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While I have been writing articles against Rich Lowry and Ben Shapiro, I recently realized I might not have been fighting the real fight. While those two may be spreading the virus, they did not start it. The man in question who started this trend is Israeli philosopher Yoram Hazony.
I should note that I find it ironic the man who started this nationalist trend is from a country that only exists because of globalism. It was the United Nations, not agreements from Palestinians, that placed Israel in the holy land of the Jews. Yet people like Hazony and the prince of nationalism Ben Shapiro (although what he’ll be the prince of this time next week is a different story) advocate defunding the UN entirely.
That’s ignoring the many military victories Israel only has because of military intervention under President’s Truman and Eisenhower. If we went the way of the ideological ancestors of Hazony, Israel wouldn’t exist at the moment.
Of course, just like Sohrab Ahmari and Rich Lowry, Hazony is quite good at making sure his words are flexible enough to where he never really says anything. Often, this is because backing up his claims shows he has no idea what he’s talking about.
In his recent interview with Ben Shapiro, Yoram decries the attempts by George W. Bush to take control of Iraq. But that never happened. After the removal of Saddam Hussein, the only military presence left in Iraq was to ensure no jihadists held a coup against the new Democratic government.
Yoram also constantly references a speech given by George H.W. Bush, where he mentioned invading Iraq to create a “new world order,” as the end of nationalism. But what came out of that? The US (and a dozen other nations including many Muslim ones like Egypt and Saudi Arabia) kicked Saddam Hussien out of the nation of Kuwait. This was a defense of Kuwait’s sovereignty (something I though nationalism was all about) in what was easily the most moral use of the US military post-Cold War.
During the interview, we see just how unthinking Yoram is in regards to his ideology. For instance, he says he is not against the statehood of the Scottish nor the Kurds because he hates those groups. He’s against it because it would cause conflict and war, which are very, very icky. Do I have to mention he lives in Israel again? Remember the many conflicts those guys got into because everyone around them wanted them dead? Is Yoram just unaware that the IDF occupies areas of Palestine to this day?
The only reason I keep going back to this is that Yoram insists on doing the same. On page two of The Virtue Of Nationalism, Yoram says, “I have been a Jewish nationalist, a Zionist, all my life.” Yet, it seems like every single piece of his ideology would be called anti-Zionist, maybe even anti-Semitic, if said by someone who was not from Israel.
That’s ignoring the blanket hypocrisy of his immigration plan, that would cause you or I not to be allowed in Israel, which he spouts out carelessly. For all of his waffling about shared values, Yoram not only calls Israel a socialist state but says (and this is a rough quote), “no one is more against socialism than me.”
First off, Israel is far from a socialist country. It’s ranked #27 on the Index of Economic Freedom, meaning it is mostly free.
Second off, if you disagree with the values held by Israel that much, why are you living there? I’m not one to scream “love it or leave it,” but I at least expect the people who do scream that to love where they are. If Yoram were trying to immigrate to Israel with his current views, people like him would use him as an example of an invasion.
And that’s ignoring the many times Yoram has showed a downright hatred for his country. His 2001 book The Jewish State: The Struggle For Israel’s Soul showed a total hatred of the culture of Israel as it moved away from an orthodox society to a more libertarian/secular one. So, hating your nation is okay because you just so happened to be born there? That’s nothing more than an accident of nature and shouldn’t make the opinion of anyone more or less valid.
I should end by saying I did not plan for this to go on for so long. At first, this article was designed to be nothing more than the typical takedown of nationalism I have done so many times in articles for The Liberty Hawk.
However, Yoram has managed to annoy me more than any of his pre-modernist buddies ever could. The fact that he bites the hand that feeds him in such a dishonest manner and gets considered a modern genius for doing so is truly insufferable in every sense of the word. Yoram, like nationalists before him (ex: Pat Buchanan), is nothing more than a demagogue who makes sure only to have principles when they’re as inconvenient to everyone else as possible.
Ephrom Josine is a libertarian political blogger/commentator, and a frequent contributor to The Liberty Hawk. You can find him on Twitter @EphromJosine1, writing near-daily on Medium @ephromjosine or weekly on Freedom First Blog.
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