German Circumcision Foes Will Fight All the Way to the Supreme Court
If Germany’s political leadership brings legislation to protect the right of Jews and Muslim to circumcise boys, opponents of the rite will fight all the way to the country’s Constitutional Court, the equivalent of America’s Supreme Court, Thomas Pany reports in the German news site Telepolis reports. Opponents of circumcision instigated a legal precedent for a constitutional case by filing charges against a German rabbi in the Bavarian town of Hof. According to Telepolis:
The debate over the legality of circumcision will be pursued further in Germany. It is conceivable that it will be brought all the way to the Federal Constitutional Court at Karlsruhe. If the govenrment brings legislation this fall declaring that infant circumcision is permissible–as a large majority of German parliamentarians seems to wish–provided that it is done with “medical competence and without unnecessary pain”–than it is likely that suit will be brought before the Constitutional court to annul the legislation.
Circumcision opponents are now positioning for standing before the Constitutional Court.
Bavarian Radio (Bayerische Rundfunk) reported today that the the rabbi of Hof has been accused of assault for performing circumcisions in a complaint brought to the state prosecutor’s office by a local doctor. The doctor was one of six hundred physicians and lawyers who signed a petition against circumcision following the June 27 decision of a provincial court in Cologne defining the religious ritual as “grievous bodily harm.” The last circumcision performed by the rabbi in question occurred years ago, according to the radio station, and the doctor’s complaint appears designed to create legal standing for a future complaint before the countyr’s Constitutional court. Bavarian radio reports that the local district attorney has not yet stated whether criminal proceedings will be brought against the rabbi. Under German law, prosecution–if it occurs–would begin with an Ermittlungsverfahren, that is, a preliminary hearing. The Times of Israel carried a misleading report suggesting that the state prosecutor had already decided to pursue the complaint, and Commentary’s website repeated the inaccuracy.
In an Aug. 9 essay at Tablet, the Jewish webzine, I reported on the campaign by a broad array of German institutions to ban circumcision, despite the support of the country’s political leaders including Chancellor Angela Merkel:
Merkel has the backing of the leadership of all of the country’s political parties, but her defense of circumcision met a groundswell of protest from German medical and child welfare organizations. Germany’s Child Protection Society (Kinderhilfe) denounced the ritual as “a blank check for religiously motivated child abuse.” The head of the German Academy for Pediatric Medicine, Wolfram Hartmann, warned on July 17, in response to Merkel’s statement, that circumcision causes “lifelong bodily and above spiritual [sic] injury.” Two days later, a spokesman for Germany’s Humanist Association dismissed circumcision as “a relic of times long gone” and demanded that Jews consign the practice to the dust-heap of history, along with corporal punishment of children. Six-hundred German physicians and lawyers signed an open letter to Merkel published July 21, proclaiming that “religious freedom cannot be a charter for violence,” and asserting that circumcision violates the “right of children to bodily integrity and sexual self-determination.”
It is hard to recall an issue that has called forth such fury from German civil society in recent years. And it is far from over. The effect of the court’s ruling can already be felt beyond Germany’s borders; copycat bans on brit milah have emerged in neighboring countries, including Switzerland and Austria. On July 23, two Swiss hospitals announced that they would abstain from performing circumcisions because they were “evaluating the legal and ethical stance in Switzerland,” a spokesman for a Zurich hospital said. A day later, the chief executive of Austria’s Vorarlberg province, Markus Wallner, told regional hospitals to refrain from circumcision for religious reasons “until the legal situation had been clarified” following the Cologne court’s decision. (Wallner backtracked a week later, after Austria’s justice minister declared that parents could not be punished for circumcising infants.)
The reasoning of the German anti-circumcision crusade, I argued, is especially disturbing:
The uproar over circumcision barely conceals a revulsion at the concept of the sacred in all its forms. The German court replaces the Jewish and Christian belief in sanctity of human life and the human body with a perverse concept of rights deriving from bodily proprietorship. In this brave new world, it is legal to bring your grandmother to a Zurich hospital to be euthanized but criminal to bring a newborn boy to be circumcised. It is doubly perverse because the West first learned of human rights, and the rights of newborns in particular, from the Jews. Banish the source of these rights and the notion of rights will eventually turn into a twisted mockery…Erase the line between what is sacred and what is merely utilitarian, and there is nothing in principle to prevent us from subjecting low-value (minderwertig) life to the cost-benefit analysis of the killers. That German physicians and attorneys campaign with such bitter determination to uproot the source of the sacred—the Jewish concept of covenant—from German society is downright chilling. Don’t they remember?
Sometimes the lack of immediacy in a democracy is a good thing. Merkel and other top officials in the major parties know that a ban on circumcision would be a huge blow to Germany’s international reputation. So they will quash it, for a while anyway.
If you say so. But even if what you suggest happens, it won’t last. The Leviathan of feminism has been admitted into the society and she is very intimidating — especially to the squishy and morally weak. All the feminist dupes that were stampeded into going along with blanket bans of a very broadly defined “female circumcision” have no rational defense against falling in line behind a ban on all circumcision. Hint: crying “but female circumcision is different!” won’t wash because so many people have already taken a bite out of the witchy feminist apple and now their intellect is clouded so much they can be (and have been!) duped to believe males and females are essentially identical.
Concede the basic premises to the Obstacle to all that is Truth and one is lost before the argument has even begun.
In the end the Jews will lead the fight to end maiming infants to mark them as members of a tribe.
You are obnoxious.
Best to be a quiet ignoramus, no?
Ozzy – If Jew do that, then in the end, they will not be Jews. Torah law requires circumcision of the penis, not of the heart.
Europe is doing its best to demonize Jews and destroy Judaism, and yet the Jews don’t seem to see it. As B. Netanyahu pointed out, the Christians of Spain did the same thing before 1492, but the Jews refused to see it. How long before the same thing happens and the Jews have to get up and leave? Of course, now there is a jewel of a country just a short plane ride away to receive them with open arms.
Why aren’t German Muslims also against this law?
Because they know that they will be granted exceptions. Jews not so much.
German Muslims most likely ARE against this law; it’s just that the article is mainly about the cases brought before the courts, which, “coincidentally,” seem only to involve Jews.
Can you shed some light on this, Mr. Goldman? I’ve seen speculation that this law is REALLY an attempt to get Muslims to leave Germany, but it’s safer to test it in court against Jews. Another speculation is that Muslims will eventually be excepted if they circumcise their boys after the “age of reason” (which ironically is a lot more painful and difficult), once the courts decide that only infant circumcision is the issue. What is your take?
Again, read by piece in Tablet.
Muslims are against the law, and there is a good deal about their views in the German media. But the campaign is not direct against Muslims so much as against the concept of the sacred as a foundation for society (which is why Catholics and Protestants have been very strong on the issue). Muslims have more leeway than Jews; there is no mandatory circumcision age (in fact, there is no mention of it in the Koran, and of course there is no Muslim idea of covenant with God to begin with). It is not quite the existential issue for Muslims that it is for Jews. But there is no question that this impacts the religious freedom of Muslims — and if there are rights to be had, Muslims have as much claim on such rights as anyone else.
Speaking of other sacred issues, here’s a good thoughtful round up of posts by two Catholic priests suggesting that maybe the West shouldn’t idolize those who disrupt Orthodox Christian worship in the name of criticizing the Kremlin:
http://zenpundit.com/?p=13039
The example used is how the global media would react if a group of Israeli feminists rushed into the male section of a synagogue to protest Bibi’s close ties to the ultra-Orthodox. Clearly it would be a mess and the Israeli police would have to move in to protect the foolish ladies from irate Hasidic men. And nobody outside of the usual media that slam Israel would care.
“Destroy the Jewish foundation of Christianity, and it stands on extremely shaky ground (as it does already in Germany).” For the record P—y Riot’s ‘punk prayer’ also included a reference to ‘gay rights exiled to Siberia’ or somesuch. It was not just about Putin as it has been portrayed by a fawning media. In fact sometimes I suspect either certain folks are so far gone that they can’t fathom Putin would love to portray all of his critics as P—y Rioting freaks (did you notice they wore balaclavas like the PLO terrorists at the Munich Olympics? And now Amnesty Intl wants to send a bunch to the Kremlin). Either that or the political agenda is simply a mask for a deeper, darker anti-Orthodox Christian, anti-Catholic and anti-Judaic wave from America to Germany to Russia, oddly enough funded by some of the same people and NGOs.
I’m sorry. I still don’t get it. What exactly are the anti-circumcision zealots all hot and bothered about? Just what harm is being done? Sorry to be so dense.
See the Tablet piece linked in the post.
The basic three arguments would be (full disclosure: I’m a German and, in principle, agree with the original anti-circumcision verdict’s logic, but still feel uneasy about a legal ban – now, charge me with anti-Semitism, secular fanaticism and contempt for human life all you want):
a) Infant circumcision removes a piece of healthy tissue that is crucial to sexual pleasure and hence reduces it significantly.
However, my impression so far is that there exists no really good scientific evidence for that one and it is rather questionable.
I believe this argument can be dismissed for the time being, although it is obnoxiously prominent in the statements of many circumcision critics.
b) Infant circumcision violates the child’s religious freedom.
Of course, as long as a child is a child, most of the important choices in its life will be made by its parents. But circumcision lasts on into adulthood, and that means the now grown-up child still bears a permanent mark of a religion and tradition it may or may not choose to embrace. (Or choose to embrace only up to a certain point.) And, yes, religious freedom certainly implies a freedom to choose if you want to have a religious label on your body. This can easily be seen by considering the case of forcing them on an already adult person.
Admittedly, even many Jews and Muslims who become atheists do not seem to care much about their lack of foreskin, but it appears there also exist people who ARE unhappy about their circumcision status (in a group comprising millions of people, that is not actually a question, of course). This point may be more compelling in Germany, where only a minority of people is circumcised, than in, e.g., the US.
c) By several peer-reviewed medical studies (just enter “circumcision pain” into Google scholar), infant circumcision causes an intense pain response that can be dampened, but not completely removed, by local anaesthesia.
My goal here is not really to convince anyone of these arguments (don’t expect to), just to answer your question.
Still: Honestly spoken, I find Dr Goldman’s response to this discussion pretty illogical. He claims that Judaism is the basis of our concept of human rights, and thus… Well, here it becomes problematic: If, after an honest examination, we come to the conclusion that an aspect of Judaism is at odds with human rights, we should ignore it for this reason? And then hold an inconsistent position on purely historical grounds?
Moreover, claiming that Judeo-Christian tradition has some kind of copyright on the human rights concept seems like a very simplistic view of a much more complex history where it was not so clearly tied to either belief or non-belief in a particular faith system. (And I can not see the concept of “universal, inalienable human rights” too clearly fleshed out anywhere in the Bible. It’s more plausible to say that our modern understanding evolved over millenia, and Judaism and Christianity were an important part of that evolution.)
“Herr Goldman” will do.
My point is that you would not have heard of human rights, much less the rights of children, except for the Jews. The notion of “rights” derives from the sanctity of life. The alternative view of “human rights,” e.g. Peter Singer’s utilitarian hedonism, is a recent and perverse addition to the repertoire (Singer for example justifies infanticide in cases of birth defects).
I DO understand your point, but my problem with it is that you do not deal with the actual question (“Accepting the framework of “Western values”/”human rights”, does infant circumcision violate the baby’s rights?”), but try to shift the discussion to another one (“Would the framework of human rights even exist without Judaism?”). But this isn’t what you have to address to make your case.
We can divide your point into two “sub-points”:
a) The one purely based on “alternate history”: Historically, without Judaism, the concept of human rights wouldn’t have entered our societies.
One problem (of several) is, this may be true, but you can not actually predict how history would have played out if you altered some of its events. That also means that taking away any number of events in Western history might have completely changed things – maybe there would be no human rights without Attila the Hun, and that still doesn’t lend his deeds any “moral force”. More to the point, even the Thora contains some commandments/laws that are (without any doubt) at odds with our generally accepted moral code (e.g. capital punishment for homosexuals), and that most Jews thankfully do not obey them. To defend these parts of scripture on the basis of Judaism’s historical role would be absurd.
b) The stronger moral version: Religion, and originally Judaism, is necessary to derive our understanding of fundamental rights.
What this overlooks is a simple fact that David Hume pointed out a few centuries ago: You cannot derive “ought” from “is”. Thus, religion, far from being necessary, is not a even a sufficient foundation for human rights. Any attempt to derive a morality from religious claims must already presuppose the existence of certain values.
If, for example, you follow God’s commandments out of reverence for an omnipotent creator of the world, the prerequisite for this very reverence is that you already HAVE a code of values that you adhere to. Similarly, you might follow a certain morality out of reverence for Mother Theresa or Thomas Paine (even if they weren’t quite divine beings). Even if you are just afraid of spending an eternity in hell, you have already accepted a value (self-preservation), and this may be used by a secular society, too, by threatening you with punishment when you don’t follow certain laws.
In the end, it makes no difference if you just skip the middle-man and accept a framework of “rights” directly out of respect for your fellow man. I would even argue that it is slightly healthier.
Now, let us assume that Judaism or some form of religiosity IS necessary and sufficient to derive the idea of human rights, and that it also implies the necessity of infant circumcision. If you answer the first above question (“Accepting the framework of “Western values”/”human rights”, does infant circumcision violate the baby’s rights?”) with “no”, there is obviously no problem, but you could have directly answered it and refuted the arguments for it (listed some of them above). If, after careful examination, your answer is “yes”, however, it means that you arrive at a contradictory position where you have to regard infant circumcision as both right and wrong at the same time: Right, because it is a commandment, wrong, because a consistent application of the rights you deduce from your religious views implies that it is wrong. An obviously untenable position.
In both cases, the question if infant circumcision somehow constitutes a violation of a baby’s rights remains the decisive one that can not be circumvented by pointing to Judaism’s historical merits. (Which I do not doubt.)
You cannot get around the problem of the sanctity of life. The view of rights proposed by Peter Singer et. al. as an alternative, namely hedonistic utilitarianism, would allow an adult to choose to be circumcised. Or to be euthanized. Or to sell a kidney. Or to have a leg amputated in service of a fetish. Or to stifle a newborn (even a healthy one). Or to end minderwertiges Leben. Take away the sanctity of life, and there is no barrier to any of these things. But how can you maintain the sanctity of life when you outlaw the rites that sanctified life in the first place?
“The view of rights proposed by Peter Singer et. al. as an alternative, namely hedonistic utilitarianism, …”
You seem to believe that Peter Singer is the only person who ever suggested a secular framework of ethics. This is obviously not true.
“would allow an adult to choose to be circumcised.”
Yes, but I think we both are okay with that.
“Or to be euthanized. Or to sell a kidney. Or to have a leg amputated in service of a fetish.”
Well, euthanasia in some cases can save people from a slow, horrendous, tortorous, painful death. Anyway: It is one question if you view these things as immoral, it is another one if you are allowed to use force (in this case, the might of law enforcement) to coerce another person to comply with your moral standards, may they be right or not.
For victim and perpetrator of what according to you is an ethical transgression are the same person here, and thus it’s hard to justify an external intervention. However, there would be one line of reasoning that would have to be considered even within a hedonist utilitarian framework: The difference between ex-post and ex-ante desires of a person. Not delving into this further, just wanted to mention it.
In any case, as I tried to explain above, it doesn’t really make a difference for choosing your values if you have a god as a middle man or not: You can just as easily submit to a secular moral code preaching the sanctity of life and (ethically) have neither gained nor lost anything.
“Or to stifle a newborn (even a healthy one). Or to end minderwertiges Leben.”
No, at least that would not be permissible under a secular principle of self-ownership of each human being and our common understanding of human rights. Doesn’t it strike you that the ones who coined the term “minderwertiges Leben” were not so much secularists as either Christians or proponents of a quasi-religious heathen cult? Not so much hedonists as believers in human sacrifice for “Führer, Volk und Vaterland”?
“But how can you maintain the sanctity of life when you outlaw the rites that sanctified life in the first place?”
I tried to explain above why I cannot see religion (much less specific religious) rites as essential to human rights or ethics. In fact, many people around the world are able to believe in these things without performing infant circumcision.
Tres,
You said that: “claiming that Judeo-Christian tradition has some kind of copyright on the human rights concept seems like a very simplistic view of a much more complex history where it was not so clearly tied to either belief or non-belief in a particular faith system”
You may argue this in the general (though even then I’m not sure the argument would be so strong). When speaking in particular of the rights of children, and above all of the rights of infants, this argument however can be rejected totally.
Infanticide was extremely widespread in the Ancient World, from Phenician and Punic sacrificing of children to Moloch, to Greek selection of infants granted the right to live according to their apparent strength and killing of others, up to and including Roman law granting the pater familias the right of life and death over his children. Unwanted children, weaklings, handicapped, and a disproportionate amount of small girls were killed: it was extremely uncommon for Roman families, even wealthy, to have more than one female child.
Pater familias lost this life & death right in the 4th century, as a result of Christianism becoming official religion of the Roman empire. Laws and practices defended by philosophers were dropped only under Christian influence.
Ancient peoples had remarked for a long time that Jews deemed it a grave sin to kill any child. They found that custom very strange, often to their distate.
Look up e.g. Roman historian Tacitus http://classics.mit.edu/Tacitus/histories.5.v.html who scorned abstention of infanticide amongst those Jewish customs he deems “at once perverse and disgusting, (owing) their strength to their very badness” : “It is a crime among them to kill any newly-born infant”. Tacitus scorned the Jewish religion as “tasteless and mean”, along with converts to Judaism “the most degraded out of other races, scorning their national beliefs”.
There is no argument that criminalization of infanticide didn’t first appear in the Jewish religion, to be later spread by the Christian religion.
This fact should weigh heavily when thinking about banning a practice which is crucial to Jewish religion, under very weak arguments based on infant rights. I fully understand your uneasiness about a legal ban.
Regarding the three arguments which you cited:
a) Foreskin as “crucial to sexual pleasure”
This is just not supported at all by the medical record.
I recommend http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexual_effects_of_circumcision
Summing it up: No difference in sexual satisfaction according to most studies, minority of studies report decreased satisfaction, minority of studies report increased satisfaction
b) Violation of religious freedom of the future adult
Actually his religious freedom is not violated at all. A Jew / Muslim can become Atheist or convert to any religion of his belief, without missing foreskin impacting that freedom in any way.
The only freedom he doesn’t have is freedom to remove a sign which he received from his parents. That’s nothing to be shocked about: a person adopting religious beliefs different from his parents generally does not (and in any case should not) deny the fact that he was raised by these parents and not others, in this religion and not another one. Even if as an adult he completely changed his beliefs, denying one’s history is neither respectful nor good for oneself.
If “it appears there also exist people who ARE unhappy about their circumcision status”… then where are their advocacy groups, where are their testimonies?
c) Pain in the infant, or more generally health problems
About health problems, I recommend: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circumcision#Complications
Summing it up: death risk and penis loss risk are very small (1 to 2 cases per million)
About pain: as you mention there is local anaesthesia. What pain remains after that I can’t comment about since I was never circumcised (I’m a French Catholic). I can’t see however any advocacy group of former victims… nor psychological therapies aiming to cure the long-term psychological devastation wrought by circumcision pain… I have every reason to believe that this short pain is about as traumatizing to an infant as vaccination is.
Like David Goldman insists, it’s quite impressive that a large group of people without any personal stake in circumcision would go out of their way to advocate on very shallow grounds pretending at infant protection the legal banning of a procedure which is central to a religion which historically was the first to (forcefully) argue against infanticide and for rights of children and was the source for later Christian spread of children right to life the world over.
The Godwin argument is wrong and insulting. These people advocating circumcision ban having nothing to do whatsoever with the Third Reich.
But all cultures and civilizations may at some times take a turn for the worse. This strange advocacy may be the first sign of a risk to take such a turn. An ill wind, in a word.
Alexis,
just briefly:
1) I said before that Judaism has a lot of historical merit in shaping our idea of “rights”, probably more so than Christianity. It is one of at least three reasons I have for feeling uneasy about legal steps against circumcision.
My main point was that this can not imply that Jewish ritual must not be held to human rights standards. Moreover, while Judaism banned infanticide and thus introduced the child’s right to live, your argument becomes historically weaker when we talk about issues like religious freedom (see Deuteronomy 13:6-11) or ban of corporal punishement/unneccessary pain for children.
2) The advocacy groups do exist, e.g. there is a website “Jews against circumcision”. Of course, a minority of people complaining about their circumcision status is less visible than a majority who have no issues with it (and have every right not to).
3) I said it above, and I will say it again: Religious freedom also implies that you have the freedom to decide if religious surgery is performed on you. For example, how would you feel if your parents had carved their political party membership into your arm? You could still root for any politics you want, but wouldn’t it still violate your political freedom?
4) The pain response (even after local anaesthesia, which does not seem to be the common practice) has been scientifically studied. Here is an article: http://www.cirp.org/library/psych/goldman1/ that was at least good enough to be published by a medical journal.
5) One reason why this topic draws so much attention from people who don’t have a personal stake is the same for which someone like you, also without a personal stake, comments on it so extensively: It touches upon fundamental questions of the role of religion in our society. (Aside from the fact that not all societal or political issues someone cares about need to concern him or her personally.)
Went there, read that. Eee Gads. Nowhere is any evidence offered to support the rather silly claims of loss of sexual determination or spirituality. It almost sounds like some new gay movement. Do gays have a thing for foreskins? Yuk.
ILTP, I like your attitude about this. Yours is the most down-to-earth, commonsensical, and most appropriate response to all of the silliness posted here.
My son is/was mild aspergers, and because of that he was teased and bullied from 1st through 3rd grade in public school. The teachers at his school did nothing about it. In fact, rather than deal with the few boys responsible for my son’s treatment, they basically said it was my son that was the cause of the problems. We took him out at 4th grade and homeschooled him. He is a teenager now, but still bears the emotional scars from the way he was treated in public school.
By the way, he was also circumcised as a baby; something that has made not one shred of difference in his life either physically or emotionally.
Of the million and one things an adult can do to permanently scar a child, both physically and psychologically, the preservation of a small flap of loose skin, that has no apparent biological purpose, is the one hill that some people are hell-bent on dying on. Good G–, you would think that if these anti-circumcision crusaders really cared about children, they could find no end of far more useful causes to champion.
So, as Mr. Goldman has pointed out, this debate has nothing to do with “saving the children” and everything to do with an attack on the spiritual. It took a lot of living before it finally dawned on me that the way to understand scriptures is to realize that we are spiritual beings, stuck for a time in a physical body; and that there is a two-layered quality to the words contained there.
What the anti-circumcision crusaders are saying is that we humans have no spiritual side, that the physical is all there is, and therefore must be preserved at all costs. What a depressing view these people must have of themselves and their fellow human beings.
You end your article with: “And don’t they (Germans) remember?” I am not exactly sure what you hold to be the object of remembering. If you mean the notion of “the sacred” per se, relative to which circumcision is one example, though a prominent one, I think you have hit the bull’s eye of the target. Although I “smell” a potentional, though evolving, anti-Semitism, not to speak of a clear dislike of Muslims, I, talking from a Catholic/Orthodox postion, experience an general avid desire on the part of secularized persons of “science” (e.g., med. doctors, jurists) to surpress religious acts of sanctification per se because the notion of “das Heilige” or “the Holy” (I am taking the term from Pastor R. Otto’s famous work on the subject) per se is experienced as a vertical offense to secularing horizontilization of life, relative to which humans are but a part of “Mother Nature” (a term that shows up over and over in German tv on nature, evolution, or even human sexuality). Santification is a word with empty content. I will briefly note what I mean.
Although it is not (yet) a subject of law discussions, I frequently find Germans, even Protestants, objecting to Catholic (and Orthodox) baptism of infants. Without trying to stretch the parellel too much, I do see an analogy between covenant sanctification sealed by circumcision in Judaism and santifying grace imparted by baptism in Catholicism (and in Orthodoxy). In both cases the “Holy” is not just a private, personal decision of an adult to affirm certain clearly understood “words of God” (if religion still plays a role), rather a covenantal or sacramental incorporation of the human individual, soon after birth, into a sanctified community chosen by God and in which s/he will live out the drama of life. The critique I hear is that child baptism deprives or robs the individual of an adult decision and is, as such, morally objectionable. Baptism is seemingly not as traumatic as circumcision and entails no alteration of the body, which leaves it on the backburner of “holy relics”to do away with. (However, I have never seen an infant baptism where the child does not react with screaming and squirming. This might be the source of sexually inhibiting traumas, no?)
Many, many Germans (not simply “the” Germans) have not so much forgotten the Holy as much as they have simply surpressed it from conscousness, replacing it with something more mundane. I have before my eyes a front page of “GO” magazine, dedicated to “Money, Sex, Style” in which a very sexy dark haired Italian type in a tuxedo with a 4 day beard stands behind a naked blond woman (seen from the hips up) and who, with obvious sexual lust, wraps one arm around the woman covering up just enough of her breasts as he gently squeezes one. (They are not preparing to pray together!) This very, very normal frontpage is taken by me to symbolize current German society in its favorite horizontal (in a double sense) pursuit as once the Cross did the vertical pursuit. I can well understand that infant baptism (adult too, for that matter) would possess little valure for the child of that couple, i.e., if they would not simply abort it as “unwanted”. Had the man been a Jew and within the the German “medical” view that circumcision damages sexual performance, certainly the German Court should save the man from any hinderance to full and unhindered sex!!!
I think that you have, to my sadness, hit the mark. But, then I have the same experience in France or Spain. The Judeo-Christian orgins of Europe are indeed being forgotten.
I´m sorry for it, but we have a strange, general left wing stupidity here in Germany; it is connected to too many state and tax funded organizations which fight for women, children, against the “right” (not only against right radicals which means neofascists), for gay marriage …; there is no true rule and foundation here anymore. They earn a lot by their “work” and that I think is their main purpose.
Torah requires circumcision of the heart as well (Deut. 10:16).
The German message is clear Juden Raus!. They wish to be rid of the Jews and they will. The so called progessives will be the first wave of the mob. But the muslims aren’t going anywhere. Once again the Europeans will remove a talented, educated, productive group and replace them with barbarism.
There’s a Jewish community/rabbi in the town of Hof? I wonder if it is comprised mostly of Russian immigrants from the 1980s and their descendants. I’d have thought the population would have shifted to Frankfurt, Munich, etc.
I find it slightly ironic that the U.S. Army’s 2d Armored Cavalry Regiment spent a good part of the 80s stationed around Hof to defend German freedoms. In those days the town was on the front-lines of the Cold War and part of the potential “Hof Corridor” invasion route for Warsaw Pact forces.
I’m curious if the prosecutor who will decide whether to bring charges is subordinate to Chancellor Merkel’s federal government, to the State of Bavaria or to a lower level political unit.
All of a sudden, in the early 21st Century, the Germans discover the humanity of children.
Within living memory, in fact my mother’s memory, who is alive and well and an Auschwitz survivor, they were dashing the brains of Jewish children out against lamposts and the sides of trucks.
They think they have something to teach the Jews about humanity?
What colossal, hateful, deceitful arrogance.
F them. Damn them to hell.
The Germans will never forgive the Jews for being their victims in the Holocaust.
In many ways Germany is the adopted home of this American, having lived here 30+ years. I read with heavy heart the sufferings that the families of some of the commentators have had at the hands of the Germans of the Nazi period–some 200,000 Germans were directly involved in the killing machine, the specific numerical contribution of the SS and even the Wehrmacht is not so easy to ascertain–it was massively there. HOWEVER today’s Germany is NOT the same, indeed, it tends towards pacificism–only with difficulty could Adenauer bring the Germans to rearm and the Germans still refuse to do their military part. Moreover, every night there is at least 1 hour, often up to 3 or 4 hours tv time full of documentaries dedicated to NOT forgetting that horrible period. I do not think that “old fashion” anti-semitism is rampant in the part of Germany derived from the former West Germany. There are such tendencies in the annexed East Germany where no de-nazification took place. I do sense a certain fashionable dislike of Israel (e.g., Günter Grass’s vile attack–one not specifically racial) and an accepted idea that Israel represses the Palestinians. Maybe such inordinate critique portends proto-anti-Semitism. But, all in all, I believe that Germany can justifiable be proud of the distance that it has put between the Germans THEN (1933-1945) and the Germans NOW. Should I ever conclude I am wrong, I do have my American passport and will move on! Why have I taken time to communicate my evaluation of any German anti-Semitism, any Juden ‘raus tendencies?
I find that some readers have not fully understood the point David P. Goldman is making. The problematic raised in Germany is not specifically directed at the JEWISH (or Muslim) practice of circumcision. Anti-circumcision is but a symptom of a deeper disease. Indeed, what Goldman is touching upon refers not alone to Germany, but to the WHOLE of Europe itself. Christianity (the historically dominant form of religiosity) is disappearing! Here in Germany, Judaism is a side-show, there are so few. Even the some, perhaps, about 4 million Muslims are religiously of minor concern (and many “Muslim” believe in not much of anyting–fully Germanized). The intent by “scientists” (evident also in “tres’s” comment above) to cut off circumcision from acceptable religiosity is but the visible tip of a more profound iceberg–the secularization of the European consciousness per se. Obama has come for the Catholic conscience in the US re abortion insurance and a certain German class is now coming for the Jews because of circumcision. In my home or origins and in my adoptive home now I see, very disheartened, the same deep motivation, which is the transformation of the world of everyday life into a manifestation of purely postmodern immanentism. Because “immanentism” is a fancy word I will make it clear citing from a discussion between a French Cardinal and a Jewish Rabbi.
Through PJ Media I learned of the book “Le rabbin et le cardinal”, a dialogue between Rabbi Gilles Bernheim and Cardinal Philippe Barbarin. The chapter on the difficulties of building a fraternal friendship between Judaism and Catholicism is perhaps the most pertinent one (ideas from Rosenzweig show up). However, for the purpose of clarifying myself, the final words of the book by the Cardinal sum up it up and sum up what I take to be Goldman’s profound point. Seeking to formulate in a few words a common ground (after 300 pages of discussion), the good Cardinal exhorts both religions “à découvrir la source de notre joie, l’infini de cet amour qui nous attend”. The source of our human joy, religiously considered as awaiting us, is God, infinite and loving, a vertical transcendence of the horizontal living in nature (and the dominance of such horizontality is the goal of secularism). In the Judeo-Christian traditions this “source de notre joie” is beyond the purely natural and is rooted in the Holy. The seemingly benign battle against the slings and arrows of circumcision manifests a deeper war against the allowed social existence of the ways that the “source de notre joie” has freely communicated to us so as to establish a community of joy with our SOURCE. The curcumcisional taking of a tiny piece of male flesh, if denied social existence, implies an enormous invasion into the ability of the recipients of the message to live out its covenantal terms. This concerns Christianity and Islam, indeed, all reigious forms of social existence. Here, in my opinion, is the depth of Goldman’s warning.
P.S. Mr. Goldman, you see that the “infinite” just will not remain in the domain of mathematicians. Reject a hetereogeneity between the infinite and the finite, and finitization will dominate life. Just a point concerning the “God of Mathematics”.
“The intent by “scientists” (evident also in “tres’s” comment above) to cut off circumcision from acceptable religiosity is but the visible tip of a more profound iceberg–the secularization of the European consciousness per se.”
You should write the word “scientists” without the inverted commas: Just because a scientist says something you don’t like, he or she is still a scientist.
Secularization (i.e. the separation of church and state and the equal treatment of religions by the state) was and is an important aspect of Western civillization that distinguishes us from many less fortunate societies – most importantly, most Islamic societies -, no matter how incomplete it is.
You have every right to hold a reverence for supernatural beings or God to be an important part of your life, but you have to accept that other people have different worldviews.
I knew that you would feel obliged to cross swords with me if I but included your name in a criticism. I pressed the buttom and voilà. You scold me because I put the word “scientist” in quotation marks. I should not reject the ideas of SCIENTISTS (note I capitalized the crew here, satisfied?) just because they do not agree with me. If I had done that, I would accept your criticism. But, before explaining laboriously what I DID write, I must establish my “scientific” status. In Germany I am called a “Geisteswissenschaftler”, a term I will not translate as it sounds silly in English. And well should I be so designated since I hold three doctoral titles, have taught now and then in 4 countries in as many languages. (I am currently engaged in writing a book that hopefully will remove the logical foundations of Cantorian math–hence my reference to “infinity” to Mr. Goldman.) May I presume that you are duely impressed and will forthwith be restrained in you corrections of my reference to “”"scientists”"”, as if I had no authority to do so. With all my titles I expect that you show the same deference to me that you say I owe to my fellow “scientists”. Take my statements as stemming from a higher pedestal, as afterall all those titles must mean something. (If you accept my argumentation here, you are a fool–but a type that I manipulate for fun.) My negative reference to scientists seen by my use of quotation marks has nothing with “colleagues” proferring opinions contrary to mine, rather their (mis)use of their pedestal status (something very German and foreign to the American ear) as demanding special consideration, either medically or definitionally (e.g., definition of maiming), even against the democratic decisions of the German Parliment. These august “scientists” want to move a court to make a Jewish religious practice illegal. I, a non-Jew, am circumcised, like my father and my sons. When I read “scientists” pontificating about physical and psychological difficulties in the sexuality of circumcised men, I take it as an affront–also as de-confirmed by my experience. They strike me as phonies. I did have one son circumcised here in Germany in the good old days, though it was not normal pratice. Now I am to be denied that right–and the right does not pertain to my religious views. It does pertain to the religiosity of Jews–so much so that it abrogates the “convenant” by a secular court’s decree. It destroys the practice of Judaism by making it illegal as am integrated totality–acts of prohibition similar to the ones done to Jews and Christians centuries ago by the Romans. (And who said that history does not repeat itself?)
You graciously grant me the “RIGHT to hold a reverence for supernatural beings or God”. (I do not know how you derive your largesse. And how do you know just what supernatural beings I might sick upon you? May you should illegalize all such beings?!) Really? In logic one has the dictum: He who says “a” must say “b”. A half-hour ago I engaged a “normal” German (actually an undertaker) in a very civilized conversation of “different worldviews”. I got him to agree to saying “a”, namely that the state has a right to prohit Jewish ritual rights of circumcision because, among reasons, the child cirucmcised has no choice. So, the child should wait until adulthood to make its own “democratic” decision. (Since the very same “scientists” apodictically state that circumcision per se is maiming and that maiming is never allowed, then even an adult in Germany has no right to maim himself, e.g., hack off an arm or some foreskin. Hacking is, well, hacking! No?) If the argument from age is valid against the “right” of Jewish circumcision (= “a”), then the Catholic baptism of babies falls within the same rational against circumcision. So I claimed that my partner in exchanging worldviews must logically say “b”, i.e., that Catholics should legally be denied the right to baptise their children until adulthood. I queried: “Do you mean prohibition by law?” Answer: “Yes!” –”On what grounds?” Answer: “Democracy!” So you see, Mr. tres, your kind, but alas idiosyncratic granting me a “right” means nothing if my “right” in practice is viewed by the state as an offense against some democratic ideal, even if the decision is by a court. You fail to grasp that the tiny bit of Jewish foreskin, if its circumcision is made illegal, might be the actual prelude (it is the logical prelude) to my losing my Christian “right” to exercise my baptismal ritual of connection with “supernatural beings” (sic). You simply, so I say from my exhaulted pedestal, have failed to comprehend the seriousness of “b” derived from Goldman’s concern with a little foreskin. You concede???
By secularization I mean more than separation of Church and State (which I support fully and you do not). Secularization refers to the removal from conscousness all awareness of the transcent realm of “supernatural beings”. That is why I have used the comparison of “horizonality” vs. “verticality”. So, you once again, are barking up the wrong tree. But, let me turn to the separation of State and Church. That was the Constitution. This document has been “secularized” to mean today a separation of State and Religion per se. This is a difference. If a Christian soldier cannot lie in a graveyard marked by a Cross, he has been deprived of his realization of his Church rights in the name of banning religion from public life. When the state expands its activities to a seeming all emcompassing encirlement–as Obama is doing–and Christians are not allowed NOT to perform or support “murder” (and so abortion is seen), and when the state, simply by the mandate of a president, forces Christians to offend their conscience in matters of “murder”, I would say that the separation of Church and State is an outdated concept and cannot grasp the situation. So, the state comes for the Catholics in America forcing them to contribute to abortion. The state in Germany comes for the Jews potentially forcing them not to circumcise. And, as my interlocuter noted, he would be for the German state coming for the Catholics by prohibiting by law infant baptism. He who denies certain rights of religous practice, will end up denying any and all of them if the logic leads in that direction. To the degree you, Mr. tres, support such “comings for” you have surrendered belief in the separation of Church and State and are affirming the interference of the state into religion in the name of separation of state and religion.
I thank you for your thoughtful comments directed against me and Mr. Goldman. An exchange of “worldviews” is welcome and I hope you feel that you have been a welcomed part of such an exchange here in PJ Media. That is the meaning of it all.
P.S.: Your reference to “supernatural beings” is patronizing. The relation between actual infinity and finitude constitutes a heterogeneity of absolute proportions. Christian theologians in the Middle Ages identified “infinity” as an entitative feature of divinity. The relation of deus infinitus with a mundus finitus is not in any way accessible with silly references to “supernatural beings”. You need a solid philosophical and theological education. Then you can shoot us down with the proper knowledge.
Leonard,
happy to oblige. You could, of course, also have responded to me directly rather than dropping my name, but I suppose that would have been too mundane a road to take for a humanities scholar. (See what I did there? I translated “Geisteswissenschaftler”!)
I am sorry, but it speaks volumes when the only thing you can see in a reference to scientists is an appeal to the authority of people putting themselves on a pedestal. The real point is, of course, that these scientists have conducted empirical medical studies on circumcision, and this reference to the *science* done by the *scientists* is the actual point.
Catholic baptism does not leave a permanent mark on the body. If having been baptised still has a meaning for an adult, it must be because this adult believes in Catholicism and having been accepted into the church by it. All this talk about banning all religious practices, banning Judaism or banning religion from public life is just an example of the slippery slope fallacy: http://www.fallacyfiles.org/slipslop.html
I am very sorry that you found my reference to “supernatural beings” patroniziing, but it is how most people who haven’t read you books would refer to one or more gods.
Geehrter Herr tres:
I am Germanized and do not feel confortable with the American custom (not there when I was young) of addressing people with first names. “Mr. tres” is my “internationally” preferred mode. So pardon my formalities. As Germanized I do love to speak volumes, but I did not speak the ones you said I did. I suspect that you know nothing about the illusionism entailed in doctoral titles. I will explain the game a bit.
“Experts”, be they with doctoral titles or not, are just people with a driver’s licience. They have passed minimum tests–and that it all. It is a game of dazzling others thereafter. A holder of a title must now begin to earn it by augmenting knowledge, and such agumentation in one field does not make one an expert in another. I know quite well how little experts know–and my knowledge rests upon more experience than most. I never said that “scientists” per se do not have something to say or that they are putting themselves on pedestals per se. (Here in Germany is a different matter.) However, I have read enough of the remarks publically made by the “scientists” in Germany, too many because much is loaded with prejudice<<– my professional opinion. When a "scientist" tells me that circumcision constitutes a fundamental "Verstümmelung"–"radical maiming" of my genitals and a major detriment to my sexual life, I can only say humbug! When I read about erectional difficulties following from circumcision I think of the flat-earth scientists.
Aside: By the way if you read Ptolomy you will find an exemplatory example of the scientific method–impressive, just false relative to a flat earth. When one turns to psychology I find so many schools as to raise doubts about any objectivity. Of course, we all know of the brilliant Newtonian "scientists" who were dead wrong as to the finality of Newton. Mathematicians held for over 2000 years that all had been said about infinity, and then came Cantor! A radical change! I presume that you have read Thomas Kuhn and his theory of paradigm changes. Change in scientific opinion is often a change into another world. The turning to "scientists" in psychological matters as a so-called special source to be subservient to is a "pedestal" use of the term, i.e., the psychological "scientist" is using the earned respect of hard physical scientists for his own claims to authority. NO, not a single med. doctor is empowered, just be cause of biological knowledge, to define what "Verstümmelung" is. That is a philosophical task, a task fed examples by what doctors do and discover. I hold that the gasing of Jews by the Nazis to be immoral, BUT not because some med. or psychiatric doctor tells me it is so. Such evaluations are fully beyond the range of mere med. knowledge. Indeed, some very competent med. doctors contributed to the truely "scientific" method used by the Nazi to solve the "Jewish Problem". Med. doctors by their very limited knowledge (= how the body functions) can structurally in NO way pontificate about "maiming" in any definitional sense and, if they do, they are using their pedestal status (and you do not know how the pedalization of knowledge in German culture is a racket–heck, I have had women refuse a date with me because I freightened them with a doctoral title–so imposing was my title).
The only "medical" authorities who in any way can speak from professional knowledge about "Verstümmelung" would be psychiatrists and psychologists and, then, only tangently. And that group of "scientists" is the least scientific of all. There are people who fear irrationally the ravages of sin and need clinical help. Should a psychologist deduce from such a case that the Catholic concept of sin should be legally forbidden. Negative pychological ramifications of sin are for psychologists. The definition and anylsis of sin pertains to the domain of the theologian and philosopher. What anthropologists and psychologists discover should be considered in theological reflections, but they do not determine said thought in its pursuit of normativity. Judgments of a moral nature are moral judgments, not a collection of "expert" opinions that sway momentary tastes.
But surely, "empirical" studies should prove something. Empirical studies receive their meaning from the theoretical context in and from which they are posed. Let me say that, statistically established for the moment, circumcised men have a more divorces that uncirmucised (in the poor areas of southern Spain where many Africans are entering), a small, but statistically significant amount. What should the LAW conclude? That is an empirical study, no? The answer is of course that an empirical study is not an empirical study per se, but a hypothesis constucted such that expected answers are generally found (cf. Kuhn on normal science). The question is: What relation does empirical studies per se have to do with a religious practice of circumcising a small amount of skin that does not interfere with sex life? If Jews were imitating the Mayans and smashing their children's skulls, your case would be solid. Such smashing would fall under illicit killing, viz., murder. And cirucumcision? The term "Versümmelung" is repeatedly trotted out and we circumcised would laugh it all out of court, except that the "scientists" (most, if not all of whom, are by their trade not qualified to establish moral normativity) want a court decision prohibiting our practices. Scientists estabilish the "is" of facts, not the "thou shalt" of morality. That is beyond their scientific competency–and structurally so. This fact alone renders the 600 """"scientists"""" suspect in my view of pontificating imperiously from a pedestal.
Finally, your translation of "Geisteswissenshaftler" is misleading. In Gemany I am more than a "humanities scholar", rather I am a "scientist of the spirit, viz., mind". A scholar is not necessarily a "scientists". I am so, at least in Germany.
Finally, leaving aside the argument that Catholic baptism does not afford the adult choice of joining (nor is it intended to do so), I have never seen a baptism where the child is not in someway upset, a way that reminds me of the few circumcisions I have seen. It is the supposed traumatic effect of circumcision that is supposed to have deliterious sexual aftereffects on the circumcized child. Analogously, one could argue that the baptismal experience of a baby has similar "traumatic" effects. If the "scientists" were to say so, would you then be for prohibiting Catholics from infant baptism. Who says "a", should say "b", no?
Verehrter Herr Prof. W.,
having received my education in the natural sciences rather than the humanities, I feel uncomfortable about a lot of things you say about these fields, but let me start with a point we agree on: Scientists, qua being scientists, can tell us something about the facts in a case, but the moral evaluation of the facts is outside their fields. You can not derive ought from is. I wrote that myself in a reply above.
However, given an ethical framework, the facts are NOT irrelevant to the morality or immorality of a decision: If a murder suspect is guilty or not is relevant to the morality of imprisoning him. In so far as they have better knowledge, and means of studying, the facts, scientists are more qualified to comment on this particular aspect of a moral decision, and they are not LESS qualified to evaluate it ethically than most other people, so it’s perfectly legitimate for them to make statements about it. This does, of course, not free us from the responsibility of coming to our own conclusions. In any case, my actual argument does not rest on public statements of scientists, but on their peer-reviewed papers and studies.
To dismiss all studies you don’t like, or all studies in general, because you assume them to be mere tools for arriving at a preconceived conclusion is popular, but not quite correct: If you want to answer a question about reality (like: “Is circumcision painful?”, or: “Does it reduce sexual pleasure?”), the way to go is to systematically look what happens in reality (and not anecdotally, like: “my sexual pleasure isn’t reduced, hence it must be true for every other circumcised person, too.”). This systematic approach means things like looking at the statistics of a representative group rather than individual cases, controlling for external factors that “muddle the waters” etc. It SHOULD not mean setting the study up to arrive at a preconceived conclusion. In fact, many studies on the circumcision pain response concentrate on which method of anaesthesia is the best, and seem very far from being biased. (Not to mention that they don’t make any political statements.) Moreover, the actual prejudice of the medical community until a few decades ago was that newborn infants don’t feel pain at all, and that one has been refuted, rather than confirmed, by studies.
Of course, it is possible that there are methodical flaws in such studies (including the ones due to investigator bias), or that they overlooked an important factor, but the burden of proof lies with the person who claims such a thing. Otherwise, for the time being, an evaluation of the best data available leads to a different conclusion. (And, yes, unlike you I’d insist that medicine IS a relevant discipline for the sexual pleasure aspect, but I mentioned before that the evidence for that one seems rather flimsy to me.)
The same is of course true in all science, not only including medical studies. You appear to see this as some sort of weakness, as your remark on changing scientific attitudes seems to indicate. The opposite is, of course, the case: Natural science tests its assumptions against reality all the time, and thus constantly adapts to it, unlike e.g. religious traditions, which may hold the same wrong beliefs for centuries or millenia. Still, it is normally reasonable (with a few exceptions) to trust the best natural science available to you, and you do that every time you use a computer or enter an airplane. That’s because, even when science is wrong, it is usually not completely wrong: The (in a strict sense) “false” Newtonian mechanics you mention is still used to make machines work or calculate orbits in space, with great success.
Science fiction writer Isaac Asimov once wrote a marvelous essay on the topic: http://hermiene.net/essays-trans/relativity_of_wrong.html
Regarding baptism, I am pretty sure that cutting tissue from the body is far more painful than getting a little wet. If the Christians, however, insisted on “waterboarding” their children (and who knows what weird sects might actually pop up in the future), there would be a solid case against that.
P.S.: I am also aware that, according to Catholcisim, baptism irreversibly makes you a member of the Catholic church. However, in order to believe that, you would have to believe in Catholicism. That’s precisely what I meant above.
“tres”, my old nemesis, you do want to quarrel! You make a thrust with various prongs and I answer the thrust with a counter thrust of various prongs producing the result that the discussion is becoming bogged down in point and counter point making. The situation is that our communications are becoming impossibly long. I have no intention of continuing in the current context other than with a few or a few more than a few final words. The last word is yours if you want it.
First of all, I have, I suspect, about 17 years of university studies spread out in slots here and there in at least 10 universities in four countries. Within that period, I did spend 3 years in the natural sciences and am aware of what can and cannot be done, including statistical theory in biology and in psychology. Most of your remarks cause me no problems. They just are not germane to the moral question at hand. Let us take one example. Science certainly helps to find out “who done it?” (which probably explains the German tv fascination with the CSI series). But, if person X is a murderer with premediation and is found guilty with the help of “scientists”, what is the punishment to be imposed? 5, 10, 15, 20 years in prison or the death penalty? The answer here, particulary relative to the death penalty, is not a factual question. If a person “deserves” to receive “punishment”, any statistics relevant to dissuasion of similar crimes are beside the point. Why? Because the moral judgment accepting punishment is in itself a value for which statistics cannot bring forth information. Well, should crimes “deserve” any “punsihement” at all, even if imprisonment statistically has deterent effects? I am not talking about keeping insanely raving people from the streets for awhile, rather about the very moral status of “punishment” per se. That is a moral question not open to any imperative derived from any statistics. Statistics help only relative to predictions of what probably will happen during incarceration, not what SHOULD happen as regards to punishment or not. Or? If a criminologist gathers scientifically some information about the effects of torturing, pampering or ignoring the prisoner, he has professionally nothing to say about the moral status if such treatment chosen, only about its deterent or amelioratory effects. But “punishment” for misdeeds is another matter. I know an American who spent 5 years in prison and said he would have preferred having his hand cut off Muslim-style. Would it be moral to grant such a wish? What do the “scientists” have to say? I suspect a full blooded Kantian would say that the incarceration of person X with the sole purpose of submitting said person to therapeutic treatment unto reform is a moral offense against the freedom and moral integrity of said person. The reason would be because the misdeeding person is being treated as a means to an end, totally ignoring any reference to his own free chosing and ensuant responsiblity. One criminologist I heard in tv said that such misdeeds are beyond the control of the so-called Kantian free will and, hence, the individual is a “thing” to manipulate anyway. What “scientific” method will impart to me the imperative to follow? This question is not foreign to your assertion that the individual has “the RESPONSIBILITY to come to one’s OWN conclusion”. From what METAscientific reality do you derive “responsiblity” as a “duty”? There are “scientists” who would doubt that you possses an “OWN” to which any “responsiblity” can be predicated. We are all, so to speak, Homer Simpsons. Is it not “scientifically” so that decisions are supposed to be made in the brain before consciousness formulates them? Where is your “own”? In between the synapsis of your brain? One German neuroscientist “scientist” proclaimed that in German tv? Have you read Gerhard Roth or Wolf Singer? You will soon find out that it is all in your brain! –Worse, the biological models used by these “scientists” allow for no evidence that you even have a “brain-in-itself”, since all evidence is already in your brain. You have no access to the trans-cerebral world, eveything being in the “brain”. And such “scientists” deserve my submission when they assert moral imperatives? At any rate, any attempted foundation for your “own” will not be uncovered by the “scientists”. Your “own” will not be found in “scientific” statistics, though such research can throw light upon factors that incline you to act so or so. My belief in Catholicism is less a belief than the “scientist’s” belief in an extra-cerebral world, let alone that he even has a brain. Evidence not in the brain for the belief in a brain? Philosophical argumentation, not “scientific” argumentation is appropiate.
But, let me come back to your words and seek to dangle you from some of them as a last point for this comment. You write that “given an ethical framework, the facts are NOT irrelevant to the morality or immorality of the decision”. For the purpose of my ensuing comment I will grant you an “own” that considers my words with “responsibility”–a non-scientific favor. I ask your “own” to “give” me “an ethical framework”, period! I want said framework to be the product of the relevant scientific facts, excluding the irrelevant ones. O.K.? Just how is the framework to obtain its status of being “given”? Given by whom or what? “Scientists”? Psychiatrists? Empirical studies? Measurements that show more pleasure if I accept an ethical framework as “given” rather than reject it? And if I am a masochist, would not pain be a better measurement? I fully agree with you that, “given an ethical framework”, empirical facts have a bearing on my judgments of morality. So, I have moved towards you. Turn about is fair play. So, adduce your “given”!!! The point of Goldman’s reaction to illegalizing circumcision and my worries about illegalizing child baptism (and you did not answer my hypothetical question as to whether you would forbid it if “scientists” found it detrimental to later pleasure in sexual orgies or whatever–and that allows you not to say “b”, having said “a”) are that “scientists”, structurally incapable within the terms of their discipline, are imposing their subjective “value judgments” upon my supposed “subjective” religious beliefs. In doing this, the separation of state and church, viz., religion is being abrogated with brutal finality and self-righteous blindness. I care not a wit if my sexual life examined with doubtful questionaires is measured as “x”% less pleasureable than Bertrand Russell’s masturbating hands (I am sure he had forskin). Measured “pleasure” is, perhaps, a fact. From what “given ethical framework” (other than the preferences of said “scientists” or your own subjective secularity) imposes logically an immperative upon any believing Jew to cease and desist circumcision, let alone to consider circumcision as a “Vertümmelung”? Maybe Jews find community with God through the covenant sealed by circumcision to be more “pleasureable” than the wang-bang modern submission to the next orgasm (and please do not forget the GO frontpage I noted above as symbolic for contemporary Germany)?! “Ethical frameworks” are not matters of science. Hitler and Himmler had an ethical framework of “unwertes Leben” which they believed to be scientifically (sic) proven. That was an ethics based upon “science” (sic) adjusted to held values. So, please show me that the “ethical framework” you want has more logical validity than Hitler’s, Stalins’s, or any “scientist” (e.g., Dr. Guttmacher in the US) that clamors for abortion. (Hint: Look up Brand Blanshard’s “Reason and Goodness” and you might find a connection between “being” and “ought”. Indeed, being true to myself obliges me with an ought to accept truth as I ascertain it. Other than evolutionary advantage, what value does truth possess as an “ethical framework”?
With my questions we are back to the foundation of human rights. If humans have rights that transcend the statistics of the moment as they please the modish prejudices, viz., value judgments of “scientists”, i.e., if humans have, as it stands in the American Declaration of Independence, “inalienable” rights, then please derive these transnatural (in a sense SUPERnatural) rights from some inalienable source, not just from an arbitrary “given” by the whims of current German society. I will patiently await the naming of the “scientists”, in so far as their science is germane to ethical imperatives. Just who will adduce the statistics proving the sanctity of human life? I trust you believe in such sanctity. I just want you to explain to me what the devil “sanctity” has to do with “science” (including Geisteswissenschaften). Sanctity is not a “scientific” category in itself, or???
In conclusion, your promotion of me from “geehrt” to “verehrt” fails, fails to show the respect for the “scientist” that I am. “Durchlaucht” would be more appropriate. Don’t you think so. Thrust ended!
Euer Durchlaucht (= Leonard W.),
I think as far as the basic ideas go, there is little in your post that I disagree with: I didn’t claim (actually, explicitly denied) that moral values can be derived from scientific facts without already presupposing a framework of ethics in the first place. If someone chooses to hold absolutely no values (not even self-preservation) and live the life of a psychopathic murderer, I can not logically refute him, and neither can you. I can just support locking him away.
Still GIVEN a set of ethical ideas, real-world and scientific facts ARE relevant to its application, and you concede as much.
In everything I said about circumcision, I also took certain moral judgements for granted (like: “it’s not okay to unnecessarily inflict intense pain on a newborn infant”), but in my view they are (when not applied to this particular case) pretty well accepted in our societies and stand firmly on the ground of the codified basic human rights. The sexual pleasure aspect was and is a minor one to me (I dismissed it in one of my first sentences on this thread). Still, while people do not have to center their life around sexual pleasure, or, as you say:
“Maybe Jews find community with God through the covenant sealed by circumcision to be more “pleasureable” than the wang-bang modern submission to the next orgasm (and please do not forget the GO frontpage I noted above as symbolic for contemporary Germany)?!”,
that would ideally be their own decision, not their parents’. The sexual functionality stuff is not the best argument in this debate, nor the one best supported by facts. I just mentioned it above because it is so prominent, and at some point might be supported by better science (or not, of course).
To answer your hypothetical question about baptism: If it was shown to be medically harmful in some way, banning it could rightfully become an issue (though I don’t regard legal bans as a particularly good solution to such problems in any case, said that before, too). However, there is no such evidence to my knowledge. If you say “A”, you must say “B” only if B actually logically follows from A.
I would agree that the argument that circumcision ““lifelong bodily and above spiritual [sic] injury” would be laughable if it wasnt so serious. Where is the evidence for this? I also agree that this is not so much a war on all things sanctified but rather driven by social engineers/child savers who draw a check from the government for their services in undermining the sacred. Professional nihilists, like ur scumbag friend Escobar. People with no useful skills who make a living fighting windmills in the name or morality.
But one thing that should be done though is putting an end to the barbaric aspect of Jewish circumcision. Specifically I am referring to the barbaric practice of extracting blood from the infants penis and having the Mohel (circumsizer) suck the blood out of the kids penis. That this bloodsucking, barbaric pagan hangover still exists among a people known for their medical prowess is the 21st century, with all we know about germs and disease is beyond shocking. The tradition of extracting blood and having the Mohel suck it out is beyond unhealthy. For a civilized nation it is barbaric. It seems like in Israel they wanna move to end this barbaric process. Its a stain a stain on the Jewish people. Of course in Israel all the Jewhadis are against it. Jewhadis are just as primative as Jihadis!
That is a minority Jewish practice and is not required by Jewish law.
Thenachash: My understanding is that the barbaric practice to which you refer was originally meant for the benefit of the baby. Also, at least once, I saw the Mohel take in some drinking alcohol, suck the blood and spit it out. The alcohol (Scotch, Rye or Bourbon) would act as an antiseptic, so the bacterial effect to which you allude would be minimized. Insofar as this practice is now so ingrained in (Orthodox) Judaism, I highly doubt it will ever be eliminated.
David, this sucking of blood is present at all brith miloth; the only question is whether it is ‘metzitzah b’peh’ (i.e., by mouth) or by a tube.
The sucking out of blood was done to help form the scab. There is also an alternate means of sucking out the blood which is agreed to by all Orthodox authorities that involves using an eye droplet dispenser. What matters is the suction needed to pull out the blood to form the scab, not how it is done. Some Orthodox families will see the traditional way as the only way, but the Mohel physically sucking out the blood is not a requirement for the mitzvah to be completed.
On the Upper East Side it a minority practice. U need to spend a Shabbat in Borough Park or Williamsburg with the Jewhadis! And the bloodletting is NOT optional. Just HOW the blood is sucked out. This is beyond barbaric and needs to be banned. Its right up there with female genital mutilation.
It is an extreme minority practice. I am part of a Modern Orthodox community in the greater Philadelphia area but associate fairly often w/the Lakewood “Yeshivais”h community (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beth_Medrash_Govoha, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talmudical_Yeshiva_of_Philadelphia). I never heard of it until recent coverage.
And btw, its NOT such a “minority practice”. My sisters 5 sons all had the blood sucked out by a mohel. I should add my sister is very modern orthodox (emphasis on the MODERN not Orthodox) and a CPA/MBA/JD married to an electrical engineer/radiologist in Lower Merion, a town not too dissimilar than the UES. I was shocked when I saw it. When I asked her about it she kind of just shrugged like she just trusted the mohel.
The time will come soon that Israel (the nation!), Jews, Christians, and everyone frankly, will be very happy to have sincerely secular states. Germany is one of the last countries in the world anyone has to worry about. Adult circumcision is still perfectly legal for anyone who wants to choose his own faith; doctors who recommend against doing it to children are the best authority.
If circumcision is taken as a substitute for human sacrifice, how does it have anything to do with modern human rights? Human rights are inherent by definition, not something anyone has to use force to get, let alone sacrifice.
Secular states no longer hold freedom of religion to be of value anymore. Using a term like “barbaric” is pure hyperbole. It has no meaning excpet whatever you consider objectionable without any rational basis.
A Rabbi has been charged with a crime in Germany for the practice of Judaism. Germans should know something about what is or is not “barbaric”. This nation, or you, presume to teach Jews about civilization. The Germans, and perhaps your own ancestors, were sacrificing children and wearing animal skins while Isaiah was preaching justice in the courtyards of the Temple of Solomon. Chutzpah.
There is no way for dialogue here. The Germans are making it impossible for Jews to live in Germany and that is no accident. Hitler promised to deliver Germany from two “wounds” inflicted on them by the Jews; “Circumcision” and “Conscience”. The latter seems to have happened already. Now those left who are barely one generation removed by the most cruel barbarism in the annals of history are trying to finish that job.
The Catholics — who support us unequivocally in this matter – understand that circumcision is the premise for baptism: Jesus’ blood flows in place of the infant’s. Destroy the Jewish foundation of Christianity, and it stands on extremely shaky ground (as it does already in Germany). Expunge the idea of the sacred, which arises from sacred practice, and what are you left with? Singer’s utilitarianism with its despicable conclusions regarding infanticide? As my old philosophy professor, Sidney Morgenbesser, would have said:
“Who do you think you are, Kant?”
Mr. Goldman, I thank you very much for your insight between circumcision and baptism. I have never thought of it that way. Your communication opens up some new vistas for me. Indeed, for sometime now your remarks on the “covenant” have fascinated me as they suggest more profound insights into the doctrines that move me within my tradition. I am grateful. The more I learn about the “older Brother”, the more I see that the “younger Brother” has an internal dynamics derived from the older sibling, so much so, that I find the brotherly comparison not quite correct. There is more of a generative relation. I now view, for my own consumption, Western Civilization as Judeo->CHRISTIAN. The arrow represents the generative role of Judaism and the capitalization represents the dominate role that Christianity played in the factual taming of us Germanic types, not to mention the rest of the West. (Somehow or other I work the Greco-Roman influence into my inchoate historical understanding.) At the moment your thesis are still suggestions leading to I know not where. But they do inspire reflection.
Leonard,
You’re welcome. We moderns don’t like to think about blood, but blood sacrifice underlies Christian and Judaism (as well as Islam: see http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/GJ12Ak01.html). In fact, I am drawing on very traditional and conventional theology here. The blood of the circumcised infant must flow. The Grace said after the circumcision ceremony includes these words: “From this eighth day onward may his blood be accepted, and may the LORD his God be with him always” (Koren-Sacks Siddur, p. 1022). Jon Levenson’s “The Death and Resurrection of the Beloved Son” is the standard modern treatment; circumcision substitutes for child sacrifice. We give the child to God symbolically and receive him back. I wrote a bit more about this here:
http://www.firstthings.com/article/2011/05/elective-antipathies
You will note that I follow the leading authority in 20th century Modern Orthodoxy, Rav Joseph Soloveitchik, in all respects.
I have consulted your articles. The one on Weil has meaning for me on several levels. I supect that you do not understand fully one aspect of the problematic.
Point One: Weil sells well enough in German bookstores (including Catholic ones) because she exercises a cathartic reminder of the Nazi self-appointment qua “Herrenrasse”. A not-forgetting historical self-comprehension is salutory for Germans. (I personally, viz. anecdotically meet little self-forgetting, just a relativizing of the “not-forgetting” to a mere “fact” learned in schools and soon thereafter “out of mind”, indeed, on occasion an irritation in discussions if one thinks that Germans are being made scapegoats now for their past.) The horrors of those times have entered profoundly into my consciousness. German tv instructs and the political class (e.g., Merkel) has not forgotten. In this context, Weil is still “present”. But that is not the deep meaning that your article suggested which, I believe, has background reference to your current article.
Point 2: The problematic of the “Chosen People” and its nationalistic usurpation by European countries (and do not we Americans deem oursevles as “exceptional” and Linclon seemed to believe that we have a divine mission?) is of central importance. You note that Vat II wisely followed in effect the de Lubac position (alas, I do have some troubles with a comment or two of his on infinity–a problem that I have with almost everybody), namely that the “new people of God” are not embodied in a specific national worldly bearer, a nationalistic fault in European history. I think this distinction had already been made by St. Augustine. Klaus Held in his worthy “Treffpunkt Platon: Philosophische Reiseführer durch die Länder des Mittelmeers” describes Augustine’s reaction to the the Germanic sacking of Rome, sort of an end of the world event. The pagan Romans wanted to re-establish the Old Rome as the “city of the gods”, purified of Christian contamination, and the Christians sought the New Rome in the Byzantian Empire as the “City of God”, purified of pagan influence. Both alternatives sought a REAL socio-political incarnation for the human relation to the divine. Augustine reacted by rejecting both alternatives, distinguishing between the City of Man and the City of God. Augustine certainly was tending towards the NON-nationalistic notion of the People of God. (De Lubac was quite familiar with Augustine).
Point 3: The origins of European nationalistic “embodiments” reside in a continuation and reconstruction of a renewed Roman Europe. Charles the Great re-established a Europe in a Roman mode and even received his justification from the Roman pontifice (he could only claim to be an emperor with the blessings of the bearer of Rome’s prestige). The history here is interesting–> I see no other historical way for the reconstitution of “Europe” (let alone for a successful defense against Islamic expansionism–Charles Martel, the one who stopped Islamic expansion, was a relative of Charles the Great and lent the family prestige). This leader and his “empire” became an exemplary model, even after the empire broked apart soon after his death. German documentaries show that the “national” centralizing and organizing moment for the always fighting Germanic hordes was the ideal of “Das Heilige Römische REICH Deutscher NATION”. German self-identification as a “nation” evolves out of the “Reich”-thought, itself derivative from the Roman model (rejected by Augustine). Alas, I see no other way that a historical creation of a German “nation” was possible. When Napoleon, using French nationalism as his psychological motor, destroyed the “Reich”, he unleashed nationalism in the German territories as the factor of integration–a process won out by Prussia. Healthy national identity became a demand for international dominance in a Europe of nationalities (I tentatively hold that the origins of French nationalism are derived from the growth of the French monarchyand secularized by Napoleon).
Point 4: I wish to return to the theme of your article within the context of my reflections in Point 3. The fine and correct reactions in European countries to the potential destruction become real in “Herrenrasse” national dominance has been to seek reconciliaton, economic integration and, hopefully, some EU-supernation building. But, the premises of such an understandable effort towards “unity” has come to ground its legitimacy in “secularism”, such that the “human rights” adopted by Germany seem to be to demand the restriction of religious practices where they conflict with secular ideals. The possible banning of circumcision of Jews with its destruction of the integrity of Jewish religious practice is of no importance to the “medical” valuators (shared by today’s Germans) in their drive for a horizontal culture. Secularism with its arbitrary definition of circumcision as “Verstümmelung” could well win out. There is much public support against the “violence” of circumcision. Following an idea of yours: First the anti-religous secularists in America came for the Catholic conscience. Now the German version is coming for Jews on circumcision. In my discussion with “tres” above I got him to admit (not without equivocation) that, per hypothesis, he would favor interference with Catholic child baptism if the experts were to evaluate it in a manner similar to circumcision. So, they could be coming for the Catholics–in time. Behind the circumscribing dynamics there is an ever augmenting enforcement of a horizontialization of consciousness that has lost much tolerance of religions which seek connection with the “source de joie” (to cite Cardinal Barbarin) that is not some sort of fun pursuit here and now. At times I feel that such secularization is turning into a “Sintflut”.
I apologize for the long communication–but you suggested the article?!? I waited until your PJ Meida article was nearing disappearance from the website before writing somehting essentially a communication to you. I will be pursuing the sacrificial connection between Judaism and Christianity. I hope I can order works from Soloveitchik.
The collaboration of every country in Europe with the German decision to destroy their Jews, with the exception of Bulgaria and to a lesser degree, Denmark, is an expression of solidarity, cultural if you will, that is not simply willed away by something so fleeting as “total defeat”. Personally, I think Western Europe could have used several generations of Soviet Therapy although America would probably have remained segregaged and much “poorer” for some time. With the growing “threat” posed by Muslim in migration, transformed by the Internet and instant financial transactions, Europeans fear and revulsion for “the other” has awakened. Of course the Jews are the lightning rod. The relationship with Europe which began with Alexander’s overthrow of the Persian Empire and immeasurably deepened by Caeser’s curiosity with the Jews which led him to bring them to Rome, ended in 1933. Those of us who cherish “western civilizization from Sappho to Nabokov should not allow sentimentality to cloud reason. Europe is turning again toward darkness. That does not mean necessarily a return to Nazism. How Germany treats Poland will be the key decision in Europe’s direction and that has nothing to do with circumcision.
Despite the fact that Poland was reduced to worse than abject slavery by the Nazis, Poles formed the incredibly selfless and heroic group Zegota to aid and rescue Jews in Poland. Zegota (http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/Zegota.html) was an offshoot of the primary Polish resistance group (the Home Army).
To write that Poland as a country or that Poles as a whole people were complicit in the Nazi atrocities is a disgusting slander.
Regarding Polish antisemitism during the German Nazi occupation and extermination, consult the letter pages and several articles in the Times Literary Supplement in June and July, 2012. No doubt if Germamy had defeated the Soviet Union the remaining Poles and Ukrainians would have been enslaved and gradually exterminated. This did not prevent many Poles and still more Ukrainians from cooperating in the slaughter of “their” Jews. Many Poles sacrificed themselves, some risked all and gave all in Resistance but this does not act as any kind of balance or moral corrective for the disgusting Jew hatred that made their (our) murder much easier. I met a distant cousin of mine who was left for murdered in the Ravine at Babi Yar where she was machine gunned with our entire Russian family on September 28, 1941. She said that my grandfather Boris, then 94, who carried his two grandsons, 1 and 3, eight miles to their murders, said all along the way, they are going to kill us when we get where we are going.
Mr. Rubinstein,
Nothing in your response begins to prove your assertion that entire nations which were conquered and brutally dominated by the Nazis were guilty of collaboration in the “German decision to destroy their Jews”.
Regarding Poland, I have indicated and you have grudgingly acknowledged the incredible efforts of Zegota (an offshoot of the Home Army, the primary Polish national resistance movement) to save Poland’s Jews. This effort was conducted despite the Nazi death penalty for Poles who aided Jews (unique in occupied Europe): “in any way: by taking them in for the night, giving them a lift in a vehicle of any kind” or “feed[ing] runaway Jews or sell[ing] them foodstuffs (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rescue_of_Jews_by_Poles_during_the_Holocaust#Punishment_for_aiding_the_Jews) “.
You might also want to consult Yad Vashem’s Garden of the Righteous Among Nations where Poles are the largest national group honored as rescuers of Jews from the Nazis. You might also want to consult the historical research of Moshe Arens the former Israeli Defense Minister, Foreign Minister , Ambassador to the U.S., MK, and Irgun combat veteran, as well as a WWII veteran of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and a native of Lithuania (thus no stranger to Eastern European anti-Semitism) . Arens went to considerable efforts to document to support of the Polish Home Army to Jewish resistance forces during the doomed Warsaw Ghetto uprising (http://www.freeman.org/m_online/may03/arens.htm).
Poland and Jews have a long a complex history, from the liberal 18th century freedom fighter (and hero of the American Revolution) Tadeusz Kościuszko (http://rkmmilwaukee.org/history.php ) to disgusting discrimination during the dark and difficult interwar years. Nevertheless it is wrong to deprecate or diminish the incredibly heroic efforts of Poles and the leading Polish institutions on behalf of the doomed Jews of Poland. It is also ridiculous to assert that Polish collaborationists who served the Germans and were considered enemies by their own people were somehow representatives of the Polish nation when they acted against the Jews.
You have chosen to try to use the sad history of your own family at Babi Yar (site of a horrendous Nazi massacre of Jews) to bolster your argument. Of course Babi Yar is near Kiev, smack in the middle of the Ukraine so it doesn’t support your indictment of the Poles. In any case, I have no need of second hand lessons from you about Nazi atrocities as about 80% of my father’s Polish and Austrian Jewish family were massacred by them. If you wish to discuss personal matters please feels free to present the sum of incidents from your own life which might approach the heroism and courage of a Zegota operative in any single five minute period of 1942.
I will close by noting that Menachem Begin, OBM, never one to whitewash East European (including Polish) anti-Semitism, seems to have always carried himself and proudly identified as a Polish gentleman.
“Bulgarians saved their country’s Jews in exchange for the Jews of the other territories under their control”
-http://sofiaecho.com/2012/01/31/1756418_greek-jewish-group-demands-un-recognise-bulgarias-role-in-slaughter
-http://www.thecuttingedgenews.com/index.php?article=32045&pageid=&pagename=
@21, Jon. A bit obscure, that.
Just a question or two and then a remark. When you refer to “Modern Orthodoxy” you mean Jewish Orthodoxy and not Christian Orthodoxy, I presume. I shall look up Soloveitchik (wow, I have problems pronouncing the name–it is of Polish origins?). I presume there are German translations. I will turn to your other sources in a day or two. If you can procure the book “Le rabbi et le cardinal” you will find some rewarding reading.
A remark: Sacrifice, entailing blood or death (I am thinking here of Jesus on the Cross) is not seen as the end all, rather as a transition to life. Blood is not shed in order to kill, rather to save life or to have its sacrificial function embrassed by a circumcisional function. I saw again last night in German tv “Der Bunker”, the last days of Hitler. Prof. Fest (a biographer of Hitler) concluded that the last days were an enacted scenario by Hitler effectively glorifying death–as the end all of life. Fest asks what victory might have meant? Marching on to Tibet? Victory brings repose and, hopefully, fuller life. But life as repose was not Hitler’s eschaton, rather Darwinian conflict in actu of the very killing and being killed (life = infliction of death). In death Hitler sought the highest existence for his life. A documentary on Himmler revealed a similar preference for battle over victory. In the Darwinian world of inflicting death and being inflicted by death, reality receives its (say, orgasmic) finality in the VERY moment of killing or being killed. When Hitler realized that the “Herrenrasse” was not winning, he lost all care for it and said he would not cry a tear for its demise and then ordered a scorched earth policy for what remained of Germany (an order that Speer did not carry out). Why? Only those who kill, and profusely, are in the height of life’s fulfilment and, should they lose, their death itself is also the height of life. Nature wins out as there is no transcendence of natural life! Life is there for the exstatic nihilism of death. Without life, there is no death. So death must have life, whose ultimate form is mutually destructive conflict. (A former Nazi associate, Hermann Rauschning wrote a book about the nihilism [= love of inflicting nothingness] of Nazism. Excellent reading for the immediate post Nazi period.)
I hope my mianderings evince some clarity of logic. What you have been talking about is the way that “le bon Dieu infini” saves us from the finality of death, from death as the last word, as the willy/nilly telos of “natural” existence. In this context I see an absolutely diametical opposition between the life of killing and the overcoming of death through sacrifice within divine intervention–which I take to be a part of the covenant’s promise. Or? I suspect that “blood sacrifice” is very foreign to postmodern feelings of reality, which is quite sexual. Above I noted the sexualizing front page of a German magazine and took it for symbolic of the feeling for reality in much modern culture. I suspect that the modern world represses or denies the notion of “blood sacrifice” because it seeks no transcendence of nature, unless pain be perversely entailed in saddistic scenarios leading to orgasm. Paradoxically, pansexuality must become as compulsive as yesterday’s orgasm is not satsifactory for today–>the pansexual form of horizontality informing the modern world that I see through out Europe. Sexuality becomes a series of little orgasmic deaths demanding ever new ones–before the juice runs out. And when we are without said juice, the state can aid us to die, since there is nothing left in life to orgasm about, except those of yesterday.And that is long dead and gone!
It’s sad that Pussy Riot gets all the publicity, rather than the courageous, restrained Gary Kasparov. If Putin and Pussy Riot are Russia’s alternatives, the future looks dim.
some Russians are deriding Russia for Pussia
http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=262611787189087&set=a.107042812745986.9938.100003208032044&type=1&theater
http://www.dailymotion.com/LeNouvelObservateur#video=xszkqd
Agreed, but I don’t think Kasparov is the answer either even though he doesn’t resort to violating the religious rights of other people to make his point about Putin or the Church.
But so long as U.S. foreign policy continues to be one of unchecked regime change-ism or even one of simply profiting from/riding the wave of perpetual Mideast chaos, Russia will be in a defensive posture. You can probably say hello to Putin’s handpicked successor already — Dmitry Olegevich Rogozin, former Russian Ambassador to NATO, who recently achieved some notoriety on Twitter for calling Madonna an old whore.
More to the point of Spengler’s threads, Russia’s Islamic communities are not nearly as numerous or as radicalized as some propose (or a few enemies promoting the break up of the RF would actually like) but there are enough in the Caucases to cause trouble. That is one of the many reasons Russia slapped down the Turks when Erdogan started making noises about invading Syria. That scenario entails too many Turkish army coming home in body bags with spetsnaz advisors possibly among the Syrian regulars hitting the Turks with anti-tank weapons and too many fruits and vegetables rotting in Turkish ports that would normally be shipped to Ashan and Perekrotstik for the winter time.
You can have you wah on terrur or you can arm the FSA with Al-Qaeda in the ranks and promote the ‘American Committee for Peace in Chechnya’. But you cannot do both without entering Orwellian ‘we’ve always been at war with Eurasia/Eastasia’ territory.
still glad got all my relations out of that backward continent. the tribalism in europe is appauling
I doubt this is a coincidence. It looks to me like an attempt to undermine Angela Merkel on any available excuse, just when her political support is weakened by her willingness to support the Euro. Politically or militarily, it will usually be found that when one is engaged in battle, some opportunist will attack from the rear. (Think the Irish rebellion in—what year?—1916. Wasn’t there some larger fight in progress then?)
If I’m right, it has less to do with putative child abuse on religious grounds, than it does with some people’s wish to rattle Merkel’s political coalition. It they succeed, it won’t be good for anybody.
EUrope is incapable of change. Freedom,especially religious freedom, is alien to them; as is the concept of limited government.. The excuses differ, but the Jew-hated remains the same. EUropeans are neither the allies nor friends of America.