[Majorityrights News] Trump will ‘arm Ukraine to the teeth’ if Putin won’t negotiate ceasefire Posted by Guessedworker on Tuesday, 12 November 2024 16:20.
[Majorityrights News] Alex Navalny, born 4th June, 1976; died at Yamalo-Nenets penitentiary 16th February, 2024 Posted by Guessedworker on Friday, 16 February 2024 23:43.
[Majorityrights Central] A couple of exchanges on the nature and meaning of Christianity’s origin Posted by Guessedworker on Tuesday, 25 July 2023 22:19.
[Majorityrights News] Is the Ukrainian counter-offensive for Bakhmut the counter-offensive for Ukraine? Posted by Guessedworker on Thursday, 18 May 2023 18:55.
Posted by DanielS on Monday, 27 January 2020 10:47.
Christopher Caldwell: America’s two constitutions — since the ‘60s, competing visions of a more perfect union
Christopher Caldwell, author of the book ‘The Age of Entitlement,’ says Democrats and Republicans have two different conceptions of what the country is about. Fox News, 27 Jan 2020:
Not long after he left the White House, Bill Clinton gave what is still the best description of the fault lines that run through American politics. “If you look back on the ’60s and on balance you think there was more good than harm, you’re probably a Democrat,” he said. “If you think there was more harm than good, you’re probably a Republican.”
What could he have meant by that?
Though Americans are reluctant to admit it, the legacy of the 1960s that most divides the country has its roots in the civil rights legislation passed in the immediate aftermath of John F. Kennedy’s assassination. It was enacted in a rush of grief, anger and overconfidence — the same overconfidence that had driven Kennedy to propose landing a man on the moon and would drive Lyndon Johnson to wage war on Vietnam. Shored up and extended by various court rulings and executive orders, the legislation became the core of the most effective campaign of social transformation in American history.
This campaign was effective both for its typically American idealism and for its typically American ruthlessness. It authorized Washington to shape state elections, withhold school funds, scrutinize the hiring practices of private businesses and sue them. It placed Offices of Civil Rights in the major cabinet agencies, and these offices were soon issuing legally binding guidelines, quotas and targets. Above all, it exposed every corner of American social, business and political life to direction from judges.
Americans assumed that solving the unique and extraordinary problem of segregation would require handing Washington powers never before granted in peacetime. In this they were correct.
But they were also confident that the use of these powers would be limited in time (to a few years at most), in place (to the South), and in purpose (to eliminating segregation). In this they misjudged, with fateful consequence for the country’s political system.
Civil rights law may have started off as a purpose-built tool to thwart the insidious legalism of Southern segregation and the violence of Southern sheriffs. It would end up a wide-ranging reinvention of government.
After the work of the civil rights movement in ending segregation was done, the civil rights model of executive orders, regulation-writing and court-ordered redress remained.
This was the so-called “rights revolution”: an entire new system of constantly churning political reform, bringing tremendous gains to certain Americans and — something that is mentioned less often — losses to many who had not necessarily been the beneficiaries of the injustices that civil rights was meant to correct.
The United States had not only acquired two codes of rules (two constitutions), as people rallied to one code or the other, they also sorted themselves into two sets of citizens (two countries). To each side, the other’s constitution might as well have been written in invisible ink.
Civil rights became an all-purpose constitutional shortcut for progressive judges and administrators. Over time it brought social changes in its wake that the leaders of the civil-rights movement had not envisioned and voters had not sanctioned: affirmative action, speech codes on college campuses, a set of bureaucratic procedures that made immigrants almost impossible to deport, gay marriage, transgender bathrooms.
In retrospect, the changes begun in the 1960s, with civil rights at their core, were not just a major new element in the Constitution. They were a rival constitution, with which the pre-1964 one would frequently prove incompatible — and the incompatibility would worsen as the civil-rights regime was built out.
Our present political impasse is the legacy of that clash of systems. Much of what we today call polarization” or “incivility” is something more grave. It is the disagreement over which of the two constitutions shall prevail: the pre-1964 constitution, with all the traditional forms of jurisprudential legitimacy and centuries of American culture behind it; or the de facto constitution of 1964, which lacks this traditional kind of legitimacy but commands the near-unanimous endorsement of judicial elites and civic educators, and the passionate allegiance of those who received it as a liberation.
As long as the baby boom generation was in its working years, permitting the country to run large debts, Washington could afford to pay for two social orders at the same time. Conservatives could console themselves that they, too, were on the winning side of the revolution. They just stood against its “excesses.” A good civil rights movement led by the martyred Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. had been hijacked, starting in the 1970s, by a radical version that brought affirmative action and eventually political correctness.
But affirmative action and political correctness were not temporary. Over time they hardened into pillars of the second constitution, shoring it up where it was impotent or illogical, the way the invention of judicial review in Marbury v Madison (1803) shored up the first constitution.
Both affirmative action and political correctness were derived from the basic enforcement powers of civil rights law. And this was the only civil rights on offer. If you didn’t like affirmative action and political correctness, you didn’t like civil rights. By 2013, when Americans began arguing over whether a cake maker could be forced to confect a pro–gay marriage cake, this was clear.
The United States had not only acquired two codes of rules (two constitutions) —as people rallied to one code or the other — they also sorted themselves into two sets of citizens (two countries). To each side, the other’s constitution might as well have been written in invisible ink. Democrats were the party of rights, Republicans of bills. Democrats say, by 84 to 12 percent, that racism is a bigger problem than political correctness. Republicans, by 80 to 17 percent, think political correctness is a bigger problem than racism. The Tea Party uprising of 2009 and 2010, and its political mirror image, the Black Lives Matter uprising of 2015 and 2016, were symbols of that division.
Much happened this century to bring matters to the present boil. Barack Obama, both for his fans and his detractors, was the first president to understand civil rights law in the way described here: as a de facto constitution by which the de jure constitution could be overridden or bypassed. His second inaugural address, an explicitly Constitution-focused argument, invoked “Seneca Falls and Selma and Stonewall” — i.e., women’s rights, civil rights and gay rights — as constitutional milestones.
In this view, the old republic built on battlefield victories had been overthrown by a new one built on rights marches and Supreme Court jurisprudence. When Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote his decision in Obergefell v. Hodges, the 2015 gay marriage case that was in many ways the culmination of this new rights-based constitution, he said as much.
The election of 2016 brought the change into focus. Today two nations look at each other in mutual incomprehension across an impeachment hearing room. It appears we are facing a constitutional problem of the profoundest kind.
Posted by DanielS on Tuesday, 14 January 2020 23:35.
For anyone without meaningful experience of black behavior, Antonio Brown’s is typical…
...the kind of abusive arrogance which explains why those of us who do have meaningful experience of their behavioral patterns cannot relate to anyone who’d live with blacks.
(Note: this article was originally written before the US assassination of Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani on January 2nd)
Trump kept the promise he made to AIPAC in March 2016: “We will move the American embassy to the eternal capital of the Jewish people, Jerusalem.” Its fulfillment gave a timely support to Netanyahu, whose popularity in Israel is entirely based on his capacity to manipulate the United States, of which he brags. Commenting in May 2018 on Trump’s decision, Netanyahu paid him this compliment:
“This will be remembered the way we remember the Cyrus declaration of 2500 years ago, when he told the exiles of Babylon, ‘you can go back and rebuild the temple in Jerusalem.’ This is a historical moment and we will always remember.”
Cyrus is that Persian king whose spirit “Yahweh roused … to issue a proclamation” and “build him a temple in Jerusalem,” according to the Book of Ezra (1:1-2) A successor to Cyrus later appointed Ezra to oversee the building. For his decree, Cyrus is bestowed the title of Yahweh’s “Anointed” (Mashiah) by the prophet Isaiah:
“Thus says Yahweh to his anointed one, to Cyrus whom, he says, I have grasped by his right hand, to make the nations bow before him and to disarm kings: […] It is for the sake of my servant Jacob and of Israel my chosen one, that I have called you by your name, have given you a title though you do not know me. […] Though you do not know me, I have armed you.” (Isaiah 45:1-5)[1]
Yahweh, who “roused Cyrus’ spirit” and “grasped him by his right hand,” stands, of course, for “Jewish Power”.
Netanyahu hailed Trump as a modern-day Cyrus on several occasions, and his enthusiasm was echoed on Fox News, when Jeanine Pirro declared: “Donald Trump recognizes history. He, like king Cyrus before him, fulfills the biblical prophecy…”
Trump was like Cyrus again in March 2019, when he signed a decree recognizing Israel’s sovereignty over the Golan Heights (top photo). It inspired Miriam Adelson, wife of Trump’s biggest donor, to comment that the President deserves his “Book of Trump” in the Bible.[2] Israel’s history is always biblical, one way or another.
I was made aware of this “Trump is Cyrus” meme by Adam Green’s impressive film “God’s Chosen People”. It seems that Trump was already promoted as a new Cyrus to Christian Zionists during the 2016 campaign. It has also been noted that, just a couple of months after taking office, Trump used the occasion of the Persian new year (Nowruz) to mention in a White House statement to the Iranian embassy that “Cyrus the Great, a leader of the ancient Persian Empire, famously said that ‘freedom, dignity, and wealth together constitute the greatest happiness of humanity.’” Using the name Cyrus rather than the form Koresch preferred by historians is an implicit reference to the Bible story. Zionists like Jonathan Cahn believe this was a cryptic message: “It was not only that the president had issued a public statement in which he spoke of Cyrus but that he spoke words attributed to the ancient king. In other words, he wasn’t only speaking of Cyrus; he was now speaking as Cyrus.”[3] Such interpretation tells us more about the Zionists’ wishful thinking than about Trump’s real intention (who wrote that statement anyway?). But then, the Zionists have proven very good at fulfilling their wishful thinking.
Of course, moving the American embassy to Jerusalem is not exactly like rebuilding of the temple. But Trump’s announcement nevertheless boosted messianic yearnings for the Third Temple. Plans, funds, and even cultic personnel are all ready. Prayers are sent to heaven that an Iranian missile would mistakenly, by Yahweh’s hand, find its way on the Al-Aqsa Mosque to get rid of the last obstacle. Confident that Trump is the new Cyrus, the Mikdash Educational Center has minted medals with Trump’s portrait superimposed on Cyrus’ on one side, and the future temple on the other. Of course, ecstatic Jews and Evangelicals have no clue that the so-called Temple Mount never supported a temple at all: what they take for the walls of Herod’s Temple is actually the remains of the Roman fort housing the legion that destroyed the Temple (as demonstrated archeologically in the documentary “The Coming Temple”).
It is not the first time that a Christian statesman is compared to Persian king Cyrus. It was said before of Lord Balfour and Harry Truman. Netanyahu actually referred to both of them when meeting Trump in the Oval Office in March 2018:
“I want to tell you that the Jewish people have a long memory, so we remember the proclamation of the great king, Cyrus the Great, the Persian king 2,500 years ago. He proclaimed that the Jewish exiles in Babylon could come back and rebuild our Temple in Jerusalem. We remember a hundred years ago, Lord Balfour, who issued the Balfour Proclamation that recognized the rights of the Jewish people in our ancestral homeland. We remember 70 years ago, President Harry S. Truman was the first leader to recognize the Jewish state. And we remember how a few weeks ago, President Donald J. Trump recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. Mr. President, this will be remembered by our people through the ages.”
Zion is a biblical program
Netanyahu’s declaration provides a good opportunity for reflecting on the importance of biblical narratives in Israel’s national consciousness, propaganda, diplomacy, and geopolitical strategy, and to analyze the Cyrus pattern in the history of the relationship between Israel and imperial powers.
Netanyahu is certainly typical of Israeli leaders’ tendency to see history as a perpetual reenactment of Bible stories. In 2015, he dramatized his phobia of Iran by referring to the Book of Esther, in an allocution to the American Congress that he managed to program on the eve of Purim, which celebrates the happy ending of the Book of Esther—the slaughter of 75,000 Persians.
Esther’s story is not unlike Ezra’s: through her, Yahweh “roused the spirit” of another Persian king, Ahasuerus, to protect the Jews and hang their persecutors. This last December, Trump became a modern-day Ahasuerus when he signed an executive order against anti-Semitism and Israel-boycott in university campuses.
Actually, the Book of Esther, Netanyahu’s favorite, is the only book in the Tanakh that makes no mention of God, which proves that “biblical” does not necessarily mean “religious”. This is a point sadly misunderstood in the Christian world.
The biblical foundation of secular Zionism is underestimated, even denied, by critics of Zionism, even when it is affirmed by the Zionists themselves. It is true that Theodor Herzl did not argue in biblical terms for his 1896 program, The Jewish State. Yet he named his movement after the Bible: Zion is metonymic designation for Jerusalem used by biblical prophets, especially Isaiah. Later on, the pioneers of the Yishuv and the founders of the Jewish State were steeped in the Bible. Ben-Gurion, an avowed atheist, used to say: “There can be no worthwhile political or military education about Israel without profound knowledge of the Bible.”[4] That statement should be taken seriously. If it is true for Zionists, then it is also true for the critics of Zionism: there can be no real understanding of Israel without profound knowledge of the Bible. The Tanakh is the alpha and the omega of Zionism. Moshe Dayan, the military hero of the 1967 Six-Day War, justified his annexation of new territory in a book titled Living with the Bible (1978).
One important thing that Ben-Gurion learnt from the Bible is that Israel’s destiny is not to be a nation like others, but the center of the world and the ruler of all nations. When asked in 1962 his prediction for the next 25 years, he declared that Jerusalem “will be the seat of the Supreme Court of Mankind, to settle all controversies among the federated continents, as prophesied by Isaiah.”[5] He was referring to Isaiah 2:2-4, announcing the messianic Pax Judaica, when “the Law will issue from Zion” and Israel “will judge between the nations and arbitrate between many peoples.” Ben-Gurion’s prophetic vision, which may be called Universal Zionism (the title of a book by the director of a Jerusalem Summit that promotes that vision), has been shared more or less by all subsequent Israeli leaders up to Benjamin Netanyahu.
It should be evident, and it surely is to Netanyahu as it was to Ben-Gurion, that for Jerusalem to become the headquarter of a “Supreme Court of Mankind” that will replace the United Nations, another world war is necessary. The fall of the American Empire, or at least its total transformation into Zionist occupied territory, is also part of the plan.
The Tanakh does not just teach Zionists the ultimate goal, it also shows them the way to go: Cyrus’ edict reproduced in the Book of Ezra, whether genuine or fake, is the blueprint for Zion’s exploitation of the Empire’s foreign policy in modern times. Transforming Gentile leaders into Cyrus-like figures is the rule of the game. That is what I would like to illustrate below.
Jeremiah, Babylon and Persia
Before we recall the way the proto-Zionists Ezra and Nehemiah worked the Persian administration into giving them control over Jerusalem, let’s go back one century earlier. In 588 BC, to subdue the rebellious Judeans, Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar II besieged and finally burned Jerusalem, then deported some of its elites (Jeremiah 52:30 gives the plausible figure of 4,600 people). The exiles enjoyed broad autonomy in Babylon, and some acquired wealth and influence. Speaking on behalf of Yahweh, Jeremiah wrote to them, from Egypt: “Work for the good of the city to which I have exiled you; pray to Yahweh on its behalf, since on its welfare yours depends” (Jeremiah 29:7). Yahweh even asked Jeremiah to convey the following message to the kings of Syria-Palestine:
“For the present, I have handed all these countries over to Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon, my servant … Any nation or kingdom that will not serve Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon and will not bow its neck to the yoke of the king of Babylon, I shall punish that nation with sword, famine and plague, Yahweh declares, until I have destroyed it by his hand.” (Jeremiah 27:6-8)
But twenty chapters later, Jeremiah announced the “vengeance of the Lord” on the Babylonians and called on their Persian enemies to “slaughter and curse with destruction every last one of them” (50:21). In the same spirit, the author of Psalm 137 wrote: “Daughter of Babel, doomed to destruction, […] a blessing on anyone who seizes your babies and shatters them against a rock!” The reason for this violent shift in Yahweh’s sentiment was that the situation had changed: in 555 BC, a prince named Nabonad seized power in Babylon. He made war against the Persian king Cyrus (Koresch). It is believed, by Jewish historian Heinrich Graetz in particular, that the Judean exiles in Babylon sided secretly with the Persians, and perhaps “opened secret negotiations with Cyrus.” That would explain “the kindness shown later on to the Judeans by the Persian warrior, and their persecution by Nabonad.”[6]
