KIFfel:Robert(TUBAF)

it was made of stone. He fails to mention that it was made of uwenhn stone. It is not simply that stone is naturally occurring. The stone for the Temple in Jerusalem was quarried and shaped (the Midrash tells us that the stone for Solomon's Temple was cut by the shamir worm, a mysterious creature that G-d fashioned before the world was actually made). But again, the imagery is not about individualism vs socialism. It is about the base level, self-serving vs the Divine.G-d destroyed the world with the flood because of the rampant thievery among people. In the case of the tower, there was a common purpose, though the Talmud tells us that there were varying reasons why people wanted to see the tower built (some contest that Nimrod was even involved). The imposition of the new languages was not to return people to their sense of individuality as Lapin wrongly contends. It was because they united in the common purpose of attempting to elevate themselves to Divine status, to elevate the work of their hands to what G-d had fashioned, rather than celebrating the fact that their ability to create anything by their own hands came from G-d (it is also explained that there were many who feared that the flood that destroyed the world was a recurring event that could be prevented by building not just one tower, but a series of them, failing to accept the Divine promise that G-d would not destroy the world by flood again).So, nice spin, but in the end it was just spin. And when I looked at the EU building at the beginning of the broadcast my first thought was that it looked like the coliseum, which is perfect for the EU mindless entertainment and bloodsport for the masses. Too bad Beck didn't just go with that. That's about as cynical and sinister as you can get.