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"Tradition?? The only good traditions are food traditions. The rest are repressive."

"There are two ways to think. The first is to trust to your ancestors, your religious leaders, or your charismatic professors. The second is to question, to challenge, to explore history for meanings, and to analyze issues. This latter is called Critical Thinking, and it is this that is the mission of my web site. "

Dr. Laina Farhat-Holzman  

December 2023

How to Become a Melting Pot


This country has always had a problem with integrating immigrants or absorbing former slaves and Native Americans. The ongoing arguments are about the best way to embrace these people into the American melting pot. The problem was particularly great in the 19th century, when ugly solutions were practiced.

The first immigration difficulties were with the Irish, who flocked here starving because of the potato famine in Ireland. We did not welcome them kindly. For some years, more...

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Minorities that Benefit Democracy

Democracy is based on the free and fair election of majority rule. In autocracies, minorities rule: either a dictator or a minority party. However, another element of democracies is gradual change, usually proposed by a minority recognized over time as right. How else can we account for the changes that western civilization has experienced over time.

Slavery, for example, was considered a universal institution for centuries. Different civilizations practiced it in different ways. more...

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Palestinian Tragedy



The Palestinians appear to be dogged by conflict and failure. They hover among a dwindling extreme form of Islam, modernization of culture, and violent authoritarian governance. As human beings, they are no different than all the others who are modernizing---as soon as they leave the Middle East. Muslims, including Palestinians, successfully integrate into American society, a bit less so in European countries.

Americans do not require immigrants to accept their ow more...

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Winners and Losers


University students, particularly the youngest ones, frequently go through a phase of swelled heads, believing that they know better than the grownups who messed up the world. Right now, there is a poisonous propaganda campaign about the innocent "Palestinians" being colonized and exploited by the evil Israelis.

Sympathy for the Palestinians has just been smashed by Hamas, which has invaded Israel, taken hostages, and even exceeds Putin in committing war crimes. This camp more...

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September 2023

Brief History of Slavery

This column should be directed to the Governor of Florida, whose knowledge of slavery reflects his defective education. Slavery was never of benefit to the slaves. This is also written to enlarge the view of slavery as a human institution, not just the Black slavery in the New World.

Hunter/Gatherers, Migration
Our earliest ancestors survived by cooperation. The men (and some women) hunted, but the main diet was provided by women, who gathered edible foods, fish, birds, an more...

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Ukraine Reborn (1 of 2)

A psychological exercise is to look out at an audience from a balcony and ask: How many red hats do you see? Until you pay specific attention, you don?t know. Once asked, all the red hats pop out at you. Thinking about Ukraine is the same sort of thing. Most Americans couldn?t tell you where it is, but that is changing now. We have Ukraine on the brain.

I should say that I have it on the brain. It has been there all along without my being aware of it. I used to think of it as THE more...

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Bigotry?s Sloppy Language

When I hear "Power to the people," I really want to know who "the people" are. This is the sloppiness of references because it implies the people, journalists, intellectuals, Jews, Chinese, Blacks, elites, are all one thing. One does not have to live to a great age to know that there is no "all" of any category that is just one thing.

The most common hate mongers today talk about hating "elites." What kind of elites? Are very rich people elite? Would you include prize fighters or more...

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Religion at War with Itself

Last month, I wrote that Religion and Democracy are a combination destined for conflict. Religion requires belief in something without proof: faith. Democracy involves arriving at consensus on how to organize an orderly society. It requires thinking, discussion, and ultimately voting for either representatives or issues. Democracy also needs representatives and voters themselves with good character: something once shaped by religion. We seem to need both.

Human beings have always more...

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December 2022

American Populism

Populism refers to a range of political stances that emphasize the idea of "the people" and often juxtapose this group against "the elite" or "the establishment."---Wikipedia. This defines the alienation of "ordinary" people who feel neglected and scorned by the educated "elites" who rule them.

People who feel displaced (jobs and industries lost), resent their government. But even college educated people who find that their educations are not producing careers for them feel alien more...

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August 2022

Evolution of the State Department

What we now call the State Department began as Foreign Affairs, whose first Ambassadors, even before we were officially a country, were John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, with Benjamin Franklin serving as an unofficial Ambassador.

A recent PBS broadcast in the series "American Experience" (Season 34 Ep 2), provided the experience of Black diplomats serving during the Cold War. Their experiences were like those of so many other "non-White Protestant males" who monopolized State Depar more...

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The Two Faces of Faith

Faith has a place in human history?a mixed bag of good and bad consequences. Faith depends upon willing belief and assumptions that this belief is unchangeable.

Democracy depends on reasoned decisions, values that change as societies evolve. We think and know things today that were inconceivable for eons before our time.

Benefits of Faith
Faith can be a valuable unifying element, creating and sustaining communities. We do not do well as hermits. Even hermits more...

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David and Goliath

Folklore across the world tell tales of giants, something that seem fixed in the human psyche. The ancient Greeks tell of the Titans, a pre-human species, one of whom stole fire from the gods and gave it to humans. The titan who did this was horribly punished by the gods for this.

The Bible story of David and Goliath describes in detail how young, small shepherd David became his tribe?s hero by slaying the enemy?s special warrior, a giant named Goliath. David managed to do this in more...

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Putin?s War Playbook

April 22, 2022
Laina Farhat-Holzman
Pajaronian

Putin?s background was as a KGB spy, not a military expert. He uses war as a blunt cudgel, not what modern military professionals would do. His war decisions are a direct demonstration of his character. He gambles shrewdly, takes risks, and is never constrained by empathy or conscience. It has worked for him so far.

Mainstream media often invite both active and retired military officers to guide us through more...

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Weaponizing Lies



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Weaponizing Lies

An ancient prophet, Persia?s Zoroaster, gave the world some powerful concepts: life after death in Heaven or Hell (depending upon one?s conduct in life); a single god of the universe, and god?s shadow, an evil spirit who used the lie as his weapon. Ancient Persia?s code of conduct for men was: ride well, shoot your arrows straight, and tell the truth.

While Zoroaster?s religion faded, these concepts passed into Judaism when the Jews lived in captivity in Babylon. It was during thi more...

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Status of Women Around the World

January is a good time to see how women are doing around the world in the past year. The status of women has changed more in the past century than it had in 10,000 years. But these changes for the better (recognition that women are citizens, not property), has not changed in many of the darker, religious, backward places outside of the English-speaking world and Western Europe. Elsewhere, even with cautious new changes, there is unfortunate backsliding in recent years.

The backsli more...

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November 2021

American Populism


Populism refers to a range of political stances that emphasize the idea of "the people" and often juxtapose this group against "the elite" or "the establishment."---Wikipedia. This defines the alienation of "ordinary" people who feel neglected and scorned by the educated "elites" who rule them.

People who feel displaced (jobs and industries lost), resent their government. But even college educated people who find that their educations are not producing careers for them fe more...

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September 2021

Tenacity of Prejudice

An American research group did an interesting experiment. They produced a resume that clicked off all the requirements of many national companies and sent it to them, changing only the name of the applicant. The names were Greg, Lucy, and two names identifiable as African-American men and women.

They found that at least 50% of companies never opened the African-American applicants and a number of them also rejected Lucy! Prejudice against Blacks and women still exist.

more...

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The Long History of Lynch-mobs

History shows that our ancestors began to thrive when they learned to work together, to cooperate. Cooperation was the dominant behavior of human beings, but the lesser aspect of our behavior was domination by force. Modern historians have assessed that we have lived far more years of our lives in in peace, war being the lesser condition. But we tend to focus more on our warfare periods because they are less usual and more horrible.

Despite the predominance of peaceful cooperati more...

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October 2020

Perspective on History of Slavery


Much current discussion of the history of slavery ignores the larger picture. Slavery was universal, still exists in parts of the world, and was only finally abolished in the 19th century by England (1833), Russia (emancipating serfs in 1861), and by the United States in 1864. These emancipations were unique to the West, not the rest of the world, which still practices domestic slavery (women as property) and in some places in the Islamic world, sexual, agricultural, and mining slavery. more...

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June 2020

Annual Darwin Awards

The Darwin Awards are an annual joke promoted by those of us who believe that Darwin?s science is valid. Those who change in ways that help their survival thrive. Those who prefer tradition die off. Stupidity kills.

The Darwin Awards are jokingly granted to those fellow human beings whose stupid choices and actions render them unfit for the gene pool. A person who jumps off a roof, flapping his arms, truly believing he can fly like a bird, should not live to reproduce.

more...

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October 2019

Anti-Semitism?s New Supporters


The most blatant hatred of Jews comes from the resurgent White Nationalists, as we witnessed when they marched in Charlottesville carrying Nazi-style torches, chanting: "Jews Will Not Replace Us." They have grown so bold that they no longer see the need to mask their faces. Even more distressing are the events at which such rabble give the Nazi salute and "Hail Trump."

These mobs are on a continuum from 1098 when the first Crusaders began their assaults by storming the R more...

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May 2019

Revisiting Public Education


There is too much talk about reforming our education system and too little discussion of what education is, and its particular purpose in a democracy.

In antiquity, only the children of the ruling class received an education, generally through a well-known teacher. We first encounter discussions of how to teach in the ancient Greek accounts written by Plato of how his own teacher, Socrates, taught. This was an unusual method at the time, and is still too rare even today. S more...

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November 2018

Historic Roots of Anti-Semitism


The perennial hostility and conspiracy theories about Jews seemed, at least in the US, a non-issue. Jews serve in government, in academe, in the press, in movies, and in outsized numbers in Nobel Prizes and other international awards.

Of course, even in the US, one finds remnants of Jew Hatred, but in mainstream society, it has been more covert; insulting Jews is an embarrassed knee-jerk utterance. I recall being in a car driven by a dear elderly classmate who, when cut o more...

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August 2018

The Ongoing War on Science


In the 19th century, as science was beginning to replace religious explanations for phenomena, the old guard pushed back. This battle raged even within one of the world?s great scientists, Charles Darwin, who was a devout Christian but also a keen observer. His lifelong observations about how species evolve (which he could see with his own eyes) differed from the Biblical explanation that God created all life in one moment and that nothing has changed since.

Darwin was sa more...

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The "Deep State" Conspiracy


A popular notion among conspiracy lovers is that there is a secret government that really runs our country. They currently call it the Deep State, but it has been known in the past by comparable concepts, such as the Jewish Conspiracy (a worldwide money cult that runs everything). One idiot on the Washington, DC city council actually believes that weather is secretly controlled by the Rothschild family (another Jewish conspiracy.) This family, he believes, can create storms and bad weath more...

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Why Conspiracy Theories Flourish


People "believe" many things, some that they see themselves, some learned from parents and teachers, and some that they accept "on faith" (literal religious beliefs). Before people learn critical thinking, a process of questioning what they hear as to the source, credibility, and consistency, many people automatically distrust information from their leaders. They suspect that all official information is propaganda designed to fool them.

We must give credit to the first anc more...

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Three Countries Turn 70: Comparisons


Seventy years ago, the United Nations recognized the birth of three new nations: Israel, India, and Pakistan. All three had just been given their independence from British colonialism: the Palestinian territory under British "mandate." India had been the "jewel in the crown" of the British Empire for 150 years. Pakistan was a brand-new country that was formerly north-eastern and north-western India. All three began their new lives with similarities and differences, the latter accounting more...

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Words Matter.

Definitions are very useful when words have power over our minds. Terrorism is one of those words. For some people, the only time "terrorism" is used is when an act of violence is committed by a Muslim. But playing loose and fast with a definition has resulted in calling a radicalized Muslim, who murdered 13 of his fellow military at Fort Hood, a perpetrator of "workplace violence."

Acts of violence by Muslims are not always terrorism, such as honor killings of family members (wo more...

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Russia?s Disinformation Campaign


Last week, we reviewed Russia?s long-term foreign policy, a policy that is a reflection of its historic vulnerability and weakness. This time, we will examine Russia?s long-term use of disinformation and discord. They have turned to this policy because it is inexpensive and can divide democratic societies without firing a shot. It is effective because so many people in our liberal democracies (rule of law) are not willing to think things through; it is easier to latch onto a source of in more...

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Let Us Take a Tour of Slavery Through History

Although slavery did not begin with America, its effects still poison the dreams of the America Black underclass and the fevered imaginations of Old South romanticizers and virulent racists. Unfortunately, slavery is and has always been a universal horror.

At our beginnings as a species, a practice emerged to compel some members of the clan to perform work that others did not want. Anthropologists tell us that among our hunter-gather ancestors, hunting required muscle and tracking more...

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December 2017

Is Fundamentalism in Meltdown?


Every mainstream religion has positive elements that provide comfort and direction to its parishioners. But religions also have dark underbellies that create death, destruction, and havoc. No human society has ever been without religion, but in addition, no human society has ever escaped bouts of the dark stuff.

Could anyone at the time of the birth of Christianity, a religion based on the loving, pacific theology of Jesus, imagine that faith 1400 years later in the hands more...

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May 2017

Where Religious Tolerance is Scorned (Part 3 of 3)

On May 13, my column provided the global history of religious tolerance. On May 20, I charted the history of western religious persecution that led to today?s modern values of tolerance. Today?s column visits the absence of religious tolerance in the Muslim world and among authoritarian states.

The most interesting case is roiling Muslim-majority countries, countries that enjoyed a brief period of modernization that brought with it (temporarily) secular governance downplaying rel more...

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Limits to Tolerance (Part 2 of 3)


On May 13, my column provided the global history of religious tolerance. This column features the history of western religious persecution that led to today's modern values of tolerance.

European religious intolerance dates back to when the Romans made Christianity the state religion. Other faiths were discouraged and some actively persecuted. The arrival of Islam in North Africa and the formerly Christian Holy Land created a conflict that soon became the three-century "C more...

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Religious Tolerance in World History


Among primitive humans, the world was frightening and animated by benign or hostile spirits. Our ancestors feared the power of these unseen forces, believing that sacrifices could calm these spirits. Sacrifices ranged from sharing food (burning foods so that the smoke could reach the deities) or, in dire circumstances, human sacrifices to pacify an angry god or goddess.

As we developed as a species, these nature spirits evolved into a system of many gods and goddess, spel more...

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Religious Tolerance in World History

Among primitive humans, the world was frightening and animated by benign or hostile spirits. Our ancestors feared the power of these unseen forces, believing that sacrifices could calm these spirits. Sacrifices ranged from sharing food (burning foods so that the smoke could reach the deities) or, in dire circumstances, human sacrifices to pacify an angry god or goddess.

As we developed as a species, these nature spirits evolved into a system of many gods and goddess, spelled out more...

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The Trouble With Today?s "Cassandras."


Cassandra dates back to ancient Greek mythology. Cassandra was a princess of Troy who was cursed with the ability to see future disasters but also cursed with never being believed (until too late). This is different from the boy who cried wolf (making up the warning) and then not being believed when the wolf actually appeared.

Two Cassandras have received much critical press in the past few weeks: Iowa Representative Steve King, who tweeted in defense of another Cassandra more...

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Vetting Immigrants and Refugees


Our country has every right to vet the flood of immigrants trying to come to this land. But one size does not fit all. This is why a blanket Muslim ban is without nuance, to say the least! President Trump is not going about this process with subtlety, unlike our current vetting process, one that is the result of continued refining.

It does make sense to sort through the refugees, first admitting those least likely to be a danger to us, and then vetting the rest. The Trump more...

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Ideas That Make People Kill.


Between the 16th and 18th centuries, Europeans engaged in mutual slaughter over religion: the Catholic-Protestant wars. Religion was not the only issue; the birth of nation-states added poisonous nationalism to the fray. The scientific and industrial revolutions added another element. Catholic states were fighting a rear-guard action in defense of the feudal world. The Protestant states, over time, advanced all the ideological changes that we value: participatory governance, religious to more...

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August 2016

Russia's Long Romance with Lying and Deception

A spotlight has been turned on Putin's Russia lately: the probability that his government had hacked the computers of the Democratic National Committee, sitting on them until being released the eve of the Democratic Presidential Convention. Their agent, Julian Asange, the creator of WikiLeaks, a hacking underworld that only hacks the computers of the West, never Russia or China, dumped these e-mails with the seeming intent of assisting the election of Donald Trump. Russia certainly could not ope more...

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Religion, Sexuality, and Homosexuality


Many well-meaning people believe that the murderous aspects of today?s Muslim true-believers is a perversion of a good religion. To say that there are many Muslims who live peaceful lives is true. But a sizable minority of violent Muslims (Islamists) have Islamic texts to back them up. Islam is a religion, like all other religions, and the behavior of its adherents depends upon how literally they choose to practice their faith. I criticize all "true believers" for their choice of literal more...

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The Mystery of Defunding Israel


When one surveys nasty governance, horrible cultures, and rampant injustice in the world, Israel would not appear on any rational list of offenders. Despite this, the campaign to boycott and defund Israel is mindlessly persistent in universities and among far-left radicals. A few people, one of them an "independent" running for Congress, still embrace the conspiracy theory that 9-11 was not perpetrated by Arabs. They insist that the buildings fell because they had been pre-wired and then more...

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What Use Are Good Manners?

Being "polite" is not just a matter of saying please and thank you. Courtesy has always been the lubricant that makes the wheels of society turn smoothly. There is a movement today to conflate honesty with rudeness, mocking the "politically correct." Political correctness is an exaggerated monitoring of words and thoughts that might offend others. The revolt by some against political correctness is that these constraints sometimes muzzle debate. However, the revolt against "political correctness more...

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1400 Years of Inbreeding


Worldwide Muslim marriage practices are now under fire for a spate of genetic problems now in the Western spotlight. The birth defects and anomalies are real and their incidence within Islam is undeniable. The problem is determining if these incidences are all caused by the Muslim preference for first-cousin marriages, a practice forbidden in Judaism and Christianity.

We do not know enough about genetics to determine if this consanguinity is totally to blame, or if there more...

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Was the Past Really Better?


When we revere the past to the point of worship, we are saying that those who came centuries before us were smarter than we are. As a historian with little romantic illusion about the past, I think that this worship is misplaced. I checked this out with a two-part question on the final exam in the World History class that I taught: A) If you could go back in a time machine to any period in history, which would you select, and why? B) If you could not choose your gender or class, would t more...

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How Our Presidents Promote Tolerance

The United States was founded just as the European Enlightenment swept through. The Enlightenment occurred after two centuries of religious wars had exhausted not only Europe?s population, but also its intellectuals. Ordinary people were not theologians; they simply retreated to the various sects accepted by their families or rulers. Southern Europeans remained Catholic, while the more economically progressive north (England, Scotland, Scandinavia, and northern Germany) and their rulers favored more...

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The Long Decline of Christians in the Muslim World.

Secular Americans and Europeans are often reluctant to rush to the defense of Christians around the world. Our educations have taught us that the Christian West cruelly colonized the good but downtrodden people of the lesser- developed world. Many of today?s radicalized academics focus on Western racial bigotry; after all, only White people can be evil. They weep for the "underdog," hence the scorn for Israelis, who have the temerity to no longer be underdogs. The "poor Palestinians," no matter more...

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Europe's Good Intentions Hit the Wall of Reality.

Casandras (me included) have been writing for 20 years about Europe's failure to integrate a Muslim immigrant population that resists modern culture. The Islamist terror attacks were alarming enough, but the New Year?s Eve sexual assaults, mobs of "North African" men molesting, raping, and robbing women in Cologne, Hamburg, Sweden, and Finland, have embarrassed governments across Europe. Europe's open door to "refugees" has brought in not only good families capable of integrating, but also hord more...

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November 2015

Racism, Anti-Semitism, and Islamophobia: a Primer


A reader once called me a racist in response to an article I wrote criticizing Islamism. I was puzzled because Islam is not a race and criticism of its more poisonous aspects is an attack on an ideology, not individuals.

Today, Muslim activists using their legal arm, CAIR, accuse anybody who criticizes Militant Islam of "Islamophobia," hatred of Muslims. They use this term as the equivalent of the anti-Semitism, or hatred of Jews. However, we need to be clearer in our use more...

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May 2015

Marriage of One Man and One Woman, a Sacred History?


The Supreme Court has not weighed in on the issue of Gay Marriage yet, but plenty of people have had their say, in and out of the court. Even those who believe that it is time to recognize that a same sex couple should have the dignity of being recognized as a family with the same rights as a married couple do note that marriage has a long traditional history of being the sacred union of one man and one woman.

However, I choke when I hear that one. Does it really? Do thes more...

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Puritans Are So Threatened By Pleasure!


There has always been a strain in religions from the beginning of time that has feared pleasure. Perhaps it is connected with a struggle between male and female power. Without wanting to push this too far, women can be a distraction. "Let's play!" distracts from the serious work of hunting with the fellows or thinking serious philosophical thoughts in the monastery. Female beauty makes men, even late into their dotage, weak in the knees. My sourpuss puritanical grandfather was pinching t more...

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Victimization Has Become Chic---Diluting the Message.

Our country is wallowing in the blame game with endless demonstrations protesting injustice. It is said that Black youth are being unfairly persecuted by police---and too often becoming victims in police shootings. Nobody is protesting the murder of Black youth by Blacks.

That we have had 300 years of injustice to Blacks through slavery and after that Southern Jim Crow and northern inner cities cannot be denied. However, the past fifty years has produced a revolution in race relat more...

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December 2014

Belief and Writing: It Must Be True If It Is Written Down.


Fanatics are not called "true believers" for nothing. Whether the belief is religious or political, somebody?s writings are always the basis for "true belief." Communism originally stemmed from the practices of early Christianity, but with the writings of Marx and Lenin, the basis shifted. Russian communists were fervent believers in the truth of the observations of Marx and Lenin.

The Nazis based their Aryan Superiority ideology on the 19th century anthropologist Arthur d more...

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September 2014

Will Islam Address Its Internal Crisis?

Muslims have lived so long with governments they cannot trust that the rumor mill serves as their source of information. Conspiracy theories are the favorite explanations for all the horrors in the world. If you cannot blame Allah, you must find someone you can blame.

The latest conspiracy theory comes out of the Netherlands, where a Muslim woman, Yasmina Haifi, who works in the Dutch Ministry of Justice and Security, has given us the following: ?The Islamic State isn?t Islamic at more...

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December 2013

Countries Can Be Judged By Their Internments

During the 20th century, a number of nations engaged in expelling populations or interning those deemed “dangerous.” Turkey was the first with the expulsion and internment of their Christian Armenian population, an action that resulted in the first of the century’s genocides. Their World War I ally, Germany, was horrified and told the Turks that this was awful.

Then, Germany did the same in the late 1930s and in the 1940s, where the supposed “resettlement” of Jews deemed more...

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June 2013

How Do Religions Modernize?


Religions can modernize. When we explore the history of how human beings coped with fear, disasters both natural and man-made, fertility, and death, we see great changes to the religions of our most ancient ancestors.

• Pantheism. Our ancestors invented systems for coping with existential fears. They saw the divine all around them: initially as forces to be placated, but also to be honored and celebrated. The ancient Greeks, for example, modernized their earlier pantheis more...

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December 2012

Sex, Religion, Politics, and Power Make a Powerful Quartet.


I have waited until the salacious reporting on General Patraeus’ fall from grace has died down before I weigh in. It is no secret that the United States has conflicting standards on that most difficult of human issues, sex. On one hand, in the public sphere today, anything goes. But we are still the children of our Puritan beginnings, and remnants of these values remain with us, particularly with our leaders.

• Power. From our beginnings as humans, the relationship more...

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The Saudis Have A “Modest Proposal” for Women

In 1951, Philip Wylie, an American social critic, wrote a novel called The Disappearance. In this fantasy, something happens in the cosmos, a spasm of some sort, that resulted in the disappearance of each gender from the other, both living in parallel worlds. It is always fascinating to contemplate how men and women would manage alone, a fantasy as old as ancient Greece, whose mythology included the Amazons, a tribe of women warriors who managed very well without men.

Men withou more...

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April 2012

Why Do Shiite and Sunni Muslims Hate Each Other?

Whenever I do a public lecture, questions come up about the Shiites and Sunnis. People read about their mutual hatreds and daily assaults on each other in Iraq and elsewhere in the Muslim world, but really do not know how these groups differ and why they are so violent.

All religions eventually fracture into competing sects with very different interpretations of their common faith. We are well acquainted with this process in the deadly Protestant-Catholic wars, and those of us old more...

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