Celebrating at the Bastille - Unconscious Leftists

I couldn't be more amazed to watch the joy of the socialist celebrations in France after taking the elections.
These elections have proven that liberal France is dead - or at least that socialists don't really have a liberal French majority.
Even when the far right casted about 20% of the votes and refused to vote for Sarkozy, Hollande barely got 50% of the votes with very little difference over Sarkozy.
The votes Hollande got consisted of classic liberals (modern liberals, secular, feminist, gay, etc) but also of a large contingent of people who voted just to oppose the Republican Secular strict agenda lead by Sarkozy. These people (mainly marginalized and extremized communities) do not understand or share the values of the liberal left that sincerely embraces them - in some cases even despise them. Hollande couldn't have refused to these votes, but I'm not sure his people understand the undercurrents.
If we do the simple arithmetic, the liberals in France are an absolute minority which managed to take the elections supported by non-liberal populations based on an ad-hoc need.
I would assume that given this anti-Sarkozy coalition, Hollande's administration will evade promoting a "Franchising" policy and not even liberal education to all the French population. The amazing Republican building will be growingly under attack from left and from right.

By the end of Hollande's term the far right in France will be stronger and bigger than ever as well as the non-liberal communities who voted him.
Does Hollande have an alternative? Yes he does. He must take the middle path, cherish the Republican liberal values even at the expense of losing a chunk of his voters. The other way will be far too disastrous for the liberal essence of the republic. Hollande's administration must see itself as the last defender of the Republican values. Otherwise, I'm afraid there will be nothing to stand between the troops of La-Pen and Immigrants' gangs that will clash in the streets.

The Conquest of the Bastille (CC Wikipedia)

Sustainable Liberalism?

In an era where sustainability is one of the most common buzzwords spread by liberals worldwide we have the right to ask ourselves: Is Liberalism itself sustainable?

Liberal ideas carry a lot of real world attributes which we commonly define as positive, like tolerance, human and civil rights, advance of knowledge, higher life standards, novelty by free minds - just to mention a few.*
However, Liberalism bears also a terrible pain. It carries at its womb a time bomb that will bring to its own destruction. Either this aggressive tumor or one of its complications will kill liberalism. Its self assuredness and pacifism.

Modern liberalism is pacifist. Its main stream adherents do not want to fight in real wars. Actually, many times they do not want to fight at all. The belief in Liberalism embeds the belief in man kindness, benevolence and an ever improving world. So, if the good always win and if everyone are good, why should one fight at all.

This liberalism is light years away from the much more realist founders of liberalism or the revolutionaries of the French Revolution, who lived the oppression that they wanted to oust with their liberal ideas.They knew they had to fight and die for the life they wanted.

Modern liberals, mainly western ones, have never felt oppression, commonly the worst thing they went through is unemployment.We grew up in welfare states, we saw too many movies in which the good guys always win and whenever we felt blue we could just open the TV to watch a movie, read a book, go for a drink or go shopping. We didn't have to be out fighting for our families' or ideas' survival.

If you have ever participated in an elections campaign, felt the stress in the days before the elections and celebrated with multitudes a victory, you probably know that feeling of an essential battle been won. A tide of strong feelings that you didn't know exist in you. But, a few days later the feeling is gone. This emotion, this fervor lacks in the liberal movement and when it exists it is commonly turned in the wrong direction.

Some additional characteristics add to the clinical history of our soon to be defeated liberal camp.

Liberal people make little children, while non liberals tend to have many.

Liberal communities (if you can call community to an agglomeration of individuals) tend to be tolerant to ideas that threat their way of life even in a violent way, while non liberal communities do not reciprocate and do not allow liberal ideas to freely enter their realm.

Liberals tend more than others to focus on career and material achievements over ideology and community life. Individualism is venerated while the general good which requires an effort to defend is left for others to do. It is a kind of outsourced values implementation. NGOs to which we contribute from time to time, tweet their links, share their Facebook posts or rarely manifest for are the perfect conscience purifier.

Our family life is a sterile from ideas and actions, and even when it is full with ideals passed to our children, we are rarely activists - thus teaching our children what hypocrisy and that a good liberal doesn't have to stand for his ideas.

Liberal which are activists prefer to reprimand their own community or other liberal communities for not being liberal enough towards others, while exalting non-liberals as mere noble savages. It is safer to verbally castigate a liberal society, since the attached price tag is low. When you attack a non liberal society you may be required to pay higher prices which almost no contemporary liberal is willing to pay.

Living such a sweet life, never having to really fight for your way of life and convictions, tunes down our instincts. Most of us are not able anymore to correctly identify who are the essential rivals. This is easily exemplified by cooperation of leftist organizations with dictatorships and undemocratic regimes. So, either these organizations aren't liberal or they are blind and cannot recognize the enemy. Maybe they cannot take seriously any enemy - after all they believe, the good guys will always win.

Human character is shaped like that of other animals through struggles, combats and playing-training towards them. When daily life is left out of any existential struggle and when we are educated that nothing is worth fighting for, we suppress those basic instincts.

The elites which carry the ideas of every regime are always the first ones to become complacent, lose their instincts and take the path towards the extinction of their own regime. Elites, being spoiled and living well, tend to become cosmopolitan, less provincial and supposedly more and more liberal. This is a stage of suicidal liberalism. Liberalism like any other idea must keep its vitality. It must have a Carthage to rival with if it wants to avoid petrification.

* These 'positive' and benevolent attributes can be considered such only in certain situations. When being a 'good guy' gets you or someone from your family/community killed by the 'bad guys' in your neighborhood, there is no meaning anymore to 'being good'.

Sometimes I feel that Hollywood is one of the main problems of the modern liberalism. Darwin taught us that the fittest, the fiercest and the strongest survives. Extremists, dictators and racists twisted the ideas trying to justify some of the most horrible deeds in human history. Liberals decided that they will negate and turn their back to any notion of Darwinism in politics and society. This is where Hollywood gets into the picture. It seems that liberals truly tend to believe that the good guys will always win. I find no possible explanations to that but two - stupidity or watching too many Hollywood movies.

Hi everybody! Wake up! Bad guys do win if you do not fight back! You cannot assume that wife beaters and child abusers will change their ways nor you can assume the same about crazy extremists, people who think a certain deity allowed them to kill others or deprive their women from basic rights.

Sad May 1st

May 1st is always a day of mixed feelings for me.

On one hand, I tremble thinking about the achievements of socialism and liberalism in the past 200 years and about empowered workers, actually previously slaves, marching and waving red flags - celebrating their dignity.
On the other hand, I think about the great failures, the wars that weren't prevented, the depths of terror to which red flags led and the great betrayal at the end of the 20th century.

I couldn't have for you my fellow readers a better example than the following.

Today a Spaniard friend talked with me about the economical situation in Spain. He started ranting about the situation, the crazy cut downs of the right wing government which is 'selling the country to the Germans'

A: Our government is demented. They are changing laws related to demonstrations expecting that during the summer Spain will burn with manifestations. I didn't expect the right wing government to be so much more radical than the already capitalist previous leftist government. They are handing the country to the Germans.
B: Why to the Germans?
A: Because all the terrible things are done at the request of the German banks.
B: I think you don't fully understand the Germans. Merkel really thinks that the south Europeans are irresponsible and need to learn a lesson.
A: Maybe. But the responsibility should be shared. Investors can't be immune to risk. They invest in Spanish banks and exposed themselves. Their gamble went wrong and instead of them coping with the results, the Spanish state is being sold part by part.
B: Well, that's what Spain (and others) did to Argentina years ago...and the Spanish left didn't even blink...
A: In fact the left here doesn't exist. It's a mere third way.
B: At least Germans are coherent.
A: The pace of changes is brutal. It will take here 2 years to destroy here the welfare state, the same kind of destruction that took you (Israel) 20 years.
B: I tell you again that the life of Argentinians was destroyed much faster, they didn't even have the support, even if virtual, of something like the EU or anyone in the world that could care that they were going down.
A: True. Many times I tell to my Argentinian acquaintances that their past is our future.
B: Other countries in the world were destroyed in months in civil wars and nobody cared. And the Spanish left...what did it do for the Greek people?

An important clarification. I truly believe that people and governments should be the first responsibles for their own deeds and not blame others. There is no redemption for a society which doesn't take responsibility and take bold steps to amend what's wrong internally. Whether the amendment should be brutal austerity or ultra-capitalist changes is debatable. Since economics isn't an exact science, there isn't one formula.

On the ideological level, people who didn't show any empathy and didn't reach out to others shouldn't be surprised when no one shows empathy and doesn't reach out to them.

The failure of the left is global. Instead of establishing a moral stand in hard times, it spent its time on other things and now when the bad times come to their step door people start whining. It didn't rally for people who lost everything, it didn't rally for millions of peoples massacred worldwide, it didn't manifest for human rights in dictatorships. It always opted for fashionable causes.

And no, my left wing party isn't any better.

Workers of the world, show compassion to others! (even when your own middle-class-stomach is full)

No competition to capitalism and the rotting west

Hegel made a correct observation that dialectics between two opposites (thesis and anti-thesis) creates new matter (synthesis) and promotes the advance of history.
Currently, when the leftist ideas championed by the USSR and socialist movements were demolished, there is no counter thesis to create dialectics versus the capitalism, which in its turn causes the rotting and decay of capitalism.

This way, the basis of the western renaissance, the logic questioning of subject, competition between ideas and cycling improvement is in danger.

While Capitalism and Socialism were contending against each other, new and advanced forms of matter appeared in the friction lines - social-democracy, welfare state, social security and more.

Nowadays, it seems that regardless whether you are a western capitalist, a middle eastern Islamist, a nationalist Russian or a competitive Chinese - money is a tool and a goal at the same time. Thus, they do not challenge capitalism and capitalism isn't really challenging their core values. This way, western liberalism (what we used to wrongly call, leftism) is left without a defender and is vanished from the ideological arena.

I agree that these ideologies currently competing on world dominance do have dialectics between them, but not sure these dialectic currents are positive.

The left has left and we are left alone. It's our own responsibility to bring up a new notion of liberalism.

We had a dream - and now we have none

Martin Luther King had a dream. That dream marched hundreds of thousands of people all over the USA and inspired others around the globe.
The strength of King didn't lay merely on is personality and his ideas.
It laid, first and foremost, on the fact that he had an idea. He combined the existing wishes and passions of people in the USA, centuries of belief in human equality and human rights into a clear an articulated utopia - an achievable new world which managed to wash away cynicism and mobilize masses.
The existence of a clear alternative world is a strong force - the one which explains the force of religions over people. The one which explains why Marxism had the same force over people.
This explains also the amazing strength of the capitalist idea - which is a clear but also one of the simplest of all utopias. Let the market play, don't intervene and the world will be paradise.

There is no leftist utopia nowadays. There is no liberal utopia. Liberalism has succumbed to a pile of post modernist bullshit. It retreated in the face of a mass of relativist ideas which justify why all the ideas of humanism and liberalism should be sacrificed to appease religious, extremist ideologies and oppressing regimes.
Enlightenment as moved aside and in the name of liberalism cleared the way to anti liberal ideas.

The west's liberalism submerged itself in a bath of guilt over the calamities that Europe has brought on the world over the 20th century has disappeared.
Instead of reformulating its aspirations into a new sociopolitical movement is was washed away by relativism, effectively accepting non-liberal ideas as acceptable just in order not to impose "European" ideas and castigating those who still believe in it as "imperialists", i.e. the USA.
For the sake of humanity and the world, the western liberalism has the same right to exist and profess its convictions like any other ideology. Regretting for western deeds should learn to a revision of ideas, improvement of liberalism and cleanup of racist ideas, but not to a full retreat.

Chronology of the Israeli protest – August 27

On Saturday, August 27, there was a main demonstration in Tel Aviv but also big manifestations in several other cities. We headed to the city were I spent most of my adolescence years - Rishon Letzion. The event was divided into a march and a central concentration with singers and speeches.

There were only a few hundred marchers, so it was a bit disappointing. They were a mix of social-democrat youth movements lads and ordinary people. I was soooo proud of this youth, my youth - finally, during this whole protest, seeing the ideological secular-liberal youth taking the streets.

When we arrived to the main park of the city, I was surprised and cheered to find that there was there a huge public of several thousand people awaiting the marchers. They were all family people, and if I know enough the city, you can count that they weren't leftist. Most of them were the common electorate of the right wing parties. They protested, they chanted, they promised to rebuild the tents over and over again and even if the tents will disappear they promised to keep meeting in 'popular gatherings' to discuss their right and planning their next steps.

They were standing and singing shoulder to shoulder with the socialist youth movements. It was a moment to remember. Let's hope both sides will know how to maintain this cooperation.

I momentarily had a dream that the left movements in Israel will stop talking on high profile on the Israeli-Palestinian-Arab conflict and instead embrace this public which joined them and raised the humanist-liberal-socialist banner above all else, and take care of the needs of this public. I hope I'm wrong, but I feel this is nothing but a dream.

All in all only 25K people protested this weekend. The optimists say people are gaining force for next week's :"1 million' protest.

Rightist and religious extremist groups all over the world do the fundamental work of teaching people their ideas from childhood, while liberals just try to convince adults on the rationality of their ideas - this is a lost war, or even better a battle who's results are clear to everyone beforehand. We should finally change the script according which we see and analyze our world. Consumerism isn't an ideology!

What's up this week:

• The young physicians insist in resigning regardless of the agreement between the government and their trade union


• The government is raising the taxes on gasoline


• The students declared boycott on a major supermarkets firm, which responded by lowering its prices by 20%


• The whole protest movement is making an effort to bring to the street '1 million' people on next Saturday's (Sept-3) evening.


• There are rumors that this is going to be the gran-finale of the tents camps and that the protest will start reshaping


• As we are getting closer  to the Palestinian's 'state recognition' in the UN, the social movement is in a greater risk of being 'forgotten' by the media and the political system.


• Regardless of everything, people keep talking about having a better life, about not being poor when you work and get a salary, about the commitment of the state to its citizens and not only to its fiscal policy. Something has changed.

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Chronology of the Israeli protest – August 25

Today buses from all around the country carried protesters to Yeruham. Yeruham is a special place in the south of Israel. It's in the middle of the desert, suffers from the regular problems of any 10K people town that is far away from labor and finances centers.

1,500 people demonstrated in Yeruham supporting the tents camp started by a 16 years old leader.

We went to the tents camp in Rehovot, were people sat in a circle, read the demands phrased by the national movement. People from various social strata joined the circle and the discussion was lively and sharp. There were even a couple of guys from a misticism movement that tried to convince everyone that love among people is the most important thing and we shouldn't handle with demands form the government. A couple of researchers from a social think tank closed the evening with a long discussion into possible models of societies and their suggestion on focusing in investing resources in community and youth development on neighborhoods level.



In the past week the government got another 'gift'. A star celebrity who is a judge in the local version of 'American Idol' got arrested for alleged relations with the organized crime. A whole week that all the newspapers filled their headlines with this stuff instead of the important things, the social movement that still kicks and bites.

Though, the probably most serious problem faced by the protest till now was the demand of the leaders who grew from the tent camps themselves, to take part in the leadership. This quickly became a challenge of the "old" leaders vs. the camps leaders vs. the periphery leaders. Some of the leaders were mad about the frontal attack against the government's committee (it seems people want to believe things can be changed by the government).  Eventually, it seems that the 'old leaders' were smart enough to make a place for new faces besides them.  I have a strong feeling that some of this demands were nurtured by government supporters in some of the camps in order to remove the 'leftists' leader of the movement. I say 'leftists' because I can personally attest that this isn't so - not everyone who wants social justice or a sane free market is a socialist or a dove.

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