” … exposition on Israel, terrorism, jurisprudence, and the ruminations of the Sages, but this section seemed relevant to the current topic, as we have seen in many ways that being “compassionate” (tolerant) when “cruelty” (firmness) is needed results in situations that are infinitely worse than the starting point (here, the unjust persecution of men accused of sexual impropriety).”

A small “L” libertarian polity solves to the minds of some, like our ancestors, a portion of these issues. The damned are free to be damned, and the Devil take them if that is what they want.

But the informal techniques of keeping the obnoxious at arm’s length are so fundamentally repugnant to some persons that they cannot abide living in such a polity, with its parallel societies … or better, in a larger society with its outcasts. So, they seek to reconfigure our political relations in the form of a “Great Society” in which “all are valued” and “none excluded” if their defect be though “no fault of their own”; or, eventually, as things evolve along these lines, due to “faults” which are not really their fault and thus not objective faults, since, ‘ we are all just social constructions and congeries of accidents and impulses beyond our control and responsibility, anyway. Please pass the salt.

Thus, “tolerance”, in the words of his greatness “The One”, is not enough. We must feel one anothers’ pains; “commit” in the words of Rawls “to a shared fate”; recognize as Rorty advises, “that chance is a worthy master”, that we simply wnat what we want as a result of historical accident, and that there is no objective there, there.

Of course you cannot really live like that for long. But you can for awhile; until the stored capital of previous generations runs out, and you find yourself completely morally bankrupt, stalled, and with no principles other than fear of death, if you do fear death more than life, to get you going again.

“There is a is a well-known teaching from the Midrash about the result of tolerating criminal, or outright evil, actions — “Whoever is kind to the cruel will end up being cruel to the kind” — recognizing that someone is going to get hurt either way, and it is worse to let the innocent suffer than to stop the guilty.”

Well, I guess they said it first, if the texts you refer to are nearly as old as the original Talmud.

But as Neo has recently referred to Romeo and Juliet, this quote is worth bearing in mind as well …

“And for that offense
Immediately we do exile him hence.
I have an interest in your hate’s proceeding,
My blood, for your rude brawls, doth lie a-bleeding.
But I’ll amerce you with so strong a fine
That you shall all repent the loss of mine.
I will be deaf to pleading and excuses;
Nor tears nor prayers shall purchase out abuses.
Therefore use none. Let Romeo hence in haste,
Else, when he’s found, that hour is his last.
Bear hence this body and attend our will.
Mercy but murders, pardoning those that kill.“

This seemingly uninterrupted norm was further reinforced the then-universal reality that starting to be sexually active normally produced a baby sometime in the first several months: Anyone contemplating “going all the way” was asking themselves, “Do I want this other person to be the father/mother of my baby, and therefore hopefully also my lifelong husband/wife, starting sometime within the next calendar year?” Such a prospect was often (I never said it was always) sufficient to daunt even the raging hormones of teenagers.

See: Meat Loaf, “Paradise by the Dashboard Light”, 1977

You quote my earlier post: “Not having sexual relations with someone until you’re willing to raise children with them”…, and then reply: “You are dreaming of an ideal that never was and never will be.”

Not so.

First, to point out what ought to be has nothing to do with whether one thinks that situation has ever previously obtained or ever will. I’m just laying out what works for human beings if and when they do it, which they can (I’ve known several couples; you probably have, too). That humans commonly don’t abstain from fornication when they should is only a specific case of the general rule that humans commonly do things they know they oughtn’t. But the humans who do abstain from fornication also statistically wind up better off in all the ways one would typically expect they would.

Now stating all that just isn’t the same as claiming that self-control in this area (a.) ever has been universal or (b.) ever will be universal. I don’t “dream” that either is the case.

Secondly, to say that abstaining from fornication is not universal is not the same as denying it was once the norm. “Everybody does it” is not true and never was; “Nobody does it” is also not true and never was. In fact, prior to widespread availability of artificial contraception, avoiding premarital sex was the norm…with one amusing proviso. For of course part of this “norm” was the then-common reality of 30% or more of all firstborn children being born 1-3 months prematurely…and, coincidentally, these “early births” nearly always occurred 6-8 months after the wedding!

The point is: Yes, of course there were persons having premarital sexual relations. They were not the majority, but they were a large minority. But, when it resulted in pregnancy, they typically got married and typically stayed married until one of them died. That’s the statistical reality. And because that was the statistical reality, and babies born 6-8 months after the wedding arguably could have been conceived on the wedding night, there was a seemingly uninterrupted social norm against premarital sex. This seemingly uninterrupted norm was further reinforced the then-universal reality that starting to be sexually active normally produced a baby sometime in the first several months: Anyone contemplating “going all the way” was asking themselves, “Do I want this other person to be the father/mother of my baby, and therefore hopefully also my lifelong husband/wife, starting sometime within the next calendar year?” Such a prospect was often (I never said it was always) sufficient to daunt even the raging hormones of teenagers.

So family life really was radically different in, say, 1900.

Now, if you’d confined yourself to saying that, now that the world has divorced sex from procreation through artificial contraception and widely-available abortion, it is impossible for fornication to ever again become a minority practice…why then, I’d have had nothing much to say in reply. It probably won’t ever again become a rarity. One cannot un-invent technologies; and while a ban on abortions would probably greatly reduce the number of abortions, a ban on condoms (!) will never happen. So, the cultural changes produced by contraceptive availability are probably irreversible.

But I think people don’t live for centuries at a time, and don’t remember much outside of the most recent decade of their lives. The result is a shocking failure to appreciate how much the severance of “orgasm” from “baby” changed the culture: Nobody can remember how it was, and the stats, when we review them, describe a world almost alien to us.

https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2019/08/intersectionality-on-the-west-bank.php

Diversity in Palestinian Society, (Arabic for the bow), which engages and supports Palestinians who identify as LGBT, was planning to hold a gathering for its members in Nablus at the end of this month. …

Explaining the decision to ban the LGBT group from operating in PA-controlled areas, Luay Zreikat, spokesperson for the PA Police, said that such activities are “harmful to the higher values and ideals of Palestinian society.”

Zreikat said that the group’s activities were completely “unrelated to religions and Palestinian traditions and customs, especially in the city of Nablus.”

He accused unnamed “dubious parties” of working to “create discord and harm civic peace in Palestinian society.”

The PA police will chase those behind the LGBT group and see to it that they are brought to trial once they are arrested, Zreikat warned. He further appealed to Palestinians to report to the police about any person connected to the group.

We know what happens when communities deteriorate. Isolation, loneliness, and a decline in social norms. And when we destroy the church, the very institution that has been our bedrock of values, morality, and redemption for thousands of years? Despair, immorality, desperation, and evil.

Combine all three, and we know exactly what happens. An opioid epidemic so severe that it has literally reduced our average life expectancy. A suicide rate that continues to climb for almost all demographic groups. Mass shootings.

Destroy the family, abandon the community, raze the church to the ground. What could go wrong? Everything.

The implication of the Midrash at hand is that if the law imposes on the government to act in a certain way, the government may not refrain from the implementation of its legal obligation by claiming that it is cruel and that it runs counter to its sense of justice; the government must implement both the spirit and the letter of the law. That is the essence of the principle of the rule of law – a principle valid both in the Jewish and Israeli legal systems. The message emerging from the Midrash is that if the government places any consideration above the law – even if it is a humanitarian consideration – ultimately it will place other considerations – even anti-humanitarian ones – above the law, and the possibilities are limitless. The only criteria according to which the government is required to act are the criteria of law, and no consideration – weighty though it may be –can prevail over the law.

Also applicable to the “First Step” penal reforms; see copious posts on the subject at PowerLine especially.

A well-phrased summation of the heart of the problem.
I note, however, that this revaluing could not have succeeded without the active acquiesence of the non-dysfunctional broader society.

The dilemma that always faces the “normal” population is between the task of excluding “dysfunctional” persons, which is a far too easy and generally quite harsh action in every society we know of, and the challenge of including them as members of the community without letting them redefine the bounds of acceptable behavior.

There is a is a well-known teaching from the Midrash about the result of tolerating criminal, or outright evil, actions — “Whoever is kind to the cruel will end up being cruel to the kind” — recognizing that someone is going to get hurt either way, and it is worse to let the innocent suffer than to stop the guilty.

I suspect that many of the strict prohibitions and punishments against aberrant behavior stem from an analogous observation. That the bans can be taken to extremes is a given, but it is hard to know where the balance point lies between being justly merciful to the outliers, and sliding into communal destruction.

And, of course, there are a host of associated problems in defining what behaviors is, in fact, criminal / evil, and must indeed be stopped in order to preserve the social order, which we are seeing in the ongoing “you’re the fascist” – “no, you’re the fascist!” confrontations of our current political factions.

Discussions of the maxim:
https://www.rishon-rishon.com/archives/044412.php

http://www.acpr.org.il/ENGLISH-NATIV/06-issue/shochetman-6.htm

Excellent comment, and I agree with your observations completely. As a society, we have gone off the rails by being too inclusive. We have forgotten that not everything is beneficial, or even neutral in its effects. There are deadly behavioral pathogens that need to be rigidly excluded from a healthy society. Our national failure to do so has damaged our societal cohesion very badly, possibly to the point of collapse in the not-too-distant future.

Keep posting. Our nation needs all the rational voices we can get out there, since the dangerously irrational have long had their volume knobs pegged at 11 trying to drown out the voices of reason.