Freedom and Power

‘Behold, I have set before you today life and good, and death and evil …’
[Deut. 30:15]

טו רְאֵ֨ה נָתַ֤תִּי לְפָנֶ֨יךָ֙ הַיּ֔וֹם אֶת־הַֽחַיִּ֖ים וְאֶת־הַטּ֑וֹב וְאֶת־הַמָּ֖וֶת וְאֶת־הָרָֽע:

Notice that the verse does not say “life and death, good and evil”, as if these were two different pairs of contrasting opposites. No, it is “life and good” on one side, “death and evil” on the other. It is the same choice.

This is the Torah’s powerful affirmation that life is good, and we are commanded to choose it.

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Dennis Prager on Deut. 30:19: “The commandment to choose life over death must have struck many readers throughout history as strange: If given the choice between life and death, who would choose death?”

But choosing life over death is a conscious choice. Prager notes that “the desire to have children has been regarded as a given”, yet in fact it’s a choice that “fewer and fewer people are making.”

Even choosing life for oneself is a conscious decision, in a day when powerful interests want to persuade us of the attractiveness of stepping across to the other side – with the express goal of decreasing the population.

To value human life is an affirmative choice, and a duty to the Creator in Whose image we are created.

So much of what we need to know about life, we learn from other people, who learned from other people. How to live with courage and dignity; how to deal with conflict and adversity; how to find and keep a mate, and how to raise the young.

From these small pieces, which we often overlook, we build a life. If the pieces are missing, life will not be whole. To live rightly and bravely and to meet its challenges, to build and sustain a family, or to prosper in any worthwhile undertaking, will elude our grasp.

It is up to us to put life back together, one piece at a time.

The riots were never about a police killing, and the lockdowns were never about a virus.

Man often presents lies. The world presented to us by Almighty G-d is full of secrets and mysteries. We know and serve G-d by finding out the truth, and by acting rightly upon it.

Your body is made of bones and flesh; a robust system includes a rigid component and a flexible component.

Time is an economic good: a scarce commodity with alternative uses. Use it wisely.

Nuance: the recognition that a statement may be true in general, and still admit of exceptions.

The right to assess our own needs is, in itself, one of our most important needs.

Establish good habits – it’s easier than breaking bad ones.

The social market is an analog of the economic market, and it follows similar principles.

The “new normal” needs to be a Big Government that has been de-fanged, de-clawed, and neutered.

Do not disdain fear; fear is to be confronted and overcome through courage. Fear, correctly located, helps you to see the shape of the battlefield. Fear points you in the direction of the enemy.

A conspiracy is a secret agreement by a group of people to do something bad. Conspiracies have existed since time began. The opposite of a “conspiracy theorist” is a complacency theorist.

They say history is written by the victors. I say history is written by people who can write.

“You don’t own your children – WE DO” is what the left is really saying.

It is the logical conclusion of the collectivism that starts with economics and ends with all aspects of society and human relationships. It is rewarding incompetence, mediocrity, and failure at the expense of those who are successful.

The left cannot defend their ideas and values in open discourse, and they know it. They cannot tolerate competition. Their only solution is to eliminate the competing model that shows up their socialist agenda for the monstrous failure that it is.

Raising a child – or caring for any family member or close relationship – requires commitment, time, and experience. It takes investment, direct knowledge, and accountability. You need to learn the individual’s needs, and how to meet those needs, over time, with a great deal of trial and error. There is no shortcut. This is what you get in a familial relationship, and it is what no institution can ever provide.

Conversely, blurring or erasing those lines of commitment and accountability serves only the interests of those who wish to hide their own failures and frauds. It is all about obfuscation.

Is is not racial or ethnic distinctions as such which have proven to be momentous but cultural distinctions, whether associated with race, with geographical origins, or with other factors. The particular culture or “human capital” available to people has often had more influence on their economic level than their existing material wealth, natural resources, or individual geniuses. … [Differences] between groups themselves have been the rule, not the exception, in countries around the world and down through history. These groups differ in specific skills – whether in optics, winemaking, engineering, medicine, or numerous other fields – and in attitudes toward work, toward education, toward violence, and toward life. …

[Following the fall of the Roman Empire, the] elaborate institutions needed for the continued transmission of a complex civilized culture simply disintegrated, along with the state apparatus that had supported it, because the invaders who were capable of destroying the Roman Empire were not capable of taking it over and running it themselves or of preserving its cultural achievements.
– Thomas Sowell, ‘Conquests and Cultures’, p. 355

The real wealth of a people is in its ability to retain, transmit, and capitalize upon knowledge. This includes practical skills of agriculture and industry, the basics of literacy and arithmetic, and (no less important) working knowledge of the social landscape and of how to negotiate financial and personal transactions. Capitalizing upon this knowledge means willingness to work hard to achieve results, and willingness to acquire new knowledge and skills when these will prove beneficial. Human society has never not been an information economy.

Most of what we know about the world, we learn from other people. Therefore, our ability to understand the world depends on our ability to understand people.

We live in a world full of people who need and want things. They will ascribe value to us according to our ability to provide for their wants and needs.

People are complicated. Assessing and navigating our position in the social universe is the most difficult, and most important, mental task that we perform in life.

Each of us will die, and others will live on after us. Whatever we may believe about the afterlife, this is the only empirical truth we know about life and death in this world.

Identity in a group is negotiated between the individual and the group. It is a bilateral relationship. The group agrees to accept the individual as one of its own, with all the attendant rights and responsibilities. In return, the individual agrees to abide by the rules and norms of the group, and to uphold the group’s values and honor. In many cases, membership may entail an element of exclusivity: If you want to call yourself a member of A, you cannot also belong to B. And this process is the model of how the individual, as a unique being, comes to terms with his or her place in society. It is the process of growth, maturity, and further growth.

The social market is the complex web of courtesies and communications, small talk and discourse, through which we negotiate our interactions with others. Through it, we assess the trustworthiness and relevance of the information others provide, and attempt to establish the value of the ideas we share with others.