Joe Klein's outburst about the "Jewish neocons" allegedly pulling John McCain's strings on behalf of Israel reminded me that I've been meaning to blog about the fact that liberals, including (and sometimes especially) Jewish liberals increasingly use the charge of "dual loyalty" to try to discredit, and thus silence, Jewish conservatives.
This is especially clear from Klein's piece, because unlike many writers, he actually shows an understanding of neoconservatism, which he describes, in roughly accurate terms, "as unilateral bellicosity cloaked in the utopian rhetoric of freedom and democracy." There is nothing uniquely "Jewish" about this ideology, and the neocons have applied to everything from the Salt II treaty to Grenada to Bosnia to Iraq, usually in circumstances that have nothing to do with Israel--as I have written, "if Israel suddenly was at complete peace with its neighbors and was no longer an issue of foreign policy concern, I would bet that all of the Jewish neoconservatives would remain neoconservatives, and continue to promote neoconservative views on foreign and domestic policy." And, as I've noted previously, Jews are not overrepresented among neoconservatives relative to their prominence as public intellectuals generally.
The purpose, then, of associating "neocons" with Jews, and neoconservatism exclusively or primarily with concern for Israel, is to delegitimize conservative Jews, just as conservative blacks are called "Uncle Toms" and whatnot. As the National Review media blog notes, "conservatives who aren't 'neo' in any appreciable way — say, Jonah Goldberg — are denounced as 'neocons' based mostly on their surnames."
One interesting aspect of all this is that the standard left-wing "Uncle Tom" attack on black conservatives accuses them of being insufficiently supportive of "their people," while the emerging attack on Jewish conservatives accuses them of being too supportive of "their people" and thus having dual loyalties. Hmm.
UPDATE: In reaction to a previous, more outlandish Klein screed, Shmuel Rosner of Ha'aretz pointed out quite aptly that liberal Jews also argue that the policies they support will help Israel. [And given that Israel is very popular with Americans in general, and American Jews in particular, it would be foolhardy to argue that a policy is good because it would hurt Israel; even the Chomskys and Finkelsteins of the world usually claim to have Israel's ultimate best interests at heart.] But, Rosner points out, it's only the conservative Jews, or at least the ones that are hawkish on foreign policy, including Israel-related foreign policy that get accused by the likes of Klein of dual loyalty:
Here's a little mind game with which to demonstrate my point. Imagine Klein, back in the late Nineties, writing this:
"The fact that a great many Jewish officials in the Clinton administration plumped for this Oslo process between Israel and the Palestinians, and now for an even more foolish summit at Camp David between Ehud Barak and Yassir Arafat, raised the question of divided loyalties: using U.S. diplomatic leverage and money, to make the world safe for Israel."
Can you imagine him writing such thing? Can you imagine him blaming the many-many Jewish members of the Clinton administration for tilting the American agenda toward the peace process only because they want to help Israel?
If you can - Klein is being honest. If you can't - Klein is just using religion to denounce people with whom he has policy differences.
Being called a racist these days is meaningless. It just means you're winning an argument with a liberal.
What probably frustrates a lot of people (including Klein) is the perception that a lot of American policies get pursued that may make us less safe because they further a particularly hawkish view of what is good for Israel. But if that's the critique, make it in those terms and argue that other policies would be better for the US, or Israel, or that we should do what's best for us even if it is on balance not best for Israel. But don't accuse people of dual loyalties; questioning the patriotism of American Jews, or even right-wing American Jews, is a slur and aids the anti-Semites.
If so, you haven't been paying close attention.
If not, go tell Klein he's full of it.
Well, I keep hearing from conservatives that racism is dead, which makes sense, because it has been a LONG time since a conservative has won an argument with a liberal (I'd say almost eight years).
I'd pose a different alternative universe. Suppose that al-Qaeda and Iran and Hezbollah and whatnot were to suddenly announce that they'd realized that the US was a wonderful force for modernism and democracy, wanted to bury the hatchet and form an alliance.
How long until the MSM began running stories about how they oppress women, execute gays, kill children, and deserve to be overthrown or wiped out as savages?
Why? What if a Jewish person does, in fact, have dual loyalties. To paragraph the title of a well-known book: We can't say that?!
During WWI, many German-Americans had dual loyalties. That's a historical fact. Should we not mention that?
Why not?
Why are some truths not allowed to be spoken?
I am not, of course, saying that American Jews as a group have dual loyalties. I'd need to see some data.
I do know, however, that when a person who is Jewish is obsessed with American intervention in Israel on "human rights" grounds; but who does not seem to even know where Darfur is; I wonder what's really motivating that person. Is it a concern for "human rights," or a sentimental attachment to a racial or ethnic group?
My dominant ethnic origins are Serbian. When Clinton started bombing Serbia, I didn't feel any sort of connection with the people being bombed - other than the usual sympathy I feel for any victim of collateral damage. If I had, you could have rightfully accused me of having dual loyalties.
Are Jews supposed to be specially insulated for such charges? If so, why?
To be fair, aside from Israel, I could see someone assuming you were conservative based on the frequency of your (mostly anti) Obama posts.
Isn't the problem here just that liberals are evil?
I agree with those who say the double loyalty canard is a way of silencing persons - trying to make them freeze. I lived in France for 17 years and I have a strong feeling of satisfaction when relations between the US and France are harmonious - so what? does not mean dual loyalty.
I would think the cases of dual loyalty would be the ones where someone was an American spying for the foreign country. We have seen some of these with Israel and China recently. That's a pretty specific case and actually is probably not about dual loyalty but is about no loyalty to the United States and loyalty to the foreign country.
The dual loyalty bit seems to come right out of the loyalty oaths etc of the McCarthy era and earlier. It is a certain kind of nationalist strain that the upper class could use to keep white ethnics (I suspect) in line.
As to Uncle Tom's, the slur does work in a similar way to freeze someone in their actions. Sell-out is another term used. Being an Uncle Tom is one coping mechanism to survive and maybe flourish in a certain way. There are many others too. It could be an ignorant comment in one setting or an accurate comment in another about a given person. I do not hear it much anymore. I heard John McLaughlin used the term "oreo" for Barack Obama on one of his shows - BHO is not seen as a conservative.
"Oreo" (black on the outside and white on the inside) is so 60's. Uncle Tom feels so 50's or earlier.
Best,
Ben
Yep. After all, the only black people who think for themselves are conservatives. The other 95% of black people are mindless sheep.
Ha! That was a good one, thanks.
Seriously though - that's good. We need more people who do not associate with either.
I disapprove of all of those situations. Incidentally, many Cuban-Americans are putting the (what they view as) interests of Cuba over the interests of the United States. I - and most Americans - would benefit with free trade with Cuban. Cuban-Americans oppose this because that would not allow Cuba to become the country many Cuban-Americans want it to become.
That's wrong, and I think any Cuban taking that position is disloyal to the United States.
If you're an American, you should support pro-American policies.
Now, if it's your position that "We are one world," great. That's a legitimate position. Perhaps it's silly for us to view ourselves as "Americans" or "Frenchmen," or whatever. The world might be a better place if everyone lived that way. In the short term, though, we Americans would be exploited - perhaps to our own economic demise.
But "We are the world" is not what you seem to be saying.
You seem to say that it's appropriate for someone to choose his ethnicity or national origin over his actual country of citizenship. Which is quite a different position from "We are the world."
Pot, kettle, black, which is amusing considering some of the stuff thrown around here
That's quite a good observation. I'm embarrassed that it never occurred to me as a response to that accusation. I remember asking my mom one time how it was that Jews were so small in numbers in the US, but so accomplished in classical music (My dad's field).
She replied that any creative or intellectual field is going to have an abundance of Jews. It wasn't just music. Mom didn't conclude that there was some Israeli intelligence plot to run the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. I suspect she was right in this. But I'd like to ask Joe Klein for his analysis.
"Are Jews supposed to be specially insulated for such charges? If so, why?"
I would say, bluntly, "Yes."
Why? Because the history of such accusations is long and vicious. The Jew as Alien In Our Midst certainly goes back as far as Medieval times. Keep in mind that outbreaks of plague were regularly followed by pogroms against the Jews.
This country has seen this phenomenon as well: The outbreak of antisemitism that went hand-in-hand with post-WWI nativism and anti-war backlash is a good example. Who were the "Merchants of Death" but The Jewish bankers like Rothschilds and the arms merchants. Also assumed to be Joos.
Please, PLEASE visit websites devoted to "The 9/11 Conspiracy." Or go to Youtube and type in 9/11. Then sit back and watch the videos and comments. You shall find that 9/11 was, of course, perpetrated by The Zionists. And if you post a rebuttal, you will be accused of being a "shill for the Zionists."
So I think we have to treat Jews accused of divided—or hidden—loyalties the way we would treat a man accused of rape and murder who had been cleared on DNA evidence. 30 times. In other words, there is a very, very heavy burden of proof upon the person making the accusation.
(In the interest of full disclosure: I am a lapsed Irish-Catholic. A moderate conservative with no noticeable "neo-" or other Wilsonian leanings. Pretty much a Christian Democrat in philosophy. I am NOT in the pay of Mossad, though I did accept a free copy of a book from AIPAC one time, when they over-bought. It WAS a hardback, so you may want to take this into account when you assess my objectivity.)
snltranscripts.jt.org/88/88cgunclub.phtml
Go ask Al Gore, John Kerry, Saddam Hussein, and Khalid Sheik Mohammed (just to name a few) if conservatives have been winning arguments in the last eight years.
Did Kennedy's love of Ireland weaken America? Come on. I don't agree with the Cuban embargo, but the Cuban-American community's heart is in the right place, and their desire for Cuban freedom is motivated by American values.
As someone of Serbian extraction, its a shame you didn't feel a twinge of regret when Serbia was being bombed. It needed to happen, but feeling bad about it doesn't make you disloyal.
The argument you use to support your position is convincing at first glance: the history of antisemitism is quite long and sad. Antisemitism is pervasive in our culture and I recognize in myself certain modes of antisemitic thought and assumptions.
Having said that, your argument, at a deeper level, doesn't convince me. What if another scapegoat emerges? Are we to insist that that newly scapegoated peoples endure centuries of repression and hardship (and genocide) before we grant them the "Hoosier exemption"? Are we supposed to devise a threshold of acceptable historical oppression a scapegoated group must meet to obtain this exemption? Are we to formulate a ranking system to determine which group has been most oppressed?
Hoosier's got one of the reasons-- because dual loyalty is historically an anti-Semitic slur lobbed only or disproportionately at Jews.
The other reason is because it doesn't accomplish anything. If the critique is that we shouldn't be supporting particular policies, why not attack the policies instead of people's motives? For instance, Klein probably feels that we are supporting hawkish policies that in the long term will harm both our interests and Israels. If I have is position right, why doesn't he just say that? Why go off on disloyal Jewish neocons conspiring against the interests of the US? What does that add to his argument?
To me, the only thing that line of argument does is further the goals of anti-Semites.
Well, this is the inverse of the phenomenon noted by Dilan Esper, and perhaps an answer to his question. When one does critique policies, one is quickly accused of impugning motive/character/loyalty. I guess there are too many minds out there incapable of making/unwilling to make the distinction.
(I KNOW there's a joke in there. Think, Hoosier! THINK!)
The "other reason" you cite is certainly a good reason not to accuse people of dual loyalty in lieu of making substantive critiques of whatever policy they advocate. But this reason should apply, I think, equally to all people of good will who advocate a policy. Hoosier's point, if I understood him correctly, was that Jewish people should be "specially insulated" from such charges due to the particularly harsh oppression they have had to endure.
So if a Cuban takes the exact same position on trade with Cuba that a wasp like me does, he is being disloyal. Jeez.
I guess you should start questioning my loyalty because I think it is very important to continue the U.S.A's close alliance with Great Britain.
In the period 1972-2006, none of the other 14 members of the UN Security Council ever voted "no" in support of any of about 40 US vetoes of resolutions aimed at Israel, and in the period 1988-97, there was an unbroken string of ten 14-1 such vetoes (i.e., no abstentions). In all that time, the big bad US was not able to twist the arm of any other Security Council member hard enough to get a supporting "no" vote to give the US veto a little legitimacy.
How do you justify that? David, your only response to this inconvenient fact has been to threaten to censor my comment.
And yes, in every one of those votes, the "yes" votes were motivated by pure antisemitism, direct or vicarious (i.e. sucking up to antisemites). In those votes where it was possible to construct a non-antisemitic reason for voting against Israel, the USA generally abstained and did not veto.
If I were David and looking to answer your question, I think I'd quote another man called [Henry] David: "[A]ny man more right than his neighbors constitutes a majority of one already."
No, it's exactly the phenomenon noted by Dilon. His rhetorical question was:
Apparently we agree with Dilan's rhetorical question, but you seem to think it applies to my criticism of McCain, while I'm convinced it applies to McCain's criticism of Obama. Here's what McCain said:
That's a textbook attack on (Obama's) motives (as political) while impugning patriotism and loyalty (i.e., Obama wants to lose the war). Which I believe is precisely the phenomenon Dilon lamented. Yet you think my pointing it out is an attack on McCain's motives? What motives? I attacked only the comment. I said nothing about McCain's motives.
You sure got that right, but you'll have to explain how it applies to me. Obama critiqued McCain's policy, and as the above quote indicates, McCain impugned his "motive/character/loyalty."
Once more we agree, but I again get the feeling we're talking about different people.
To the other answers to your question I'd add, "What does it have to do with this thread?"
Actually I think it's the same side of the coin, and I get it a lot myself. The other side of the coin is "self-hating Jew" directed at anti-Israel liberal Jews.
They ask only that the US not embargo arms to Israel, that Israel be allowed to buy US arms on the same terms as other nations, and that the US not restrict Israel's right to defend itself against attack, build on territory tht it obtained during a defensive war and that it is entitled to govern (per UN Security Resolution 242) until there is a comprehensive peace agreement with secure and recognized borders, and not pressure Israel to make suicidal concessions to neighboring countries. This hardly constitutes intervention. If anything, it is a request for the opposite.
That's a myth, Oren. It's impossible to eliminate blonds without going out and killing essentially everyone with the gene for it. They'll continue to pop up for the foreseeable future.
Nope. I just read my post again, and my point is clear. It pertains to the specific accusation of divided/hidden loyalties. If you want to accuse Jews of something else, I'd probably have a response to that.
But let's just assume that I meant what I said.
Were you the unicorn Obama was riding on the other day.
That said, any problems with dual loyalty among American Jews pale in comparison with the divided loyalties of many elected officials of Mexican and Latin American descent. LA Mayor Villaraigosa, former assembly speaker Fabian Nunez, former AG Gonzalez, Rep. Luis Gutierrez, and on and on have openly scorned territorial sovereignty and supported the violation of U.S. immigration law. An outrageous example of dual loyalty was evinced by Texas Border Patrol Chief Carlos Carillo, who stated that his job was not to stop illegal aliens, but only to intercept terrorists.
Equally serious allegations of dual loyalty can be legitimately raised against Muslim U.S. Citizens who have been indicted and convicted of aiding terrorist organizations. Just google "muslim us citizens convicted of terrorism".
Given the seriousness of real dual loyalties among Mexican-Americans and Muslim Americans, I think that there is an anti-Semitic tone when pro-Israel Jews are accused of divided allegiance.
I believe that the HE'S IMPUGNING HIS PATRIOTISM! baloney is a way to dodge the substance of the policy, or in some cases character, critique. Thus, limiting oneself to policy critiques (which McCain usually bends over way backwards to do) is nearly pointless, as such critiques are perceived (or such is claimed) to be of motives/loyalty anyway. Hence an answer to the original question from Mr. Esper.
As for your example, one could still be a patriot and believe that "losing" this war would be a good thing. Many, and not all on the left, have in fact argued that this is so in that it would lead to a more humble foreign policy, and surely a patriotic Democrat would believe that winning an election campaign would be a patriotic thing to do.
Obama could accuse McCain of being willing to "lose" the war on Global Warming in order to win an election and be entirely legitimate in doing so.
Why should Americans be expected to support this?
Because they have no legitimate reason to oppose it. No reason is necessary to support other people's rights.
It doesn't matter to me if you want to deny it or not, although the denial is hilarious to those who know you at all well. I know other libertarians with strongly conservative views who also deny that they are conservatives for what I assume are strategic reasons. The strategic reasons are by and large unfathomable to me, but perhaps you have good reasons for them.
I read most of the Volokh posts. Orin's and Eugene's (for instance) are typically academic and would fit well into a law review. David's are typically political and would fit well into National Review. Don't get me wrong -- I enjoy polemics and I am a NR subscriber, finding a lot in there I agree with substantively. But David, for you to deny that you are a conservative suggests on your part an extremely idiosyncratic understanding of the term.
But it's fun to write an anonymous post and pretend you're on close terms with a poster, right?
Equally serious critiques can be made against Chinese-Americans, Google "Wen Ho Lee", or Jewish-Americans, Google "AIPAC spying." Does that mean expressing concern about these types of events makes a person anti-Chinese or anti-Jewish?
This is laughably untrue. Maybe intellectually honest ones would, but at least a significant number are only concerned with Israel and think that hawkishness is the only way to promote its interests. The (many) Jewish neocons and 9/11 Republicans I know personally could not care less about Grenada or Bosnia.
And since 9/11 was only tangentially, at best, related to Israel, it's not clear how peace breaking out in Israel would affect any "9/11 Republicans'" views.
And to the extent they don't care about Grenada or Bosnia, it's probably because you're in your 20s, and Grenada was a big issue in the early 80s, and Bosnia in the early-mid 90s. It's fair to say that NO ONE cares about Grenada NOW, except Grenadans.
This is fair enough. I am, indeed, talking about average people, not widely-read intellectuals. I don't know how the people you name would feel about a given hypothetical situation.
"And to the extent they don't care about Grenada or Bosnia, it's probably because you're in your 20s, and Grenada was a big issue in the early 80s, and Bosnia in the early-mid 90s. It's fair to say that NO ONE cares about Grenada NOW, except Grenadans."
Those are examples. You may believe that most Jews with hawkish foreign policy views would care about East Timor or Darfur and want the U.S. to send its military to intervene. I am considerably more cynical.
David, this is not your personal blog -- you have co-bloggers here who may be concerned about your damaging the reputation of this blog by your arbitrary censorship. By now this blog has probably been cited over a hundred times by law journal articles and willingness to cite this blog is jeopardized by arbitrary censorship of comments. You may think that you are a bigshot now but your chutzpah may someday come back to haunt you.
"one of many" said,
I am sure that the US would have just loved to get supporting "no" votes for the US vetoes. No country ever tried to curry US favor by voting "no" in support of one of those 40 US vetoes. It is embarrassing -- or should be embarrassing -- to the US that there was never a supporting "no" vote for any of those 40 US vetoes in that period of 1972-2006.
So you are saying that the US should take all the heat of "upsetting" the oil/muslim nations.
Other SC members have been willing to upset the oil/muslim nations at least a little by abstaining when the US made those vetoes.
Obama critiqued McCain's policy, and as the above quote indicates, McCain impugned his "motive/character/loyalty."
It does not strike me as particularly objectionable for one politician to accuse another politician of acting from political motives to the extent that it encourages some healthy skepticism among voters. Senator Obama certainly is in no position to complain about the practice as a general matter given his own regular habit of accusing conservatives of allegedly exploiting people's angers and fears about "divisive" issues like gun control, welfare, affirmative action, crime, religion, etc. "for their own electoral ends."
good for israel
bad for the US
I will posit that the implementation thereof was disastrous from an Israeli point of view and that American current foreign policy does not support Israeli objectives.
A weak Israeli government is unable to refuse and reject these policies.
Case in point - US was able to put Israel in the line of Iranian fire - whereas Iranian beef is with US ME hegemony.
With all due respect, I think you may be dismissing too quickly the observations of others. I, like several of the above posters, would characterize you as conservative. My conclusion is based only on your numerous postings here on the VC, and elsewhere on the internet. I have not danced at your wedding, have not chatted with you at cocktail parties, and of course, cannot look into your heart and soul.
But it may be worthwhile for you to think about this: If everyone who reads your thoughts and opinions (okay, everyone who both reads your posts and takes the time to respond, which admittedly is *not* the same thing) sees you as conservative, what does that mean? One possibility is that we are simply misreading what you have said. One possibility is that we are correctly reading, but that you are posting only on "conservative-favoring" subjects. And one possibility is that you are in fact somewhat conservative. Is it possible that you see yourself in a way that is inconsistent with how others see you? [An example totally unrelated to you: We all have known people who will say, "I'm not a racist, but have you noticed that . . . [fill in long racist anti-black or anti-Mexican, or anti-Arab story.]?"
David, you may well decide that how you are perceived by the VC readers does not matter to you. That is fine. You may decide that you want to modulate your postings, to more accurate reflect your true political/sociological/philosophical leanings. That is fine as well. Either of these are perfectly reasonable approaches. But it's also reasonable for those of us who read what you write to form opinions based on your body of work. If you want to be seen as 'objective,' then simply write more objectively.
If I post here, and only write about McCain's numerous flip-flops, idiotic policy positions, and 'senior moments,', then--very quickly--people will see me as someone biased in favor of the Left, and of liberal causes. But if I also criticize Obama's many flip-flops, stupid comments, and other mis-steps, in roughly equal amounts, then people will see me as more objective (although probably as a hyper-critical person), and will factor that into the equation when listening to an argument that I make.
Those people will have drawn a conclusion insupportable by logic alone. The unspoken assumption is the existence of only two options, and further that members of neither group can see their role as criticizing their own (think Mickey Kaus).
What you're saying is that such criticism is "objectively leftist". However, anti-(banal)right does not equal left. Nor does, in this case, defending a minority (Jewish neo-conservatives) who have been wrongly disparaged by members of the overwhelming majority (among Jewish intellectuals/academia/the international elite/its media) make one thereby a Jewish Neo-conservative. Or even a conservative.
Those who see things exclusively in political terms might care to check their own views before assigning them (or their simplistic negations) to the original poster.
Don't accuse them of dual loyalties, nor use the horridly inaccurate term "neo-conservative". Just try to show why their policies would be bad. You'll be wrong and incapable of doing so, but try. It would be nice to have honest opposition for once, rather than a bunch of racist traitors like we've had for so long. I'm an libertarian imperialist WASP and I approve this message. I'm not a neo-conservative as I have never been of the left, never mind a communist.
I'm never a fan of attacking people's motives without evidence of their motives, but that wasn't my main complaint. I only took it up to refute David Warner's absurd implication that I attacked McCain's motives, and that McCain didn't attack Obama's. But as you can see from my original comment, my real objection was that McCain impugned Obama's patriotism and loyalty. That I find despicable. I'm confident Obama has never done that to McCain, and that he never will.
No doubt you have a well thought out political philosophy, and it may be ill-described by "conservative." I'd only be surprised if you're surprised that regular readers might reasonably get the impression you're generally somewhere along the libertarian-conservative axis.
As for Israel, it deserves full American support. Watching liberals (and especially liberal Jews) act like that if Israel were to just go away all of the problems in the Middle East would be solved makes me laugh even louder because of its rank idiocy. That attitude reminds me of the part of the Dark Knight where some of the citizens were blaming Batman for causing the increase in crime.
What happened? Interesting that Golda Meir was as socialistic as you can get, yet has not been embraced by left-wing feminism for example.
The left only likes minorities who are victims.
I like your (much shorter and more accurate) analysis more than what I wrote. :-)
Are Jews really underrepresented in the left-wing anti-globalization movement? Its biggest figurehead is Naomi Klein. Buchanan was supported by Murray Rothbard in the past and Paul Gottfried today. There were a sizable number of "Jews for Ron Paul" when he was in the race. You might be surprised by how many Jews hang out at Lawrence Auster's (himself a convert from Judaism to Episcopalianism) View From the Right, which puts out more offensive stuff than Paul/Buchanan but is also quite sensitive to anti-semitism.
Steve Sailer, who at one time identified as a Jewish neo-conservative, proposes a "Cuban model" for the Israel lobby here.
I also assumed David Bernstein was a neo-conservative from reading him, especially his reaction to criticism of neocons. I would ask him where he differs from them or what caused him to drift away from that identity? I personally entered libertarianism via the Chicago school and old 70s style domestic neo-conservatism and I've become an anti-federalist paleolibertarian more sympathetic to pluralist communitarianism and less to big business and the "essential" government programs simply from taking my old conservative/libertarian beliefs to a more radical place, as well as reading more history and economics.
Your memory of your conversations with others is apparently as imperfect as your understanding of the way you appear to others. These are perfectly understandable imperfections and most of us have them. However, it is to say the least unusual to act as if people who disagree with you on these matters are simply wrong.
Senator McCain's alleged impugning of Senator Obama's patriotism seems to be mainly the result of the fact that the indifference to the public good implied in allegedly acting mainly from political motives in this case deals with an issue of war. I'm also reasonably confident that Senator Obama is unlikely to impugn Senator McCain's patriotism because I'm confident that Senator Obama is a talented enough politician that he would resist such a foolish undertaking.
Obviously, there are some libertarians who think that anyone to the right of Rothbard is a conservative, and some on the left who think that everyone on the right is "conservative" (when they are being polite). So be it, but I don't have to follow it.
I defend neocon's a lot because I wrote my senior thesis on them, still follow their goings-on, and find that they are sometimes attacked as Jews instead of for their often wrongheaded policy positions (not to mention their generally wrongheaded ideology).
SO, out of curiousity, what is the definition of plain conservatism?
And what would provoke a non-neo-conservative to consider deploying large amounts of armed forces, or to put it the other way, what specific kind of talk/action in that area would qualify as non-bellicose, or non-neo? Is there such a circumstance? Or is conservatism all about abortion, or fiscal responsibility, or low taxes, or busybody libertarianism, or whatever....? Sounds like Klein, and by extension you, David, have a HUGE problem with people talking about right and wrong, and trying to do right. That, after all, is the boiled down thing that Bush did that has upset so many principle-free 'superior intellects'.
Bush's original argument, as I saw it, was that if we did not intervene, really rotten people were going to do really terrible things, things they have both promised to do and demonstrated they would do, and many many people would die, lots of them Jews and Americans. I have yet to hear a rational and convincing argument to the contrary.
From this, the left invented (and lots of formerly trustworthy people lapped up) this term "neo-cons",with its deliberate reference to neo-nazis (the only other commonly used descriptor of its form, chosen carefully and repeated often). This, because a man of conviction and courage saw that he had to act even if it was unpopular.
oh yeah, and he's one of those insane stupid Christian guys.
I sometimes wonder if, someday in the not too distant future, the act of standing against evil will simply be permanently abandoned as too socially and politically risky.
Evil is real, and it's a part of the makeup of human beings. It is something guaranteed to appear in various forms at all times in history. The only choice is how people react to it, not whether it can be prevented or made obsolete.
Grow up, intellectuals. Embrace all of humanity, not just the 'i'm smarter than you' part. Or catch hell, as literally as you'd care to read that.
Lazarus, Klein isn't an anti-Semite. He's just using a phoney allegations that plays on both anti-Semitism and on prejudices among Jewish liberal themselves for political purposes. Similarly, blacks who attack Clarence Thomas or Condi Rice as Uncle Toms are racists, but they are content to use vile racially charged rhetoric to score political points.
I have an alternative theory: Oil.
In 1947 the Middle East wasn't particularly important to the world economy. Since then, the Left has realized that there are about 200 million Arabs and 3 or 4 million Jews in the Middle East.
The Left goes with the money.
As you alluded, to us liberals those guys all look alike. :)
If that statement is even potentially true, I may have to re-evaluate my entire thesis.
I don't know about David Bernstein, but I shop at Whole Foods. I love their selection and quality. Because there is one close to where I work, I eat lunch there at least once a week.
Don't be so fast to pidgeonhole your adversaries. ;-)
You've only proving how wrong unsupported attacks on motives are by how terribly destructive they can be. In this case such an attack was further bootstrapped into an even more scurrilous attack on patriotism and loyalty. How does that mitigate any part of it?
Thanks.
That does it. If you guys can shop at Whole Foods, then I can buy a gun.
Wait, I already have one.... ;)
The only bootstrapping you've yet given evidence of is your own, here repeated. Where is McCain scurrilously attacking Obama's patriotism and loyalty?
To preclude further obtuseness on your part, I am not and was not impugning anyone's motives, least of all yours', about which I could care less. As far as I can tell, however, you are crying wolf quite loudly, to no benefit to your argument.
Good point. Glenn Reynolds is also called a conservative though he supports these.
Apparently Left-ism is a religion. If you disagree with them on anything, the war, guns, affirmative action, then you are a heretic. Conservative is their word for heretic.
Except, of course, that it's entirely false that there is "special dispensation" with Israel or that dual citizenship is "allowed with no other country." And those people are not "dual citizens" at all, but Jews. So, yeah it kind of has everything to do with religion.
You quote an anti-semitic site. Care to link to one with some degree of credibility? Just one. Please.
The State Department's website does indicate that the United States recognizes that certain people claim dual citizenship or nationality but the United States, as government policy, discourages it.
You provided a list of Jewish-American politicans and other individuals, who under the Law of Return, could claim Israeli citizenship if they ever went to Israel and chose to do so. You provide absolutely NO evidence that any of these people actually have done so.
In fact, any other Jew could claim Israeli citizenship under the Law of Return: David Bernstein, Arlen Specter, Ed Koch, Joseph Lieberman, Barbara Boxer, etc. etc.
To conclude that people who have a right to claim Israeli citizenship because they are Jewish are also somehow automatically suspect if they hold posts in the American government is the height of anti-semitism.
And no, I am not Jewish.
You're just saying that to make them sound crazy. They know LBJ killed Kennedy as well as you do. And your cynicism about UFOs makes me wonder if you know anything at all about The BioMusic Conspiracy. Because if you really understood that
you wouldn't be so smug. But with an attitude like yours, I don't expect to see light shooting out of your eyes any time soon.
Wanting your own country to lose a war is pretty much the definition of unpatriotic and disloyal. But you claim it's perfectly innocent to accuse Obama of wanting precisely that because "one could still be a patriot and believe that "losing" this war would be a good thing." I'd confess my skepticism that you really believe that, and I'd challenge you to show me the "many" on the left who "have in fact argued that this is so," but it's not necessary. McCain didn't say Obama wants us to lose the war because it would be strategically advantageous for us to do so. He said Obama wants us to lose the war for his own political advantage. And if wanting us to lose for no particular reason is unpatriotic and disloyal, wanting us to lose for one's own political gain is worse. I don't know even know what the word for that would be.
As for your red herring about how "a patriotic Democrat would believe that winning an election campaign would be a patriotic thing to do," give me a break. What's our usual attitude toward people who act on their desire for us to lose a war, e.g. passing intelligence, sabotaging munitions and transports, etc? You know, as in "treason"? You're not seriously suggesting that anyone with the possible exception of Ephraim would consider that a-ok so long as the perpetrator did it to get power because the country would be better off with him at the helm? Please. And the only differences between wanting that result and acting on it are practical and legal. They would be equally condemned as morally horrific.
Bottom line: If Obama actually wanted us to lose a war so he could win an election, that would reprehensible and every reasonable person would agree. For McCain to accuse him of that is reprehensible, and every reasonable person should agree.
I think McCain has a point. When most of the country thought the war was unwinable (never my position) Obama was saying that the surge couldn't work and that we should pull out in 16 months. i.e. Obama took the politically popular (at the time) position. McCain did not take that position. In fact he took the opposite position.
Now a days things look different and Obama is still looking for a pull out time table. While at the same time Sunnis say we should stay to insure their protection i.e. to prevent a resumption of the civil war. Now Obama says that he thinks a civil war would require a return to Iraq. Why isn't he saying a prevention of a civil war is worth our staying?
I guess you were equally outraged during the Republican primaries, when McCain's mantra was along the lines of "I'd rather lose an election than lose a war." Which to me implied that his primary opponents didn't hold the same priorities.
It doesn't have any real strategic importance to the United States and it doesn't seem to have any natural resources whose extraction we need to protect.
He doesn't get to the US very often, does he?
Reprehensible, and by far worse than neocon Jews accusing their critics of being anti-Semitic because that slur is, of course, completely accurate.
Well, that's not really the same. Black conservatives are criticized for supporting conservative policies that are harmful to blacks. Neocon Jews are criticized for supporting policies that they believe to be beneficial to Israel and that might be harmful to the U.S. Unless you can somehow equate black politicians supporting their black constituents in America with neocon American Jews supporting their brethren in Israel.
FYI, withdrawal from Iraq is still the more popular position. Also, since McCain supported the war then, does now, and will support it tomorrow no matter what happens, I'm not sure how he demonstrates anymore resolve than Obama who, in your scenario, is for withdrawal no matter how things go in Iraq.
I'm sure the two audience members with the intelligent facial features could give you some penetrating insights, but the very fact that you even have to ask the question tells me one person whose Christmas Card list you won't be on. And I can only imagine the festivity of opening a Christmas Card from David Irving.
Once is too often for me. I was surprised he qualified for a visa. I'm guessing it's since what he was convicted of wouldn't be criminal here, because otherwise my operative assumptions would be that any conviction carrying a three year sentence would be considered felonious, and it's not our practice to give visas to convicted felons. But you know what they say about assumptions -- they make an "ass" out of "u" and "mptions." Anyway, I oppose criminalizing what he did, but the idea that he'd be considered less undesirable than John Lennon was is galling.
How does anything you said justify accusing Obama of wanting us to lose a war? Let me clear something up I've mistakenly assumed that by now needs no explanation. The source of this whole controversy is the Orwellian and logically fallacious re-definition by many Republicans of "wanting to lose." It goes like this:
That's how many Republicans, starting with Karl Rove and Dick Cheney have demonized Iraq war opponents for six years, and that's what McCain just did to Obama. McCain is better than that, he knows better, and he should be ashamed.
Depends. If the topic or question is his opponents' position on the war, that sounds like a reasonable inference. But if he's being asked or is talking about only himself, then his comment seems legitimate. I might draw the conclusion about the other candidates on my own, but I wouldn't infer it directly from his remarks. He's entitled to make a positive case for himself without our assuming he intends the negative implication for others. Of course there are other ways he can hint at the implication, e.g., tone of voice, facial expressions, but that's another story. That's actual evidence of his intention.
For one thing they have brains. See Intel and AMD and Motorola among others. Not to mention medical research.
For another they are very good at gathering intel from the various Arab/Persian countries in the region.
The popularity of that position is declining. In any case the question is when and how. If Obama believes that a civil war in Iraq is a bad idea and in the case of one we would have to re-enter Iraq then the obvious thing to do is to leave when civil war is very unlikely.
In any case it is my opinion that the Iraqis should have a say in the matter. And so far the Iraqi Government has not asked us to leave.
Remind me next time not to pick a fight with a guy who sells arguments by the hour...
Look, I could concede your entire last post (and at gunpoint I might have to, though sans gun I'm pretty agnostic on the whole thing), and it would still be (largely?) immaterial to the original point, which was actually connected to the point of the thread.
That is, Dilan Esper asked why one wouldn't criticize policies instead of loyalty. You came back with, basically, "McCain sure doesn't!" My perception is that McCain usually bends over backward to avoid questions of loyalty (you might even concede this, though I will concede that this is likely to change as the campaign heats up) and has even taken steps to shut down local organizations independent of his campaign whose ads could possibly be construed as doing so.
And yet thereby he gains no benefit - he's accused of questioning patriotism whatever he does. Hence one answer to Dilan Esper's question. On the other hand, I suspect McCain's general aversion to questioning Obama's character has more to do with his sense of personal honor than any political cost/benefit analysis, but the general principle stands.
I'd be happy to take the appropriate umbrage at that if I had any idea what it meant.
Wrong. As an afterthought to my comment about DB's post, I tacked on an observation about the main point of Klein's article. I didn't "come back with" anything. What I said about McCain's statement was neither inspired by nor a response to Dilon's comment.
That's also false. You based your generalizations on my comment, and I can only speak for myself. I've only ever accused McCain of questioning patriotism when he questioned patriotism. Specifically, this is the first time I've done it. Moreover, I've defended him countless times as a decent, principled man, usually against the onslaught of my right wing friends and relatives who consider him an evil, unprincipled liar.
I agree, which is why I said this episode is beneath him, and not something like, "I'd expect no better from such a partisan hack."
"And I can only imagine the festivity of opening a Christmas Card from David Irving."
Does he send money?
If someone had asked me this morning: "Hoosier, do you thin