Personally, I have tried life on both sides of the fence. Admittedly, I have never lived as a pro-life, pro-war Republican. But I did spend some time pursuing wealth and, in my way, power. It felt inauthentic. I don't really like the side of myself that is angry, demanding, and rude. I prefer to cultivate the parts that are caring, loving, expressive, nurturing. So, I've made my choice -- but probably on grounds that are psychological and subjective. I can't generalize from my tastes; it feels more authentic to me to be facilitating meditation than putting on a suit and drafting documents -- but for others, the reverse is true.

One could, I suppose, have recourse to ethical norms, and argue that one side or the other is ethically superior -- i.e., strong values reduce violence, or compassion reduces suffering, or people are generally happier in one kind of culture than another. In the case of Star Wars and its political allegory, it's amazing to me how many Right-wingers overlook the outrageous injustice of the Dark Side as they unashamedly line up behind it. "The truth is that from the beginning, Lucas confused the good guys with the bad," Jonathan Last wrote in the Weekly Standard. "The deep lesson of Star Wars is that the Empire is good."

Really? What about Darth Vader killing all the young Jedi students? What about the Death Star annihilating an entire, peaceful planet? Just like "collateral damage" in Iraq, these details tend to get brushed off in the Right's rush to the moral "high ground." This is not a mere oversight; it's a moral choice, preferring the ends of conservative values, despite the nasty means/side-effects of genocide, avoidable war, poverty, and death. So, one might argue, Sith values are wrong because they cause so much harm -- even if they do so in the service of a supposedly-good empire.

One hears this argument a lot nowadays, but I think if we on the Left are honest with ourselves, the moral superiority of Jedi philosophy is not why we're really subscribers to it. Maybe some people choose "living simply" because it really is good for the planet, but they choose being good for the planet in the first place for reasons which are ultimately psychological. Rather, Jedi philosophy feels right, seems right, and brings about feelings which are pleasant (love, connection, etc.). It alleviates suffering -- starting with our own.

The Sith and Bushites have a different recipe for suffering: deal with it. It makes you stronger, it toughens you up, and it is how the world works. They say (in their actions, if not their rhetoric): tough is right, and while violence is regrettable, it is often justified by a higher purpose. So, toughen up and deal with it, soldier -- or if you can't, get out of the way of those who can. For us on the Jedi Left, "toughen up and deal with it" is exactly the problem. Indeed, it's exactly what we should not do. Rather than erect walls of toughness to insulate ourselves from the shocking reality of violence, we say that we need to open up, more and more, expanding our sphere of compassion.

An example: recently, a conservative colleague of mine said that, in his opinion, "we're going to mix it up in Iran, too, before this thing is over." Mix it up? Is that how we understand making widows and orphans out of innocent human beings? Well, if we're tough, it is. You want to make an omelet; gotta break some eggs. Yes, war is hell, but you've got to be tough about it. Don't tell me about your bleeding heart. Whereas, my view is that war may be necessary, but we must always be mindful of the costs, and take seriously the gravity of what war really is about. To say "mix it up" is, to me, part of the problem.

As an aside, it's interesting that most Left-wing philosophy, like Jedi philosophy, has its own response to the experience of pain. Where the Right says Get Tough, the Left says, don't attach. "Be ready to let go of that which you fear to lose," Yoda says, paraphrasing the Buddha. Yes, you should care -- but don't get attached to caring. It's as if no one, on either the Right or the Left, can really bear to face the reality of suffering. I know, Buddhists always say non-attachment isn't the same as detachment -- that there is still plenty of emotion. But -- not as much as really letting yourself be beaten up by evil.

I really do believe that these questions ultimately boil down to questions of fundamental value. Are we to be strong, or kind? Selfish, or generous? How are we to be most fully human?

2. The Jews and the Penis

Ask what the "opposite of Judaism" is, and most people will probably say "Christianity." But Judaism came first -- so what, before Christianity developed, did it see itself as opposing? What was its opposite?

The dominant model in the Ancient Near East was one in which bravery, virtue, and violence were celebrated. God-kings, eldest sons, rule of the powerful; pagan rituals, eros, Dionysian violence. Speaking very broadly, and in terms defined by its opposition, this was the time of Canaanite, Moabite, and Assyrian religious systems which celebrated strength and virtue, together with ecstatic, erotic religious experience. The sacred marriages of Baal and Asherah, the Gilgamesh cycle, the slaying of Tiamat by El the sky god -- these went hand in hand with a highly-charged religiosity of sacrifice (including child sacrifice) and what is sometimes, anachronistically, labeled as paganism. (The "paganism" label is quite unhelpful here, as it applies both to feminine-centered Earth religions and masculine-centered cults of war and thunder. Though both may be nature-based, the differences seem as large as the commonalities.) In other words, be strong and get tough.

Judaism rejected all of that. Israelite religion was, as Nietzsche said, the slave revolt in morality: the younger, wimpier son triumphs over the older, stronger one. Humble leaders and even humble mountains merit leadership of the Israelite tribes -- themselves humbler and smaller than their enemies. Of course, there is powerful-phallic-sky-god language in the Bible -- God as "man of war" or descending on earth in thunderstorms, not to mention the maintenance (albeit in a domesticated form) of sacrificial cults. Yet the entire trajectory of Jewish ritual ethics seems to be about clothing the naked, caring for the weakest, and subverting those systems in which might makes right. The "Sin of Sodom" was neither sexual immorality nor weakness but inhospitality, stinginess, and callousness.

How ironic, then, to find today Jewish rhetoric married to a radically anti-Jewish ideology of strength, "personal responsibility," power, and militarism. Today's Jewish neocons willfully miss the narrative of empathy, in favor of selected "Old Testament" pronouncements of moral absolutism. Their Israeli far-right cohorts focus on the Book of Joshua more than the Book of Isaiah, on holiness codes more than the Golden Rule. And both act as though Judaism were a religion of power, when clearly it is that of the dispossessed. Thus marrying memes of Jewish power to emotional motifs of victimhood, they espouse numerous policies of cruelty, with disastrous results.

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