Eidelberg on the "politics of compassion"

A Discourse on Statesmanship is in large part a contrast between the politics of the American founders, especially Madison and Hamilton, and those of Woodrow Wilson, whom Eidelberg sees as the intellectual founder of a new American republic, greatly inferior to the original. Wilsonianism succeeded in transforming American politics so that it no longer aimed at justice or equality of opportunity, but rather equality of personal condition. The first Eidelberg sees as a felicitous synthesis of aristocratic and democratic principles, tending to protect the exercise of individual faculties by securing the economic differences to which they give rise; the second, as an unfettered democratic principle which ultimately leads to moral relativism . . . . CONTINUE

Rousseau on religion and the State

In today's American Thinker, Timothy Birdnow highlights an important passage from Rousseau's Social Contract, which is presented at greater length below. Birdnow is interested in unearthing the roots of the Left-Islamic alliance against Christian values—Rousseau being a key to leftist viewpoints—but the passage is of wider interest as well . . . . CONTINUE

Eidelberg on diversity, tolerance, and patriotism

In A Discourse on Statesmanship Eidelberg describes how the American Founding Father James Madison (whom Eidelberg rates very highly) favoured the establishment of a political orthodoxy centered around a standardized curriculum at institutions of higher learning, as a means of uniting the new, somewhat "multicultural" American republic.

Returning to Madison . . . it may be thought inconsistent of him to want to cultivate a political orthodoxy on the one hand, and "liberal sentiments" on the other. But Madison believed he understood the true principles of republican government and that these were embodied in the text he proposed for the University of Virginia's School of Politics. To imbue students with those principles would be to inculcate genuine patriotism, not national chauvinism. Properly understood, patriotism means a concern for the common good, a love of one's own people, their traditions, their institutions, their great men, their noble purposes. True patriotism is rooted in gratitude for the blessings which the past has bestowed upon the present . . . . CONTINUE

Eidelberg's proposal for an independent presidency

The Jewish political thinker Paul Eidelberg (see preceding post) does not seem to be widely known, in part presumably because in recent years he has concentrated his attention on the political problems facing Israel. This obscurity is unfortunate, because those problems are apparently to a great extent shared by the West as a whole—though in Israel their gravity is deepened by the existential external threat to which the country is permanently exposed, as well as (it turns out) by deficiencies specific to the Israeli political system. Much of what Eidelberg says is thus quite relevant to non-Jews, even if he is no longer addressing them . . . . CONTINUE

Paul Eidelberg on radical democracy

In an extended restatement of the thesis of Plato and Aristotle, Paul Eidelberg gives a compelling description of the transition from the democratic to the tyrannical phase of the "political cycle". It is from his Discourse on Statesmanship (1974), pp 63–68.

In the worst variety of democracy, there are no qualifications for voting or for holding office (apart from age, citizenship, and perhaps residence requirements). Accordingly, each individual has a right to an equal voice in public affairs. This fact alone has profound moral and intellectual consequences. First of all, it fosters the notion that one individual is as good as any other, that his opinions, or his likes and dislikes, are as valid as another's. Such a notion is utterly destructive of morality and even of rationality . . . . CONTINUE

Walkin' in a George Bush wonderland

Parapundit relays an account from 2002, in the heady days of neoconservative imperialist plot-hatching.

I am reminded of what an unnamed senior adviser to George W. Bush told reporter Ron Suskind about people who try to form their opinions based on empirical evidence.

In the summer of 2002, after I [Suskind] had written an article in Esquire that the White House didn't like about Bush's former communications director, Karen Hughes, I had a meeting with a senior adviser to Bush. He expressed the White House's displeasure, and then he told me something that at the time I didn't fully comprehend -- but which I now believe gets to the very heart of the Bush presidency.

The aide said that guys like me were "in what we call the reality-based community," which he defined as people who "believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality." I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. "That's not the way the world really works anymore," he continued. "We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do." Who besides guys like me are part of the reality-based community? Many of the other elected officials in Washington, it would seem. A group of Democratic and Republican members of Congress were called in to discuss Iraq sometime before the October 2002 vote authorizing Bush to move forward. A Republican senator recently told Time Magazine that the president walked in and said: "Look, I want your vote. I'm not going to debate it with you." When one of the senators began to ask a question, Bush snapped, "Look, I'm not going to debate it with you."

It used to be said that conservatives were those who based their position on historical experience, while liberals believed they could design policies using the power of reason. To this we must add a third category, the loonies who think that reality will defer to the force of their naked will.

Caroline Glick: an Israeli crisis of corruption

The respected Jerusalem Post deputy managing editor Caroline Glick has an astonishing column from January 5th which deals with, among other things, the reasons for the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza.

Many outside Israel watched with amazement as the reputed right-wing hardliner Ariel Sharon handed over territory in Gaza, which contained long-established Jewish settlements, to the Palestinians, gaining nothing in return, and indeed inviting a stepped-up Arab militancy. According to Glick, the error of Sharon's withdrawal from Gaza was compounded by a simultaneous breach of the central principle of the peace treaty with Egypt: the demilitarization of the Sinai peninsula. The Egyptian forces now stationed on the border of Gaza have been permitting large-scale shipments of weapons into that territory from Lebanon, Iran and other sources. Together with a variety of other recent unfavourable developments, this is potentially catastrophic for the State of Israel.

Commenters on right-wing blogs, mystified by such behaviour, thought up ingenious explanations of how the withdrawal might be, for example, part of some devious plan to expose Palestinian government as corrupt, with a view to discrediting the Palestinian side in the eyes of world opinion. Glick, however, writes that Sharon's apparent conversion to the left-wing position on the "peace process" (more properly, "surrender process") was in fact the result of allegations of personal corruption. To save the skins of himself and his family, Sharon caved in to pressure from the leftist elites which dominate the Israeli media and judiciary, and which are evidently willing to use this power without restraint. This surrender on the part of Sharon was treasonous, whatever the validity of the original allegations—a subject which Glick doesn't write about here. The left at least honestly believed in the "peace process".

In 2003, Ariel Sharon and his sons found themselves on the brink of political, economic and personal destruction. Criminal investigations of their alleged corruption were coming to a head and it was widely predicted that Sharon and his sons Omri and Gilad would all be indicted on felony charges. A way had to be found to step away from the abyss. After advising with Sharon's personal attorney and chief of staff Dov Weisglass, Sharon and his sons chose to protect themselves by adopting the Left's irrational strategy of destroying Israeli communities and giving their land to terrorists. That is how the policy of retreating from Gaza and northern Samaria and carrying out the mass expulsion of Israeli citizens from the areas was born.

. . . . Overnight the media transformed Sharon from the corrupt politician to the visionary leader. As Amnon Abramovich, Channel 2's chief commentator explained, the media understood that corrupt or not, their job was to protect Sharon to make sure he threw the Jews out of Gush Katif. And as Supreme Court Justice Mishel Cheshin admitted in an interview upon his retirement, the Supreme Court justices would never have dreamed of acting against Sharon lest they endanger the withdrawal.

Sharon's betrayal prompted the resignation of the IDF chief of staff, Lt. Gen. Ya'alon, and the demotion of those who questioned Sharon's irrational policy. The result of this is that the top positions in Israel's cabinet, civil service and military are now occupied by "obedient, opportunistic and inexperienced yes-men". These include Olmert, the new Prime Minister, who was a minor figure in Israeli politics until promoted by Sharon, and the new IDF chief of staff Halutz—a friend of Sharon's son, and in Glick's judgment an arrogant incompetent, "unfit to command the IDF". Possibly, Glick says, Sharon did not anticipate quite how disastrous such promotions might prove, because he did not expect his own leadership skills to be made unavailable by a stroke.

The only bright spot in this story, Glick points out, is that Israel has an alternative principled and competent leadership consisting of those who were forced out or who resigned as a result of Sharon's Gaza decision. Otherwise, "Israel faces unprecedented threats to its security and very existence while it is being led by the most incompetent, corrupt leadership it has ever known".

Incidentally, the most convenient way I am aware of to subscribe to Caroline Glick's columns is via the Real Clear Politics RSS feeds (scroll about 1/6 of the way down the page).

Tashbih Sayyed: Why I am still a Muslim

Many Western conservatives, having become familiar over the past few years with some unappealing aspects of Islam and its core texts, have grown suspicious of "moderate Muslims" who laud many Western values while retaining their allegiance to a religion which seems to contradict those values. If they are serious about Western values, why don't they leave Islam? Islamic dissident Tashbih Sayyed (whose website is here) provided one thought-provoking answer in an interview with Tovia Singer on the unofficial internet radio station Israel National Radio (direct link to mp3 here). Tashbih Sayyed expressed attitudes which were so pro-Jewish that they seemed to leave Singer nonplussed. Singer did, however, manage to ask why Tashbih Sayyed did not therefore simply convert to Judaism. Here is his response (as near as I can make it out from the rather poor-quality out-of-studio component of the audio recording):

[Laughs] If I become a Jew, I will give a weapon in the hands of radical Islamists, that he is criticizing us because he is a Jew . . . I believe in my Islam. I want to fight the radical Islam by remaining a Muslim, because I don't trust people who leave their faith. Everyone has to clean his own house. He cannot leave a dirty house and join a cleaner house, because the dirt will follow him. The dirt will corrupt the house that he joins.