At this point, my own sense is that responding to anything
that Larry Darby says would only perpetuate the illusion that a
serious and reasoned conversation is possible with him.
It might be worth, though, standing up for the honor of
Albert Einstein.
In one of Darby's messages, he included this alleged
quotation from Einstein:
"Anti-Semitism is nothing but the antagonistic attitude produced in the
non-Jew by the Jewish group. The Jewish group has thrived on oppression
and on the antagonism it has forever met in the world." -- Albert
Einstein, in Collier's Magazine, November 26, 1938
These lines, quoted this way, appear all over the web, but
only on avowedly antisemitic, neo-Nazi, White Power, and similar
sites. In fact, these two sentences are ripped, out of context and
distorted, from two different pages of a famous essay by Einstein
called "Why Do They Hate the Jews?," which he published in 1938
shortly after Kristallnacht. Einstein's article discussed, among
other things, the opportunistic role that anti-semitism had come to
play in totalitarian politics, and also sketched out a quite stirring
humanist synthesis of traditional Jewish values. He also made, in
one short section of the essay, the unremarkable observation that to
some extent oppression can serve to foster solidarity in the
oppressed group. The basic message of the article, however, is that
antisemitism is the favored tool of a political mentality that "seeks
to base society exclusively upon authority, blind obedience, and
coercion." And he ends the essay, interestingly enough, with a
warning about the threat, even in the United States, of oppressive
political movements employing the "weapon of anti-Semitism as well as
hostility to various other groups."
Perry
*******************************************************
Perry Dane
Professor of Law
Rutgers University
School of Law -- Camden
217 North Fifth Street
Camden, NJ 08102
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
www.camlaw.rutgers.edu/bio/925/
Work: (856) 225-6004
Fax: (856) 969-7924
Home: (610) 896-5702
*******************************************************
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