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I realized something very important about the human condition when I was in high school.
I realized that people tend to hate those who fight evil far more than they hate those engaged in doing evil.
What made me come to this conclusion was the way in which many people reacted to communism and to anti-communism.
To my amazement, a great many people — specifically, all leftists and many, though not all, liberals — hated anti-communists far more than they hated communism.
Because of my early preoccupation with good and evil, already in high school, I hated communism. How could one not, I wondered. Along with Nazism, it was the great evil of the 20th century. Needless to say, as a Jew and as a human, I hated Nazism. But as I was born after Nazism was vanquished, the great evil of my time was communism.
Communists murdered about 100 million people — all noncombatants and all innocent. Stalin murdered about 30 million people, including 5 million Ukrainians by starvation (in just two years: 1932-33). Mao killed about 60 million people. Pol Pot and his Khmer Rouge (Red Cambodians) killed about 3 million people, one in every four Cambodians, between 1975 and 1979. The North Korean communist regime killed between 2 million and 3 million people, not including another million killed in the Korean War started by the North Korean communists.
For every one of the 100 million killed by communists, add at least a dozen more people — family and friends — who were terribly and permanently affected by the death of their family member or friend. Then add another billion whose lives were ruined by having to live in a communist totalitarian state: their poverty, their loss of fundamental human rights, and their loss of dignity.
You would think that anyone with a functioning conscience and with any degree of compassion would hate communism. But that was not the case. Indeed, there were many people throughout the non-communist world who supported communism. And there was an even larger number of people who hated anti-communists, dismissing them as “Cold Warriors,” “warmongers,” “red-baiters,” etc.
At the present time, we are again witnessing this phenomenon — hatred of those who oppose evil rather than of those who do evil — with regard to Israel and its enemies. And on a far greater level. Israel is hated by individuals and governments throughout the world. Israel is the most reviled country at the United Nations as well as in Western media and, of course, in universities.
Israel is a liberal democracy with an independent judiciary, independent opposition press, and equal rights for women, gays and its Arab population (20% of the Israeli population). Its enemies — the Iranian regime, Hamas and Hezbollah — allow no such freedoms to those under their control. More relevantly, their primary goal — indeed, their stated reason for being — is to wipe out Israel and its Jewish inhabitants. Hamas and Hezbollah have built nothing, absolutely nothing, in Gaza and Lebanon, respectively. They exist solely to commit genocide against Israel and its Jews.
Why did so many people hate anti-communists more than communism? And why do even more people hate Israel more than Iran, Hamas and Hezbollah?
The general reason is that it is emotionally and psychologically difficult for most people to stare evil in the face. Evil is widely described as “dark.” But it is not dark; it is easy to look into the dark. What is far harder to look at is blinding bright light. Perhaps that is why Lucifer, the original name of the Christian devil, comes from the word “light.”
Why this is so — why people will not call evil “evil” — is probably related to a lack of courage. Once one declares something evil, one is morally bound to resist it, and people fear resisting evil. The fools who mock Christianity — whether through a work of “art” like “Piss Christ” (a crucifix in a jar of urine), or the Paris Olympics opening ceremony that mocked the Last Supper, or the Los Angeles Dodgers honoring the “Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence” (men in drag dressed as nuns) — would never mock Islam. They fear Muslim wrath; they do not fear Christian wrath. Yet Islamic wrath has done and is doing far more evil in our time than Christian wrath.
And there is one additional reason for hating Israel — one that is specific to Israel — rather than those who seek to exterminate Israel: Jew-hatred, better known as antisemitism. The people who introduced a judging God and gave the world the Ten Commandments have been hated for thousands of years. Not those who systematically violate those commandments.
The irrationality of Judaism prepared the ground for the irrationality of Christianity and both prepared the ground for the irrationality of Islam and modern totalitarianism.
“To the extent to which a man is rational, life is the premise directing his actions. To the extent to which he is irrational, the premise directing his actions is death.” – Ayn Rand
“All rights rest on the fact that man’s life is the moral standard. Rights are rights to the kinds of actions necessary for the preservation of human life. Just as “it is only the concept of ‘life’ that makes the concept of ‘value’ possible,” so it is only the requirements of man’s life that make morality, and thus the concept of “rights,” possible.
All rights rest on the fact that man survives by means of reason. Rights are rights to the actions necessary for the preservation of a rational being. Only an entity with a conceptual faculty has judgment on which to act, volition with which to select goals, and intelligence with which to create wealth.
All rights rest on the fact that man is a productive being. Rights presume that men can live together without anyone’s sacrifice. If man merely consumed objects provided in a static quantity by nature, every man would be a potential threat to every other. In such a case, the rule of life would have to be that which governs the lower species: seize what you can be before others get it, eat or be eaten, kill or be killed.
All rights rest on the ethics of egoism. Rights are an individual’s selfish possessions—his title to his life, his liberty, his property, the pursuit of his own happiness. Only a being who is an end in himself can claim a moral sanction to independent action. If man existed to serve an entity beyond himself, whether God or society, then he would not have rights, but only the duties of a servant.” – Leonard Peikoff
I think we will have to include the phrase “prepared the ground” in our drinking game. It is one of your (or is it Lenny’s?) favorite and overused hackneyed observations….right up there with “altruism”.
Obviously there really isn’t all that much to your pet philosophy because you only use a couple of paragraphs from your fave raves over and over again. I guess you figure that we intellectual peons simply aren’t smart enough to grasp the daunting “complexities” of Objectionism.
Maybe we should adopt the phrase ‘rinse and repeat’ to our lexicon. Seems to be all you ever do.
John the Randist is like our own personal “man in the desert crying out.” Amusing isn’t it?
Just keep rackin’ up those downvotes, Mr. Individuality.
You are one stupid MO-FO!
Judaism is the most rational of all thought systems and has brought order out of the chaos of a might-makes-right system. As Hitler notably said.. he hated Jews because they brought conscience into the world as opposed to the Teutonic concept of might make- right and I can make up my own rules idea of Esau, and all other meglomaniacs throughout history. Belief in God and the Ten Commandments is the only source of moralty without which the entire civilized world will collapse, without restraint, under the weight of its own egocentric rules. I want what I want when I want it and since I am stronger than you- try to stop me.
You say “the moral standard.” Who’s moral standard? yours? mine? Intrepid’s?
If man existed to serve an entity beyond himself, whether God or society, then he would not have rights, but only the duties of a servant.” – Leonard Peikoff
This is the dumbest f*cking thing I have ever heard. That is rational?? So to serve myself because I want the Raptor next door, I should shoot and kill the owner. Then it is mine because MY moral standard allows for such shit. I don’t believe this to be the case because I am a Christian and the moral standard I live by does not allow for such actions. I serve God and to that end I treat my fellow man as I would be treated. I have right of self. So did the owner of the Raptor. He was well within his “rights” to make my head look like a canoe.
Do you ever think through what you cut and paste? To critically analyze what these self absorbed assholes you quote are saying?
Winston Churchill was much hated by the British People who called him, that bloody old war monger, imperialist & an agent of the Jews and voted out after VE day. Margret Thatcher was referred to, as another bloody Churchill after Britain’s victory in The Falklands War
Not sure I’d include Mrs Thatcher. She ordered the evacuation of troops from the Falklands, thus issuing an open invitation to Argentina to invade, because she needed the boost that a successful war would give to her chances of re-election. My aunt was a civil servant in the British Admiralty at the time, and she described how angry the Admiralty bosses were about the entirely unnecessary order to sink the General Belgrano.
The cowards who hide their faces from us who are they really?!
Your piece revolves around Israel but the hatred extends from an early life experience that will never be forgotten. At puberty or even sooner in school the lines are drawn. A small group of kids are ostracized for physical, emotional or intellectual reasons.
The emotional reasons are genetically based in a poorly developed amygdala. It can never change. The kid immediately runs for the other victims who form a group that hates everyone else throughout life. Logic and life cannot wash away the terrible experience of their youth. These people are easily led to be foot soldiers in favor of the “oppressed ” group of the day and will continue a lifelong crusade in the direction in which they are pointed.
(Perhaps that is why Lucifer, the original name of the Christian devil, comes from the word “light.” )
lozrfr-zatan was the angel of light – his pride and ego got out of check and wanted to be G-D and rebelled along with 1/3 of Heaven’s angels
What’s my point? More people are calling the evil in this world today as demonic.
From “Canopy of Angels” :
Demons come as angels of light
But are flash of light with dead shadows~
========================================================================================
Canopy of Angels
————————–
Canopy of Angels
Surround the earth
Harmony of Wings
Touch keeping angels’
Algorithms connected
Their hands clasp together
In prayer, thanksgiving and praise
Demons come as angels of light
But are flash of light with dead shadows~
Seek only life and the eternal light in life ~!~
~From Eternity to Eternity~
~!~Do I love You~!~
~!~ To the eternity of infinite possibilities ~ !~
Etchings in the Ectoplasm the cosmos of time.
Human chronos is planetary gears
Planetary gears is the chronos of time.
Chronos of time is planetary gears.
Planetary gears are the chronos of human time.
You’re a miracle in my life.
Canopy of Angels (c)MSC Bored Bunny Toons 8/20/2021 0526 -7GMT
Jews tend to be successful, physically attractive, and happy, happy in spite of the hatred directed towards them. Anyone, Jew or non Jew, who possesses these three attributes will have enemies aplenty. Successful Israel stands out in the middle of its failed neighbors like the proverbial sore thumb.
Leftists hate people who succeed in adversity without needing any form of positive discrimination or mobile goalposts to help them, because it undermines their entire platform.
“To my amazement, a great many people — specifically, all leftists and many, though not all, liberals — hated anti-communists far more than they hated communism.” Let’s clarify this…those who hated the anti-Communists were Democrats, those who hated the Communists, the ones the Democrats hated, were Republicans.
“What made me come to this conclusion was the way in which many people reacted to communism and to anti-communism.
To my amazement, a great many people — specifically, all leftists and many, though not all, liberals — hated anti-communists far more than they hated communism.”
Perhaps this explains Horowitz’s unhinged attack on Diana West, when she exposed the FDR administration during WW2, as George Crocker had done years before?
https://mises.org/library/book/roosevelts-road-russia