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(JTA) Israels 75th anniversary was supposed to be a blowout birthday party for its supporters, but that was before the country was convulsed by street protests over the right-wing governments proposal to overhaul its judiciary. Critics call it an unprecedented threat to Israels democracy, and supporters of Israel found themselves conflicted. In synagogues across North America, rabbis found themselves giving yes, but sermons: Yes, Israels existence is a miracle, but its democracy is fragile and in danger.

One of those sermons was given a week ago Saturday by Rabbi Ammiel Hirsch of Manhattans Stephen Wise Free Synagogue, expressing his dismay over the governments actions. Hirsch is the former head of ARZA, the Reform movements Zionist organization, and the founder of a new program at his synagogue, Amplify Israel, meant to promote Zionism among Reform Jews. He is often quoted as an example of a mainstream non-Orthodox rabbi who not only criticizes anti-Zionism on the far left but who insists that his liberal colleagues are not doing enough to defend the Jewish state from its critics.

Many on the Jewish left, meanwhile, say Jewish establishment figures, even liberals like Hirsch, have been too reluctant to call out Israel on, for example, its treatment of the Palestinians thereby enabling the countrys extremists.

In March, however, he warned that the Israeli government is tearing Israeli society apart and bringing world Jewry along for the dangerous ride. That is uncharacteristically strong language from a rabbi whose forthcoming book, The Lilac Tree: A Rabbis Reflections on Love, Courage, and History, includes a number of essays on the limits of criticizing Israel.When does such criticism give comfort to left-wing hatred of Israel, as he writes in his book, and when does failure to criticize Israel appear to condone extremism?

Although the book includes essays on God, Torah, history and antisemitism, in a recent interview we focused on the Israel-Diaspora divide, the role of Israel in the lives of Diaspora Jews and why the synagogue remains the central Jewish institution.

The interview was edited for length and clarity.

Jewish Telegraphic Agency: You gave a sermon earlier this month about the 75th anniversary of Israels founding, which is usually a time of celebration in American synagogues, but you also said you were dismayed by the political extremism and religious fundamentalism of the current government. Was that difficult as a pulpit rabbi?

Rabbi Ammiel Hirsch: The approach is more difficult now with the election of the new government than it has been in all the years of the past. Because we cant sanitize supremacism, elitism, extremism, fundamentalism, and were not going to. Israel is in whats probably the most serious domestic crisis in the 75-year history of the state. And what happens in Israel affects American Jewry directly. Its Israeli citizens who elect their representatives, but thats not the end of the discussion neither for Israelis or for American Jews. At the insistence of both parties, both parties say the relationship is fundamental and critical and it not only entitles but requires Israelis and world Jews to be involved in each others affairs.

For American Jewry, in its relationship with Israel, our broadest objective is to sustain that relationship, deepen that relationship, and encourage people to be involved in the affairs in Israel and to go to Israel, spend time in Israel and so forth, and thats a difficult thing to do and at the same time be critical.

American Jews have been demonstrating here in solidarity with the Israelis who have been protesting the recent judicial overhaul proposals in Israel. Is that a place for liberal American Jews to make their voices heard on what happens in Israel?

I would like to believe that if I were living in Israel, I would be at every single one of those demonstrations on Saturday night, but I dont participate in demonstrations here because the context of our world and how we operate is different from in Israel when an Israeli citizen goes out and marches on Kaplan Street in Tel Aviv. Its presumed that theyre Zionists and theyre speaking to their own government. Im not critical of other people who reach a different perspective in the United States, but for me, our context is different. Even if we say the identical words in Tel Aviv or on West 68th Street, theyre perceived in a different way and they operate in a different context.

What then is the appropriate way for American Jews to express themselves if they are critical of an action by the Israeli government?

My strongest guidance is dont disengage, dont turn your back, double down, be more supportive of those who support your worldview and are fighting for it in Israel. Polls seem to suggest that the large majority of Israelis are opposed to these reforms being proposed. Double down on those who are supportive of our worldview.

You lament in your book that the connections to Israel are weakening among world Jewry, especially among Jewish liberals.

The liberal part of the Jewish world is where I am and where the people I serve are by and large, and where at least 80% of American Jewry resides. Its a difficult process because were operating here in a context of weakening relationship: a rapidly increasing emphasis on universal values, what we sometimes call tikkun olam [social justice], and not as a reflection of Jewish particularism, but often at the expense of Jewish particularism.

There is a counter-argument, however, which you describe in your book: some left-wing Jewish activists contend that alienation from Israel, especially among the younger generations, is a result of the failures of the American Jewish establishment that is, by not doing more to express their concerns about the dangers of Jewish settlement in the West Bank, for example, the establishment alienated young liberal Jews. Youre skeptical of that argument. Tell me why.

Fundamentally I believe that identification with Israel is a reflection of identity. If you have a strong Jewish identity, the tendency is to have a strong connection with the state of Israel and to believe that the Jewish state is an important component of your Jewish identity. I think that surveys bear that out. No doubt the Palestinian question will have an impact on the relationship between American Jews in Israel as long as its not resolved, it will be an outstanding irritant because it raises moral dilemmas that should disturb every thinking and caring Jew. And Ive been active in trying to oppose ultra-Orthodox coercion in Israel. But fundamentally, while these certainly are components putting pressure on the relationship between Israel and Diaspora Jewry, in particular among the elites of the American Jewish leadership, for the majority of American Jews, the relationship with Israel is a reflection of their relationship with Judaism. And if that relationship is weak and weakening, as day follows night, the relationship with Israel will weaken as well.

But what about the criticism that has come from, lets say, deep within the tent? I am thinking of the American rabbinical students who in 2021 issued a public letter accusing Israel of apartheid and calling on American Jewish communities to hold Israel accountable for the violent suppression of human rights. They were certainly engaged Jews, and they might say that they were warning the establishment about the kinds of right-wing tendencies in Israel that you and others in the establishment are criticizing now.

Almost every time I speak about Israel and those who are critical of Israel, I hold that the concept of criticism is central to Jewish tradition. Judaism unfolds through an ongoing process of disputation, disagreement, argumentation, and debate. Im a pluralist, both politically as well as intellectually.

In response to your question, I would say two things. First of all, I distinguish between those who are Zionist, pro-Israel, active Jews with a strong Jewish identity who criticize this or that policy of the Israeli government, and between those who are anti-Zionists, because anti-Zionism asserts that the Jewish people has no right to a Jewish state, at least in that part of the world. And that inevitably leads to anti-Jewish feelings and very often to antisemitism.

When it came to the students, I didnt respond at all because I was a student once too, and there are views that I hold today that I didnt hold when I was a student. Their original article was published in the Forward, if Im not mistaken, and it generated some debate in all the liberal seminaries. I didnt respond at all until it became a huge, multi-thousand word piece in The New York Times. Once it left the internal Jewish scene, it seemed to me that I had an obligation to respond. Not that I believe that theyre anti-Zionist I do not. I didnt put them in the BDS camp [of those who support the boycott of Israel]. I just simply criticized them.

Hundreds of Jews protest the proposed Israeli court reform outside the Israeli consulate in New York City on Feb. 21, 2023. (Gili Getz)

You signed a letter with other rabbis noting that the students petition came during Israels war with Hamas that May, writing that those who aspire to be future leaders of the Jewish people must possess and model empathy for their brothers and sisters in Israel, especially when they are attacked by a terrorist organization whose stated goal is to kill Jews and destroy the Jewish State.

My main point was that the essence of the Jewish condition is that all Jews feel responsible one for the another Kol yisrael arevim zeh bazeh. And that relationship starts with emotions. It starts with a feeling of belongingness to the Jewish people, and a feeling of concern for our people who are attacked in the Jewish state. My criticism was based, in the middle of a war, on expressing compassion, support for our people who are under indiscriminate and terrorist assault. I uphold that and even especially in retrospect two years later, why anyone would consider that to be offensive in any way is still beyond me.

You were executive director of ARZA, the Reform Zionist organization, and you write in your book that Israel is the primary source of our peoples collective energy the engine for the recreation and restoration of the national home and the national spirit of the Jewish people. A number of your essays put Israel at the center of the present-day Jewish story. You are a rabbi in New York City. So whats the role or function of the Diaspora?

Our existence in the Diaspora needs no justification. For practically all of the last 2,000 years, Jewish life has existed in the Diaspora. Its only for the last 75 years and if you count the beginning of the Zionist movement, the last 125 years or so that Jews have begun en masse to live in the land of Israel. Much of the values of what we call now Judaism was developed in the Diaspora. Moreover, the American Jewish community is the strongest, most influential, most glorious of all the Jewish Diasporas in Jewish history.

And yet, the only place in the Jewish world where the Jewish community is growing is in Israel. More Jewish children now live in Israel than all the other places in the world combined. The central value that powers the sustainability, viability and continuity of the Jewish people is peoplehood. Its not the values that have sustained the Jewish people in the Diaspora and over the last 2,000 years, which was Torah or God, what we would call religion. Im a rabbi. I believe in the centrality of God, Torah and religion to sustain Jewish identity. But in the 21st century, Israel is the most eloquent concept of the value of Jewish peoplehood. And therefore, I do not believe that there is enough energy, enough power, enough sustainability in the classical concept of Judaism to sustain continuity in the Diaspora. The concept of Jewish peoplehood is the most powerful way that we can sustain Jewish continuity in the 21st century.

But doesnt that negate the importance of American Jewry?

In my view, it augments the sustainability of American Jewry. If American Jews disengage from Israel, and from the concept of Jewish peoplehood, and also dont consider religion to be at the center of their existence, then whats left? Now theres a lot of activity, for example, on tikkun olam, which is a part of Jewish tradition. But tikkun olam in Judaism always was a blend between Jewish particularism and universalism concern for humanity at large but rooted in the concept of Jewish peoplehood. But very often now, tikkun olam in the Diaspora is practiced not as a part of the concept of Jewish particularism but, as I said before, at the expense of Jewish particularism. That will not be enough to sustain Jewish communities going into the 21st century.

I want to ask about the health of the American synagogue as an institution. Considering your concern about the waning centrality of Torah and God in peoples lives especially among the non-Orthodox do you feel optimistic about it as an institution? Does it have to change?

Ive believed since the beginning of my career that theres no substitute in the Diaspora for the synagogue as the central Jewish institution. We harm ourselves when we underemphasize the central role of the synagogue. Any issue that is being done by one of the hundreds of Jewish agencies that weve created rests on our ability as a community to produce Jews into the next generation. And what are those institutions that produce that are most responsible for the production of Jewish continuity? Synagogues, day schools and summer camps, and of the three synagogues are by far the most important for the following reasons: First, were the only institution that defines ourselves as and whose purpose is what we call cradle to grave. Second, for most American Jews, if they end up in any institution at all it will be a synagogue. Far fewer American Jews will receive a day school education and or go to Jewish summer camps. That should have ramifications across the board for American Jewish policy, including how we budget Jewish institutions. We should be focusing many, many more resources on these three institutions, and at the core of that is the institution of the synagogue.

The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of JTA or its parent company, 70 Faces Media.

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Why a liberal Zionist rabbi isnt taking to the streets over Israels ... - JTA News - Jewish Telegraphic Agency

The panel included Aboriginal leaders Patrick Dodson, Noel Pearson, Marcia Langton and Megan Davis. In 2012, they agreed on four principles to guide their assessment of proposals for constitutional recognition, namely that each proposal must: contribute to a more unified and reconciled nation; be of benefit to and accord with the wishes of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples; be capable of being supported by an overwhelming majority of Australians from across the political and social spectrums; and be technically and legally sound.

From left: Noel Pearson, Marcia Langton, Patrick Dodson and Mark Leibler meet to discuss the issue in 2011. Rebecca Hallas

Dodson, Pearson and Davis later served on the 2017 Referendum Council which adopted these same four principles.

Back in 2012, they recommended: The referendum should only proceed when it is likely to be supported by all major political parties.

This time with the election of the Albanese government in 2022, things changed. The Aboriginal leaders and government decided to go it alone, leaving the Coalition outside the tent. Why? In part, no doubt because three consecutive Liberal prime ministers Abbott, Turnbull and Morrison rejected out of hand the idea of an Indigenous Voice to parliament, the idea first proposed by Noel Pearson in 2014. Peter Dutton was a cabinet minister to all three.

Soon after his election, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese attended the Garma Festival and announced a formula of words as a possible amendment to the Constitution. He said he was open to considering any changes to the proposed wording. The government set up a series of panels including the referendum working group of 21 Indigenous leaders and an eight-member panel of constitutional experts.

The government has released highly-anticipated legal advice on its proposal for an Indigenous Voice to parliament referendum.

The Coalition did not have a seat at the table until this past month when the Joint Select Committee on the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice Referendum was established. But by then, both the Liberal and National Parties had announced their opposition to the governments proposed amendment.

The prime minister still says he is open to any revised wording. But the referendum working group is not much interested. The government is unlikely to move unless given the go-ahead by the group. The leadership and majority of the Coalition parties are not for changing their No stance. By promoting Jacinta Nampijinpa Price and escalating his own media profile on the troubled streets of Alice Springs, Dutton has placed himself and his party at the front of the No campaign. Whichever way it goes, this referendum is unlikely in the short term to contribute to a more unified and reconciled nation any time soon.

This one and only parliamentary opportunity to bring at least some of the Coalition on board should not be squandered.

Is there a formula of words sufficiently technically and legally sound that key Liberals like Julian Leeser, Simon Birmingham and Andrew Bragg could support? These three, unlike their leader, have shown sympathy for the Voice but have expressed concerns about the clogging up of the workings of government and the risk of ongoing litigation were the Voice to have the capacity to make representations to individual public servants and to agencies like the Reserve Bank.

The government points to the evidence from assuring them that the High Court would never draw an inference that the Voice would be entitled to prior notice and information about proposed decisions of the public service. They give the added assurance that the parliament will have complete control of the Voice, guaranteeing that there would be no clogging of the workings of government.

Another retired High Court judge, Ian Callinan, is not so sanguine. Even the best of lawyers often disagree.

Constitutional scholar , who worked with Noel Pearson on early formulations of the Voice, has told the parliamentary committee that: the only obligation that was ever intended to be imposed was an obligation on the parliament to consider the advice during the passage of certain laws; this obligation on the Parliament was always intended to be non-justiciable; no obligation was intended to be imposed upon the executive government; it was regarded as essential to include machinery provisions that would ensure parliament would not be delayed or impeded in its enactment of laws.

Twomey has told the committee that parliament can say that you make your representation to the executive government by sending all your representations to a particular email address or a particular officer or by giving them to ministers.

Neither the government nor these lawyers want the Voice getting down into the weeds with individual public servants making routine administrative decisions even if those decisions relate to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander citizens. The Voice should be dealing primarily with parliament, ministers and heads of government departments.

We might look at the key functions of the much-lauded South Australian Voice which will deliver in person an annual report to parliament, address parliament on any relevant legislation, meet twice a year with the cabinet, and then twice a year with the chief executives of each administrative unit of the public service. There is no need to provide a constitutional entitlement to make representations to individual public servants.

If the assurances of French and Hayne about the present wording are not enough to satisfy Leeser, Bragg and Birmingham, can this Liberal trio come up with a tweaking of the present formula that would satisfy them? And would the referendum working group be prepared to accept the change?

Constitution-making is always about compromise, or at least it has been until now. Labor has tried to amend the Constitution 25 times and has failed 24 times. Having a few Liberals on board could only help in getting the country across the line.

Fr Frank Brennan is rector of Newman College, University of Melbourne, and the author of An Indigenous Voice to Parliament: Considering a Constitutional Bridge, Garratt Publishing, 2023.

The Opinion newsletter is a weekly wrap of views that will challenge, champion and inform your own. .

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Labor may need to compromise on Voice to win key Liberals support - Sydney Morning Herald

Though the original petitioners may genuinely have been looking to find a way to marry a partner of the same sex, the ongoing litigation in the Supreme Court (SC) on the issue of same-sex marriage is no longer about their claimed rights, or even about them. It has become another attempt by the minuscule English-speaking elite, shaped largely by Western thought and mores, to retain the hold they have had over the country for the last 75 years.

The challenge this elite has faced over the last decade is unique. Their hold over setting and controlling the agenda has been put to the test by the Hindi-medium types. HMTs had learnt to get themselves elected decades back, but their aspiration was limited to becoming people-like-us, owning mansions and farmhouses and wealth in Swiss banks. Those elected now have not only not been to English-medium schools, they do not carry the baggage of not being able to quote Machiavelli or Shakespeare. On the contrary, they take pride in quoting the likes of Chanakya and Swami Vivekananda; they do not need to signal their arrival by being able to differentiate between vintage wines or Scotch whiskies they proudly prefer chaach.

In plain English, being liberal means being tolerant of others and their views. Our self-styled liberals are quite obviously not. Take Indira Jaisings article (The partisan council, IE, April 26). She argues that the SC is duty-bound to uphold the Constitution and the values espoused by it, but her arguments challenge this very Constitution and its principles. She doubts whether Parliament or state legislatures represent the will of the people because of our first-past-the-post system of elections challenging parliamentary democracy as provided for in the Constitution. She dismisses views not in conformity with hers as being regressive notions of marriage, rooted in religion and culture, thus questioning the fundamental right to freedom of views and perhaps, by implication, the concept of the social contract itself. Those having views that are different from hers are accused of polarisation. She even challenges the concept of marriage as a societal framework for procreation arguing that, in that case, pre-marriage fertility tests ought to be needed. This is sophistry at its most imaginative.

No sophistry is required to explain the arguments of the other side. Parliament and state legislatures together represent the will of the people to the best extent possible, and as provided in the Constitution. Together, they have the right to amend the Constitution or enact laws for their jurisdictions. The law is an expression of societys needs, values and thinking, depending on the levels of education, literacy, exposure, socio-economic development, etc. No law can be enacted divorced from social realities. Important changes to personal laws that have taken place in the past the anti-Sati law, widow-remarriage law, Sharda Act, Hindu Code Bill, etc, have all had legislative approval, even if they seemed unpopular at the time.

In the opinion of many, Indian society at large sees marriage as a solemn union of opposite sexes, with the likelihood of procreation, limited by choice or medical issues. No survey or opinion poll is necessary to determine this. The elected representatives are in touch with and responsive to what the people feel, otherwise, they would not be elected. They, more than anyone else in the country, know the pulse of the people. If society at large had felt strongly about same-sex marriage, no politician would dare oppose it. There are several laws enacted in the recent past that reflect a demand from society: The tightening of rape laws post the Delhi 2012 rape, for example.

For any group, no matter how liberal they imagine themselves to be, to think that they know better than all others, is righteousness at its worst. Maybe rural and small-town India think and feel differently. Unfortunately, holding the beliefs and feelings of an overwhelming majority in contempt, valorising it as intellectual superiority, seems to have become the forte of the liberal elite.

The demand for recognising same-sex marriage cannot be dismissed out of hand but neither can be the view that is opposed to it. Let everyone be entitled to their views. Let us respect our Constitution and let Parliament and legislatures debate and decide on the issue. There is little doubt that such debate will be informed by the will of the people and that parliamentarians and legislators will be compelled by the views of their constituents. To short-cut parliamentary democracy itself, ironically in the name of upholding the Constitution, is to pave the way for an unknown and dark future.

The writer is a former civil servant

First published on: 01-05-2023 at 14:47 IST

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Same-sex marriage and liberal elites conceit: Parliament must decide on the issue - The Indian Express

The Struggle for a Decent Politics: On Liberal as an Adjective, by Michael Walzer (Yale University Press, 176 pp., $30)

A prominent political theorist and longtime editor of the democratic-socialist magazine Dissent, Michael Walzer has been at the center of major intellectual debates and activist movements of the past 60 years. In his latest book, The Struggle for a Decent Politics, Walzer fuses his longstanding interest in pluralism and his decades of activism to craft a narrative of the liberal that stresses flexibility, uncertainty, and diversity. Through stories about visiting Israel in the 1950s, organizing against the Vietnam War, and marching against Brexit, Walzer offers a synoptic view of a career of political involvement. And his wider account of the liberal illuminates conflicts about politics today, challenging some of the dichotomies of our own polarized moment.

A debate about liberalism broadly understood suffuses contemporary American political life. Some critics of liberalismperhaps most notably, Notre Dame professor Patrick Deneen in Why Liberalism Failedargue that a liberalism of relentless autonomy has dissolved social bonds and led to an alienated misery. Others insist that liberalism should be defended from an onslaught by post-liberalism, nationalism, populism, and other supposed reactionary terrors.

Rather than conjuring some titanic clash between isms, Walzer offers a more parsimonious account of liberal as an adjective. Here, what is liberal is not the product of some grand ideology, nor does it necessarily lead to a single set of conclusions (as ideological narratives often do). Instead, it is marked by ambiguity, toleration, pluralism, and an acceptance of openness. That spirit of generosity is not the same as moral relativism: liberals oppose every kind of bigotry and cruelty. But it is marked by some acceptance of difference and an openness to correction. For Walzer, the liberal is not an ideology but an accent for an ideology; it is not who we are but how we are who we arehow we enact our ideological commitments. The liberal is thus compatible with a wide range of ideological orientations, and the course of the book is dedicated to exploring the liberal flavors of different ideologies (all dear to Walzers heart): liberal democrats, liberal socialists, liberal nationalists and internationalists, liberal communitarians, liberal feminists, liberal professors and intellectuals, and liberal Jews.

In this sketch of the liberal as not ideologically tethered, Walzer taps into a broader tradition. Judith Shklars liberalism of fear, which he cites as an inspiration, argues that the core of the liberal is the avoidance of cruelty. Helena Rosenblatts more recent The Lost History of Liberalism also broadens the valence of the concept by attending to diversity and even tensions within different liberal traditions. Walzer does not discount the possibility of liberalism as an ideology; he argues that liberalism in this sense (of free trade, open borders, radical individualism, and so on) has many resonances with contemporary American libertarianism. However, he also hopes to show how liberal as an adjective can be compatible with a variety of other traditions and political approaches. The liberal supports pluralism in numerous ways.

An acceptance of ambiguity and difference structures the books very narrative. Rather than assailing his readers with polemical points, The Struggle for a Decent Politics instead advances in a searching and at times tentative (that is, thoroughly liberal) way. The Liberal Socialists chapter criticizes predatory capitalism, profit-driven economic behavior, and a laissez-faire state. But it also offers a limited defense of income differentiation and many of the trappings of the market economy. A longtime member of the political Left, Walzer also writes that he has never understood the left critique of consumerism. The ability of a steelworker to afford a bracelet for his daughter is an achievement of the organized left, which too many leftists dont value.

Walzers sense of the liberal as demanding a check on power and a wariness about a politics of emergency is in counterpoint to the way that liberalism can sometimes be invoked in contemporary controversies. While Walzer uses the liberal as a way of tempering existential conflict, political actors since 2015 have at times appealed to some supposed crisis of liberalism as a way of justifying all-out political combatnorm-breaking, lawfare, and constitutional hardball.

In his discussion of liberal democrats, Walzer warns against this temptation to turn the legal system against ones political opponents. He argues that the losers of an election should not face imprisonment, exile, or death and applies that teaching to the case of Donald Trump. While criticizing the Lock her up! chants of 2016, he also raises doubts about prosecuting Trump: Even after the events of January 6, 2021 . . . I still thought sending him home was the right thing to doand then working hard to keep him there. . . . Lock him up is not a chant for liberal democrats during or after an election. It is better to say, even in the case of a Donald Trump: Thats not what we do. Embodying his emphasis on the provisional, Walzer wrote a blog post for his publisher in January (the month this book was published) saying that he was now more open to arguments on behalf of legally investigating Trump. Yet he remains conflicted. Walzers liberal is not one of absolutes.

Throughout his career, Walzer has interrogated the demands of human belonging and ethical commitments. For instance, his 1983 volume Spheres of Justice explores the demands of equality in different contexts. The Struggle for a Decent Politics takes up this theme. Throughout, it defends various social commitments not as opposed to the liberal but as supplementing it (and as being informed by its limiting demands).

In Liberal Nationalists and Internationalists as well as Liberal Communitarians, Walzer complicates some popular assumptions. While American newspapers are full of dire warnings about a nationalist threat to democracy or liberal democracy, Walzer instead defends the nation as a key liberal and democratic priority. The national advances the cause of social justice, according to Walzer: the home of democracy turns out to be, naturally enough, the home of social democracy. Conversely, he finds that a radical cosmopolitanismwhich den[ies] the value of national membershipmight in fact be illiberal in its dismissal of the importance of national, particularized belonging to many people. Rejecting isolationism, he hopes for the project of international exchange. Arguing that nations have a right to regulate migration (and even to prioritize familial, ethnic, and ideological kin), Walzer also thinks that they should be open to some limited number of refugees.

In his discussion of liberal nationalism, Walzer implicitly argues that the United States is not a liberal nation. Such nations are ideologically pluralist. Instead, as the great un-nation, the United States is a multinational, multiracial, multireligious country. As such, it is defined by its politics, and people who reject that politics are called un-American. Walzer instead endorses the idea that the American political order might best be defined by a kind of creedal patriotism; nationalism in America isnt patriotic.

However, the potential for a narrowly creedal definition of the United States to exclude some people might also suggest the benefits of cultivating some kind of liberal nationalism (in Walzers sense) to complement creedal tendencies. In American history, one of the greatest justifications for the abuse of civil rights and for the weaponization of government has been the claim that political opponents are somehow un-American, not merely in the sense of ethnicity but in the sense of being ideologically suspect. Indeed, at times arguments about ethnicity have intertwined with those about ideology, so that a group is read as being ideologically suspect because it is ethnically different.

A sense of pre-political belongingflexible, expansive, and pluralistcan help counteract the risk of ideological purges that threaten democratic stability and liberal politics more broadly. Far from excluding others, that kind of belonging could embrace complexity and heterogeneity as part of the American character. In The Omni-Americans, Albert Murray sketched one horizon for that belonging in describing The American as a composite that is part Yankee, part backwoodsman and Indian, and part Negro. The family trees of hundreds of millions of Americans suggest how a heritage could be compositewith distinct strands and ever-new assimilations. In a time of growing conflict over what exactly the politics of the United States demands, renewing that sense of a broader compact may be even more pressing.

While Walzer is forthrightly a man of the Left, his account of the liberal in The Struggle for a Decent Politics contains insights that might be valuable to people with other perspectives. Walzer reminds us that a spirit of temperance and openness can be in harmony with other commitmentsand that maintaining those commitments to others may be an important part of preserving the liberal, broadly understood.

Photo: Denisfilm/iStock

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The Liberal in All of Us - City Journal

Last November, conservative commentator Ross Douthat penned a provocative column titled How the Right Became the Left and the Left Became the Right. One of the master keys to understanding our era, Douthat wrote in the opening paragraph, is seeing all the ways in which conservatives and progressives have traded attitudes and impulses.

The populist rights attitude toward American institutions has the flavor of the 1970s skeptical, pessimistic, paranoid while the mainstream, MSNBC-watching left has a strange new respect for the F.B.I. and C.I.A. The online right likes transgression for its own sake, while cultural progressivism dabbles in censorship and worries that the First Amendment goes too far. Trumpian conservatism flirts with postmodernism and channels Michel Foucault; its progressive rivals are institutionalist, moralistic, confident in official narratives and establishment credentials.

Despite some terminological imprecision Douthat often writes of the Left when he really means liberals the argument speaks to something real.

While liberals of the Bush era worried about mass surveillance and government overreach, todays liberal mainstream champions the sanctity of institutions and views the likes of courts, security agencies, and misinformation regulators as a bulwark against the Right. As Donald Trump insulted his way into the executive branch, liberals bludgeoned Bernie Sanders and his supporters with bad-faith social-justice critiques and made prudish appeals to consensus and decency. The Republican affect, by contrast, has increasingly drawn on themes of dissent and rebellion, with a politics of trolling and an aesthetic of 4chan-esque vulgarity supplanting the comparatively upright style once associated with figures like Mitt Romney and Jeb Bush.

Theres a certain elegance in seeing contemporary politics like this: censorious and oversensitive Brahmins sermonizing about institutional authority in one corner and a newly irreverent right pursuing a frenzied and paranoid style in the other. It isnt entirely wrong, but its not exactly right either. In its tidiness, such a narrative elides the important ways that the Right now engages in its own version of the very politics it claims to deplore. Conservatism, in this sense, has not so much traded places with liberalism as converged with some of its shallowest and most illiberal instincts.

Recently, conservatives launched a crusade against brewing company Anheuser-Busch in response to an innocuous advertising collaboration with transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney. Breweries have reportedly been targeted with bomb threats, and one right-leaning company has seized upon the situation to launch a service called Woke Alerts that will warn consumers when companies cave to the woke mob. The episode is instructive for several reasons, among them that the campaign so obviously mirrors the very sensibility it purports to be resisting. In effect, the Rights go-to reaction to what it imagines are woke mobs is to create woke mobs of its own.

The incident is merely one example of a wider zeitgeist currently reflected in mass campaigns to get books with black or LGBTQ themes pulled from library shelves, draconian legislation to discipline academics who teach particular subjects, heavy-handed regulation of free expression in public-school classrooms, and sinister directives to state agencies targeting transgender children and their parents. Woke capitalism has, meanwhile, become conservatisms favorite bte noire, inspiring absurd freakouts about everything from Disneys ostensible promotion of socialism to Pride-themed Oreo packaging. The related concept of ESG (Environmental and Social Governance) is set to be the subject of congressional hearings that will, like Woke Alerts, target investors thought to be undermining profits in pursuit of a woke agenda.

Conservatives, in effect, have recognized the socially liberal bent of modern America and they absolutely hate it. The result is a politics increasingly indistinguishable from the most exaggerated right-wing caricature of censorious social-justice warrior liberalism.

Another irony of this posture is that it has seen conservatives embrace a key premise of the shallow social-justice ethos that now pervades the upper echelons of some large corporations. True, they may hate it when leviathans like Amazon and Nike issue statements in support of Black Lives Matter or partner with transgender TikTok stars. But, in lockstep with the marketing teams at these very companies, conservatives accept the corporate alignment with various social-justice causes as something genuine rather than a branding exercise. On this, they agree with an influential section of American liberals: woke capitalism exists.

Yet the whole idea of so-called woke capitalism is absurd on its face. Large profitable corporations are, by definition, driven by cold-market calculus, not the pursuit of social justice in anything but the hollowest sense. Insofar as some corporations bend toward social liberalism, its mostly because theres a greater market share to be found there on major issues like trans rights and abortion, conservatism is very much a minority proposition in todays America and because it can be an effective inoculant when their owners and bosses are caught union busting, running exploitative workplaces, or contributing to climate change. Its a cynical and often nakedly hypocritical branding exercise undertaken by people thinking about their bottom lines and little more. If the Right is wrong to attack woke capital, liberals are wrong to celebrate it.

Its one thing to find fault with the moralism that pervades some liberal milieus, or to roll ones eyes in the direction of Wall Street banks or entertainment conglomerates trying to cash in on social-justice branding. The fact remains, however, that it is not oversensitive liberals who are crusading against Bud Light, trying to get books banned en masse, or enforcing parochial ideas about gender and sexuality through state legislation. In the narcotic haze of the culture war, it is all too easy to overlook the extent to which Americas conservative minority has become a mirror image of the very thing it purports to deplore: a shrill and inflexible mass that not only mistakes consumption for politics but demands protection, at all times, from facts, people, and ideas that make it uncomfortable.

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Conservatives Need a Safe Space From the Imaginary Threat of Woke Capitalism - Jacobin magazine