Allan Bloom Forum at Yale: Yoram Hazony on "The Virtue Of Nationalism"

hi guys so welcome to the 2018 fall Allan bloom forum if you guys could all put your cell phones on silent right now we'd really appreciate that so my name is Helen Zhou and I'm the president of this semester's Allan bloom forum named for the late philosopher classicist and Yale professor Allan bloom bloom was a champion of classical education grounded in the great books of the Western canon and he became famous for his criticism of the moral education upheld by institutions of higher learning in the u.s. the Allan bloom forum at Yale seeks to embody and share his spirit of both critical inquiry and veneration of intellectual pursuits as such the forum seeks to promote the public exploration of the ideas that have shaped both the Western and American tradition we invite distinguished guests from academia politics and related institutions to speak on issues of culture philosophy history and politics past guests have included Allen cores of the University of Pennsylvania Harvey Mansfield of Harvard and Robert P George of Princeton we're honored this year to be hosting dr. um hos OD dr. ho's Oni specializes in political theory philosophy and biblical studies he's president of the Herzl Institute in Jerusalem and founder of the Shalem Center Israel's leading publisher of Western philosophy translated into Hebrew the center is now Salem College the first accredited liberal arts college in Israel doctoral zonies recent work has appeared in publications such as The Wall Street Journal the New York Times the National Review and NPR he even appeared with Morgan Freeman in his National Geographic miniseries the story of God where he illuminates the story of Abraham and Isaac tonight dr. hezonia will be addressing the topic of his newest book the virtue of nationalism although nationalism today is often a term that has been associated with dangerous tribalism dr. ho's Oni seeks to analyze it as a principle of shared identity one that encourages people to work towards upholding the ideals that so characterized their nation the shared identity can be cultivated through the development of shared language history and religion thus at a time when many have deemed the nation-state to be obsolete dr. hezonia argues in debt that it is in fact an important unit of economic interest and political action as well as an important moralizing agent and the best mode of organizing society today the virtue of nationalism has received critical acclaim and leading Minds have emphasized the value of Doctor Who's oneis philosophy especially in our current political moment michael lind co-founder the think-tank New America wrote that in a time when nationalism is all too often conflated with racism and authoritarianism euro Mazzoni reminds us that democracy and Liberty can flourish only in a world of sovereign nation-states anat on Sharansky a notable human rights activist and author of the case for democracy and defending identity has commented that political figures scholars and the broader public will have to think carefully about this remarkable book now without further ado please join me in welcoming dr. your Amazonian all right can you hear this okay here's what's gonna happen what's gonna happen is I'm gonna start talking and then when I start getting excited I'll start lowering the microphone and that'll you'll be able to hear less so I don't when I do that I don't know wave at me or something to remind me that I'm forgetting myself all right well it's exciting to be here at Yale some of you may know that my history is at another school I went to Princeton my wife went to Princeton my daughter went to Princeton so I would like to thank you all in this era of intolerance for the gracious warm welcome that I received this evening from the Yale students I really really do appreciate it and in fact I appreciate anybody who's tolerant in this day and age so speaking of intolerance I'm talking to you about nationalism the week that President Trump announced that he was a nationalist I wrote the book before President Trump and that he was a nationalist so I didn't have didn't didn't have him his declaration in mind and nevertheless I thought that the points that he made about nationalism were exactly on like you'd I don't I don't think you have to love him or agree with everything that he thinks or says in order to agree with with this points on nationalism maybe other things and and I find it absolutely incredible that that someone can take what I consider to be and I think traditionally historically was a reasonable position with respect to the independence of nations and the desirability of a world of independent nations and and be widely condemned as as a Nazi as Hitler not not just by you know by people I don't know if students let's say who are excited and and and don't know the stuff well yet but in the most prestigious and the most important forums and the most important media in the country people don't have any problem declaring that the president is something is something like a Nazi and why because he thinks that we should take a stand on the issue of globalism versus nationalism and he thinks that we should take the nationalist side now I think that he's completely right on this nationalism versus globalism is the issue of our age it's the most important political issue that that that there is and every one of us if we want to be responsible about about our political views about our position on public matters if we want to be responsible then we're going to have to each one of us is going to have to take a stand on exactly this question of globalism versus nationalism where do we stand okay so that's the subject that I'm going to talk about this evening before I get into the substance of it let me just say that the the political spectrum in America has has shifted to the left on this and many other issues in the last generation in in a way that's that's pretty extraordinary when I was in college Ronald Reagan was president Margaret Thatcher was the Prime Minister in the UK and I I think that you could just use the word nationalist I mean let's for example Reagan was elected and commentary magazine which in those days was the flagship publication of American conservative thought of serious American conservative thought commentary magazine welcomed Ronald Reagan for the new nationalism that he was bringing to America that was that the the praise for Reagan was look at this great new nationalism that he's reviving in the country and Irving Kristol who was in those days considered kind of the the the the leading intellectual of public conservatism in America maybe you could say Buckley but one of the two was and it was was well-known for for his view that conservatism modern conservatism rests on three pillars religion nationalism and economic growth and in fact he was famous for writing a book called two cheers for capitalism because he thought that capitalism was important as as an engine for economic growth and there wasn't any better system but why not three cheers because he thought that without a strong bulwark of religion and nationalism that the the corrosive effects of of the free market would end up undermining the family and the nation and religious tradition which is exactly what has happened you could argue so in those days when when I became a conservative when I was in sort of inducted into the conservative movement and nationalism was a normal thing for a person to be now what's changed is that over the last 30 years since the fall of the Berlin Wall something pretty remarkable happened they went when I was in college we were still in the middle of the struggle against the Soviet Union the the free nations as they were called right this is this is what America and its allies called themselves the free nations saw themselves as being pitted against what Reagan called the evil empire right and notice the difference between Empire and nations to be free was to have your own nation to be independent to do your own thing to to be part of an evil empire was to have some central ideology the dictated wanted to dictate to to every people that it conquered how they would live in what they would think and that whose goal was to take over the entire world and dictate to everyone in the world what they would think and what they would believe in how they would live and the people people who were fighting on the free nation side of this and I I'm speaking from from conversations of people who were involved in the the administration then and and remember this time and say we we always thought that that we were the good guys because our goal was to set the nations of the world free now so when the Berlin Wall fell in 1989 there was this moment where there were people who said the war is over we won let's let's bring the boys home let's go home and let's take care of the the the crumbling cultural institutions in in our country that need for us urgently to to to deal with them people like Irving Kristol and if you if you go and read reflections of a neoconservative today it's like on many points it's like reading President Trump is looking for the withering away of NATO and on many points of course it's the higher at a higher level of diction but it's a lot like like the things that we so today disparagingly with Trump's nationalism so people people like crystal and Jean Kirkpatrick wanted the war to end and wanted some kind of return to to taking care of of business at home but that point of view was swept away Margaret Thatcher it was one of along with Reagan one of the principal the principal moral forces you can add the Pope I guess but one of the one of the one of the principal moral forces of the the struggle against Empire right Reagan Thatcher Pope John Paul this position that she had as a leading campaigner against the Soviet Union should have I don't know if you know as as I'm not a Brit right it wasn't living in the UK but looking at it from abroad you would think wow since Churchill the British have not had a leader like Margaret Thatcher but the moment the war ended she was dumped and what she was dumped particularly there there were some domestic issues but the central thing that made her just absolutely intolerable was the fact that she was a nationalist was the fact that she was struggling to try to prevent the United Kingdom from giving up its sovereignty to the European Union and being submerged into this into this international organization whose aim was to expropriate the independence of nations to end the independence of nations and to impose a uniform rule of law and ideas on them by the time that Margaret Thatcher was dumped by her own political party by the Conservatives there was just about no one who was willing to take a stand I mean almost nobody no mainstream significant political figure was willing to take a stand against what today looking back on it I think we can see was a moment of extraordinary utopianism utopianism like the the flood of books declaring the end of history and that the world was about to to become one world with one economy and everyone was going to unite under a single international law George HW Bush declared declared the in 1991 the new world order and I can remember to this day the the the the the shiver that went down my spine when I heard the President of the United States talking about this new world order he said for a thousand generations mankind has struggled but failed to achieve what we're about to achieve now anytime somebody starts talking to you about a thousand generations and they're going to solve the problems that that thousand generations couldn't have solved if you're good conservative like all the oh all the alarms should be going on all of them a thousand generations and what was he going to solve what's this new world order he said the the law of the jungle was no longer going to rule in the world instead it would be replaced by the rule of law so that's his vision is that the entire planet was going to be wrapped in a rule of law which was going to emanate from the Security Council of the United Nations later American presidents back down from from that view of the centrality of the Security Council is kind of like a super legislature but all the subsequent American presidents up until Trump and all of the the the British leaders up until up until brexit all of them bought into this so Democrats and Republicans labor and conservatives and all the major parties across Europe all of them miraculously reached this uncanny unanimity that what was needed was to take down the borders and create a single a single economic and political order for the for the entire planet goes under different names some people call it global some people call it liberal internationalism I call it liberal Empire and I'll explain myself in a moment okay but this vision of one world under one law to be enforced if necessary by American might you know with European contingents but by American might that was the political vision of the the political leadership of all major parties for thirty years for almost thirty years now I think that this is a horrendous and just a terrible terrible mistake and I'd like to talk to you about two two aspects of this mistake first I want to say something about the history of the idea of nationalism as opposed to imperialism and then I'd like to talk a little bit about the the political theory of the the political philosophy of of nationalism and then we'll have a conversation if you still have patience for it after all that all right so first let's begin with the historical issue the the history of the West can be of Western nations can be seen as a kind of a seesaw between imperialism and nationalism this seesaw begins with the Hebrew Bible with the Old Testament in if you study the Bible and I personally think it's a a great mistake that political theory depart a court it's the political theory departments and and programs and and philosophy programs and and and and law faculty do not consider the Bible to be worthy of study for its ideas because many of its ideas are decisive in the history of the West and even if you don't agree with any of them at least to know where they come from would be a useful thing so one of the ideas that is is extremely significant in the history of the West that derives from Hebrew Hebrew Scripture is the idea of the independent national states right in prior prior to that we have in the Middle East as far as the Bible can see we have you know try tribes and clans you know like Abraham going and living on a mountaintop in a tent with with goats and sheep and when is it when he feels like going to war against some some King he gathers up the neighbors and you know like a posse and they they go out in they wage war every family has if you live in the order that that ancient order of tribes and clans every family has like its own foreign policy all right but that is a that is a life of Anarchy that is a life of violence and so the the Middle East by the time that that the Bible is being composed the Middle East is has seen a succession of visionary empires the Egyptian Empire the Babylonian Empire the Assyrian Empire the Persian Empire some of them go more than one round and all of these empires when you start digging when you start digging into the sands in the Middle East and you pull up these clay tablets you start reading what what they're writing about although these empires are you know in many ways very different from one another they all share a they all share a single vision for the relationship between between the gods and and world Empire the vision is the gods come and say to Pharaoh or Hammurabi or Nebuchadnezzar that the gods come and say to to the king to the Emperor I want you to go out and suppress the needless division and violence throughout the world because people are killing each other for no reason your mission is to conquer the four corners of the earth that's the expression that keeps appearing to conquer the four corners of the earth and to bring peace and prosperity to all mankind that is the Imperial vision and that imperial vision it we see we see it later it's adopted by Alexander the Great and his effort to try to unify mankind and then it becomes the the vision of the Roman Empire and from the Roman Empire it gets adopted by the by the Holy Roman Empire right it becomes the the the the medieval Catholic vision of a universal Catholic Republic it also becomes the the vision of the caliphate right the Islamic world Republic and then later it gets picked up by all sorts of characters right like Napoleon who is going to bring peace and prosperity enlightenment to the world by imposing French enlightenment and by Hitler who is going to make he says is going to make Germany Lord of the earth and mistress of the globe all of these all of these are imitations of the Roman Empire the Russians also have a tradition of being the third Rome of a vision of of unifying the world under Russian leadership which you know later transmogrifies into into the crazy communist vision but you can just go on and on now in this background of of this dream of unifying mankind and bring being bringing peace and prosperity against this the only texts that we have from antiquity that stand up against this vision the only texts are not Greek and not Roman they're the texts we find in the Hebrew Bible and in the Hebrew Bible that this is despite the fact that the the Jews are famous for you know for their their monotheism right for for discovering the God of heaven and earth who is was the father of all mankind and the Creator the Creator and the father of all mankind despite this notice this incredible thing that God creator of heaven and earth speaks to Moses but he doesn't tell him what all the other gods tell him go out and conquer the four corners of the earth in fact what he tells him is the opposite he says here are the borders that your people will live within and he gives them the Torah and the Torres you know it's for all mankind the the the biblical teaching is clearly for all mankind but Moses is told you'll you have borders and in Deuteronomy he tells the the people of Israel do not trouble the neighbors do because God has given them their lands as an inheritance and so you leave them alone if you bother them you get punished the God of Israel as far as we know is the first God in the history of mankind to give borders to his own people and say no you're not allowed to go and conquer the neighbors he says you should have a king who's from among your brothers you should have prophets who are from among your brothers that doesn't mean that there aren't prophets among the other nations it just means that your prophets are gonna be from your people and other people will have their own kings and their own prophets in this vision and as far as the universal teaching that the Jews are supposed to bring into the world the prophets say when they are ready the peoples will come to Jerusalem and they'll study with you alright this is this is a a revolution in the history of politics morals and theology this idea that you think you know the truth you think you know God's will but you have no right to go conquer the neighbors and impose it on them when they're ready they'll come to you now as I said Western history is kind of a seesaw for most of Western history what we get is is Empire and more Empire but the Hebrew Bible the Old Testament never stops causing trouble for for this vision of empire even in the Middle Ages Catholics we see the the French the English the poles the Czechs developing nationalisms developing a resistance struggling against against centralization against the holy roman empire against the popes and this really comes to to an explosive place with the protestant reformation especially the Western Protestants the Calvinists the Anglicans in 1534 when Henry the eighth the Claire's independence from the Holy Roman Empire we're all taught that it's all about Anne Boleyn or something I'm I have no doubt that she played an important role but if the English had not already for centuries seen of themselves as something like an independent nation there never would have been a Declaration of Independence it wouldn't have been possible to do but the English adopted it they embraced it after the English we we see the Dutch fighting a war of independence from from Spanish Spanish imperialism from the Holy Roman Empire Spanish branch for 81 years read the Dutch Declaration of Independence of 1581 it's 200 years before the American Declaration of Independence the similarities are absolutely uncanny Jefferson might have been cribbing it's amazing it's amazing the similarities and the Scots declare independence the Swiss and the French and so on now this is the beginning of a world in which national independence and the view of a world of independent nations which later what we call nationalism this is the moment that it first gets put on the table as something that might actually happen I mean in in in the Bible it was maybe something that might actually happen but the Protestants really do succeed in pulling off one nation national state after another the United States is is one of these countries and for 300 years three four hundred years we we have now this is a new world order this is a a world in which gradually the principle of each nation should seek its own course and be allowed to do that by its neighbors right gradually becomes accepted and becomes the basis of international politics now obviously there's an awful lot of flaws in that implementation I mean while while the Europeans are like developing this theory of independent national states at the same time they start building empires they don't have a problem conquering you know Africans and Americans and Asians often brutally so I'm not trying to paint this as some kind of ideal or something it at the same time this principle of the independence of Nations eventually demolishes these empires eventually it gets strong enough so that it ends colonialism now was this good was this for the good this this this movement of what Henry Kissinger calls the the in his book World Order which is excellent from 2015 if you're scared of all those gigantic Henry Kissinger books this world order book it's like a summary of all of his vast volumes it's super please read it so he Henry Kissinger says up until the treaty's the Westphalia treaties in 1648 up until then the whole European history is though the whole world in fact is just a battle between among contending Universal isms every single every single power wants to be the universal power and conquer all the others and here this this this biblical vision allows for treaties which actually explicitly allow that whether you're a Lutheran or Calvinist or a Catholic nation that's no longer going to be an excuse to go to war I'm not saying they banned wars they had plenty of wars but the the impulse to say you have to live the way I say takes the first step towards a world that is much more tolerant and that has a direct effect very quickly also on tolerance internally in countries all right so we live in a world that was created by this moment how did that work this new world of competition among nations I think in a lot of ways it worked great the many of the things that we consider to be the you know the the flower of what's good about modernity the-the-the the intense advancement in the sciences the new experiments and innovations in government in economics in industry and in art we see the competition among these newly independent nations as creating this kind of hot house of X H one is an experiment and what it means to be human and they compete with one another and trying to better the world again I'm not saying anything's perfect about it this is not a utopian vision that I'm describing my book is not utopian there's plenty of things wrong this is not going to solve all the problems in the world but compared to what there was I think in many ways it's a great advancement let's think about this advancement just a little bit I say that that these are competing Nations right this is the age of the balance of power this is the age in which the idea gets developed and advanced by thinkers like Vittal for example who writes that the key to the European system is to prevent any one power from gaining control over the others now when I study did this in college maybe you heard the same thing the balance of power is described I think almost always as though its purpose is to bring peace and stability but I looked this up actually and if I tell doesn't say anything of the kind he says something much more interesting he doesn't claim that this brings peace and stability what he claims is that it brings freedom that by having by preventing anyone power from growing strong enough to be able to he says to dictate the law to the others you maintain freedom in the system the whole purpose and the balance of power is to prevent an imperial power from being able to dictate the law to the rest of the planet now let's think about this a second I said that some of the great innovations in government and economics the kinds of things that that we often hear liberals talking about limited government democratic rotation of power among competing groups within it within the nation the the the the concern for individual liberties oh the the free market all of these things are developed where where are they developed they develop in these independent national states now of course they each of the thing I mentioned has a prehistory that goes all the way back to the Bible and through medieval political theory it didn't spring out of nowhere at the same time it's these independent and this is not a coincidence that it's in England and Scotland and the Netherlands and in America it's an independent national states that we find the development of all of these things that liberals say well look this is this is what makes for a good life we don't have a single example in all of human history not one not one example of limited government being developed and implemented as a principle for an entire empire for an empire for a state that wants to conquer many nations all right let me just refine these terms for a second nationalism the view that the world is governed best when many different nations are given the the are allowed their independence to pursue their own interests and their own traditions according to their own understanding that's nationalism that as opposed to imperialism a view that says no the world is going to be governed best if as much as possible we bring all nations under a single rule of law under a single course of authority and their pie bring the greatest possible peace and prosperity these two positions are completely Eirik irreconcilable and I'm not saying there aren't arguments on either side there are arguments but if what you're looking for is something like limited government or the development of individual liberties we do not have an example of one of these worldwide empires these empires trying to unite the four quarters of the earth that develops this this kind of thing takes place only in a cohesive nation in a nation that the term cohesive is from from John Stuart Mill in it in a nation that is in which the great majority of the people feel a mutual loyalty to one another so that if people come to the king as they did in England and they say look you know you have your sphere of power but each man each person each man is is king in his own castle and the King of England has no right to enter the home of the lowliest serf without permission right this is a famous principle in the common law this can only happen in a nation that's sufficiently cohesive where people are sufficiently loyal to one another so that the king feels proud to be developing these English liberties and to not demand absolute authority to go into any home that he wants and to take anything think about democracy the idea that competing tribes that were at war with one another and disagree on on substantive matters that they will each one be willing to allow the other to win an election and to rule today that's coming apart in America but a generation ago that's what happened was that if the Democrats won they got to rule and if the Republicans won they got to rule and if they couldn't rule alone then they would compromise and they've worked together I mean again I don't want to say there was no politics than no hatred of course there was but compared to today mutual loyalty the feeling that they were a single nation is what made democracy possible take away that mutual loyalty take it away and there will not be any democracy the only way left to govern is through coercion through imposition of force and that's why every Empire which is not unit because empires are not united they're they're many different nations they're not united by mutual loyalty and so every Empire in the end has to govern by coercion look at Europe like the most liberal people in the world and they're incapable incapable of assembling 27 nation nationalities or whatever it is they're incapable of assembling them into a democratic country it will never happen because there is no bond of mutual loyalty among these people in the end in order for the Greeks to do what the Germans want them to do that if to force them the Italians just elected a government they wanted a certain finance minister and if in Brussels they said no they dictated who would be the finance minister in Italy sorry you have to choose you have to choose between freedom which is first based on national freedom if to choose between limited government democracy you have to choose between these things and Empire I'm not so having South not saying anything maybe Empire will bring more peace and prosperity but it will not bring more freedom let me just say one lat last point about about Empire versus nationalism nationalism as I've described it nationalism is a principle of limiting yourself of saying saying I want to unify the diverse tribes within my borders okay and notice notice this is an important point that that nations are always diverse all nations are diverse go back all the way to the Bible right to the to the paradigmatic unification of the tribes of a nation and you'll see great diversity among the Jews and not only is there great diversity among the different tribes of Israel but they also adopt people from other nations Egyptians left left Egypt together with with Israel and stood at Mount Sinai and became Jews Ruth the Moabitess she's a Moabitess her descendant is no less than King David she joins the Jewish people saying your people is my people your God is my god so she's not an economic immigrant although that factors into the story she's willing to adopt both the Jewish people and to be loyal to them as they are flaws and all and she also adopts the Jewish god the principle Jewish idea okay so if we think about this history of independence nations made up of tribes not just Israel but the Dutch and the English and and then the Americans made up of different diverse tribes but held together by mutual loyalty in some kind of common tradition where does tolerance flourish America has never been as intolerant in my lifetime as it is today all right I'm not saying that you know that the people were you know always gentlemanly to me when I was a conservative activist and on college campus they were not there's always hatred there's always obnoxiousness obnoxiousness is like eternal in the human condition but in those days if one of us you know we and our magazine the Princeton Torre if one of us wanted to write about something we believed in religious political philosophical points of view I don't remember anybody being afraid to speak their truth they might be unpopular they weren't going to be persecuted because they said what they had to say on some subject we talked about everything everything we wanted to talk about we talked about it we debated about it we wrote it we published it it scares me that those days are gone now I'm ashamed I'm ashamed that I teach my children to be careful about what they say I am ashamed that I teach my children that sometimes when you believe something you shouldn't say it now why is this happening all right again nationalism as I've described it is a principle of limiting yourself that your nation will not go out and conquer all the nations in the world that you may think that you have the best way of life but you're not going to go out and impose it on all the other nations in the world which means that national nationalism is in fact a principle of tolerance this was an important point nationalism is a principle of Tolerance because if you say there are borders everybody's always focusing on keeping people out of the borders you know keeping us keeping them from crossing the borders that's not the important part it's important it's not the important the most important part is keeping you from crossing the borders to conquer everybody else and impose your your ideas about what's right on the entire rest of the world by having borders by believing in borders nationalists create the possibility of a world of Tolerance and by creating the kind of personality becoming the kind of person who wants to take care of his own and does not want to conquer the four corners of the earth and impose his or her ideas on them but becoming that kind of person you become a tolerant person and it becomes possible for you to tolerate difference in your own society as well and guess what if you're moving in the other direction as we have been for a generation you've got some new world order you're gonna impose your values on the entire planet if necessary by coercion then guess what so you become the kind of person who cannot tolerate different points of view and if you're not going to tolerate different points of view in Afghanistan or Iraq or Yugoslavia then you're not going to tolerate them at home either and the intolerance that we see today in America and Europe is the direct result the direct result of the fact that you all go to school at this wonderful extraordinary institution right such brilliant people such hard work goes into this and basically you have two choices for what you're taught what you're taught here in in departments that deal with ideas two choices there's new Marxist universalism right which is something that sometimes called progressivism neo Marxism which is going to bring the revolution to the entire planet we know the many all Marxists say we know exactly the way the world should be run because we're so smart and then you have liberal universalism liberal Empire we liberals we know how the world should be run the entire planet those are your two choices total arrogance total arrogance neither of those points of view allows the space for anybody else to exist but you and your values so when people come to me and they say oh you know I don't I don't trust salvini Trump's not my hero look at those brexit ears boy what's what are the chances they can govern I say you know what you might be right but what are you doing you want to do a better nationalism go right ahead everybody's gonna welcome a better nationalism but you have to be a nationalist in order to be doing the right thing and that's why Trump was actually right this week when he says there's there's globalists and there's nationalists the globalists they want worldwide liberal Empire nobody should want more lot worldwide liberal Empire there are some people who don't want to be liberals there are such people all right like so either you respect them maybe you'll take pity on them maybe you'll hate them but they're people who don't want to be liberals America will be able to move back towards being a tolerant country when there is an alternative that is nationalist that is tolerance because it's nationalist and cares about America and cares that other nations should be allowed to care about themselves and do things their own way as well thank you very much [Applause] so we're just gonna open it up to a Q&A for first question was promised if you buy it I sign thank you so much I was wondering sort of about how journalism in the media like what is their duty at this like nationalist framework is their duty to a country or is it to the world and if it is to the world was that even mean and so I was only if you could sort of speak to like before you were talking about sort of what's been eroding at like American nationalism and how a lot of it is intervention in other countries which might be distracting from problems within America and to me it seems like that like journalism is or the media is a really big cause of that like a cause of like misinformation about other countries and also a sense of like entitlement and arrogance that we know what to do so yeah basically what is the role of the media as it is today in the nationalist framework well we America used to have America used to have a a much more moderate media which you could call nationalist I mean the there it's it it's famous that that the the main media would never carry a photograph of Roosevelt in his wheelchair because there was the the White House thought that it would would not be good for the for the respect for the presidency or for the respect for the president for him to be photographed in a wheelchair and the the media cooperated with this and I think this is this is an example of of bipartisan nonpartisan loyalty to your president and to your institutions you you you might have thought that this was a terrible stupid policy but the president asked and you would respect for the president and you you want to want it to strengthen the country so you helped now look obviously this stands in tension in tension with the responsibilities of journalists to to pursue to pursue the truth about you know bad things that are happening abroad and in the United States it stands in tension but you know what it stands in tension the truth is it stands in tension with with people's responsibilities as professors with people's responsibilities as citizens with people's responsibilities in you know in a great many occupations the the the loyalty to your nation always has to be balanced against considerations of our evil things being done and and and and and should I speak out against the evil things that are happening that that tension is eternal it's going to exist forever and I think that what what we are are seeing in in the last generation especially is the development of a of a almost complete lack of national responsibility on the part of the of many in the media you could add many in academia and many and in Hollywood many in you know all sorts of industries what used to be a delicate balance so even if you were a Democrat I'll tell you a secret when I was in college I could still read the New York Times I read it every day I mean I I knew that it wasn't reflecting my perspective on the world yeah I knew wasn't conservative but it was respectful and responsible enough so that I could feel like I could get my my news from there now maybe in some cases I was mistaken but but you you felt like it was legitimate and honorable and respectable to be something other than what the New York Times editorial line believed in and I I feel like that's gone I can't I can't read many of the American papers anymore I can't watch a lot of American television anymore I mean it's it's the the total partisanship it's being called partisanship or lack of civility but I'll tell you I'll give you a different word to describe it that is maybe a little bit more apt it's tribalism it's simply tribalism America is breaking down into its tribes and most of the academics and most of the media and most of Hollywood are members of a certain tribe and and what matters is the good of that tribe I'm not saying it's not happening on the other side also I think it's a general phenomenon and when I say I wrote wrote in a piece in time this week that that we need actually what an American needs is more nationalism I know a lot of people will find that strange but nationalism uniting finding what what unites the people finding a way for the tribes to work together and to distinguish themselves from others that's nationalism that's what that's what America needs right now good evening doctor thank you for coming and for your honest words I'd like to ask to what extent maintaining a national identity is compatible with cultural exchange and ideological exchange to the extent that we see today more specifically I'd like to know how do you resolve the tension between the second stage of the mandate that you mentioned first you have your borders and then you're open to teaching your neighbors and the humility that goes along with your flavour of nationalism as in if you have something that's worth teaching there's still a sense that that should be propagated around because it is a certain truth how do you reconcile that with humility and with a lack of exceptionalism so as to avoid Empire great question I think you described I think you described the problem very well but I also think you described the the answer remember I said my books not utopian I'm not utopian so I'm not gonna there's no no formula there's no Creed that is going to simply solve this problem this is this is a problem that's not going to go away but the first step into to dealing with it is is understanding the problem the problem is exactly as you said it that any any nation worth its its salt as a nation this comes to feel that it has all sorts of it has a perspective that's unique in the world that is better than what most other nations have produced in a lot of ways and is something that really others should should be interested in in adopting that that's a I think a completely natural progression in the development of nations and at the same time the whole key to keeping a sane World Order is to speak your mind to disseminate to teach and not to think it's your job to concur in course and you're exactly right that that is an incredible problem because the more you think that your ideas are just the greatest thing the more you're going to be inclined to go out and and conquer and course and we've we've seen it for as long as we have recorded history so I'm actually at the end of the book in the conclusion I talk about not just nationalism as a virtue in the international order like a something that the world should strive to move towards gradually but also it's a virtue in the individual soul and I take this very seriously that there there is such a thing as a completely tribe alized individual who thinks that whatever you know whatever the the leaders the of his tribe say you know is the truth and there is no other truth and and if it's necessary to to do orrible things for that then you will and at the other extreme there there is Empire the the Empire is is is the most fanatical possible position because because it's you know like the tribe you think that you know that your way is best but in Empire you've already reached that stage of burning passion where where you know it can just be imposed on everybody tribal societies aren't like that they the tribes they they think their way is best they may even destroy another tribe if they feel like they need to to survive but they don't have the they don't have the the burning desire to conquer the planet that that doesn't exist in tribal society in in imperial society you develop individuals right just like in tribal society you develop people who are just loyal loyal loyal loyalists in Imperial Society you that the of course there are many different kinds of people but the the the ultimate product of an imperial state is people who are burning with the desire to to overthrow everything in the world other than the value system that the Empire is committed to so it's an imperialist revolution an imperialist revolution that's what what what what we see for example in the French revolutionaries or in Nazi Germany or among the Communists and we even see hints of it among internationalist liberals this burning desire to impose yourself on the planet the ultimate will to power in your soul in your soul if you're a nationalist you recognize two truths that stand in tension and have to balance one another one truth that there is extraordinary truth and beauty in your tradition the way you and your people understand things the second thing that there is also extraordinary truth and beauty among the nations and that sometimes they know things that you don't know and so sometimes you have to learn from them and not only to teach that balance that is I'm not saying all nationalists are like that that's absurd but that's the the the balance point that it that a person who understands nationalism should be striving towards within himself or herself I think that's a tremendous virtue in any person who can achieve that very important in conservatism however it would seem that on a global scale on capitalism are necessarily creates networks of interdependence between nations and it would seem that these networks can sometimes take away some sovereignty from nations especially if there's a very big imbalance in economic power in a relationship but do you think there's any friction between global capitalism and nationalism yes there there there is friction I mean this is I mentioned that the Irving Kristol wrote this book - cheers for capitalism and this this insight actually is very old I mean it's a at least as old as Montesquieu and probably older you you find in his spirit of the laws that he says that that if your thinking is strictly economic if you think only about Commerce and trading and business then you you you move towards seeing the whole world as though as though it's just one entity because because you want to be able to do business everywhere now I don't I don't think there's anything wrong with that I I mean the the purpose of business is is is to to allow all the trading societies each one in its own way in its own pace to flower and flourish sometimes it can be abusive and maybe often it can become abusive and then you have to deal with it but in principle it you know in principle it's a good thing the the the problem is not the desire to trade you know with everyone the problem is the desire to trade in everything okay the problem is the invasion of capitalist ways of thinking which are which are fundamentally promiscuous they're fundamentally they are people today say contractual but I'll say promiscuous that what it means is is if you're doing a good job but your company decides that they have a different priority then they can fire you they don't necessarily have any loyalty to you and people will say well economically that makes sense because companies need to adjust to the market so they'll fire whoever you know loyalty is it is let's say kindly it's not the number one issue okay and the same with you you work you're taught we're taught you go work for a firm you work for some business you for years you become essential there then somebody comes along and offers you twice the salary you know maybe you'll feel loyal loyal and you'll you'll you'll stick with with the job at half the salary but as far as capitalism is concerned it's just as effective and just as efficient and maybe much better if each person when he's valued or she is valued at a certain level if you're being offered more at a different company then you should go so that's promiscuous it's not it's not based on loyalty maybe some some firms have have loyalty and that's good but capitalism is not based on loyalty take that system I write about this at some length in my book take that capitalist system which is so great at producing wealth and innovation and move it into the family and have people start you know eat each each day each month each year husbands and wives will you know will decide you know is like in a nine Rand book is as my husband you know as good as I thought he could be can I get a better husband somewhere else yeah we laugh but it's it's true our society works too to a shocking degree degree where it works like like this children you know everything's based on consent really well you know maybe 20-30 years ago I consented to have that child maybe but not I didn't consent to that child I didn't expect that and then they get to be teenagers and they start talking to you I'm like oh my god I never consented to this I never did right and what what can last that way nothing nothing can last people who people who want to keep the family a marriage together they can't do it they can't do it anymore because they're too capitalists to do it they kid they don't understand you don't understand anymore you people most of you that that no seriously because nobody says this to you that to stay in a marriage for your for fifty or a hundred years right you change your wife changes everything changes none of it is what you consented to right it's not what you can say it's not what you dreamed of so the only way to make it through is through loyalty not through consent through through saying this is more painful than I can even imagine I'm speaking to a young audience when I say this when I speak in front of adult audiences and I get to this point and I say you cannot hold a marriage together without excruciating pain all them heads all the older people start nodding nodding you you cannot you cannot raise children without excruciating pain but the pain is part of the process I mean in the end you can come out of it in in many cases but the pain is is part of the process that that in under capitalism when you feel that much pain you get out and a family when you feel that much pain you say I swore a vow I stick and and that's what holds society together now a nation is much more like a family than it is like like a business enterprise my families have a home economy and nations have economics and it's important but but a nation is is like a big family if people are willing to take the pain on the chin in order to do what needs to be done to hold the nation together the nation can live for centuries for millennia can become something really great and if people are transactional and promiscuous and the moment things go bad then they go well well you know I'm not going to be the laws I'm not gonna pay taxes I'm not gonna serve in the army I'm not gonna fight for this country which is I'm just describing like Europe's already there and America is getting there so you're destroying the nation okay the problem with capitalism is not the business part the problem with capitalism is that it ruins everything else and the only the only the only answer just like Irving Kristol said was tradition national traditions nationalism the religion of your people these things have to contain capitalism or it will simply jump across the to jump out of the bounds of its its course is the river and it'll flood everything hi thanks so much for coming and speaking I want to ask so what is the plan for peace if there is one in sort of a nationalist world or at least a world where people have a nationalist worldview like I I think you kind of said like Oh even if it might come at a cost to peace I was wondering well how how large we expect that cost to be and what trade-offs should we be prepared to make especially in light of the possibility that like a great powers war today would leave nothing very good you're right I I wanted to make my argument leaving over leaving open the possibility that there would actually be that we might take a hit and that for freedom we would actually be willing to have less less peace I mean if in theory right somebody could just conquer the whole world like it's like a big risk set right like like as long as there's competing empires then then there's war but you could think well all I need to do is just to win yeses which is where where America was in nineteen 1989 1990 1991 I just need to win and take the whole board and then I can just rule forever and then there'll be peace so I understand some people think like that but the truth is that in the book I I don't I don't believe in that either I actually think that that Empire ends up being a an engine for perpetual war now national states also fight wars and the question is whether whether there's a difference in the quality and the kinds of wars that are fought when people have imperial aspirations and I think that there actually is a big difference I think that the that when we talk about war as this existential Menace like you know killing millions tens of millions hundreds of millions destroy the earth when we think of war in those terms we're actually not thinking about you know all of these you know petty wars that were that were fought among the national state I mean just just think think examples like wars between the Irish and in the English or the Jews and the Arabs in the Middle East or between India and Pakistan all right I'm not saying that these wars aren't terrible but these wars are they're they're mostly fought about where the border should be other fought about some natural and and the natural resources they're fought about you know like like you're arming too much and you're threatening me they fought about all sorts of things but here's what they're not fought about they're not fought about I have a plan to conquer the entire planet and this will save mankind if I do this you know there's it's a vision of universal salvation which is I mean it it's really close to a religion and right that I have a universal salvation theory and it will save all of mankind and therefore any cost is worth it now then you get the 30 Years War then you get the Napoleonic Wars then you get world war one in World War two these these are wars that they're not just it's not just the you know the the the the Serbs want elected to take off some to move the border with the Austrian Empire so they're so they're they're they're killing a few people so there's a war but there's a a border war between that's not what we're talking about all the wars I just named are Wars that are driven by a universal salvation vision and if the Communists had ever fought the a world war it would have been the same as communists because because Stalin reverted to you know a patriotic nationalist in World War two in order to save Russia but if there had been an actual shooting war with the communists then it would have been the same kind of thing a burning fanatical idea for which it is worth sacrificing anything paying any cost and so I actually think this is not an argument new to me this is this is a famous argument of Kissinger's which goes goes back earlier earlier than him eliminating the universal salvation theory as a motive for war eliminates doesn't eliminate but it as far as we know it it greatly reduces the possibility that you're going to end up with with these kinds of vastly cataclysmic Wars the ones that we're familiar with they're always fueled by the burning desire to save the whole planet which is apparently something that people can't hold on to while fighting wars without doing terrible things so so I'm actually claiming we'll be better off with the world of independent nations even on this front yeah thank you so much for your question I talk rather I have a question about how religion about to ask you a question and we'll see if you thank me I thought how religion fits into the framework that you just described specifically religions that promise like universal truths and the universal brotherhood of man so under your definition of nationalism can somebody be both a good nationalist and somebody who believes in like higher authorities that transcend national boundaries yes great question now this book does not enter into theological questions and that is mostly because of the preferences of some of the people involved in the editorial process but if you want to see my worked out theology of of of nationalism and conservatism and how the pieces fit together the there is on on my virtue of nationalism webpage or you can you can google it there is a lecture called something like god nationalism and conservatism which I assume will become a an essay or a book or something eventually I'll give you the highlight the highlight is this or the the highlights are this tribal societies are basically tend to be relativistic right meaning that every tribe has its own god or gods and those those gods each one rules over you know like a local value system which you know the command and the commands of the God according to its traditions and tribal societies to the extent that they don't have any interest in going out and conquering the world they tend to say ok over there they do things that way and over here we do things this way their gods say this our God say that it works very very well with with polytheism to have each tribe have its own God and to say ok you know down the street there are different gods in charge the the Universal Empire thing appears like it could easily be monotheistic ok and in fact I think quite a few Christians and Moslems have this impulse it's very different from Jews have this impulse to say well there's one God in heaven and there's one Empire on earth you know which is which is not that's not a made-up quotation it actually appears in very various places in history and it's difficult is very often difficult for for Christians and Muslims to to identify with this Old Testament vision which says there's one god who created heaven and earth but peoples are many and they have to do things each their own way how is that possible well it's possible because the prophets are not relativists right they they have no doubt that there are truths that are universal right that they they they believe that some some day all of the peoples in the air claw on the face of the earth are going to stop murdering sacrificing their children to pick an obvious central example but the but they have a an epistemology a theory of knowledge if they can say that they have a theory of knowledge which assumes radical limitation on what each individual can know and surprise even Moses the greatest of the prophets when he keeps insisting at the end of the book of Exodus he keeps insisting to to know God's essence like there's this whole story in the book of sxs that unfolds of Moses wanting to know God's name to know God's ways and and and when the when the when when when the Jews when the Israelites are given the Ten Commandments and then they turn around and they build themselves a Idol like a cow right like a a bull that's a gold idol and they say these are your gods Israel who brought you out of Egypt so at that moment God you know says there's never been anything so foul and corrupt in the history of the world just five minutes ago I told them that they can't do this and now they're saying that that's their God and so God wants to kill them all which is you know that that's like you know divine justice let's go let's kill them all he says to Moses let's let's I'll make a new people and making new people out of you and the Moses will not handle this because and for its really interesting he will not take this because God promised that he was gonna save this people and they lived in Egypt with idolatry and what now he's gonna kill them all like what's the big surprise God promised that he was going to save this people and now he's gonna back out of it and Moses has a sit-down strike he says I I refuse write me out I'm not participating in this religion and I'm just I'm out if if you kill these people and there's this fight that goes on for like five pages between God and Moses between this are we gonna go strict justice or or or or should it be mercy and when when Moses finally gets God to agree to let him see his essence right he wants to know is the world governed by justice is the it's the same issue right are you governing the world in justice or are you just a capricious you know vindictive arbitrary God will just kill all these people because they made a mistake and at that moment there is this astonishing description where Moses is at the top of Mount Sinai we're not the top is somewhere up Mount Mount Sinai and and and God says well you can't see my face because no no man can see my face and live all right so to begin with there's a whole core to God that no human being can ever see and then to see the rest to understand God's essence God puts Moses in between in the cleft between is like an ax crevice between two rocks on the mountain and covers it says that God covers Moses with his hand and then God walks by but Moses can't see him coming he can only see his backside and when he sees the God in the past tense in the backside then there's a description of God's essence there the the famous 13:13 attributed name of God this passage has Moses the greatest of all the prophets according to Scripture getting God to reveal his name his true name is true essence and all he can see is he can't see the face when God's going by he's covered his eyes are covered by God's hand and then when God removed his hand all he can see is God's back right now this this message of of humility about what any human being can know including the prophets that is the basis for the the political view that we're talking about that says why is it that Moses simply can't get a commandment to go conquer all the nations of the world and impose and the answer seems to be because you're not smart enough not Moses not the prophets the people are closest to God still do not have the ability to do this thing and here there is a an amazing clash between Old Testament religion which has its you know that there are many Christians who are very sympathetic to this not not just Protestants but also Catholics i I know because I've been I've been teaching this for four years in in to graduate students and professors there there are many Protestants and Catholics who are sympathetic to this to this Old Testament biblical epistemology theory of knowledge notice how it clashes with the Enlightenment this is really important notice how it clashes with the Enlightenment the Enlightenment Hobbes Locke Rousseau Spinoza can't and all the people teaching you philosophy and political theory in your departments just about though all of these thinkers believe that the human brain is capable of attaining through unaided reason attaining universal truth with regard to morals and politics and the way things should run that is a cornerstone belief of the Enlightenment thought all the empiricists Seldon and and and and um-- and Smith and Burke and Mill and and Adam Ferguson all the great empiricists say this is rubbish no human mind is capable of doing this but it's that that that rationalist anti-imperialist antepers anti empiricist view the rationalist enlightenment view which says my brain is good enough to know the truth for all men and women in all stages of history in all parts of the world I know the final answer that rubbish that is the basis for a lot of Western imperialist thinking like Napoleon enters one country after another and he throws out their ancient constitutions usually which may not have been good constitutions and what does he do he himself personally writes a new constitution for every country that he invades within a few weeks of invading it he doesn't need to know anything there's a universal constitution Napoleon smart enough to have the answer and that is unfortunately the way many of our liberal imperialists and Marxist imperialists think today so that to bring this to a conclusion I actually think the only way that you can be a bible-believing Jew or Christian and this is this is my view is through understanding the old testament teaching about episteme ik humility in terms of what you can know and that falls out almost immediately to anti-imperialism because you can't know enough to run the world so i guess this will be the last question but on my questions about federalism in the United States and do you see the you know the idea of federalism which gives a lot of power to autonomous and gives a lot of power to autonomous states and regions and locales over the power of the federal government as something that helps nationalism or hurts national nationalism in the u.s. well it helps I mean look that is it there's a balancing issue here federalism recognizes something we touched with that I discussed earlier which is that there is no such thing as a homogeneous nation all nations are made up of tribes and those tribes each one has its own traditions in its own ways and the the original 13 American colonies are you know are exactly that same same story every decent country is you know if it's a national state and it wants to unify the nation the tribes of the nation to unify the tribes of the nation it has to keep its eye on two different things one of them to allow the tribes enough of their own so that their own traditions their own unique ways of doing things so that they don't feel like the central government is like this Empire and imperial despotic government that's oppressing them and and and on the other hand there are limits right because because there are things that simply cannot be tolerated and and and maintain the national heritage so one of them was slavery and the the attempt to eradicate slavery by force is something that I I personally think it was justified and made sense nicely it's slavery is an abomination but on the other hand and likewise I feel the same about polygamy about the the coercive eradication of polygamy among in Utah and among the Mormons I mean these are these are not liberal points of view these are I mean this is this is a nationalist point of view that says we have certain traditions that and we will not accept tribes that do not accept those so I think that was necessary but today eh I think America's gotten to the point of America is the the best example of working federalism that we have and unfortunately America has really gotten to the point where many many people feel many people with a lot of power feel that that anything that's really important needs to be decided at the federal level and that's that raises at least food for thought I have a chapter on on on this in my book I'm in favor of federalism but I have a chapter called the myth of a federal solution I don't think federalism solves ultimately solves the problem the problem is that there has to be a enough generosity of allowing each of the the unique tribes to pursue their own their own way of doing things and there have to be boundaries limits to what you're allowed to do you're not gonna allow one of your tribes to start sacrificing children again because you know they think that being in a neo Canaanite is just cool or whatever you're not going to do that so even if you have to stamp it out by force so federalism is a is a super and necessary compromise to allow the National States to to maintain its diversity while while holding a certain core of values steady however the many people who think that you can just have federalism anywhere like for example in Europe are completely mistaken I mean you you you cannot have a functioning federalism like you can't have you know the Federation on Star Trek or or in Star Wars you know like like like you can't have a federation where there isn't a strong bond of mutual loyalty existing among all the tribes that you're uniting if you don't have that then no federalism is going to help you which is what we see in in Europe and the dream of a world federal government which is you know the content dreams the John Lennon dream my day like there's no chance there's absolutely no chance of making that work and we don't have any examples of it working so luckily we we don't need to guess thank you all very much [Applause] [Music]

Channel: YaleUniversity

Views: 13,144

Rating: 4.642458 out of 5

Keywords: Allan, Bloom, Yoram, Hazony, philosophy, politics, nationalism, conservative, Yale, ISI, Intercollegiate Studies Institute, Buckley, western civilization, Allan Bloom, Yoram Hazony, Allan Bloom Forum

Id: A8bvYELc1SI

Length: 84min 34sec (5074 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 26 2018

Reddit Comments

[u/LibertarianFascist69]

Je moet van je eigen identiteit kunnen houden voordat je andere leefwijzen en identiteiten die fundamenteel anders zijn dan je eigen te kunnen respecteren. Anders ga je het straatje in van dat jij de ultieme morele waarden bezit en het levensdoel deze te verspreiden.

Hier heeft vooral links tegenwoordig last van. Ze hebben een enorme unificatie drang omdat ze uitgaan van een positie dat ze een universele waarheid bezitten, die tot Neo-Kolonialisme leidt. Het moeten forceren van LGBT principes in landen waar ze nog niet eens drinkwater hebben en nog geloven dat de tanden van een olifant mensen voorzien van superkrachten. De virtue signaling die leidt tot dat er een leger aan tieners is die vrijwilligers werk wil gaan doen in weeshuizen op ze een grote schaal dat er een handel in weeskinderen ontstaat om aan de grote vraag aan weeshuizen van de weldoeners te kunnen voldoen in de 3de wereld.(#StopWeeshuisToerisme)

De EU is hier echt goed gereedschap in. De wil opleggen aan andere landen binnen de EU is nog maar het begin hiervan. Grote bedragen worden overgemaakt naar corrupte overheden met het label ontwikkelingshulp met het idee dat er een paar westers liberale principes worden overgenomen. Gesubsidieerde industrie die de marktwerking in Afrika helemaal kapot maakt omdat deze markt wordt overspoelt door westerse producten die door subsidies goedkoper kunnen worden aangeboden.