Practical tips for Mivtzoyim*

Posted on July 12, 2011 by jewamongyou

Yesterday I went door to door again distributing some flyers.  It was a two-sided flyer this time.  One side had my updated “Stop the Hatred” flyer while the other featured one of Unamusement Park’s recent creations.  Here’s the updated “Stop the Hatred” flyer (please edit the part about Portland according to whatever city you’re in):

STOP THE HATE

TAKE A STAND AGAINST ANTI-WHITE BIGOTRY AND VIOLENCE

Certainly you have heard of the recent, racially-motivated mob attacks in Chicago against whites, the savage beating, by racist blacks, of Carter Strange in South Carolina, the anti-white pogroms in Philadelphia and Milwaukee and the brutal beating, by blacks, of white transgender Crissy Polis in Baltimore.  On the reverse is a description of one of these recent attacks.
All of the above incidents, and many more, occurred within the last few months.  If you haven’t heard of them, it is because you get your “news” from a media that does not want you to know about them.  You will know about them when such attacks become common in the Portland area as well.
Interracial crime is overwhelmingly black on white, or black on Asian.  The Justice department tries to distort this fact by counting Hispanics as “white” when they are perpetrators, but as “Hispanic” when they are victims.  Even so, the trends are clear.  White people are being victimized, because of their race, all over the country.
It is high time that whites grow a backbone and stand up for their group rights – just as every other race, and ethnicity, has done.  It is time to stop being ashamed of your own heritage, to tell your teachers, college professors and the media – most of whom openly hate whites as a race – to keep their hatred to themselves and to stop infecting vulnerable young people with self-loathing.
When you hear the following expressions, and words, from the powers that be, here is what they actually mean:
“Affirmative Action” = anti-white discrimination
“Diversity” = the denial of freedom of association for whites and the destruction of white societies as cohesive communities.
“Hate Crime” (in the racial context) = a crime committed by whites against non-whites.
“Not a Hate Crime” = a crime committed by non-whites against whites, even when racial epithets are used.
“Racist” = a white person.

Here’s the link to Unamusement Park’s flyer.  I took Unamusement Park’s advice and left out my URL.  His reasoning was that as soon as people visit the site, they’ll see that its author believes in innate racial differences in I.Q.  At that point, mental paralysis sets in and they cannot digest any information.
Here are some practical tips:  If you don’t already have a laser printer, order a Brother HL2240D from Costco online.  This printer should cost you only about $100.  It has duplex capabilities, making it a lot easier to do what I did yesterday – printing on both sides of the page without any confusion or mess-ups.  Don’t get caught without extra toner, but don’t order your extra cartridge from Costco.  Shop around for the toner.  I got mine from shop4tech and paid about half of what Costco wanted.  If you don’t already have a USB cable, order it online from newegg.com of a similar site.  They cost way too much through retail.  When you are ready to print your flyers, go into the print options and select “toner saving mode”; it will save you money and the quality is easily good enough.  Don’t print all 50, or 100 flyers yet.  First print just one and make sure it comes out okay.
Now that you’ve got your flyers printed, dress appropriately, shave, shower and look presentable.  Always look for “no soliciting” signs.  When you see one, skip that house.  Don’t take shortcuts through people’s lawns or gardens.  If you’re self-conscious, there’s nothing wrong with skipping houses where people are out front.
Warning:  Do not put flyers in people’s mailboxes.  It is illegal and you could get into serious trouble.
After you have distributed all your flyers, treat yourself to some summer fruit and ice-cream or cold watermelon.  You’ve earned it!
*”Mivstoyim” is the Habad-Lubavitch term for public/street activism.  I have adopted the term because it’s appropriate and because I’d like to co-opt  it to mean the specifically pro-white activism I encourage in this blog.

Posted in activism | 64 Comments

The Ainu – the "other" white people

Posted on July 11, 2011 by jewamongyou

It is almost indisputable that the Japanese were guilty of genocide against the Ainu inhabitants of the far North.  In enotes, under “Genocide and Crimes Against Humanity”, we find:

Japanese employed different discriminatory policies towards its ethnic minorities, who were located at the country’s geographical margins (Hokkaido in the north and Okinawa in the south). Once again, domestic and international political pressures converged, this time in the context of establishing a modern nation-state. The Ainu, who comprised the indigenous population of northeastern Honshu, Hokkaido, and the adjacent islands (the Kurils and southern Sakhalin), began to be recognized as a distinct ethnic group only in the sixteenth century. At that time, the Tokugawa shogunate designated Hokkaido a buffer zone vis-à-vis Northeast Asian areas with which the Ainu had once formed an autonomous trading region. This was accomplished by the gradual conversion of much of the Ainu hunting and gathering economy into forced dependency on Japanese contract-fishing. An unintended outcome of this policy was the introduction of new diseases such as smallpox, which reached epidemic proportions in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Yet it was the Meiji state’s perceived need to secure Hokkaido as Japanese territory against Russian interests that underlay its aggressive policy of assimilation through deculturation. Begun in 1871, and institutionalized by the Hokkaido Former Natives Protection Act of 1899, the Meiji colonization project systematically eliminated the Ainu language, religion, customs (i.e., tattooing and wearing earrings), and lifestyles. Land redistribution, often accompanied by forced relocation, made Ainu into impoverished agriculturists indentured to Japanese immigrant landowners. The Ainu were classified as imperial subjects, whose decreasing numbers distinguished them in public discourse as a “dying race.” From approximately 80,000 in the early eighteenth century, the Ainu population had decreased to 16,000 by 1873, accounting for 14.63 percent of the total population in Hokkaido. By 1939, they constituted only 0.54 percent of Hokkaido’s population, even though the actual number of Ainu, now heavily intermarried with Japanese, remained about the same. In the later decades of the twentieth century, an Ainu ethnopolitical movement began to address this historical treatment. The adoption of the Ainu New Law in 1984 marks the viability of the movement, which recognizes the genocidal quality of Japanese policy towards the Ainu and forges links with a worldwide indigenous peoples’ movement.

Here we find many components of genocide:  Disenfranchisement, violence, serfdom, repression of their language and customs, unfair laws and marginalization.  But, unpleasant as these things were, and painful as they must be to contemplate, they are all reversible.  The one thing that is not reversible is the “heavily intermarried with Japanese” part.
One contemporary Ainu, himself married to a Japanese, admits that American-style reservations would not work because…

“There is lots and lots of mixed blood between Ainu and Japanese. I feel it is very difficult to claim land, to say, `This used to be our land.'”

In other words, how can a people lay claim to a land, when there is no longer a distinct people?  Perhaps the goal of Ainu activists is merely to preserve Ainu language as an academic language, like Latin or ancient Greek, and to preserve Ainu customs merely so that people whose great grandfather was an Ainu can dust off their traditional garb and show it off a couple of times a year on special occasions.  When a man, who claims to be an “Ainu activist” marries a non-Ainu, I would say that the Japanese have succeeded in their genocide of this people.
To the extent that there are any real Ainu left, should the pro-white movements show concern, and solidarity, for them?  Perhaps we can arrange for a shipment of hairy whites* to be imported to Hokkaido, declare themselves “Ainu”, learn the Ainu language and culture and, voila!  The Ainu people will have been reborn.
* Yes, I know there is controversy about any relationship they may have to Europeans.  It’s a joke.

Posted in miscegenation, pan-nationalism and multi-culturalism | 3 Comments

What are they really trying to say?

Posted on July 9, 2011 by jewamongyou

Regular readers of this blog already know that there is no colorblindness within the mainstream media, just as there is no gender-blindness.  When a “person of color” is shown, it is because the producers specifically wanted a “person of color”.  Though they like to claim that chance plays a role in their racial choices, they are clearly lying.
Nevertheless, we might entertain the thought that, though their racial selections were deliberate, they still play only a secondary role.  In other words, we might believe that the organization in question is primarily interested in selling you their product – but they also have a secondary goal of infusing you with multiracial piety (or of avoiding trouble).
With the full understanding that each organization is different, and not all leftists are the same, I submit that there are times when the primary goal is to infuse us with multiracial piety, and the apparent primary goal is actually only secondary.
If we pay attention to cases where we know, for a fact, that the organization in question is sincere about their apparent primary goal, we can learn from them.  For example, in a recent Oregonian article about violence against gays, we are treated to the following example of the billboards they put up:

Notice that there are five couples depicted – but not one of them is mixed race.  Of course, it is possible that these just happen to be the couples that volunteered to have their pictures shown.  But it is also possible that the Cascade AIDS project, which is responsible for putting up the billboards, did not want race to be a distraction from the important message they wanted to convey:  Do not attack gays!  It’s dangerous; if their blood gets on you, you could get AIDS! (just kidding).
Government agencies are required (I’m fairly certain) to depict the “right” racial mix in their publications.  So we cannot learn anything from them that we don’t already know.  But we can certainly learn from cases where there is a choice.  There is also a possibility that gay organizations are not as worried about depicting blacks or Hispanics because they are less fearful of attacks from the left.  But then we would have to assume that gay organizations only include “people of color” out of fear, that they do not actually accept the multiracial agenda.  I do not think this is the case.
Am I suggesting that all the companies, that show blacks or Hispanics on their billboards, are not primarily interested in profit?  Not at all.  Merely showing “people of color” on billboards is not a hot button issue; they can easily promote their (secondary) multiracial agenda without much risk to the bottom line.  Very few people get upset over this.  Mixed-race couples are a hot button issue.  So if they are depicted, there is a very good reason for it.  By paying attention to where they are not depicted, we can gain some insight as to true motivation.

Posted in examples of propaganda | 5 Comments

Racialist spillover to anti-Islamism

Posted on July 8, 2011 by jewamongyou

Very few of us, relatively speaking, are race-conscious.  Whether in Europe or the U.S., our numbers are small – practically negligible.  The taboos against speaking the truth about race are very strong.  Too strong for most people to even entertain the thought.
A step down from race-realists are the “conservatives”.  Many of them are Christian.  Some are atheist.  Yet others are Jewish (or both Jewish and atheist).  These “conservatives” often entertain race-realist ideas in their subconscious.  Some of them are even aware of these thoughts, but dare not speak them.  At a certain level, in their psyches, they know that their own race, the white race, is in grave danger.  At some level, they identify with their own race.  But they cannot put into words what they are thinking.  It is too dangerous – not just for their family, their jobs or their social circles, but even for themselves.  They would consider themselves bad people if they even acknowledged their own deepest thoughts.  This fear and loathing needs an outlet of some sort.
This is where Islam comes in.  As politically incorrect as it may be to criticize Islam, it is not nearly as taboo as criticizing another race – such as blacks or Mestizos.  The conservatives, described above, take their suppressed fear and loathing of blacks and/or Mestizos and project it onto Muslims.  This is not to say that there is nothing to fear or loath about Islam.  But I do believe that some of the vitriol, directed toward Islam, should be directed at the invading alien races.  Geert Wilders was acquitted of attacking Islam – but he would never have been acquitted of attacking blacks.  Most likely, Wilder does not recognized the dangers of massive black immigration into Europe.  Even if he did, he would not say so.  But there can be little doubt that many who support him do understand what is at stake.  They oppose all non-white immigration into Europe, but Islam provides a (somewhat) permissible guise to rally under.  And there are, of course, those who do not understand what they understand.  The Left seems to appreciate this, which is why they often refer to anti-Muslim sentiments as “racism”.  We should bear this in mind when we are told that “Geert is not our friend”.  Perhaps not, but many of his followers surely are, whether they realize it or not.

Posted in immigration/ Hispanics, politics and attitudes of the pro-white movements | 15 Comments

California school curriculum requirements

Posted on July 7, 2011 by jewamongyou

California is on its way to requiring that “gay history” be taught in public schools.  From the Huffington Post:

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — California lawmakers on Tuesday sent the governor a bill that would make the state the first requiring public schools to include the contributions of gays and lesbians in social studies curriculum.
The bill, passed on a party-line vote, adds lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people as well as people with disabilities to the list of groups that schools must include in the lessons. It also would prohibit material that reflects adversely on gays.
Democratic Assemblyman Tom Ammiano of San Francisco says SB48 is crucial because of the bullying that happens to gay students. Republicans called it a well-intentioned but ill-conceived bill and raised concerns that it would indoctrinate children to accept homosexuality.

There is so much wrong with this, it is difficult to know where to start.  Firstly, it is hard to comprehend how anybody could justify the following hypothetical dialog:
Teacher:  “Today we will learn about the accomplishments of Alan Turing.  Mr. Turing was not only a great man who served his country – he was also GAY“.
Little Johnny:  “What’s gay?”
Teacher:  “Excellent question!  A gay person is…”
For God’s sake.  Let the children grow up before they must deal with such issues.  As for Ammiano’s concern about bullying, it is easy to see how such discussions could bring about more bullying than would be the case if they were silent about it.
We could argue the pros and cons until we’re red in the face, but by now it should be obvious that there are far too many special interests to please them all by cramming their views into the heads of innocent little children.  This case supports my contention that government should not be in the business of educating children at all.  This is the inevitable result when every group, in a fractured (excuse me, “diverse”) society, is given a say in the curriculum of public schools.  Where there is “multiculturalism”, there will also be “multi-curriculumism”.  When there are thousands of different ethnic groups, religions and sexual groups that all demand their stories be told, how can there still be enough time and resources to teach reading, writing and arithmetic?
Tom Ammiano says “gay history” should be taught to students because gays are bullied.   What about fat children?  What about children with freckles?  What about short children?  What about European American children?  Actually, according to the Huffington Post, California schools are already required to teach about European Americans:

California law already requires schools to teach about women, African Americans, Mexican Americans, entrepreneurs, Asian Americans, European Americans, American Indians and labor. The Legislature over the years also has prescribed specific lessons about the Irish potato famine and the Holocaust, among other topics.

I wonder if this is actually done – or do they simply teach about George Washington (for example) and leave it at that, excusing themselves from teaching more by saying, “he was a European American, wasn’t he?”  Perhaps some of our Californian readers, with children in public schools, would enlighten the rest of us.

Posted in libertarian thought, pan-nationalism and multi-culturalism | 10 Comments

S.W.P.L. – Saving whales

Posted on July 6, 2011 by jewamongyou

What is it that arouses the sympathies of people (especially leftists) toward animals?  Whales are held in the highest regard, as we see from this video:
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EBYPlcSD490&w=425&h=349]
What if somebody made a similar video (with the same dramatic narrative) – about his success in rescuing a sardine from a net.  Instead of being awed, viewers would laugh.  When my mother asked me what I thought of the video, which had been circulating through the family, I replied, “I guess size matters when it comes to animals”.  Then I asked her if she would be similarly impressed by a video of a sardine rescue.  She laughed.
Americans eat sardines by the million and think nothing of it.  Even vegetarians eat sardines and think nothing of it.  If we were to confront a sardine-eating vegetarian, and ask him why he allows himself to eat the flesh of this creature – and why he considers the life of a sardine worth less than the life of a dolphin, he might give one of these answers:

“And I’d rather kill a cow than a human but that doesn’t mean I have to do either. Why do other animals have a right to life but fish don’t? Most animals that we eat like cows are incredibly stupid, I doubt they really have that much more self awareness than a fish. Plus fish still feel pain as far as I know. It seems quite arbitrary to have fish as the cut off point, why not include all animals that can feel pain?”
“I follow a pescetarian diet but I do it for health reasons. I have been thinking about cutting out all fish for a while now for ethical reasons and I was trying to think of justification for eating fish but not all other animals and I couldn’t find any.”
“You don’t have to do either, no, but I don’t mind people doing what’s practical for them as long as they are doing something. I’m vegetarian but not vegan because it’s not practical for me at the moment. I’m okay with that. Some people will be pescatarian but not vegetarian because it’s not practical for them to be vegetarian at that time. Some people might eat meat less often. None of it is pointless because it’s better than nothing. You can give £10 to charity when you could easily give another £10 and it’s still a good thing to do even if you could do more.
“I think fish are less capable of emotions like fear, a sense of loss at losing their babies etc., and are less self-aware than mammals. Humans can see certain emotions in mammals that they can’t see in fish. It doesn’t mean that fish don’t suffer, but they probably suffer less.””
“I think it’s quite easy to see where the line can be drawn. Fruit and vegetables don’t have central nervous systems, they don’t feel pain, they don’t feel anything. They don’t know who their ‘children’ are and they probably don’t care. It’s impossible to harm a fruit or vegetable.
A lot of animals kept for consumption aren’t really kept in very good conditions for any of their lives because its expensive to give them good living conditions. Free range is okay but it’s expensive. I went to an abattoir once and it actually traumatised me, it was horrible and the animals were really agitated. It was like they could sense what was coming, they were all just lined up waiting to be herded in and shot. It’s that that puts me off eating meat. I actually wouldn’t mind eating meat if I went along to a farm and someone just went out and picked a cow/chicken whatever and just killed it quickly.”

The underlying theme seems to be a goal to minimize suffering.   Since fish (apparently) don’t experience as much pain as mammals, it is therefore more acceptable to catch, and eat them.  Sardines are assumed to experience little, or no, pain.  Whales do appear to experience pain.  Larger mammals have been observed exhibiting human-like behaviors such as joy or mourning.  The large lizards and crocodiles can live a long time – but they do not arouse our sympathies because they are not like us.  Their cold eyes and their cold blood seem alien to us.  But more importantly, they are dangerous to us.  It is difficult to feel a connection with a creature that would think nothing of tearing us to shreds and devouring us.  The large tortoises, posing no danger to us – but who live a long time – do arouse our sympathy somewhat.

If we don’t count pets or livestock, then we might come up with a list of priorities that help determine whether we are likely to feel a connection with an animal:
1)  Intelligent (assumed to go hand-in-hand with the potential for suffering)
2)  Similar to us (preferably a mammal)
3)  Large (not a bug or microbe)
4)  Pleasing to the eye (butterflies and ladybugs)
5)  Useful to us
6)  Not particularly dangerous to us
The left is used to seeing things in black and white.  It lacks the ability to see shades of grey or to allow for fine distinctions.  The mind of the leftist is dominated by boundaries.  His most sacred boundary is, of course, the line between human and non-human.  All the distinctions listed above, that apply to animals, lose their importance when dealing with humans.
1)  He will not value the life of a less intelligent human more than that of a more intelligent one (not that we should either, when dealing with individuals).
2)  He will not value the life of a large human over a small one (not that we should either).
3)  He will deny that any humans are more, or less, similar to himself to the degree where he would value one over the other (allowance is made for his own family of course).
4)  He sees no difference in degree of beauty between a Bantu and a Japanese (or so he says… in practice, he will much more likely take a Japanese wife than a Bantu one).
5)  He is careful to remain ignorant as to racial differences in achievement.
6)  He is careful to remain ignorant as to racial differences in crime.
Obviously not all of the criteria, listed above, should be applied to how we value other humans, either as individuals or as groups.  There is no reason for us to value large humans over small ones – except for women, who care first and foremost about an eligible man’s height and sports teams.  As for intelligence, obviously there are other factors that help us determine how much we value another individual.  But, when it comes to groups of people, we will always value the more intelligent over the less intelligent – unless we intend to use them only as slaves.
If I were given a choice between two populations, both of whom wish to immigrate to my country, I would use all the above criteria (except for size) in my decision.  Who, in his right mind, would disagree?  Would you rather have the dangerous group come to your country or the safe one?  The more intelligent one or the less intelligent one?  The one that is similar to the native population or the one that is very different?  It is important to remember that, in this scenario, we cannot judge each potential immigrant as an individual; all we have is general information about them.
Leftists tend to be as rational as the rest of us when choosing their favorite animals – but when it comes to humans, they turn into blundering idiots.  They realize, subconsciously, that there are racial differences, but their urge to deny this forces them to reach conclusions that are the opposite of reality.  They end up favoring the least desirable races (at least verbally) and disdaining the more desirable ones.  Perhaps by doing this, they imagine they are doing a good deed by giving a crutch to those who were shortchanged by nature.

Posted in immigration/ Hispanics, shenanigans of the Left and of non-white activists | 1 Comment

European dark beauty – from the Middle East?

Posted on July 5, 2011 by jewamongyou

Seed of Japheth recently wrote about “genetic theft”:

… Genetic theft is when a race acquires some genetic material of another race, the amount of genetic material gained is a small enough amount so that the genetic material of the other race can be assimilated into the gene pool without the racial integrity of the race doing the assimilating being threatened.
Genetic material refers to sperm of the male and ovum of the female.
A question arises, should white people engage in genetic theft of their own and at what point is it a good idea to accept someone into the fold of the white race?

Though it might be argued that lower-quality whites (“white trash”) would benefit from an infusion of Asian blood, these are not the sort of whites we find doing so.  As Richard J. Herrnstein and Charles Murray explain in “The Bell Curve“, like attracts like.  Thus, it is not the chain-smoking, beer guzzling, foul-mouthed trashy whites who end up marrying Asians (unless it’s trashy Asians).  Rather, it is those who stand to gain the least from such liaisons:  The successful, intellectual elites.  I don’t think it’s a good idea to encourage miscegenation among whites, at least not on any large scale.  Does anybody encourage the Spotted Owl to mix with the Barred Owl?  As for who should be considered “white”, I have already written about this.
But I found myself thinking along the lines of Seed of Japheth recently.  I was at a social event and was chatting with a certain fellow.  The man’s appearance was exceptional, with thick eyebrows and sharp features.  If I were a woman, I’d say he was handsome.  As for his young daughter, it was obvious that she’s going to blossom into an stunningly beautiful woman.  Our conversation drifted to DNA testing and he mentioned that his test showed some Yemeni heritage.  He was under the impression that there might be some Jewish blood in his family.  I told him it is more likely that one of the Yemeni soldiers (Yemen always participated mightily in the Arab wars of conquest) had left his DNA in France before the Arabs/Moors were turned back by Charles Martel.  In any event, this conversation reminded me of a pet theory I’d had since childhood – that some of the more exotic features, found in trace amounts among the darker-haired peoples of Europe (and, perhaps, their dark hair itself), have their roots in the Middle East.  These features often make for very good-looking people.
There was a guy at my high school (not the ghetto high school, but the mostly white one) who was known as “the Jew”.  He wasn’t Jewish, but he looked like he could be.  Nobody would call him that around me, because they knew I was a real Jew and they feared offending me.  In any event, since that time, I’d always assumed that the darker features of some Europeans had come from the Middle East during the Neolithic migrations that accompanied the spread of agriculture.  I will not begrudge the Nordics their beauty, but there is also beauty of the dark-haired/dark-eyed variety.  The contrast between light skin and dark hair/eyes has its own appeal.  If this combination dates from Neolithic migrations from the Middle East, then this could be described as “genetic theft” and whites could be said to have benefited from it – at least aesthetically.
On a related note, check out this  interesting article on the mutation that causes ultra-light skin among Europeans (SLC24A5).  It’s possible/likely that Southern Europeans, lacking this mutation, simply retained the pigmentation of the original Europeans.  But we now know that there is a certain percentage of Middle Eastern genes in Europeans, and that this percentage increases as we move South-East from the Baltic toward the Balkans and Turkey.  So, while dark hair and dark eyes may well be indigenous to Europe, the vaguely Middle Eastern features we sometimes find among native Europeans might have arrived later.

Posted in miscegenation, racial differences and how they manifest themselves/race science, Uncategorized | 18 Comments

Muhammad Ali tells it like it is

Posted on July 4, 2011 by jewamongyou

This is an old video and I hope he hasn’t since changed his mind about these things.  The way he shoots down his white leftist interviewer (a D.W.L.) is priceless (though I would have been happier if he’d also gotten up and smacked him in the face):
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HqiWFLsgVi4&w=425&h=349]

Posted in book/movie/video reviews and links, miscegenation | 13 Comments

Smoking cigarettes can cause your baby to be born black

Posted on July 3, 2011 by jewamongyou

Thanks to Charles for bringing this to my attention.  This MSNBC article highlights new warning labels that cigarette manufacturers will be required to include on their packaging by 2012.  I quote:

One of nine new warning labels cigarette makers will have to use by the fall of 2012. In the most significant change to U.S. cigarette packs in 25 years, the FDA’s the new warning labels depict in graphic detail…

Apparently, MSNBC uses affirmative action employees to do their proofreading.  But beware!  Smoking cigarettes can cause your baby to be born black:
Once he is born black, he is at increased risk for deadly diseases such as AIDS or diabetes.  Jewamongyou recommends pregnant women smoke marijuana instead – if they absolutely must smoke.

Posted in Uncategorized | 11 Comments

Catherine the Great

Posted on July 2, 2011 by jewamongyou

I’ve been reading the biography of Catherine the Great (by Joan Haslip).  Though I am less than half-way through it, I thought I’d share some of my thoughts with the wider public.
I find my self admiring her – for her cunning, patience, determination and the suffering she endured prior to her rise to power.  Here was a woman who knew what she wanted, set her goals high – and achieved them without undue bloodshed.  Her treatment of my ancestors, though not fair, certainly could have been a lot worse.  Nevertheless, the things she did, in order to seize power, might be considered morally questionable today (to put it mildly).
But, compared to Empress Elizabeth (who preceded her – if we disregard her infantile husband, Peter), she was quite merciful.  Empress Elizabeth had found it necessary to incarcerate the infant Czar, Ivan VI in the fortress of Shlusselburg, where he rotted for his entire miserable life.  This dastardly deed was considered acceptable in order to gain power.  Empress Elizabeth was a deeply religious woman.  Apparently, she felt there was no sin in locking an infant in a dungeon for life so that she may rule.  Perhaps “superstitious” would be a more appropriate description of her than “religious”.  For her, religion was no more than one, of many, means to further her advancement and secure her power.
Catherine also shamelessly used religion to fool the masses into thinking she was as sincere in her faith as they were.  We are told about the throngs of peasants, who came to pay their last respects to Empress Elizabeth at her funeral (pg. 108):

Not one of them could fail to notice the veiled woman in black, kneeling at the foot of the bier and apparently so lost in prayer that she seemed unaware of their presence.  It was the new empress, sharing the mourning of the Russian people, kneeling on the cold stone and prostrating herself in prayer like the most fervent of Orthodox believers.  She was there every day and almost all day, a heroic effort for even the healthiest of women, but doubly so for one who was already six months gone with child… but never did she falter, thereby winning the crowds…

Things have not changed much regarding the role of religion in politics.  Politicians still feign devoutness to win over the masses – and it still works.
But Catherine knew tenderness, passion, shame, anger and pity – just like the rest of us.  She was no less human.  In studying this woman, and in asking myself why I admire her, I found myself asking why I have admired the Romans.  Especially given the horrors they perpetrated upon my own people.  Until now, I had never given it much thought; I had simply assumed it was some sort of misplaced nostalgia, romanticism or a holdover from the education of my youth, when Roman civilization was still highly regarded (for their accomplishments and culture) in public schools.
It is possible that all the above is correct – but, in any case, now I have a more legitimate reason:  The Romans – and Catherine the Great – represent a perfection that I, myself, lack.  Having been raised in liberal America, I am flawed.  My flaw is that I care too much about other people.  I am too sensitive and have too much empathy.  I am not the only one; much of Western civilization suffers from this affliction.  If we view, as a continuum, a lack of empathy that progresses toward an overabundance thereof, the question presents itself:  Where, in this continuum, should we strive to stand?  A society composed of sociopaths cannot function.  It should be obvious that too much empathy is also not a good thing.  Clearly, Western society has taken empathy too far, and this excess empathy is leading us to our demise.
What is the optimum amount of empathy?  I do not believe there can be a precise answer to this question, but there surely must be a range, at the middle of the continuum, that is healthy.  Perhaps we can view this in terms of genetic interests.  We should strive for just enough empathy to benefit ourselves and those close to us – but not so much that we worry about outsiders to the detriment of family or clan.  As we move to the right, we pass through an area of  “praiseworthy”, which gradually fades into “foolhardy”.
In a monarchy, like 18th century Russia, a person like Catherine could rise to the top and make a difference for her nation.  I admire her for her (apparent) good balance of empathy and cruelty.  What about recent American presidents?  Did they also maintain such a balance?  I can’t answer that question – but here I tread on dangerous ground.  It’s against my faith to admire politicians – and I just shot myself in the foot!

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