Israelis Are Tribalistic

A young friend, who writes brilliantly on Kant und Heidegger, sent me a commentary “In Defense of the Tribe,” which had just been posted on NRO .The author of this piece, Brian Stewart, states that human happiness is most fully achieved where some kind of “tribal life is maintained.” Stewart cites a World Happiness Report, 2016 Update, and a book On Homecoming and Belonging, by New York Times journalist Sebastian Junger, both of which indicate that where human beings are integrated into a community they feel physically safe and emotionally content. According to my correspondent, Stewart’s remarks could have a “subversive effect” in a publication that prides itself on its global democratic ideology and its liberal internationalist foreign policy.  Apparently Stewart is defending at least indirectly the paleoconservative view that national communities have a right and possibly a duty to preserve themselves. He also seems to be questioning an idea that is congenial to most of the NR-editorial staff, that the present pluralistic or multicultural model of government that now exists in the US should be forced on other countries as the only valid form of political life.

Moreover, a serious discussion of the American idea as presented by neoconservatives, and most prominently by Allan Bloom in The Closing of the American Mind, would reveal that the US was supposedly set up to exemplify a “proposition.” That proposition can be reduced to the formula that everyone on the planet should be viewed as equal; and just about everyone should be eligible for American citizenship, providing that he or she embraces the neoconservative notion of democratic equality. In a hard-hitting analysis of neoconservatism, Michael Lind observes that the foreign policy adviser to George W. Bush, Douglas Feith, was fond of contrasting America’s “fluid” identity to Israel’s entirely appropriate character as an ethnic state.

Feith had no problem justifying this difference and wished to see the US and Israel continue to exist according to their radically different founding principles. One may view this defense of the idea that the US and Israel function according to contrasting principles as illustrative of a widespread mindset on the pseudo-Right. It is certainly the view that one encounters among “conservative” superstars and among those who run the enterprise founded by Bill Buckley. Because of this established position, I do not share my friend’s hope that Brian Stewart’s comments on tribal identity may signal a turn-about in the world view associated with NRO. Stewart’s sympathetic discussion of Jewish tribalism can coexist in the minds of “conservative” Dittoheads with an equally strong view of America as a crusading global democracy. The need to make room for an Israeli exception never seems to bother those “conservatives” who call for a post-ethnic pluralistic democracy in other countries.

For the record: I do not oppose the right of Israel to exist as an ethnic state and to defend itself against foreign and domestic enemies. But I also believe that European gentiles have the same right as other groups to maintain their historic national identity and to decide their immigration policies accordingly. I also believe the US can protect its borders without having to be an ideological missionary. American internal safety does not depend on converting the entire planet to our latest authorized version of pluralistic democracy.

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