Truth Over Tyranny: Biblical wisdom for defeating the Technocrats.
These are my insights for defeating the Transhumanist Technocracy movement, based on the teachings of Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, of blessed memory, on the weekly Bible portion.
One of the most despicable — and destructive — tactics of the leftists, is their use of evil speech. Here are just a few examples:
If you protest a man using a women’s bathroom, they call you a “transphobe.’
If you call out Islamists for demanding the death of Israel and America, they call you an “Islamophobe.”
If you point out that the perpetrators of a certain crime are black, they call you a “racist.”
If you refuse to take a shot that could kill or injure you, they call you “anti-vaxx.”
If you call BS on all the “climate-change” propaganda, they call you a “climate-denier.”
If you express views that support our country, they call you a “violent extremist.”
And if you hold true to your Judeo – Christian values, they call you a “dangerous radical.”
This name-calling is wrong for so many reasons:
It denies the truth.
It delegitimizes the valid positions of people with whom they disagree.
It covers their own bigotry and hatred.
It replaces moral standards with self-righteousness and intolerance.
And it tears society apart, in true Marxist fashion.
Unfortunately, evil speech was a problem for us way before the destructive force of Marxism appeared on the scene. Rabbi Jonathan Sacks shows us its Biblical roots in his commentary on Parashat Tazria called, “The Price of Free Speech.” In the process. he guides us on how we should deal with it.
https://rabbisacks.org/covenant-conversation/tazria/the-price-of-free-speech/
Rabbi Sacks starts with a modern-day story about the tragic consequences of evil speech:
“Hannah Smith was a fourteen-year-old schoolgirl living in Lutterworth, Leicestershire. Bright and outgoing, she enjoyed an active social life and seemed to have an exciting future ahead of her. On the morning of 2nd August 2013, Hannah was found hanged in her bedroom. She had committed suicide.
“Seeking to unravel what had happened, her family soon discovered that she had been the target of anonymous abusive posts on a social network website. Hannah was a victim of the latest variant of the oldest story in human history: the use of words as weapons by those seeking to inflict pain. The new version is called cyber-bullying.”
The Bible considers this one of the worst sins of all:
“The Jewish phrase for this kind of behaviour is lashon hara, evil speech, speech about people that is negative and derogatory. It means, quite simply, speaking badly about people, and is a subset of the biblical prohibition against spreading gossip.
“Despite the fact that it is not singled out in the Torah for a prohibition in its own right, the Sages regarded it as one of the worst of all sins. They said, astonishingly, that it is as bad as the three cardinal sins – idolatry, murder and incest – combined. More significantly in the context of Hannah Smith they said it kills three people, the one who says it, the one he says it about, and the one who listens in.”
Even the great Biblical heroes Moses and Miriam were guilty of such a grievous sin:
“The connection with this week’s parsha is straightforward. Tazria and Metzora, are about a condition called tsara’at, sometimes translated as leprosy. The commentators were puzzled as to what this condition is and why it should be given such prominence in the Torah. They concluded that it was precisely because it was a punishment for lashon hara, derogatory speech.
“Evidence for this is the story of Miriam (Numbers 12:1) who spoke slightingly about her brother Moses ‘because of the Ethiopian wife he had taken. God himself felt bound to defend Moses’ honour and as a punishment, turned Miriam leprous. Moses prayed for God to heal her. God mitigated the punishment to seven days, but did not annul it entirely.
“Clearly this was no minor matter, because Moses singles it out among the teachings he gives the next generation:
“’Remember what the Lord your God did to Miriam along the way after you came out of Egypt.’ Deut. 24:9, and see Ibn Ezra ad loc.
“Oddly enough Moses himself, according to the Sages, had been briefly guilty of the same offence. At the Burning Bush when God challenged him to lead the people Moses replied, ‘They will not believe in me’ (Ex. 4:1). God then gave Moses three signs: water that turned to blood, a staff that became a snake, and his hand briefly turning leprous. We find reference later in the narrative to water turning to blood and a staff turning into a serpent, but none to a hand that turns leprous.
“The Sages, ever alert to the nuances of the biblical text, said that the hand that turned leprous was not a sign but a punishment. Moses was being reprimanded for ‘casting doubts against the innocent’ by saying that the Israelites would not believe in him. ‘They are believers the children of believers,’ said God according to the Talmud, ‘but in the end you will not believe.'”
So was Joseph, as well as the national leaders who spied out the Promised Land. Their sins had disastrous consequences:
“How dangerous lashon hara can be is illustrated by the story of Joseph and his brothers. The Torah says that he ‘brought an evil report’ to his father about some of his brothers (Gen. 37:2). This was not the only provocation that led his brothers to plot to kill him and eventually sell him as a slave. There were several other factors. But his derogatory gossip did not endear him to his siblings.
“No less disastrous was the ‘evil report’ (dibah: the Torah uses the same word as it does in the case of Joseph) brought back by the spies about the land of Canaan and its inhabitants (Num. 13:32). Even after Moses’ prayers to God for forgiveness, the report delayed entry in the land by almost forty years and condemned a whole generation to die in the Wilderness.”
Why does evil speech cause such destruction? It’s because of the tremendous power of words:
“Why is the Torah so severe about lashon hara, branding it as one of the worst of sins? Partly this has deep roots in the Jewish understanding of God and the human condition. Judaism is less a religion of holy people and holy places than it is a religion of holy words.
“God created the universe by words: ‘And God said, Let there be… and there was.’ God reveals himself in words. He spoke to the patriarchs and the prophets and at Mount Sinai to the whole nation. Our very humanity has to do with our ability to use language. The creation of homo sapiens is described in the Torah thus:
“’Then the Lord God formed man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.’Gen. 2:7
“The Targum renders the last phrase as ‘and the man became a speaking being.’ Language is life. Words are creative but also destructive. If good words are holy then evil words are a desecration.”
So how do we deal with evil speech?
“If you should ever suffer this (be the target of evil speech,) the best advice is given by Maimonides: ‘If a person is scrupulous in his conduct, gentle in his conversation, pleasant toward his fellow creatures, affable in manner when receiving them, not responding even when affronted, but showing courtesy to all, even to those who treat him with disdain … such a person has sanctified God and about him Scripture says, “You are my servant, Israel, in whom I will be glorified (Isaiah 49:3).’
“That is in relation to lashon hara directed against yourself. As for the group as a whole, however, you should practise zero tolerance toward lashon hara. Allowing people to speak badly about one another will eventually destroy the integrity of the group. Evil speech generates negative energies. Within the group it sows the seeds of distrust and envy. Directed outside the group it can lead to arrogance, self-righteousness, racism and prejudice, all of which are fatal to the moral credibility of any team. Whether or not you are the leader of such a group you must politely make it clear that you will have nothing to do with this kind of speech and that it has no place in your conversations.”
“Zero-tolerance” means calling evil speech out for the destructive weapon that it is, and bringing public attention to it:
“All of which helps us to understand the biblical idea of tsara’at. The peculiar property of tsara’at – whether as a skin disease, a discolouration of garments or mould on the walls of a house – is that it was immediately and conspicuously visible. People engage in lashon hara because, like wearers of Gyges’ ring, they think they can get away with it. ‘It wasn’t me. I never said it. I didn’t mean it. I was misunderstood.’ The Torah is here telling us that malicious speech uttered in private is to be stigmatised in public and those who engage in it are to be openly shamed.
“To put it at its simplest: as we behave to others so God behaves to us. Do not expect God to be kind to those who are unkind to their fellow humans.”
I would add this:
Today, the evil speech that is most commonly engaged in by the opponents of freedom-lovers is that of targeted ridicule and personal destruction. This is no surprise, as this is the primary tactic of Rules for Radicals, by Saul Alinsky: “Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.”
When personally targeted in this disgusting manner, many freedom-loving people are often too timid to push back hard enough to rightfully shame the radical Leftists. They fear that shaming their attacker will cause themselves to lose the moral high ground. So they put all their effort into refuting the Left’s claims instead — or they just stay quiet.
As I see it, the teachings of Rabbis Sacks, on how God wants us to handle evil speech, compels us to publicly shame the radical Leftists for their malicious behavior:
“The Torah is here telling us that malicious speech uttered in private is to be stigmatised in public and those who engage in it are to be openly shamed.”
Indeed, those who target us for personal ridicule and destruction — instead of civilly discussing the policy issues with which they disagree — must be strenuously called out for being haters themselves.
Our personal morality is not up for debate. We cannot allow ourselves to feel ashamed — when it is they, not us, who should feel ashamed. So we must push back — and push back hard.
Everybody, let’s practice shouting, “HOW DARE YOU SAY THAT ABOUT ME!!!”