Image via WikipediaRelated source » The AshkenazisWhat a wonderful exegesis on the origins, impartiality, superiority, foundation of, and, sadly, confusion about the rule of law. The American Constitution, the basis of our Nation's rule of law (not rule of men) is arguably, as if that were necessary, the greatest and most successful charter for any nation-state in recorded history. In the manner of the Decalogue, which was etched in stone, the Constitution (together with its self-amending provisions) guarantees predictable treatment under the law and equal justice to all persons, regardless of any distinguishing characteristics.
[This related source is recommended in its entirety.]
“I am the tag-end of that generation of Jews linked to the Ashkenazi Immigration.
The Ashkenazis, the Eastern European Jews, were, in the main, unassimilated in Europe. They lived in the Pale of Settlement, banished there by the Tsarina, in 1772 […] Those who stayed behind, in Warsaw, and on the Bug River, the Russian-Polish border, died, killed by Stalin or Hitler. […]
All four grandparents came here with nothing — with little or no command of English, and all their children went to college. […]
Other than that, we, in my own as in many Ashkenazi families, had little or no Family History. […]
For we were assimilated Jews. […]
This millennia-old history of reverence for Justice could not be eradicated in the two generations between my grandparents' immigration and the baby boom. The mechanism at the center of this pursuit, however, was not only lost, but forgotten.
The assimilated Jews, raised as immigrants, in families, which for whatever reason, ceased Jewish observance, retained their cultural love of Justice, but were ignorant of the historical methods of its pursuit. […]
Jews of my day were Democrats, were Liberals. Everyone in the acquaintance of my parents' generation supported the NAACP and the ACLU, […] and for a Jew, to vote Republican would have been as for him to endorse child sacrifice. […]
But we, the Jews, even given our historical dedication to Justice, had, in our assimilation, forgotten that justice could only be achieved through law, and that the application of law meant the necessity of, at the very least, disappointment to at least one and more probably both of the parties involved in dispute. That, thus, the utmost expression of care was not the ability to express sympathy, but the ability to control sympathy and execute justice. Sympathy to the wicked, we were taught, is wickedness to the just. […]
Rabbinical thought holds that all sins are the Sin of the Golden Calf: Moses told the Jews to wait, as he was ascending the mountain to talk with God; the Jews did not wait, but, instead, built a golden image, and worshipped it.
But note that, though we understand their sin, ... , it was committed while Moses was yet undescended from the mountain, that is, before the Jews even received the Law. That is to say, they held in their heart some conscience, some knowledge of the Divine which caused them, on discovery of their act, shame at what they, even uninstructed, understood as a transgression. […]
The revelation, of my latter years, is that all good people care, but that they may be, legitimately, divided as to the means to address and the potential to understand and to correct disparity, sorrow, and injustice. […]
What is "social justice"? It is not merely an oxymoron. It is, inherently, the notion that there is a supergovernmental, superlegal responsibility upon the right-thinking to implement their visions. […]
The great advances in Justice which have made our country not only great but good are essentially the broadening of its definitions of those worthy of protection. This is the attempt to find justice through equality of opportunity. This is antithetical to that equality of result beloved of the Left; […]
I recognized that though, as a lifelong Liberal, I endorsed and paid lip service to "social justice", which is to say, to equality of result, I actually based the important decisions of my life ... upon the principle of equality of opportunity.”
— David Mamet, The Secret Knowledge: On the Dismantling of American Culture, Chapter 27
The Left, which is populated by the greater part of all assimilated Ashkenazi Americans, has succumbed to the fallacy at the root of their waywardness: justice can not be dispensed by a supremely-gifted wise Latina or a purported-genius community organizer; it can only be pursued via the application of the impartial rule of law. It is not only wrong to search for equality of result; it is immoral to forgo the mechanisms implemented for the arrival at an impartial and just verdict.
Moses the Lawgiver and Jesus the Christ are the soul of the Judeo-Christian foundation that enabled the evolution of law-based ethical standards of Western civilization. As David Mamet wisely states:
This expression of "sympathy," as in the action of most of contemporary Big Government, is the usurpation by the elected (or appointed) of the rights of others. The judge who forgot the admonition in Proverbs, "do not favor the rich, neither favor the poor, but do Justice," who set aside the laws, or who "interpreted" them in a way he considered "more fair," was, for all his good intentions, robbing the populace of an actual possession (the predictability of the legal codes). He was graciously giving away something which was not his [to give].If you want to understand whence comes your loathing of the liberal left, read David Mamet's The Secret Knowledge. Be advised that understanding will likely effect more intense loathing.
Post 1,671 Wisdom and Justice for All
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