Crusader War College

There's no denying that an effective wedge to drive between the Religious Right and Judaism is to remind both sides of the elephant in the living room: Jesus Christ as the Son of God, and his crucifixion by the Romans at Jewish insistance. The later is a fact of history and must be addressed. I'll summarize my take on it: 1) The method for selecting the Sanhedrin and the High Priest in those days (by Roman selection) makes it questionable that it truly represented the Jewish people. For all the failings that Israpundit commentators have pointed out with the current Israeli system of representation, Ariel Sharon probably has more religious legitimacy today than the Sanhedrin had back then (which says a lot about both administrations). I also venture to say that the Sanhedrin back then does not any more represent current Judaism than the Clinton Administration currently represents Americans. 2) I hardly believe that a lynch mob assembled to "choose" between Barabbas and Jesus was any more representative of the Jewish people than the american electorate of 1960 represents the current one. 3) The effectiveness of the wedge depends on both parties accepting the leftist principle that people cannot change, and that religions and nations are totally bound and determined by their past. This relieves leftists of the required mental effort to learn new facts after they leave the leftist hothouse that is the post-modern college campus, which in turn would lead to a change in the beliefs and practices that they adopted there. Christianity and Judaism REJECT this belief about human nature (Reformationists and Calvinists excepted), and it is high time that both Christians and Jews have the guts and consistency to apply THEIR principles, not the left's, when dealing with each other. 4) Another Leftist principle that should be rejected by Jews and Christians, as well as Americans, is what I've just named "GroupJudge": the idea that guilt incurred by part of a group becomes the guilt of the whole. While starting with the Roman Catholic church, it has become a leftist intellectual short-cut that reflects mental laziness as well as an attempt at getting a moralistic edge in any arguments. We must REJECT this practice, starting with the trial of Jesus and moving forward. (I am not adverse to starting earlier.) 5) Another leftist "principle" that should be rejected by Jews and Christians is temporal group guilt: that guilt incurred by earlier members of the group adheres to members of the group that come after who never committed the offense in the first place.

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