Evola, Heidegger, Sartre and Fascism

In response to several comments in the ongoing debate about Henry Ford, international bankers and anti-Semitism the name "Julius Evola" kept coming up.  I've been meaning to read Evola for some time and so this inspired me to check out his study of Buddhism, The Doctrine of Awakening.  While I'm still reading that book - and will probably have to reread it again to make sure I don't miss anything - I will definitely say that so far I am quite impressed by Evola's thought.  I note particularly that Evola's description of the descending chain of twelve nidāna which take the individual into the plane of samsāric existence.  It reminds me a great deal of Martin Heidegger's descriptions of Geworfenheit, or "thrownness." As Roy Hornsby describes it:

To Heidegger this concept is a primordial banality which had long been overlooked by metaphysical conjecture. Humans beings are thrown with neither prior knowledge nor individual option into a world that was there before and will remain there after they are gone (Steiner 1978). Heidegger wrote;

“This characteristic of Dasein’s Being – this ‘that it is’ – is veiled in its ‘whence’ and ‘whither’, yet disclosed in itself all the more unveiledly; we call it the ‘thrownness’ of this entity into its ‘there’; indeed, it is thrown in such a way that, as Being-in-the-world, it is the ‘there’. The expression ‘thrownness’ is meant to suggest the facticity of its being delivered over.”

Evola's descriptions of the life of the unenlightened versus enlightened mind also reminded me of Heidegger's authentic and inauthentic modes of Dasein (being-there). And when I read his description of the Buddha's highest attainment - the recognition of non-existence:

This summit must be apprehended by the "noble son," it must be his purpose. The strength and sureness of those who know no more anguish or fear is described as something that has a vertiginous and fearful effect on others, both human and superhuman; when they are faced by those who have conquered, and when they hear their truth, they become aware of their own unsuspected contingency, and the primordial anguish bursts forth unchecked. They see the abyss.

I was reminded of Heidegger's comments on the "fundamental experience of the oblivion of Being."  These ideas were later expanded (Martin H. would have said "misunderstood") by a chain-smoking Frenchman named Jean-Paul Sartre, who named his magnum opus L'etre et le neant or, in English, Being and Nothingness. According to Sartre, man was "condemned to be free" - forced to make arbitrary choices in a meaningless world into which he came ab nihilo, ex nihilo. Writing in early to midcentury 20th century Europe, all three of these visionaries found themselves staring into a void.

Another thing which all three had in common was a taste for dubious politics.  Evola's close if sometime contentious relationship with Mussolini and Italian fascism, Heidegger's affiliation with the Nazi party, and Sartre's apologetics for Stalinism are all well-documented.  Were these intellectual missteps by otherwise brilliant men? Were they irredeemable sins which taint everything they publish? Or is there another, and far more disquieting possibility - that they were visionaries who saw the cracks in the underpinnings of our modern idols, "Freedom" and "Democracy?"

Over the past two centuries, America has extended suffrage to landless peasants, women, blacks and other once-disenfranchised groups.  Yet today many Americans don't bother to vote: of those who do, how many are actually qualified to make an informed decision on their political future? Do you honestly think that "freedom" and "democracy" are served by giving the trolls who comment on most news stories a voice at the voting booth?  As we learn more about the science of mass psychology, it becomes easier to treat our audience like a target market: instead of battles between aristocratic factions, we have competing businesses selling politicians as products.  And instead of arguing one's case to an elite and educated few, we get demagogues and appeals to the mob instinct.

This is not to say that fascism is an answer; neither is it to minimize the very real excesses committed by each of these regimes. But it may be worthwhile to ask ourselves just what is meant by our chosen buzzwords "freedom" and "democracy," and in what ways they have improved our lives and the lives of those around us. It may also be worthwhile to consider to what extent our contemporary Western socialist/democratic political system is a product of the Enlightenment - and what political systems will take its place in a post-Enlightenment era.

Evola and Judaism: for Mad Fishmonger

Right after I posted my response to Mad Fishmonger, he went and posted a response to me.  Alas, his post has left me with more questions than answers.

Evola, while not convinced of their authenticity, made, amongst points, the extremely valid point that in many ways The Protocols do accurately reflect what many Jewish leaders do now or have in the past wished to bring about in the world.

Which contemporary and/or historical Jewish leaders are seeking world domination?  If you're going to make a statement as explosive as this, you will really need specific examples to back it up.  Who are these wannabe Elders of Zion and what has their influence been on world history and contemporary culture?  Without names, dates and places I'm going to have a hard time accepting that this statement is even slightly, never mind extremely, valid.  

Even a summary perusal of the canonical texts of Jewish law unambiguously supports his conclusion that Jewish law is based on a racial distinction between Jew and Goy, a distinction placing Goy at a lower level, no better than slaves and at times less than animals.

Which "canonical texts of Jewish law" are we talking about here? An English translation of The Babylonian Talmud runs to 22 volumes, while Penguin's selection of essential Talmudic texts is nearly 900 pages.  It could be that Mad Fishmonger has made a summary perusal of these works. It could also be that he is speaking of passages which were taken out of context by people who were searching for evidence of Jewish perfidy.  I would want to see the results of this summary perusal before I made any further comment. 

And, as I said in a previous paragraph, Zionism is not a special case in relation to religious triumphalism, i.e. the effort to install one's religion as the prevailing political power, and sometimes to spread the religion through conversion efforts, though modern Judaism specifically has little interest in conversion and some even actively doubt the possibility of conversion based on the legal distinction between Jew and Goy.

Mad Fishmonger is correct in stating that modern Judaism has little interest in conversion.  But I've never heard of any Jewish religious leader who doubted the possibility of giyur, or conversion.  As Lubavitcher Rabbi Tzvi Freeman says: "In short, a ger is an adopted member of the Jewish family. In the words of the paradigm of all gerim, Ruth the Moabite, 'Your people are my people; your G‑d is my G‑d.'"

As far as religious triumphalism goes, there is certainly a strong emphasis in Judaism upon the Holy Land, aka Zion. But while there is considerable quibbling over where the borders of that land should lie, I've not yet found any Jewish leaders who believe they should dominate the whole world.  One might argue that Zionism has led to a state of apartheid in the state of Israel: indeed, many have. But there's far less connection to Zionism and a call for world domination. 

Right now I'm inclined to think that Mad Fishmonger has fallen into the trap which led me to post my earlier message.  He is an intelligent and well-meaning guy who has bought into a line of toxic nonsense spun by people with unsavory agendas. Thankfully, he is smart enough to repudiate many of the most dangerous myths connected with these agendas.  He has repeatedly disavowed the existence of a shadowy Zionist conspiracy which controls Hollywood, Jerusalem, Washington and Wall Street.  What concerns me is the people who are reading this crap and buying into it wholesale. 

Truthiness in Anti-Zionist Country: Henry Ford and Julius Evola

Since the discussions on Henry Ford continue to garner interest, I thought I'd add yet another post to the subject.  As I promised earlier, here's more on Mad Fishmonger's original comment:

I generally agree with you. However, I think Julius Evola, who couldn't really be defined as an anti-Semite (he had issues with Judaism but nothing he didn't express similar issues about with virtually every other group and institution), made a point when he said that although the Protocols are a certain fraud (their certainty had not been established when he wrote this, but he strongly allowed the likelihood), it isn't entire off base about what certain elements of Judaism wish to have happen, i.e. the world bowing before Israel. They literally speak a prayer every year at Jubilee, sung by top Israeli leaders, for all nations and races to grobble on their knees at the feet of Israel and the Almighty Chosen People. The very fact that they call themselves Chosen People, and often literally believe this is so, should be reasonable ground to be concerned about the agenda of many of their leaders.

Here's what Julius Evola had to say in his preface for the Italian edition of the Protocols:

Here, as rightly pointed out by Guénon, lies the decisive point, which puts the question of 'authenticity' into perspective : the fact is that no truly and seriously secret organisation, whatever its nature, leaves behind written 'documents'. It is only by inductive processes that the importance of texts such as the 'Protocols' can be determined. This means that the problem of their 'authenticity' is secondary to the far more serious and essential problem of their 'veracity', as was already emphasised by Giovani Preziosi when he published them for the first time seventeen years ago. The serious and positive conclusion of the whole controversy which has developed since is that, even if we assume that the 'Protocols' are not 'authentic' in the narrow sense, it comes to the same thing as if they were, for two capital and decisive reasons : 

1) because the facts show that they describe the real state of affairs truthfully ;
2) because their correspondence with the governing ideas of both traditional and modern Judaism is indisputable.

What Evola is saying here is that even if the Protocols are a crude forgery, they should still be taken as authentic.  In this he echoes another great American philosopher, political pundit Stephen Colbert, who has advocated a "truthiness" which is more concerned with gut feelings than elitist facts.  Except, of course, that Stephen Colbert is a satirist and Evola appears to be deadly serious here.

Mad Fishmonger claims that Evola "couldn't really be defined as an anti-Semite." Putting aside the simple fact that he wrote an introduction to the Protocols, let's take a look at some of his comments in that preface:

As the Berne trial provoked by the 'Protocols' was widely talked about, we shall describe it here, so that the reader knows where he stands and does not let himself be influenced by tendentious reportage. The Berne trial was really just a manoeuvre on the part of international Judaism, which attempted to use Swiss justice, or, to put it better, Swiss marxist 'justice', to obtain a sort of official legal determination of the non-authenticity of the document which so troubles Israel.

***** 

Here another decisive proof of the veracity of the 'Protocols' as Jewish document becomes apparent, namely, that to draw from that Law all its logical consequences on the plane of action means, precisely, to arrive more or less at what is essential in the 'Protocols' : International Judaism has striven to prove that the 'Protocols' are 'false', while always taking great care to avoid the question of whether that document, true or false, corresponds to the Jewish spirit. And it is precisely that question which we would like to examine now. Jewish Law is based on the radical distinction between the Jew and the non-Jew, which is presented more or less in the same terms as that between human and animal, or that between élite and slaves ; from this is derived the promise that the universal Reign of Israel will come sooner or later, and that all peoples will have to submit to the sceptre of Judah ; it is the duty of the Jew to see only violence and injustice in any law which is not his Law, to manifest a torment, and a baseness, wherever his power is less than absolute ; from this is derived a double morality which limits solidarity to the Jewish race, while approving every form of lying, trickery, and treachery, in the relations between Jews and non-Jews, thus making the latter into outlaws ; finally we find the sanctification of gold and interest as instruments of the power of the Jew, to whom, by divine promise, all the wealth of the earth must peculiarly belong, and who must 'devour' any people that the Lord will give to him.

Given this example, it would appear that Evola can indeed be defined as an anti-Semite.  In fact, it would require some truly heroic sleight of mind not to define him thusly.  This may not invalidate all his   work: Henry Ford built some fine cars and Richard Wagner composed some top-notch operas. But it certainly calls into question his judgment, and makes his pronouncements on Jews and Jewish conspiracies useless as anything but a study in psychopathology.

More on Occupying Wall Street, Quoting Henry Ford

Since my previous post on Henry Ford's "banking and monetary system" quote has garnered a fair bit of attention, I thought I'd respond to some of the points made here.  (I've already answered a couple of these in the comments, but hope to go into a bit more detail for this post).

First, Nutty Professor said:

I agree. But we don't need distractions and tribal bickering in these times. Press forward for others to remain focused. Use spiritual energy to raise the vibration. This is something that everyone can do, irrespective of what they think of Henry Ford or whomever-the-fuck.

I am not sure we should be ignoring this particular "distraction." Right now Occupy Wall Street is a nascent and nebulous movement. There are many voices striving to be heard. There are also many people seeking to reshape OWS and use it to their desired ends, and many others who would like to discredit the protestors altogether.  Ignoring or glossing over intolerable behavior for the cause is not a viable option: look how well it worked for the Communist Party in postwar Europe and the Roman Catholic Church in contemporary America.  

I appreciate that OWS is a decentralized movement which is united mainly by frustration with economic inequality in America. I realize that when nobody is in charge there's nobody to say what is and is not Official OWS doctrine.  But I also recognize that this means OWS protestors - and sympathizers - have the responsibility to stand up and speak out: this is a consensus movement and silence will be treated as consent.  

Then V.V.F. opined: 

I don't know what exactly has breathed new life into this pseudo-Illuminati anti-Zionist Satanic Conspiracy stuff, but for some reason it seems like it's hit fever pitch. People are spouting this stuff everywhere you look, and I find it pretty disturbing.

I think there are several factors at play. One is that people are presently not feeling particularly charitable toward corporations and plutocrats: they'll happily beat bankers with any stick they can find.  A second is that the Internet has provided us much greater access to data but has done very little to improve our critical faculties.  (Indeed, I'd argue that the "information wants to be free" ethos of many OWS protestors might make them more likely to take seriously long-discredited crapola like the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.  Since people have censored it for decades, there must be some truth they are trying desperately to hide... or so the reasoning goes). 

A third, alas, is that for several decades Zionist organizations - real Zionist organizations like AIPAC and B'nai Brith, not the shadowy world leaders found in Nazi fapfest pamphlets - have equated criticism of Israeli foreign and domestic policy with anti-Semitism.  And while this has been an extremely effective political tool, it's also led to a great deal of skepticism about the term.  When you classify criticism of Israeli cluster bombs and Israeli settlements on Palestinian land as "anti-Semitism," you water down the term until it becomes meaningless.  

Because these are interesting times, many folks on the fringe are hoping to move closer to the center.  Their response to the current ill feeling about "international bankers" is a time-honored one. And because many Zionist and Jewish organizations have wasted moral capital attacking honest critics and defending the indefensible (remember what I said about the Catholic Church and the European communist party?), they are likely to have trouble getting many OWS protestors to take them seriously. 

Finally, Mad Fishmonger responded with several comments: I hope to respond to him in more detail in a future post (after I've done a bit more research), but I wanted to clarify one thing.  I have no problem with people quoting Henry Ford on automobile manufacture, on workplace conditions, or on just about any other topic.  I realize that genius and execrable politics are not mutually exclusive: given that I'm currently reading Martin Heidegger, I'd be hard-pressed to argue otherwise.  

My issue here is that, for Ford, the problems with "our banking and monetary system" could be laid squarely at the feet of the Jew: when he used the words "international banker," he meant "international Jew."  And so when it comes to quotes about banking Ford is not a reliable source for anyone who rejects his ideas about a powerful Jewish conspiracy seeking global domination. 

Monotheism Ethical and Otherwise IV: for Dennis Prager

I | II | III | IV

In earlier installments, I've explored some of the problematic presuppositions underlying Dennis Prager's conception of "Ethical Monotheism." This post explores one of monotheism's greatest weaknesses, one which Prager avoids mentioning but which can clearly be seen in his first premise:

There is one God from whom emanates one morality for all humanity.

Polytheistic cultures may react to their neighbors' gods in a number of different ways. They may incorporate them into their native pantheons, as the Greeks did with the Thracean Ares and the Romans did with the Olympian deities. They may claim those gods are merely their own deities under a different name: Tacitus considered Odin to be a Germanic Mercury. They may travel to become initiated in the mysteries of a deity's worship, as the ancients did at Eleusis: they might bring those deities home and found new cults, like the Mithraic mysteries.  As the cultures incorporate foreign gods, so too do they incorporate foreign philosophy and science. 

A monotheist culture, by contrast, begins with the assumption that it honors the One God and follows the One Truth. Those who think otherwise are misguided at best and actively evil at worst. If they cannot be converted by reason or by force, they must be exterminated. 

But when the forbidden months are past, then fight and slay the Pagans wherever ye find them, an seize them, beleaguer them, and lie in wait for them in every stratagem (of war); but if they repent, and establish regular prayers and practise regular charity, then open the way for them: for Allah is Oft-forgiving, Most Merciful. If one amongst the Pagans ask thee for asylum, grant it to him, so that he may hear the word of Allah. and then escort him to where he can be secure. That is because they are men without knowledge.

Surah 9:5-6, al-Q'uran

No war ever undertaken by the Frank nation was carried on with such persistence and bitterness, or cost so much labour, because the Saxons, like almost all the tribes of Germany, were a fierce people, given to the worship of devils, and hostile to our religion, and did not consider it dishonourable to transgress and violate all law, human and divine.

Einhard, Charlemagne's biographer, describing the Christianization of northern Europe

This is not to say that the polytheistic worldview leads invariably to sunshine, rainbows and moral relativism. The Romans were horrified by the Carthaginian practice of child sacrifice:  Buddhists launched genocidal attacks against Mongolian shamans.  But there is far more room for commerce and cooperation amongst people who accept a multitude of deities than amongst people who divide the world into the faithful and the infidels. 

Occupying Wall Street, Quoting Henry Ford

As I'm sure you've all heard, there's this little protest that started in New York and has recently spread to many other cities.  As a result of this popular uprising, a growing number of people are expressing their long-simmering anger with the power of the American plutocracy.  And we've seen a fair number of much-shared Facebook photos which have expressed their pro-populist sentiments, including this one.

That's a nice, inspiring quote from the founder of Ford Motor Company.  He had many other quotes about the banking and monetary system ... or, more precisely, the people who run it.

There is apparently in the world today a central financial force which is playing a vast and closely organized game, with the world for its table and universal control for its stakes. The people of civilized countries have lost all confidence in the explanation that "economic conditions" are responsible for all the changes that occur. Under the camouflage of "economic law" a great many phenomena have been accounted for which were not due to any law whatever except the law of the selfish human will as operated by a few men who have the purpose and the power to work on a wide scale with nations as their vassals.

Whatever else may be national, no one today believes that finance is national. Finance is international. Nobody today believes that international finance is in any way competitive. There are some independent banking houses, but few strong independent ones. The great masters, the few whose minds see clearly the entire play of the plan, control numerous banking houses and trust companies, and one is used for this while another is used for that, but there is no disharmony between them, no correction of each other's methods, no competition in the interests of the business world. There is as much unity of policy between the principal banking houses of every country as there is between the various branches of the United States Post Office — and for the same reason, namely, they are all operated from the same source and for the same purpose.

Ford even wrote a book about this "central financial force" and gave away copies in the hopes of warning the American populace about the danger.  You can find it online today with a simple Google search for The International Jew.   It's nearly as popular as another book which Ford recommended, and which he quotes frequently in his tome: The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion.

Upon being informed of Ford's anti-Semitic streak, several people chimed in with their opinions. Some felt this was much ado about nothing.

Greg Foster Enough already with 1st and 2nd millennium tribal mentalities/identites. They're just about over and done with. Get with the 3rd millennium already.

Yesterday at 5:29pm ·  ·  4 people

Wayne Jones There is not a person on this page that does'nt have issues ford is a great founder of business in this country and still people discredit him get real folks move on in this world.

Yesterday at 10:34pm · 

And if some wanted to minimize Ford's Jew-hating, others reveled in it:

Ben Standard 

THe banking system IS jewish - its a fact and not just some wild claim. Henry Ford wasnt afraid to call a spade a spade. As for being anti - semitic .... Most jews have very little semitic heritage so to be against the evils of jewish elitism aka zionism doesnt make one semitic - jews arent semitic! However these white jewish racists are themselves anti semitic in their dealings with palestrinians and other arabs who ARE semites! Its time these elitists zionists stooges were exposed for their true colors and the fact that theyre imposters and are nothing more than anti semiticgentile swine themselves

Yesterday at 4:31pm ·  ·  5 people


Padraig Williams Rothchild zionists are not Jewish... that's just a facade. They are luciferians.

Yesterday at 5:06pm ·  ·  2 people

Padraig Williams True Jews are against Zionism.

Yesterday at 5:07pm ·  ·  1 person

Occupy Wall Street is presently following the Anonymous model of leaderless collective resistance. This means that anybody can join in the protests and offer their opinions.  And I recognize the strengths of that approach. On the other hand, I also remember when the Tea Party faithful claimed Barack Obama was a closet Muslim (with a phony birth certificate) who was going to introduce Sharia law.  And all that silliness wound up detracting from any substantive ideas they might have had. As it stands now, they're well on their way to the same irrelevance which has claimed other populist right-wing movements like the John Birch Society.  

If you want to criticize Israeli excesses against the Palestinians, there are plenty of people who agree with you, including many Israelis.  But spewing the old venom with "anti-Zionist" used as a polite euphemism for "anti-Semite" (which itself started out as a polite euphemism for "Jew-hater") serves nobody.  Nobody, that is, save the Jew-haters who would like to capitalize on our current mistrust of international banks for their own ends - and those who would like to discredit the movement by linking it to Nazism and anti-Semitism. 

Henry Ford is not a useful source of information on international banking. Quoting him on the subject suggests that you are grossly uninformed at best and a bigot at worst.   The Protocols of the Elders of Zion is not a thought-provoking exposé. It is a crude forgery which has cost many innocent people their lives.   Sooner or later somebody is going to have to stand up and say "this, ladies and gentlemen, is a steaming pile of horseshit and no amount of consensus, cooperation and open-mindedness is going to change that fact." And so, in that spirit, let me be the one to break out the shovel. 

Monotheism Ethical and Otherwise III: for Dennis Prager

I | II | III | IV

In his essay on Ethical Monotheism, Mr. Prager writes:

One morality also means one moral code for all humanity. "Thou shall not murder" means that murder is wrong for everyone, not just for one culture. It means that suttee, the now rare but once widespread Hindu practice of burning widows with their husband's body, is wrong. It means the killing of a daughter or sister who lost her virginity prior to marriage, practiced to this day in parts of the Arab world, is immoral. It means that clitoridectomies, the cutting off of a girl's clitoris (and sometimes more), a ritual practiced on almost one hundred million women living today mostly in Africa, is immoral. 

As I noted in my first post on ethical monotheism,  Prager's G-d, as set forth in Prager's Holy Scriptures, demands the murder by stoning of women who come to the bridal bed with ruptured hymens.  If anything, I would think that Prager would praise the Arabs who still practice "honor killings," as they are upholding the "one moral code for all humanity" more stringently than their secular cousins in Israel.  But as we see in this June 30, 2009 column at the conservative website Townhall.com, Mr. Prager has a serious problem with Muslims who stone adulteresses:

Yet, now, released as if by Providence the week after the fraudulent elections in Iran and the suppression and murder of Iranian dissidents, is a film about the nature of the radical Muslims who govern Iran. Titled "The Stoning of Soraya M.," the film depicts events based on the true story of a woman stoned to death in a rural village in Iran in 1986 for allegedly committing adultery. 

If you want to understand the type of people who run Iran, see this film. If you want to understand why men and women risk their lives to demonstrate against the fascist theocracy that rules Iran, see this film. The film is about the type of peoLple who become “supreme leader” (Ali Khamanei) or president of Iran (Mahmoud Ahmadinejad). It is about their mendacity, their use of religion to commit barbarity, and, of course, their despicable treatment of women.

We should also note that Prager's distaste for murder does not include a distaste for capital punishment. In this December 12, 2006 column Prager claimed "It is a cosmic injustice to allow a murderer to keep his life" and noted:

The most common objection opponents offer against capital punishment is that innocents may be executed. 

My answer has always been that this is so rare (I do not know of a proved case of mistaken execution in America in the last 50 years) that society must be prepared to pay that terrible price. Why? Among other reasons, because more innocents will be killed by murderers who are not executed (in prison, or once released or if they escape) than will be killed by the state in erroneous executions. 

So, yes, I acknowledge the possibility of an innocent being killed by the state because of a mistaken murder conviction. But we often have the tragedy of innocents dying because of a social policy. I support higher speed limits even when shown that they lead to more traffic fatalities. I support the right of people to drink alcohol even though the amount of violence directly emanating from alcohol consumption -- from drunk drivers to spousal and child abuse -- is so high.

The Innocence Project might have something to say about Prager's contention concerning proved cases of execution in America.  So too might those wild-eyed left-wing radicals at the National Conference of Catholic Bishops.  And the troubling issues of racism and classism in the death penalty's application have led many to compare it to lynching.  But Mr. Prager appears unconcerned by these nay-sayers.  He feels that the execution of murderers is a moral imperative, while the execution of adulteresses and whores is repugnant.  And yet the "one moral code" which he so zealously upholds is quite clear that adultery and wantonness is as deserving of death as willful murder.

But in case you might think I'm accusing Mr. Prager of being soft on sexual sin, let's look at his feelings on homosexuality:

Jews or Christians who take the Bible's views on homosexuality seriously are not obligated to prove that they are not fundamentalists or literalists, let alone bigots (though, of course, people have used the Bible to defend bigotry). Rather, those who claim homosexuality is compatible with Judaism or Christianity bear the burden of proof to reconcile this view with their Bible. Given the unambiguous nature of the biblical attitude toward homosexuality, however, such a reconciliation is not possible. All that is possible is to declare: "I am aware that the Bible condemns homosexuality, and I consider the Bible wrong." That would be an intellectually honest approach. But this approach leads to another problem. If one chooses which of the Bible's moral injunctions to take seriously (and the Bible states its prohibition of homosexuality not only as a law, but as a value --- "it is an abomination"), of what moral use is the Bible?

You might ask about those moral injunctions to stone harlots and homosexuals. Prager, one step ahead of you, follows up with these paragraphs:

Those who advocate religious acceptance of homosexuality also argue that the Bible prescribes the death penalty for a multitude of sins, including such seemingly inconsequential acts as gathering wood on the Sabbath. Thus, the fact that the Torah declares homosexuality a capital offense may mean that homosexuality is no more grave an offense than some violation of the Sabbath. And since we no longer condemn people who violate the Sabbath, why continue to condemn people who engage in homosexual acts?

The answer is that we do not derive our approach toward homosexuality from the fact that the Torah made it a capital offense. We learn it from the fact that the Bible makes a moral statement about homosexuality. It makes no statement about gathering wood on the Sabbath. The Torah uses its strongest term of censure --- "abomination" --- to describe homosexuality. It is the Bible's moral evaluation of homosexuality that distinguishes homosexuality from other offenses, capital or otherwise.  

This is fair enough. Yet among the other offenses which are condemned as toevot (abominations) are incest, child sacrifice, idolatry, usury... and, according to the Prophet Isaiah, adultery.  If it is a cosmic injustice to allow a murderer to keep his life, surely it's an even greater cosmic injustice to tolerate the continuing existence of a toe'vah.   And so our "one moral code for all humanity" brings us (and Mr.  Prager) back to the town square with a pile of rocks at our feet.