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On Thursday, July 17, 2014 Israeli ground forces invaded Gaza, on Tuesday, August 5, 2014 they withdrew. How come after more than 10 years the US still has troops in Afganistan. (no question mark – rhetorical question)

Today Brian Wright sent a link to:
http://www.alternet.org/belief/mourning-judaism-being-murdered-israel

I replied:
To borrow some words and ideas from Sam Harris, http://www.samharris.org/, and extend with my own remarks:
“I don’t think Israel should exist as a Jewish state.” I think it is irrational to have a state organized around a religion. So I don’t celebrate the idea that there is a Jewish homeland in the Middle East. I certainly don’t support any Jewish claims to real estate based on the Bible. However, the fact that the rest of the world has shown itself eager to murder the Jews at almost every opportunity, if there were going to be a state organized around protecting members of a single religion, there should be one for Jews. Israel is not a theocracy, and one could argue that its Jewish identity is more cultural than religious. Their laws guarantee freedom of religion to all its citizens. Some claim Arab citizens are treated as second class, others claim those who have become citizens have equal rights. “However, if we ask why the Jews wouldn’t move to British Columbia if offered a home there, we can see the role that religion still plays in their thinking.”

A Jewish state in the middle east is ultimately untenable. Mistakes by Westerners were made starting in about 1870, and especially by the British around 1917-22, and then in 1947-48 by the UN. If they were going to create a Jewish state it should have been in Nevada, Montana, middle of Australia, or Galt’s Gulch, some place that was mostly uninhabited.

Contrary to current myths, the Jews and the Arabs were not always enemies. The Moors and the Jews flourished in Spain and north Africa before the Spanish Inquisition. There was less persecution of Jews in Arab countries than in so called Christian counties of Europe.

The first friction came when the Zionist immigrants in Palestine in 1880-1917 period bought deeds to land from Ottoman Turk absentee landlords. Because of the Ottoman empire, the deeds were recognized by the government, but not by the people who were living on the land.

That said, the only thing the US government should do is open our borders to any peaceful Arabs or Jews that want to settle here. We should not be supporting financially or militarily the lunacy that is going on.

This youtube video states the sentiments of most American who have any sympathy for Israel.

youTube video by Dennis Prager

Thanks to Khalling for distributing this.

Thanks to Pat Conover for distributing this.

Sam Harris is a philosophy professor.  Here he criticizes Israel a little, but claims that Hamas and its allies are worse.

In this excerpt, he comes close to my feelings about Israel.

“I don’t think Israel should exist as a Jewish state. I think it is obscene, irrational and unjustifiable to have a state organized around a religion. So I don’t celebrate the idea that there’s a Jewish homeland in the Middle East. I certainly don’t support any Jewish claims to real estate based on the Bible. “

“Though I just said that I don’t think Israel should exist as a Jewish state, the justification for such a state is rather easy to find. We need look no further than the fact that the rest of the world has shown itself eager to murder the Jews at almost every opportunity. So, if there were going to be a state organized around protecting members of a single religion, it certainly should be a Jewish state. …… I think the idea of a religious state is ultimately untenable.  It is worth observing, however, that Israel isn’t “Jewish” in the sense that Saudi Arabia and Pakistan are “Muslim.” As my friend Jerry Coyne points out, Israel is actually less religious than the U.S., and it guarantees freedom of religion to its citizens. Israel is not a theocracy, and one could easily argue that its Jewish identity is more cultural than religious. However, if we ask why the Jews wouldn’t move to British Columbia if offered a home there, we can see the role that religion still plays in their thinking.“

On antiwar.com Lucy Steigerwald writes We Should Care More About ‘Our’ Wars

She concludes:
“Is it any wonder that after 115 years of empire, the people trying desperately to go cold turkey off that drug sometimes sound like they’re going easy on everyone except the bad guys at home? The bad guys at home are acting in our name. The patriotic scolds ask why anti-interventionists obsess over America (or Israel) and not boogeymen like Assad or Putin. Because our standards – or noble little Israel the democracy’s – were supposed to be higher than theocracies’, or oligarchies’, or dictatorships’. Because dead innocent people has no excuse – certainly not good intentions, or relative freedom for our own people. And because we should stop the imperialists, and the international cowboys, and the child-killers, but we don’t. We just watch the missiles we bought hit their targets on CNN.”

In a recent Washington Times commentary, Jeffrey Miron, spells out  the consistency of the libertarian approach. Click here cato publications to view the article.

Sadly, but realistically, Miron ends his article with:

“….libertarians can (not) yet win national office, but they can push conservatives and liberals toward more consistent views. Libertarian-leaning liberals can nudge Democrats to support cuts in entitlements so these programs do not bankrupt the country. Libertarian-leaning conservatives can push Republicans to support marijuana legalization, expanded immigration or homosexual marriage out of genuine respect for individual liberty. The combination could create a “libertarian-middle” that all politicians would have to accommodate.”

In a recent blog Jacob Hornberger provides the solution advocated by many libertarians to the Big Money in Politics Problem.  http://fff.org/2014/07/22/the-libertarian-solution-to-campaign-finance-corruption/

Any suggestions on how we get from where we are now to where we ought to be?

In a recent New York Times article

Who Wants a Depression