(Kimball's Unauthorized Perversion)

The shooting at the holocaust museum (6/10/2009) in Washington DC has [news] people saying that things like a bad economy stress out misfits who act out their hatreds and also stresses out others who find themselves looking for a scapegoat, and that Jews are historically chosen as scapegoats.

Why Jews, in your opinion?

One week later, I wrote my answer:

Dear ****,

Sorry I took so long to respond.  I've been composing my thoughts because I've seen people try to answer this question before, and I want to do at least as well as they did.  Ben Franklin once said that the only two sure things in life are death and taxes, but anti-Semitism is a third one.  I think Mr. Franklin left that out because he lived during the Enlightenment, and during that time, anti-Jewish prejudice wasn't as bad as it had been in previous centuries.  This gave many Jews the idea that if they assimilated into the dominant cultures around them, and kept their Jewish customs at home, they would eventually be accepted as equals.  It didn't happen, though, which is why we're having this discussion now.

1.  The first reason is plain stupidity. In the case of the gunman at the museum, we have learned that over the years, he also expressed hatred of former President Bush and neocons, Christianity and capitalism. Well, since getting on the Internet, I have run into anti-Semites more often (on websites and in forums) than I ever did in real life. It seems to me that they're always mentally disturbed in one way or another. Thus, I have declared more than once that anti-Semitism is a mental disorder. Often they're sexually dysfunctional as well. Nor is this a new phenomenon; I've read that Adolf Hitler only had one testicle. Therefore if you hate Jews, it's safe to say that you've got something wrong in your upper story, and maybe something wrong in your lower story, too.

It seems to be a part of human nature to tear down people who are more successful than you are.  When the Black Death hit Europe, for example, Jews didn't suffer as badly as Christians because they bathed regularly, and that gave some Christians the idea that they had made a deal with the Devil to keep the plague away from their homes, or that they had poisoned the wells of Christians.

I'm not a fisherman, so I don't know if this is true, but once I heard that if you catch a crab and put it in a basket, you have to cover the opening to keep it from escaping.  However, if you put two or more crabs in the same basket, you can leave the cover off, because if a crab tries to climb out, another will reach over and pull it back.  Boy, they are so much like people when they do that!  Nobody is willing to blame themselves, if they are not successful.  It is always easier (and more comfortable) to cut down somebody else, than it is to get off the couch and fix your own problems.  The same attitude pops up in every election, when candidates play the class warfare card.  Here's my response to them:  "Once you've gotten rid of the rich, who is going to provide jobs for us?  Have you ever worked for someone who is poorer than you?  I tried it once, and that job lasted for less than a month, because he could not pay me!"

For a personal example, a few months ago, my wife and I got started building a business with LegalShield Services.  It gives us a chance to help a lot of people improve their lives, and we're starting to make some good money from it; the compensation plan is better than what I've seen anywhere else.  However, not everyone is going to join just because we're doing well.  Most of the people we approach with the business will say they don't have time, or they don't have money--excuses for staying poor.  Last week I got an e-mail from a leader in the business who said, "I am willing to do today what others won't do, so I will have tomorrow what others won't have."  The treatment we're getting from people full of negativism is starting to remind me of what the Jews must experience, at the hands of people less successful or simply dumber than they are.

3.  Third, Jews are the conscience of the human race.  When somebody is oppressed, Jews are often the first to speak out against it.  They were heavily involved in the civil rights struggle during the 1960s, something today's black leaders seem to have forgotten.  I think a lot of it stems from the laws of the Old Testament.  By our standards, the laws of Torah may seem oppressive, but compared with the laws of other civilizations in the bronze age, they were actually progressive.  For example, there are laws regarding slavery, but some of the laws also minimize the chances of someone being enslaved for life.  Likewise, there are laws calling for the cancellation of debts after enough years have passed.

Unlike the other civilizations of ancient times, Jews were not willing to surrender all their freedoms to a "god-king,"  And when Israel finally did get a king, there were still prophets like Samuel and Amos around; because of them, the king could not perform priestly functions, like the kings of surrounding nations did, and the king was answerable to them as well as to God.  Naturally a tyrant isn't going to like such a group of people around, who will point out when he's doing wrong.  That would keep him from getting away with many acts of corruption or cruelty.

Jewish mothers sometimes tell their children that, "If you ever forget you're a Jew, there will always be a Gentile to remind you."  Along that line, if you ever forget you're human, there will always be a Jew to remind you.

4.  Since God picked Abraham and his descendants as a chosen people, Satan has been trying to wipe them out, so that they can't fulfill God's ultimate goal of redeeming the world.  Thus, we can expect a true enemy of God will be an enemy of both Jews and Christians.  Along that line, a few years ago I speculated that Satan picked the Amalekites as an anti-chosen people, to destroy the chosen people, and that today's Saudis are their descendants.  For more on that, read my essay "Satan's Chosen People?" Thus, as long as the Devil is allowed to run loose, I expect anti-Semitism will run loose, too; it won't disappear for good until the Lord ends it.

There, I hope that helps!  I think I also know why 78 percent of American Jews voted for a guy who seems to attract most of today's anti-Semites, but I'm still working on that question, so please let me try tackling it another time.

2. The left is anti-capitalism. Accurate or not, there’s a longstanding identification of Jews with capitalism -- going back at least to the Rothschilds. This is bolstered by Jewish success in business and the professions. Judaism and later Christianity, validated private property honestly acquired and material progress. Islam doesn’t share this perspective, which is why wealth in the Muslim world is acquired (from oil), not earned. This also explains leftist compatibility with Islam.

3. The left is obsessed with equality. The left finds the idea of a "chosen people" (in reality, chosen to advance certain values) wholly repugnant. In Israel, the Jews succeeded where others of the region have failed since ancient times. For the left, this can’t be due to unique talents or God’s plan, but exploitation -- another charge against the Jews from the Romans to the Bolsheviks to the Nazis. On the same basis, the left has decided that American preeminence in the post-war world must be due not to our talents, entrepreneurship or democracy, but to exploitation.

4. The left loves conspiracy theories. Oliver Stone, Michael Moore, the Kennedy assassination nuts, energy prices set by oil companies, foreign policy run behind the scenes by industrialists -- the left insists that dark and sinister forces manipulate world events, making them susceptible to the longest-running conspiracy theory of all: the International Jewish Conspiracy, which blames "the Jews" for wars, depressions, economic downturns and the common cold. The distance isn’t that great between multinational corporations running the world and "international Jewry" dominating world events.

5. The left equates Jews with Israel. With all of the tyranny in the world -- especially in the neighborhood Israel inhabits -- the left has made the region’s one democracy (the only nation to give away territory acquired in wars forced on it), the unique focus of its ire. In 2006-2007, the neo-Marxists who run the UN General Assembly couldn’t find time to comment on Darfur, but condemned Israel on 22 separate occasions. There was a time when the left insisted you could be anti-Zionist without being anti-Semitic. Increasingly, neo-Marxists are forced to conclude that because "them Jews" support Israel (along with most Americans and evangelical Christians) there must be something inherently wrong with members of the tribe. Thus anti-Israel morphs easily to anti-Jew.

6. Solidarity with the Muslim world. It seems counter-intuitive, but the self-avowed secularists of the left embrace Islamacist theocrats, who find the former’s social positions appalling. Muslims fit neatly into the left’s division of humanity into exploited and exploiters, imperialists and subjugated peoples. Israel is seen as an extension of European imperialism, the continuation of centuries of Western domination. In solidarity with their allies in the Moslem world, the left is at the very least willing to tolerate the anti-Semitism of Hamas, Hezbollah, the Palestinian Authority, Syria and Iran (all viewed as revolutionary movements or regimes), but increasingly prone to indulge in the age-old evil itself.

7. The left is at war with God. From its inception during the French Revolution, the left has seen religion as the primary impediment to the realization of its utopian dreams. Christianity is indicted as the principal support for capitalism, the "patriarchal family," misogyny and homophobia. Without Judaism, there would be no Christianity -- and, by extension, no America, a reality which hasn’t escaped leftist totalitarians, from Marx and Lenin to Hitler and Hugo Chavez. Der Fuhrer (who also blamed the Jews for "inventing" Christianity) believed that if he killed enough Jews, he would ultimately kill the God of Israel.

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