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As the war between Israel and Gaza rages on, some inevitable questions must be raised. If Hamas, an indisputable rogue organization that governs a region which exists more like a plot of land in a state of nature than as a civilized geographic entity, is not totally obliterated (which, with sentimental calls for ceasefires and daily pauses in aerial bombings and ground incursions on Israel’s part, seems unlikely), then can Hamas be politically rehabilitated? What would such rehabilitation look like? Or should we be thinking of more robust and radical solutions such as global incarceration whereby a country is evicted from the community of nations and radically contained militarily?
The most draconian form of global incarceration of a state or region is the permanent disbandment of a state into regional disembodiments, sedimentary fragments chiseled into the mortar bodies of larger states with no chance of it ever recovering its political solvency. It is the absolute disappearance of a state without necessarily terminating the lives of its former citizens. It includes but is not limited to the deracination of its political culture, the destruction of its political institutions and its mores, customs, and norms. Radical assimilation and/or extreme containment are the political concomitants and the direct corollaries of this mandate. Global incarceration of a state or region is the death of its political life and its capacity to generate and regenerate life as it was once capable of doing. An incarcerated state or region is not just a neutralized state – it is a neutered state.
On the slim chance that a heavily compromised, Hamas-governed Gaza exists, what might it look like, and how would it come about?
Here it might be helpful to look to history for political and moral guidance. Japan and Germany in World War II were countries that went through political rehabilitation and, with the aid of the United States, had their entire identities reconstituted. In the case of Japan, a heavily influenced U.S Constitution was foisted on it with great success, albeit via warfare. Sometimes rehabilitation requires war. Sometimes it requires firm diplomacy, or economic sanctions, or military intervention, or absolute regime change. What is essential about rehabilitation in the political sense is that there is adaptation to a code of normative behavior to which the rogue state must adhere. The rogue entity adapts to the norms of a civilizational order.
Imperial Japan was brought to its knees in the aftermath of its attack on the United States of America. As an enemy it was completely vanquished and subjected to the imposition of a Constitution by which it was forced to govern; but more than that: under the order of the Supreme Commander of the Allied Powers (SCAP), it was forced to relinquish several of its cultural and religious practices, values and traditions that were deemed anathema to the spirit and letter of the law of a democratically conceived republic.
In his seminal work, Nothing Less Than Victory: Decisive Wars and the Lessons of History, John David Lewis notes that we inhabit a moral climate in which any attempts by victors of war to impose cultural values onto others is routinely condemned. This is because we have accepted, for the most part, that victory itself would grow new grievances and ensure more destructive conflicts in the future. Those who wage war to enslave nations and states or continents or to impose their dictatorships are seeking immoral ends and, as such, they cannot be judged morally equal to persons who defend against such attacks. Warfare is fundamentally a clash of moral purposes. The goal of any moral war is the subjugation of the hostile will of the enemy; or, war is an act of force to compel the enemy to do our will. Its primary objective is the overcoming of the hostile will to resist. As Lewis notes: the destruction of the enemy’s armed forces is not the object of war; neither is the occupation of his territory. These are all means to an end. The fundamental and irreducible end is the overcoming of the enemy’s will to resist. Once that will is broken and it disintegrates, then capitulation will follow.
Lewis argues that the “center” of a nation’s strength is not a center of gravity as a point of balance but is, instead, the essential source of ideological and moral strength. When broken, it is impossible for the adversary to continue the war. The tide of war is turned when one side has tasted defeat and its will to continue collapses.
In the aftermath of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the humiliating defeat of Japan, the military regime of Japan was revealed as a total failure. It was the American military occupation that brought an alternative to the Japanese people. Between the years September 1945 through April 1952, the Japanese lived under the SCAP. All of Japan was properly under American control. There were no divisions of the country, and incidentally, during the occupation not one single American soldier, Lewis notes, was killed by hostile action in Japan. When in 1945 the anticipated number of 500,000 troops fell to 102, 000 by 1948, General Douglas MacArthur noted that, In the accomplishment of the extraordinarily difficult and dangerous surrender in Japan, unique in the annals of history, not a shot was necessary, not a drop of Allied blood was shed.
Lewis emphasizes that the concept of absolute defeat was driven deeply into the minds of the Japanese, and a one-sided relationship with the Americans was established. The occupation was forced on the Japanese, not negotiated. They had to be made to realize that it was because of their lawlessness and militarism that suffering and defeat had been brought upon them and that only when such militarism had been eliminated from their lives and institutions would Japan be admitted into the family of moral nations. All attempts by Japan to bargain were cut off. As Japanese officials communicated their desire to President Truman to control their own foreign embassies he replied that all instructions would be communicated by the Supreme Commander at appropriate times determined by him. All attempts by the Japanese to direct American maneuverings in their direct favor was interpreted by President Truman as an attempt on the part of the defeated to bargain with the victors as equals. What was made clear to the Japanese was that American relations with them rested not on a contractual basis but on unconditional surrender – not to be confused with an armistice agreement reached by negotiations. As Lewis puts it: Unconditional surrender began with a demand; the alternative was surrender or death, not a choice between negotiating points.
As far as the rehabilitative moments were concerned, the most important mission of the occupation was the total elimination of emperor worship and religious-political indoctrination. To accomplish this, two major reforms were put in place: Shinto as a state cult had to be abolished and then eradicated; and schools had to be purged of indoctrination for service to the state. These, Lewis concludes, were the keys to remaking the moral framework that dominated Japanese political life. People would be free to practice their religious beliefs and worship as they pleased; however, the dissemination of Japanese militaristic and ultra-nationalistic ideology in any form as used by Shinto mythology would be prohibited. State Shinto was illegalized, as were nationalistic ideologies. Textbooks were rewritten. Students were taught the importance of challenging dogma and of forming their own judgments. Even traditions of bowing to the imperial palace and shouting “Long Live the Emperor” were terminated under American occupation, as were Japanese military and paramilitary training in all schools.
And what was the proof that Japan underwent a successful rehabilitative program? Lewis astutely recounts that Japanese educators, quickly realizing they faced no choice under American moral intransigence, excised imperial indoctrination from all their classrooms. Teachers apologized for their past activities before public assemblies. In classrooms across the country, students boycotted their classes and forced their principals to resign, and even the emperor’s household eliminated the practice of bowing to his image and recalled all imperial portraits.
Victory here is deeply philosophical. Physical destruction forced the Japanese to destroy and rebuild the concepts by which they understood the world and themselves. In place of the idea of serving the emperor were the principles of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness that were written into Article 13 of the new Constitution. Where the Japanese had been used to mindless obedience, they were re-socialized into the virtues of rational thinking, individualism and the belief in an autonomous self. Lewis writes: These moral reversals were at the center of the Japanese repudiation of war.
We are still attempting to understand the measures that can be meted out to a rogue entity like Hamas. The terror group poses a national security threat not only to Israel, but to the whole world. Its charter calls for the obliteration of Israel and of Jewry, and for the establishment of a global Caliphate that would see the annihilation of all non-Muslims.
Victory over Hamas means destroying its assets, which means not just a military defeat but its real asset: its collective formidable will to cruelty, chaos and destruction, along with the moral manipulation of much a world that is anti-Semitic. Where there are assets you find collateral. Its collateral is not its people. Hamas cares little for its citizenry. It cares a great deal for its ability to exploit the global imaginary and garner support by way of the international public’s perception of a Palestinian oppression that is inextricably bound to its own plight. It cares for the attendant guilt Israel feels every time some world leader or street lout tells Israeli leaders to hold a ceasefire, or parades before the world the body of a civilian who happens to be killed in a morally defensive war.
Israel and the moral minority must show an intransigent and implacable rejection of and indifference to the international vitriol and hysteria over the so-called oppression of Palestinians. She must fight her war with moral righteousness and rectitude knowing full well that the hundreds of thousands of people protesting in the streets of London and Paris, New York and Chicago, the Middle East—and all over the world—are nothing more than pure, unabashed haters of Jews masquerading as advocates of justice for Palestinians.
The Palestinian war refugees in Judea and Samaria (the West Bank) are oppressed by the Palestinian Authority, and Palestinians in Gaza, 75% of whom voted for Hamas in 2006, are oppressed by Hamas. Observe that the 2.1 million Israeli Arabs in Israel are not rioting in the streets.
We may have to think of the future of Gaza in terms of temporary or permanent trusteeship, military occupation, annexation, or rehabilitative colonization. Israel would be foolish to think she can be surrounded by such a gratuitously violent region run by jihadists without assuming some form of military governance by itself, or in partnership with other countries. One thing is certain: a Hamas-governed Gaza is not fit for political autonomy or sovereignty.
It stands in such egregious violation of the global social contract to which all civilized countries are signatories, that its redemptive moment has resolutely ceased to be a possibility. It has fallen below a decency threshold to which civilized nations adhere, and it has so violated the political moralities on which civilization is predicated, that it has no business in the pantheon of the moral order of civilized states any longer. Neither does its ideological and financial fountainhead: Iran. That, however, is the subject of another article.
Divested of the status of sovereignty, then, Gaza has no legal standing in the international community. It is, therefore, left to the judgment of what could be called a benevolent imperium to determine its future. What that will look like and how it will shape the future of Gaza (should the region even remain intact) will depend on the outcome of the war and how it is fought. And that will depend on whether or not Israel truly admits to herself just how much of the world hates her and her Jewish citizens.
Indeed, no moral country can stake its reputation on the feelings, views and opinions of those who do not like it or its people. Independence and national self-esteem require a nation wean itself from the approval of a global community filled with nihilistic supporters of terrorists, and haters of an exalted civilization and its people.
The complete uprooting of Islam from the hearts of the people would be a sine qua non of rehabilitation.
Correct. The problem is not Hamas or Hezbollah etc. but rather Islam itself. it is a “religion” of conquest, rape and plunder.
it is not even a religion, as it honours no valid diety. Its foundational writings are no more than the garbled rantings of a self-centred control freak, likely on some form of ind-altering substance. Its only real goal is total subjugation of whichever people with which it comes in contact.
By its own precepts, Islam cannot be otherwise.
Islam has been the scourge of humanity for 1400 years.
Enough already.
And, the WEF, Phizer, et al, affiliation of Netanyahu. Israelis are being screwed on multiple fronts…
All,
Noone really cares what Hill says; he’s part of the problem.
Ann Coulter proposed a solution to Islamic enemies:
Invade their countries. Kill their leaders. Convert the population to Christianity.
…and end up with a bunch of psychotic pseudo-Christians who still think like 7th century barbarians. Coulter is clever, but she didn’t think this all out. Her solution would only destroy Christianity by dumping a bunch of savages into it.
Rome defeated Carthage such that its will to continue as Carthage dissipated, even though most Carthaginians were left alive. Carthage was pagan and, its military and commercial might broken, melted into its pagan surroundings. There are no more Carthaginians.
Judea was crushed in much the same way as Carthage, but Judea had Judaism. Jewry survived, albeit in a non-Temple Judaism form and Israel is revived today.
Hamas has Islam and will wind-up more like Judea–or even better off than Judea ended up– than Carthage.
Between Biden, Putin, Xi, the global left and others–including guys like Lapid and Gantz, Hamas will not be demoralized enough to be rebuilt like Japanese. “Palestinians” see the images of leftists protesting around the world and the images of Muslims protesting, en masse, in cities like London and elsewhere. They are well aware of demographics–both Jewish and, critically, Christian and Westerners, e.g. shrinking, while Muslim demographics burgeon throughout the West. Hamas, Gazans, Palestinians, whatever you want to call them, ARE heartened by this and their morale buoyed; they wont give up and go away.
There are too many leftist Jews who still consider themselves Jews and affiliate with the community and live in Israel. The rest of us are too timid to fight the civil war that we know we ought to fight, therefore, we carry the dead weight of the left and let them burden us. Because Israel will not defy leftist Jews and disperse Gazans physically–while withstanding something like BDS–Israelis will have content to themselves with frequent rounds of “operation mow the grass” and occasional 10/7’s.
Why do I get the feeling that somewhere diplomats and world architects are planning to move Gazans to the U.S.?
Gosh! So the Americans were the only occupiers of postwar Japan?
Nobody else was there?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Commonwealth_Occupation_Force
To paraphrase Gaad Saad this has to be fixed by islamic people from within.
The only reason Japan surrendered and swore never again was nukes. Who is going to nuke Mecca? Medina? Tehran? Islamabad?
Certainly, Iran must be nuked before it can build a nuke of its own. Its nuclear infrastructure, its missiles, its shipyards, its command and control centers, its security services, its military, and its centers of government must be nuked. Tactical nuclear warheads would do the trick.
While they’re at it, they could nuke Doha, Qutar. The Hamas big rats live there.
The U.S. should have done it on 9/12/01. We seriously dropped the ball on that one.
Wow just wow, Jason one of the most important articles for me and hope others on what the possible future ahead for the Jewish State of Israel from all the other noise that is being written. Thank you.
Despite being a well thought out essay, Mr. Hill misses a huge point. This is not a war between Israel and Hamas. This is merely the latest battle in the ongoing war between Islam and Civilization (I leave off the word Western because it would be a redundancy.)
Absolute victory will come either when the 1.5-plus billion Muslims around the world reform their “religion” and completely renounce and reject the sections of the Koran and Hadith that call for the slaughter of infidels as a requirement for global domination, OR the aforementioned are eradicated from the face of the Earth.
Since either is a non-starter, then something must be done to ensure one sixth of the world’s population, and rising, can be effectively neutralized and contained.
Ultimately, the battle for life or death is the war between reason and unreason. Between faith and reason. Between those that accept reality and those who reject reality and want to escape reality for some supernatural, religious, magical, fantasy-utopia.
“The damnation of this earth as a realm where nothing is possible to man but pain, disaster and defeat, a realm inferior to another, “higher,” reality; the damnation of all values, enjoyment, achievement and success on earth as a proof of depravity; the damnation of man’s mind as a source of pride, and the damnation of reason as a “limited,” deceptive, unreliable, impotent faculty, incapable of perceiving the “real” reality and the “true” truth; the split of man in two, setting his consciousness (his soul) against his body, and his moral values against his own interest; the damnation of man’s nature, body and self as evil; the commandment of self-sacrifice, renunciation, suffering, obedience, humility and faith, as the good; the damnation of life and the worship of death, with the promise of rewards beyond the grave—these are the necessary tenets of the [mystic’s] view of existence, as they have been in every variant of [mystical] philosophy throughout the course of mankind’s history….
There is only one state that fulfills the mystic’s longing for infinity, non-causality, non-identity: death. No matter what unintelligible causes he ascribes to his incommunicable feelings, whoever rejects reality rejects existence—and the feelings that move him from then on are hatred for all the values of man’s life, and lust for all the evils that destroy it.” – Ayn Rand
Ah yes, just what we need. Your definition about what war really is and Rand’s incomprehensible mumblings that simply mimic your “profound” definition.
I’m just so sure Netanyahu checked in with ARI, read up on the Fountainhead, Atlas Shrugged and consulted with you right after the Oct 7 Hamas attack as to whether it was OK to launch the IDF offensive. I am sure that Bush 2 curled up with the Objectivist Reader right after 9-11 as well, called a cabinet meeting to discuss it with the Cabinet secretaries, particularly Dick Cheney, and the Sec. of the Army, Air Force and the Navy before going in.
And of course Trump. He took out two major terrorists and dropped cruise missiles on Russians in Syria, But not before he consulted with you, right.
Bush: “Let’s see boys, reason v unreason Waddya think? 3000 people were just murdered at the hands of Al Queda, but lets ponder the philosophical meaning of this. You know the mystic’s longing for infinity, non-causality, non-identity and other fancy stuff. I think a two month discussion is in order. I’ll order lunch from the WH kitchen.”
Can you say pointy headed intellectual?
You seem to hold that faith and reason are antithetical to each other.
THis is a false dichotomy. Faith is one thing, reason is another, they are noether equivalent nor interchangeable. Man needs BOTH, but each in their proper place.
Islam is built in blind unquestioned unmoveable faith in that book they have, the writings of a power tripping litle boy who never really grew up, though he DID get big enough to become a bully. To memers of this group there IS no reason. Nothing more than blind faith, instant unequestioning obedience and submissuon to the tenets of their cult.
God already told us that much of the Muslim world will be destroyed when the Muslims and Russia attack Israel in the Magog invasion described in Ezekiel 38 & 39. God will not just neutralize the Muslim countries of the Middle East; He will vaporize them. Or, if one wanted to try to escape this reality, one could put their head in the sand and follow the psycho babble of THX 1138 and his guru Ayn Rand.
Reform of Islam isn’t possible.
“Victory here is deeply philosophical. Physical destruction forced the Japanese to destroy and rebuild the concepts by which they understood the world and themselves. In place of the idea of serving the emperor were the principles of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness that were written into Article 13 of the new Constitution. Where the Japanese had been used to mindless obedience, they were re-socialized into the virtues of rational thinking, individualism and the belief in an autonomous self. Lewis writes: These moral reversals were at the center of the Japanese repudiation of war.”
Serving the emperor is ALTRUISTIC SELF-SACRIFICE. Just as Nazism means serving the Aryan Race and the Fuhrer. Islam means submissive servitude, altruistic self-sacrifice, serving Allah. Communism means altruistic self-sacrifice serving society.
On the other side of the MORAL conundrum are life, liberty, and the personal-individual pursuit of happiness. These values are thoroughly, secular, rational, and SELFISH. In order to establish and keep these values Ayn Rand’s historical, revolutionary, paradigm shift, moral code of RATIONAL SELFISHNESS must be EXPLICITLY discovered, understood, and proudly embraced.
Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness cannot be sustained on any religious, otherworldly, mystical basis. They cannot be sustained on the basis of Judeo-Christianity anymore than they can be sustained on the basis of Islam, Marxism, Nazism, or Shintoism.
“From her start, America was torn by the clash of her political system with the altruist morality. Capitalism and altruism are incompatible; they are philosophical opposites; they cannot co-exist in the same man or in the same society. Today, the conflict has reached its ultimate climax; the choice is clear-cut: either a new morality of rational self-interest, with its consequences of freedom, justice, progress and man’s happiness on earth—or the primordial morality of altruism, with its consequences of slavery, brute force, stagnant terror and sacrificial furnaces.” – Ayn Rand
From her start the United States was torn by the clash of normal people who wanted to succeed and those who got caught up in a lot of intellectual B.S. It is no wonder you never succeeded at anything.
Did you just drop your book on the floor?
All those long quotes he gives are a trolling technique, to try to get people to argue against professional philosophers like Rand and Peikoff, which is harder than arguing against the insipid stuff our dear friend comes up with on his own. Would be better if he just gave short comments stating his own positions or ideas, rather than giving the quotes from others.
So you concede that it is too difficult to refute Ayn Rand and Leonard Peikoff and you refuse to try it. Thanks for admitting this.
Love the ‘logical fallacy’ come back. It always assumes things about the adversary that isn’t so. And you don’t have to prove anything. Perfect for you.
It’s pointless to try to refute long dead and close to dead people and argue with someone who is so blindingly and religiously loyal it wouldn’t matter what anyone said. That is a fool’s errand.
I wouldn’t even try because most of what they say is beyond incomprehensible, and all of what you say is so off point why bother. Personally I find very little of what you say, beyond the stock altruism, religious hatred, rational selfishness shtick, to be particularly interesting, meaningful or memorable. You don’t even like it when someone like Kynarion Hellenis actually does try to refute you, Rand and Peikoff. Basically you are an amateur.
What I like is needling you re: your actual selfishness, your incessant religious bigotry, your childish revisionist version of history, your presumptuous explanations of the reasons for war and your take on the American culture of the past. You seem to think you can change the world by copying and pasting a little Rand and Peikoff over and over again…..that no one reads.
You are a psychiatrists dream patient
When he does stick with short comments that originate in his own mind, they are quite good and worth reading. You’d think that he would notice the number of upvotes on those as opposed to downvotes on the long, turgid, cut-and-paste quotes, but that doesn’t deter him from posting mostly the latter.
Personally I haven’t seen the “plethora” of up votes ever. But I have seen the downvote derby in full effect.
One thing I must admire your diatribes for THX is the fact that you constantly and politely make your points and have your say. You never lower yourself to respond to the many negative comments aimed at you or indulge in vitriol.
Whatever one might think of your beliefs you always conduct them in a gentlemanly fashion. Good job!
Thank you, there are times when I am tempted to answer insult with insult but that would only harm me, it would harm my argument. It would be self-harming, not self-preserving, to give in to returning insult for insult.
That’s precisely what “Intrepid” wants from me. He’s the one who is actually trolling me, baiting me, to make me say things I would regret saying once I become calm again. It ain’t gona happen.
His goal is to have me banned from FPM by baiting me into insults, profanity, or threats of violence, it ain’t gona happen.
A few days ago Intrepid was actually complaining that I don’t talk about myself, I don’t reveal anything about my life, as if this website is some local watering hole, social club. As far as I’m concerned this is a website for the intellectual discussion of the ideas that shape the world and the course of history and nothing else.
I’m certainly not going to dox myself for the malicious intentions of a rabid hater like Intrepid.
Aw, poor baby. Doesn’t like me constantly pushing against his childish obsessions. He’d rather whine about me to everyone else, than confront me directly.
If you think this is a high minded website that is “for the intellectual discussion of the ideas that shape the world and the course of history and nothing else.” I’ve got news for you. You couldn’t find intellectualism with two hands a flashlight.
“not going to dox myself?” Afraid of what we will find, Mr Amateur. And you always talk about yourself especially when you are treating us to your bizarre tastes in TV viewing, or your dead end taste in popular music. That’s always a hoot. Or when you helped a Muslim woman lost in a “large park in a big city”. Would that be Central Park? Or the fact that you are not a credentialed philosopher. We know more than you think we know.
If I may repeat what Daniel Greenfield said to you:
“Daniel Greenfield says
September 29, 2023 at 9:14 pm
The idea that you and your particular belief system, for which you are an absolutely terrible representative, represent ‘reason’, is as much of a fallacy as the idea that Fauci represents science.
You are only as good as your arguments.”
Yeah, he never had a course in symbolic logic, yet claims to be an advocate of logic.
There are the forms of civilization and there is the heart of civilization. Men are the primary founders of civilization and do so with strong, beautiful women with them, making families to maintain that hard-won legacy.
Intellectual dishonesty and weakness are unbecoming a true gentleman. THX may have the form of gentlemanliness, but he lacks the power thereof. He may have the form, but the “power” in his ideas leads to chaos and destruction.
Intellectual dishonesty and weakness? Last week, at Danusha Goska’s article, you once again attacked with your weak and dishonest sophistry. So I once again replied to you but you did not reply back.
Here you go, here is my reply to you that you did not reply back to:
Ok, let’s start all over again. Once again battling your sophistry.
When I used the word “grace” as in “by the grace of existence” I was using the word in the sense of “by the FACT of existence”. By the fact that existence does exist we and the universe exist. I did not mean to imply that grace is some power or force separate from and antecedent to existence.
“Existence exists, and only existence exists. Existence is a primary: it is uncreated, indestructible, eternal. So if you are to postulate something beyond existence—some supernatural realm—you must do it by openly denying reason, dispensing with definitions, proofs, arguments, and saying flatly, “To Hell with argument, I have faith.” That, of course, is a willful rejection of reason.” – Leonard Peikoff, “Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand”
The original Rand quote is “Existence exists by the GRACE of existence.” This can only mean grace precedes existence. You change Rand’s words while not dealing with mine. “Fact” and “grace” are not synonyms. “Reason” is not “man’s mind.”
So we will use your modified Rand quote: “Existence exists by the FACT of existence.” Existence exists. We AGREE. Existence is primary. We agree.
But no “fact” could create existence because existence is primary to ANY fact – ANY truth. It is Super Existence – not uncreated matter and energy.
You must deal with the problem of the infinite regress, by imbuing matter and energy with eternality, with reason, intelligence and the creation of life. Where is the evidence for ANY of that? Or do you believe this upon “faith”? When does intelligence, reason or life come from matter? When does chaos create order? When does the lesser create the greater?
In essence, your complaint is that I should have understood the word “grace” to mean “fact.” And you have the temerity to call me weak and dishonest? You weak connection to truth and flaccid argumentation remove any possibility of imagining you as gentlemanly.
To Kynarion Hellenis,
Infinite regress? Who created your God? If you answer no one created Jehovah he is eternal, then why can that not be true of matter and energy? I can point to matter and energy, you can perceive matter and energy, you can study matter and energy, but where is your Jehovah?
If you claim that existence requires a creator then that creator, if he exists, by the fact that he exists, following your premise that existence requires a creator, would require an antecedent creator to create him, and that antecedent creator would require another antecedent creator to create him, ad infinitum. There is your infinite regress.
So you believe that matter is eternal had has the capacity to bring forth light, order, reason and intelligence. What is the half-life of eternity?
If you cannot see the irrationality of your presuppositions, then reason is not among of your attributes and your religion is based upon faith without evidence.
“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…
The individual, says the intrinsicist who accepts rights, is God’s creation and therefore His property, not the collective’s. Such an approach implies the denial of rights: it means that only God is morally sovereign. in practice, this leads to the conclusion that man on earth may be used and disposed of by God’s representatives on earth.
No religious society has ever cherished or protected individual freedom, which is a purely secular value and achievement. Rights, contrary to a formulation common during the Enlightenment, do not derive from man’s source or “creator”. They derive from the fact of man’s existence and the requirements of his survival, however he came into being.” – Leonard Peikoff, “Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand”
Why, it wouldn’t be Friday without at least one useless lecture quoting Old Man Piekoff telling us how horrible we are, just as doddering and insignificant as Old Joe Biden.
I have to agree to this fundamental change is required. Hamas is but on branch of the vile, genocidal cult of Islamofascism. Like the cult of Shinto Islamofascisms must be eradicated from Arab society
The Cult of Altruism and Self-Sacrifice, in religious or secular form, must be eradicated from Western civilization, period. And rational selfishness embraced.
“October 2, 2001—Fifty years of increasing American appeasement in the Mideast have led to fifty years of increasing contempt in the Muslim world for the U.S. The climax was September 11, 2001.
Fifty years ago, Truman and Eisenhower surrendered the West’s property rights in oil, although that oil rightfully belonged to those in the West whose science, technology, and capital made its discovery and use possible. The first country to nationalize Western oil, in 1951, was Iran. The rest, observing our frightened silence, hurried to grab their piece of the newly available loot.
The cause of the U.S. silence was not practical, but philosophical. The Mideast’s dictators were denouncing wealthy egotistical capitalism. They were crying that their poor needed our sacrifice; that oil, like all property, is owned collectively, by virtue of birth; and that they knew their viewpoint was true by means of otherworldly emotion. Our Presidents had no answer. Implicitly, they were ashamed of the Declaration of Independence. They did not dare to answer that Americans, properly, were motivated by the selfish desire to achieve personal happiness in a rich, secular, individualist society.
The Muslim countries embodied in an extreme form every idea—selfless duty, anti-materialism, faith or feeling above science, the supremacy of the group—which our universities, our churches, and our own political Establishment had long been upholding as virtue. When two groups, our leadership and theirs, accept the same basic ideas, the most consistent side wins.” – Leonard Peikoff, “End States Who Sponsor Terrorism”
4 big unimportant and impotent lectures from you today. You include all the biggies and the oldies but goodies. And I have collected them over the years into one comment which I will repeat here:
Basically your Objectivism For Dummies course consists of the following:
Altruism…bad.
Self-sacrifice…..bad
Jesus…..bad
Christianity…………bad
Judaism…….bad
Judeo-Christianity is Leftism……bad
Judaism and Christianity are oriental…..bad
Christianity prepared the ground for modern totalitarianism….bad
Medieval Christianity was a totalitarian system…..bad
God and magical thinking…….bad
Atheism….good
Greeks……good
Christian Dark Age….bad
Renaissance and enlightenment …..good
Greek philosophers……good
Christian philosophers…….bad
selfishness “properly defined”, rational selfishness….good
Objectivist reason and reality….good
Altruism…bad.
Thx’s Heroes — Homer, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Aristophanes, Aesop, Hesiod, Pindar, Herodotus, Thucydides, Archimedes, Aristarchus, Euclid, Hippocrates, Pythagoras, Cicero, Seneca, Galen.
THX’s List of Religious Horribles
Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden with a Talking Snake and a Fruit of Knowledge. Eve Made From Adam’s Rib. An Immaculate Conception. A Virgin Birth. Noah’s Ark. The Parting of the Red Sea.
Repeat ad infinitum. The Big Lie in practice.
Not quite. Hamas, was an Israeli creature.
You are full of Shiite. Hamas is a creation of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood. Typical LeftTwat propaganda
I can’t speak for what Michael means to say but the evil of Hamas WAS made possible by the “sanction of the victim”.
It was made possible by Israel’s and America’s, and the West’s, predominant moral code of altruism and self-sacrifice for the needy and the morally inferior, for the morally evil.
Israel granted 21,000 work permits to the Palestinian Muslims in the name of altruism, mercy, and pity. Work permits that the Muslims used to do reconnaissance on the Israelis they would slaughter.
Hamas was enabled by the altruistic sacrifice of billions in American taxpayer money confiscated from the American taxpayer and handed over to Hamas and the Palestinians.
Without the altruism, self-sacrifice, mercy, and pity, work permits and billions of dollars feeding the evil monster of Hamas and the Palestinians, this massacre would not have happened.
Imagine if the Israelis, Americans, and Western Europe had done this with the Nazis. Actually, America did do this with its Lend-Lease policy to Soviet Russia. the altruism of Lend-Lease resulted in the Soviet takeover of Eastern Europe, without Lend-Lease Soviet Russia would have been destroyed by the Nazis. Read “American Betrayal” by Diana West.
“The “sanction of the victim” is the willingness of the good to suffer at the hands of the evil, to accept the role of sacrificial victim for the “sin” of creating values.” – Leonard Peikoff
I have never heard the theory that Americans created Hamas. I guess I am at fault. I guess it’s all my fault that Roosevelt helped the Soviets after Operation Barbarossa.
Never mind that we would all be living in a vastly different world had Germany taken Moscow and would then have been free to finish swallowing up England because we wouldn’t have sent aid to England either. Thank God for altruism.
Talk about historical revisionism. You are the king.
*I don’t recognize any such absurdity as service to my country. I recognize a moral responsibility to my freedom and liberty and the freedom and liberty of those I love.* — THX
“American Betrayal” is a brilliant book. I would recommend it to everyone, to understand not only how communism took over eastern Europe, but how we ended up where we are now.
Thanks Jason, excellent analysis.
The display of overwhelming force, for example the Allied ships at the surrender ceremony, crushed Japanese morale.
Everything Dr. Hill says in this article is true and insightful, but if Israel were to engage in a successful all-out war and Gaza were handed over to a “benevolent imperium,” that imperium would fail in the face of world-wide hatred of Israel and the Jews.
The Japanese emperor was not motivated by hatred so much as he was by the desire for land and resources for his people. That is normal human war. Israel has demonstrated that land and resources cannot be offered to her enemies because their hatred requires her death.
Failing to see the the spiritual nature of the enmity and that the same spirit would pervade any governing imperium established afterwards might provide a temporary peace, but the final solution is Israel’s repentance and return to her LORD, Who alone will establish, protect and glorify her.
Thanks KH! I think it was the Japanese military that drove Japan into war, rather than the Emperor. I could be wrong, haven’t checked online recently.
You are most likely correct, but I am unsure, also. I will find out. Thanks for the heads up!
Jason D. Hill – Your epistemology is broken. Get a brain.
Islam 101
http://media-quest.com/Islam101.pdf
Read 11 pages marked starting from the middle of page 4 thru 14.
You might also want to read the section on the Media-Quest page “A recent comment is as follows.”
No decent person can remain a follower of Islam. Islam commands that its followers must not take infidels as friends. And indeed what decent person can claim to be your friend yet remain a willing follower of a religion which has indoctrinated them since earliest childhood that they are commanded to either murder you or at very least subjugate you to the status of a dhimmi, to expect that their religion will become superior over all other religions, to practice taqqiya and kitman in claiming to be your friend all the while knowing it is the opposite that is true. Disgusting.
“Learn about Islam. That is the most important thing for people to do. Learn who it is that you are not.” – Samuel Lurie
I know all about Islam … Depraved and Psychopathic and Murderous.
That’s about all that Islam, in fact, is.
Dr. Hill has a good brain and this article is well-reasoned, but his presuppositions are secular and humanist. This being so, Dr. Hill will frame even a moral issue as one in which the answer lies in reason alone.
Of course he is right that Hamas must be defeated and surrender unconditionally, but then the suggested moral imperium, guided without a standard of good or evil, would simply allow the enemy grow strong again.
Reason sheds no light upon the “mystery of iniquity.” 2 Thessalonians 2:7
“Man’s mind is his basic means of survival—and of self-protection. Reason is the most selfish human faculty: it has to be used in and by a man’s own mind, and its product—truth—makes him inflexible, intransigent, impervious to the power of any pack or any ruler. Deprived of the ability to reason, man becomes a docile, pliant, impotent chunk of clay, to be shaped into any subhuman form and used for any purpose by anyone who wants to bother.
There has never been a philosophy, a theory or a doctrine that attacked (or “limited”) reason, which did not also preach submission to the power of some authority.” – Ayn Rand
Islam claims that reason is impotent to know the supernatural mysteries of Allah; observe the results.
Christianity claims the same, observe the results, more than one thousand years of Dark Age stagnation and persecution of heretics who dared to question and rebel against the orthodoxy of the mysteries of Yahweh.
“The infamous times you call the Dark Ages were an era of intelligence on strike, when men of ability went underground and lived undiscovered, studying in secret, and died, destroying the works of their mind, when only a few of the bravest martyrs remained to keep the human race alive. Every period ruled by mystics was an era of stagnation and want, when most men were on strike against existence, working for less than their barest survival, leaving nothing but scraps for their rulers to loot, refusing to think, to venture, to produce, when the ultimate collector of their profits and the final authority on truth or error was the whim of some gilded degenerate sanctioned as superior to reason by divine right and by grace of a club….
The Middle Ages were an era of mysticism, ruled by blind faith and blind obedience to the dogma that faith is superior to reason.” – Ayn Rand
Hey guess what, she has already read this garbage from you. Try something new. She already beat you several times at your own games
The men and boys raping Jews to death and burning babies in ovens were educated to be exactly like that from kindergarten on. In the West, children are educated to be Greta Gunburgs, and the worldview of Hamas and Western educators are exactly rhe same.
The point is, even a Gaza occupied by Western educators at this point would not change the moral outlook of Gazans.
The rot is not in Hamas. It is western ideologies that have built the Muslim Brotherhoid movement, and not the other way around.
It took unconditional surrender by Germany and Japan, and their willingness to be “remade”, that allowed for their reintegration not the family f nations. But has anyone even demanded Gaza, or Hamas to surrender? Israel has called for Hamas’ *soldiers* to “surrender or die”, but nothing beyond that.
Has Israel simply elected not to demand what, based on history, what it will never get? As I’ve regularly noted over the 75 years of Israel’s existence, Israel is not allowed to win, and its enemies are not allowed to lose. The world mostly stands by when Israel is under attack, but quickly rallies to call for a cessation of conflict when Israel is advancing. And following a stand own, Israel is expected to surrender its gains. And certainly where conflicts with Palestinians end with the usual ceasefire, the community of nations gather in a “donors conference” to rebuild and restore on the Palestinian side, but not one dollar for the Israeli side, which must rebuild on its own,
Never forced to surrender, and always being made whole after a loss – often claimed as a victory because they were “not defeated” – there is no disincentive to preparing for another round in the future when they may be more successful.
And what of purging society of the values that fostered aggression in the first place? Barely imaginable here. The UN has, to date, been “in charge” of education, but its teachers are often tied to Hamas, and the teaching material is full of Jew hatred and Islamic triumphalism. And even if new books are provided, and the Hamas “summer camps” closed down, are such teachings not available in every mosque in Gaza? German Naziism and Japanese imperialism lost all legitimacy because they led to utter defeat and destruction. What will it take for Islamic triumphalism and Jew hatred to be discredited, especially when over a billion people worldwide and outside the conflict zone continue to subscribe to it?
You asked, “What will it take for Islamic triumphalism and Jew hatred to be discredited, especially when over a billion people worldwide and outside the conflict zone continue to subscribe to it?”
Would seeing the black rock in Mecca and its environs turned into a smoldering hole in the ground work? Muslims respect strength; they pick the “strong horse” in the words of Osama bin Laden. If they discover that their “god” cannot protect them, perhaps they will back off. It’s worth a try. And if it doesn’t work there are always Medina, Tehran, and Qom.
Excuse me but the root cause isn’t Hamas. It’s Islam. How are you going to “rehabilitate” a religion that, for over 1300 years, has preached world conquest, despises unbelievers and especially Jews, and punishes any deviation as blasphemy or apostasy, both of which are punishable by death? Somehow, I don’t think the lessons from WW2 are applicable. I hope I’m wrong but I just don’t see it. Al-Qaida, ISIS, Boko Haram, Abu Sayyaf, and on and on all over the world.
1000 thumbs up.
If the oil/energy chokepoint of the world economy were not in the hands of the Islamic OPEC psychopaths,
then no one would give a crap about the depraved Islamic middle east..
If the cannibals in Africa had huge reservoirs of oil and gas, and held the chokepoint of the world
economy and finances, then I guess it would
be OK today to be cooking and eating human flesh.
The answer, then, is what Sarah Palin said years ago: Drill baby, drill. If the US went back to being the greatest producer of energy in the world, the Arab states would cease to matter. As would Russia, Mexico, and Venezuela. This is why it is so important to shut the treacherous greenies up, defeat the Democraps, and get on with America’s business, which is business.
Exactly.
Add to that the notion that the Hamas mafia “has fallen below a decency threshold to which civilized nations adhere” — on the contrary, either Hamas or its flip-face the PA enjoy favor in every international circle, with no questions asked.
Even now, the “decency threshold” of the UN was quite able to bypass any condemnation of Hamas’s brutal slaughter and kidnapping spree of Oct. 7.
Great article! And just think about what the US did in Japan to change the mindset of a Nation! I do believe we need the same thing here – start with the schools!! As far as Gaza? Eliminate it – even the NAME! End the insane indoctrination of those children and make sure NOTHING of military value gets in! And most of all, KEEP THE UN PEACEMAKERS OUT!!! Israel TRIED to do the right thing back in 2005 and it NEVER had a chance to work. No need in TRYING that again!
Great article. Israel must stay true to its course and reject the toxic teats of the global community.
The Japanese, even in their darkest days, are/were essentially modern people.It wasn’t very hard to sell them on democracy and a humane society. Gaza’s Muslims are none of that, primitive goat (ungulate, I should say) fuckers who want to return the world to the seventh century. Offered democracy and modernism they rejected them in the worst way. Rape and the slaughter of babies inan alleged military action is a loud proclamation of Fuck You to the civilized world.What is necessary, as ugly as it sounds, is the forced removal of most of them from Gaza, and other parts of historic Palestine,,and their dispersal among the peoples presently claiming fraternalism with them.
The hard thing is that Islam itself requires violent jihad until every person in the world is submitted to the sharia, Islamic law. Allah is believed to have designed the sharia as a complete blueprint for every aspect of life. Every human being must bow to him. This requirement is found many times in the Qur’an, the hadith, the sira, and 1400 years of Islamic jurisprudence. Contribution to violent jihad is required in the yearly zakat contribution. The only guarantee of Paradise for male Muslims is dying while waging jihad.
So essentially it is Islam itself which must be eradicated, a more elusive goal than banning the militaristic aspects of Shinto. I commend the Israeli Arabs who are not rioting in the streets. I assume they realize that their lives are better following the rules for peaceful life in Israel. It would be good to find out how they have reconciled their identification with Islam with living in peace with Jews and not practicing violent jihad.
Like in Japan and Germany, Israel must control the education system and design new curricula which are appealing and deprogram the violence. Defanging Islam is the major challenge of our time, but it’s really just going back to the time when colonizing powers achieved power over Islam and abolished dhimmitude, the enslavement of Christians in Muslim countries.
You got it right.
Germany and Japan were not surrounded by dozens of nations and 10’s of millions of people with radical, Jihadist views who with unbridled religions fervor prayed five times a day to eliminate their neighbor. With peer pressure like that, I highly doubt that if/when Gaza is reoccupied with Palestinians, there is a snowballs chance that anything will change.
Israel won the Gaza Strip in 1967.
Israel gave full autonomy to the people of Gaza in 2005. Hamas soon took over full control.
Israel embarked on a policy of co-existence with Hamas that failed miserably on October 7, 2023
Now, Israel should be taking back control of Gaza as they should have done in 1967.
This will be a warning to Hamas and PLO in the West Bank to be good neighbors, or Israel will take back Judea and Samaria, which was also won in the 1967 war.
Judea and Samaria are already part of Israel, and have been since Biblical times. How can a Muslim be a Judean? It makes no sense for them to even want to live there. Have they no self-respect? No shame?
Are you saying that if a Jew born and raised in Judea converts to Islam he forfeits his Judean citizenship?
The author is obviously paid by the word.
“and they created a desert and called it peace”
First………
The Moral Rehabilitation of: Congress, the DOJ, FBI, CIA, DHS, IRS, CDC, NIH, Pubic Schools, Colleges and the MSM!
You got that right!
Islam is simply a cancer invading a dying West. The underlying cause of the cancer is an intellectual, philosophical, HIV. If you don’t cure the HIV, you cannot get rid of the invading Islam cancer.
The West is LITERALLY inviting the cancer of Islam to invade and destroy the West.
“Socialism is really helping religion. The bigger the statism, the more people are accustomed to government rule over everything. The more people are ready for religionists to take over the lead away from the more secular side… the socialists are building the basis for totalitarianism but only the religionists are going to cash in on it and take over….
I believe that the medievals understood much better than the moderns on what basis to build a totalitarian society that would last and not collapse in less than a century. They did it. And the people in the rising religious movements today know that full well. They’re the ones who have millions, upon millions, upon millions, of followers and a real insight into the fact that economics is not the crucial factor in history but philosophy and culture [are]….
Religion was the root of [totalitarianism] from the beginning. It has ruled in disguised forms and still is. And now the disguise has to be stripped off if there is to be a lasting totalitarianism. For a lasting totalitarian state, religion is the only means.” – Leonard Peikoff
You never get tired of pushing the “Christianity prepared the ground for totalitarianism”, do you.
And you can’t wait for the West to die out as a society, either. To be replaced with what…..your religion?
The problem you have is that if Islam becomes the dominant religion in the West you will definitely be on the menu.
What is the author talking about? Hamas isn’t a rogue organization. It is mainstream.. Begin there.
Japan was completely defeated. The only result of continued war would have been national suicide. The emperor wanted to preserve his family and position, which seemed vulnerable to the a-bomb. The “unconditional surrender” came with the promise that the position of emperor would continue and the emperor would not be treated as a war criminal. In fact, during the bombing raids on Japan, the emperor’s home was avoided. The emperor told his people on radio that he was not a god, and they did not believe him, but the obeyed. Islam is not facing the defeat that Japan did. The defeat of a single group of Islamist terrorists does not make Muslims feel their religion has been shown to be false, like a Japanese god-emperor. Tokyo burned. Mecca stands. Each terrorist group and their sponsors must be defeated. Muslim leaders are themselves threatened by terrorists and if they want more normal relations with others, they can seek such. The fact that several nations have or were about to affected the timing of this war.
Islam still remains in the dark ages, they haven’t advanced to a higher learning and understanding, specifically of the truth since they believe totally in deception.
I shudder to think how many people are totally naieve about the times to come. We are nearing the “Time of Jacob’s trouble”. Jeremiah 30:7. and Ezekiel 38:8. The New Testament authors based their understanding of this end time on the 19 references from such Old Testament prophets as Isaiah, Joel, Amos, Zephania, Zecharia, and Malachi.
New Testament writers referred to this same time period as “the Day of the Lord” 1 Thessalonians 5:2 and 2 Peter 3:10.
The Tribulation period consists of a (seven-year time period when God will pour out his wrath upon the world for its continued….rebellion against him.)…and secondly……use that time to bring many people to accept Jesus as Savior…..especially among the Jewish people.
The Book of Revelation is also the climax of many lines of Revelation running through Both Testaments, and it brings to a conclusion the Revelation of many prophecies yet to be fulfilled. The Scoffers will get a consuming jolt of Reality as the time clock advances to the late hour. Many have studied and are aware of the conclusion to come.
THERE IS HOPE FOR THOSE WHO KNOW THE TRUTH AND DON’T ALLOW BRAINWASHING TO AFFECT THEM!
“….use that time to bring many people to accept Jesus as Savior…..especially among the Jewish people.””
Yeah 2023 years we’re still not buying what you sell dear
LOL same BS we get from Islam- convert to survive
will we go to hell too if we don’t convert to the 1st replacement religion? the founders of antiSemitism?
your post is anti Jew & you probably don’t even understand why instead
you believe you are giving us a gift
Anybody here even noted the recent disclosure of the hostages who were found dead and the condition of their bodies? Age range 19 to 86 …so far…..
If I am taken, please flatten the land held by the people who took me and all of them with it, as I would rather die than be tortured as those victims were tortured prior to their deaths.
There is no claim of harm, colonialism, settler, occupation, dark subhuman (20th century) super white privilege (21st century) blah blah blah that justifies that torture.
Islam justifies it, and that’s all that matters to the goat f***ers who did it.
What makes anyone think Hamas evil is capable of reform? Sometimes evil just has to be neutralized in the US Marine sense of the word.
Not as trivial as it may sound. But part of Japan’s postwar recovery can be attributed to the establishment of baseball—organized teams and leagues—that Japanese citizens enthusiastically embraced. MacArthur called it “the greatest piece of diplomacy ever.”
Though I can’t see Hamas responding in same (they don’t seem like the baseball type), I think the sport makes an interesting basis for a cultural comparison. If Hamas is incapable of rehabilitation, they merely condemn themselves to a national life sentence without hope of parole.
there is no moderate islam , no reforming will take place and there are no innocent fakestinians young or old . no occupation and no such thing as a palestinian . ethnic cleansing is the only way to go . they love death , oblige them . if israel doesn’t do what they should it will only happen again . the world is on the side of terrorists and they continue to fund them under the guise of aid .
Why does this article address Israel in its conflict with “Hamas”. The West already surrendered to Islam on September 12, 2001 when G. W. Bush declared it to be a “religion of peace”. Maybe that was a wise move, given that an all-out war on over a billion people is almost unthinkable, but surrender it was. How to “un-surrender”? Hell if I know.
All those who are for Zion in real truth….lend an ear.
Isaiah 62. For Zion’s sake I will not keep silent, for Jerusalem’s sake I will. not remain quiet, till her rightgeousness shines out like the dawn, her salvation like a blazing torch.
The nations will see your righteousness, and all kings your glory; you will be called by a new name that the mouth of the Lord will bestow. You will be a crown of splendor in the Lord’s hand, a royal diadem in the hand of your God.
Israel wlll fulfill God’s glory, and the time is coming when her enemies will be judged harshly. They attack others because they are losing on this earth, and their evil ways are going to be corrected.
1 John 2:9. Anyone who claims to be in the light but hates his brother is still in darkness.
Beautiful quote from Isaiah. Thanks for reminding us of it.
Many want to deny it, but Israel’s perserverance, as well as its reestablishment as a nation, sweeps across the span of human history. All the promises made to Abram, passed on to his son of promise Isaac, Jacob, and the mutigenerational children of Israel, have been kept. Battles have raged..in the spiritual realm and on earth to upset his eternal plan, but God has orchestrated everything for his glory and the good of those who trust him. God is never going to big done with Israel.