss her views on autism. As always, whenever suggesting that MacLean might not be completely correct, it is important to confess, right from the start: I am a Koch minion so you should ignore everything that I say. All arguments against her simply prove how deep and nefarious the "not exactly a conspiracy" against her is and how desperate her enemies have become now that she has revealed the truth about them. (Also, as an Asperger, I have no sense of humor and am incapable of sarcasm.)

This is a video of a speech given several days ago by historian MacLean about her book. At about the hour mark, she speculates that James Buchanan and other people who share his libertarian politics (or his desire to take over the world) are autistic as they do not "feel solidarity or empathy with other people." This is a further jump from her attempt, in her book, to make something out of the fact that Tyler Cowen, a libertarian economist, is involved with the autistic advocacy. Now she is going so far as to diagnose Buchanan, a man who never identified himself with the neurodiverse community.

Whether Buchanan really was on the spectrum or not, this is dangerous slander, particularly for the casual way in which she frames it, as if it was a truth that everyone knew that people on the autism spectrum lacked empathy. Such "casual truths," by their nature cannot easily be refuted by simply pointing out the facts because people are not going to think that it is even a matter for debate. You can actually see this in action a few minutes later in the video. A person in the audience runs with MacLean's statement and jokingly starts talking about autistic libertarians trying to take over law schools.   

The principle of rational ignorance teaches us that there is no reason to expect MacLean to educate herself about autistic people or care about what we might find offensive. It is generally not productive to get worked up about someone (even a university professor) being wrong on the internet. My justification for this is twofold. First, her account of Buchanan's life is an exercise in trying to tar someone as a racist on the vaguest kinds of guilt by association. (Contrast her case against Buchanan with the kind of evidence that Prof. Deborah Lipstadt and her team had to produce when sued by David Irving.) It is a losing proposition to simply attempt to defend Buchanan. It is inevitable that at some time, over his career, that he walked within a mile of a Nathan Bedford Forrest statue. It is necessary, therefore, to hold MacLean to her own standards. The fact that she fails, robs her of the authority to prosecute her case and demonstrates that she does not care about tolerance, but merely uses it as moral cover for her progressive agenda. (If Buchanan was guilty of all of MacLean's charges, but was a progressive in his politics and economics, would this book have ever been written?)

Second, there is a wider case to be made against modern liberalism, which gains much of its moral authority from its claim to universal tolerance. This is connected to modern liberalism's claim to knowledge of some objective "public welfare." It is impossible for anyone to be universally tolerant or to grasp the public welfare. Inevitably, much like G. K. Chesterton's insane rationalist, reality is chopped up to fit the limitations of the human mind. Tolerance for certain people must take precedence. In practice, this means that liberals are terrible at considering problems of justice the moment they have to step outside of their narrow index card of privilege scoring. (What do you do when the villains are not white Christian heterosexual men?)

There is an even larger problem in that the liberal's belief in the ultimate value of tolerance makes it difficult for them to ever question their own prejudices. This is similar to how formal religion has a tendency to work against actual spirituality. How can a person whose very notion of self is equated with their relationship with God ever question the genuineness of that relationship? (The dark night of the soul, by its very nature, is something that only God, not the human seeker, can initiate.) Likewise, since the liberal defines himself as tolerant and it is this tolerance that gives him moral authority over all the "less enlightened," any attempt to question that tolerance challenges the liberal's very being. By contrast, both religious people and liberals might agree that it is a virtue to be slow to anger. That being said, acknowledging that one is quick to anger (something I am quite guilty of) is not that serious a problem as it does not challenge anyone's central narrative of themselves nor undermine anyone's moral authority.  

Are libertarians likely to be on the autism spectrum? In my experience, there seems to be some truth to this. If I were in charge of a libertarian organization, I would make a special point in reaching out to autism organizations on the assumption that they contained likely converts and vice versa. (Admittedly, as a libertarian on the autism spectrum I am biased to notice people like me.) This is not because we lack empathy; whatever the very real challenges of being on the autism spectrum, lacking empathy is not one of them. I suspect that autistics come preconditioned to make the kind of Faustian bargain necessary for ideological libertarianism (as opposed to simply being socially liberal and fiscally conservative). Libertarianism offers the prospect of being right and logically consistent, but the price you pay is irrelevancy. Note that I am not claiming that libertarians are right or consistent; on the contrary, to even seriously consider libertarianism you have to be willing to surrender relevancy and you may never turn out to be right or consistent.

I confess that this is a limitation of my own thinking. A politically conservative relative recently compared reading this blog to a Calvin and Hobbes cartoon. You can count on Calvin being logical, but nothing he says has anything to do with planet Earth. I write in order to have my own little universe that is rational and where the things I care about matter. There would be no point in writing if I lived in a world that actually reflected my mode of being. 

In politics, this leads to voting for Gov. Gary Johnson in the last election even though he only got three percent of the vote. (Not that Johnson was some kind of perfect libertarian. Furthermore, voting for him did not make you one and vice versa.) I voted for Johnson precisely because I refused to make the practical consideration of whether Trump or Clinton was worse than the other. I simply voted for him out of a desire to stick to my principles, to live according to a set of values that exist only in my head. I readily grant that, by doing so, I chose to make myself irrelevant. Not that I have any regrets, but I threw my vote away and neither of the two parties has any reason to take me into consideration.

Consider libertarian principles like "taxation is theft" and "the state has no special moral authority." These are great for those on the spectrum as it offers the chance to turn political science into geometry with beliefs that logically follow clear axioms and theorems. Trying to beat neurotypicals' heads with these ideas is unproductive as they do not relate to their lived experiences. We live in a world of states that claim the moral authority to tax and do anything else for the "public welfare." The state is so ubiquitous that it is meaningless to seriously analyze it as an instrument of power. Unless you can produce something tangible with it, neurotypicals are not likely to make the moral jump and reject the state. To mentally live in a world where you have rejected the government from your own head has no meaning for them.

This leads us to a certain irony in MacLean's accusations of a Koch backed libertarian conspiracy. Much as anti-Semites would have never dreamed up the Protocols of the Elders of Zion if they only had spent time with Jews and saw that Jews could not plot through a kiddush, if MacLean understood either libertarians or autistics, she would have realized that we have no master plan and, if we had to come up with one, it would be much better than the one she invented for us. Buchanan, whether or not he was on the spectrum, wrote as an academic for people living a century in the future, not guidebooks on overthrowing the state.

Autistics are often accused of lacking a theory of mind. In essence, this is a more sophisticated version of the lacking empathy libel. It has the advantage of sounding more clinical and offers the fig-leaf of pretending not to be prejudiced. What is funny about MacLean is the extent that she seems to lack any theory of mind regarding her opponents. Conspiracy thinking is fundamentally about lacking theory of mind in the sense that you assume that your opponents claim what they claim, knowing that it is false, for some sinister purpose as opposed to accepting that, whether they are right or wrong, they honestly believe what they say.

History is about getting into the mind of your subject. If MacLean honestly wanted to write a biography about Buchanan, she should have, for the purposes of the book, started with the assumption that public choice economics is correct. Furthermore, that progressivism, the New Deal, and the 1960s marked wrong turns for this country. If you were an academic who believed this, how would you have responded? Now you have a story worth telling regardless of your political affiliation. The fact that MacLean failed to do this does not mean that she is autistic; she simply lacks the moral imagination to be a good historian.

Gaining Arab Respect

There is a vast literature of denigration and denunciation of the Jews published in Arabic, ranging over the whole of Jewish history from remote antiquity to the present day and including all kinds of accusations culled, in the main, from European anti-Semitic literature. Paradoxically, Arab authors appear to show more respect for Israel and Zionism than for Jewish religion and history. Discussions of the former are occasionally serious and factual; on the latter, they rarely rise above the level of uninformed polemic and abuse, drawn partly from local stereotypes but relying very largely on such typical products of Christian anti-Semitism as the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. (Bernard Lewis, "The Anti-Zionist Resolution" pg. 56.)


This goes against the standard narrative of Arab anti-Semitism, where anti-Semitism is seen simply as a result of Zionism. In the extreme version of this argument, Neturei Karta members justify embracing the likes of Ahmadinejad on account that he is not really out to kill Jews, he only wishes to destroy "Zionists." We only need to show him that not all Zionists and his opposition to Jews will disappear. What particularly interests me about Lewis' line of argument is that he changes the narrative over from one of hatred and opposition to one of respect. Lewis does not deny that the Arab world is out to defeat Zionism and destroy the State of Israel. As he sees it, though, Arabs at least respect Zionism to the extent that some sort of dialogue might be possible. I think the reason for this is that Zionism is a political movement. Judaism without Zionism has traditionally been, by definition, outside of the political discourse. Why should a non-political entity ever be taken seriously in a political world?

So what is more important to us, gaining Arab tolerance and convincing them to not try to kill us or gaining their respect so that even if they try to kill us they should at least do so from the perspective of seeing us as human beings, who are part of the political discourse? What might the implications be for the peace process if conducted under a respect model? Under a respect model, how relevant would issues of Palestinian human rights, a State or a right of return be?

Martin Luther was an Evil Pharisaic Jewish Rabbi

E. Michael Jones is a radical Catholic historian and moderate Jew hater. His book, the Jewish Revolutionary Spirit and Its Impact on World History is over one thousand pages devoted to the thesis that Jews have been behind every major revolutionary movement in the western world. You see Jews, having rejected Jesus, were in essence declaring war upon the Logos and divorcing themselves from it. Thus, robbed of any genuine religious sensibility, the Jewish religion descended into a mere collection of rules and legalistic hair splitting, hence the Mishnah and the Talmud. The other side of this rejection of Logos was that, having rejected the salvation of Christ because he was not offering political salvation on their terms, the Jews continued to attempt to overthrow the established political order in the hopes of achieving physical political salvation. The entire book becomes an exercise in connecting every revolutionary movement (in essence any movement that Jones does not like) to Jews. In essence this book is a more elaborate and scholarly version of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. To be fair to Jones he does not attack Jews as a race, but only as a religion, so he cannot technically be classified as an anti-Semite. I would classify him as a moderate simply because he only hates Jews slightly more than he hates all non conservative Catholics like himself.


Martin Luther is someone that most would classify as an anti-Semite. Ironically enough, Jones hates Luther more than most Jews do. In fact Jones' hatred of Luther is even on par with his hatred of Jews. According to Jones, Luther was a continuation of this Jewish revolutionary heretical disease:

Luther did for Christianity what Jochanan ben Zakkai did for Judaism: he turned the evangelical Church into a debating society, in which the evangelical rabbis would offer competing interpretations of scripture with no way adjudicating differences other than splitting off from whomever one disagreed with. (pg. 266)

While Protestantism, because of its emphasis on the Old Testament, has a much stronger tradition of active philo-Semtism, as I have previously argued, I see Judaism as having more in common with Catholicism than Protestantism. Both Judaism and Catholicism are openly built around tradition. Unlike Protestantism, there is no pretense that Scripture has a plain meaning obvious to anyone who simply reads the text. As such the text of Scripture almost becomes irrelevant, what we really believe in are our respective religious traditions and their interpretations of Scripture. Protestants, in order to function as a religion, are forced at the end of the day to do the same thing. They are just hypocritical enough to deny that this is what they are doing and maintain the moral pretense that they support everyone being able to simply open Scripture for themselves to decide what it means.

Toward a More Spiritual Meaning of the Homosexuality Taboo: My Response to Dr. Lively III

Evan Hurst did a post, commenting on my original encounter with Dr. Scott Lively. He also pointed me to a video of Dr. Lively blaming the Rwandan genocide on homosexuals.



I have no problem acknowledging that homosexual individuals took part in the genocide. I do have a problem with linking the genocide to Homosexuality. You are free to make your own judgments as to whether this is a call for mass murder. Can someone like Dr. Lively truly play innocent in urging the mass murder of homosexuals when saying things like this? Is this not a matter of saying: "Homosexuals should not be killed (wink wink), but they are responsible for all the world's worst blood baths (wink wink) and you need to do everything necessary (wink wink) to protect yourself."

I would like to point you to a recent op-ed by Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, the Chief Rabbi of England, in the Times. He takes a similar position to mine, though he is a much better writer, in regards to homosexuality and freedom of religion. Do take a look at the comments. The rabid venom of some of these secularists is simply frightening. These people do not have a meaningful notion of what rights mean and they actively seek to be able trample over the liberties of people of faith. Such people need to be kept as far as possible from government.





Mr. Chinn,


Thank you for your change of tone.  


I'm not defending Igra regarding Shaw.  I'm actually now questioning whether it was even Shaw that Igra implicated in his book based the violence on your reaction to the idea. You certainly know much more about the Protocols than I do.  I don't have any notes on this question in my files because the issue was irrelevant to my research at the time -- and I cannot be confident in my fading memory of that book.   However, I didn't give you the tip because of Shaw's connection, but primarily because it related to the Protocols. In any case, I agree that evidence is the necessary prerequiste to deciding whether to entertain a theory, which is all the more reason why you should not have dismissed Igra.  You haven't yet seen the evidence. 


Just to play Devil's Advocate, let us assume I remembered correctly and Shaw was Igra's subject.  Is it really so implausible that he could have written the Protocols?  He was morally capable such an act, wouldn't you agree?  He was certainly artistically capable of writing it in the persona of its purported author.  By analogy, good actors can play bad actors when the script calls for it. And if Shaw, a reportedly "celibate homosexual" was a close friend of the "out and proud" translator of the document, you have what any good prosecutor would call probable cause for a search warrant: motive and opportunity. I'm not saying it's enough to persuade a jury, or that I am personally persuaded, but it's not a crackpot theory in the vein of Mormon "theology". 


You may be surprised to learn that I completely agree with your arguments in paragraphs 3 and 4.  I, too, prefer a secular society.  I too would be unwilling at accept any current religious leaders in any sort of theocratic rulership.  That said, I strongly disagree with your premise that secularism can be "religiously neutral."  Every legal or governmental system necessarily rests on moral presuppositions which in turn assume an ultimate source of moral authority.  This is why atheism in not only morally bankrupt, but literally irrational, in the truest sense of the word.  By definition it denies G-d, whose existence is the only possible "prime reality" in logic (a "prime reality" being the logical presupposition that does not itself depend on any other presupposition) and thus, true atheists (as opposed to confused thesists just looking for a way to escape accountability) cannot accurately perceive reality.    


The enlightened secularism achieved by the founders rested firmly on Biblical presuppositions.  The founding documents, including the Declaration of Independence and Constitution reflect a distinctly Judeo-Christian world view, and the historic record is replete with admonitions from the framers of those documents that to deviate from their world view would lead to disintegration of the nation.  Their "secularism" held (for example) the Ten Commandments to be objectively true and inviolable moral precepts, and viewed religious freedom as a matter of tolerance for views that deviated from unarguable truth NOT the system of religious pluralism we're suffering today in which every theological notion, however foolish, is deemed equal.  


If you really want a study in absurdity, ponder the question of what religious neutrality by government actually means when atheism and theism are granted equivalence.  It is Aristotle's logical impossibility:  A cannot be Not A.   If A is theism and Not A is atheism government is presented with the impossible task of holding contradictory premises at the same time.  This explains the schizophrenia of our government since the 1940s when "religion" was redefined by the Supreme Court to include atheism.  Atheism must logically win in such a contest since it has no prescriptions of its own but is only a contradiction of theism's prescriptions.  Yet, only theism has rational prescriptions for human needs and underlies the only workable portions of our public policy.  Thus, the literal insanity of our age and the explanation for the so-called "culture war." So how do we restore/achieve a sane and workable secularism without veering into theocracy?  Through the stewardship of individuals with the ability to understand and apply Biblical principles to civil society and the maturity to do so for the greater good and not personal (or sectarian) advantage. 


This brings me to your 2nd paragraph.  I take the Bible at face value and accept its absolute authority, but I believe the greater lessons of Scripture are not in the letter of the law, but much more in the spirit of it.  I seek the principles of the Bible by attempting to discern G-d's meaning and purposes within, beneath and behind the Scripture.  Thus, for example, I do not want to apply the letter of the Mosaic law to homosexuals because I perceive that the letter of the law was meant (and was appropriate) for the nomadic tribal society it was unveiled to and is not intended nor appropriate for today.  However, underlying that law are numerous easily discernable principles (including but not limited to) the importance of heterosexual duality, their sanctification of sex only in marriage, the predictability of harmful consequences for deviating from G-d's design, and the necessity of social/governmental affirmation of G-d's standards. I believe that while the letter of the law is subject to modification in its application, the principles of the law are eternally constant and binding. 


I conclude that G-d's proscription of homosexuality is of greater concern to Him than other things like eating pork or even civil crimes like theft by the way these issues are addressed throughout Scripture.  G-d's emphatic condemnation of homosexuality predates the Mosaic law, is expressly named and clarified in the law in a way that few other sins are, is specifically addressed throughout the historical books -- always in the context of this conduct/lifestyle bringing severe spiritual and sociological consequences -- and is specifically and repeatedly re-affirmed in the New Testament, even while many other Old Testament proscriptions are deemed fulfilled by Christ or otherwise changed. In my reading, only idolatry is treated in Scripture more harshly, but even in this, homosexuality is frequently implicated as an essential aspect.  


(If I am "obsessed", it is with my desire to align my mind with G-d's.  I honestly would love not to deal with the homosexual issue at all and spare myself all of the hate from the Left, but as one of the few people in the West today with both broad knowledge of the issue and the courage to articulate it unapologetically without regard for my personal reputation or safety, I have a responsibility to do so.) 


Contrary to your apparent belief, Biblical law and civil law are not separate and distinct realms regulating believers and non-believers respectively.  Sure, the law related to Jewish ritual may be so, but what we call civil law is almost entirely derived from the Biblical law.  Take a look at Blackstone's Commentaries on the Law of England sometime and you'll see just how much this is true.  You cannot and should not attempt to divorce the criminal law from its true source, which is the mind and will of G-d.  Apply your logic regarding sodomy to other Biblical criminal proscriptions such as murder and you can see it isn't sound or workable.   


I challenge you to consider how much your arguments for minimizing the threat of homosexuality may be rooted in the fear of being ridiculed as "absurd" by your politically-correct peers. Your generation has been subjected to a culture-wide campaign of propaganda on this issue to such an astonishing degree it is a wonder that any of you are still willing to call homosexuality sin.  I respect you for that, but as for your conclusion that homosexuality is a harmless lifestyle alternative outside the scope of secular civil regulation I think you are allowing yourself to be ensnared in an irrational contradiction to your faith and to good public policy.   


Respectfully,


Dr. Scott Lively      






My response: 


Dr. Lively
…

In regards to Shaw and Ingra, I see you are yielding on that front. I will take that as a win. As to why Shaw did not write the Protocols, I would say it is about as likely that he wrote Huckleberry Finn. Shaw, like Mark Twain, was one of the great masters of wit in the English language. Maybe Shaw was experimenting with writing in a more American style? The Protocols first show up in Russian newspapers around 1905. We do not know for certain for actually wrote it, but we can be pretty confident with a profile of a conservative Russian aristocrat.

I do not see a problem with a secular state, properly understood, and see no reason why government cannot be something outside religion. Take your garbage man or highway patrolman; is there a religious way to collect the garbage or hand out speeding tickets? I have no reason to doubt that atheists would be able to collect the trash from my curb or hand out tickets to people driving eighty miles an hour. The government is the sum of all of these little jobs. A government that keeps crime at low levels, defends the borders and handles monetary disputes all while allowing me to pursue my own good in my own way in the privacy of my own home is an effective government. None of this has anything to do with religion or private morality. Rudy Giuliani was a good mayor and I think he would have made a good president. As a human being, he may be an absolute scumbag and I would certainly not want him on the board of my synagogue.

I was particularly interested in how you made that "Christian" turn of turning toward the "spiritual" message of the ban on homosexual sex. I also believe that biblical commandments have a spiritual component underlying them, but that the physical commandment is still real and valid and that the spiritual message must be approached through the physical commandment. It would seem that you operate with a Protestant sola scriptura approach to religious authority. As an Orthodox Jew, I operate within a religious framework that Catholics would empathize with. Religious authority comes less from my personal reading of the Bible and more on rabbinic authority and the Jewish legal tradition. If you wanted to prove something to a Catholic about his faith you would not quote verses from scripture. Instead, you would hand him Augustine, Aquinas, the Fourth Lateran Council, and Vatican II. Similarly, with rabbinic Judaism the most important text is not really the Bible. If you wish to prove something you need to turn to the Talmud, Maimonides, and Rabbi Joseph Caro.

While you can talk about every man being allowed to decide things for himself, if you wish to have a religious community you need to have some sort of final human authority for the buck to stop by. This has nothing to do with this human authority being infallible. A Catholic would tell you that whatever he may personally think of abortion and contraceptives, in order to have a community of Catholics there is a need for someone to set official Catholic policy and that man is the Bishop of Rome. One could personally believe that the Pope is wrong in his ruling and still be a religious Catholic and bow to his rule. Someone had to make a decision and even the wrong decision is better than the Church falling into schisms. The problem with Protestants is that they have no system of authority so every disagreement risks schism. If my neighbor reads scripture differently than I do then he must be a servant of Satan trying to undermine God's True Church and we must break away from him. (I study sixteenth century history; that is Protestantism for you in one sentence.) Protestant movements are only able to succeed by hypocritically bringing in religious authority (whether Luther or Calvin) and hoping that no one will notice that they are adopting "papist" thinking.

I believe in the importance of each person having their relationship with God in their basement or on a hilltop. The moment you wish to have a religious society then you are going to need to agree to some form of religious authority and submit to it even in those situations where you disagree with the religious authority. Just as I am willing to split public politics from private religion, I am also willing to split a personal private spirituality from public established religion. Each one is legitimate within its own particular sphere.

Regardless of this general objection to your approach to religious authority, your application of this approach to homosexuality only ties the noose all the tighter in terms of homophobia. You understand the spiritual meaning of the ban on homosexuality as "the importance of heterosexual duality, their sanctification of sex only in marriage, the predictability of harmful consequences for deviating from G-d's design, and the necessity of social/governmental affirmation of G-d's standards."

I have met Episcopalians who have told me that the spiritual meaning of the ban on homosexuality was to stop the sort of predatory homosexual relationships that were common in biblical times. It was never meant to ban "warm" "loving" "committed" "monogamous" homosexual relationships that exist today. Therefore such homosexuals should be welcomed into the Church without prejudice. How is this spiritual reading of scripture any less valid than yours? This raises the question of why you go with your reading; is it possible that you are motivated, just a little bit, by a personal hatred to homosexuals that has nothing to do with God or scripture?

This is not a problem for Orthodox Jews like me or for Catholics. I could respond to the Episcopalian (or the Reform Jew) that, regardless of the moral and spiritual commitment of our homosexual couple, we could not accept them into our religious community because their actions are not in keeping with the demands of the community. This is nothing personal; I am fully willing to acknowledge that these people may be fully right with God, maybe even more so than I am, but the community cannot admit them without undermining the very integrity of the community. This would be no different than if a righteous Jewish pork lover would raise and slaughter his pig in an ethical manner and eat it with the highest spiritual intentions. This Jew may be very holy and beloved by God. God can see into this man's heart and accept him for spiritually keeping his commandments. As a guardian of the community, I can only see that he has willfully violated the physical commandments of God.

I can hide behind my religious legal traditions, you cannot. To do that would be Catholic or, even worse, Pharisaic of you.

A Classical Liberal Unsheathes His Sword: My Response to Dr. Lively

Dr. Scott Lively, the subject of two earlier posts, was gracious enough to write in a more detailed defense of himself, which I include here along with my response.


Mr. Chinn,
 
…

First, I did not accuse you of being anti-Semitic.  I suggested that your initial response to me was dehumanizing, in the same way that anti-Semites dehumanize Jews.  I approached you as one human being to another because I accidentally stumbled on your blog during an Internet search.  Your post that day was about The Protocols, so I thought I would do you a favor and give you a research tip on the Protocols that you would probably never have encountered on your own.  Igra is an obscure enough figure as it is, and his book about Shaw is for all practical purposes unknown to the world.  What a coup, I thought, for a researcher to find a comprehensive, published analysis of an aspect of one's field of study that no one else in the field has ever even heard of.  As for Shaw's conclusions, I really don't know enough to have a firm opinion.   

I frankly expected a note of thanks.  Instead, and this is the dehumanizing aspect, when you discovered that I am publicly known for my views and work against the homosexual movement, I became for you just a prop for a blog posting.  It was as if I had stopped to help you push a stalled car out of traffic and instead of showing appreciation, you turned to your friends in the car to say "What an a**hole this guy is."     

I don't really care that you posted our exchange.  I obviously do not self-censor my views out of concern for what my opponents will say about me.  What bothers me is that once you had identified me as a "homophobe" you felt entitled to dispense with normal civilities and treat me as an object of ridicule.  That is precisely the attitude of anti-Semites for Jews, and, more importantly to me (since all who share my views on this topic are being subjected to such a campaign in America today), the attitude they would like the general public to hold.  Replace "Jew" with "homophobe" (meaning anyone who holds a Biblical world view) and ask yourself whether it is "gays" or believing Christians (and Orthodox Jews) who are being actively marginalized in this way.
 
Secondly, I made the mistake of assuming that you were a faithful Jew regarding the issue of homosexuality.  All of my Jewish friends agree with my views, generally, and my first book, The Pink Swastika: Homosexuality in the Nazi Party was co-authored by Orthodox Jewish researcher Kevin Abrams. We actually wrote The Pink Swastika to stop the "gays" from misappropriating the Holocaust as a political tactic.  You might not be old enough to remember that the primary symbol of their movement in the 70s and 80s was not the rainbow but the pink triangle, in support of the claim that they suffered a "Gay Holocaust" equivalent to that against the Jews.  Our book forced them to back off that claim (though a watered down version is unfortunately still featured in many Holocaust museums).

I truly don't understand how you can consider your tolerance of the mainstreaming of homosexuality as anything other than a repudiation of the Torah.  While I was in law school years ago I had the great privilege of working closely with Rabbi Samuel Dresner, who asked me to do a re-write of his final book "The Case Against Homosexuality: A Jewish View."  He was at that time in the latter stages of his battle with cancer and did not have the stamina to do the work himself.  His argument against homosexuality from Judaism was so strong and compelling I can't see how any Jew can today support the legitimizing of it. 

Unfortunately, Rabbi Dresner passed away before the project was completed and his wife refused to allow the book to be published in an unfinished state.  However, I count my months of interaction with this fine scholar among the most valuable steps in my education and one of the reasons I have continued to focus my career on opposition to the homosexual political agenda (NOT homosexuals as individuals). Indeed, I count Rabbi Dresner as my first (informal) doctoral advisor in the pursuit of my Th.D., the thesis for which is now published in the form of a textbook on my website www.defendthefamily.com and is attached to this e-mail.  It is titled Redeeming the Rainbow: A Christian Response to the "Gay" Agenda.  I incorporated much of what I learned from Rabbi Dresner in this book. 

I earned my Th.D. while serving as a litigation attorney in Southern California (having just graduated law school with a Juris Doctor, magna cum laude and passed the CA Bar Exam on the first attempt in a year when more than half of all applicants failed).  I chose an admittedly humble institution both because it was close to my home and because it allowed me to work directly with Dr. Richard Anderson (then in his early 80s), a highly respected pastor and teacher who had personally known and worked with many of the founders of the Charismatic movement, which is my own theological persuasion. 
I don't know about you, but in my experience there are far too many people trading on the credibility of their alma mater who do not deserve it for their work.  I suppose they got what they paid for.  You may not agree with my positions, but if you read my book you should at least grant that I have paid my scholastic dues for my degree.  
Finally, as to the attacks against me on the Internet.  If you are willing to consider that among social movements in the West the homosexual one is singularly aggressive in the pursuit of its own interests, and that being unconstrained by conventional morality in the matter of their sexual conduct they may be unconstrained in matters of truthfulness and justice, then perhaps you will be willing to reconsider their case against me.  I don't deny or apologize for being a leading opponent of their agenda, which I do in fact consider a great menace to society.  However, I vigorously deny the accusation of malice toward "gay" or lesbian individuals.  
My entire body of work is grounded in systematic logical analysis backed by reasonable observation and careful documentation and is focused on the prevention of the mainstreaming of sexual perversion as a matter of public policy.  I am against what they do, not who they are, and it is for the purpose of steering society toward a more marriage and family-centered model, not to stamp out whatever they want to do in the privacy of their subculture so long as they stop trying to remake civilization in their own image.  You might disagree even with this position, but it is a far cry from the evil caricature they have painted of me.  
Respectfully,
Dr. Scott Lively

My response:
Dr. Lively,

Ironically enough you have been helpful for my research. I am not so much interested in the Protocols in of itself, but as a study in the absurd. Ingra, from what I can tell, was himself someone who had gone off the edge in a delightfully scholarly fashion. For this I am grateful. I think it says something about you that you pointed me in the direction of Ingra as someone who should be taken seriously as a scholar. A recurring theme in Izgad is that people should be understood less in terms of what they officially support or oppose, but in terms of which ideas they believe are worthy of serious consideration and which ideas they dismiss as satanic or insane. For example, how fast would you start edging away from someone who started talking about this interesting idea, which he is not sure about, that the United States government was really behind 9/11? Obviously this is in a completely different category from raising taxes on stock options.

As for whether my actions dehumanized you, on the contrary my response was an important part of my tolerating you. If I were not a classical liberal, it would be much simpler to deal with you. Since you are someone who does not believe like I do, I could come after you to inflict bodily harm in order to "teach" you the "error" of your ways. If my lessons proved fatal well then that would mean one less unbeliever and a better world for everyone else. Since I am a classical liberal, I have to "tolerate" you. Not only that, I am even morally obligated, God help me, to go out of my way and even put my life on the line to protect you from all the non classical liberals, who wish to cause you physical harm. (This would include modern liberals, who wish to jail you for hate speech and take your kids away to be "reeducated.") The one bright spot in this, that makes classical liberalism bearable, is that my classical liberalism allows me to subject you to a withering storm of ridicule and scorn as long as I do not cause you any physical suffering (your feelings get no protection what so ever).

I grant you that that the modern left is quickly transforming the term "homophobe" to mean anyone who takes the prohibitions of Leviticus seriously. This is a cover for an attack on the liberties of religious people. My nightmare scenario is that the government is going to come and take my job and children away on the grounds that I am a hatemonger who believes that homosexuality is a sin. Let us be clear I do believe that homosexuality is a sin in the same way that I believe that eating pork is a sin for Jews. (I do not pick and choose my passages in Leviticus.) When I use the term "homophobe" I mean something much more specific; this singling out of homosexuals, above and beyond other groups of sinners, as some particularly dark and nefarious force and obsessing about it. Notice how you jumped on Bruce Douglas the homosexual for his part in the Protocols. Why didn't you talk about how poets or Catholics created the Protocols? Henry Ford published the Protocols in the United States; are the Protocols an example of Capitalist bigotry?

I believe that the modern left will use any excuse to come after religious people and it is therefore important not give them any excuse. Have you considered that this little joy ride stunt in Uganda may very well lose us Proposition 8. This will mean that a United States court will be declaring that it is bigotry to define marriage as something between a man and a woman (despite the fact that technically homosexuals have an equal right to marry members of the opposite sex as heterosexuals) to such an extent that one is not even allowed to amend the Constitution of a State in order to do this.

I view myself as a faithful and Orthodox Jew. I also oppose laws that that cause physical harm to homosexuals and have no desire to see the government do anything to stop people from choosing to live a gay lifestyle. In theory, I am even open to secular gay marriage as long as we do not say that it is some sort of civil right. I am perfectly willing to buy into the argument that monogamous homosexual relationships provide the sort of benefits to society that homosexual ones provide and that it is reasonable for our secular government to provide similar encouragement (like tax cuts). This is not a contradiction to my Orthodox beliefs that homosexuality, like eating pork, is a sin. As a classical liberal I have learned to live with the fact that people are going to be allowed to do things which I believe to be sinful and immoral, but as long as no physical harm is done, I must not cause any physical harm. I believe that many types of Christianity are idolatry (as are certain types of Orthodox Judaism). That being said I would be in the front lines to stop the Israeli government from closing down the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. I will protect that right of Christians to venerate crucifixes in church and I will protect the right of gay Satanists to shove crucifixes up each other's rectums in Satanist temples.

I am a classical liberal and an Orthodox Jew. I stand for a free society against the unbelievers who never believed in the concept in the first place and the heretics of the modern left, who have sold their liberal principles out for tribalist gain. I have clearly defined principles and I am willing to consistently stick to those principles even when they are inconvenient. You may disagree with my political principles, but I challenge you to find an inconsistency in them.

Sincerely,

Benzion N. Chinn

Email From Scott Lively: The Protocols are a George Bernard Shaw Conspiracy

Last night I received an email response to my post on the Protocols of the Elders of Zion:

At the Library of Congress is an obscure book by Samuel Igra which makes the case that "The Protocols...Zion" was actually written by George Bernard Shaw.  I don't remember the title, but I read a portion in DC when I was researching another book by Igra and I remember thinking at the time that his case seemed quite plausible, though I don't remember the details now.

It is common knowledge that Shaw was a close friend of the homosexual poet Bruce Douglas, the "translator" of the Protocols.  
Regards,
  
Dr. Scott Lively

Scott Lively (I am willing to assume this email is genuine and really does come from him.) is the head of Abiding Truths Ministry and Defend the Family. He has a doctorate in theology from the School of Bible Theology Seminary and University (Take a look at the website for yourself and decide for yourselves if you feel comfortable with referring to Lively as a doctor. He has a law degree from Trinity Law School and apparently is licensed to practice law in California. Finally he has a Certificate from the Institute of International Human Rights in Strasbourg France. (I always wondered how one becames an official human rights activist.) It is in his capacity as human rights activist that Lively has taken his most important role recently with his involvement with the Uganda gay laws. Lively seems to have managed to get the Ugandan government to abandon the death penalty for homosexuals and to opt for treatment.

Doing a bit of background research on Lively certainly clarified this email a bit, explaining who he was and why he would be interested in making the connection between homosexuality and anti-Semitism. Lively is even the author of a book, the Pink Swastika, which argues that the Nazis were a homosexual movement.

Samuel Igra, Lively's source, seems to have been one of the main originators of this Nazism and homosexuality link with his 1945 book, Germany's National Vice. According to Igra, Hitler was a homosexual prostitute in Vienna and then in Munich from 1907-1914. (See Gregory Woods A History of Gay Literature: the Male Tradition pg. 251-53.) Obviously, there were Nazis who were homosexuals. The most famous example was Ernst Rohm of the SD. While an early member of the party, Rohm was killed off in the infamous "Night of the Long Knives" in 1934. Considering the very real persecution of homosexuals under the Nazi regime, saying that Nazism was a homosexual movement (as opposed to individual Nazis being homosexual) strikes me as the height of perversity.

Bruce Douglas was the young lover of Oscar Wilde's, whose father got into a libel suit with Wilde, which eventually brought about the downfall of Wilde in English society. Douglas did do one of the first English translations of the Protocols in 1919, nearly twenty years after it was first written. The Protocols came out of Russia, and while it was plagiarized from many sources, including one French anti-Semitic tract, it is clearly a product of reactionary Russian circles. Personally I find the idea that George Bernard Shaw would have written the Protocols to be offensive. I would have no problem accepting Shaw as an anti-Semite along the lines of T. S. Eliot and Ezra Pound. But to think that Shaw would have written such a piece of garbage as the Protocols, boggles the mind. If Shaw had wanted to write a book about Jews plotting to rule the world, this book would have been a model of wit and would have me convinced to become an Elder.

I guess I should be grateful that Christians like Lively are concerned about anti-Semitism. All I can say is that with friends like these who needs enemies.

Izgad and the Elders of Zion

The Protocols of the Elders of Zion is an anti-Semitic classic, dealing with a Jewish conspiracy to take over the world. It was endorsed by that great American hero Henry Ford, who helped publish a translation of the book in this country. More recently there was an excellent documentary, Protocols of Zion, by Marc Levin on the book and its continued influence, particularly in the Arab world. Levin was inspired to make this documentary after having an Egyptian taxi driver explain to him that the Jews were behind the 9/11 attacks.

I was perusing the Wheaton Public Library this evening through their Judaic section when, to my surprise, I came across a copy of the Protocols. Naturally I was greatly offended to see this compendium of falsehoods. Long ago I appointed myself, with unanimous approval, as High Comrade of the Young Elders of Zion and I can assure you that we are absolutely nothing like what you read about in the Protocols (and if we once were then we have certainly reformed our ways and eliminated all Protocol Jews.)

As you can see I do not have a bulbous hooked nose. Our organization offers nose jobs, as part of our health package, to all our Jewish employees. We are also far better dressed. Taking over the world, like mathematics, is a young man's game, no one older than thirty. We are not an exclusively Jewish organization; we have a proud gentile faction, the Shabbos Goys, for the gentiles who run around and do stuff for us in an unstoogelike fashion. It should be noted for the record that the Protocols is a Czarist forgery, plagiarized from several earlier anti-Semitic works.

All joking aside, the proposition of a public library openly having a copy of the Protocols on its shelves posed an interesting challenge to my liberalism. As a good old fashioned fighting nineteenth liberal, the notion of censorship is completely odious to me. I recognize the sort of Pandora's Box one opens with censorship. If I exercise my liberal indignation against the Protocols, other liberals might choose to come after Ann Coulter's books (not that I would consider this a bad thing). Next on the chopping block could be the Bell Curve, which argues that blacks really do have a problem when it comes to performing in standardized tests, and before long the mobs might be coming for this humble blog. As a historian, I see the Protocols as one of the most important primary source documents relating to modern anti-Semitism and the perfect history 101 lesson on how to turn texts against their authors. I wish for young aspiring historians to be able to easily be able to get a hold of this book. (Internet editions are also in abundance.)

That being said I recognize the danger of having this book on display as if it were just a regular book. By allowing this book on the shelf, the government of Montgomery County is saying that this is a book of opinions alongside other opinions. You can be pro health care or against it, pro the war in Iraq or against or believe that there is a secret cabal of Jews pulling the strings behind all of this. If I am to engage in the public discourse of free citizens then I need you to give me the benefit of the doubt about my beliefs and intentions. I may be wrong in my beliefs (As I tell my students, much of history is the story of very smart people with really bad ideas.) and it may be that what I propose will lead to utter disaster. You must still assume that, despite my wrong ideas, I came by them honestly and that I mean them for the best. I cannot prove that I am not part of some sort of dark conspiracy. You just have to give me the benefit of the doubt and let my ideas stand or fall in the free marketplace of ideas. At the very least hate literature like the Protocols should not be treated any better than pornography. If the library is not going to leave pornographic material out where the young and impressionable can easily find it and form their own opinions about it then they should not be leaving hate literature out on the open shelves.

I took this copy of the Protocols over to the two librarians at the side desk to show them what they had. The two ladies were very kind to me. To my shock, neither of them had ever heard of the Protocols. (I am not sure if this is a good or bad thing.) I politely explained to them that I was opposed to censorship and did not want the book removed. I suggested a number of possibilities. The book could be put on some sort of reserved section for anyone who specifically asks for it. (Much the same way that stores keep their pornography behind counters and people have to ask for it. No, I have never tried to ask for some.) Another idea would be to create a separate section for hate literature and put the Protocols there. (Whether this entire section should be behind lock and key is another issue.) It turns out that the book was cataloged under the Dewey decimal system under anti-Semitism and therefore ended up right next to Judaics.

Luther Wanted to Burn Down Synagogues But He Was Not an Anti-Semite

I spoke about Martin Luther the other day. I asked my Hebrew Academy students to define anti-Semitism and whether Luther was an anti-Semite. (As an early modernist, one of my personal goals is that after a year of my class my students, when they hear the name Martin Luther, should not think of a black preacher with a dream but a fat, beer-drinking German.) Almost every one of my students defined anti-Semitism as hating Jews. They also all saw Luther as an anti-Semite. I sympathize with my students’ feelings. When I was younger I agreed with my students. In my ninth grade history class, I called Luther a bum. The history teacher, Mr. Jesse, responded that he was a Lutheran. I guess you can say oops. (Mr. Jesse was the perfect middle school teacher. He was physically intimidating as in over six feet tall, built like a brick wall, yelled, and threw stuff. He also had a basic command of the material, was a genuinely likable person, and had a great sense of humor.)

There are certainly good reasons for viewing Luther as an anti-Semite. After taking a fairly positive attitude toward Jews early in his career, Luther turned on Jews with a vengeance in On the Jews and their Lies (1543). Luther advises:

First, to set fire to their synagogues or schools and to bury and cover with dirt whatever will not burn, so that no man will ever again see a stone or cinder of them. …
Second, I advise that their houses also be razed and destroyed. For they pursue in them the same aims as in their synagogues. Instead they might be lodged under a roof or in a barn, like the gypsies. …
Third, I advise that all their prayer books and Talmudic writings, in which such idolatry, lies, cursing, and blasphemy are taught, be taken from them.
Fourth, I advise that their rabbis be forbidden to teach henceforth on pain of loss of life and limb.
Fifth, I advise that safe-conduct on the highways be abolished completely for the Jews. For they have no business in the countryside, since they are not lords, officials, tradesmen, or the like.
While this aspect of Luther was mostly ignored until the twentieth century, the Nazis made use of Luther, viewing him as a precursor of theirs. The modern Lutheran Church has officially rejected all statements of Luther’s regarding Jews.

I believe that it is important that for anti-Semitism to mean something it has to mean something more than hating Jews. The English hate the French and vice versa. At Ohio State, we have a Hate Michigan Week every November. Pretty much every group on the planet has been hated by someone else, has been the subject of bigotry, discriminated against, and even on occasion killed. Anti-Semitism is something beyond that. Jews are unique in the sort of hatred they have consistently evoked in so many different places and people. What other group of people has something to compare to the blood libel or the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, one of the best-selling books of the twentieth century? The Nazis hated lots of different groups of people yet there was something about the Jews that made them a special target. For example, the German war effort in 1944 was literally sabotaged in order to massacre Hungarian Jewry. So anti-Semitism is not just people hating Jews but people having a pathological hatred of Jews, a hatred of Jews that goes beyond reason.

When dealing with Christian-Jewish relations it is important to distinguish between Christians who were hostile to Jews for what they were and a Christian hostility that went beyond all reality. Let us be clear, medieval Jews were heretics, unbelievers, and blasphemers, who hated Christians. Toldot Yeshu was accepted as fact by Jews. They believed that their ancestors really did kill Jesus and were proud of it. To them, Jesus was a bastard, a heretic, and a magician while the Virgin Mary was a whore. From this perspective, Luther was being perfectly reasonable. All his accusations were things that Jews would have admitted to. Jews cursing Christians was a fact. When Jews, in the sixteenth century, said the curse for heretics in the eighteen benedictions they meant Christians. It was a fact that Jews referred to Christians as goyim. Jews called Jesus the ‘hanged one.' Jews practiced usury. Luther refers to the blood libel accusations. He was agnostic about these charges but argued that Jews hated Christians enough to murder Christians. Again this was a very reasonable assumption.

Luther was a polemicist, who wrote in an aggressive manner; even by the standards of the day Luther’s universe was highly Manichean one, sharply divided between the saved and the unsaved with no grey area in between. It was not just Jews whom he believed to be satanic. He believed that the Catholic Church and even fellow Protestants who disagreed with him were also of the Devil and going straight to Hell. So there was nothing particularly anti-Jewish about his demonization of Jews. The fact that they were Jews was incidental to the fact that they were people who disagreed with him.

In the pre-modern period, all government authority was inherently religious. It was assumed that it was God’s will that a certain person rule. Because of this, there was, almost by definition, no such thing as a non-political religious claim. Every religious claim had political implications and anyone who went against the established religion was by definition engaging in political subversion. For example, if God is not a Catholic then God clearly would not want the Catholic Charles V to rule over his German people and take care of their spiritual welfare like he has the Pope look after their spiritual welfare. Therefore anyone who was not a Catholic in early sixteenth-century Germany was implicitly advocating for the overthrow of Charles V. Because of this it is impossible to ever accuse a pre-modern, Luther or anyone else, of being intolerant of other religions. Luther was perfectly in his rights to advocate the use of violence against Jews or any other religious subversives just as we accept the legitimacy of the use of violence even today against political traitors. And in fact, Jews got off much easier than Luther’s Christian opponents. Luther explicitly warned against directly harming Jews. The fact that Luther only wanted to destroy Jewish property, interfere with the ability of Jews to earn a livelihood and practice their religion while at the same time advocating physical violence against Catholics and Anabaptists begs the question not why Luther was hostile to Jews but why he was not more hostile to them. One suspects that it had something to do with his strong Augustinian leanings.

In conclusion, I do not think it is accurate or helpful to view Luther as an anti-Semite. He was an active opponent of Judaism which is nothing remarkable as to be a Christian, unless you are a very liberal one, requires that one be at least a passive opponent of Judaism, along with every other religion. Luther’s opposition to Judaism was internally consistent. His accusations against Jews are all grounded in solid fact; there was nothing fantastical about them. He took these things to their logical conclusion and endorsed a very reasonable sixteenth-century solution to the problem. Jews today do not have any legitimate grounds for any personal animosity against Luther himself let alone to use Luther as a polemical club against modern-day Lutherans.