AMERICAN SOCIETY Prepared By Ner Le’Elef AMERICAN SOCIETY Prepared by Ner LeElef Publication date 04 November 2007 Permission is granted to reproduce in part or in whole. Profits may not be gained from any such reproductions. This book is updated with each edition and is produced several times a year. Other Ner LeElef Booklets currently available: BOOK OF QUOTATIONS EVOLUTION HILCHOS MASHPIAH HOLOCAUST JEWISH MEDICAL ETHICS JEWISH RESOURCES LEADERSHIP AND MANAGEMENT ORAL LAW PROOFS QUESTION & ANSWERS SCIENCE AND JUDAISM SOURCES SUFFERING THE CHOSEN PEOPLE THIS WORLD & THE NEXT WOMEN’S ISSUES (Book One) WOMEN’S ISSUES (Book Two) For information on how to order additional booklets, please contact: Ner Le’Elef P.O. Box 14503 Jewish quarter, Old City, Jerusalem, 91145 E-mail: [email protected] Fax #: 972-02-653-6229 Tel #: 972-02-651-0825 Page 2 TABLE OF CONTENTS CHAPTER ONE: PRINCIPLES AND CORE VALUES 5 i- Introduction 6 ii- Underlying ethical principles 10 iii- Do not do what is hateful – The Harm Principle 12 iv- Basic human rights; democracy 14 v- Equality 16 vi- Absolute equality is discriminatory 18 vii- Rights and duties 20 viii- Tolerance – relative morality 22 ix- Freedom and immaturity 32 x- Capitalism – The Great American Dream 38 a- Globalization 40 b- The Great American Dream 40 xi- Protection, litigation and victimization 42 xii- Secular Humanism/reason/Western intellectuals 44 CHAPTER TWO: SOCIETY AND LIFESTYLE 54 i- Materialism 55 ii- Religion 63 a- How religious is America? 63 b- Separation of church and state: government funding and school prayer 74 c- The failure of secularism 82 d- The problem of man-made religion 84 e- The need for religious values in schools 85 f- Non-traditional expressions of spirituality amongst American Jewry 86 iii- Lack of tradition and reverence 88 iv- Pace of life, consumerism 91 v- Education 93 vi- Marriage 95 vii- Sexual permissiveness 99 viii- Alternative lifestyles/homosexuality 105 ix- Civic responsibility and heroism 109 x- Celebrities and heroes 110 xi- The media 112 a- Bias and fabricated stories 112 b- Non-factual reporting of biases 114 c- Altering video images 117 d- News blackouts 118 xii- TV and Hollywood 121 a- TV 121 b- Hollywood values and actors 129 c- Truth 134 d- The vastness of the movie industry 137 e- Movies as a source of immoral lessons 138 xiii- Art, music and culture 141 a- Art 141 b- Theater 148 c- Music 150 Page 3 xiv- Sports 153 xv- Alcohol, drugs, violence and other trends 156 CHAPTER THREE: PERSONALITY AND GROWTH 165 i- Pleasure and happiness 166 ii- Meaning of life 173 iii- Individualism, creativity, innovation, self-image and self-worth 179 iv- Honesty, truth 182 v- Personal and interpersonal 190 CHAPTER FOUR: IS THE WORLD A BETTER PLACE? 192 INDEX 203 Page 4 CHAPTER ONE: PRINCIPLES AND CORE VALUES i- Introduction ii- Underlying ethical principles iii- Do not do what is hateful – The Harm Principle iv- Basic human rights; democracy v- Equality vi- Absolute equality is discriminatory vii- Rights and duties viii- Tolerance – relative morality ix- Freedom and immaturity x- Capitalism – The Great American Dream a- Globalization b- The Great American Dream xi- Protection, litigation and victimization xii- Secular humanism/reason/western intellectuals Page 5 CHAPTER ONE: PRINCIPLES AND CORE VALUES i- Introduction Although everyone recognizes that America had problems, many see it as the leading example of “the good society.” Typical are the comments of Robert J. Samuelson in the Newsweek Special Issue at the end of the Millennium: “The U.S. GDP in 1998 of more than $8 trillion slightly exceeded the output of the European Union (which has 100 million more people) and surpassed Japan’s output by about $5 trillion. On average, incomes per person are 45 percent higher in America [than the rest of the world] … The 20th century has been a contest of ideas. At the outset, there was Empire, the notion (crudely put) that some peoples deserve to rule over others. Then there was Fascism and Communism. Only the American ideal – with its emphasis put on human dignity, freedom and material progress – survived. Indeed, its continuous, if sporadic, spread inspired the American writer Francis Fukuyama to declare “the end of history.” Triumphant democracy and market economies would slowly erase major geopolitical conflicts.” There is no single coherent set of ethical principles on which American law and ethics, or that of any other Western country, is based. Some laws come from Roman Law, and the Western legal tradition that built on it; some are built on the idea of natural law, which presumes that there are certain universal laws for mankind, whereas other laws are based on principles of enlightened self-interest, which presumes that laws are merely for the collective convenience of the society. The Ten Commandments are quite well accepted as G-d-given principles on the one hand, while many other principles were made as if there were no G-d at all. Nor do the principles combine to form an internally self-consistent system, a fact that leads to many contradictions and even double-standards.1 Man-made systems are simply not capable of __________________________________________________________________________________________ 1 The following was culled from an article by John Leo in U.S. News & World Report, August 7, 2000, When Rules Don’t Count: Herbert Marcuse was a fashionable radical intellectual of the 1960s who believed that tolerance and free speech mostly serve the interests of the powerful. So he called frankly for “intolerance against movements from the right, and toleration of movements from the left.” To restore the balance between oppressors and oppressed, he argued, indoctrination of students and “deeply pervasive” censorship of oppressors would be necessary, starting in college. Double standards are all around us now: • Endless restrictions on abortion protesters that would never be applied to other demonstrators. • The belief that all-black college dorms are progressive but all-white ones are racist. • Explanations that the killing of whales is a universal social horror, except when conducted by the oppressed (American Indians). A quarter century of feminist yawning over feminist Mary Daly’s ban on males in her Boston College classes, though a male professor who tried to bar females would have been hammered into submission in one day. John Leo, U.S. News and World Report, November 29, 2004: Don’t discount moral views: …The “don’t impose” people make little effort to be consistent, deploring, for example, Roman Catholics who act on their church’s beliefs on abortion and stem cells but not those who follow the pope’s insistence that the rich nations share their wealth with poor nations or his opposition to the death penalty and the invasion of Iraq….Consistency would also require the “don’t impose” supporters to speak up about coercive schemes intended to force believers to violate their own principles: antiabortion doctors and nurses who are required in some jurisdictions to study abortion techniques; Catholic agencies forced to carry contraceptive coverage in health plans; evangelical college groups who believe homosexuality is a sin defunded or disbanded for not allowing gays to become officers in their groups; the pressure from the ACLU and others to force the boy Scouts to admit gays, despite a Supreme Court ruling that the Scouts are entitled to go their own way.…Sometimes the “don’t impose’ arguments pops up in an odd form, as when John Kerry tried to define the stem-cells argument as science versus ideology. But the stem- cell debate in fact featured ideology versus ideology –the belief that the chance to eliminate many diseases outweighs the killing of infinitesimal embryos versus the belief that killing embryos for research is a moral violation and a dangerous precedent. Both arguments are serious moral ones. Those who resent religiously based arguments often present themselves as rational and scientific, whereas people of faith are dogmatic and emotional. This won’t do. As Professor Volokh argues, “All of our opinions are ultimately based on unproven and Page 6 Chapter One: Principles and Core Values – i. Introduction creating a system where all the principles unite to form one coherent whole, where there are clear principles of deciding what happens when two principles appear to conflict and where the principles are readily applicable at all times and in all places. A cursory look at Supreme Court decisions shows how different courts impose their respective decisions on the society at large. These in turn generally reflect conservative or liberal swings in the population at large. All these principles combine to form what has become known as secular humanism, secular because it was man made; humanistic because it is supposed to represent the highest levels of moral and interpersonal sensitivity towards mankind. In this section, we will first consider some of the individual principles underlying this secular humanism and then, at the end, look at the more fundamental idea of how far human reason in general can go. But to understand the full picture one must also look at how well American society is operating today; what kind of art and music it has, how happy its marriages are, how well adjusted and fulfilled its people are, and most importantly, what kind of moral contribution they are making to themselves and the rest of the world. All of these comprise the various sections contained in this booklet. America as empire America is considered by most scholars today as not only the strongest country on earth, but as controlling an empire, “a colossus,” as one writer put it. Although the Americans prefer not to rule directly over other countries, America’s direct and indirect influence over most of the world makes it at least comparable to the Roman and other great empires of yesteryear2.