An open society is not a society. By definition, a society is defined by its constituting a segment of humanity that adheres to a special set of rules. Those who do not adhere to that set of rules are outside of that society.

One guy I know was talking with a rabbi and said that the Jewish refusal to eat pork was based on dangers they had known about pork in Biblical days. The rabbi replied, “No. We don’t eat pork because we are JEWS.”

Jews are the only group for whom their society is not considered temporary. Blacks can have black identity for now, but in the long run they are supposed to become Multicult. But Jews are expected to go on forever.

Hitler, you know.

Mommy Professor says that Jews will always be a separate people, but the rest of mankind will be united under their Wordist Multicult.

Modern biology shows us that nothing is more unnatural than for an interbreedable social species to become a single society. So as national borders weaken Wordist borders are substituted for them.

As Lawrence Brown pointed out in some detail in Might of the West, this has happened before. In the Levantine Civilization of the Middle East, religions became what we would call nations. The Jews had their own courts and Moslems had their own legislation and the Orthodox Church had its own state institutions.

The Emperor controlled the Church in the East. So the concept of Church-State relations is alien to that society. Until the rise of Islam the dominant nation in that society was the Orthodox Church. But it was dominant in the same sense that a powerful European state can dominate Europe. The smaller countries continue to function as countries.

Islam allowed other Jehovist faiths to continue within its dominion. This was not so much a doctrine as it was a treaty between nations. If a country in Europe is dominant for a long period of time it may absorb other countries around it. But it does not begin by absorbing everything that it dominates.

People talk about the enormous Tolerance Islam has for other faiths because they do not understand history. You may as well give Napoleon credit for his Tolerance in allowing Prussia to remain a separate country after its defeat and occupation.

Like Napoleon, Islam was dealing with the nations of Christianity and Judaism. The cost of wiping them out on the spot would have been enormous. They were absorbed.

This policy was especially obvious in the case of Persia. All of Persia was Zoroastrian, but there were also Zoroastrians outside of Persia proper. Mani was in Iraq. But when Islam conquered the homeland of Zoroastrianism, it had to make a treaty with it.

This caused a lot of trouble. Persia was the first country to go straight to Islamic rule which had not previously been Christian. In every other country Islam conquered, the Church had destroyed the pagans as an organized force. It also allowed Jews to remain. So to that point Islam made a treaty with the nations of Christianity and Judaism, both of which recognized Jehovah.

Iran was a new thing entirely. Islam allowed Zoroastrians, like Christians and Jews, to practice their national religion. A lot of Moslems felt about this the way the Allies at the Treaty of Vienna in 1815 felt about recognizing a former Napoleonic marshal who was heir to the thrones of Norway and Sweden. He was not Legitimate.

But officially Islam accepted the Zoroastrian Holy Book as Revealed Truth, and so the Zoroastrian religion was allowed to continue to exist, and still has a few adherents in Iran today.

But that was not Tolerance. It was a Treaty recognizing the nation as it existed in the Levantine world at that time, as a religion.

We all know about the Khazars. Their pagan nationality was not recognized by Islam and they had to accept some form of Jehovism, so they became Jews. But a religion with two thousand years of dominance in Iran could not be brought down at a cost acceptable to its Islamic conquerors, any more than the Legitimists at the Treaty of Vienna were willing to invade Norway or Sweden to take down the last non-Legitimist monarchial settlement left from Napoleon’s rule.

This was not tolerance. It was recognition that a sovereign if small country had made its choice.

Western historians cannot imagine different nationalities existing inside the same borders, so they glory in the Tolerance of Islam. This is essential to the claim made by each branch of Wordism that it is Universal and will Unite Humanity.

Levantine history shows that Wordism can separate people as totally and far more brutally than any border could ever do.

I feel that I do understand Jesus in ONE way others do not. Jesus was, after all, a man, and as a man I understand how he was frustrated near to tears by his followers’ ability to use his words and completely miss his POINT.

Attention deficit makes coming up with examples on the spot very hard, but I do have a couple and have noticed many more.

For example, the Lord’s Prayer. That section was not about the prayer, it was about the fact that a fish is a fish. The Lord’s Prayer was an EXAMPLE of how one could talk straight to God.

It was not, in fact, the Lord’s Prayer.

The example Jesus gave was a bit of a shock to those who heard it. The idea was that you didn’t just tell God what was on your mind. If laymen cod do that, what would the Priests of the Temple do for a living?

So we Praise the Lord, which is exactly the kind of thing the Lord’s Prayer is a good example of NOT doing. That is probably why the last part, telling God how fine he was, was added to Jesus’ own words.

“The poor we have with us always” is always a favorite for some paid clergyman who wants to talk about Relevant Social Issues. If you read the text, it had nothing to do with the poor or with social issues. Jesus could have said the rich we have with us always. His point was that at that moment, he himself was standing in front of the crowd, and it was no time to get stuck on the State of the Poor or other current events.

When Jesus had the Last Supper, he instituted an entirely new custom just when Jews were supposed to be celebrating Passover. That was an enormous precedent, but I haven’t seen it discussed as such. Like his statement to the Jews that no one cold have salvation except through him, it as not the sort of thing the Society of Christians and Jews likes to dwell on.

If Jesus couldn’t do it, I sure as hell can’t. But it would be nice if commenters would at least mention the point I actually made before going on to their world view. World view is what General Discussion is for.

But it’s not a critical point. I just don’t want comments to be used the way “Christians” use the Gospels to get off the POINT that was made.

I have mentioned before that Dave uses my name a lot and gets criticism for it. He is supposed to be currying my favor.

For WHAT?

No, I encourage Dave to use my name to keep him on the point. It wouldn’t hurt if other commenters used a similar discipline, being sure they give a moment to being sure that they at least read the article they are talking about.

They damned well better, or I will withdraw all my wildly valuable Curried Favor from them.