Rabbi Salanter’s Mussar movement became worse and worse over time.
Unlike his students (see the main deleted section in Emunah Ubitachon), Rabbi Yisrael Salanter did know the value of a Torah scholar.
“The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one’s time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all.”
This is why the focus is most often against the greater “scoundrel” – the politician.
And we do want scoundrels persecuted/prosecuted by Beis Din/ostracism, etc., just not by an anti-religious state.
גליון שאלות הלכתיות המתחדשות מדי שבוע בבדיקת העירובים השכונתיים
מצורף לגליון מדור החידונים. ניתן לצלם ולהפיץ את החידונים לתתי”ם ולילדי השכונה.
Reprinted with permission.
When a wild creature, a common product of the government’s welfare and public education system, enters some decent working man’s home, rapes and murders his wife and daughters, steals his goods, and destroys his home, if, by some extraordinary circumstance, the rapist is then caught, he is put in prison, where he is fed, sheltered, and clothed for the rest of his life with money extorted from the victim. That is called government justice.
Source: Someone.
Some Jewish scholars have fatal “Spectatoritis” – they don’t do any real work (neither for nor against; neither with nor without profit), so they don’t know anything beyond the activity of book reading (ergonomics?). Nor do they recognize their knowledge might be lacking.
We learn not only from reading, but also from doing. And when your books are wrong, they must be corrected by experience. Hyehudi has already mentioned this idea, but it bears repeating.