Greece and Rome were openly homosexual societies but lacked gay marriage. A permissive environment for deviational enjoyment does not have to twist the values of commonsense.
Liberalism as an all-permissive culture flourished in America because immigrants lost their core values and traditions in the melting pot of American assimilation, and developed no new system of values besides the objective of getting rich. An experiment in cultural meltdown failed in the US, as it did in Russia and Israel; actually, the experiment succeeded while the societies failed culturally.
The Netherlands are permissive not because the locals lack values but because they are abnormally kind to others. Hard communal work building dams, an absence of mortal foreign enemies or expansionist ambitions, a mild monarchy and non-aggressive clergy, prosperity, and relatively mild domestic economic competition together created a rare well-wishing national mentality; we’ve yet to see the results of its accommodation of deviants. Nations that lack statutory enemies are extremely rare.
A “national mentality” does exist in many places, and values do vary across nations. The Norwegians but not the Danes, the French but not the Italians, are anti-Semitic. Few if any people value freedom above security or order, and still fewer interpret freedom as an all-permissiveness which is not, in fact, a value but rather the absence thereof.
Immigrant societies like the US, Israel, and to a lesser extent the originally culturally homogenous Canada lack values, and thus tend towards valueless liberalism. They will either eventually build a cultural core suitable for a nation, or dissolve. The US survived and prospered for so long because it was formed in an incubator of oceanic isolation, it retained some Puritan values, and it consistently suppressed multiculturalism, which calls for the lowest common denominator among various values. Today, the US cities look like intergalactic airports, swarming with aliens. Small faraway towns and to a degree the South retained the original American ideology: tolerant, but not permissive beyond the bounds of common sense.
All-permissiveness historically correlates with decadence, which kicks in before societies enter free fall. Affluent and afraid of violence toward themselves, people shrink from violence to others. In search of still more enjoyment, they abandon moral restrictions and in their arrogance disregard seemingly irrational values. Societies which lack commonsense values, whether decadent like Rome or rationalist like the communist Russia, always fail.
Israelis imitate the Americans and study humanities relatively little. More attention is paid to the cash crops of applied sciences. Americans build complicated enterprises but fail to understand complex international relations. Israelis are sliding in the same direction.
Bill, this article uses homosexuality as an example only. Obviously, the issue of multiculturalism is not limited to homosexuality.
We have a single problem with homosexuality: the Biblical prohibition of it. Note that the Bible prescribes punishment not for homosexuality per se, but only for practicing it in the presence of witnesses.
Obadiah actually tries to bridge the gap between Orthodox rejection of homosexuality and its acceptance in liberal societies. His view is a religious various of “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy.
As a practical matter, Obadiah is resigned to gay parades in Tel Aviv – but not in the holy city of Jerusalem. Doesn’t seem too much to ask the gays for.
Bill, we believe in every line of the Torah. The problem is, many people misread it. There is no commandment to murder gays. They must be expelled from Jewish community (caret) and only if there are witnesses to their sexual actions. The idea is that gays violate public purity and the community should be kept clean. Thus, I have no problem with gay parades in San Francisco – just not in Jerusalem. Here you’re right that gay movements are unnecessarily obnoxious. Few people in Israel object to gay presence in our society, but pushing with the parades and gay marriages is too much.
Judaism is not about democracy, but, again, purity. The same was true of the original American democracy: recall that super-liberal Penn’s colony offered unhindered freedom to everyone who believes in God, not anyone else.
Violent protests in Jerusalem are aimed not really against the gay march per se, but rather against desecration of the holy city. You can see that protesters pushed not against gays, but for sanctity of the city. They are defenders, not attackers.
Jonathan, the article refers to cultural rather than ethnic aliens. America’s famous melting pot historically assimilated ethnic aliens, but the current policy of multiculturalism saturates the society with cultural aliens. It’s about cultural homogeneity, not racial purity.
Jews in the Land of Israel are rather the European settlers (in the American parallel). The Arabs are Indian aborigines, and Jordan makes a nice reservation for them.
Is there any state on the earth which established itself by means other than violence?
Canada is safer than Israel. What makes you stay in the middle of 200 million Arabs, if Israel is only a matter of safety? In fact, Israel is one of the most dangerous states to live in, far from being a safe haven.
Banishing Arabs from the Jewish state makes us good Jews, for the Torah – totally in accordance with the common sense – prescribes to expel the aliens.
Why would the Arabs willingly migrate from Israel which pays them subsidies, doesn’t conscript them, asks for no taxes, gives them jobs, and tolerates their crime and illegal construction?
On the positive side, you want a Jewish state without Arabs. That makes two of us. Now ask yourself: would the Arabs willingly move out from the ethnic-blind Israel? could a state that includes 34% of Arabs in the younger age group be called Jewish? what is a Jewish state? was any state ever established through tolerance to aborigines?