I have some criticisms of Rudyard's characterization of Second Temple period Judea (i.e. the period in which Jesus lived). If you're reading this please check it out before you do your Jewish civilization video.

Tl;dr:
-Judea was a constitutional monarchy with a parliament of people appointed by lower parliaments.
-The parliament was run by a meritocratic educated class.
-Death penalty was quite rare.
-There was a strict division of powers
-The dominant political and religious faction at the time basically supported all of the same principles regarding religious practice and treatment towards others as Jesus.
-Charity and caring for the poor and the meek was part of the Jewish tradition for centuries.

Judea society was more enlightened than you give it credit for. You draw the analogy between Judea and the Taliban. To some extent, this makes sense. Judaism was an obscure monotheistic religion with a very strict set of rules and a culture very different from Rome. There was also a lot of fundamentalism present. However, the extent to which this is the case is largely overstated. Ancient Judea was a constitutional monarchy, where the King was essentially just a military leader and all issues relating to the law were handled by a parliament consistent of members of a relatively meritocratic class of educated sages, the precursors to the modern rabbis. This parliament was known as the Great Sanhedrin (there were lesser Sanhedrin's on local levels to appoint the sages on the Great Sanhedrin), and while it was founded as the governing/judicial body of Hasmonean Judea, it continued to serve as an authority in Jewish society after the Roman conquest. An example is of the institution's meritocracy was Rabbi Akiva, a poor illiterate farm boy who studied for 24 years and went on to become the most famous sage of his day.

The death penalty in ancient Judea was actually quite rare. The Sanhedrin met in Jerusalem on the Temple Mount (until the Judeo-Roman Wars), and only did so during the three major week-long harvest festivals (Passover, Shavuot, and Sukkot), and since the Sanhedrin was the only institution capable of dishing out the death penalty, this indicates that death penalty was actually quite rare at the time. Also worth noting, there was a separation of powers, in which the minority leader of the Sanhedrin was also the leader of judicial activities.

Groups like the Pharisees and Sadducees are often regarded as mere religious groups that Jesus argued with, but they were actually also the political parties that ruled Judea. More accurately, the Pharisees dominated the Sanhedrin, and because the Pharisee faction was so large, it consisted of two branches. One branch, founded by the sage Shammai, was basically what Jesus said about the Pharisees– lots of focus on taboos and following the word of scripture closely. However, this was the minority faction. The founder of the majority faction, Hillel the Elder, had a profound influence both on Christianity and on modern Judaism. When asked to explain the laws of Torah, Hillel said “do not do unto your neighbor that which you do not want done unto you. The rest is commentary.” As such, Hillelists, whose views were most common among Judea society and the most formative to modern Judaism, had a much looser interpretation of religious law than Shammaists and place much more emphasis on mercy and kindness. Basically everything Jesus talked about aside from him being the literal son of God and being the only path towards salvation can be found in the dominant ideology in Judea at the time, which might be both why his fellow Jews took to him but at the same time why Jews were the only group around the Mediterranean that mostly retained their old religion since Jesus as a figure is just redundant.

Also, important to note that while Christianity did spread the emphasis on charity and caring for the poor and meek to the rest of the world, this was already a principle in Judaism. Deuteronomy, Amos, Psalms, and a number of other books of the Hebrew Bible involve a duty to the poor in society.

“The other side is bad because they’re trying to divide us” has to be the most idiotic rhetoric I’ve seen in politics that requires 1984 levels of doublethink to buy into.

(This post is about the Vivek 2024 campaign launch but this applies to a number of people on both sides.)

The best thing we can do to save American industry would actually be to repeal a protectionist bill. The Jones Act prohibiting non-American ships to carry goods between American ports makes it prohibitively expensive to actually ship goods between American Cities. As a result, Americans buy more foreign goods and most of our international trade is relegated to the most prominent coastal ports. Repealing the Jones Act would lead to more Americans buying American, restore our industry and self-reliance, and revive cities along the interior waterways of heartland America (i.e. the Great Lakes and Mississippi).

I’m currently sitting on USC campus, and I realized that college campuses are basically home to some of the best urban design in the US. The campus I’m on right now feels like a contemporary American take on an old European-style city. Campuses are compact and yet walkable, full of green space, and often have regular transit systems. Even college towns not located at the heart of major metro areas tend to have a lot of amenities and cultural/entertainment experiences and are all around pleasant places to live aside from the more annoying stuff college students tend to do. If an entire US city was designed they way a lot of campuses are it would become a major destination.

The only reason to be upset about kids hearing about gay people but not straight people is if you think gayness is inherently some form of perversion in a way straightness is not. I’m not sure why culture warriors say “what about our children” instead of saying the actual position which is “we think the gays are inherently morally inferior”.

I think the reason DeSantis hasn’t announced yet is because he is holding off until 2028. It would be the smartest thing for him to do politically.

If one is to suppose that psychiatric conditions are largely downstream from the biology of one’s brain, then gender dysphoria is a biological feature of the brain. This means that, biologically, there is a mismatch in the sex between different parts of the body. Therefore, people suffering gender dysphoria would by definition be considered intersex, and thus ought to be entitled to the same discretion on gender identity that we assign to other intersex people.