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A short lesson on the Gold Standard from the Bible

February 12, 2012 By Leave a Comment

I’m planning a class on this for Jews for Ron Paul, but here are some initial thoughts on the subject.

Genesis 2:12 always took me for a loop, until I was introduced to Austrian economic theory and the gold standard. After God creates man in the second creation story (yes, there are two), the Bible goes off on a tangent about where the Garden of Eden is located. It maps the rivers that feed the garden, and then talks about the lands the rivers pass, and in case we cared at all, it says that the gold in one of these lands that the river that happens to flow into Eden flows past, is good.

Well OK, the gold in some land that has nothing to do with the man on the moon is good. So what?

Come on! It’s the Garden of Eden for the love of God! There’s no work, no toil, but you have to tell me about some gold and that it’s of good quality before God even puts Adam in the Garden of Eden?

The message, which I finally understand: There is no such thing as a fiat paradise. Back it up with gold.

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To Ron Paul Supporters: Reflections from Israel on the Iowa Caucuses

January 4, 2012 By 4 Comments

To my dear American patriots and fellow lovers of liberty and freedom,

I’m writing this to you to give you what they call “chizuk” in Hebrew, or strengthening. Before I get on to it, Ron Paul came in third in the vote count last night, but he came in tied with Romney and Santorum for delegates to the convention, and possibly even first due to the dedication and love of our liberty soldiers in Iowa who volunteered to be delegates after the voting ended. We will know for sure in the coming days whether Ron Paul actually won the most delegates. Nonetheless, a third place showing is emotionally difficult for all of us. I will try to explain to you now why it should not be, and actually isn’t for me.

I am first and foremost a Jew. I am only an American in name in that I feel no national bond with America, though I do love the country as being one of the most spectacular to ever have existed, if not the most. And I want her to be healthy and strong and free. So I am telling you this as a Jew, not as an American, because I cannot separate my Jewish consciousness from anything I think about, as it is so integrally entwined with my psyche.

There is a Rabbinic lesson written in a book called Midrash Raba, which is basically a collection of Rabbinic exegesis on Biblical verses. Commenting on the story of Creation, the Rabbis note that redemption was preprogrammed into the universe. Redemption, meaning humanity being restored to its complete, most fully functional form. That form is freedom. The drive toward freedom is unstoppable and inevitable. This is the very first thing you have to keep in mind at all times. In pushing humanity toward freedom, you are literally partnering with God in furthering the very purpose of creation, because what you are fighting for is absolutely real and true, and nothing can change that. Nothing.

This is all nice and good, but how do we overcome a third place showing? The same way the Jewish people overcame virtually everything. You just have faith in God. And if you understand that you are doing the right and true thing, you do the absolute best you can while realizing you cannot control everything. We cannot control everything and we are not the masters of the universe. We are only subordinate partners with the True Master.

Remember, there are men who love power, and there are men who love freedom. Freedom is uncontrolled. Power is control. So if you do the best you can and understand and internalize the truth that freedom means you can’t control everything, then you inherently leave the final step to God. If you think you can control everything, you are treading into the dangerous alleys of the power mind. Your hard work and dedication and love of humanity did not go unnoticed in the heavens. Now have faith and keep going.

Going back to the Exodus from Egypt for a second, before the Israelites finally left, they were commanded to do the ultimate act of defiance against Egypt right in front of the Egyptian people. That is, tie a sheep – the Egyptian god – to a bedpost, leave it there for 4 days, then slaughter it, smear its blood all over their front doors, roast it completely whole over an open fire, eat it, and burn all the leftovers, bones and all – and only then could they get the hell out of Egypt.

That is, they had to demonstrate one act of complete freedom in defiance of the Egyptian establishment before they took the final step. And then they were out forever. Just one act of freedom, and that was enough to earn them a ticket out.

You, my friends, have demonstrated so many acts of freedom already. You deserve your freedom and you WILL win it, because unlike any other cause to get some soulless guy in the White House, your cause for freedom is the very purpose of Creation.

What you all need to do now is first, understand that you WILL win. It is programmed into the Divine fabric of the universe. Second, understand that you cannot control exactly HOW you win. If you could control it, you wouldn’t be free. In order never to be seduced by power as so many human beings are, in order to be truly free, you have to ultimately let go and have faith. You must realize you cannot control ANYTHING. The only one who can is God, the source of freedom itself.

And third, keep going full speed.

The ultimate test of our own liberty is when we are deflated and depressed, what do we do? Do we give up and say that since we couldn’t control this one event absolutely and it didn’t come out as we personally envisioned it, then we may as well give up on the whole thing? That would prove that our conception of liberty was only self-aggrandizement, only a form of power lust for absolute control.

So what are we going to do? Are we going to go home? Or are we going to take the lamb of slavery and government control where they can now arrest us without trial or charges, slaughter it, smear its blood all over our door posts and BURN the damn thing?

Not every soul will be activated. It will not happen. We WILL win, but we CANNOT know how. What we CAN know is that God is with us in our fight because it is TRUE.

We won the MOST delegates even though we didn’t come in first. And you know why? Because the people that voted with us are FREE! In Iowa, we didn’t have the most men. But we had the FREE men, and that’s why we won.

Now on to New Hampshire! God bless you all!

 

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Ron Paul is to Government Spending as Moshe Feiglin is to the Oslo Peace Process

October 30, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Ron Paul and Moshe Feiglin; both libertarian, both trying to change the course of history.

There comes a time in every man’s life when he has to make a fundamental decision about the direction his life will take. This point can be called the “free will” turning point of a person’s life that happens very rarely, usually only once in a lifetime. It delineates a turning point when someone is finally faced with the decision about what kind of person he will be. Once made, the choice can only be changed with extreme difficulty.

The same can be said for countries. There comes a point in every country’s life when that country has to make a fundamental decision about which direction it will take, how the country will define itself.

As Ron Paul repeatedly states (for there really is nothing he says that isn’t repeated), America made her decision in 1913 as to what kind of country she was going to be, and that is a country with an unstoppable and ever expanding central government.

1913 introduced the income tax and the Federal Reserve to America, which established the precedent that not only could the government print money whenever it wanted, but it could actually take away whatever percentage of your income from you that it wanted as well. This paved the inexorable path to the erosion of the gold standard and the adoption of money backed by…the word of the Government.

Such was the road paved for big government in America, and now, not only are Americans OK with the fact that they don’t own their own incomes except by government benevolence; some actually expect, even DEMAND that the government take MORE of their money. And not only are Americans OK with the fact that a group of 12 people can conspire in secret meetings to print trillions of dollars in currency, effectively devaluing the money that people have in their bank accounts. Americans are actually THRILLED when the Fed says they are going to “do more” to “stimulate” the economy by running the printing presses.

America made a decision in 1913 on big government. To change that direction requires not simply a change in style. It requires a 180 degree paradigm shift in the way America thinks about itself as a country. It will require huge amounts of pain when the country realizes that it’s entitlement system is broken, that it is not all-powerful, that it can no longer pass out checks like water. This requires another free will decision about its own identity, and as we said at the beginning of this post, free will decisions are rarely made twice in a lifetime, be it of an individual, or of a country.

When America decided on Big Government in 1913, that paved the way for that government’s hubris in assuming that she runs the world and can meddle in global affairs with impunity, without declaring war, without consulting Congress, just on a presidential whim go in and do something.

As for Israel, our problem isn’t fiscal. Unlike America, Jews have a constant fear that they are about to be destroyed, so being fiscally irresponsible is not an option for us. Our problem is our sense of self.

In 1993, Israel made a free will decision. When she signed the Oslo Accords with a people that claimed we are living in its land and not our own land, she made the decision that Israel is not Jewish land. From that point on, everything Israel has done has been on the premise that every Jew here is an occupier of Arab land.

Every time we are attacked, we withdraw. Every time we withdraw, we are attacked. And then we tell everyone that we want to give the land away, but that we’re worried we’ll get killed if we do. Every political party in Israel is built on the premise that we have no choice but to give away our country. Right and Left strive together towards the same goal, for there is no alternative without a complete paradigm shift. Just as both Democrats and Republicans strive towards big government, Likud, Labor, and Kadima strive towards Oslo.

To change the Oslo perspective will take another free will decision by Israel as to the purpose of its existence as the Jewish State. The only one trying to make this paradigm shift is Moshe Feiglin.

Feiglin, like Ron Paul with the Republicans, is running in the main “Right Wing” party, the Likud, which once stood for Israel as the land of the Jewish People. Ron Paul and Moshe Feiglin are both despised and feared by their respective partys’ establishment. Both Ron Paul and Moshe Feiglin are trying to bring their parties back to their roots. Both Ron Paul and Moshe Feiglin even bike several miles every morning.

Both Ron Paul and Moshe Feiglin are trying to do the impossible and change the way their countries think about themselves.

And both Ron Paul and Moshe Feiglin want America to stop giving foreign aid to Israel. Read Feiglin’s position on this here.

Finally, both Ron Paul and Moshe Feiglin know this: If their respective countries continue in the paths that they are on now, the future of the free world is quite dim.

But I suspect that both know the following as well: At some point, both will wake up. The only question is, how much will we all have to lose before they both do.

Whether we like it or not, America and Israel are all that’s left of the free world, and both countries are in existential quandaries. Both, with God’s help, will get back to their roots and find themselves, with the help of Ron Paul and Moshe Feiglin, who I hope in the very near future will become very close friends.

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