My Big Sister Can Beat Up Your Big Brother Any Day

The Baltimore Sun magazine has an article on Masada Tactical and their self-defense courses. The person being strangled in the picture is my sister. I missed out on the chance to do that as a kid and now trying might not be good for my health.   

Feminists in Burqas: A Response to Clarissa

Clarissa has a post up about a Gender Studies series of lectures on "Liberating Potential of the Burqa." Clarissa laments the fact that this is not a sign of the feminist movement gaining a sense of humor, but is meant in full earnestness as a study of how the burqa might be used to "liberate women from being constantly victimized by the desire implicit in a male gaze." As to this notion of the male gaze, Clarissa notes:

I never got this whole drama about people being demeaned or "objectified" (what a silly word!) by another person's gaze. If somebody looks at you and finds you attractive, it isn't something they can control. Whether they act on their desire for you can be controlled, of course. But the feeling of desire cannot. Only a very puritanical world-view believes that desire is inherently evil and has to be feared. As for objectification, other people are always objects of our actions. That's implicit in the rules of grammar. "I see you, I like you, I help you, I respect you, I support you" - in all of these sentences "I" is the only subject, while "you" is always an object. Other people are always objects of our feelings, actions, thoughts, etc. Being an object of somebody else's actions can be both good and bad, depending on the content of the action.


Every day, as I walk around, people see me and form attitudes towards me on the basis of what they see. Even if these attitudes are negative, why should I care? Why should I hide myself behind a bulky piece of covering? Why should I grant others such a huge power over my life? Instead of spending our lives fearing the judgment we believe is present in the gaze of other people, shouldn't we concentrate on our own desires, thoughts, and experiences? Who cares what some unknown man who sees me on the bus thinks of me? If he thinks I'm attractive, that's his right. If he sits there thinking, "Oh, Jeez, what an ugly woman," that's his right too.


I suspect that I differ from Clarissa in that I have no deep-seated objection to the burqa, seeing it as something, in of itself, neutral in terms of women's empowerment. A burqa could mean a mean trying to gain control over a woman by making her ashamed of her body and to feel guilty for "leading men astray." A burqa could equally be a woman's way of empowering herself and engaging in a critic of a male-dominated culture which objectifies women. The fact that historically the burqa has tended to more often serve the former function does not mean it cannot be made to serve the latter. I would even argue that our best hope in defeating the patriarchal implications of the burqa is not by head-on eliminating the burqa, but in embracing the burqa while subverting it.

Ultimately my willingness to not oppose the burqa is rooted in my willingness to only recognize the validity of physical harm. Like Clarissa, I see nothing intrinsically wrong with the male gaze, but again only because it does not cause physical harm. A man might have all the patriarchal intentions in the world, but that has no effect on the person being observed, who is free to interpret the gaze and feel about as desired. Since the observed person is as such free it carries the full responsibility for how it reacts to being observed, an objectively neutral action.

If there is one thing that Clarissa and I agree on here, it is, I believe, a concern that the self-proclaimed liberal activism of those in Gender Studies departments might become an exercise in going far enough to the left and ending up on the right. Who is going to inherit the benefits of feminist attempts to liberate women from patriarchy? The historical law of unintended consequences leads one to wonder if it might not be patriarchal men armed with new academic jargon to back their biblical truths. As long as individuals can be subjected to the non-physical concerns of others there can be no secure rights for women or any men.   

Separate Schools for Autistics

Ari Ne’eman has an article responding to the recent proposal by Gov. Chris Christie to fund an autism school in every county in New Jersey. In what might strike some people as being counter intuitive for an autism advocate, Ari opposes this proposal and for good reason, considering his own childhood experience. As Ari points out:

As an autistic adult who went through New Jersey's special education system as a child, I experience firsthand the low expectations that are all too common in segregated settings for students with disabilities.


For several years of my childhood, instead of walking to the neighborhood public school a few minutes away from my home, a van took me an hour and a half away to a school for students with disabilities. There, academics took a back seat to social skills classes. A culture of low expectations dominated the educational environment.

I cannot say that I support separate government schools for autistics mainly because I do not support government schools in the first place for anyone. That being said, I worry that by advocating integration we are missing an opportunity. Could not we, in the autistic community, take over such a school and give the children the sort of autistic education they can actually succeed with? If we believe that autism is a difference of mind not a disability then it follows that autistic children would benefit from a learning program designed specifically for them. To grow through the regular public school system, means starting out with special education, guaranteed, by definition, to treat us as inferiors, in the hope of eventually being able to integrate into a wider school, which might not really be a victory either.

The weakness of any integrationist policy is that it, by definition, enshrines the majority culture as the “superior” one to be integrated into. As long as we are trying to be like neurotypicals, we can shout at the top of our lungs that we are their equals, but we will not and they will have every reason to continue to treat us with contempt as their inferiors. This can be seen already in Ari’s own school experience. I am sure his teachers meant well and desired to give him the skills to eventually be able to integrate. That being said they were forcing him to spend time developing skills that he might not have had any particular aptitude with; time that could have been better spent developing those skills he could make best use of. At a more fundamental level the very valuing of neurotypical social skills holds up neurotypicals as the superior thing to which us autistics should try to emulate. If this was going on at an autistic school, how much worse would it be at a regular public school, a system designed around the valuation of socialization at the expense of the simple transfer of knowledge?

I am not saying that autistics have no need to be taught to socialize with neurotypicals, just that socializing, beyond being able to communicate a rational case as to why someone should do what you want, has no intrinsic value. That still leaves the attempt to play on the emotions of others to get them to conform to one’s desires. We generally call such activity manipulation and I have serious qualms about the morality of teaching such skills in school.

What might a real neurodiversity based autistic school look like? For starters we would have to take control away from people whose primary training is special education. As long as we are beholden to that model we will forever be trapped in the cycle of trying to catch up and by like neurotypicals. We need the school to be in the hands of people whose experience is not in treating autism, but in living it. The very concept of a classroom is based on a model of education as socialization and therefore needs to be scraped. In its place we offer a “school” as a building in which children are supervised and restrained from causing harm to others and to themselves; within such a framework children should be left to pursue their own interests. For teachers we should not be searching for education specialists at all, but experts in specific fields. Their purpose is to identify what specific fields of knowledge any given child possesses a predilection for and to work with that child to create specific assignments through which the child can pursue an area of interest. This could be something as simple as agreeing to read a book by a given date, write a report on it or be prepared to talk about it.

The success of the neurodiversity movement is going to depend on our ability to not just claim that we are different though still equal, but on our ability to put that into practice. We need to show that we can produce experts in specific fields of value. Do that and society will readily grant us the accommodations we need. To do this we are going to have to start with the education system and we are going to need to take control of it.

Now that is Integrity

A while back I posted on the need to be repulsed by the mere idea of improperly taking government money and my horror at a young man who claimed not to see anything wrong in stealing from the government. At its roots integrity is about the recognition of what you deserve and a loathing to receive anything other than that. The moment someone loses that moral compass of “I should not have it therefore I do not want it” it becomes possible, and even perhaps inevitable, to accept playing outside the rules


One can see baseball’s malady this past decade of star baseball players using steroids as based in this lack of integrity. Millions of dollars are at stake and players desire to extend their careers. If it means violating some rules well then it is not like they are actually hurting anyone and besides “everyone else is doing it.” This is the logic of someone who wants millions of dollars as opposed to someone who wishes to earn millions of dollars and do it in complete honesty.

So what are we to make of Royals pitcher Gil Meche who declined the $12 million of the last year of his contract because he did not feel he was playing well enough to deserve that kind of money? Legally he had every right to this money and no one would have questioned him for taking it. How many people here (me included) have that kind of integrity to not be able to bring oneself to accept millions of dollars that was not completely deserved.

As a libertarian I would add that there is a lesson here in the how and why statist regimes come to power. Contrary to what some of you might think, libertarianism is not about greed. Quite the contrary it is rooted in the moral integrity to only want what one honestly deserves. It is the statist that suffers from greed and that is how the government ensnares them. People look around and see others with more than they have. They are not criminals and would never dream of actually stealing, but still they are consumed with the desire to have that which by law they have no right to. Even worse than simple materialist greed is the jealously of wanting something not for its own sake, but precisely because someone else has it. Keep this up long enough and a person will believe that they “deserve” what the other person has regardless of any law and if the law does not come to this “correct” solution it needs to be made more “practical” to fit the “reality” of day to day life. It is at this point that the statist politician enters the picture and offers to use government to give you what belongs to someone else (this includes anything paid for with someone else’s tax dollars) in the interest of “fairness.”

The vast majority of Americans lack the integrity to not desire what they have not honestly earned and politicians from both parties eagerly cater to this moral weakness. What most people do not realize that there is a hidden price to pay. Allowing the government to take money in the interest of fairness means the government now has the right to take your money in the interest of someone else’s “fairness.” You agree to let the government give you a single penny of someone else’s money you are really signing over to the government everything you own. Every election cycle the American population happily sells itself into slavery and thanks the government for being so kind as to slap on the chains of bondage. So who here can resist the temptation to accept from the government something they have not worked for and earned? Who has the integrity to be a free man?

G. K. Chesterton and Jewish Hats

I think it would make a wonderful discussion exercise to hand out a sample of G. K. Chesterton's writing about Jews to be read by a group and ask them to judge whether or not Chesterton was an anti-Semite. I suspect that a more Haredi audience would actually find that they relate very well to Chesterton and accept where he is coming from. A group of more liberal Jews would find Chesterton utterly offensive.

In my mind at least, Chesterton wrote one of the most eloquent pieces on the importance of Jews maintaining a separate mode of dress. Chesterton states:


Thus we cannot help feeling, for instance, that there is something a little grotesque about the Hebrew habit of putting on a top-hat as an act of worship.

…

Nobody can say that a top-hat was among the strange utensils dedicated to the obscure service of the Ark; nobody can suppose that a top-hat descended from heaven among the wings and wheels of the flying visions of the Prophets.

…

It is solely the special type and shape of hat that makes the Hebrew ritual seem ridiculous. Performed in the old original Hebrew fashion it is not ridiculous, but rather if anything sublime.

For the original fashion was an oriental fashion; and the Jews are orientals; and the mark of such orientals is the wearing of long and loose draperies. To throw those loose draperies over the head is decidedly a dignified and even poetic gesture.

…

It may be true, and personally I think it is true, that the Hebrew covering of the head signifies a certain stress on the fear of God, which is the beginning of wisdom, while the Christian uncovering of the head suggests rather the love of God that is the end of wisdom.

But this has nothing to do with the taste and dignity of the ceremony; and to do justice to these we must treat the Jews as an oriental; we must even dress him as an oriental.

…

I have felt disposed to say: let all liberal legislation stand, let all literal and legal civic equality stand; let a Jew occupy any political or social position which he can gain in open competition; let us not listen for a moment to any suggestions of reactionary restrictions or racial privilege. Let a Jew be Lord Chief justice, if his exceptional veracity and reliability have clearly marked him out for that post. Let a Jew be Archbishop of Canterbury, if our national religion has attained to that receptive breadth that would render such a transition unobjectionable and even unconscious. But let there be one single-clause bill; one simple and sweeping law about Jews, and no other.

Be it enacted, by the King's Most Excellent Majesty, by and with the advice of the Lords Spiritual and Temporal and the Commons in Parliament assembled, that every Jew must be dressed like an Arab.


(New Jerusalem kindle 3078-3114.)


I can only imagine what Chesterton might think if he had lived to see black fedora hats go out of fashion among non-Jews and be embraced by Haredim as the national Jewish hat.

Peter Cunaeus’ Biblical Turn to the Redistribution of Wealth

Eric Nelson's The Hebrew Republic: Jewish Sources and the Transformation of European Political Thought is an analysis of the origins of Enlightenment political liberalism. Nelson makes the case, that contrary to popular belief, Enlightenment political liberalism came out of not secularism, but early modern Christian Hebraism and its turn toward the Old Testament as a political constitution, particularly at the expense of classical sources. Aristotelian political thought could recognize monarchy, aristocracy and democracy as all being legitimate forms of political authority. For early modern Christian Hebraists, the Old Testament recognized one form of government as being legitimate, the republic.

One of the issues that Nelson discusses that caught my attention is the redistribution of wealth. He argues that before the sixteenth century all discussions about the redistribution of wealth took as their starting point Cicero's vehement rejection of Roman agrarian reform laws, whether that of the Gracchi brothers or that of Julius Caesar, which attempted to give land to Rome's poor. Even opponents of private property like Machiavelli and Thomas More based their opposition solely on civic morality and not out of a desire to create a more equitable society. According to Nelson:

 
When [Peter] Cunaeus, professor of jurisprudence at the University of Leiden, came to reflect on the equal division of land mandated by God among Israelite families and tribes – it seemed immediately obvious to him that this should be called an "agrarian law" (lex agraria), just like the one proposed by Licinius Stolo among the Romans. With one small gesture of analogy, Cunaeus rendered the agrarian laws not only respectable but also divinely sanctioned. If God had ordained agrarian laws in his own commonwealth, then Cicero had to be wrong. (pg. 64.)


Cicero's opposition to agrarian laws made him a hero for libertarians such as Hayek, who saw in Cicero the foundational figure of the principled defense of private property as the very basis of any law and order society. History vindicated Cicero as the agrarian laws turned out to be cover for Caesar's takeover of power and the destruction of the Roman republic. So who do we blame for the West's turn away from path of Cicero, the Bible or Christians trying to interpret the Bible and making a mess out of it (as usual)?

G. K. Chesterton in Defense of Greek

There is something highly maddening in the circumstance that when modern people attack an institution that really does demand reform, they always attack it for the wrong reasons. Thus many opponents of our public schools, imagining themselves to be very democratic, have exhausted themselves in an unmeaning attack upon the study of Greek. I can understand how Greek may be regarded as useless, especially by those thirsting to throw themselves into the cut throat commerce which is the negation of citizenship; but I do not understand how it can be considered undemocratic.
I quite understand why Mr. [Andrew] Carnegie has a hatred of Greek. It is obscurely funded on the firm and sound impression that in any self-governing Greek city he would have been killed. But I cannot comprehend why any chance democrat, say Mr. Quelch, or Mr. Will Crooks, I or Mr. John M. Robertson, should be opposed to people learning the Greek alphabet, which was the alphabet of liberty. Why should Radicals dislike Greek? In that language is written all the earliest and, Heaven knows, the most heroic history of the Radical party. Why should Greek disgust a democrat, when the very word democrat is Greek? (What's Wrong with the World kindle 1954-61.)


To my readers: what course of study would you propose to spread through our general education system to revive our flagging public civic democratic spirit?

My Relationship Status

• 

Well, I am back to being gloriously single and struggling to make progress on my dissertation. So why am I still so gloriously single?

Is it:

A) I am married to writing my dissertation and incapable of forming another meaningful relationship.

B) I am a natural sucker for women who will use me as it suits their purpose and then cast me out when I am no longer convenient.

C) I am an obsessive neurotic control freak who frightens people away.

D) I am an Asperger who only thinks of myself and incapable of understanding the mind of another person, let alone a woman.

E) I have just yet to meet the right person for me.

A Point in Favor of Anarcho-Libertarianism

A few months ago I debated David Friedman about the plausibility of his system anarcho-libertarian private companies providing all functions of government including law enforcement and courts. My argument against him then was that a necessary element of government is that it is unchallengeable in its basic legitimacy. I may dislike a specific result, but I do not have the option of simply exchanging my government like I would an insurance company, which is precisely what Friedman's system would do. Another of the major issues I have been discussing is that of the necessity of "de-citizenship" trials. Since citizenship is based on a social contract, it is necessary that everyone accept the social contract. The burden of proof should on every person to make the case that they accept the social contract. If there is any doubt about a person's acceptance then that person can and should be stripped of citizenship and placed outside the social contract. This could even apply to entire groups such as Jews. It recently occurred to me that, while a formal government, and particularly one operating on the principles of modern liberalism, might have some difficulty putting these principles into practice, a private insurance style government, like the one advocated for by Friedman, would be able to handle this quite effectively.

As I mentioned previously, one of the weaknesses of modern political thought is that it approaches the social contract as something given and not as something earned. In the extreme, this leads to modern liberal notions of an ever-expanding field of rights in which every desire is transformed into a right. The reason for this is that if one does not have a sense that every right in the social contract given must be paid for in kind then one has no reason to not think of everything as a right and demand it, particularly when you take into account the assumption that every other faction in society is doing the same. For example, a gay rights advocate might hesitate to demand the right of homosexuals to blackmail the rest of society into not doing anything that might hurt their feelings if they knew that the price for this was that Evangelical Christians were to be given those same "rights" to ban gay speech "hurtful" to them. Yes everyone might have the right to life, liberty, and property in some sort of theoretical moral sense, but the only way they could ever actualize those rights is if they were under the jurisdiction of some sort of government with a social contract, demanding that the government protect those rights. The price that must be paid for these rights is staggering. It means giving the government the right to kill you, imprison you and confiscate your property as long as it can claim that it is acting to protect the rights of the members of society at large.

There is a clear advantage in making every person earn their way into the social contract, mainly that it keeps everyone honest. It would make it that cheating the social contract would actually require some effort. One would actually have to watch one's thoughts and actions to make sure they complied with the spirit of the social contract. Also, formalizing the social contract would stop it from turning into a magic goodie bag with which to demand anything. Modern liberal thought, by definition, is incapable of this and even libertarian thought would require some arguing for.

Abolish all traditional public government and leave everyone to sign up for a private insurance style government and the problem is instantly solved. Every person would have to convince their prospective company that they are not a liability and can be trusted to live by the agreed upon social contract. Since the bureaucrats would also be members of the same company they would be conscious of the need to not let just anyone in, but only one who would actually benefit the other members. Keep in mind that any downgrade in the company will cause members to defect in mass to another company waiting to offer a better deal. The established companies could easily come to a recognition of each other, limiting the need for warfare. What we would be left with is a two-tiered system. On the top would be those with memberships in one of the companies and then there would be everyone else, who can be shot, enslaved or imprisoned at will. The fact that these people are unable to negotiate a deal with anyone would suggest that they are either too irrational or too dangerous to be trusted and best eliminated for the benefit of those with company membership.

Not that I support anarcho-libertarianism, but this seems to be a strong point in its favor worth taking into consideration.

Amy Chua: Possibly a Better Mother than Historian

Yale Law professor Amy Chua has recently been making headlines with her book Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, a misleading excerpt of which was published in the Wall Street Journal, about the "superiority" of Asian mothers, who do not let their children attend sleepovers, insult their children for failing to achieve academic excellence and make them practice music for hours on end. I found the whole thing amusing as this was not the first time Amy Chua has crossed my radar. Several years ago I had a lot of fun posting on her book Day of Empire and her utter incompetency as a historian. I think it is worthwhile to note that, from what I can tell, Chua does not appear to force her daughters to spend hours on end attempting to critically analyze primary and secondary sources, something that Chua is clearly unable to do and has written a book proving it.

Unlike her many critics, I will not question Chua's abilities as a mother and keep my knocking of her to the realm of history. Actually, I think there is a lot to be said for Chua's style of parenting. While not nearly as intense as what Chua describes, my parents were much stricter with me than most of my peer's parents were with them and I benefited from that. The point that Chua makes that struck the strongest chord with me was:

What Chinese parents understand is that nothing is fun until you're good at it. To get good at anything you have to work, and children on their own never want to work, which is why it is crucial to override their preferences. This often requires fortitude on the part of the parents because the child will resist; things are always hardest at the beginning, which is where Western parents tend to give up. But if done properly, the Chinese strategy produces a virtuous circle. Tenacious practice, practice, practice is crucial for excellence; rote repetition is underrated in America. Once a child starts to excel at something—whether it's math, piano, pitching or ballet—he or she gets praise, admiration and satisfaction. This builds confidence and makes the once not-fun activity fun. This in turn makes it easier for the parent to get the child to work even more.

This is a key argument used by educational theorist Daniel Willingham in his book Why Don't Students Like School. Willingham argues for the value of homework and repetitive drilling, particularly in the early grades. The idea is that learning in any given field requires a certain baseline of knowledge and a set of skills. You either have it or you do not and there is no fun easy way to get it. The only option is to just drill it in. Once a child has gained the necessary skills then the real education can begin and yes it can be fun.

I am good with history and enjoy it because I made myself memorize loads of historical facts as a kid and therefore have a baseline knowledge and skills now to read even really difficult works of history. In contrast, I never really developed the necessary skills in reading Talmud. My high school yeshiva education was therefore hell as I floated along accomplishing nothing. Today I have a mental block when it comes to the topic and avoid it. Perhaps I needed a Tiger Mother to drill me into a Talmudic scholar.

Easy Libertarianism (Part II)

(Part I)


Baruch Pelta has posted his final thoughts on our discussion about libertarianism. He attempts to turn the tables on me in terms of authoritarianism, arguing that I desire to force my views on government on others despite the fact that the vast majority of people disagree with me about limiting government to only protecting against direct physical harm. He asks what I would do if I ever got my way and libertarian policies failed to work. How do I intend to protect American workers from being "crushed" by corporations? What would I do about radical Islamic schools teaching children how to be terrorists? In the end Baruch sees my "hard libertarianism" as no different from a Marxist or an anarchist. "All three of these belief systems require their adherents to accept on faith their economic theories, views of human potential, and philosophical constructs."

To start with that last point, libertarianism is not just another political ideology, but an attempt to transcend all political ideologies. Being a libertarian does not mean you reject other political ideologies, one could be a libertarian Marxist or a religious theocrat, just that you reject the use of government force in pursuit of those ideological goals.

What would a libertarian country look like? It would be thousands of experiments simultaneously conducted to discover the best ways to live and organize society. Every town and neighborhood could organize itself around any ideology it chooses. You could have a liberal town that kept corporations in check and offered free education and health care. Down the highway there could be a Haredi town that bans television and does not allow women to drive. Travel further down and you could find a socialist kibbutz where everything is held in common. Despite my libertarianism, I have no desire to live in a "libertarian" town. I may believe that drugs and prostitution should be legal, but I have no desire to live near a brothel, a crack den or the people who frequent either. My freedom of association allows me to pay to live in a place without these things and, to protect my investment, make a contract banning the town from ever bringing such things in. (The white supremacist in pursuit of his own happiness could make the same bargain to ban blacks and Jews.) Libertarian America would like a lot like the present day America just without people in Washington trying to force one size fits all solutions to this country's problems.

With this in mind the other issues fall into place. If liberal policies really proved to work better in practice than the alternatives and it is very possible that they might then I would be free to accept them. This would in no way be a pragmatic rejection of my libertarian beliefs. If liberal policies worked than the liberal towns in libertarian America would be more prosperous. Seeing that, people would rush to move into liberal towns or turn their towns to liberalism. Before you know it most of libertarian America could be liberal. This would not change the government in Washington, which would continue to concern itself solely with protecting people, no matter their political ideology, from physical harm. This means foreigners trying to attack libertarian America, and Americans trying to destroy libertarian America from within by forcing their values on others.

Would libertarian America be trapped into tolerating radical Islamic schools that endorsed terrorism, without actually carrying it out? Would libertarian America have to wait until hordes of jihadist children poured out of these schools? Not necessarily. Nothing against Islam here; the same would apply to any group that turned to violence. Keep in mind that libertarianism is not rooted in an absolutist ideology, but a pragmatic social contract, a plausible agreement that a society with many factions might come to in order to stave off massive violence. I tolerate liberals, Haredim, Marxists and even Muslims for the simple reason that it is the only alternative to shooting them and having them shoot at me. If the libertarian social contract failed to protect me then the contract serves no purpose. I only refrain from pulling a Baruch Goldstein on my local Islamic school, because I believe that my government will protect me from any potential terrorists. The moment I stop believing that then I am off to kill every last person in that school.

A social contract is not a moral absolute made with the entire world. I have no social contract with people in Mexico or Canada. They may be very nice people and I wish them the best, but they are outside my social contract. For that matter not everyone living in the United States has to be a citizen and come under the social contract either. It is for this reason that the slavery tolerated by the Constitution would not necessarily contradict libertarianism. Slaves were not citizens and therefore outside the social contract. Muslims do not have an intrinsic right to be citizens and be part of the social contract. Muslims in foreign countries are certainly not. Muslims who are American citizens are part of the social contract to the extent that I believe them when they claim to not be plotting to wage war against me. Even in libertarian America, if I hear a Muslim saying that Jews are pigs and should be killed, I am going to call my representative and tell him that I no longer feel physically safe and demand that he choose between that Muslim and me. Unless they strip that Muslim of his citizenship and make sure he is no longer a threat, I will reject the social contract and turn to war. (See Crimes of De-Citizenship.)

Did Print Create a Counter Revolution in Judaism?

Robert Bonfil, in "Jewish Attitudes toward History and Historical Writing in Pre-Modern Times," argues for the field of history as having an important role in Judaism, contrary to the position of Yosef Yerushalmi. Bonfil focuses on the case of R. Joseph Caro in the sixteenth century, who banned the reading of "profane bellettristic and erotic literature, such as the book of Immanuel as well as books of wars" on the Sabbath as well as on weekdays. Bonfil sees this position as an innovation. It is far more stringent than even that of Maimonides, who may have philosophically objected to history but never stepped in with a legal ban. For Bonfil this marks a shift in the rabbinic response both to history specifically and secular literature in general due to the rise of print.



As is well known, the authoritarian control over knowledge characteristic of the Middle Ages and particularly of frames of mind such as Maimonides', made possible a wide range of medieval production of profane Hebrew literature, including of course historical writing. I suggest that such a cohabitation of sacred and profane, licit and illicit, was no longer possible now that, in the wake of the printing revolution, effective control over reading material had been lost. A careful definition of boundaries now became necessary. The learned arbiters of Jewish culture, who defined borders according to criteria "known" only to themselves, lost much of their former control over the intellectual activities of the masses. Decisions could no longer be made exclusively by the learned elites. The lost control had therefore to be restored by codifying the elimination of arbitrarity, i.e., by establishing very strict definitions. In so doing, without at the same time radically reforming ancient and medieval basic assumptions, codification was almost inevitably forced into further strictures. (pg. 16)

 This certainly goes against the popular conception of print as a liberalizing force, but it fits with the trend we see in the Catholic Church. The Catholic Church did not create an Index or wage any organized campaigns to ban books until the sixteenth century, when printing became a major force.

A Helpful Message to Finish My Dissertation

Today I was reading up on John of Rupescissa. He was a fourteenth-century Franciscan apocalyptic visionary. He believed that the Jews would convert and be saved in the end. He also, like seemingly every self-respecting Franciscan of the period, got into trouble with the Church and spent the last years of his life in prison, (something to do with having very "un-Christian" ideas about Church poverty) from where he did most of his writings, ranging from the end of the world to alchemy. Tommaso Campanella, another Christian apocalyptic visionary I am studying, also spent over twenty years in prison for his part in a failed political revolution in Naples. (This was after he managed to convince the Inquisition he was insane by being tortured for two days straight.) He also used his time in prison to write productively and was released to spend the last few years of his life as a European court celebrity. Then there is the example of St. John of the Cross; my spiritual guide through depression. His inspiring poetry on life in a spiritual abyss, The Dark Night of the Soul, benefited from a year spent locked away against his will. (I could, of course, also mention Adolf Hitler, who managed to produce Mein Kempf during a year spent in prison, but he does not fit under medieval and early modern Christian thinkers.)  

I cannot help but feel that I am being sent a message, one that I would rather not hear. That the best place to write is not the office, the library, or even on a couch with the TV on, but in prison doing hard time for treason and heresy. So I need to go to federal prison as a violent religious apocalyptic revolutionary. To do that I am going to need to start a violent religious apocalyptic movement. (All violent religious apocalyptic actions will of course be carried out by erring disciples who have distorted my teachings.) In order to learn how to start such a movement, I will need to finish writing my dissertation. But of course, I cannot hope to finish my dissertation unless I go to prison.