Brothers Judd Blog

If two New Hampshire men aren't a match for the Devil, we might as well give the country back to the Indians. -Stephen Vincent Benet (1898-1943)

Anglospherics

Identitarianism

PALEOCONS IN FANCY DRESS:

The Rise and Fall of American Integralism (Kevin Vallier, June 13, 2024, The Dispatch)


Liberalism has faced criticism since it emerged in the late 18th century, whether from socialists who thought it downplayed solidarity, fraternity, and equality, or from conservatives who considered it harmful to traditional institutions like the family, the local community, and the Church. But by the end of the 20th century and into the 21st, liberalism had seemingly defeated its opponents. Almost everyone in the West defended liberal institutions. Take the 2012 U.S. presidential election: Mitt Romney was no illiberal right-winger, and Barack Obama was never a socialist. They both were—to different degrees, certainly—liberals.

Things changed in 2016. Suddenly, immigration restrictions and aggressive right-wing approaches to the culture war became influential, if not dominant, in many liberal democracies. Culture trumped economics. In the U.S., questions of identity took over the “national conversation” that health care reform had occupied a few election cycles prior. The political right—now content with a large welfare state and eschewing fiscal discipline—started winning elections.

To comprehend the post-liberal project of the Right one needs to comprehend that the energy behind the Obamacare hysteria was just Identitarian too. After all, the model was the right’s own Heritage plan and Romneycare, while the supposedly small government Tea Party only opposed social welfare for “others”.

Crusader State W

MISSION ACCOMPLISHED:

The Iraq War was a Success (Simon Maass, June 13, 2024, Providence)

In terms of its objectives, Operation Iraqi Freedom was a clear success. Saddam Hussein was deposed, tried and executed with ease. “We achieved our goals,” as John Bolton put it. Even so, the Iraq War is usually characterized as the poster child for American failure in foreign affairs, a perception based on questionable assumptions. […]

Eli Lake lists several indicators of Iraq’s progress since the invasion. In the two intervening decades, the country’s GDP ballooned approximately tenfold, while life expectancy, literacy rates, and the prevalence of cell phone plans also increased. According to the World Bank, Iraq’s GDP per capita declined from 2000 to 2003, but rose quite swiftly thereafter – that is, it actually started to grow following the invasion. Currently, it is nearly at an all-time high. The suicide rate remained roughly unchanged by the war, while infant mortality continued to diminish.[…]

As Alan Dowd writes, “it pays to recall that Saddam murdered 600,000 Iraqis.”If one includes deaths incurred during his war of aggression against Iran, that figure is reasonable. Human Rights Watch famously estimated the number of people “disappeared,” then killed, by the Ba’athist regime at “between 250,000 and 290,000 people.” This number was based on just the government’s major sprees of detentions and killings.

David French compares Iraq to neighboring Syria, which also had a Ba’athist dictatorship. That tyranny was not overthrown. When the Arab Spring swept across the Middle East, Syria was plunged into a civil war which has made the country “a charnel house.” We can supplement this point with some numbers. According to the UN, the decade from 2011 to 2021 saw over 350,000 deaths in the Syrian Civil War. Combined with Iraq Body Count’s figure, this implies that, despite having a smaller population, Syria experienced more deaths from falling into civil war than Iraq experienced from an American invasion. This illustrates that the lack of American intervention does not mean many people will not suffer. Furthermore, the Syrian Network for Human Rights currently estimates that “Syrian regime forces and Iranian militias” are responsible for 87% of the war’s civilian casualties. Note also that Syria’s population plummeted after its civil war began, whereas Iraq’s kept rising fairly smoothly after the invasion.

The critics generally prefer dictators keeping their Third World populations quiet to messy democracies.

Anglospherics

CREATION IS OBJECTIVELY BEAUTIFUL:

Shaftesbury’s Theory of a “Moral Sense” Sets the Direction of the British Enlightenment (Part 2)
(Walter Donway, May 9, 2024, Liberty Fund: Online Library of Liberty)


Still, his essential message emerges. We can answer Hobbes and Locke if we think of moral goodness as analogous to beauty. We all have a sense of beauty: we all respond to visual and other harmony, for example. We all respond to proportionality. That is why art and music exist in every known culture. There is a universal “sense of beauty” that is a response to form not content. Man’s moral goodness can be grounded in objective features of the world, not arbitrarily but in an empiricist framework. Again, speaking broadly: moral beauty is the harmony and proportionality of our choices and actions with what advances and preserves the life of creatures of our species—the life of man qua man, man living as man.

Identitarianism

THEY’RE AN A-FRAME:

Left-wing authoritarians share key psychological traits with far right, Emory study finds (Carol Clark, Sept. 9, 2021, Emory University)

People with extreme political views that favor authoritarianism — whether they are on the far left or the far right — have surprisingly similar behaviors and psychological characteristics, a new study finds.

The Journal of Personality and Social Psychology published the research by psychologists at Emory University — the first comprehensive look at left-wing authoritarianism.

No one is surprised.

Israel/Palestine

NOT YOUR FATHER’S ZIONISM:

The perversion of religious Zionism (AMOTZ ASA-EL, JUNE 7, 2024, Jerusalem Post)

The pair’s endgame is a restoration of Jewish settlement in the Gaza Strip, a mad idea by any yardstick – national, international, or military – but a perfectly sound one in terms of their messianic theology, which is to plant Jewish settlements in every reachable corner of the biblical Land of Israel, regardless of who is there and what that entails. While even they understand this cannot happen immediately, they focus on what can happen: Israeli military rule across the Gaza Strip.

A ceasefire is anathema to them because it might generate an Arab regime in Gaza designed by Arab governments at peace with Israel, and also Saudi Arabia. To Smotrich and Ben-Gvir, such a scenario is a nightmare, not militarily or strategically, as they claim, but theologically as they do not openly admit.


RELIGIOUS ZIONISM and ultra-Orthodoxy have been at odds for more than a century. Their controversy was about the Jews’ role in shaping their future. Religious Zionists, like their secular allies, thought the Jews must fight for their freedom or they would be abused indefinitely. Ultra-Orthodoxy thought the Jews’ redemption was God’s task, and the Jews’ task was to pray that God would soon fulfill His task.

The Zionist goal, then, was Jewish liberation through Jewish sovereignty in the Jewish land. The Jews were the aim, and their land was the means. This view was shared by Religious Zionism’s politicians who in 1947 backed wholeheartedly the partition plan that created the Jewish state, and in 1967 backed with equal conviction the idea of land for peace, as did the greatest Modern Orthodox theologian, Rabbi Joseph Ber Soloveitchik (1903-1993).

Now the party that calls itself Religious Zionism not only doesn’t think of land for peace, it thinks of land for war. The hostages, in its view, are expendable for the hallucination of Jewish settlements in Gaza. The people, originally the aim, and the land, originally the means, have reversed roles. It’s a biblical tragedy.

Israel/Palestine

WELL OUT OF IT:

The Implications of the Gaza-Israel War for U.S.-Jordanian Ties (Abdulaziz Kilani, June 6, 2024, New Lines Institute)

Prior to the war, Jordan had already been dealing with various challenges, including the smuggling of drugs and weapons over its border with Syria. The kingdom’s economy also continues to struggle, and continued U.S. assistance has played a role in maintaining its stability. Since the war began, those challenges have deepened, with economic impacts on tourism immediately after Oct. 7 and on trade coming from the Red Sea escalations.

The kingdom “has been walking a high wire” with Washington since the Oct. 7 attack, Jawad Anani, former chief of the Royal Hashemite Court, told the author. “Jordan still believes the U.S. has the upper hand in bringing the parties together,” Anani said, adding that diminished U.S. prestige in the region could have consequences for the kingdom. A November 2023 University of Jordan poll showed 99% dissatisfaction among Jordanians with the U.S. stance on the conflict.

The war also has increased Hamas’ popularity in Jordan, leading some to again call on the government to restore ties with the militant group. Such a move is unlikely; it would anger several of Jordan’s partners, including the U.S., and in April, officials and observers in Jordan accused the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas of inciting protests to destabilize the kingdom.

The violence has caused concerns over refugees. Although the focus currently is on Gaza, Amman is also worried that the West Bank might be the next point of escalation, bringing with it a possible new influx of refugees and a host of political, economic, security, and demographic obstacles. In 2020, Abdullah warned of “massive conflict” with Israel if it proceeded with its plans to annex large parts of the West Bank.

Amman has been clear that it will not accept more refugees, seeing the crisis as an Israeli attempt to settle the Palestinian conflict at the expense of Jordan. Washington understands the kingdom’s position, and some U.S. officials have privately acknowledged that countries such as Jordan have valid concerns.

Jordan’s ability to see to the needs of Palestinian refugees was dealt a further blow when the U.S. and several other countries suspended funding for the U.N. Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) after Israel accused 12 of the agency’s employees in Gaza of participating in the Oct. 7 attack. While some nations eventually reinstated funding, the U.S. has not reversed its decision. The UNRWA took charge of all refugee expenses, including those for education and health care; the suspension leaves Jordan struggling to find alternative means to make up the deficit.

The war has also increased Israeli-Iranian tensions. On April 13, Iran launched more than 300 drones and missiles toward Israel in response to its strike on Tehran’s consulate in Syria earlier in the month. Jordan intercepted missiles and drones that entered its airspace during the attack, a move some social media activists interpreted as defending Israel. However, officials in Jordan insisted the move was in the context of self-defence and protection of the kingdom’s sovereignty. Abdullah made it clear that the kingdom “will not be a battlefield for any party.”

The Kingdom has to liberalize next.

India

GOVERNING IS A STUBBORN TASKMASTER:

Narendra Modi’s Plan Backfired: India’s shock election result proves: people don’t care that the economy is booming when they can’t feel the effects. (Rupa Subramanya, June 6, 2024, Free Press)

His campaign was triumphalist, focusing on his claim that India will soon become the world’s third largest economy because it has the highest GDP growth rate of any major economy in the world. But this message didn’t resonate with the country’s working and lower-middle classes, who aren’t seeing the benefits of the boom. Unemployment levels are high, as is inflation.

About midway through the long campaign, Modi pivoted, making incendiary speeches targeting India’s Muslim minority, hoping to fire up those who support his Hindu nationalism. The plan backfired. In India’s largest state, Uttar Pradesh, the BJP lost most of their seats to secular parties that draw support from Muslims and lower-caste Hindus. Here, Modi saw the victory margin in his own parliamentary seat, Varanasi, shrink from half a million votes to about 150,000.

The BJP also lost its seat where a controversial temple stands in the city of Ayodhya. The temple was built, over the last four years, on the site of an ancient mosque. A few months ago, Modi personally inaugurated the temple, with great fanfare, in a move that came to symbolize his efforts to marginalize India’s Muslim minority.

Indian voters are fed up with Modi’s religious polarization. What they want is a stronger economy…

Long War

TWO-BIT BARBERY:

Ideology is the Enemy of True Faith (ANTHONY ESOLEN, CERC)

There is rest in their faith, but there can be no rest in ideology. Indeed the ideologue looks upon their prayer as quaint and pointless at best, and at worst a waste of human potential, even a culpable refusal to put their shoulders to the wheel of revolutionary change. The ideologue has no use — no use, for all things must be used — for what Christopher Lasch happily called the true and only heaven. The monk knows that no matter what political regime should come to power, this world, so beautiful and so bittersweet, will always be a world of sin and death; it will always be less of a home than a wayside inn. And if the inn’s sign is hanging from a broken nail, and the bed sheets are a little musty, and the roast beef is overdone, it does not matter too much, because he himself, he considers with a smile, stoops in the shoulder, and is a little musty and overdone too.

But the ideologue has no clear sense of the pilgrimage. He believes in progress, and the imperfections of the world offend him; they must be eliminated. Fortunately for him, those imperfections are external to his person. Sometimes they are social conditions, including those that come naturally to mankind, such as the stubborn particularities of the family. Sometimes they are persons who ought to lose their jobs for a crime of least dissent; or to be re-educated by a regimen of ridicule, emotional manipulation, and threats; or, when the ideopathy is particularly virulent, to be cured by a haircut from the national barber, a purgative stay hacking at permafrost in a gulag, or a bullet in the back of the brain. Ideology does not forgive.

FDR Identitarianism

IT DID HAPPEN HERE:

Roosevelt’s Revolution: a review of The New Deal’s War on the Bill of Rights: The Untold Story of FDR’s Concentration Camps, Censorship, and Mass Surveillance
By David T. Beito (Reviewed by Michael Lucchese., University Bookman)

Perhaps no single group suffered more, though, from Roosevelt’s policies than Japanese Americans. In a moment of wartime paranoia, Roosevelt blatantly disregarded the civil rights of over 120,000 Japanese people, two thirds of whom were U.S. citizens, and sent them to internment camps. Beito does not hold back in his description of the dreadful conditions they faced. He outlines Roosevelt’s genuine racial animus against East Asians, which he describes as “amateur eugenicist views,” and successfully argues that the president was “the man who was chiefly responsible” for these outright tyrannies. Beito even compares the internment camps to the concentration camps established by communist and fascist regimes around the same time.

Japanese internment is among the darkest moments in American history, and Beito does a real service confronting its sordid realities. The United States government did not right these wrongs until President Reagan signed a bill providing restitution to surviving victims, and even today the crimes committed by Roosevelt’s regime are too often forgotten. The episode should serve as a bleak reminder of what happens when the Bill of Rights is thrown out.

Republican Liberty

YOU’RE ENTITLED TO LOSE THE ARGUMENT:

Cultivating Moderation in an Age of Extremism: Aurelian Craiutu joins Ben Klutsey to discuss the state of liberalism today and the neglected virtue of moderation (BEN KLUTSEY, MAY 31, 2024, Discourse)


KLUTSEY: Now, you use José Ortega y Gasset’s view of liberalism, which he describes as “the supreme form of generosity.” Can you unpack this definition?

CRAIUTU: I’ve always been intrigued by this definition of Ortega, which appears in his book, “La rebelión de las masas,” which is a great book (but published in 1929, so almost 100 years ago). I think that it gives justice to the essence of liberalism, which is a liberal democratic regime. The institutions of representative government give the opposition, those who disagree with us—those who are in power and those who are against power—to argue, to present arguments, to coexist.

Those who have power do not throw the others in prison just because there’s disagreement or different views on what the good society might be. They create conditions for publicity, for exchange of ideas. That is the form of generosity: that, when you have power, you allow the weaker part to contribute to the public debate. You don’t want to stifle that. You want to learn from it, and you allow other voices to voice their opinions.

Also because you think that you never are in possession of the whole truth. Totalitarian regimes are those in which there is a monopoly of truth. One party, one group, one person has the monopoly of truth. In a liberal regime, nobody has the monopoly of truth. There is no single central committee where the truth is located. That is the form of generosity: that people share a public space and the freedoms and the institutions to search in common for the truth, justice and reason. That’s a form of generosity that is liberal.

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