I read today that according to Pew, 82% white evangelical Christians in the US believe that Israel was given to the Jews by God. Whereas only 40% of Jews subscribe to this view.
While this may not surprise us, it is an astounding statistic. All the more astounding for how true it rings.
After all to be Christian is to believe that Jesus Christ was the Messiah, and also to believe that the Jews stand in rejection of him.
To be Evangelical is to believe in an individual duty to preach Jesus to the unconverted.
Apparently, in America, Jewish people have an exemption from evangelism. I can think of a good few people who might want to feign a Jewish background as a result.
This represents a remarkable shift. Jews were routinely persecuted in Europe for several hundred years. Anti Semitism did not stop at the Atlantic's eastern shore, but crossed to the new world. Significant Americans, and significant numbers of ordinary Americans were casually or actively anti Semitic well into the 1970s. The Ku Klux Klan, that barometer of old school racism, peddled hatred of Jews just as easily as hatred of blacks.
But something has changed. If an organisation representing the worst of the extreme right was to be founded today, very likely it would be talking about 'Judeo Christian heritage'. For the right, Jews are no longer part of 'them', rather they are now part of 'us'.
So a Republican candidate, to win the presidential nomination, must seriously love Israel. The question is, will that help them win the election? Like so many hot issues for Republicans in general, and evangelicals in particular, saying what the primary voters want to hear means saying things that ordinary voters think sound insane.
Democracy is a wonderful thing. Grass roots movements like the tea party are amongst the most democratic of all movements. But they are not mainstream. If Republicans don't find a way to get more mainstream candidates past the committed base of Evangelicals, not only will elections be hard to win, but winning them will have consequences. These consequences will be bad news for the Republicans. Governing (if only in part) in the interests of another nation cannot end well. And it must have less than ideal consequences for the US, too. But worst of all, the alliance between the Republican right and Israel is really an alliance between the Republican right and the Israeli right. It isn't even to the benefit of all Israeli Jews.
It seems to me that most educated Americans must know all this. But the train is hurtling down the track and the brakes have failed. No one knows how to stop it.
Friday 27 March 2015
Tuesday 17 March 2015
A new consensus. Is it possible?
In the Democratic world, there was an overall political consensus from the 1930s to the 1970s.
This was a left wing consensus.
It was brought about by the depredations of the great depression. Reinforced by the horror at the handiwork of the extreme right, the Nazis. This consensus oversaw the advancement of the state until it took over half the economy or more.
From the mid 70s onward, this consensus collapsed. The weight of over empowered workers, who misdirected the collectivism of unions into a defence of their own, new vested interest. The corruption of an unholy alliance between the liberal left and the authoritarian apologists for the Soviet Union. The discrediting of nominally leftist leaders, such as Kennedy and Johnson in Vietnam, or Wilson in Rhodesia. The leftists' had become a new elite. A new version of the establishment.
Therefore forces of the right, while maintaining the banner of conservatism, could offer what seemed a new radical approach to politics. So came the alliance of libertarian free marketeers with social conservatism. The idea that freeing a sector of society to get rich would benefit us all. 'A rising tide lifts all boats'. So a second consensus was formed. This entailed the idea that the state was inherently inefficient and should do as little as possible, that all state action stifled enterprise. That tax was evil, wealth, and particularly wealth 'creators' good. All that was need for progress was freedom for employers, and limits on the freedom of workers to organise. This consensus was reinforced by the fall of the Soviet Union, bringing a clutch of new nations into the orbit of the west, nations that would distrust the left and feel nothing but gratitude to the 'Cold Warriors' of the right.
The economic and banking crisis of the last few years leaves this second consensus as tarnished as the first was 35 years ago.
The second consensus was personified by Reagan and Thatcher. But before either of them took office Menachem Begin won election in Israel in 1977. His election ended thirty years of leftists dominance, thirty years that represented the whole life of the state of Israel.
This leaves me wondering, if the left wins in Israel today, does that signal a new leftist consensus is about to spring into being? From Obamacare in the US to economics trumping security in Israel, all the signs are there.
It is the time of the 99%.
UPDATE----
Or maybe not. Netanyahu won, apparently. Israel views itself as a democracy, it therefore gets the government it deserves. One that rejects peace with its neighbours. That was the change Netanyahu made to win. Israel has declared itself to be more the country not of Netanyahu than Ben Gurion. Let it be judged as such..
This was a left wing consensus.
It was brought about by the depredations of the great depression. Reinforced by the horror at the handiwork of the extreme right, the Nazis. This consensus oversaw the advancement of the state until it took over half the economy or more.
From the mid 70s onward, this consensus collapsed. The weight of over empowered workers, who misdirected the collectivism of unions into a defence of their own, new vested interest. The corruption of an unholy alliance between the liberal left and the authoritarian apologists for the Soviet Union. The discrediting of nominally leftist leaders, such as Kennedy and Johnson in Vietnam, or Wilson in Rhodesia. The leftists' had become a new elite. A new version of the establishment.
Therefore forces of the right, while maintaining the banner of conservatism, could offer what seemed a new radical approach to politics. So came the alliance of libertarian free marketeers with social conservatism. The idea that freeing a sector of society to get rich would benefit us all. 'A rising tide lifts all boats'. So a second consensus was formed. This entailed the idea that the state was inherently inefficient and should do as little as possible, that all state action stifled enterprise. That tax was evil, wealth, and particularly wealth 'creators' good. All that was need for progress was freedom for employers, and limits on the freedom of workers to organise. This consensus was reinforced by the fall of the Soviet Union, bringing a clutch of new nations into the orbit of the west, nations that would distrust the left and feel nothing but gratitude to the 'Cold Warriors' of the right.
The economic and banking crisis of the last few years leaves this second consensus as tarnished as the first was 35 years ago.
The second consensus was personified by Reagan and Thatcher. But before either of them took office Menachem Begin won election in Israel in 1977. His election ended thirty years of leftists dominance, thirty years that represented the whole life of the state of Israel.
This leaves me wondering, if the left wins in Israel today, does that signal a new leftist consensus is about to spring into being? From Obamacare in the US to economics trumping security in Israel, all the signs are there.
It is the time of the 99%.
UPDATE----
Or maybe not. Netanyahu won, apparently. Israel views itself as a democracy, it therefore gets the government it deserves. One that rejects peace with its neighbours. That was the change Netanyahu made to win. Israel has declared itself to be more the country not of Netanyahu than Ben Gurion. Let it be judged as such..
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