While the original intent of this thread is to discusses a very conservative Christian sect and its affects on society and government, I am expanding the thread to discuss a very conservative Judaistic sect and its affects on society and government, as well - because the two conservative religious philosophies intertwine, and well as the negative effects each of the brand of religion has on non-followers.
The belief that all humans have certain rights, endowed by the Creator as Jefferson put it, is common. The lesson of Chapter 9 of
The Origins of Totalitarianism (“Origins”) by Hannah Arendt is that such rights mean little or nothing if there is no one to enforce them. Realist diplomats after WWI knew that the successor states would not enforce the human rights of minorities and refugees unless forced to do so. They created the
Minority Treaties to provide that enforcement, backed by the League of Nations.
It didn’t work. It turns out that the important part of Jefferson’s observation is the next phrase: “that to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed….“
Absent the protection of the state, the mystical state of having rights is useless. And even having formal rights, like citizenship, is no protection against
denaturalization, as found in
The Origins of Totalitarianism, published in 1951, Hannah Arendt's first major work, where she describes and analyzes Nazism and Stalinism as the major totalitarian political movements of the first half of the 20th century.
Arendt writes:
Yet, one need only remember the extreme care of the Nazis, who insisted that all Jews of non-German nationality “should be deprived of their citizenship either prior to, or, at the latest, on the day of deportation” (for German Jews such a decree was not needed, because in the Third Reich there existed a law according to which all Jews who had left the territory—including, of course, those deported to a Polish camp—automatically lost their citizenship) citizenship) in order to realize the true implications of statelessness..[/quoteThe problem of statelessness, and thus rightlessness, which runs through Origins is still with us. One salient example today is the Palestinian people. Arendt wrote about the impact of establishment of The State Of Israel in 1947.[quote]The notion that statelessness is primarily a Jewish problem was a pretext used by all governments who tried to settle the problem by ignoring it. None of the statesmen was aware that Hitler’s solution of the Jewish problem, first to reduce the German Jews to a nonrecognized minority in Germany, then to drive them as stateless people across the borders, and finally to gather them back from everywhere in order to ship them to extermination camps, was an eloquent demonstration to the rest of the world how really to “liquidate” all problems concerning minorities and stateless.
After the war it turned out that the Judaistic question, which was considered the only insoluble one, was indeed solved - namely, by means of a colonized and then conquered territory - but this solved neither the problem of the minorities nor the stateless. On the contrary, like virtually all other events of our century, the solution of the Jewish question merely produced a new category of refugees, the Arabs, thereby increasing the number of the stateless and rightless by another 700,000 to 800,000 people.
And what happened in Palestine within the smallest territory and in terms of hundreds of thousands was then repeated in India on a large scale involving many millions of people. Since the Peace Treaties of 1919 and 1920 thé refugees and the stateless have attached themselves like a curse to all the newly established states on earth which were created in the image of the nation-state.
The problem of the stateless and rightness of Arabs described by Arendt has not been solved. The Palestinian Authority has no ability, or will, to protect the human rights of Palestinians and Gazans. Hamas is a terrorist organization, not a government. No Hamas member from top to bottom cares about the lives of the people of Gaza, let alone their rights, though apparently the “leaders” care about their own safety and luxuries, living the rich life in Qatar.
The State of Israel doesn’t care about the Palestinians either. There’s the ruthless bombing. There’s the settler attacks in the West Bank, which go unpunished. Israel has
sold oil leases that were thought to be the property of the Palestinians. Even as the current Israeli "war" against Gazan Palestinians continues, it announced its intention to build 3,000 new housing units for settlers in the West Bank.
There are two factions within the Zionist movement, Labor Zionism and Revisionist Zionism. Labor Zionism is the faction that seemed to prevail. It’s the faction of the Kibbutzim, people working the land to make the desert bloom. Radial Zionists (very conservative Judoists) believes that the State of Israel should include all the land from the Euphrates to the Nile. Radial Zionists believe Arabs and other non-Judoists who live there now have no political rights, and this the radical Zionists' ideological position.
From the viewpoint of some within US evangelicalism, the establishment of the state of Israel is a prerequisite of the Second Coming of Jesus. It’s not that these folks love Israel per se, but that this is simply part of what has to happen before Jesus comes again.
SPOILER ALERT: Judoists do not fare well during the Second Coming.
The "problem" with the Second Coming for US evangelicals is that Jesus will not come back to earth until the Judoists and Judea leaders ask Him to come back. Just as the Judiah leaders led the nation to the rejection of the Messiaship of Jesus, they must some day lead the nation to the acceptance of the Messiaship of Jesus. This, then, is the two-fold basis of the Second Coming: Israel must confess her national sin and then plead for Messiah to return, to mourn for Him as one mourns for an only son. Until these two things happen, there will be no Second Coming.
As I have often written here at
The Rant: Conservatism is the bane of mankind’s existence. I cite every negative outcome man has ever experienced through the ages, can be traced back to conservatism in one form or another: philosophy, religion, or government - or a combination of any of the three.
