Comments on: Michael Lerner says the left would ‘totally demean Israel’

By: Margaret599

Margaret599 — Fri, 01 May 2009 16:23:40 +0000

What about not providing any funding to either side for an interim period? Except for food and other necessities of life funneled through non-aligned actors. Public health in California is taking a beating; I expect people are dieing, if not dead, from lack of dental care – based on my experience when bare bones services were available. For awhile, I wonder if it would be possible to reduce all foreign aid to a minimum, until some of the holes in the 'safety net' of the nation, resulting from the Bush & CO. years, can be repaired.

By: fultro

fultro — Fri, 01 May 2009 00:43:54 +0000

Another brief example: growing up in the 50s / 60s I remember various rivers, lakes and beaches being absolute toxic cesspools – some of which literally exploded and certainly were unswimmable – not to mention the loss of wildlife and commercial fishing. To a great extent (there are new problems now) a lot of this was cleaned up and made habitable again. And this from where I stood did not look like the work of bleeding heart industrialists. So how did these changes occur? I appreciate your ideas about a more religious culture, and so given those conditions do you really believe that sociopaths will somehow be weeded out or will not be allowed into powerful positions to create the dystopia of greed and virtual slavery anyway ?

By: fultro

fultro — Fri, 01 May 2009 00:43:00 +0000

Thanks – there is much there to think about – I will stick to one point here: Was government somehow responsible for creating monopoly capitalism and the robber barons who not only created slave-like working conditions for many Americans (mostly Christian I would guess), but they pissed off other capitalists who couldn't compete and whose innovations were swallowed for the greater greed of the few on top. So how was it that by the 1950s the growing middle class got 40Hr weeks with pensions, better health care (for then), sick leaves, more opportunities for career advancement, etc. , and the economy seemed to be at the top of it's game worldwide – certainly by many people's standards a vast improvement over the free rein of the 19th cent/early 20th cent non-regulated monopolists. (con't)

By: lurker

lurker — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 23:57:46 +0000

as if one had more than the other–anal Witty, the sheltered one–thanks to goys needing jobs and joining the US military

By: Sin Nombre

Sin Nombre — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 17:33:04 +0000

Pfui. If it wasn't for Lend-Lease they'd be speaking German in Moscow right now. And then there's the opening of the Western Front. That's not to dismiss Steveb's excellent point about the contributions of everyone who fought, but there are such things as contributing causes and necessary causes, and in the defeat of Hitler America's efforts were the latter.

By: Ed

Ed — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 16:19:18 +0000

[cont'd] And it is primarily nasty Christian-haters who have seen to it that Big Government has displaced Christianity as the ultimate moral authority. And I would anticipate that if government is itself displaced, America could function along the lines actualized in its early history by the Founders again. But whatever groups, secular or religious, that grow up in the absence of Big Government, they're going to be better than what we've got now. I think the best way to implement such a program would be vouchers, to wean Americans off of their dysfunctional and unhealthy government addiction. Vouchers used for schooling at the parents school of choice, (religious or otherwise) for example, with government setting standards for the three R's, and keeping its paws out of the rest of it. From liberal to conservative, anyone who has faith in their own belief system, and their own value system, should welcome such an opportunity.

By: Ed

Ed — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 16:17:09 +0000

@ fultro: "socio-paths seem always to rule in governments and business despite the best wishes of regular people with the best intentions" Atheistic, anti-spiritual, irreligious, secular-centered societies are inevitably going to produce, tolerate, and encourage dysfunctional, greedy governments and nasty, greedy business people. If one puts their faith in God or their own belief system above government (and most people do), then government needs to be cut back to only the essentials (police, national defense, city planning, etc) and let religious and other value systems take their course. How did the early, libertarian America designed by the Founders function so well for so long without government inserting its hand into everything? Religious institutions took care of what government has now co-opted. [cont'd]

By: rykart

rykart — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 16:13:14 +0000

"a spiritualist/moralist rather than an anarchist or some other self-appointed idiocy" richard "who else?" witty

By: Marion

Marion — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 15:42:07 +0000

Very good points. And I would like to add that the Zionist left which Rabbi Lerner represents is just a different form of the same problem for the Jews, not a solution… No matter how Zionist Jews decide to go about securing the Zionist, so-called Jewish, State of Israel, they are overlooking the fundamental flaw of the Zionist ideology, and no matter how they try to manipulate or present Zionism, it's core will always remain racist…..

By: Marion

Marion — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 15:26:18 +0000

All we have to do is have our government divert US funding for Israel to the Palestinians as reparations….