Chaos Muppets

Impeachment is the word of the day, as after faux-scandal after faux-scandal have failed to stick, Republicans have finally found a government act that everyone agrees was an abuse of power (the IRS audits). Now, from what we know if the IRS scandal at this stage talk of impeachment is obviously ludicrous. Nonetheless, Jon Chait argues that Republicans should let the crazy fly.

It's an interesting question, to be honest. Our constitutional system depends on norms to function, and what we've seen these past few years is what happens when these norms start to breakdown -- when it becomes acceptable to try and kneecap entire wings of government by refusing outright to confirm any agency appointees, or to hold the entire economy hostage through the debt ceiling, or, for that matter, by tossing "impeachment" around every time Obama hears a sneeze without saying "God bless you." Our political system (defined crudely as who wins and loses elections), by contrast, is zero-sum -- it doesn't matter how much the American people hate you so long as they hate the other guy more. Chaos, as Littlefinger reminds us, is a ladder, and a calculated decision to sow chaos certainly can end up redounding to one party's benefit. The system is calibrated to respond to people who stay within well-defined borders, and when a player comes along who openly flouts those rules, he can gain a distinct advantage. This is why the Joker is Batman's most dangerous foe -- his behavior defies even those norms which govern how criminals behave.

But that chaos can aid its progenitors does not mean it always will, and the truly chaotic actor is by definition incapable of ceasing setting fires just because its no longer in his interest. The problem for Republicans is that I don't think this is planned chaos. The Clinton impeachment, for example, was obviously farcically weak on its merits, but at least it could be plausibly sold as a political strategy. It turned out to be a bad gambit -- the American people reacted badly, and the GOP was tarred as a bunch of overzealous hypocritical loons -- but they at least could claim that outcome was apparent only with the benefit of hindsight.

By contrast, today it seems quite clear that all the impeachment chatter is not a calculated strategy but simply an uncontrollable reflex. Impeachment was uttered about Solyndra and Fast and Furious. A number of high-profile Republicans have contemplated it for one alleged offense or another. World Net Daily convened a panel to discuss impeaching Obama over no less than a dozen different "scandals" ranging from the Libya war to Cap and Trade. Rob Portman gets elder statesman points for not being ready to commit to impeachment yet.

Republicans were convinced in 2012 that Benghazi was their ticket to victory, and were shocked that American voters didn't seem to think the Obama administration did anything wrong. One could say they've learned nothing. But I think the problem is deeper. The impeachment talk is no longer a political strategy -- its just the raw result of the conservative id flailing about, and Republicans can no longer keep it under control.

Our Divine Constitution

It wasn't the first academic piece I had accepted for publication (that would be "When Separation Doesn't Work: The Religion Clause as an Anti-Subordination Principle, which came out in the Dartmouth Law Journal when I was still at Carleton).

It wasn't the first piece of academic scholarship I published in a true law review (that would be my law review comment, The Price of Victory: Political Triumphs and Judicial Protection in the Gay Rights Movement). Nor was it the first piece I published as a professor (The Perils and Promise of the Holder Memo), or even the first full-length piece I had accepted for publication (Sticky Slopes, which I believe is scheduled to come out this October).

But nonetheless it is a milestone, and I am pleased to announce the publication of my first full-length law review article to actually hit the presses: Our Divine Constitution, 44 Loy. U. Chi. L.J. 1201 (2013). An abstract is below (I realized that I never actually wrote an abstract for this piece, so I whipped this up in the last 20 minutes).

The presumption that God is omnibenevolent — inherently just, wise, kind, and merciful — is so pervasive as to be almost a tautology. Were God not just, God would not be God. And the United States Constitution, often analogized to a religious document, has regularly been spoken of in the same way. While we accept that the Constitution can tolerate injustice, we are highly resistant to the notion that it can actively command it. When that appears to occur, we are torn between our intuition that the Constitution must allow for justice, and our instinct that our sense of justice cannot deviate from the dictates of the Constitution. We reject either that the contested point is the true command of the Constitution, or the true requirement of justice. Moreover, because Western political thought predicates the legitimacy of constitutional law on its consistency with prefigured conceptions of justice, if we cannot adopt either of these apologias, the only remaining move seems to be rejection of the Constitution itself.

In this review of Robert A. Burt’s book "In the Whirlwind: God and Humanity in Conflict," I address this tension both in terms of theology and legal philosophy. Borrowing from the literature on "protest theology", I argue that neither our faith in the Constitution nor our faith in God is or can be predicated on the idea that these sovereigns are always behaving in a perfectly just manner. But I also reject the notion that injustice is an inherent part of these entities or that our relationship with them is unrelated to our desire for them to help instantiate justice. Our commitment to God and the Constitution is not dependent on their supposed perfection. It exists because it is a relationship we find meaningful even in spite of continual, mutual failings. It persists in spite of those shortcomings not because either God or the Constitution is "truly" or "essentially" just, but because we think it is a relationship worth preserving, and that each can at least be appealed to in the language in justice.

As always, I'd love you feedback.

It's been a really hard year this year, and it did not go the way I had hoped (to put it mildly). But I can do this, and this article will be the first of many.

To Know is not To Understand

Reprinting a status update from David Hirsh, whose Engage organization is simply an indispensable resource for those concerned with anti-Semitism and are looking for an unabashedly progressive and unapologetic approach to combating it:

There is a huge reluctance amongst many antiracist Jews to see antisemitism; to understand it; to oppose it, to defend their fellow Jews, to educate their fellow antiracists. They have lost the ability to sniff antisemitism. They know, without knowing, that to do so puts them outside of the intellectual and political world in which they live. They know, without knowing, that to see, understand, sniff or oppose antisemitism is considered vulgar, selfish, dishonest, dishonourable, disgraceful; It is the end of them being considered progressive, intelligent, antiracist, engaged. The act of knowing is itself punished by exclusion, yet this fact itself does not help them to know.

I'm reminded of a story recounted by Steve Cohen (the British Marxist, not the Tennessee Congressman), who famously described himself as an "anti-Zionist Zionist" ("at least that should confuse the bastards"), about a review of his classic pamphlet "That's Funny, You Don't Look Anti-Semitic". If you click the link and/or read the pamphlet (which you should -- it's one of the most important works of modern anti- anti-Semitism ever written), it is evident immediately that Cohen is a sharp critic of Israel and Zionism -- to a far greater degree than I support, and in ways that I ultimately think are incompatible with Jewish and human equality. But despite this I've always considered Steve an ally, because it is very clear that he thinks critically about anti-Semitism and is unafraid to call it out and does not shy away from the fact that the existence of anti-Semitism does and should alter what sorts of political programs, tactics, and commitments are permissible. 

Anyway, Cohen publishes his pamphlet, which is quite open in its critique of Zionism in the midst of leveling an equally open critique of anti-Semitism amongst anti-Zionists. And the reviewer acknowledges his critique of Zionism, but dismisses it as hollow because he also criticizes anti-Semitism. The exact words were "It is not enough to trot out platitudes, as he does, about being against Zionism and in support of the Palestinian struggle.".And so Steve replied:

So I'm not allowed into the club even though I fulfil the entry requirements. I'm not allowed in because I recognise and oppose the existence of anti-Semitism on the Left—and this therefore renders all support for Palestinians a "platitude". Well it ain't me who's here confusing anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism.

I encountered a similar situation a few years ago. I had been writing a lot on another blog about anti-Semitism, and a commenter asked me "no offense, but is there any criticism of Israel that you wouldn't automatically consider to be anti-Semitic?" And I told her, guess what? Offense taken. First, because caring about anti-Semitism should not give any inference about what positions I take on Israel (much less an unyielding one that cannot tolerate any criticism); second, because I'd spent considerable time documenting and explaining why I thought various things were anti-Semitic, and now I'm told that this some sort of "automatic," thoughtless, kneejerk expression; and third, because I had (at the time) a searchable blog that made it quite clear that I criticized Israel myself quite regularly. No matter -- opposing anti-Semitism itself was enough to render me a suspicious character in her eyes.

There's a saw about the modern right that it isn't so much "racist" as it is "anti-anti-racist." It doesn't really care one way or the other about racism, but it is very committed to attacking those who attack racism. I feel similarly about much of the left (Jewish and otherwise) with regards to anti-Semitism. It's not so much that they themselves are anti-Semitic (though some are), but they seem to positively recoil if anyone might think they could be so gauche, so (dare I say) provincial, as to actually fight against anti-Semitism. Combating anti-Semitism is viewed as a dead giveaway for all manner of mendacious positions -- an inability to criticize Israel, a desire to see Palestinians dispossessed, silencing of people of color, hatred of cosmopolitanism, outdated tribalism -- take your pick. And if, as in Cohen's case, those charges are manifestly untrue -- it still doesn't matter. The pretension at being progressive is but a platitude.

If I sound too harsh towards the Jews Hirsh is talking about, I don't mean to be. To be Jewish anywhere in the world (except that one place the existence of which non-Jews are so angry about) is to be ultimately at the mercy of others. Knowing how not to get kicked out of the club is a survival skill, and Jews know that talking too loudly about anti-Semitism (and for some, any talk is too loud) is a quick way to be shown the exit. The instinct they feel to duck is a perfectly sensible one. But as Hirsh says, the knowledge that to remain in the majority's good graces they have to sing the majority's praises is a sign of the fundamental inequality they experience. And when they promote the majority's narrative that combating anti-Semitism is a far greater problem and graver evil than anti-Semitism itself, they do damage to other Jews. They block the emergence of a serious, unflinching, and badly necessary conversation about anti-Semitism, and they contribute to the expulsion of those who labor so hard and so courageously to bring that conversation about in what remains deeply infertile soul.

An Israel Roundup

A smattering of Israel links sitting on my browser:

Left and right groups agree: Israel is freezing new settlement construction.

Norm Geras has a great article up in Fathom about Israel as an "alibi" for anti-Semitism.

In a similar vein, Eve Gerrard has her own piece about the "pleasures of anti-Semitism". She identifies three: "the pleasures of hatred," "the pleasures of tradition," and "the pleasures of moral purity". The last of these is the one that I see as the most important and most striking.

Stephen Hawking canceled an academic trip to Israel, in what was initially reported to be a boycott move, then a health decision, and now is back to being a boycott statement. Carlo Strenger pens an open letter in response, calling the boycott movement a "way to ventilate outrage about the world's injustices where the cost is low."

The Attorney General of Israel just issued a sweeping and sharp directive aimed at mandating gender equality in sectors of Israeli society where Haredi influence has long propogated segregation.

... and one more: leading Shas MK urges Bibi to accept the Arab Peace Plan. I keep on forgetting that Shas in the opposition right now.

With Friends Like These....

A Facebook friend, with the ever-so-wry "just sayin'", just posted a quote attributed to a certain Father John Sheehan, S.J.:

“Every time anyone says that Israel is our only friend in the Middle East, I can’t help but think that before Israel, we had no enemies in the Middle East.”

As a pure statement of history, this is of course false. The U.S. has had its share of pre-1948 enemies in the Middle East (the Barbary Pirates, the Ottoman Empire in WWI, various Arab factions which sided with the Nazis in WWII, etc.).

But pushing beyond that, I think this statement needs to be unpacked a bit even if we took it at face value. The argument being made by our friendly Jesuit priest is that prior to Israel's establishment, we were all buddy-buddy with the dominant powers in the Middle East, but that all went to hell once the Jews had the temerity to establish their own state. Damn Jews.

This, of course, is an interesting view over how we should think about "friendship," to wit, that the most important consideration is whether it allows us to maintain and preserve preexisting relationships of power. Which ... okay, so that's one way of looking at it. Charles De Gaulle did say that "nations do not have friends, only interests." But I'd hope that's not the only way that we would think about how we select our friends.

Consider the following statement as a parallel:

"Every time anyone says that Blacks are Democrats' only friends in the South, I can't help but think that before Blacks were allowed to vote Democrats had all the votes in the South."

As a historical matter, this is at least as true (and probably more so) than Sheehan's statement. And some people do seem to resent Blacks for that, and essentially blame them for the Democratic Party's misfortunes in the American South. But most of us, one hopes, would recognize that supporting civil rights was the right thing to do regardless of whether it ultimately helped or hindered Democratic electoral fortunes. And if we're looking for someone to blame, it should be the White voters who decided that supporting civil rights was a dealbreaker, not the African-Americans who had the temerity to want to be treated as equals.

How much of the current strain between America and the countries of the Middle East can be attributed to the existence of Israel is debatable, but it is fair to say that most of these countries are less than keen on the friendship or the existence of an Israel at all. And they expressed that antipathy quite cogently, in the form of a series of wars and ethnically cleansing 99% of the Jewish population from the Arab World. Such actions don't always result in American opposition, particularly when (as noted) such opposition places us in conflict with the local elites. But where it does, it seems weird to object on the grounds that we weren't sufficiently solicitous of the preexisting hierarchy.

After doing all this work, I got interested in the provenance of the quote itself and who this "Father John Sheehan" is. And that is a surprisingly difficult proposition. The quote shows up a lot on Google, but it is almost invariably unsourced except to say "John Sheehan, S.J." The closest thing I've found to a source is a citation to Volume 21, No. 2, p. 34 (2002) of the Journal of Historical Review. The problem being that the Journal of Historical Review is the house journal of Holocaust-deniers -- it's a conspiracy website with footnotes. Meanwhile "John Sheehan" might as well be "John Doe" if you're thinking of generic name for a Jesuit Priest -- while that could just explain why it's so hard to find the particular "John Sheehan" who said it, it also might explain why there seemingly is no information of the "John Sheehan" who supposedly said it.

The bottom line is that I think the quote is a hoax -- it flies around various anti-Zionist and anti-Semitic circles, but I don't think it's real.

This story does come with a happy ending though: I posted all of this (including my sense that the quote was fake) on my friend's Facebook wall, and you know what she said? She thanked me for my sleuthing, admitted she had probably taken in, and resolved to be more careful next time (and affirmed that the quote did not express her views on the American/Israeli alliance, which she says should be preserved).

Quote of the Evening

Tonight's quote of the evening was found while reading Joseph William Singer's The Player and the Cards: Nihilism and Legal Theory, 94 Yale L.J. 1 (1984), which ranks quite high on my list of "titles I'm bitter are already taken." But the quote itself isn't from Singer, but rather Nelson Goodman:

A rule is amended if it yields an inference we are unwilling to accept; an inference is rejected if it violates a rule we are unwilling to amend.

Nelson Goodman, Fact, Fiction, and Forecast 64 (4th ed. 1983).

I Would Come Here

Why am I blooging this? Because it makes me happy, that's why. Do I need another reason?

If he could only afford it, Geoff Ramokgadi says he would temporarily transplant himself to Hungary and launch a grassroots drive to eradicate rising anti-Semitism here.

Ramokgadi, a black convert to Judaism, represents one of the smallest Jewish communities of the world: the 14-family-strong Jewish community of the Kingdom of Swaziland.
[...]
Rather bewildered by the recent surge in anti-Jewish sentiments in Hungary, Ramokgadi says he would like to engage in dialogue with the locals here to figure out what lies behind the trend. “We must sit down the people here and ask them, ‘Why are the Jews being singled out? Where should they go?’” he says. “Yes, Israel is a country for them, but here is where they are born, so why are they being treated like aliens?”

Walking down the street the other day, recounts Ramokgadi, he encountered two boys who were playing guitar and asked to join them. “They saw my tag and asked if I was Jewish. I told them I was. Then I took out 10 euros and handed it to one of the boys. He was about to cry when I did that. It all starts with changing one person. One person changes another and then you have shalom. This is all I want. If only I had the money, I would come here.”

Some days my mood is "I bet if I could just talk to these people, they'd see I'm a human just like them" and some days my mood is "they'll never change, so I'll just curse them into hell from here." I like the former mood better.

Keep on representing the Tribe, Ramokgadi.

The Oppressor Class

Phoebe Maltz nails it, discussing the creation of a late 19th century German colony established, in part, to keep good Aryans away from those meddlesome Jews:

Anti-Semites weren't - aren't - just people who think they're better than Jews. They're people who think they're being oppressed by Jews.

This is part of the reason why anti-Semitism so easily finds footing among certain branches of the far-left. To be sure, it's also why anti-Semitism finds footing among the far-right -- the right certainly has no trouble imagining untrustworthy aliens who threaten Our Way of Life. But the left's rhetoric of opposing "oppression" and "hierarchy" can easily incorporate anti-Semitic prejudices insofar as they buy into popular narratives of Jews and the quintessential oppressing class.

This also relates to some popular prescriptions of how Jews can end anti-Semitism (much like ending rape or ending racism, this is of course typically presented as the obligation of the victim rather than the perpetrator). Jews will cease being hated when they cease possessing power, whether it be social (control of Hollywood), political ("the Jewish lobby"), national (Israel), or what have you. See, for example, this piece of work (proof that finding yourself on a Google Book Search isn't always a happy day). A Jew who has the temerity to succeed (and in particular, succeed at persuading others) is a Jew who is playing to stereotype. A polity where Jews are successfully convincing non-Jews to adopt policies Jews find amenable is a polity that clearly, clearly, has been damaged or diseased in some way. How else could Jews possibly win but by dirty pool?

The corollary is that Jews have a normative obligation to be weak, to be at the sufferance of others. It is wrong for Jews to win, and it is extra wrong for Jews to win based on their own decisions and determinations (as opposed to being gifted a privilege by the benevolent majority). Jewish power is always taken to be Jewish oppression; hence, the bare fact that Jews sometimes are in a position where they don't have to answer to the Gentile world is itself an outrage. This is why so much of the "critical" (so to speak) assault on Jewish institutions focuses not on what they do, but the fact of their continued existence. That Jews have institutions which can make decisions which impact the world without -- gasp -- gentile permission; this is the anathema. The problem is when Jews are subjects -- actors who have the ability to influence the world around them. The solution is to make them subjects -- subjugated and controlled by others who know best.


My Problem With Podhoertz's "Negro Problem"

Norman Podhoertz has a retrospective commemorating the 50th anniversary of his famous essay "My Negro Problem-and Ours". The original essay I may have read and forgotten -- I've certainly heard of it. This reflection is certainly interesting as a historical artifact -- it's always interesting to know more about the circumstances around which such a piece is written. But at least judging by how Podhoertz talks now, it's difficult to think he's really got a good insight into the "negro problem." I'm dubious, for example, that there exists a single Black person (well -- I take that back -- if I've learned anything from Jewish politics, there's always one) that really thinks racial relations have actually deteriorated since 1963. And whether or not the rise of out-of-wedlock births in the black family is having some antisocial effects, to declare it "the root cause of all the ills that plague the black community" smacks of someone who really doesn't want to think hard about this question anymore.

I've never quite understood why the nonracist wing of the conservative movement didn't embrace the black power agenda, and reading this essay just deepens the dilemma. Podhoertz gives their actual ideology the short shrift -- the black power movement thought that whites were incorrigibly racist, but their solution was simply to be left alone. Blacks get to run their own schools, blacks get to run their own communities. White racism was only a problem insofar as it was coupled with whites dominating blacks. This is easily compatible with conservative views of federalism, individual liberty, and community control. It is not easily compatible with conservative views of racial supremacy, the need to civilize the savage man, and the sense that white freedom included the freedom to dictate terms to blacks. In that respect, Podhoertz's protests to the contrary notwithstanding, the modern GOP really did take on a healthy dose of John Calhoun.

Of course, this "dilemma" is easily resolved in the descriptive sense: Nonracist Republicans didn't promote the ideology of black power because they preferrred to make a successful run at the votes of Southern racists. That's what the southern strategy was all about. But it's still a bit surprising that there wasn't at least a little more pushback. One gets the since from reading Podhoertz that even the Republicans who friends with Black intellectuals at the time weren't really invested in the struggle, and today they're so alienated that they just don't care about it at all.

Dispatches from the Elders

The Church of Scotland takes on Jewish claims to the land of Israel. It's strategy for doing so is to put forward an extreme irrendetist and biblical-literalist position, characterize this as "the position of Zionism," and then proceed to reject it outright. One might immediately raise an eyebrow at the phrase "the position of Zionism," since "Zionism" is not a monolith and lacks a central governing authority that could present such a singular and specific "position." Or perhaps they got a text from the Elders of Zionism laying out the official white paper? Anyway, the Church kind of recognizes the problem, as it concedes that various Zionist leaders adopted much more nuanced positions that were quite attentive to the importance of establishing a liberal democratic state. Indeed, it notes that these positions were enshrined in Israel's declaration of independence. But somehow, it retains the confidence that these statements create "a tension . . . with the state of Israel’s ethno-national, Zionist goals," rather than creating a tension with the Church of Scotland's overly narrow and ahistorical definition of what Zionism is. And so "Zionism" remains incompatible with any conception of good -- a uniquely Jewish evil that Christians must demolish and Jews must "repent" of.

Of course, there's nothing wrong in the abstract with attacking far-right renditions of Zionist ideology. I do this with at least as much regularity as I attack the resurrection of Christian anti-Semitic ideologies. There is, however, a huge problem with launching this attack as if it is a hit on the sine qua non of Zionism. Structuring the assault that way results in a misappropriation of huge swaths of Jewish experience, and leads the Church here to make a considerably wider-ranging "critique" (if one wants to call it that) of the Jewish peoples' purported "particular exclusivism," our sense of ourselves as "victims and special," and our alleged "specialness." They demand of Jews an obligation to stop believing that we are "serving God’s special purpose and that abuses by the state of Israel, however wrong and regrettable, don’t invalidate the Zionist project." Meanwhile, the Church endorses a return to a "radical critique of Jewish theology and practice." I can't wait to see how that turns out.

Scottish Jews are understandably aggrieved, and accuse the Church of "claiming to know Judaism better than we do." This, of course, is probably the trademark of Christian approaches to Jewish institutions of all stripes (see also the UK's Methodist Church), and so it is hardly a surprise to see that rear its ugly head again. One does continue to marvel at what makes Christian organizations think we will read such a message and think "by golly, they must be right, because if there's one group I trust to issue accurate assessments about moral questions in general and Jewish experience in particular, it's institutional Christianity!" The arrogance, if nothing else, is as astonishing as ever.

Perhaps the Church could take some of its own advice about asymmetries of power and note its own privileged position in getting to interpret the meaning of Jewish history and Jewish ideologies. But somehow, I'm doubtful.

The Good News Club

Two pieces of good news related to the Holy Land. First, incoming Justice Minister Tzipi Livni indicated that she'll be cracking down on Israeli "price tag" militants. "Price tag" refers to the cost these radical settlers claim they impose on Israeli actions seeking to undo the occupation, and the result is they've attacked both Palestinian and Israeli targets alike in a sweeping spree of terrorism. I've been quite adamant that Israel needs to come down hard on these thugs, and I've also been a long-time fan of Livni. Good to see she's stepping up.

Meanwhile, the Arab League has announced that it would be willing to accept variations from the '67 borders as a basis of a new Palestinian state. The swaps would have to be agreed-upon and "minor", but since '67 borders-with-agreed-upon-swaps is the acknowledged formula by everyone even remotely serious about securing the democratic self-determination of Jews and Palestinians alike, it's good to get another stakeholder on board.

The Appearance Gap

During the recent Kamala Harris incident (wherein Barack Obama, in the course of calling Harris "brilliant", "dedicated", and "tough", also called her "the best looking attorney general"), a common reaction was that Obama's statement was an innocent compliment and any negative reaction was just over-sensitivity (see here for an example). What's the harm in a nice compliment?

The answer was always that such remarks -- even when complimentary on face -- make it harder for women to be taken seriously and thus hurt their entry and advancement in professional spaces. And lo and behold! New research bears this argument out (via). The study tracked what happened in a hypothetical match-up between a male and female candidate depending on whether the women's appearance was remarked upon. It found that when the female candidate's appearance was mentioned -- regardless of whether the mention was positive, negative, or neutral -- it caused a material drop in her poll numbers. To be sure, the study did not similarly measure the effect of mentioning the male candidate's appearance, so we don't know if men would be burdened in the same way. But since it is fair to say that a woman's appearance is far more likely to gain attention in the media than a man's, the finding is still important even if the effects would theoretically be entirely gender-blind.

The Laboror and the Field

Ta-Nehisi Coates post on Dr. Benjamin Carson is heart-breaking because, for whatever reason, I suspecting exactly this about Dr. Carson.

For kids like me who came up in Baltimore during the '80s and '90s, Carson has special importance. Whenever the black folks at our summer camps or schools wanted to have a "Be A Credit To Your Race" moment they brought in Dr. Carson. I saw him speak so many times that I began to have that "This guy again?" feeling. As an adult, knowing how much it takes to speak in front of people, I can recognize that Carson's willingness to talk to black youth (and youth in general) came from a deeply sincere place. There were no cameras at those summer camps and school assemblies. No one had money to pay him. But he showed up. And that was what mattered.
[...]
It's perfectly respectable to think Obamacare is bad for the country. It's less respectable to claim that Obama isn't an African-American. It's perfectly respectable to believe in a flat tax. It's less respectable to tell a room full of white people that Obama, isn't "a strong black man" or that he has "never been a part of the black experience in America." It's respectable to believe that the Ryan Budget is the key to the future. It's less respectable to believe that equating same-sex marriage with child-rape puts you on Harriet Tubman status.

The corollary of that last metaphor -- the idea of liberalism as a plantation -- is especially noxious and deeply racist. It holds that black people are not really like other adult humans in America -- people capable of discerning their interest and voting accordingly -- but mental slaves too stupid to know what's good for them.

When Ben Carson uses this language he is promoting himself at the expense of the community from which he hails. More, he is promoting himself at the expense of the community in which I once saw him labor. That is tragic.

I think an interview session between Coates and Dr. Carson would be fascinating; all the more so because of Coates' experience as a child who saw him as a role model and recognized the sincerity of his labor.

Any Jew knows and respects the value of dissent, but any Jew also can recognize a member of the tribe who simply revels in the role of providing a Jewish voice for what non-Jews love to hear. Their role isn't to persuade Jews, it's to give non-Jews a Jewish facade to justify maintaining their prior beliefs about Jews and ignore any Jew who tells them differently. That role also exists in the Black community, and it was the part Dr. Carson chose to play. It's all the more tragic because as Coates' personal experience with Dr. Carson years ago documents, it wasn't always thus. Dr. Carson once (and for all I know, still does) labor in his own community -- with the cameras off, with the goal of making his people stronger. That I might disagree with some of Dr. Carson's prescriptions on what constitutes strength does not make that endeavor less laudable. But the fact that Dr. Carson has done the right thing does make it hurt more when he does wrong.

Jew is Always the Right Answer

I once played a round of pub trivia with the category "conspiracy theories". I proposed that we just answer "Jews" for every question. What are the odds we'd be wrong?

I bring that story up again with reference to this post:

There’s a post going around that rightfully brings up how unfair it is that when a Muslim is charged with a crime it is Islam, not the individual, that goes on trial. But it emphasizes that by asserting that when a “Jew kills someone” (and there a religious Jew with peyos and a kippa and the white shirt - black pants uniform is drawn shooting a fallen child with a rifle) “religion is not mentioned.”

The image itself I take issue with and how it’s another example of portraying Jews as child killers, though I have no doubt the intent was to hi-light how Israeli soldiers have killed Palestinian children without Judaism as a religion being vilified in the West.

But it’s also incorrect. When a Jew does something wrong, kills someone, or commits a crime, it is near always mentioned. Jews around the world live terrified, waiting for the day some Jew does something wrong and we’re all blamed and condemned. When I hear about something horrible happening, whether it be a killing, a political scandal, embezzlement, or just someone making a stupid comment, I close my eyes and think, please don’t let it have been a Jew, please don’t let it have been a Jew, please don’t let it have been a Jew, because I know that if it was, we’re all in trouble.

Obviously amen to that, and I would add that there is something particularly pernicious about taking a shot at Jews for mistreatment of Muslims that is not, primarily, instigated by Jews. Instead of a clear line of accountability, the grievance seems to be against Jews for having the temerity to actually (supposedly, and in fact inaccurately) be respected as equals.

But of course as the post notes, we're not actually exempted from these blanket judgments when one of the tribe does wrong. Indeed if anything I'd say what makes Jews special is that we're subjected to that treatment even when none of ours had anything to do with the underlying event. Muslims as a whole get blamed for al-Qaeda. Louis Farrakhan spouts bile, and all Blacks are repulsive "reverse racists." And Jews face that too, of course: our bad parts (Bernie Madoff, Jewish slumlords) get attributed to the whole too. But that's really just the tip of the iceberg -- we're also blamed for atrocities committed by other people. A white guy from New Jersey slaughters kids at a Connecticut school? Jews. Muslim extremists attack the twin towers? Jews. Hugo Chavez dies of cancer? Oh you better believe it's Jews (link warning).

To my knowledge, this does not happen to other groups. And the fact that the (grotesque) blanket condemnations of Muslims is held to be in contradistinction to the alleged privileged position of Jews, when in fact this particular facet of oppression may target Jews more severely than any other group, is deeply worrisome. It signifies at best a fundamental blindness to the reality of anti-Semitic discourse, and at worst a form of ingrained anti-Jewish hostility that sees this treatment as normal, even desirable.

A Danish Jew in Denmark

A Danish Jew experiments by walking through a Copenhagen neighborhood while wearing a kippah.

Krasnik set out to walk two kilometers down Nørrebrogade, through a neighborhood he used to call home, in the city in which he was born and raised, wearing a yarmulke. The discomfort began quickly. “The first Arab guys I talked to happened to be in a very infamous, violent gang” that controls a large chunk of the drug trade in Nørrebro. Krasnik asked them what they thought would happen to him if he were to continue walking through the neighborhood wearing a kippah. “I mean, you’re Jewish,” one said to him. “But how can we know that you’re not Israeli?” If you’re an Israeli, Krasnik was told, “we have a right to kick your ass.”

Not being an Israeli—Krasnik specified that he was, in fact, a Danish Jew—he escaped without a beating. It was an inauspicious start, but he forged ahead and was soon confronted by another group of young immigrants. “Some young people, boys, started to shout ‘are you Jewish?’ and were giving me the finger,” he recalled. “One of the younger guys, a Somali, came over and asked me, ‘Are you Jewish?’ I said, ‘Yes of course.’ And he ran back to the group and said, ‘Go to hell, Jew.’” No one tried to hit Krasnik—it was early afternoon, and the street was bustling—but the journalist had the feeling that physical violence loomed.

“I started to feel … unpleasant,” he told me. “I thought: If I keep doing this for an hour or two, something will happen. And if I did this everyday, I would get my ass kicked around.”

On the final leg of his 2-kilometer walk, he approached a small grocery store, where five or six young men—“probably 25 years old, of Pakistani or Palestinian background”—were loitering outside. They too quickly spotted his yarmulke. “They stopped me immediately and asked, ‘Are you Jewish?’ And when I said yes, they said ‘Take that [kippah] off.’ One was shouting from behind, ‘You’re from Israel!’ I said, ‘No, I’m from Denmark and I live just down the road.’ ”

The remainder of the story is equally harrowing: principals advising Jews not to enroll in their schools, anti-Semitic incidents doubling, Jewish groups forbidden from displaying Israeli flags at a multicultural festival (which contemplated excluding Jews entirely), and protesters hurling rocks at the Israeli embassy. This all has been met with ambivalence, at best, from the Danish government.

In Fits and Starts

I'm happy that CPAC is having sessions on appealing to Black voters. I really am. And the "Frederick Douglass Republicans" line strikes me as a better approach than most. Sure, "Democrats are the party of the KKK" is not actually going to persuade anyone, but baby steps, right?

Still, I find it hilarious that this session dissolved into chaos after a group of white supremacists came in shouting about how appealing to Black voters constituted oppression of White Southerners.

Amazingly, the panel host tried to defuse the situation by saying that Douglass "forgave" his slavemaster. That only prompted the belligerent Whites to reply "For giving him food? And shelter?" And then we were off to the races (so to speak).

And this, in a nutshell, is why Republicans can't appeal to Black voters. It's not that there aren't people genuinely interested in trying. And it's not that there aren't people who are thinking hard and critically about how conservative policy priorities might benefit, or be made harmonious with, the priorities of the Black community. It's that there is a significant cadre of conservatives who are so attached to White racial resentment that they find this whole project offensive, and the conservative movement has proven unable to keep that element out of the fore.

Whistlin' in the Wind

Israel brought one of its most prominent pop stars, the Persian-born Rita, to perform before the UN General Assembly and deliver a message of peace between the Israeli and Iranian peoples.

‎"I am proud of being Jewish and Israeli. I am about to reveal a piece of the ancient, rich and beautiful culture of Persia. The concert combined both languages intertwined simply and beautifully, just like the prayer in my heart that we, the common people, will be able to make an impact eventually.

"There is a story about a boy who walked into a synagogue and didn't know how to pray like everyone else, so he just whistled with all his might. I have no knowledge of the language of politics, but I will be there, whistle my prayer and hope that it reaches as far as Iran."

In the story she refers to, incidentally, the learned Rebbe of the synagogue declares that the boy's whistle (in my recollection, he blew a note on his flute, but same principle) is what allowed their prayers to ascend and be heard in heaven. May it be the case here, too, that the voices of regular people with a passion for engagement and desire to hear each others songs also heal rifts and create peace where politicians and ideologues have failed.

Hell, What's One More?

Indiana Right to Life Director Sue Swayze defends mandatory transvaginal ultrasounds:

“I got pregnant vaginally. Something else could come in my vagina for a medical test that wouldn’t be that intrusive to me. So I find that argument a little ridiculous.”

H/T.

Memmi on "What is a Zionist?"

I'm finally sitting down to try and make some progress on my pile of books. Reading Professor Zasloff inspired me, what can I say. And the book that I've actually been making some real progress in is Albert Memmi's Jews and Arabs (Eleanor Levieux, trans., Chicago: J. Philip O'Hara 1975). Memmi, of course, is a Tunisian Jewish writer whose work I've praised before. But the chapter I'm reading now ("What is a Zionist?") makes some particular important and erudite points.

[O]ne cannot propose any effective liberation if the specificity of each condition has not been grasped. That is why I protested so strongly when attempts were made to reduce the colonial problem first, then the Jewish problem, to a matter of class struggle . . . . It is reductions such as those which have made the ideology of the political left in Europe impotent.
[...]
What, then is the meaning of the oppression of the Jew? I have demonstrated [in prior work] that the Jews are not oppressed only in the practice of their religion, or only as a religious group; they are not oppressed only as a cultural group; nor only in the exercise of their political rights, nor only in their economic activities, etc. The Jews are oppressed in every one of their collective dimensions. In other words, they are oppressed as a people.
[...]
[W]hether we like it or not, we are looked upon as a special category of foreigners and we are treated as such. Unlike our universalists, the Jewish masses know this and take it into account. The Jewish masses never have more than a limited amount of confidence in their fellow citizens. That is why they constantly confirm their unity, for they know that when a catastrophe occurs, the only help they can hope for will come from other Jewish communities that have been temporarily spared. People ought to stop stupidly repeating that such solidarity cannot be allowed! That it is a reverse form of racism and other such nonsense. It is a perfectly natural self-defense reaction on the part of an endangered group. Let people stop persecuting the Jews, first, and then we ill see what they can be reproached with.

Thus, the Jews are oppressed as a people. If we accept the idea that liberation should be achieved on the basis of the specificity of each case of oppression, then we are now in a position to take another step forward: oppressed as a people, it is only as a people that the Jews will be genuinely liberated. Today, however, the liberation of peoples still retains a national physiognomy.
[...]
. . . . I have not been more sparing in my criticisms of that young state [of Israel], of its political errors or its theocratic self-satisfaction. . . . All this, however, is merely a matter of criticizing details. The essential and undeniable fact is that from now on, the State of Israel is part of the destiny of every Jew anywhere in the world who continues to acknowledge himself as a Jew. No matter what doubts or even reproofs certain of Israel's actions may arouse, no Jew anywhere in the world can call its existence in question without doing himself grave harm. And the nonJews, especially the liberals, must understand that Israel represents the still-precarious result of the liberation of the Jew, just as decolonization represents the liberation of the Arab or black peoples of Asia and Africa.
[...]
. . . . I did not hide the fact that these new ties, this sentimental solidarity with the new state, were likely to intensify the climate of suspicion in which Jews everywhere have always lived. But we have always been in danger. I do not believe that we can be in greater danger. Let us at least face danger with dignity. Above all, and once again, the perspective of accusation must be reversed. If the Jews had not been so accused, threatened, and periodically prevented from living, they would not have tried to secure a possible refuge. It is really too presumptions of the people who have persecuted us for centuries, who have made us second-class citizens, often despite their own laws, to dare to reproach us with this ambiguity that they have cultivated in us regardless of our protests, our efforts, and the sometimes shameful pledges we gave them. What they call our double allegiance was forced upon us. We would have liked nothing better than not to need it!

What exactly is a Zionist?

A Zionist is anyone, Jew or non-Jew, who, having found that the Jewish situation is a situation of oppression, looks upon the reconstruction of a Jewish state as legitimate: so as to put an end to that oppression and so that Jews, like other peoples, may retrieve their dimensions as free men.

Or again, anyone who considers the liberation of the Jews as a Jew desirable.

Albert Memmi, Jews and Arabs 92-97 (Eleanor Levieux, trans., 1975) (emphasis original).

Today's Reading Assingment

Jonathan Zasloff, Left and Right in the Middle East: Notes on the Social Construction of Race, 47 Va. J. Int'l L. 201 (2006). It is one of the first academic examples I've seen which compares Israel and its identity as a "Jewish state" to the American affirmative action debate, and accurately notes that there is an inversion of the normal left/right split on the question. He also makes an intriguing parallel between the Palestinian "right of return" and the American debate over property rights and "takings", again noting that the rightward position would seem to favor Palestinians and the leftward one Israel.

On the one hand, my tenure-o-meter always winces whenever I see one of my ideas has already been taken. On the other hand, if I ever get around to organizing the "New Perspectives on the New Anti-Semitism" symposium I keep on running in my mind, an additional candidate for participation has just emerged.