Israel through (genuinely) Liberal Eyes

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1. American exceptionalism is a current myth . . .

   If it is a myth now it wasn’t always, generally speaking.

   . . . a European unit in the world organization of the United Nations… one of several continental units, the pillars of the world instrument for maintaining security.”

   This is probably the main issue I trumpet. A nuclear Iran is a real threat to the world but should not overshadow the very real prospects of global tyranny which will end in universal chaos and war. Iran will be obliterated if they attempt to use nuclear weapons; but a world government turns the whole planet into a prison.

   A world government could be established, following the collapse of the global economic system or the dollar, which, is not that unlikely. Environmental issues have also been used to condition societies to accept international authority.

   Following a collapse of currency or hyperinflation, a majority will accept a global order if they believe it will put food back on the table and restore some from of normalcy.

   Already, Russia and China are not opposed to the idea of a global authority, if it fits their demands. I do not believe either would play by the rules in cases where self interest is in conflict.

   In the end, a New World order is a kingdom that fits the fascinating description in Daniel chapter 2—a world kingdom made up of alliances; a kingdom of iron that stands upon feet made part of iron and partly of clay:

   41 Whereas you saw the feet and toes, part of potters’ clay, and part of iron, it shall be a divided kingdom; but there shall be in it of the strength of the iron, because you saw the iron mixed with miry clay. 42 As the toes of the feet were part of iron, and part of clay, so the kingdom shall be partly strong, and partly broken. 43 Whereas you saw the iron mixed with miry clay, they shall mingle themselves with the seed of men; but they shall not cling to one another, even as iron does not mingle with clay.

   The last part [emphasized] portrays a world kingdom built upon the idea of a multicultural civilization. However, the diverse cultures do not adhere to one another and the whole world order collapses.

2. What is a liberal?
   Conservatives are liberals.

   True liberals stand and fight for freedom; that’s what the right is doing. The left advocates for the shackles of dependance on government and fights against free enterprise, free markets and free choice.

   True liberals stand and fight for equality; that’s what the right is doing. The left advocates for people having special rights according to their sex lives, what they look like or what language they speak.

   True liberals stand and fight for freedom of speech; that’s what the right is doing. The left advocates for “fairness” thereby limiting freedom of speech.

   True liberals stand and fight for freedom of religion – or from it; that’s what the right is doing. The left advocates suppression of religion, unless of course the religion is Islam, the most intolerant illiberal theological political movement on earth.

   Those referred to as “conservatives” are the fighters for freedom, the true “liberals”.

   I urge you to use the term “leftist” when referring to those on the left. The word implies that a member of that group is subversive and destructive to his/her country – and always to Israel, which is an incontrovertible truth.

3. Sarah Palin is leading the fight against the new world order prefering US exceptionalism and patriotism.

   I strongly disagree with you on Palin. Obama is doing everything to build her up hoping she becomes his opponent in 2012. She would be the democrats weakest candidate.

   America has to a large extent lost her patriotism beginning with the Korean war exploding over Vietnam and the Iraq invasion proved to be a watershed. The only thing keeping a relative lid on the opposition is that thre is no longer a draft and for at least half of Americans there is no love or respect for the military.

   American exceptionalism is a current myth that began it’s downward slide during the late sixties when American Industry folded against the Japanese. American Industries either closed or were shipped to Asia.

4. I think many in Europe are having buyers remorse for having bought into multiculturalism and the EU.

   Some but too few and too late!

   Europe is finished as the historical Europe we have known till recently. The EU will implode within the next 5-10 years if not sooner.
   THE NEW EU NOW PUSHING ITS LISBON TREATY: MEMBER STATES ARE NO LONGER SOVEREIGN…….

   New EU ambassador in Washington claims transatlantic authority
   The new European Union ambassador to Washington has suggested that he will speak for Britain on foreign and security policy in America.

   This movement goes back to Huxley and Churchill. Read this:

   “The United Nations Organization must immediately be equipped with an international armed force… a force for action, a true Temple of Peace.”

   “We are engaged in the process of creating a European unit in the world organization of the United Nations… one of several continental units, the pillars of the world instrument for maintaining security.”

   1. The quotes are from Winston Churchill, the first from paragraph 10 of his speech, “The Sinews of Peace,” March 05, 1946 delivered at Westminster College, Fulton, Missouri, often termed the ‘iron curtain’ speech; the second quote from “the Council of Europe,” delivered at the Council in Strasbourg, August 17, 1949.
   2. H. G. Wells, The New World Order (NY, Knopf 1940; re-print, Filiquarian 2007), 132, chapter 12, “World Order in Being”; Churchill, “the Sinews of Peace” op. cit.

5. I consider liberalism a mental disorder.

6. If only Obama would follow the constitution.

   Obama hates the Constitution and is determined to undermine it, and replace it with international law. America is somewhat unique as a country in the amount of power individual states have. Obama is destroying state sovereignty through centralization of power under the Federal Government. The second phase is to submit US power to an international body. If this is happening in the US, what do you think will happen under a World Government where most of the world citizenry is already adapted to socialism and centralization of power?

   Even if there were one, a World Constitution would be worthless, being interpreted mostly by nations who are authoritarian or totalitarian. A majority consensus of nations would determine right and wrong and establish international law, at least on some basic issues. All nations would be obligated to comply. The nations would have the power to settle the Middle-East conflict by Global decree. Would that be a good thing? Israel can not survive in such a system.

   3. Neither Hazony nor Cohen give even a hint of what kind of new paradigm, new policies and new and improved PR that Israel must fashion in order to counter, blunt or overcome the world’s rising anti-Israel negativity and antipathy and resurgent anti-semitism.

   There isn’t any. The only recourse Israel has is independence—independence is preemptive. Sovereignty is the only defense.

7. I think many in Europe are having buyers remorse for having bought into multiculturalism and the EU. Sarah Palin is leading the fight against the new world order prefering US exceptionalism and patriotism. Israel is a partner in this fight. So the answer is not that we need a new paradigm but that we need the old one.

   But Bill is right to point out that its not just the new paradigm that affects us but the old antisemitism too.

8. Though Hazony’s essay is interesting, it is nonetheless a flawed and unhelpful explanation as to why Israel is being singled out for villification, demonization and delegitimization.

   To butress his analysis, Hazony draws on Thomas Kuhn’s very influential academic 1962 book called The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, which provided a new and insightful explanation for “academic thinking about the way we search for truth, and about the way we come to believe the things we believe”, which Kuhn believed was in the context of scentific paradigms and that those paradigms had had implications well beyond the sciences. Hazony further summarized his thinking thusly:

   scientists are trained to see the world in terms of a certain framework of interrelated concepts, which Kuhn calls a paradigm. In the overwhelming majority of cases, the paradigm not only determines the interpretation that a scientist gives the facts, but even what facts there are to be interpreted: The “facts” that scientists consider admissible for discussion are those that easily conform to the dominant paradigm, or that can be made to conform to it by extending the paradigm or introducing minor repairs into it. Those facts that can’t be made to conform to the reigning paradigm are overlooked entirely or dismissed as unimportant.

   Hazony proceeds with his premise that a paradigm that validated the value of a nation state offering its people the path to salvation of self determination, rights and freedoms, all within a cohesive society, has given way to a new paradigm.

   That new paradigm holds that such salvation can much better be achieved by breaking down the walls of nation states and building new walls encompassing all peoples within those former states to be governed by a form of universal government. Citing the European Union as exemplifying this new paradigm, Hazony says this new European political state of being is a first step along the road to a world government as theorized by Immanuel Kant in his 1795 philosphical work, Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Sketch.

   Hazony summarizes Kant’s view of how the world will get right with itself, saying Kant makes an:

   “attack on the ideal of the nation-state, comparing national self-determination to the lawless freedom of savages, which, he said, is rightly detested as “barbarism,” and a “brutish debasement of humanity.” As he wrote:

   We look with profound contempt upon the way in which savages cling to their lawless freedom. They would rather engage in incessant strife than to submit to legal constraint…. We regard this as barbarism, coarseness, and brutish debasement of humanity. We might thus expect civilized peoples, each united within itself as a [nation] state, would hasten to abandon so degrading a condition as soon as possible. But instead of doing so, each state sees its own majesty… precisely in not having to submit to any external constraint, and the glory of its ruler consists in his power to order thousands of people to immolate themselves….

   For Kant, then, the hallmark of reason in politics is the willingness to give up any kind of right to act on the basis of one’s own political independence. This is true of the individual, when he submits to the lawful order of the political state. And it is true of nations as well, which must in the same way give up any right to independent action and enter into an “international state” that will assume all rights respecting the use of force and the establishment of justice:

   There is only one rational way in which states co-existing with other states can emerge from the lawless condition of pure warfare…. They must renounce their savage and lawless freedom, adapt themselves to public coercive laws, and thus form an international state, which would necessarily continue to grow until it embraced all the people of the earth.[8]”

   Hazony proceeds from there to contend that because Israel as a nation state is premised on the old paradigm abandoned by Europe, the EU thus demonizes and seeks to delegitimize Israel because her existence flies in the face of the new political/social paradigm of a universal peoples governed by a universal government in start contrast to the older nation state paradigm.

   Ben Cohen mildly takes issue with Hazony’s analysis when he says:

   Hazony’s mistake is to conflate Kant’s idea of perpetual peace with Judt’s post-national critique of Israel.

   Cohen however, concurs with Hazony’s employing Kant’s analysis based on paradigms and that Israel does need a new paradigm when he says:

   Yoram Hazony is supremely correct when he says that work on constructing a new paradigm for Israel must begin now. I would urge him, as he does so, not to cast aside Kant, with his emphasis on reason and his insistence on liberal government.

   Like Afghanistan, like Iraq, Israel is one of the great tests of the post 9-11 era: whether we are willing to spread the core principles of liberty and whether we are prepared to embrace a natural ally in that same spirit.

   Cohen’s thinking, like Hazony’s, is flawed and unhelpful in a number of respects, several of which are:

   1. Hazony is an academic writing for academics and nerds that frequent blogs like Israpundit. Relatively few outside academia would have the patience to read these views. Furthermore, the vast majority of Westerners simply do not think like this or think this deeply. Given that, the extent to which Hazony’s treatise provides practical insight and guidance to most Westerners is questionable.

   2. While Hazony’s premise that the new paradigm has replaced the old and the creation of the EU in 1992 is evidence of that, may generally be a fair and valid one, that premise simply does not come close to adequately explaining the EU’s negative attitude and antipathy towards Israel.

   In particular, Hazony has failed to incorporate two very obvious and significant factors that together account for the EU’s increasingly hostile views towards Israel:

   a. Antisemtism which has existed since the beginnings of Christianity and which anti-semitism became lethal once Emporer Constantine made Christianity the religion of the one acceptable religion of the Roman Empire. With the Nicean code of 325 a.d. promulgated under Constantine, people that did not accept the fundamental tenets of Christianity were to be cursed. We all know how that story has played out since.

   b. The power and influence of Arab oil, the transformation of the world economy from a gold standard to an oil standard, the increasing dependence of Western nations on oil producers to satisfy their thirst for oil to fuel their homes, transportation and industries, the consequential increasing vulnerabilities of Western nations to accommodating and appeasing the OPEC nations sensibilities and sensitivities and other similar consequences of an oil driven Western civilization so dependent on oil producers.

   Few Western nations, especially Americans, will soon forget the suffering caused them when in 1973, the OPEC nations in revenge for America coming to Israel’s aid during the 1973 Yom Kippur War and enabling Israel to once again turn back the genocidal Arabs’ effort to severely harm, if not destroy Israel.

   Even for those Western nations that did not suffer the impact of that embargo, that embargo served as a stark object lesson for them and they too have not forgotten that lesson.

   There is little if any difference in the Arab and much of the Muslim world at large, between pervasive anti-semitism and anti-Israel sentiment.

   Even Britain, from whence came in 1917 the Balfour Declaration, turned against the Jews as Britain seeing the Arabs as more important to them then the Jews, soon gave away 78% of their mandated lands destined for the Jews, armed and led Arabs in their hate filled attacks on Jews, blockaded the remaining 22% of the mandated lands from Jewish immigration post WWII, armed the Arabs and when it came time to vote on the partition Resolution of 1947, Britain abstained. Britian did not recognize Israel until 2 years after she declared herself a state and only after it was certain that Israel and her Jews were there to stay and would not easily be eradicated by the Jew hating Arabs.

   Thus ever present anti-semitism within the West and the perceived need of furthering Western interests, primarily regarding oil by appeasing as much as their stomachs could take, Arab anti-Jewish and anti-Israel sensibilities has worked in tandem to turn up the anti-Israel heat by Western nations.

   3. Neither Hazony nor Cohen give even a hint of what kind of new paradigm, new policies and new and improved PR that Israel must fashion in order to counter, blunt or overcome the world’s rising anti-Israel negativity and antipathy and resurgent anti-semitism.

9. Although there is one American Government, the constitution and states rights keep everything in balance. If only Obama would follow the constitution.

10. Thus the Liberal abandons the paradigm of a world made up of nation states and relinguishes his countries statehood for a higher moral order namely, world government.

    A one world government precludes a Jewish State. It must be anti-Zionist by definition, and thus, will be anti-Semitic. Any adherence to a Jewish identity of the State of Israel will be deemed racist.

    Ironic that Jews would place their hope in the end of sovereign nations. That was Hitler’s goal. Hitler’s vision was the end of nation states. Only nation states stopped him. The people who support the notion of a central global authority with absolute power are fools who are rebuilding the Nazi dream, whether they realize it or not.

11. Felix, I will try to deal with you questions
    1. I think the essay defines “liberal” for purposes of the essay. A liberal is a person who accepts the new paradigm i.e. a new world order. This is who he is talking about.
    I think Kuhn merely pointed out that over the centuries, scientists were constrained by and informed by the prevaling paradigm. When the paradigm changed then new thinking took place. I read it quickly but that is the general idea.

    So he makes an analogy to politics suggesting that so long as the paradigm remained that the highest value was the nation state then that determined a particular value system in place. Israel fit well into that paradigm. But now that the paradigm has dramatically changed to relinguishment of sovereignty, Israel is left dangling in the wind.

    2. He is suggesting that these suggestions would be sensible in the old paradigm but they are irrelevant with the new one. I agree with this. I don’t think he equated them.

    The only reason he mentions the left is because that’s who have accepted the new paradigm and who criticize Israel whereas the right is trying to hold on the the old paradigm, a la Palin.

    We both agree that better PR won’t avail in the new paradigm.

    3. Kuhn’s proposition is correct. The example you stated seems to be to be more of a semantic argument. Newton believed that he said it all, Einstein went further. Newton was all about certain physical laws having a lot to do with gravity. Einstein went way beyond gravity and proved thaere were other laws that Newton didn’t know about. I think this is a paradigm shift. You don’t.

    Isn’t the objective truth limited to the paradigm it is in. But leaving that aside, yes there are facts but they are given different values depending on the value system or paradigm. Harzony says facts in one paradigm have great value but in another paradigm are irrelevant. We are not talking about trutth but the relevance of facts.

12. As I continue to read

    This worries me greatly and I admit I need all the help I can get

    Kuhn was famous, of course, for pointing out that things don’t go on like this forever. The history of science is punctuated by shifts in the dominant paradigm, as when Aristotelian physics gave way to Newtonian physics, or when Newton’s science was displaced by Einstein’s. Kuhn calls these shifts in paradigm scientific revolutions, and in the book he discusses tens of such shifts from the history of the physical sciences. Kuhn concludes that while most scientists are reasonable people, what we would usually consider reasonable discussion and argument only takes place among scientists who subscribe to the same paradigm. Nothing like a normal process of persuasion is involved in battles between competing paradigms. Indeed, when scientists representing competing paradigms argue, there is often no way at all that either one will be able to prove his case to the other:

    I have always been trained to believe that Einstein did not replace Newton in the way suggested above.

    That the truths which Newton established were objective truths.
    

    Many of these truths remained true and Einstein in fact based himself on these truths, but went beyond those truths to gain new truths. This is the path of knowledge.

    I feel what Kuhn was saying is that there can be no objective truth.

    This method of relativism conflicts in my opinion with the method also of such important researchers as Francisco Gil White or Jared Israel.

    You lay out the facts in relation to the historical role of the US rulers towards Islam, or to be more specific towards Iran

    The facts are laid down and from those facts you draw certain conclusions, which in a philosophical sense I consider as objective truth.

    For example, in the case of FGW anyway, that the US rulers have always been hostile to Israel, that the US rulers are in a tight alliance with Islam and with the Arab states, that therefore they the US rulers will NOT stop the Iranian Nuclear Bomb, and that therefore it is a TRUTH that Israel has to stop the Iranian Bomb on its own

    Kuhn is saying that is YOUR objective truth. And the words “your” and “objective” are obviously in contradiction

    He is saying that the human mind is incapable of reaching objective truth.

    He is saying that one man´s opinion is as good as another, which is the basis for the whole of present day conspiracy thinking, a la Alex Jones. In my opinion this represents the end of an objective truth, and the end of science.

13. I did not read very far until i found something very puzzling

    As to the reactions of Jews and other friends of Israel to these smear campaigns—as far as I can tell, the reactions haven’t really changed in the last generation either: My friends on the political left always seem to think that a change of Israeli policy could prevent these campaigns of vilification, or at least lessen their reach. My friends on the political right always seem to say that what we need is “better PR”.

    No doubt, Israel could always stand to have better policies and better public relations. But my own view is that neither of these otherwise sensible reactions can help improve things, because neither really gets to the heart of what’s been happening to Israel’s legitimacy. Israel’s policies have fluctuated radically over the past 30 or 40 years, being sometimes better, sometimes worse.

    Why did this writer include the words “otherwise sensible” to the above, and why does he equate the two.

    the idea of PR IS indeed sensible, and more than that, urgent, but why does he confuse that with what he calls the left, waht i call traitors, proposal to cave in to fascism?

14. being born into this period of man´s history, and haven taken up definite positions, I find my role is to be combative on many fronts.

    A feature of Ted´s work on Israpundit is that one thing follows another, and indeed issues are dropped very quickly, and I intend this not to be the case here.

    So I will start here with Ted´s remarks above and then when I get an answer move on to the rest above.

    T. Belman. I took the trouble to read Yoam Hazony’s essay and was well rewarded for my efforts. Its brilliant There can be no understanding of Israel’s present predicament without a full understanding of what Hazony has to say. Boiled down, he says that the Liberal who grew up in nation states has decided that they lead to Auschwitz. Thus the Liberal abandons the paradigm of a world made up of nation states and relinguishes his countries statehood for a higher moral order namely, world government. Just as an individual in a nation state submits to the power of the state, a nation state must submit to the power of a World Government.

    According to this paradigm, Israel is nationalist Germany heading for Auschwitz. So Israel’s defense of her nation state is not acceptable. She must abandon her nation state. Therefore Zionism is the enemy of the new world order and it is the enemy of Zionism and Israel. The facts are irrelevant. Only the new paradigm matters

    .

    What is meant by “liberal”?

    What is meant in the essay by “paradym” and how does the writers explanation of paradym relate to science, a la “the scientific method”?

    I await your answer on these Ted before I continue…