Hillel’s version of environmental economics

 

From an email to a friend:

Whichever way you cut it, the climate policy nexus is seriously broken, worldwide. By the time it gets abandoned, it will have cost hundreds of billions of dollars stretching into the future, including lots of death and suffering. Every new freeze or heat wave will be a challenge for the electric grid. 

Concerning “we are damaging the environment”. It helps to understand the essence of all so-called environmental problems. As briefly as I can.

All life, all human life, all human economic life (which is basically all human life in one way or another) involves using natural resources. There is no such thing as human endeavor without using natural resources. Humans are the only species that have mastered the craft of engineering (transforming) natural resources to any great extent. Beavers build dams, ants build colonies, is about the level reached by animals. So the “environment” is inevitably changed. The policy question appears to be whether the changes are good or bad, valuable or harmful. But actually that is not the fundamental question. The fundamental question is “who should decide whether any resource use is good or bad?” 

When the resources are privately owned, we pretty much agree that the question is answered in favor of the owners. They decide what to do with the resources they own. They are motivated and guided by the value put on the results, the products produced with the resources, by consumers who buy them. So, indirectly, consumers decide how resources should be used. So, if I paint my house red, you may hate it, but unless there is a homeowner association agreement against it, it is my legitimate choice. Similarly, a stretch of beach may be owned by a large estate who sells it to a hotel chain to build a vacation resort that the environmentalist don’t like. They have a right to their opinions, but its not their decision to make. The only other way to do it is by some external committee. 

There is, of course, as you will be bursting to point out, one big caveat. When private resource usage has “external” effects, imposing costs on third parties, that is a true environmental “problem”, like air pollution, like smoke or noise (an airport). This is like a trespass or an intrusion. It occurs always, without exception, because property rights cannot or will not be defined. The air cannot be privately owned – that is the best, and maybe the only, perfect example. So air pollution is the canonical environmental problem. Water pollution is a close second. Property rights in water are difficult and sometimes impossible to define and enforce. But, where the problem is localized and involves a small number of parties, it can and should be decided by the common law. I sue the airport. The judge must decide who is plausibly the rightful property owner of the noise-space. One important fact is who was their first? If the airport, then the homeowner likely bought the land at a discount. If the airport came after then the homeowners my be entitled by law to assume the absence of noise pollution and receive compensation. The “problem” is internalized. Mostly such problems are handled by negotiation and agreement. Like the waterboards of the early frontier in the USA. And, as a side implication, the way resources are used will mostly not depend upon who is awarded the right, though, of course, the relative earnings positions will be affected. 

When negotiation and small party legal adjudication is not possible, because there are masses affected, one has to resort to government regulation. This is extremely rare. One important case is the banning of leaded gasoline. One law, one time, unchanging, with no discretion or side payments, removed an agreed unnecessary pollutant that we were all omitting and all consuming. Rarely is such a case to be found. Another potential problem is the overuse of resources in the oceans, or pollution by dumping into the oceans, etc. This occurs because no one owns the oceans. Other examples involve “public property” like national parks, etc. The solution is clearly to privatize them – or contract them out to private parties. Wild life game parks in South Africa are great examples. They are the only effective way to preserve certain wildlife species if that is one of the objectives. Kruger is run as private concessions. 

So, in general, is it true that we are spoiling the environment. Actually, no. Not in any objective or general way. Spoilage of the Amazon is a matter of private exploitation of land previously owned, still owned, by tribal folks. Basically stolen. And government officials benefit in the corruption. But, even so, there are more trees in the world than there have ever been. Many acres of swampland have been cleared and beautified. The advance of civilization has destroyed or damaged some ecosystems or certain species. Is this bad? There is no objective way to decide this. Classical liberal thinking would say it depends on who owns the land with the ecosystems, and, if you think it is bad, buy the land and preserve it. And if you cannot persuade enough people to back you financially to do this, then if you resort to government compulsion, to force, you are violating the property rights of the owners.  Every so-called environmental problem is this kind of thing. But, as for the natural environment of the world, unless we are talking taste, beauty, ugliness, this is a non-question. Resources have value only insofar as they are valued by humans. 

The question of climate change can be cast as an environmental problem, a special one. The allegation is that CO2 emissions are causing an existential threat to humanity (this claim, though repeated often by the news media, is actually not a very common scientific claim at all). So, they have argued, it is an extreme form of air pollution. It is not a very good claim at all. It is pretty definitely not an existential threat, and the proposed solutions are neither proved effective, are likely not effective, and are extremely costly and damaging to existing energy arrangements and economic development. 

That is Hillel’s version of environmental economics.

The Enigma of Barack Obama

 

Tablet Magazine has published this very long tantalizing speculative peak into the life and times of Barack Obama.

I have no expertise on the matter from which to comment or judge the accuracy of it. I post the link here in case you are interested to read it in whole or in part.

https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/arts-letters/articles/david-garrow-interview-obama?fbclid=IwAR0Ny6OUlQpRc7cdRAu8y2WM0vUlkWmqdPCpp2piEXB4xnTxrGVyLlnRe9k 

Reading it myself, I recalled my own reaction to the campaign and election of Obama, and, for what its worth, I decided to record here my current evaluation looking back. I think Obama has been misjudged by his many admirers, who see him as a highly intelligent, affable human being who brought a refreshing light to America as the first black president. My assessment is quite the opposite. And perhaps history will agree more with me in light of the miserable nature of our current public discourse.

Whereas I absolutely despise the man that Donald Trump is, while favoring many of the policies he followed in his presidency, I absolutely despise the policies and sentiments associated with Barack Obama, even though I acknowledge his intelligence, eloquence and political astuteness. I think, in the end, Obama will be credited with more damage to America than Trump. Here is why.

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Very early on I found myself repelled by the content of Obama’s speeches. And during his presidency I could not watch him talk. He annoyed and frightened me. I was surprised to find how many people, by contrast, simply ate it up. I wonder how many actually thought about what he was saying, rather than simply reacting to his charisma and the fact that he was black. They liked the idea, the showcasing of a black American president. [Of course, to be picky, but quite relevant, Obama is not black, he is bi-racial, and he did not, like Michele Obama and his many black fans, grow up with the “black American experience” – he adopted this persona, it is a kind of an act.] At the time I opined that he was the worst president in my lifetime.

What irked and disturbed me was that, every time he opened his mouth, he insinuated the existence of some sort of festering grievance to be concerned about. To be sure, he did it cleverly and subtly, which made it scarier for me – because when Hillary Clinton tried to do it, it was so obvious and clumsy and earned her a lot of antagonism – when Obama did it scared me because it was insidious, it wormed its way into the consciousness without people realizing what they were admiring.

Basically, what Barack Obama did was to break with the long sweep of black American liberalism from Frederick Douglas to Martin Luther King to current black intellectuals, like John McWhorter and many others. Frederick Douglas, an ex-slave, was crystal clear. He rejected slavery and lingering racism. He rejected them as un-American, as a betrayal of basic and universal liberal American values. [Americans have always thought of classical liberal values as both an aspect of American exceptionalism, and as universal. After all, they emanate from British Enlightenment thought.] For Douglas, American liberalism was aspirational and inspirational. He took the words of the Declaration of Independence seriously – the self-evident truth that ALL people are equally endowed with the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. America had fallen down, had failed in its striving to implement these values, but the values themselves were unassailable. These included freedom to trade, to own property, to express one’s views, to assemble. He was explicit in rejecting special treatment for ex-slaves. He rejected paternalism as insulting. Similarly, MLK was clear in his condemnations, not of American liberal values, but of the failure to implement them, as they should have been implemented to create an America in which his children would be judged by the content of their character and the color of their skin would be irrelevant. Both were, in this sense, proud Americans. And there are today many other proud classically liberal black Americans who feel the same way – who embrace the progress against racism that has been made and seek an ever-better America.

Obama’s story is different, has always been different. He explicitly downplayed American exceptionalism and encouraged the view that the American experience was one that was dominated by the white race to the unambiguous detriment of non-whites. So-called American values are the values of colonial domination. It is time for blacks to rediscover their own authentic black experience, which involves the rejection of much of so-called liberalism. High on the list is the challenge against free speech, because the establishment powers control the channels of public expression for their own purposes. The damages of white domination need to be addressed, firmly using the mighty power of the federal government with access to an unlimited amount of tax money restored from the property of the unjustifiably rich. Social justice must be done. And this will involve, sooner or later, a complete transformation of the current economic and social system.  Obama was at the forefront, if not the leader, of a separate black identity, separate from and antithetical to the American identity. This became clear when Michele Obama, less subtly perhaps than her husband, declared soon after the election: “for the first time in my life, I am proud to be an American.” If this sounds like “wokism” it is because it is, before the name was invented. The fork in the road was Obama, not Biden. And his presidency left many Americans very uneasy, feeling an undercurrent of something very un-American, very hostile and threatening, being pushed by the Democratic party and its very unpopular nominee Hillary Clinton. In this very real sense, Obama caused Trump. Make no mistake about that.

And this black identity is really more than that. It is really an anti-white identity, where “white” is more a state of being than a skin color. Thus, the anomaly of the Jews and the Asians. Obama was never overtly anti-semitic, but his view of the Jews as a group, as distinct from his “Jewish friends,” is undoubtedly hostile. The Jews cannot claim to be non-white, no matter what their experience as victims or their skin color as north Africans. I know too little about foreign policy to claim to be able to provide expert opinion, but Obama’s foreign policy, for which the world is paying dearly today, was palpably anti-Israel. He worked long and hard, against the domestic and foreign current of events, to fashion a middle eastern alliance that patched up things with Iran and excluded Israel.  [His capitulation to Russia in Syria, Crimea and the Donbas arguably also encouraged Putin to invade Ukraine.] Besides this, is his clear refusal to disavow his friendship with and admiration of his one-time spiritual leader, the overtly anti-sematic Jeremiah Wright. Be this as it may, whether Obama can be credited with it or not, his black identity worldview has developed a new strain of virulent anti-semitism alongside its anti-white racism.

The flowering of woke ideology, with its intolerance of any dissident views, and rejection of any limits to the scope of social-justice-funded government activity, starts with Barack Obama. In the Tablet piece it fits with his childhood abandonment and resentment and his unbridled narcissism, but I leave that to the social psychologists.  In more mundane terms, Obama is the starting point of the ramping up of state-capitalism (“you didn’t build that”) buoyed by the emergency of the Great Recession and the permission it gave him to blow out the federal budget to unprecedented levels and pile on regulations in all aspects of life, especially business life (a ball picked up eagerly by Biden who has run even further with it). Obama honed the practice of disregarding and bending Congressional limits to implement unlegislated policies (something his successors have eagerly emulated). And even now, while still ensconced in D.C. he is apparently pulling the strings influencing policy directions.

Like all politicians Barack Obama should not be trusted, but more than most he should be feared. 

ISRAEL JUDICIAL OVERHAUL: EXPOSING THE MYTHS

 

ISRAEL JUDICIAL OVERHAUL: EXPOSING THE MYTHS

Oshy Tugendhaft

 

“The first thing we do is, let’s kill all the lawyers”.  So proposed, Dick the Butcher, in William Shakespeare’s Henry VI.  Often misinterpreted, the context in which Dick utters this phrase is key to its true meaning, that society could not exist in a state of fairness, peace and justice without the protectiveness of both the law and its staunch guardians.  Dick is suggesting that for their coup to prevail, they must eradicate society of the very defenders of justice who could prevent the revolt he intends to promote and then remove the power he would seek to usurp.  USA Supreme Court justice, John Paul Stevens, shared this reading of the line, in a 1985 decision:

“As a careful reading of that text will reveal, Shakespeare insightfully realized that disposing of lawyers is a step in the direction of a totalitarian form of Government.”

The objective of the Israeli Government’s “judicial overhaul” is to “kill the judges”.  It is designed, firstly, to give the ruling coalition an overriding say in the selection and appointment of judges, and secondly, to significantly circumscribe the Supreme Court’s power to review laws passed by the Knesset.

But, in an effort to stifle criticism of its reform proposals, there are two myths which have been perpetuated by Netanyahu and his Government, designed to mislead the Israeli population and Jewish supporters of Israel in the diaspora.

The first myth is that the judges appoint themselves. The second, is that a democracy requires that the will of the majority, which is represented by the elected majority in the Knesset, should not be frustrated by the decision of a Supreme Court, comprising some 15 judges, who are not elected by the people, which, so they contend, is the antithesis of democracy. 

We need at the outset, to expose these myths for what they are.

The judges do not appoint themselves.  Israel has a judicial selection committee comprising the following 9 members:

·       The Minister of Justice, Chairman of the Committee;

·       The Supreme Court President;

·       two additional Supreme Court justices;

·       an additional Minister;

·       two Knesset members;

·       two representatives of the Israeli Bar Association.

Accordingly, 4 of the 9 members are appointed by the Government, 3 by Supreme Court judges, and 2 by the Israeli Bar Association.

Judges of the lower courts are appointed by a majority ‑ 5 out of 9 ‑ of the members of the Judicial Committee. The appointment of a judge of the Supreme Court, requires a majority of 7 of the 9 members of the Judicial Committee. 

The Supreme Court, being the highest court in the land, is the ultimate judicial body, responsible for reviewing legislation of the Knesset.  Contrary to the false narrative perpetrated, therefore, the representatives of the Government have an absolute veto regarding the appointment of any judge of the Supreme Court.  No judge of the Supreme Court can be appointed without at least 2 of the 4 representatives of the Government on the Judicial Committee supporting that appointment, even if that appointment is supported by all 3 justices and the  2 representatives of the Bar Counsel.  Similarly, the 3 justices also have a corresponding veto right.  That, I would suggest, is a most balanced and equitable system. To contend, therefore, that the judges appoint themselves is a misrepresentation of the true facts.

The second myth is even more egregious.  It garners support in the thesis that because the judges are not appointed by popular vote, they are not truly representative of the will of the majority of the population.  In contrast, a government which holds a majority in the Knesset, maintains that it is representative of the will of the majority, and therefore, when it enacts important legislation, the Supreme Court should not have the power to strike down and invalidate that law, on the grounds that it is unconstitutional or lacks rationality.  But that, precisely, is what a liberal democracy demands.  One of the fundamental roles of such a Court, is to enforce the rule of law and hold government to abide by that rule of law.

What the Israeli Government is seeking to enact, are revolutionary changes to judicial oversight. At present, and for the past 30 years, the Supreme Court has the power, by majority vote of the Court, to invalidate laws which offend constitutional values or the rule of law. The Government’s proposal is that the Supreme Court will only be able to invalidate a law when it sits as a full bench of 15 judges, and when 12 out of the 15 determine that law to be unconstitutional (in the second proposal it has been suggested that such a decision would require unanimity).  But the proposed changes go even further.  In the event of the Court striking down any legislation on the grounds that it is unconstitutional or unreasonable, the Knesset, by a simple majority of 61 out of 120 members, would have the right to override such a decision of the Supreme Court.  The Government would thus arrogate to itself the unlimited power as final arbiter and judge to determine the validity of its own laws.  In short, even if the Supreme Court declared such a law to be invalid, the Government could override and invalidate that decision.  If that untrammeled power is not enough, it goes even further.  During the legislative process, if the Government determines that a particular piece of legislature is a Basic Law, it can in advance preclude the Supreme Court of exercising any jurisdiction at all regarding the validity of that legislation and so preemptively shield it entirely from judicial review.

The objective is clear.  The ruling coalition in the Knesset must have absolute power and the Supreme Court, which has historically at least since 1992 served as the only and ultimate check on that power, must be emasculated and neutralized.  Besides controlling the appointment of the judges of the Supreme Court, the Knesset would reign supreme, and it would even be beyond the power of the Supreme Court to review any legislation which the Government by simple majority declares to be a Basic Law. 

It is not only dictatorial regimes that may seek to weaken the review power of courts in respect of important legislation and executive action. It will often be attractive to a democratically elected government, to believe that because it enjoys electoral majority support, it is axiomatic that the laws it enacts are necessarily in the best interests of the country and its people and should not be capable of being assailed by a court, whose judges are not appointed by the same process.  However, in every liberal democracy, there has always been an adherence to, and recognition of, the fundamental principle of the separation of powers, which prescribes, amongst other things, that the highest court of the land has to be instrumental in placing a check on the actions of that government, derived from the rule of law.

Without that fundamental separation of powers and the residual power of the Court to set aside legislation and administrative conduct which violates constitutional principles or lacks rationality, there cannot be a true liberal democracy.  We encounter, instead, the tyranny of the majority, about which the renowned French political scientist and philosopher, Alexis de Tocqueville, expressed concern almost 200 years ago, as part of his study of democracy in America.  So too, John Stuart Mill, in his 1859 book “On Liberty”, warned about the inherent weakness to majority rule in which the majority of an electorate pursues exclusively its own objectives at the expense of those of the minority factions.  This results in oppression of minority groups comparable to that of a tyrant or despot.

Since Israel does not have some of the other checks against government excesses, which are enjoyed by certain other democracies, with a separation of the legislative and executive bodies and sometimes a bicameral legislative body – examples are the House of Commons and the House of Lords in the United Kingdom and the House and  Senate in the USA ‑ the only check that Israel has against any government exploiting its majority in order to pass whatever legislation it may deem fit, no matter how extreme or self‑serving, is its Supreme Court, with the power to review and strike down offensive legislation and set aside administrative abuses of authority and power.  Accordingly, the Supreme Court is there to safeguard minority factions against the tyranny of the majority or, as it has sometimes been described, the tyranny of the masses. 

That was precisely Tocqueville’s concern, that a majority could become an all‑powerful force and could tyrannize unpopular minorities and marginal individuals.  Unchecked political power will eventually always lead to tyranny.  It is the Court that is the ultimate check against the unconstitutional or irrational exercise of that political power.  Inherent, therefore, in the separation of powers, is the function of an independent judiciary, which must hold the legislature and executive to account.  It can only perform that function, with an uninhibited review process which the Israeli Government’s judicial overview proposals are designed to remove.

We in South Africa, are readily able to appreciate the position as it prevailed   under apartheid before 1994, with absolute parliamentary sovereignty and our courts bereft of any judicial review power.  And so, the most pernicious legislation could be passed, including the 90- and 180-day arbitrary detention laws, in respect of which the courts had no power of review at all.  In contrast, since the advent of democracy in South Africa, our Constitution guarantees, inter alia, personal rights and freedoms and entrenches the power of the Constitutional Court, to strike down and declare invalid any legislation or administrative act which violates those rights and freedoms. There have been countless judgments of our Constitutional Court, which have declared unconstitutional and invalid laws passed by the ruling ANC government.  In one of its leading judgments dealing with the Nkandla scandal involving then President Zuma, Chief Justice Mogoeng introduced the unanimous judgment of the Court, with the following statement:

“One of the crucial elements of our constitutional vision is to make a decisive break from the unchecked abuse of State power and resources that was virtually institutionalized during the apartheid era.  To achieve this goal, we adopted accountability, the rule of law and the supremacy of the Constitution as values of our constitutional democracy.  For this reason, public office‑bearers ignore their constitutional obligations at their peril.  This is so because constitutionalism, accountability and the rule of law constitute the sharp and mighty sword that stands ready to chop the ugly head of impunity off its stiffened neck.”

Israel, whilst it does not have a written constitution, has a body of law, developed over many decades, which serves as its uncodified constitution.  A written or codified constitution is not a requirement.  One of the strongest constitutions in the western world, is the uncodified constitution of the United Kingdom, developed over centuries of jurisprudence.

One cannot overstate the extreme existential danger that the Israeli Government’s judicial overhaul policy poses to the entire social fabric of Israeli society.  In a recent interview, constitutional expert, Professor Yaniv Roznai, an Associate Professor and Vice‑Dean at the Harry Radzyner Law School, and Co‑director at the Rubenstein Center for Constitutional Challenges at Reichman University in Herzliya, expounded on that danger as follows:

“The question of checks is crucial.  If you look around the world, all other democracies have various mechanisms to make sure that political power is checked and diffused.  Israel is the only democracy in the world without any of these mechanisms.  None.  We have only one parliament with one house that is controlled by the coalition leadership, usually 5 or 6 politicians, who can impose their will through coalition discipline.  And you need to remember that in the Israeli system, most parties are actually non‑democratic in the sense that there is no democratic process within the party.  So, we have totalitarian parties where you have a leader who decides who will be in the party and in which place.  It is in this context in which the Government is already so strong, that now we want to get rid of those limited checks, such as the Court that were crucial.

……………

I am extremely worried about our democratic future.  Being a student of comparative constitutional law, and seeing around the world the process of democratic erosion, and the way populus Governments abuse legal and constitutional means to undermine the other democratic institutions of the Government, people now tell me: ‘What do you want? The Israeli Supreme Court now has absolute powers’.  This is of course not true, but I don’t know a country in history that lost its democratic character and became a dictatorship because the court was overly activist in its human rights protection or had a very broad understanding of reasonableness doctrine.  But I know of many democracies who have collapsed because the Government and executive had too much power.”

One thing is clear.  The controversy created by the Government’s intended judicial overhaul is the most profound and critical internal issue that Israel has faced since its establishment. The divisiveness, rancor and animosity that this proposed legislation has created is as unparalleled as it is tragic.  If this legislation as contemplated is passed and implemented, it will forever adversely change the face of Israeli civil society.

Disregarding Netanyahu’s personal stake in the proposed legislation consequent upon the criminal charges he faces, his latest explanation that this judicial overhaul will not destroy democracy but will in fact strengthen it, is, ironically, the mantra of every demagogue who seeks to justify the erosion of the courts and the rule of law on the pretext that a democratically elected majority government must be the only and final arbiter of its exercise of political power.  That, precisely, is the recipe of every authoritarian state.  Unsurprisingly therefore, already last Monday, immediately after the initial law was passed by the Knesset, removing the power of the Court to apply the critical reasonableness standard, Ben-Gvir crowd glowingly and chillingly that this was only the beginning for “the salad bar is open”. Beware the slippery slope.

In the final analysis, we should never take democracy or democratic values for granted.  They do not self‑regulate.  In every truly democratic society, it is the responsibility of the people ‑ hence the valiant and indefatigable 30-week protests ‑ to guard against the potential disintegration of that democratic order through the concentration of hegemonic power, which finds expression in Lord Acton’s famous quote:

“Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”

The Israeli Supreme Court, which for decades has enjoyed international respect and recognition for its independence, judicial integrity and profundity, has provided, and must continue to provide, the necessary protection against any abuse of that power by any government du jour.  If the judicial overhaul proposals are implemented, it will forever be stripped of that power and Israel will cease to be a liberal democracy.

If you want to be a democracy, there can be only one solution. You need broad consensus for anything that dramatically shifts the balance of power and increases its concentration in the hands of the government.  Any radical changes must be resisted because they don’t allow for careful debate and reflection over successive parliaments.  If there is any suggested room for improvement of the Supreme Court, absent rational deliberation and ultimately consensus, it will lead to civil disobedience and revolt.

Oshy Tugendhaft is an prominent attorney in Johannesburg, South Africa.

Thoughts on the recent Supreme Court decision banning affirmative action in college admissions.

It is absolutely the right decision, and I expected it. However, I also expect the stubborn, unprincipled educational establishment to violate this law by adopting one workaround after another.

The University of Texas, Austin, some time ago, did that effectively by admitting the ranking top 10% in any high school graduating class across the state, disregarding the quality of the school. Discrimination against whites and asians is perhaps even worse under this workaround than under transparent affirmative action. It should be challenged.

To clarify my position: I think affirmative action is immoral, paternalistic, and unconstitutional. In my ideal world, to the extent that Harvard is a private institution, I think it ought to be able to discriminate if it wants to. But, insofar as affirmative action is actually affirmative discrimination, I think it violates anti-discrimination law, and thus violates the 14^th Amendment requiring “equal protection” of individuals under the law - (even though I do not support that law - Title VII of the Civil Rights Act). If Harvard is allowed to discriminate, then anyone should be allowed to discriminate against whomever they want. The law should not be confined to preventing discrimination only against certain groups, while allowing and encouraging it against others. 

Meantime social media is abuzz with this, "reporting" on how bad it is, without any clue about the facts and the principles involved. They claim the moral high ground for an immoral cause.

 

Thoughts on the new antisemitism - SHORTEST VERSION

 

I just read two recently published books, one about the UK (Jews Don’t Count by David Baddiel)  and the other about the US (Woke Antisemitism by David Bernstein). I highly recommend them both. Perhaps the most notable thing about them, is that they are both written by avowedly “liberal” authors, self-described as “leftist”. But, both, in spite of this, have become completely disillusioned and alarmed by the woke (Progressive) agenda, not least because of its inevitable anti-semitic element.

Baddiel is a well-known British-Jewish comedian/public intellectual. Bernstein is an eminent American-Jewish communal leader. Both became disillusioned over time, especially Bernstein, as they began to realize that the woke folk were not the traditional friends to the Jews that “liberals” had always been. Further, they came to the realization that following the well-worn path of Jewish-liberal alliances would no longer work with the latest brand of “liberalism”. In fact, and this is key, the vigorous attempt by Jewish organizations to curry favor with the organizations adopting one woke principle after another, was not only undermining traditional Jewish values of tolerance and open-mindedness, it was not even working to maintain the alliances regarded as valuable. Instead, these efforts were rebuffed and treated with contempt (for chapter and verse read Bernstein).

In the woke worldview Jews cannot be victims, notwithstanding the evidence to the contrary. The Holocaust was terrible, but it is not relevant to the current environment of “systemic racism” in which Jews are “white adjacent” – part of the privileged white class. (Whiteness has been mystified to go beyond skin color to include a state of being). In fact, Jews, because of their relative success as a group, are an obvious and easy target when it comes to attacking white privilege. They have used their “whiteness” to garner disproportionate numbers in the institutions of power. As Baddiel points out when it comes to anti-semitism, “Jews don’t count” as victims, because they are way down on the hierarchy of racisms. And, by the way, Asians are, likewise, white adjacents, who have benefitted by their token whiteness. They are not included in the club of the oppressed. Indeed, the world is divided into oppressed and oppressor and if you are not part of one you are part of the other. 

An important aspect of this anti-Jewish animus is the uncompromising anti-Israel rage that characterizes the woke folk. Criticism of Israeli government policy absolutely need not be anti-semitic, but, upon close examination, most of it in social media turns out to be grossly anti-semitic. To wit, the distortions that characterize the reporting, the historical misinformation, the singling out of Israel for human rights violations far less egregious than those of its neighbors or, indeed, numerous countries around the world, the insidious allusions to the Jewish character of the Israeli nation and so on. The association of Jews with the demon Israel has done much to make left-wing anti-semitism respectable.

You need not take my word for it. In a short essay I cannot provide the kind of evidence necessary to document the character of wokism and the implications of it for Jews and for Jewish organizations. For that you should read especially Bernstein. Anyone in any position of Jewish leadership should read that book. But, if this is right, if Bernstein is right, then Jews in America and everywhere that wokism is a factor, should understand the fundamentals of wokism and why it is necessary for Jewish organizations to distance themselves from it, and to combat its blatantly illiberal precepts. Those precepts are essentially anti-liberal and anti-Jewish in nature.

Conclusion

Recently, the problem has gotten worse. Jewish students on many campuses are at pains to hide their Jewishness. Jewish organizations have to have security at their events. University administrations have caved to the demand of woke student organizations to adopt their agendas and strike anti-Israel poses. None of this comes from the right-wing.

As I write, as evidenced by the two books referenced here, awareness is growing, but slowly. An effective policy to combat this new anti-semitism, on campus and elsewhere, will depend on a fundamental change in the typical American Jewish mindset. It is a big change, but, one that I actually feel is possible, even likely, given the growing impossibility of denying the obvious.

Thoughts on the new antisemitism - SHORT VERSION

 

      

Newsflash: Its not what you think it is.

A few years ago, I was invited to a meeting at the Jewish Community Center of Dallas – a meeting including a diverse group of local Jewish “leaders” to discuss the problem of antisemitism on university campuses. I was shocked to realize that I may have been the only one in the room who knew what was really going on. I felt that there were new essential elements in the current situation - that we were witnessing a deep cultural shift one that emanated from “the left wing” rather than the "right wing" of the social divide. This was not the usual right-wing variety of antisemitism. 

In fact, over time I have come to realize that the typical American Jewish commitment to all cultural and social aspects of “liberalism” in America was confusing matters and that unless the American Jewish Community at large could be made to see past its obsolete assumptions, no effective response to this new antisemitism would be effective.

When its about the Jews, its not just about the Jews, its not even really about the Jews at all.

The “liberals” are making a big category mistake, a mistake that diverts attention away from the most serious attack on American civil society in a century. The category mistake involves the meaning of “liberal” – a concept, that, in spite of its straightforward origins, has become fraught with confusions and ambiguities. Furthermore, a radical (per)version of what passes as liberalism has abandoned a firm commitment to tolerance, open discussion, and the encouraging of diverse viewpoints. Bias plus intolerance is what we have, gross intolerance of any alternative viewpoints. This is the result of a significant radical change in the character of American “liberalism” – or, more accurately, a change in who gets to set and dominate the “liberal” narrative. It is what we may conveniently refer to as the ”woke revolution”. And, in a nutshell, because of what it essentially is, the woke revolution is what is responsible for the explosion of antisemitism on campus and everywhere else.

If its Woke it ain’t Liberal.

Woke is not liberal. It is the opposite of liberal – in all plausible variations of that term. The ideology known critically as wokism originates not from any liberal source, but, from its antithesis, from a variant of Marxism, known as Critical Theory. Wokism denies the validity of every important aspect of liberalism, most significantly the value of freedom of expression and open inquiry. Modern American “liberals” who have jettisoned the firm commitment to protection of individual property rights, at least still agree on the importance of tolerance of individual viewpoints and the encouragement of civil discussion of alternative viewpoints. As such, they should not seek to make common ground with the Progressives who have embraced the tenets of wokism. Understanding that wokism is illiberal is also the key to understanding why it is responsible for the rise in (this new variant) of antisemitism.

Jews Don’t Count

Wokism, “social justice revolution”, Critical Race Theory, “Anti-racism”, equity, diversity, inclusion, … .and other various components of this new ideology, all seek to articulate an alternate worldview that is antithetical to liberalism and liberal democracy, and to the very foundations of western science. In this worldview, the ideas and perceptions of all individuals are indelibly shaped by their identity, in the original Marxist concept by their social class, but, in this modern variant, by their race. Truth is not objective in the sense we usually understand it. For example, the truth of the “black experience” cannot be understood, therefore should not be described or researched, by anyone who is not black. One has to have access the “lived experience” of the minority group members themselves for this. Hence there can be no legitimate discussion between whites and blacks who disagree about this. 

In this narrative, whites, who live privileged lives, should just shut up about this, unless it is to seek to understand the role that they have played historically, and continue to play, in the ongoing oppression. These are not claims made as an invitation to a discussion, they are dogmas, to be acted upon. Identity (race) determines character. This principle is completely and insidiously destructive of the idea of the uniqueness of the individual. The individual is completely eclipsed by the contours of the group to which she belongs. There is no transcending the nature of one’s group -  one’s racial identity. It is of a type with Marxist class determinism, where class is replaced by race.

According to this, Martin Luther King’s hope for a colorblind society is naïve at best and complicit at worst. The woke agenda, by contrast, seeks to emphasize race, to dethrone and shame whites for benefitting from white supremacy, and remake the entire social system (by massive government intrusions, educational indoctrination challenging all and every “white” shibboleth imaginable). I have yet to find an account of what the new world achieved by this revolution is supposed to look like.

I just read two recently published books, one about the UK (Jews Don’t Count by David Baddiel)  and the other about the US (Woke Antisemitism by David Bernstein). I highly recommend them both. Perhaps the most notable thing about them, is that they are both written by avowedly “liberal” authors, self-described as “leftist”. But, both, in spite of this, have become completely disillusioned and alarmed by the woke (Progressive) agenda, not least because of its inevitable anti-semitic element.

Baddiel is a well-known British-Jewish comedian/public intellectual. Bernstein is an eminent American-Jewish communal leader. Both became disillusioned over time, especially Bernstein, as they began to realize that the woke folk were not the traditional friends to the Jews that “liberals” had always been. Further, they came to the realization that following the well-worn path of Jewish-liberal alliances would no longer work with the latest brand of “liberalism”. In fact, and this is key, the vigorous attempt by Jewish organizations to curry favor with the organizations adopting one woke principle after another, was not only undermining traditional Jewish values of tolerance and open-mindedness, it was not even working to maintain the alliances regarded as valuable. Instead, these efforts were rebuffed and treated with contempt (for chapter and verse read Bernstein).

In the woke worldview Jews cannot be victims, notwithstanding the evidence to the contrary. The Holocaust was terrible, but it is not relevant to the current environment of “systemic racism” in which Jews are “white adjacent” – part of the privileged white class. (Whiteness has been mystified to go beyond skin color to include a state of being). In fact, Jews, because of their relative success as a group, are an obvious and easy target when it comes to attacking white privilege. They have used their “whiteness” to garner disproportionate numbers in the institutions of power. As Baddiel points out when it comes to anti-semitism, “Jews don’t count” as victims, because they are way down on the hierarchy of racisms. And, by the way, Asians are, likewise, white adjacents, who have benefitted by their token whiteness. They are not included in the club of the oppressed. Indeed, the world is divided into oppressed and oppressor and if you are not part of one you are part of the other. 

An important aspect of this anti-Jewish animus is the uncompromising anti-Israel rage that characterizes the woke folk. Criticism of Israeli government policy absolutely need not be anti-semitic, but, upon close examination, most of it in social media turns out to be grossly anti-semitic. To wit, the distortions that characterize the reporting, the historical misinformation, the singling out of Israel for human rights violations far less egregious than those of its neighbors or, indeed, numerous countries around the world, the insidious allusions to the Jewish character of the Israeli nation and so on. The association of Jews with the demon Israel has done much to make left-wing anti-semitism respectable.

You need not take my word for it. In a short essay I cannot provide the kind of evidence necessary to document the character of wokism and the implications of it for Jews and for Jewish organizations. For that you should read especially Bernstein. Anyone in any position of Jewish leadership should read that book. But, if this is right, if Bernstein is right, then Jews in America and everywhere that wokism is a factor, should understand the fundamentals of wokism and why it is necessary for Jewish organizations to distance themselves from it, and to combat its blatantly illiberal precepts. Those precepts are essentially anti-liberal and anti-Jewish in nature.

Conclusion

Recently, the problem has gotten worse. Jewish students on many campuses are at pains to hide their Jewishness. Jewish organizations have to have security at their events. University administrations have caved to the demand of woke student organizations to adopt their agendas and strike anti-Israel poses. None of this comes from the right-wing.

As I write, as evidenced by the two books referenced here, awareness is growing, but slowly. An effective policy to combat this new anti-semitism, on campus and elsewhere, will depend on a fundamental change in the typical American Jewish mindset. It is a big change, but, one that I actually feel is possible, even likely, given the growing impossibility of denying the obvious.

Thoghts on the new antisemitism

 

     

Newsflash: Its not what you think it is.

A few years ago, I was invited to a meeting at the Jewish Community Center of Dallas – a meeting including a diverse group of local Jewish “leaders” to discuss the problem of antisemitism on university campuses. I was invited as a Jewish faculty member at the University of Texas at Dallas. Also present were Jewish faculty from other local schools, the head of the Dallas Jewish Federation and other local Jewish communal bodies, the head of AIPAC (who happened to be from Dallas), Jewish student group staff, a few prominent Jewish business leaders active in community affairs, etc.

I forget who chaired the meeting or even most of the details of what he and what others said. The time was spent going around the table letting everyone have their say – reporting on what they knew and expressing their opinions about what could be done.

At that time, it was becoming apparent that anti-semitism was growing on campuses nationwide, though as yet had not become very visible in Texas. Most of the remarks were vague or silent regarding the causes of this new development and it became clear to me that it was generally assumed that the problem was an increase in the familiar crude right-wing anti-Jewish (anti-black/Hispanic/Asian – you name it) rhetoric and action – crude, rude and violent.

Somewhat shocked I realized that I may have been the only one in the room who knew what was really going on. There may have been others, but nobody was able to articulate what seemed to me were essentially new elements in the current situation. When my turn came I tried, with the limited soundbites allocated to me, to suggest that we were witnessing the surface phenomenon of a much deeper cultural shift that emanated from a different political demographic source, namely, what is commonly identified as “the left wing” of the social divide. My remarks were ignored. This forum was not there to gain a deeper understanding and to form effective responses. It was, rather, a typical exercise in public relations signifying not much at all.

The truth is, if I had been asked to give a thorough analysis of this cultural shift and why it manifested in part in an increase in anti-Jewish animus, I would not have been able to do it. At that time, I had not connected all the dots, nor had I realized the extent of the abiding, stubborn, and frankly naïve, American Jewish commitment to all cultural and social aspects of what is commonly called “liberalism” in America. But, I began to realize that unless the American Jewish Community at large could be made to see past its obsolete assumptions, no effective response to antisemitism would be found. Later, I found out, it was much more serious. The weight of Jewish communal action was actually fueling the problem – making it worse.

When its about the Jews, its not just about the Jews, its not even really about the Jews at all.

In the intervening period, realization has begun to grow, generally, but significantly within the Jewish community that the old categories do not apply. The “liberals” are making a big category mistake, a mistake that diverts attention away from the most serious attack on American civil society in a century. It is a wolf in sheep’s clothing type problem. And unless you see it’s a wolf you may think its your friend, when actually it is about to tear you apart and eat you.

The category mistake involves the meaning of “liberal” – a concept, that, in spite of its straightforward origins, has become fraught with confusions and ambiguities. For starters, it does not mean the same thing in the UK or Australia or Europe that it does here in the US. I should start then by clarifying terms before linking to the real-world problems they can help us understand.  I have realized that progress has been greatly inhibited by semantic confusions leading to debilitating miscommunication.

The most robust, yet confusing, framework for analysis among the American intelligentsia is the “left-right”/” liberal-conservative” divide. This is always ground zero for any political discussion, or for any discussion of social and economic policy. It is reinforced by and is the basis of our unalterable two party system. It has always been wrong and confusing, but, now much moreso than ever.

A serious, but not the most serious, problem is the naïve simplicity of this framework. It reflects gross binary thinking. If you are a “liberal” then anyone who disagrees with what you think is liberal is “conservative”. Equally, if you are a Conservative (with a big C), anyone who disagrees is a “liberal”. The only nuance comes from inserting the term “moderate” as in “moderate liberal” (or centrist liberal), or “moderate conservative”. It is not only binary, it is one dimensional. And once you have decided who fits wear that is all you need to know to know whether they are right or wrong. It is a dumbing down of the political discourse. And the worst of it is that academia, and much of education generally, has bought into this. In terms of this linear left-right spectrum the left outnumbers the right 18-1 in our universities, and the number is much higher in the humanities and social sciences. This, in itself, though at a relative high, would not be so serious, if our institutions of higher learning were still firmly committed to the doctrine of tolerance, open discussion, and the encouraging of diverse viewpoints. Bias plus intolerance, however, is what we have, gross intolerance of any alternative viewpoints. This is the result of a significant radical change in the character of American “liberalism” – or, more accurately, a change in who gets to set and dominate the “liberal” narrative. It is what we may conveniently refer to as the ”woke revolution”. And, in a nutshell, because of what it essentially is, the woke revolution is what is responsible for the explosion of AS on campus and everywhere else.

If its Woke it ain’t Liberal.

The critical literature explaining wokism is huge and is growing – many articles and books exist. I won’t attempt here to provide a complete account of it, but, instead, will concentrate on the essential relevant aspects.

The first thing to note is that woke is not liberal. It is the opposite of liberal – in all plausible variations of that term. Before the label was highjacked, to be a liberal meant you were someone who believed in the sanctity of equal individual human rights, in equal individual freedom. This freedom consists simply of the right to be free in one’s person and property from coercion by others. Since it applies equally to each and every individual, regardless of race, gender, nationality, ethnicity, etc., having freedom does not imply license to complete freedom of action. Any action I take that compromises your body or your property – which would be a violation of your freedom – is prohibited to me. The practical limits of individual freedom are defined by property rights. Property rights include ownership of one’s body and the ownership of any property acquired legitimately by gift or trade. As such, liberalism looks askance at any interference in voluntary transactions.

The details and complexities of this doctrine can be greatly expanded and explained. But, the main point here is to understand that this, broadly speaking, is what liberalism meant, and, many believe, should continue to mean. Its appealing features are associated with its commitment to individual autonomy and equality before the law - the king is subject to the same law as the peasant; on its belief in the sanctity of freedom of expression, association, assembly, the value of diverse opinions, etc.; and to its association with enrichment of the masses. The advent of liberalism (not in its complete ideal form, but, certainly in the most important of its features) ushered in what has been called the Great Enrichment, the explosion of wealth creation in those nations that adopted it. This is undeniable. For most of human history, the vast majority of people were miserably poor and ignorant. Since the rise of liberalism, for the first time (roughly over the last 300 years and picking up speed) the majority of humans do not live in poverty. To be sure, the gains vary greatly between people, but, the gains have been considerable. Commitment to liberalism, properly understood, has been based on its morality and on its massive widely distributed benefits.

Toward the middle of the 19^th century, ideas critical of the foundations of liberalism began to grow in popularity, the most common being the doctrine of socialism. Socialists challenge the most basic ingredient of liberalism, namely, property. They challenge the sanctity and even the meaning of individual property rights. They challenge the notions of equality before the law to protect such property rights, insofar as such protections are seen not to apply to the “wealthy”. Socialists regard unequal outcomes as evidence of injustice, and claim the right, the necessity, to “reform” the distribution of income and wealth to make them equal. The most far-reaching variant of socialism is Marxism, which seeks to abolish private property completely.

These remarks are not meant to persuade as much as to clarify. But, any attempt at persuasion would start with the consequences of implementing policies that involved gross violations of individual property rights, such as those involving extensive government regulation, taxation, and spending to encourage “social justice” outcomes, like socialist countries or those with extensive welfare states. The consequences are that poverty increases and economic growth falls. In the extreme, socialism causes economic collapse and dictatorship. Numerous examples exist. No example of prosperous socialism exists.

But, the important point to make here, is that the ideology known critically as wokism originates not from any liberal source, but, from its antithesis, from a variant of Marxism, known as Critical Theory. Wokism denies the validity of every important aspect of liberalism, most significantly the value of freedom of expression and open inquiry. Modern American “liberals” who have jettisoned the firm commitment to protection of individual property rights, at least still agree on the importance of tolerance of individual viewpoints and the encouragement of civil discussion of such alternative points of view. As such they should not seek to make common ground with the Progressives who have embraced the tenets of wokism. Understanding that wokism is illiberal is also the key to understanding why it is responsible for the rise in (this new variant) of anti-semitism.

Jews Don’t Count

Wokism, “social justice revolution”, Critical Race Theory, “Anti-racism”, equity, diversity, inclusion, … .and other various components of this new ideology, all seek to articulate an alternate worldview that is antithetical to liberalism and liberal democracy, and to the very foundations of western science. In this worldview, the ideas and perceptions of all individuals are indelibly shaped by their identity, in the original Marxist concept by their social class, but, in this modern variant, by their race (- ethnicity, culture, etc., but mainly race). Truth is not objective in the sense we usually understand it. Rather, the truth of the “black experience” or the anguish of gay people, cannot be understood, therefore should not be described or researched, by anyone who is not black or gay respectively – and equivalently for any of the other oppressed minorities usually identified. One had to have access the “lived experience” of the minority group members themselves for this.

So, whites, who live privileged lives, should just shut up about this, unless it is to seek to understand the role that they have played historically, and continue to play, in the ongoing oppression. These are not claims made as an invitation to a discussion, they are dogmas, to be acted upon. Identity determines character. This principle is completely and insidiously destructive of the idea of the uniqueness of the individual. The individual is completely eclipsed by the contours of the group to which she belongs. There is no transcending the nature of one’s group (racial) identity. It is of a type with Marxist class determinism, where class is replaced by race (and other minority designations).

So, Martin Luther King’s hope for a colorblind society is naïve at best and complicit at worst. The woke agenda, by contrast, seeks to emphasize race, to dethrone and shame whites for benefitting from white supremacy, and remake the entire social system (by massive government intrusions, educational indoctrination challenging all and every “white” shibboleth imaginable). I have yet to find an account of what the new world achieved by this revolution is supposed to look like.

The manifold manifestations of wokism and their implications can be found in the vast literature to which I referred. My purpose here is to address their connection to anti-semitism. Published work has begun to appear on this. I just read two recent books, one about the UK (Jews Don’t Count by David Baddiel)  and the other about the US (Woke Antisemitism by David Bernstein). I highly recommend them both. Perhaps the most notable thing about them, is that they are both written by avowedly “liberal” authors, self-described as “leftist”. As such they appear sadly ignorant of the problems associated with the “leftist” agenda in general, to which they remain favorably disposed. But, both, in spite of this, have become completely disillusioned and alarmed by the woke (Progressive) agenda, not least because of its inevitable anti-semitic element.

Baddiel is a well-known British-Jewish comedian/public intellectual. Bernstein is an eminent American-Jewish communal leader. Both became disillusioned over time, especially Bernstein, as they began to realize that the woke folk were not the traditional friends to the Jews that “liberals” had always been. Further, they came to the realization that following the well-worn path of Jewish-liberal alliances would no longer work with the latest brand of “liberalism”. In fact, and this is key, the vigorous attempt by Jewish organizations to curry favor with the organizations adopting one woke principle after another, was not only undermining traditional Jewish values of tolerance and open-mindedness, it was not even working to maintain the alliances regarded as valuable. Instead, these efforts were rebuffed and treated with contempt (for chapter and verse read Bernstein).

In the woke worldview Jews cannot be victims, notwithstanding the evidence to the contrary. The Holocaust was terrible, but it is not relevant to the current environment of “systemic racism” in which Jews are “white adjacent” – part of the privileged white class. (Whiteness has been mystified to go beyond skin color to include a state of being). In fact, Jews, because of their relative success as a group, are an obvious and easy target when it comes to attacking white privilege. They have used their “whiteness” to garner disproportionate numbers in the institutions of power. As Baddiel points out when it comes to anti-semitism, “Jews don’t count” as victims, because they are way down on the hierarchy of racisms. Don’t complain about being oppressed by Jeremy Corbyn or Ye. Your suffering pales into insignificance in this world of systemic racism against blacks, Hispanics and others.  And, by the way, Asians are, likewise, white adjacents, who have benefitted by their token whiteness. No, they are not included in the club of the oppressed. Indeed, the world is divided into oppressed and oppressor and if you are not part of one you are part of the other. 

No small part is played in this anti-Jewish animus by the uncompromising anti-Israel rage that characterizes the woke folk. Criticism of Israeli government policy absolutely need not be anti-semitic, but, upon close examination, most of it in social media turns out to be grossly anti-semitic. To wit, the gross historical distortions that characterize the reporting, the historical misinformation, the singling out of Israel for human rights violations far less egregious than those of its neighbors or, indeed, numerous countries around the world, the insidious allusions to the Jewish character of the Israeli nation and so on. The association of Jews with the demon Israel has done much to make left-wing anti-semitism respectable.

You need not take my word for it. In a short essay I cannot provide the kind of evidence necessary to document the character (caricature?) of wokism and the implications of it for Jews and for Jewish organizations. For that you should read especially Bernstein. Anyone in any position of Jewish leadership should read that book. But, if this is right, if Bernstein is right, then Jews in America and everywhere that wokism is a factor, should understand the fundamentals of wokism and why it is necessary for Jewish organizations to distance themselves from it, and to combat its blatantly illiberal precepts. Those precepts are essentially anti-liberal and anti-Jewish in nature. There is no way to compromise with them. Racial preferences for blacks imply racial discrimination against non-blacks. Cancelling people with critical views is fundamentally anti-democratic. Whenever and wherever freedom in society is compromised, Jews will be targeted. Antisemitism is a litmus test for the degree of intolerance of dissidents in general.

Conclusion

If you have read this far, you will understand why I was at a loss at that community meeting to articulate the nature of the antisemitism that had emerged on campus. Since that time the problem has gotten worse. Jewish students on many campuses are at pains to hide their Jewishness. Jewish organizations have to have security at their events. University administrations have caved to the demand of woke student organizations to adopt their agendas and strike anti-Israel poses. None of this comes from the right-wing. Finally, at my campus, UTD, signs of this have emerged – so far among the student body, not yet endorsed by the administration – which, hopefully, never will.

As I write, as evidenced by the two books referenced here, awareness is beginning to grow. But the anti-woke awakening is still small and slow to grow. In America, an effective policy to combat this new anti-semitism, on campus and elsewhere, will depend on a fundamental change in the typical American Jewish mindset. It is a big change, but, one that I actually feel is possible, even likely, given the growing impossibility of denying the obvious.