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Man in the Moon, Tower of Babel & Rabbi Lapin

March 21, 2013
Wilson

Writer

There’s a part in Glenn’s July 4th ‘Man in the Moon’ show that features a stunning Tower of Babel replica - so what the heck is the Tower of Babel doing in a July 4th celebration? Glenn talked on radio today to Rabbi Lapin, the man who explained the history of Babel to him better than anyone.

Transcript of interview is below:

GLENN: I have with me one of my dear friends and he's the best teacher I think. I said on the era minute ago, I have such respect for David Barton and I think he's one of the best teachers known in America. Rabbi Daniel Lapin is David Barton on steroids, not on speed but on steroids. And I was just showing him a picture of something that's coming from the American Dream Labs for Man in the Moon and this is in construction now and I think it's actually finished. I'm just waiting for the film on it. But this is a model of the Tower of Babel that, when I'm telling the story of America in the Man in the Moon thing for independence week in Salt Lake, part of that has to include the Tower of Babel. And that came from a conversation where he taught me the story, Rabbi Lapin taught me the story of the Tower of Babel and it is so clear what the ‑‑ the Lord is so consistent, and we are battling the exact same problem over and over and over again.

RABBI LAPIN: Well, that's what the first nine verses in Chapter 11 of genesis, that's not just a silly story about some anachronistic nation that's vanished in some primitive archeological artifact. No, it's actually a blueprint for the faithful allure of socialism which will live and burn in the hearts of men until the end of time.

GLENN: He has a new book called Buried Treasure: Secrets For Living from the Lord's Language, where he is taking Hebrew and showing ‑‑ for instance, I love this, and this isn't in the book and let me just make this side note. One of the things he taught me was, "Glenn, there is no such thing ‑‑ there's no Hebrew word for retirement. It's not in the Bible. There's no word for retirement, not part of God's plan."

RABBI LAPIN: And it's a really bad idea because what it really suggests is that when I've got mine, I'm getting out of the game and talking my ball and going home.

PAT: And how many people seriously die shortly after retiring?

RABBI LAPIN: It's definitely not part of God's plan for humanity. You're right about that.

GLENN: Okay. So one of the things in the book you talk about, there's only one word for blood and money.

RABBI LAPIN: Yes. In Hebrew ‑‑

GLENN: And so when you're reading ‑‑ you're reading the scriptures, you have to know which way it's ‑‑ similar.

RABBI LAPIN: It's always like that, yes, and this is not like this in English. For instance, the sole of my foot has absolutely nothing to do with fried sole that I like with french fries.

GLENN: Right.

RABBI LAPIN: And we don't sit around figuring out ourselves what could one have to do with the other. But in Hebrew anytime one word applies to what appear to be two concepts, what we do is we wrap those two concepts and they are actually, by combining them and integrating them, some fundamental truth is divulged and ‑‑

GLENN: So the same word, it's "dam."

RABBI LAPIN: Correct. That's exactly right, yes.

GLENN: So "dam" is the word for blood and "dam" is the word for money. So you're saying that God's language is saying those are the same how?

RABBI LAPIN: Sure. Well, one of the ways they are the same, of course, is that they are both your life force and, in fact, scripture says blood is the life force. And we've got to recognize that money isn't this dreadful, awful thing that hangs onto us like germs or like an article of clothing we might put on. Money, our money is actually our life force. If we didn't ‑‑

GLENN: Hang on just a second. That sounds to me like you're worshipping money or that you've put money ‑‑ you've made money more than a vehicle that can drive either way.

RABBI LAPIN: Ah, and this is why we're not allowed to, in Judaism we're not allowed to eat blood. And number two, think about it. There's a real problem if you see blood. Anytime you actually see it, something's wrong. It's not a good thing. When you see money, when it's too evident, that suggests the love of money. That's something else entirely. So money should do its work behind the scenes, as it were, the way blood does it work thinned scenes.

PAT: Makes sense, doesn't it?

GLENN: I just love you.

PAT: That's great.

GLENN: You are so clarifying on stuff. The thing that you said last night, we were talking about the pope.

RABBI LAPIN: Yes.

GLENN: And when you talk about the pope, first thing you do is you call a rabbi. We had really ‑‑ we had actually one of your really good friends. He just flew in from Rome to be with us last night, and it's really good news about this pope. We did our homework, we've talked to several people, and we really believe this guy is a ‑‑ he could be, he could be the best pope in the history of the church and he very well looks like he's going to be the same kind of pope as John Paul was, which is help the poor. He was described as really kind of a Mother Teresa. Not a government thing. It's an individual thing to help.

But as we were talking about this, we started talking about the world and the president going over to Israel and you said something that I had never heard before. In fact, the reverend said, "Where is that in the Bible? Show that to me." When the Jews left Egypt ‑‑

RABBI LAPIN: Yes.

GLENN: ‑‑ not all of them left.

RABBI LAPIN: Correct.

GLENN: Explain.

RABBI LAPIN: Well, the verse in Gene‑ ‑‑ excuse me. The verse in Exodus says ‑‑ and in Hebrew it says (inaudible), the children of Israel went up out of Egypt 1/5th. And since the early 17th century with the King James translation of the Bible, they've had trouble translating that word because it raises so many more questions than it answers. "Wow, what are you talking about? Like only 20% left?" Well, yeah, that's exactly right. And so most English translations fudge that Hebrew word and turn it into something else. They might say the children of Israel left with weapons in their hands.

GLENN: Find it real quick, Pat, will ya? Do you remember which ‑‑

PAT: Do you know what verse it is?

RABBI LAPIN: How awful that I came here so unprepared.

GLENN: No, no, no, no, I'm sorry. In Exodus.

RABBI LAPIN: I can find it.

GLENN: Yeah.

RABBI LAPIN: It's in Exodus. It's going to be somewhere around about Chapter 12 in Exodus, somewhere there.

GLENN: Okay.

RABBI LAPIN: And the English translation will probably say something like the children of Israel went out of Egypt armed, or something like that.

GLENN: Why did they translate "1/5th" to "armed"?

RABBI LAPIN: Because in Hebrew 1/5th is meaning 5, and the word "five" is always linked to a hand, five fingers to a hand. And so what they ‑‑ you know, unarmed combat or empty‑handed. So here they threw in and they said, well, it must mean ‑‑

GLENN: How do you know that that's not the way they meant it, that that's not what ‑‑ that only, only 1/5 left? How do you know that that's what they meant and not that they carried weapons with them?

RABBI LAPIN: Ancient Jewish wisdom, about 2600 pages of densely packed Aramaic text from the time of Jesus 2,000 years old, and before that it was completely oral. What happened is Moses was on Mt. Sinai for 40 days and 40 nights, and a large part of that time the background was being explained because there are many bizarre mysteries in the five books of Moses that on the surface of it appear to be very, very strange. And as soon as we know some of the background, we know exactly what's going on and we understand why these things are. The whole point of the 20% is to teach us not only that even in spite of Moses, in spite of the miracles, in spite of the ten plagues, bottom line is 80% of people are going to say "Give me security. Just let me ‑‑ you know what? I'm okay with the Egyptians. They have problems, they exact a lot of texts..."

GLENN: This is so amazing because it was only 20% ‑‑ correct me if I'm wrong, Pat. It was only 20% that went with the founders. It was really only about 20% of the American people who said, "I'm willing to die for this." Right?

PAT: Yeah.

GLENN: Wasn't it?

PAT: It was a small percentage.

RABBI LAPIN: It always is. And, you know, it's the rule in business as well. People who are professional salespeople know that 80% of your sales come from 20% of your customers. In the final analysis, in every epoch and in every orbit, it's about 1/5 of the people that deliver.

GLENN: So that explains why. So is the tipping point, you know, with, for instance, taxes, is the tipping point really truly 50/50 or 49/51? Because what we're having a problem with is people are saying, "Well, you'll never be able to turn it back because so many people are comfortable. They get money back and so they're comfortable."

RABBI LAPIN: When the takers exceed the makers, I think we have a problem.

GLENN: But you have only 20%. Because that's the problem. The reason why people take or they want security is they are afraid to risk.

RABBI LAPIN: Yes.

GLENN: More people are not entrepreneurs I believe because it's scary. It really is scary. To come out and say, "You know what, I'm going to do this. I'm going to leave ‑‑ I'm going to leave the comfort that I had." I mean, when I was at Fox, they told me, you're not going to leave. Nobody ever does. You're not going to leave. And I'm like, "No, I'm going to leave because I am an independent person and I'm an entrepreneur." But that takes a different kind of person to go out and strike it out on your own.

RABBI LAPIN: You better be able to live with fear.

GLENN: Yeah.

RABBI LAPIN: You better be able to live with uncertainty and above all what I find to be the defining characteristic and I've known you long enough, if I may say, to know that you possess this and that is faith. You can't do it without faith, which is why entrepreneurialism never thrives in a socialist or atheistic environment.

GLENN: I didn't know that, either. Is that why Europe doesn't have ‑‑ and that's why ‑‑ that would explain why Israel is so for its size, is so huge on so huge on entrepreneurial spirit and everything else.

RABBI LAPIN: There's no other way to explain it because ordinarily GDP is a function of population. Georgia has 10 times the GDP of Rhode Island and it's got 10 times the population. So the numbers match. Israel's four contiguous neighbors, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and Egypt have about ten times the population of Israel. You'd expect them to have ten times the GDP. That's actually closer to the other way around. And the only explanation is that Judeo‑Christian biblical culture focuses very much on the idea of faith, which is why the founders put the words "In God We Trust" not on the walls of churches but on the money. Because that is where it comes from. It absolutely depends on a faith. And Koranic culture does not possess the same focus on faith that biblical culture does.

GLENN: You are going to learn more from this one book, Buried Treasure ‑‑ this is the second edition, Buried Treasure by Rabbi Daniel Lapin than you will learn anyplace else. In fact, before I went on the air, just to show you that I love this man and I think he is really truly one of the greatest teachers alive today. I just asked him, I said, "You know, when you're in town, will you schedule some time and when you're in town, I'd like him to come and teach me, you know, and so I can learn and really be a student of Daniel Lapin. He is brilliant, and it is not ‑‑ it's God stuff that you will learn. Again the book is Buried Treasure: The Secrets for Living from the Lord's Language. Rabbi Lapin, it's available anywhere or you can go to RabbiDanielLapin.com and pick it up there. Thank you very much, Rabbi.

RABBI LAPIN: Thank you, Glenn. Great being here.

GLENN: God bless. All right. Back in just a second.

Stop trying to be right and think of the children

Mario Tama/Getty Images

All the outrage this week has mainly focused on one thing: the evil Trump administration and its minions who delight in taking children from their illegal immigrant parents and throwing them all in dungeons. Separate dungeons, mind you.

That makes for a nice, easy storyline, but the reality is less convenient. Most Americans seem to agree that separating children from their parents — even if their parents entered the US illegally — is a bad thing. But what if that mom and dad you're trying to keep the kids with aren't really the kids' parents? Believe it or not, fraud happens.

RELATED: Where were Rachel Maddow's tears for immigrant children in 2014?

While there are plenty of heartbreaking stories of parents simply seeking a chance for a better life for their children in the US, there are also corrupt, abusive human traffickers who profit from the illegal immigration trade. And sorting all of this out is no easy task.

This week, the Department of Homeland Security said that since October 2017, more than 300 children have arrived at the border with adults claiming to be their parents who turned out not to be relatives. 90 of these fraud cases came from the Rio Grande Valley sector alone.

In 2017, DHS reported 46 causes of fraudulent family claims. But there have already been 191 fraud cases in 2018.

Shouldn't we be concerned about any child that is smuggled by a human trafficker?

When Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen pointed out this 315 percent increase, the New York Times was quick to give these family fraud cases "context" by noting they make up less than one percent of the total number of illegal immigrant families apprehended at the southern border. Their implication was that Nielsen was exaggerating the numbers. Even if the number of fraud cases at the border was only 0.001 percent, shouldn't we be concerned about any child that is smuggled by a human trafficker?

This is the most infuriating part of this whole conversation this week (if you can call it a "conversation") — that both sides have an angle to defend. And while everyone's busy yelling and making their case, children are being abused.

What if we just tried, for two seconds, to love having mercy more than we love having to be right all the time?

Occupy Wall Street posts cartoon guide to murdering US border agents

John Moore/Getty Images

Remember when cartoons were happy things? Each panel took you on a tiny journey, carrying you to an unexplored place. In Understanding Comics, Scott McCloud writes:

The comics creator asks us to join in a silent dance of the seen and the unseen. The visible and the invisible. This dance is unique to comics. No other artform gives so much to its audience while asking so much from them as well. This is why I think it's a mistake to see comics as a mere hybrid of the graphic arts and prose fiction. What happens between . . . panels is a kind of magic only comics can create.

When that magic is manipulated or politicized, it often devolves the artform into a baseless thing. Yesterday, Occupy Wall Street published the perfect example of low-brow deviation of the artform: A six-panel approach at satire, which imitates the instructions-panel found in the netted cubbyhole behind seats on airplanes. The cartoon is a critique of the recent news about immigrant children being separated from their parents after crossing the border. It is a step-by-step guide to murdering US Immigrations and Customs Enforcement agents.

RELATED: Cultural appropriation has jumped the shark, and everyone is noticing

The first panel shows a man shoving an infant into a cage meant for Pomeranians. The following five panels feature instructions, and include pictures of a cartoonish murder.

The panels read as follows:

  1. If an ICE agent tries to take your child at the border, don't panic.
  2. Pull your child away as quickly as possibly by force.
  3. Gently tell your child to close his/her eyes and ears so they won't witness what you are about to do.
  4. Grab the ICE agent from behind and push your knife into his chest with an upward thrust, causing the agent's sternum to break.
  5. Reach into his chest and pull out his still beating heart.
  6. Hold his bloody heart out for all other agents to see, and tell them that the same fate awaits them if they f--- with your child again.

Violent comics are nothing new. But most of the time, they remain in the realms of invented worlds — in other words, not in our own, with reference to actual people, let alone federal agents.

The mainstream media made a game of crying racism with every cartoon depiction of Obama during his presidency, as well as during his tenure as Senator, when the New Yorker, of all things, faced scrutiny for depicting him in "Muslim clothing." Life was a minefield for political cartoonists during the Obama era.

Chris Hondros/Getty Images

This year, we saw the leftist outrage regarding The Simpsons character Apu — a cartoon representation of a highly-respected, though cartoonishly-depicted, character on a cartoon show composed of cartoonishly-depicted characters.

We all remember Charlie Hebdo, which, like many outlets that have used cartoon satire to criticize Islam, faced the wrath and ire of people unable to see even the tamest representation of the prophet, Muhammad.

Interesting, isn't it? Occupy Wall Street publishes a cartoon that advocates murdering federal agents, and critics are told to lighten up. Meanwhile, the merest depiction of Muhammad has resulted in riots throughout the world, murder and terror on an unprecedented scale.

The intersection of Islam and comics is complex enough to have its own three-hour show, so we'll leave it at that, for now. Although, it is worth mentioning the commentary by satirical website The Onion, which featured a highly offensive cartoon of all the major religious figures except Muhammad. It noted:

Following the publication of the image above, in which the most cherished figures from multiple religious faiths were depicted engaging in a lascivious sex act of considerable depravity, no one was murdered, beaten, or had their lives threatened.

Of course, Occupy Wall Street is free to publish any cartoon they like. Freedom of speech, and so on—although there have been several instances in which violent cartoons were ruled to have violated the "yelling fire in a crowded theater" limitation of the First Amendment.

Posting it to Twitter is another issue — this is surely in violation of Twitter's violent content policy, but something tells me nothing will come of it. It's a funny world, isn't it? A screenshot of a receipt from Chick-fil-A causes outrage but a cartoon advocating murder gets crickets.

RELATED: Twitter mob goes ballistic over Father's Day photo of Caitlyn Jenner. Who cares?

In Understanding Comics, Scott McCloud concludes that, "Today the possibilities for comics are — as they've always been — endless. Comics offers . . . range and versatility, with all the potential imagery of film and painting plus the intimacy of the written word. And all that's needed is the desire to be heard, the will to learn, and the ability to see."

Smile, and keep moving forward.

Crude and awful as the Occupy Wall Street comic is, the best thing we can do is nod and look elsewhere for the art that will open our eyes. Let the lunatics draw what they want, let them stew in their own flawed double standards. Otherwise, we're as shallow and empty as they are, and nothing good comes of that. Smile, and keep moving forward.

Things are getting better. Show the world how to hear, how to learn, how to see.

People should start listening to Nikki Haley

ANDREW CABALLERO-REYNOLDS/AFP/Getty Images

Okay. Let's take a vote. You know, an objective, quantifiable count. How many resolutions has the UN Human Rights Council adopted condemning dictatorships? Easy. Well. How do you define "dictatorship"?

Well, one metric is the UN Human Rights Council Condemnation. How many have the United Nations issued to China, with a body count higher than a professional Call of Duty player?

Zero.

How about Venezuela, where socialism is devouring its own in the cruelest, most unsettling ways imaginable?

Zero.

And Russia, home of unsettling cruelty and rampant censorship, murder and (actual) homophobia?

Zero.

Iraq? Zero. Turkey? Iraq? Zero. Cuba? Zero. Pakistan? Zero.

RELATED: Nikki Haley just dropped some serious verbal bombs on Russia at the UN

According to UN Human Rights Council Condemnations, 2006-2016, none of these nations is as dangerous as we'd imagined. Or, rather, none of them faced a single condemnation. Meanwhile, one country in particular has faced unbelievable scrutiny and fury — you'll never guess which country.

No, it's not Somalia. It's Israel. With 68 UN Human Rights Council Condemnations! In fact, the number of total United Nations condemnations against Israel outnumbers the total of condemnations against all other countries combined. The only country that comes close is Syria, with 15.

The Trump administration withdrew from the United Nations Human Rights Council on Tuesday in protest of what it perceives as an entrenched bias against Israel and a willingness to allow notorious human rights abusers as members.

In an address to the UN Security Council on Tuesday, Nikki Haley said:

Let's remember that the Hamas terrorist organization has been inciting violence for years, long before the United States decided to move our embassy. This is what is endangering the people of Gaza. Make no mistake, Hamas is pleased with the results from yesterday... No country in this chamber would act with more restraint than Israel has.

Maybe people should start listening to Haley. Hopefully, they will. Not likely, but there's no crime in remaining hopeful.

Twitter mob goes ballistic over Father's Day photo of Caitlyn Jenner. Who cares?

Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images

Here's a question unique to our times: "Should I tell my father 'Happy Father's Day,' even though he (she?) is now one of my mothers?"

Father's Day was four days ago, yes, but this story is just weird enough to report on. One enjoyable line to read was this gem from Hollywood Gossip: "Cait is a woman and a transgender icon, but she is also and will always be the father of her six children."

RELATED: If Bruce was never a he and always a she, who won the men's Olympic gold in 1976?

Imagine reading that to someone ten — even five — years ago. And, honestly, there's something nice about it. But the strangeness of its having ever been written overpowers any emotional impact it might bring.

"So lucky to have you," wrote Kylie Jenner, in the Instagram caption under pre-transition pictures of Bruce Jenner.

Look. I risk sounding like a tabloid by mere dint of having even mentioned this story, but the important element is the cultural sway that's occurring. The original story was that a band of disgruntled Twitter users got outraged about the supposed "transphobic" remarks by Jenner's daughter.

But, what we should be saying is, "who the hell cares?" Who cares what one Jenner says to another — and more importantly and on a far deeper level — who cares what some anonymous Twitter user has to say?

When are we going to stop playing into the hands of the Twitter mob?

When are we going to stop playing into the hands of the Twitter mob? Because, at the moment, they've got it pretty good. They have a nifty relationship with the mainstream media: One or two Twitter users get outraged by any given thing — in this case Jenner and supposed transphobia. In return, the mainstream media use the Twitter comment as a source.

Then, a larger Twitter audience points to the article itself as proof that there's some kind of systemic justice at play. It's a closed-market currency, where the negative feedback loop of proof and evidence is composed of faulty accusations. Isn't it a hell of a time to be alive?