hile there is much debate over whether the existence of human beings is to be explained by God or evolution, I sometimes think to myself that the very existence of human beings and the manner in which they care for their young is proof par excellence that something like evolution just has to be the explanation for how it is that human beings came into existence.  With no other species on the face of the earth is it a matter of such radical happenstance that the offspring are well provided for than it is with human beings. 

Barring some sort of major intervention lions and dogs will care for their cubs, as will other mammals.  Again, barring some sort of major intervention, the feathered creatures will typically care for their offspring.  Animals do sometimes abandon their offspring.  But obviously enough this is very rare.  It has to be in order to the species to continue.

So sometimes it seems to me that insofar as there is a rebuttal of the existence of God as sacred texts traditionally conceive of Him, well guess what: we human beings are it. 

The argument here is a poignantly simple one: No child asks to be born in this world.  An incontrovertible principle about human beings if ever there was one.  This makes children morally innocent on every conceivable account.  Harming the innocent is abominable.  Yet, this is precisely what happens often enough with human children.  A species whose adult members regularly harm their innocent children had to have come about by accident; for no all knowing and all powerful and all-loving being would have brought into existence such a species. 

This argument holds all the more so when one considers that in the typical case human beings knowingly harm their children. 

I mean your typical lioness is not thinking to herself “If I do not attend to my cubs properly, there is no telling what will happen to them”.  Not only that, your typical lion is incapable of having the kind of foresight that makes her morally culpable of harming her children in those rare cases that this happens.

We human beings are a different story entirely.  It is not just that we harm the most innocent among us.  But we do so with a profound grasp of the reality of our behavior in this regard.  To be sure, we may deny these things.  But who is fooling whom?  There is seems to be no end to the ability of human beings to deceive themselves.

At any rate, the point is this: How is it even remotely possible that an all-knowing and all-loving and all-powerful God could have put on this earth a species that would wreck such havoc upon its own innocent offspring? 

Consider a single man with not a single child in tow.  If he does stupid stuff with his life and my resources, there is a very straightforward sense in which it can be said that it is his foolishness and his foolishness is my business.  I am quite the libertarian when it comes to people doing stupid things with their own lives.

Innocent children, however, are another matter entirely.  I draw the line there.  But should I not also draw the line there for God, too?  Even the story of original sin leaves me unpersuaded.  For the problem that I have raised merely re-asserts itself one step removed.  The issue of creating human beings who could be so readily disposed to harm their innocent children, given the curse of sin, hardly exculpates God.  This is especially so when the sin could have manifested itself in a host of other deleterious ways that have nothing whatsoever to do with harming innocent children. For instance, self-destructive behavior could kick in when parents are in their 50s, long after the development of most children is intact. 

For the record, I am not much bothered by things going wrong here and there.  But a cursory look at human history suggests that when it comes to children, the amount of harm that human beings have done to their children far exceeds the amount of harm that the adult members of a species have done to their children.  So we are not talking about occasional mishaps here and there, but what more or less amounts to a pattern among human beings. 

My argument is a very specialized version of the argument from evil.  Given the assumption of free will, the evil that takes place in the world does not particularly strike me as a challenge to the existence of an all-knowing and all-powerful and all-loving God who created human beings.  Certainly, it is not the same challenge. 

However, there is something radically unnerving about a species that has what all but seems to be a penchant not just to harming others, but to harming its very own innocent young. 

The world would already be radically different if human being had a hard-wired instinct to care for their innocent young, but were otherwise were as free as they are now.  Surely this was an option for God.  If so, then why did he not exercise it?  Suppose our drive to care for our children was as intense as our sex drive is.  I mention this because we do not normally suppose that having an intense sex drive is incompatible with having free will.

So to repeat: Given the damage that human beings wreck upon the lives of innocent children, it seems to me that we human beings are the biggest challenge to the soundness of the creationist’s view that human beings were created by God.  No other species on the face of the earth has more intelligence, on the one hand, and does more to its innocent children, on the other, than human beings. 

I cannot fathom how an all-knowing and all-loving and all-powerful God can be indifferent to the creation of a species where the behavior on the part of the adult members of harming the most innocent of the members of that species is rather rampant.  The greatest problem of evil occurs in hundreds upon thousands, if not millions, of homes every single day, namely innocent children being damaged by their parents. 

Creating a species whose adult members routinely wreck havoc upon one another: Bad.  Creating a species whose adult members routinely wreck havoc upon the most innocent of all, namely children: Unforgivable.  This is to put the flesh of quotidien reality upon the problem of evil.  

Of course, we can always resort to God’s will.  But Freud himself put it rather masterfully when he noted that if we are prepared to be content with God’s inscrutable degrees, then we might as well spare ourselves the detour. 

nyone born and raised in Western Culture has head the expression “It is better to give than to receive”.  Attributed to Jesus by the Apostle Paul, as a quick Google search will reveal, I suspect that not a few people have thought the invocation of expression more than a little manipulative.  For one thing, it seems that the expression is invariably invoked by someone who is, dare I say it, asking for something rather than giving something.  I mean when was the last time any one of us was walking down the street only to have something really nice placed in our hands by someone and then have that someone explain her or his behavior by intoning that it is better to give than to receive?

Indeed, we live in a world in which people have become suspicious of nice behavior, readily imagining a wealth of unseemly ulterior motives.  Nowadays, this seems to apply to just about every walk of life, including the clergy. 

Still, the expression that it is better to give than to receive persists.  And that tells me that there is something to it, if only we could manage to figure it out.

Well, it is clear that it is absolutely wonderful to receive a nice gift from another.  What a lovely act of affirmation such a gift is.  Surely the saying that “It is better to give than to receive” cannot possibly mean that we are mistaken in being so moved by the gifts that we have received from another.  If it does mean that we are mistaken in being moved by the gifts that we have received, then I am afraid that this would mean that the expression itself is questionable not only as a source of inspiration, but as a psychological possibility.  Gratitude rather than indifference is most appropriate for the gifts that we received; and any view that comes even close to suggesting otherwise is itself unsatisfactory.

But surely no one who has ever uttered the saying “It is better to give than to receive” has meant to downplay the importance and propriety of gratitude. 

Imagine a life in which we only received gifts from others (freely and voluntarily, to be sure) and we never gave anything to anyone.  At first blush, this might seem like quite the life to have, especially if the gifts we are receiving are quite lovely.  Alas, there is the second part of the thought experiment, namely that we do not give anything to anyone. 

Significantly, not even God himself serves as an example of this thought experiment.  For God is never presented in the sacred texts as only demanding things from human beings.  He is also presented as doing things on behalf of humanity. 

A life in which we were only the beneficiary of gifts from others and never did anything for others would be one in which we never by our own moral agency performed an act of (non-obligatory) goodness on behalf of another. 

What is more, while I suppose that as wonderful as it is to receive gifts from others, there is something quite disconcerting about it turning out to being true that our life is such that we have not performed a single (non-obligatory) act of goodness on behalf of another.  Surely, this is a moral asymmetry with which no one would be happy.  Now why is that?

First of all, there is the poignant fact that a person who never did a non-obligatory act of goodness on behalf of another would have to be a quite selfish and callous individual.  It is the extremely rare individual who never in his life to perform an act of goodness for another. 

But the point of the expression “It is better to give than to receive” is not simply a comparative one (namely that one is a better person than the selfish bastards who never gives); rather, seems to be that there is something beneficial and significant that comes with our own giving that cannot be diminished by what others do.  That is, the expression has a non-comparative force to it. 

One of my favorite biblical passages is from the 1 Samuel 30:6, which reads as follows:

And [King] David was greatly distressed for the people spake of stoning him; because the soul of all the people was grieved . . . : but David encouraged himself.

Insofar as King David succeeded in encouraging himself, he learnt something about his own strength of character that he could not have learnt otherwise, namely that he could raise his own spirits.

When we give in the right way and in the right spirit, we learn something about our moral powers that we can not learn otherwise.  At their best, non-obligatory acts of giving constitute a way of transforming the life of another.  This is why gifts often a symbolic value that far transcends their actual worth.  Any pen or watch or prayer shawl or book can be purchased.  But not a single one of these items purchased will ever substitute for the watch or pen or prayer shawl or book that one received from another as a gift.

Giving represents the moral power to choose to participate in the goodness of another’s life by forge in that person a set of memories and sentiments that she or he will savor indefinitely.  In this respect, gift giving makes us more god-like than we might initially suppose.  Whatever animals can do in terms of giving gifts, it pales mightily in comparison to what human beings can do. 

Everything that we know about human beings tells us that exercising that power is one of the most gratifying experiences that a person has in life.  Or so it is if one’s is psychologically healthy. 

Hopefully, all of us can remember a moment when the marvelous delight that was displayed in a person’s eyes made our gesture of kindness seem so worthwhile.  That is the contentment that comes from the knowledge that one have participated in the goodness of another’s life.  While there are surely other forms of contentment, there is none that can replace this one.  Thus, a person who has never given (in the right way) to another cannot experience this form of contentment, whatever other pleasures she or he might have. 

Receiving a gift is surely wonderful.  A gift can be an expression of gratitude or goodwill or appreciation that leaves one at a loss for words.  And those who have received gifts are blessed to have friends and family who so treasure them.  But the greatest exercise of our moral powers comes not in receiving gifts but in giving them. 

And nothing affirms our moral excellence like the acts of moral excellence we perform on behalf of others; accordingly, giving is one of the fundamental conduits of self-knowledge that we have in life.  Therein lies, at least in part, the truth behind the expression that “It is better to give than to receive”.

f had to pick one lesson that evil unequivocally teaches us, it would be the power and significance of staying the course.  There is perhaps nothing more persistent than evil, save that of more evil.  This I write as Iran expresses its determination to stay the course in developing nuclear weapons.  This I write knowing that Hazbollah thinks nothing of having Muslim women surround its military men so that any attacker can be accused of killing innocent women.  It is not just that evil stays the course, it does so most creatively. 

In fact, every where one sees persistent instances of evil, one also sees considerable creativity.  Serial killers or rapists, for instance, are not dumb.  Quite the contrary, they are often able to outsmart the police for years on end.  Nor are child molesters.  With a studiousness that would put most of us to shame, these folks close in on their “prey”. 

As Ehud Sprinzak observed in his seminal essay “Rational Fanatics,” suicide-terrorism works because the final result is a part of a very large and creative network.  There is no simple-mindlessness going on with suicide-terrorism.  It is not just an expression of anger or outrage.  It is not an uncontrollable outburst.  Far from it.  Suicide-terrorism is as calculating and as persistent as any form of human behavior has ever been.

It is in this regard, namely of creative determination, that I wonder whether Good is a match for evil. 

It seems to me that so often those who seek to do Good want a very quick victory.  Or, in any case, they want to see immediate results.  Sometimes, it seems to me that take what I shall the boogie man approach to evil.  That is, we seem to think that all it takes is a good scare and evil is out the door.  Needless to say, nothing of the sort is true. 

And as I reflect upon the way in which the world is evolving, it seems to me quite clear that evil has the advantage owing the unerring creative determination on the part of the agents of evil.  They seem never to tire and the occasional defeat seems only to strengthen their resolve to win.

Oh how different the world would be if Hezbollah was easily discouraged. 

With Good, on the other hand, it too often seems to be the case that the slightest setback suffices to discourage and to occasions doubt about the worthiness of the cause. 

It goes without saying, of course, that it can sometimes be foolish not to change course.  But if all it takes to arrive at that conclusion is a single setback here and there, then one has little chance of succeeding at anything.

What intrigues me, though, is that agents of evil never seem to have the thought, owing to set backs here and there, that their cause is unworthy; whereas this is often the case with the agents of Good.  Again, I am struck by the fact that agents of evil rarely if ever seem to lose their resolve; whereas agents of Good often retreat so quickly from their initial stance that one has to wonder how much resolve was there in first place.

More importantly, if there is one thing more than any other that evil is counting on it is that of wearing down the agents of Good. 

I am reminded of the biblical passage in the book of Ecclesiastics which reads as follows: “The race is not to the swift nor the battle to the strong”.  Most poignantly, it seems to me that the agents of evil grasp the soundness of this passage better than the agents of Good. 

Sometimes in life, the most important gift that we can bring to any struggle or battle is our unfailing determination.  In this regard, I am reminded of a wonderful student.  He has been utterly unflappable in his determination to excel.  And over the years, he (DTS) has stayed the course with an intellectual majesty that has truly earned my respect and admiration.  Words cannot do justice to how moved I was by the depth of his ideas as we spoke at Marshall Square Mall a week or so ago.  The excellence exhibited by this beloved student that afternoon came from one thing: his staying the course.   

Nothing could be worse than for all of us to become so comfortable with our lives that we lose the will to struggle against evil.  And it is my considered view that this is precisely what Hezbollah and the like are counting upon. 

But here is a truth that we must not forget, namely that the steadfast determination on the part of a people to perform small acts of goodness can be like a mighty river whose force very little can withstand.  The lives of the people of Le Chambon bear witness to this truth.  Without anything near the military might of Hitler’s army they stopped him in his tracks and thereby saved the lives of thousands of Jews.  What made the difference is not so much one dramatic act on the part of anyone, but everyone’s unfailing commitment to doing their small part, which gave rise to a tidal wave of moral excellence that even Hitler thought best to leave alone.

Again, DTS successfully climbed the mountain of excellence in my eyes not by doing a single dramatic thing, but by proceeding step-by-step with a certain sure footedness.  The agents of Good can surmount the agents of evil only if they (the agents of Good) proceed in a like manner. 

To be sure, dramatic events of success are wonderful and readily savored.  There is no denying that.  But the will to stay the course in the absence such events is a most extraordinary virtue.  And the collective will so to behave is a veritable wall against which evil can rarely, if ever, prevail. 

But once more and most sadly, it would seem to be the agents of evil that grasp this truth ever so profoundly rather than the agents of Good.  Oh how I would that it was otherwise. 

There is something ever so sublime here.  For the greatest of moral gifts, namely unfailing determination, is one that comes not so much from God but from within us.  That, to be sure, is the point of the story of Jacob’s wrestling with the angel.  The story suggests that when a mere mortal is unfailing in his determination to receive a blessing from God, then even God himself is moved. 

The real victory against terrorism lies not in our mighty weapons or battleships or the array of missiles that can rain upon this or that party, but an absolutely unflappable and unshakable resolve.  When agents of evil behold that, they will change their moral posture.  For the moment, agents of evil have no need to precisely because from the standpoint of unshakable resolve they very much have the upper-hand. 

Thank You DTS for inspiring this entry

ver the years, I have become more than a little annoyed with the claim that something is an addiction.  Here is why.  How is it there are never any good addictions?  Gambling is said to be an addiction, playing computer games, watching pornography, having sex, and even road rage.  All of these so-called addictions either cause harm to other individuals or harm to oneself.  The thought, I suppose, is that no one would knowingly harm himself or a complete stranger unless he is either a madman or addicted to the behavior in question. 

The problem with that line of argument is that indifference to one’s own well-being, which is surely harmful, has to be declared an addiction, which is just sheer lunacy. 

But I asked a question at the outset, namely: How is that there are never any good addictions?  Well, when the paradigm examples of addiction were alcohol and drugs, it was rather clear why there were never any good addictions.  That is because, in laymen’s terms, these items are known to bring about a genuine chemical dependency.   This is precisely why extending the idea of addiction to pornography and computer games and road rage is problematic.  A chemical dependency is one thing; wanting something ever so badly is quite another. 

In giving American women chocolates from Paris, I have seen them respond in ways that almost make me blush.  But it would not occur to either them or me to think they are addicted to such chocolates.  And insofar as I can grasp their reaction to French chocolates, I must confess that I experience something very close, or so it seems to me, when I eat a certain brand of butter pecan ice cream.  And I will eat it if it is there.  But am I addicted to it?  I think not. 

But if playing video games and road rage and gambling can all be addictions, then surely there ought to be good addictions.  There ought to be random acts of kindness committed by people who some how just cannot help themselves.  There ought to be instances that go rather like this: “I don’t know what the hell has happened to me.  But I have just got to give that person over there, whom I do not even know, $100. 

Or, every now then someone should come home only to find the grass cut and the bushes trimmed, with a note left that reads roughly as follows: “Sorry, I hope I did not offend you.  But before I realized what was happening, I found myself attending to your lawn and I could not stop myself”. 

I mean if road rage is an addiction, then surely there are no limits to what can count for an addiction. 

Sex is unbelievably appealing and it may play a multitude of roles in our lives.  But an addiction it is not an addiction.  If it were, then we would expect it to manifest in rather repulsive ways and the excuse would be: it is an addiction.  I hate to say this for fear that I may give someone an idea.  But if sex really were an addiction, then rape might admit of an excusing condition—at least to some degree.  No one thinks that; and that fact reveals that we have considerable control over our acting upon our sexual desires, however intense they may be. 

But if sex and road rage and computer games were all genuine addictions, then the very idea of random acts of kindness would take on an entirely different meaning.  Indeed, sometimes a person would have to hide her or himself from others for fear that she or he might spend more money helping others than he has.  There would be a new explanation for people charging their credit cards to the maximum: “I just can’t stop myself from helping others”. 

How odd it is that even over spending or shopping are characterized as addictions, yet it always turns out that people over spend only on themselves.  I mean the regret would be pretty much the same whether one over spends on oneself or another, especially since people rarely overspend buying things that they need in order to live.  Most credit card debt comes from buying frills: not only things that a person does not need, but things that a person will not put to regular use. 

My argument, then, is quite simple.  It is actually rather elegant.  Either (i) the idea of an addiction conforms to our model of drugs and alcohol as paradigm examples where we have a chemical dependency or (ii) the idea of an addiction is extended to such things as road rage or watching pornography or playing video games or shopping.  If (ii) were true, then (iii) there would in general be random acts of kindness with people exclaiming that they cannot help themselves as they put themselves out to help others. 

But we know that (iii) is simply false.  There are, to be sure, acts kindness throughout the world.  But nothing that comes close to resembling the “I can’t help myself” mentality—at least as that expression is meant.  When people say things like “I would not be able to live with myself if I did not do such-and-such on behalf of this or that person”, we understand that to be merely a manner of speaking.  We do not think for a moment that the person has a problem controlling her behavior. 

At any rate, if (iii) is false, then (ii) is false.  And that leaves us with (i) as true.  Our argument, then, that most so-called addiction—road rage, playing video games, shopping, and the like—are not properly considered addictions takes the form of a simple argument:

(P or Q) & not-̴Q
_____
Therefore P

One can, of course, quibble with my claim that (ii) entails (iii).  However, I see no good reason whatsoever to think that it does not, given what is called an addiction these days. 

Fortunately, the argument I have presented does not preclude the possibility of random acts of kindness.  All of us have friends and loved-ones.  Do we need a special day to show them kindness?  I hope not.  On any given day, we can wake up with, and act upon, the thought of doing something nice for those individuals. 

Helping a stranger can be more difficult.  But there are many ways that we can do even that.  This afternoon not only did I open the door for an elderly lady, I then extended my hand to help her as she struggled with the very high step at the door’s entrance.  I did not save her life or put food on her table or clothes on her back.  But my gesture was unanticipated.  And the delight that my gesture brought to her eyes was memorable. 

My small act of kindness in this instance was rather random.  It was not something that I was thinking about doing.  It all sort of just happened on the spur of the moment.  And it all happened without my being addicted to anything.  Whenever I see such an act of kindness in others, it is unmistakably clear to me: That is kindness as it should be.

This entry was set to post automatically at 18h00

t does not take a genius to figure out that traveling by airplane has become pretty much a nightmare since the new rules of August 2006.  Why?  Because it takes no effort at all to end up with 3 little 3-ounce containers of something. This is true whether one is a woman or a man.  Shaving cream and toothpaste and deodorant are all very typical for a man; and one is already up to three and we haven’t even gotten to cologne or solution for contact lenses or any form of over-the-counter liquid medication with which a person has typically traveled.  Left out also are the various sprays and gels that women and men use for their hair.  Then there is the fact that women typically like to carry some form of lotion.

Before August 2006, the typical person traveling easily carried at least 4, probably 5, of the 8 items mentioned in the preceding paragraph—items that were seen as mere basics. 

Then there were the little gifts of this and that, which we used to carry in our carry-on bags.  They are out—unless, of course, one buys them at the airport.  Gone are the simple days when could pick up a bottle of cologne or perfume at one’s favorite store in town for that special someone that one could take back in one’s carry-on luggage.  Likewise for the half-bottles of wine that were such a nice treat. 

Although I am one of Continental Airline’s very frequent flyers and my baggage is supposed to get priority handling, I waited 45 minutes to day for my one little small bag.  When it comes to checked baggage, the only thing that being a frequent flyer gets one, at least at Continental, is a label that says one’s bags get priority to handling.  The label and the reality most certainly have not met one another.  My plan is to check bags about every 4th trip or so. 

One of the T(ransportation) S(ecurity) A(administration) personnel informed me that people are checking cases of things to destinations that they typically carried with them in much smaller amounts on a regular basis.  I gather others have the same idea, namely that is better to lose time every third or fourth trip than to do so every single time.. 

For anyone who has a connecting flight, carrying-on luggage often means the difference between making the next flight or missing it.  Or, it makes the difference in one’s bags arriving with one at one’s final destination as opposed to one’s having to come back later and pick them up.  Then there is the factor already alluded to, which is the time lost in waiting for one’s bags to arrive on the conveyor belt.  10 trips a year with a 45 minute wait for one’s luggage comes to 4 hours and 45 minutes.  No wait: it comes to 9 hours 30 minutes, since there is going and returning.  Thus, every three years, one loses a day of one’s life simply waiting for one’s checked bags to arrive on the conveyor belt.

Even a flight attendant said to me yesterday: “Something has got to give”.  For the occasional traveler who packs just about everything in the name of anticipating one contingency after another, this individual is not much affected by the new rules.  Checking bags is a part of what such a person does. 

But for the frequent traveler, the 11th commandment is surely: “Thou shall exit the airport with all due speed upon getting off the plane”.  Since flights almost never arrive on time, this commandment has a certain urgency to it. 

Now, we know the reason the new rules, namely our safety.  Since I am all for planes taking off and landing under their own power, I would be the first to admit that there is much to be said for the new rules. 

Ironically, my problem is with their application.  Perhaps the time has come for a permit to fly free from intense security checks—a permit that must be renewed at least once every year.  In order to get such a permit, a fairly rich profile of one would be necessary. 

Interestingly, such a profile is possible without giving up too much privacy.  Besides, in a credit card society much of what we do and where we have been can already be determined by our credit card use.  Large donations are signaled by tax reports.  And traveling is signaled by two points: point of departure and point of destination. 

It seeds to me, for example, that a person who flies back and forth numerous times a year between New York City and Brussels to do major work for IBM probably merits a permit to be a flying passenger.  Likewise for a professor who lectures around the world taking about how to cure breast cancer.  In either case, the person’s career is a substantial part of the person’s public persona, such as it is.  We do not need to know when and where a person had sex or how much she had to drink in order to determine whether she is a safe bet for flying.

A profile gives a general sense of what a person is like. 

Can profiles trip us up?  Absolutely.  But anything can do that.  There is no fail-safe method of preventing terrorism, short of dying. 

The present arrangement for flying, though, is simply foolish.  For in essence, the idea is that everyone is a terrorist until an inspection at airport security proves otherwise.

Now, a permit to be a flying passenger would be entirely voluntary.  Just so, I suspect that an awful lot of frequent flyers would gladly and voluntarily submit to the kind of informed profile that it would take to get the permit simply because it would make their lives so very much simpler.   

The present arrangement stems from the attitude that profiling is wrong.  When it comes to airplane passengers: treating everyone exactly alike is thought to be the morally preferable state of affairs.  That was perhaps plausible prior to August 2006, but not so since then.  For the rules since then have effectively undermined the quality of our lives.  Small gesture of kindness have been cast aside for no other reason that it is too much hassle to check bags.  Little things that we have taken on the plane for years on end must be left home or purchased at the other end or in the airport.  Since November 21, I have purchased a tube of toothpaste at the airport for each of the three flights that I have taken across the Atlantic ocean, just so that I can brush my teeth on the overnight flight.  For 15 years, though, what have I carried with me from home?  Right: toothpaste. 

Something is wrong when in order to prevent future acts of terrorism our only response is to treat each airplane passenger as if she or he were a possible terrorist until she passes a security check on the spot. 

My proposal is simply why not have background security check available for those who would want a permit to fly, that is sufficiently rich that the odds of such a person turning out to be terrorist are infinitesimally small. 

A person who has been lecturing around the world on breast cancer for the past 15 years might become a terrorist.  It is most unlikely, however.  Certainly, the story could not possibly be that he lectured on breast cancer on Tuesday and decided to blow up an airplane on Thursday.  It would take a monumental event for it to turn out that a professionally active person with a morally acceptable life becomes a terrorist. 

A minimum 5-year profile background check would rule out lots and lots of people initially.  That is, one would have to have a 5 year history of doing a particular thing.  It would not be enough that without ever harming anyone one painted for one year, went mountain climbing for another, horseback riding for another, and so on.  We do not have harm here, but we also do not have stability of life style, either.  I propose that stability of lifestyle be an immutable necessity for obtaining a permit to fly.

In the oddest of ways, the concern over terrorism has rightly forced us to set aside the rule of innocent until proven guilty.  But the choice is not to treat each flying passenger as a terrorist or nothing at all. 

Presumably, relatively few CIA or FBI agents turn out to be terrorists.  So we know that there can be profiles that give us rich enough information in this regard.  My proposal is simply that we use that kind of wherewithal to make traveling easier for morally decent people, all the while acknowledging that the old ground rules of innocent to proven guilty have changed.

oing God’s will is serious business.  That, of course, is an understatement.  On the one hand, I am impressed by those who are committed to doing just that.  On the other, I am distraught by some approaches to doing God’s will.  Some have what I shall call the hands-off approach to doing God’s will.  This line of argument goes like this: If God means for something to happen, then it will happen.  Accordingly, there is nothing that one should do.  There are Jews who reason in this way; there are Christians who reason in this way.  I am utterly puzzled in either case.

As I recall the story of Moses’s mother, she built a basket and then put him in the river.  She did not, in name of a God-will-take-care-of-everything attitude merely plop Moses in the river.  One might very well say that she exercised a measure of commonsense, which consists in doing what we ourselves can do. 

The story would have been absolutely horrendous had Moses’s mother merely dropped him in the river.  Of course, had God commanded her so to behave, as with the case of Abraham being commanded to sacrifice his son, that would have been a different story.  But even there, Abraham had to do his part.

What makes this all particularly interesting are the Jews who showed up in support of Iran’s conference on the Holocaust.  These are Orthodox Jews from the sect called Neturei Karta. 

In one sense, their stance is most admirable: God has all power and nothing could happen if did not allow it.  Such profound faith can be most energizing and moving. 

As with any horrific horror, be it the Holocaust or American Slavery, suffering can be exploited.  But Neturei Karta Jews most surely go beyond the pale.  They may very well think that the state of Israel does not a right to exist.  But that was not the subject matter of the Iran conference on the Holocaust.  The aim of the conference was to support the view that the Holocaust is nothing but a myth.  Even if one accepts the proposition that (1) the state of Israel does not have a right to exist, what most surely does not follow from that proposition is that (2) the Holocaust did not occur.  These two propositions are entirely unrelated.  They are unrelated even if it is true that (3) the Holocaust was used as a tool of sympathy to bring about the creation of the state of Israel. 

Neturei Karta Jews seem to hold that (3) is true.  But that commits them to the view that the Holocaust did occur—which is precisely what Iran’s conference on the Holocaust denies.

So there is something down-right sick on the part of Neturei Karta Jews.  And one does not have to be pro-zionist or antisemitic to think that.

Consider, for instance, that there is much disagreement on the part of contemporary blacks regarding how blacks should conduct their lives.  But no one would think to argue that this or that form of behavior on the part of blacks suggests that American slavery did not occur. 

As Neturei Karta Jews know all too well, Judaism attaches considerable importance to the very appearance of things.  For example, the Orthodox tradition would deem it woefully inappropriate for a male friend to be studying with another man’s wife late at night at the home of the couple while the husband is away.  It would be inappropriate so to behave even if it is absolutely the case that studying is all that is being done and not an ounce of sexual attraction exists between the male friend and the wife. 

The explanation here is very simple: Such behavior too readily lends itself to unsavory gossip. 

I am rather certain that Neturei Karta Jews accept the example given.  So you no doubt see my problem with them.

Whether the state of Israel has a right to exist or not, it is another thing entirely to befriend those who would deny the Holocaust and who are committed to destroying the state of Israel. 

So If Neturei Karta Jews are not aiding and abetting evil, then I do not know who is.  And there is simply no way that they could not grasp this.

Thus, I find the behavior of Naturei Karta Jews as despicable as the behavior of the denizens of Nazi Germany who, in the name of the State, “looked the other way” when Jews were being viciously mistreated.  Indeed, I challenge anyone to come up with a difference between them.  Few in Nazi Germany could ever have thought that Jews were being provided a better home. 

Iran’s president Ahmadinejad was just delighted to have Naturei Karta Jews at the conference.  And as far as I can tell he thinks that the only good Jew is a dead Jew.  The exception, of course, is the Jew would agree with him.  And nothing beats an Orthodox Jew in this regard.

Now, as I have already indicated in the preceding blog-entry: I am ruthlessly in favor of free speech.  Accordingly, I hold that Neturei Karta Jews have the right to make the assertions that they make.  I also hold that those who hear their words and witness their actions have a right to hold them accountable for what they say and do. 

Aiding and abetting evil is a fundamental moral wrong.  We may do so by our silence; we may do so by our presence.  I would never tolerate in my classroom a racial epithet against Asian or Arabic students.  I would never show up at a rally in support of violence against women.  It would be woefully indecent of me to do either.

By attending Iran’s conference, Neturei Karta Jews stand guilty of aiding and abetting evil.  That is why I made the very harsh claim that I see no difference between them and a denizen of Nazi Germany who looked the other way when Jews were being harmed.  In fact, I am even willing to make a stronger claim, namely that the brazen behavior Neturei Karta Jews was itself evil. 

If I show up at a meeting fully understanding that you will take my presence as a sign that it is all right to commit acts of sexual violence against a particular group, then I do what is evil in showing up although I do not commit the evil of engaging in any act of sexual violence. 

For the president of Iran, Neturei Karta Jews at the conference served as nothing more than a justification for his venomous diatribe against Jews in general.  If Neturei Karta Jews can live with that, this only because they are morally depraved.  Once again, the difference between them and Nazi Germany citizens who looked the other way while Jews were being viciously mistreated disappears.