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SATIRE: You Can’t Be Loony Leftist & Support Covid Vaccine, Too!

The COVID Vaccine Is a Product of Systemic Racism

By Walter Block

(This op-ed is written by a politically correct analyst, who will remain anonymous, but brought to you by Walter E. Block.)

I cannot in good conscience take the COVID vaccine. Why not? Because its producers are mainly toxic white males.

We wokesters want a COVID vaccine created in a more inclusive manner. Yes, yes, we will include a few token toxic white male supremacists, evil though they be, but we want laboratories that “Look Like America.” That means proportional representation by blacks, Hispanics, women, the transgendered, the queer, the bisexuals, the handicapped (both mentally and physically), young people, old people, people of color, Indigenous Americans, Asian Americans, and the vertically challenged.

But the COVID vaccines have not been created in anything approaching an inclusive manner. Unless and until this occurs, we pledge not to avail ourselves of these vaccines.

Why is this important? We the downtrodden will not feel safe until and unless the laboratories of the nation are emptied of most (not all—we are moderates, not radicals) cisgender white males. They are exploitive wherever they go; they have colonized; they have enslaved; they have exploited workers. These capitalists have ruined the economy and the environment.

The reason minorities are not proportionately represented among chemists, biologists, epidemiologists, and medical scientists is that they have all too few role models to emulate. Given our boycott, this will soon change. On that happy day, future consumers will not have to be bitterly disappointed that these occupations are non-inclusive.

Here are the details. After a pause in the distribution of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, there are two COVID vaccines currently making the rounds. They are produced by Pfizer and Moderna, respectively. Who are the people associated with the creation of these COVID vaccines?

Pfizer lists the following individuals as being involved with vaccines: Nanette Cocero, William C. Gruber, Kathrin U. Jansen, Luis Jodar, and Nicholas Kitchin. Pfizer’s immunologists are Jean Beebe, Jeremy D. Gale, and Thomas A. Wynn. Those who study and cure rare diseases include Seng H. Cheng, Katherine L. Beaverson, Michael Binks, Christian Czech, Sarah Grimwood, Greg Larosa, John Murphy, and Clark Pan. Pfizer’s medical experts are Aida Habtezion and Mace L. Rothenberg. The team studying cardiovascular and metabolic diseases is comprised of Kendra K. Bence, Morris J. Birnbaum, Albert Kim, and Bei B. Zhang.

Of these people, only Habtezion, who is from Eritrea, is African-American.

Over at Moderna the executive committee consists of Stéphane Bancel, Stephen Hoge, Juan Andres, Marcello Damiani, Tracey Franklin, Lori Henderson, Ray Jordan, Corinne Le Goff, David Meline, and Tal Zaks. Moderna’s board members are listed as follows: Noubar Afeyan, Stéphane Bancel, Stephen Berenson, Sandra Horning, Robert Langer, Elizabeth Nabel, François Nader, Paul Sagan, Elizabeth Tallett, and Henri A. Termeer. Those on the scientific advisory board include Jack Szostak, Ulrich H. von Andrian, Michael Diamond, Ron Eydelloth, Rachel Green, Paula T. Hammond, Robert Langer, Sander G. Mills, Melissa Moore, and Ralph Weissleder.

An examination of their pictures reveals that only one of them, Hammond, is black. If this is not clear evidence of racism, then nothing is.

Blacks and African Americans comprise roughly 13 percent of the population of the United States. If their representation were even 10 percent of the people involved in creating COVID-19 vaccines, I would be satisfied. Exact representation is not required. After all, the National Football League and the National Basketball Association could never be considered racist, and their black representation greatly exceeds 13 percent. But this atrocious level of underrepresentation for black Americans in the COVID vaccine initiative cries out to the heavens for social justice.

“Equity” has not been even approximately achieved.

So, our conscience dictates that we boycott Moderna and Pfizer’s products until and unless they engage in sufficient amount of skin color diversity and inclusiveness.

Walter Block

Walter Block is an economics professor at Loyola University and a Mises Institute senior fellow. He is author of several books, including Defending the Undefendable (1976).

From Chronicles Mag, here.

Charles Dickens Supported Private Philanthropy, Not Public Welfare 

Was Dickens Really a Socialist?

Far from being an early proponent of the welfare state, he was sounding alarms for all of us.
Friday, December 1, 2006
William E. Pike

have been an avid fan of Charles Dickens’s works since before entering high school. I have also adhered to the freedom philosophy for about as long.

Therefore, as the years passed and I read more and more commentators lauding Dickens as a catalyst for collectivist economics and state-centered social programs, I grew discouraged and disquieted. I have come to find, however, that by and large these commentators were not interpreting Dickens at face value, but were in effect putting words into his mouth.

Did Dickens stand up for the poor? Yes. Did Dickens speak out on the conditions in his time? Yes. Was he anti-capitalist? Were his views socialist? Did he advocate for government welfare programs? No.

Compared to most great novelists, Dickens has inspired an inordinate mass of biographies, and interest in his life, apart from his works, has been unceasingly strong. One reason for this is simply that Dickens lived life fully. He traveled abroad often and made many public appearances. He was an oft-seen figure (though many times anonymous) in the streets of London, exploring the city and meeting people of all backgrounds and walks of life. He was comfortable among England‘s highest society and among its lowest classes. His understanding of the human condition, therefore, was comprehensive.

Dickens meant to force us to face the plight of society’s least members, but he did not prescribe a collectivist solution to ending their miseries. 

It is no surprise, then, that in both his fiction and his nonfiction Dickens went to great lengths to present his readers with the full range of English society, including many of its most downtrodden. We should not draw political conclusions from the fact that Dickens had a heart — that he painted vivid pictures of those suffering poverty, disability, abuse, and homelessness. That he would try to win his readers’ hearts to the likes of these says nothing about his views on how they should be helped. Such inferences are made today by self-serving ideologues eager to enlist an ever-popular writer into their ranks.

Dickens presented his readers with some of literature’s most touching characters: Tiny Tim, whose handicap would doom him to a youthful death without costly treatment; Oliver Twist, the orphan forced to endure hunger, cruelty, and childhood labor; Mr. Micawber, the genial debtor tragically forced into prison; Little Nell and Jo, who would die well before their time. In presenting such characters, Dickens meant to force us to face the plight of society’s least members, but he did not prescribe a collectivist solution to ending their miseries.

Nor does he blame their plight on the still-evolving capitalist economy of his day.

We are used to thinking of Dickens as an enemy of capitalism largely because of his timeless lampooning of certain men of business. What he was really doing, however, was attacking the vice of greed. In Our Mutual Friend, he blasts the Lammles, who marry each other solely for money (only to find out that neither has any). In the same novel, he forced the “mercenary” Bella Wilfer to undergo a transformation before finding happiness. In Martin Chuzzlewit, relatives of the title character are ridiculed for their scheming at inheritance.

And then there is the prototype of the heartless capitalist — Ebenezer Scrooge. But as with other characters, Dickens does not attack Scrooge as a capitalist but as a miser. As Daniel T. Oliver put it in The Freeman (December 1999):

Scrooge’s character defect is not so much greed as miserliness. He hoards his money even at the expense of personal comfort. While many remember the single lump of coal that burns in the cold office of his assistant Bob Cratchit, the fire in Scrooge’s own office is described as “very small.” … Dickens gives us no reason to believe that Scrooge has ever been dishonest in his business dealings. He is thrifty, disciplined, and hard-working. What Dickens makes clear is that these virtues are not enough.

Though the protagonist throughout A Christmas Carol might be Bob Cratchit, there are sympathetic characters who are, in fact, capitalists. Fezziwig, a man of business, nevertheless treats his employees like family. And then there are the easily overlooked “portly gentlemen, pleasant to behold,” collecting money to “buy the Poor some meat and drink, and means of warmth.”

Indeed, Scrooge himself, on that transformative Christmas morning, does not renounce capitalism. Instead, he promises to be a better man. He will live a fuller life and share his good fortune with those close to him.

Many libertarians and other supporters of the free market will interject that Scrooge is already benefiting society as an effective businessman. The argument is also made that in lampooning Scrooge’s personality, Dickens also distorts the realities of the labor market. Michael Levin has written:

Let’s look without preconceptions at Scrooge’s allegedly underpaid clerk, Bob Cratchit. The fact is, if Cratchit’s skills were worth more to anyone than the fifteen shillings Scrooge pays him weekly, there would be someone glad to offer it to him. Since no one has, and since Cratchit’s profit-maximizing boss is hardly a man to pay for nothing, Cratchit must be worth exactly his present wages.

Both arguments have merit — Scrooge, like your local banker or financier, benefits society through his business. And yes, Dickens does not express, and most likely did not fully comprehend, the realities of the labor market. But the tale of Scrooge is of personal redemption. It is not particularly realistic nor well-versed in economics. Dickens is not attempting to argue against capitalism, nor is he arguing against a free market for labor. He is arguing against personal callousness and against misanthropy.

In chapter 33 of Socialism, Ludwig von Mises lamented Dickens’s characterizations of utilitarianism and of true liberalism. However, if Dickens’s words were later co-opted to promote a socialist agenda, that is hardly his fault. Utilitarianism can be the basis of a solid capitalist economy. It can also be mutated into a communist state. Dickens might not have understood that, but he did know that utilitarianism without reasonable judgment can turn society — and the state — into something monstrous.

A Christmas Carol exemplifies, on a personal level, what Dickens was really arguing for. He was not calling for state intervention, nor for economic regulations. Instead, he argued on behalf of personal philanthropy. In the end, Scrooge helps Tiny Tim, not because of socialist ideals, but because his humanity is reawakened, causing him to care for this child. Quite frankly, he does the right thing.

Continue reading…

From FEE, here.

מפלגת נעם *כאילו* נלחמים באנשי סדום, אבל העיקר אצלם להילחם במקדש

דיווח: נתניהו והרב טאו סיכמו להגביל עליית יהודים להר הבית

פעילי הר הבית טוענים כי הרב טאו הסכים לתמוך בממשלה עם רע”מ בתמורה להגבלת עליית היהודים להר הבית. במפלגת נעם ובלשכת רה”מ מכחישים

ערוץ 7 , כ”ג באייר תשפ”א 05/05/21

גורמים בקרב פעילי הר הבית טוענים כי הסכמתו של הרב צבי טאו להתיר ממשלה שנשענת על רע”מ הגיעה בתמורה להסכמה לדרישת סביבתו של הרב להגביל עליית יהודים להר הבית. כך דווח בעיתון ידיעות אחרונות.

הרב צבי טאו, ראש ישיבת הר המור ומורו הרוחני של ח”כ אבי מעוז, יו”ר מפלגת נעם, הורה לחבר הכנסת מעוז שלא לקבל את עמדתו של יו”ר הציונות הדתית בצלאל סמוטריץ’ וכן להסכים להרכבת ממשלה בראשות נתניהו שתישען על הימנעות של מפלגת רע”מ.

נציין כי רק לאחרונה הרב טאו בעצמו חתם על מכתב רבנים האוסר להישען על עבאס. ייתכן שכעת נמצאה הסיבה לשינוי העמדה שלו.

פעילים מרכזיים בתנועות למען עליית יהודים להר הבית סיפרו לידיעות אחרונות כי בימים שקדמו להודעת הרב טאו גיששה לשכת ראש הממשלה מול סביבת הרב באשר לשאלה מה יכול לגרום לו לאפשר הרכבת ממשלה שתישען על רע”מ.

לדברי פעילי הר הבית, גורם בכיר המקורב לרב טאו הודה בפניהם כי ללשכת ראש הממשלה הועבר מסר לפיו הרב חפץ בצמצום עליית היהודים להר הבית.

בלשכת ראש הממשלה הכחישו כי הועבר מסר כזה מסביבת הרב טאו. חבר הכנסת אבי מעוז הכחיש כי ידוע לו על כל מסר הנוגע להר הבית שעבר בין הרב טאו לבין לשכת נתניהו.

מאתר ערוץ שבע, כאן.

A Principled Rabbi Tells What It’s Like…

To Be A Rav – With Principles

By  Rabbi Dov Fischer –

At my first shul as a rav, I was told, “Soon enough, you’ll figure out that you have to compromise on principles or you’ll never get anywhere.”

Wherever I went, I was told, “Sooner or later, Dov, you’ll learn that you can’t feed a family on principles. Everyone sells out, sooner or later.”

Throughout my life, I have heard many Jewish laity snipe about their shul rav: “He has no guts. No rabbis do. Cowards – the whole lot of them.” And yet, that’s the very rabbi these complainers want: a man who’s fearless but does and says only what he’s told – on penalty of being fired.

And so we see rabbis who stand up and preach with fire on Shabbat: “If Yasser Arafat were to walk into this room right now, I would look him right in the eye and tell him exactly what I’m telling you about our rights to the land of Israel.” The thing is, Yasser Arafat never needed to stop by that shul to say a yahrzeit kaddish.

It has been an exciting rollercoaster of a life for me. Very challenging, not always quite as planned. But I have the extraordinary feeling that comes from knowing that I have never sold out.

I had in-laws who did everything they could to convince me in my 20s to go to law school and become a lawyer for the rest of my life. But my dream was to become a rav. So after four undergraduate years at Columbia University, I attended YU’s rabbinic school – not law school. I became a rav and followed my destiny. And a decade later, when the time called for it, I went to UCLA Law School and became an attorney – and a law professor.

I was told that if I would just condemn and separate from Rabbi Meir Kahane at the height of the Soviet Jewry movement, I could open fabulous doors for myself in the American centrist Orthodox rabbinate and could go on to great things. But I stood firm.

As a result, when I was granted semicha, the people in YU’s rabbinic placement office wouldn’t offer me a suitable pulpit opportunity. Instead, they gave me a choice of Cape Town, South Africa at the height of the Steve Biko apartheid riots; Christchurch, New Zealand; and Wichita, Kansas. They said, “We don’t want you in the New York area.”

So I did the forbidden. I went wildcat and applied for my own pulpit independently rather than proceed through the YU placement office. In retaliation, they blacklisted me for five years. But I managed to remain in the New York Tri-State area, and that allowed me to become national director of the Likud in the United States.

That has been my life. I lost many opportunities because I wouldn’t back down on core principles. At a shul in California, I learned that a member of the shul’s Board of Directors was harassing and propositioning women, including my office secretary. I insisted that he be removed from the board and from all lay leadership positions.

They warned me that he’s very popular, and he and his friends would destroy me if I didn’t let it go. But I persisted until he was off the board and out of leadership. He then gathered supporters who pressed me to leave the shul.

The people he gathered included people who had other issues with me. The community of 100,000 Jews had no mikveh, so I built one – raised the first $100,000 all on my own – and thus unfortunately made enemies of laity who wanted a building-enhancement campaign instead of a mikveh.

Others fought me because the city only had a Community Day School where boys didn’t have to wear yarmulkes and where Chumash and Rashi – to say nothing of Gemara and Tosafot – weren’t taught. So I pushed for a yeshiva day school under Orthodox auspices.

I was warned that would be the death blow to my rabbinic career. So I started my own shul down the block. It’s now in its 13th year.

I am reasonable. I compromise – all the time. That’s why my second wife – the love of my life whom G-d took from me with glioblastoma last year after 20 years of a marriage made in Heaven – and I got along so well. I compromise all the time. She liked that. But never – ever – on principle. She admired that.

There is a price to pay. Some of my rabbinic colleagues are scared of me; they maintain their distance. Some speak horribly behind my back. “Do you know he has never held on to a big shul?” “Do you know he once was divorced?” “Do you know that he has no friends, that he can’t get along with anyone?”  That hurts. Of course it does. It’s good that I have friends who warn me.

When I applied to attend YU’s rabbinic school in 1976, I initially was rejected because of my activity in the Jewish Defense League. I had to meet personally with the new president of YU, Rabbi Dr. Norman Lamm, to ask him to overturn the decision of a very-highly placed rabbi at YU who insisted I be kept out because I wouldn’t turn on Rav Kahane.

It was Rav Lamm’s very first tough decision to make as president of YU – and he admitted me. I have remained his deepest admirer to this day. Even when he came under attack decades later by opportunists on the left and the cancel culture crowd, I stood by him. When I was told that now was the time to turn on him for my own gain, I stood by him. Ironic, no?

When I applied for membership in the Rabbinical Council of America in the early 1980s, the same people who initially kept me out of YU now worked to keep me out of the RCA. They succeeded for 20 years. And then, one day in 2005, I received a call from the placement office of Yeshiva University – the one that had blacklisted me a quarter century earlier because I wouldn’t be the rabbi of Christchurch – and the placement director begged me on the phone for half an hour to apply for a certain pulpit. I complied. And he then got me into the RCA as a member.

Soon I was elected by RCA members to sit for three terms on the RCA Executive Committee, but only after I ran as a wildcat. The official Nominating Committee wouldn’t nominate me. To avoid my becoming West Coast Vice President, they even redefined the term “West Coast” to include Europe. Parlez vous francais?

Why am I writing this? To brag? To say, “Hey, everyone, look at me”! Nope. If that were my purpose, there is plenty more I would add – and stuff I would leave out. Rather, I’m writing this for young rabbis since I now have 40 rabbinic years in my rear-view mirror. I am writing this likewise for non-rabbis in every walk of life.

Know this: There comes a time when you look back on your life and ask yourself: “Has my life been well lived or have I wasted so much of what I could have done and been because I feared what others would think of me, what others would say?”

If you compromise reasonably but stand firmly on your principles and values, and if you treat people right and try to accept and love all people unless they truly stab you in the back and prove themselves despicable – you will be able to look in the mirror and know that you have honored your destiny. You will have touched more lives for the good than you ever will know.

And the thing that your haters will hate most about you is that they never managed to transcend mediocrity while you somehow, despite one setback after another, never stopped advancing forward without selling out.

From The Jewish Press, here.