In the course of a political argument with a neurofeedback therapist as to the virtues of Hugo Chavez, I was told that "the Jews should leave Venezuela". Are the Jews not true Venezuelans after centuries of residence? Guess not. Are we true British, Americans, or anything other than Jews? Probably not. So we belong to Israel, our ancient homeland. But I read in another psychotherapist's blog that Jews are distinguished as being the only people without a homeland, and that our identity is a collective atonement for the death of a great Egyptian in another land where we were guests. Of course, this presupposes we have an identity to start with. A little circular, I think.Of course, when we attach ourselves to Israel, we are told that it is not ours, because we are supplanting a group of people whose ancestors settled there after we, as a group, were kicked out.All this leads me to question who, or what I am. What I come up with, is that I am the nation-less soul (which I use figuratively, because I am an atheist) who belongs nowhere except in a land that I have no right to inhabit. The convenient Nowhere Man, whose butt is a convenient target for anyone afraid to kick his own. I am thus led to the following little bit of dogmatism:I am a Jew.The nation of Israel lives.To make any sense of this at all, I am a committed Zionist.Those who object, may take a flying f**k. Of course, if you choose to eliminate us (as you have repeatedly), you will have only yourselves to kick in the Butt. OUCH! If we choose to eliminate you, we will also have to kick our own selves in the Butt. DOUBLE OUCH!So, we might as well leave each other alone, and admit that ultimately, we are all one, under the greater umbrella of man. And try to conquer something else. Like Mars. We could all use the room, and reviving the spirit of mutual growth and exploration could benefit us all. After all, Medieval is just sooo last year, and hard as hell to spell.
Judaism defines more than a religion. It defines a people, an ethnic group bound together by a common cultural, philosophical, and anthropological descent, deriving their national identity and the faith some of them choose to practice from their ancestral homeland, Israel. Exiled, forced to wander rootless in a world of nation states, it is not surprising that they soon developed a pathological relation with their host countries. More than such gross abominations of history, such as the Holocaust and Spanish Inquisition, internal social imbalance and vocational disposition, born of need to adapt as a displaced group, a group that could not comfortably assimilate because it had lost its natural object of national identity, the Jewish nation state, Israel, it often became the object of demeaning national caricature. Such caricature not only became the well spring of that racist ideology anti-Semitism, but further perpetuated an often grotesque relationship with the host countries and further reinforced their internal and external perception of separateness, a perception that often became realized through edict or choice.
Thus, I argue, that far from being a religious apartheid state, Jewish Israel is the core of a people, and defining it as Jewish only relates it to the people from whose loins it sprang. Far from being an object of greater patriotic loyalty than the so-called host country, Israel’s existence as a Jewish state, in the place which shaped its identity and continues to facilitate its existence as a Jewish state, and hence it essence, affords the Jews abroad the security, cultural and ethnic comfort to comfortably assimilate into the Diaspora, rendering the concept of host and guest fatuous. It is precisely by dint of Israel’s Jewish character that it retains its identity, meaning or life as that core, and by whose existence as a Jewish state, can it once, and for all, resolve one of the greatest, festering and persisting social enigmas and ills of all time.
Perhaps this is why, when confronting a hostile audience member during a speech he delivered at Harvard, in 1968, the late Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., angrily shouted, “When people criticize Zionists they mean Jews, you are talking anti-Semitism.”
The withholding of healthcare from any human for any reason is an abomination. Citing economic reasons using social cost benefit analysis as a factor in allocating health care, is, in my mind, equivalent to treating the human being as a commodity, something to be valued in terms of capital; fascism, pure and simple, and runs contrary to the constitutional guarantee that every American has to pursuit of happiness.
I am not opposed to using Monte Carlo based national insurance models as a financial platform to provide such care. I just feel these schema should be designed so that every American should have access to state of the art medical and psychiatric care, regardless of cost, and administered without prejudice, indeed without criteria of any kind, so long as it can be demonstrated that such need exists. And anything that interferes with full organic or mental fulfillment, with the ability to realize the constitutional guarantee of pursuit of happiness is a demonstration of that need.
Americans should participate in a nation wide health insurance plan, with equal benefits guaranteed to all, supported by premiums collected according to the ability to pay. Regional ability to obtain income, local cost of living and similar factors should be taken in account when calculating citizen support of this plan, but risk should NOT be a factor. Every American is at equal 'risk' and benefit by dint of being a United States Citizen alone. Risk, of course, must be taken into account when structuring or administering the plan, so long as this weighting is NOT a factor in distribution of benefits or individual responsibility. Since individual and regional risk cannot be a factor, I suggest the plan be administered locally to guarantee maximum sensitivity to regional risk and health care infrastructure, but that these local administrations reside within a greater federal structure to allow for a sufficient cash reserve to compensate for local ability to pay into such a plan as well as temporal and more permanent regional variations in administrative and distribution costs. Thus the guarantee should be federal, the structure more localized, with individual support weighted so that everyone's responsibility is equal, without discouraging personal advance in financial or social status, while at same time assuring equal distributions and equitable collection without regard to individual regional health risk factors. Definition of these weighting factors, might indeed be the most difficult element of all, as they are clearly NOT simply income proportional. Any further suggestions as to the structure of these complicated functions superceeds my personal competence, experience and knowledge.
