Brexit, National Sovereignty, and the Jewish Question
Political theorist Mark Lilla has noted the irony that "Once upon a time, the Jews were mocked for not having a nation-state. Now they are criticized for having one," and their stubborn determination to defend it.
That is why the dramatic reassertion of national sovereignty in the Brexit vote is important for Israel. Nor was the British public alone. Laurent Wauquiez, former French minister for European affairs, said in the wake of the Brexit vote, "{T]he result would have been the same in any other country in the EU. Perhaps an even greater rejection in France."
At the core of the concept of national sovereignty, writes Lilla, is the "notion of autonomy, which in political terms means the capacity to defend oneself, and when necessary, wage war." A corollary is that nations have a duty to value the lives of their citizens above those of citizens of other countries. Hiroshima and Nagasaki were fully justified by the projected loss of a million American servicemen an invasion of the Japanese mainland. (More Japanese civilians would also have died in that invasion than perished at Hiroshima and Nagasaki.)
And if Hamas or Hezbollah fire missiles at Israeli civilians from amidst their own civilian populations, Israel has the duty to do everything necessary to stop that fire, while trying to minimize civilian casualties.
European nations have lost the ability – and among the elites the will as well -- to advance the interests of their citizens or to defend themselves. One thousand young English girls were impressed into sex slavery by Pakistani immigrants in Rotherham, over a period of twenty years. The authorities did not intervene lest they be accused of Islamaphobia. When rapes of Swedish women in Stockholm increase fifteen fold as 1.5 million Muslims enter the country, opposition to unfettered immigration is neither racism nor xenophobia but simple self-preservation.
Another aspect of national sovereignty is the ability of each nation to control its borders and determine who will become citizens. Thus the central place of immigration debates in America and Europe today.
Current EU rules require Britain to admit any immigrant from another EU country. As a consequence, job seekers from eastern bloc countries in the EU have flooded England. Drawn by Britain's comparatively free labor markets, resulting in more unskilled jobs, they have claimed 70% of all new unskilled jobs. And if they fail to obtain jobs, they are immediately entitled to all the benefits of Britain's welfare system.
UNDERLYING THE SOVEREIGNTY DEBATES is a deeper philosophical one: Are all men essentially alike – homo economicus, each rationally pursuing a slightly larger slice of the economic pie? (Note the only argument advanced by the Remain camps was: Brexit will cost us money.) And can they be organized, economically and politically, according to rational principles best administrated by an elite of trained bureaucrats?
Never mind the abject failure of every centrally-planned economy or of the EU itself. Today Europe is the only continent with a declining percentage of world economic activity. Its common currency, the euro, almost brought down the entire banking system when Greek went bankrupt, and remains vulnerable to worse disaster if Spain or Italy follow suit.
The opposing, Burkean view that human beings are products of particular cultures, bound to one another by ties of history, kinship, and language, underpins the case for national sovereignty.
For Burke human beings are not abstractions -- random sets of individuals born to another random set of individuals. Rather they are products of an organic historical development, the nether reaches of which cannot be determined by abstract thought experiments ala John Locke. Those living today are part of a pact with previous generations and those yet unborn.
Appalled by the devastation of two world wars, European elites sought to jettison nationalism and the nation-states that were thought to have caused that destruction. The vision of a European political union resulted. But to say that modern Europe was "born in the ashes of Auschwitz," notes Alain Finkielkraut, is also to forget that Europe is heir to a great civilization and results in a passion for sameness.
For those who reject all pride in one's country or culture, there is nothing worth defending past one's time on this mortal coil or worth transmitting to future generations. The yet unborn remain unborn. Witness Europe's demographic suicide.
The stubborn refusal to acknowledge the depth of culture differences led Angela Merkel to throw open the gates of Europe to millions of refugees from an alien culture, who have proven unassimilable even in much smaller numbers.
NO PEOPLE ever insisted on its own uniqueness – indeed chosen status – to the same degree as the Jewish people. Without a sense of special mission, we could not have survived for millennia apart from our Land.
Not by accident did the first great theorist of national sovereignty, Jean Bodin, draw heavily on Jewish sources. Jews have been the fiercest opponents of those spreading one universal culture from the Seleucid Greeks to Napolean's armies. The Jews rejected paganism's easy acceptance of a pantheon of gods. And we stood against the monotheistic faiths – Christianity and Islam – that sought to unite all mankind under one banner.
When Napolean's liberating armies approached Russian, Rabbi Shneur Zalman M'Liadi, the founder of Chabad, prayed for his defeat. He realized that the slogan of the French Revolution -- "To the Jews as individuals -- everything; as a nation – nothing" – might be good for individual Jews but would spell the end of Jewish history.
Resurgent pride in place and people may well unleash old genies in Europe. But Europe's rationalist bureaucrats have not exactly done a bang-up job of defending Jews or Israel. The Jewish people will never be well served by those for whom religion and national identity are atavistic holdovers from a less enlightened past.
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Brexit and the Jewish Question
Harvard historian Berl Septimus coined the lovely phrase "philosophically informed anti-rationalism" to describe the position of Rabbi Meir Abulafia (the Ramah) in his Hispano-Jewish Culture in Transition: The Career and Controversies of Ramah. The Ramah was a moderate opponent of Maimonidean rationalism in the debates that divided some of the greatest of the Rishonim during the Rambam's lifetime and for a period thereafter.
I wish I could find an equally lovely phrase to describe my own position, but I cannot do better than elite-trained anti-elitism. While grateful for the education I received and the friendships I made, some of which persist to this day, despite the strains of my double conversion to Torah Judaism and political conservatism, I have come to view the widely held beliefs of most of my old friends as dangerous to national (any nation's) survival.
The children of Enlightenment rationalism have a tendency to see the world and its inhabitants as abstractions, rather than in all their complexity and difference. They imagine that everything would be neat and tidy if only the best and brightest were left free to work things out among themselves, without being bothered by the hoi polloi.
The EU, with its impotent parliament, and rule by 28 commissioners, is an expression of that progressive impulse – "a classical utopian project, a monument to the vanity of intellectuals" in the formulation of the late Margaret Thatcher.
Two devastating world wars, which began on the European continent gave birth to the European Union. If nationalism had given rise to such death and destruction, the thought went, then let us get rid of nation-state and create something that supersedes all the old national divisions. "Imagine there were no more countries," John Lennon might have sung. And indeed for the cosmopolitan class from whom the massive European bureaucracy is drawn that act of imagination is easy. They have far more in common with one another than with those born in the same country and speaking the same mother tongue.
The idea that modern Europe was born in the ashes of Auschwitz, the French Jewish thinker Alain Finkielkraut points out, is, however, a dangerous one. It leads to forgetting that Europe is a civilization, with a rich history and unique culture. The concept of a "war of civilizations" – indeed of civilizations themselves -- is anathema to those who created the EU, an atavistic holdover from less enlightened times.
ISIS knows that it is waging war on an enemy civilization: Only the objects of its attacks deny it. The modern European intellectual refuses to acknowledge that an alien civilization is breeding in Europe's midst or to take steps to defend his civilization from attack because to do so would be to acknowledge that the whole world is not comprised of human beings motivated by the same goal of gaining a slightly larger slice of the pie.
It is instructive that after all the insults – racist, xenophobe, "lizard-brain" – the only positive argument advanced by the Remain camp, in the recent debate over Britain's continued membership in the EU, was: Brexit will be economically disastrous for British citizens. The desire for greater material goods is for supporters of the European Union the universal constant that makes all men alike.
And that is why they are incapable of understanding the goals of political Islam or of confronting its proponents. They cannot comprehend, must less take seriously, that the goal of ISIS or the Iranian mullahs could really be to impose Sharia around the globe.
Penitents for the old nationalism that wracked their continent, the architects of the EU view everything that distinguishes one man from another as bad. Borders are bad; fences are bad. Internet is good. The European cosmopolitans show a "passion for sameness," argues Finkielkraut.
Against this universalism, supporters of Brexit asserted, in the words of Daniel Hannan, that human beings are not abstractions – one random set of individuals born to another set of individuals. Rather we are each the product of a particular culture, and related to other citizens of our country or culture by ties of kinship, history, language. Acknowledgment of that fact should not be a cause of embarrassment.
The debate over Brexit tracks that between Edmund Burke and Thomas Paine described with great clarity by Yuval Levin in The Great Debate. Burke rightly saw that the abstract principles of the French Revolution, and the confidence in the power of reason alone, would lead to the Terror.
Human beings are not abstractions, in the Burkean view. Their actions are not guided by pure reason, nor are there precise formulas of rational governance by which they can be organized. Rather each human being is the product of a particular culture that has evolved organically, and whose historical origins cannot be derived by some rational thought experiment. Each of us is a partner with those who have preceded us and with those yet unborn. Or to paraphrase Avos, we are part of a chain that it is not given to us to complete, but which we must not let be broken.
Where that sense of being rooted in a particular people is lost so too is all national strength. That is manifested in two ways across Europe today, most notably among the elites. The first is in the unwillingness to defend one's particular culture from destruction. What could have possessed Angela Merkel to think it a good idea to fling open the gates of Europe to millions of refugees from foreign lands and alien cultures?
And second, in the refusal to produce future generations. The entirety of Europe is in demographic self-destruct mode. The less one feels pride in one's particular culture and civilization the less need one feels to preserve it through future generations. The yet unborn remain unborn.
NO PEOPLE has ever insisted on its particularity – indeed its chosen status – to such an extent as the Jewish people. Not by accident did the great early theorists of national sovereignty draw heavily on Tractate Sanhedrin. And no people is so threatened by universalizing sameness as the Jewish people. The Ba'al HaTanya presciently saw that Napolean's conquering armies, spreading the Enlightenment's rational administration across Europe by force of arms, posed a mortal threat to Torah Jewry. "To Jews as individuals – everything; as a nation – nothing" was the ideal of the French Revolution carried by Napolean's armies.
Professor Jeremy Rabkin, one of the leading modern scholars of national sovereignty once pointed out to me that Jews have always been the great barrier to universalism: We rejected paganism's easy tolerance of all gods, and we have been the great naysayers to the universal monotheistic creeds that seek to unite all mankind under the banner of one religion.
Many Jews in Britain and Europe no doubt feared that a pro-Brexit vote would unleash xenophobic forces around the continent -- not that Europe's governing class have proven such great defenders of Jews or Israel – and that may happen. But my impression is that most Torah Jews voted for Brexit. Perhaps they intuitively understood, like the Ba'al HaTanya, that as a community they have more to fear from the universalists for whom religion is just an embarrassing remnant of a less enlightened past.
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The Pleasure of English Spoken Well
One of the small, but distinct delights of the British Brexit debate was the opportunity to savor British political oratory. Quite simply, there is nothing to match it in America. Indeed the contrast is embarrassing. To listen to either of the likely presidential candidates deliver a speech is sheer torture. Neither shows any capacity for anything beyond a series of platitudes or childish insults.
Marco Rubio proved capable of some stirring riffs – perhaps too capable as Chris Christie showed in the New Hampshire debate – and one can understand how Ted Cruz was a national collegiate debate champion and highly effective oral advocate. But neither showed much talent for the sophisticated, witty repartee that characterizes British parliamentary debate.
That wit was on full display in a recent pro-Brexit speech in the Oxford Union by Daniel Hannan, a member of the European parliament, who urged the audience to fire him. I've watched that speech three times, awed by the cadences, the emotional range, the crystal-clear logic, and the wit – all delivered extemporaneously, without benefit of a note or teleprompter.
In Israel, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu is certainly an eloquent speaker. But he has only one tone – doom and gloom.
The resignation speech of an obviously crestfallen British Prime Minister David Cameron was not intended to be the rhetorical delight of Hannan's debate in the Oxford Union. Cameron had only himself to blame for the pro- Brexit vote that he never contemplated. He pledged in the last election campaign to bring Britain's continued membership in the European Union to a referendum vote, and made good on his promise, at the cost of his political career.
Yet I was moved by the generosity and simple patriotism of Cameron's resignation speech. Not a word of recrimination nor of bitterness. Rather he celebrated the fact that over 30 million citizens had voted in the referendum and that the people had been entrusted with such a momentous decision. Repeatedly he insisted that the people's decision must be respected, and that those on the losing side of the debate, himself first among them, must do everything to make that decision succeed.
But having taken the losing side, Cameron acknowledged, that he could not be "the captain to steer the ship of state to its next destination." Having made a very clear decision to take a fresh path, the British people, deserved new leadership as well.
I could not help contrast that willing giving up of power to Israel, where every prime minister clings to office, like a murderer to the mizbeach, and only leaves office when decisively rejected by the voters.
Nor could I help but contrast Cameron's affecting closing – "I love this country and I feel honored to have served it as prime minister and will do everything in my power to help it succeed" – to the current presidential candidates in America. On the one side, a candidate so thoroughly venal, self-seeking, and duplicitous that she has never been able to articulate a reason for her candidacy beyond her own sense of entitlement and on the other a bellowing, carnival barker yelling "Make America great" but who means nothing more than "Make me great."
Readers interested in the subject of national sovereignty should read Yoram Hazony's brilliant essay, "Nationalism and the Future of Western Freedom," in the current issue of the on-line publication Mosaic.