Using the Bedouin to Attack Israel. By Jonathan S. Tobin.

Using the Bedouin to Attack Israel. By Jonathan S. Tobin. Commentary, December 3, 2013.

New Blood Libel Film on Israeli Bedouin. By Ben-Dror Yemini.

The blood libel film. By Ben-Dror Yemini. The Times of Israel, November 29, 2013.

Israeli government claims 80% of Bedouin agree to resettlement; Bedouin leader: State is lying. By Shirly Seidler. Haaretz, December 2, 2013.

Prawer Plan to displace Bedouin. Articles on +972. (Israeli left-wing.)

Britons protest plan to remove 70,000 Palestinian Bedouins. By Harriet Sherwood. The Guardian, November 29, 2013. Noam Sheizaf at +972.

Why don’t Rabbis for Human Rights care about Bedouin women. By Alon Tal. Haaretz, September 2, 2013.

Study: Most Bedouin victims of domestic violence believe it’s a “decree from God.” By Jack Khoury. Haaretz, April 30, 2012.

Theodore Bikel: It Hurts That the Descendants of Anatevka Expel Israeli Bedouin. Video. Rabbis for Human Rights, May 30, 2013. YouTube.

Women’s Human Security Rights in the Arab World: On Nobody’s Agenda. By Mariz Tadros.

Women’s human security rights in the Arab world: on nobody’s agenda. By Mariz Tadros. OpenDemocracy, December 2, 2013.

No Ideologues Please. By Jennifer Rubin.

No ideologues please. By Jennifer Rubin. Washington Post, December 2, 2013. Also here.

Andrew Jackson: Symbol of a Southern Age. By Mark R. Cheathem.

Andrew Jackson, Tennessee Gentleman. By Ralph E.W. Earl, 1828-1833. Wikimedia.

Andrew Jackson: Symbol of a Southern Age. By Mark R. Cheathem. History News Network, December 2, 2013.

Cheathem:

“The Majesty of the People had disappeared,” Washington, D.C., gossip Margaret Bayard Smith wrote disapprovingly, replaced by “a rabble, a mob, of boys, negros, women, children, scrambling, fighting, romping.” Smith was not describing a riot in the nation’s capital but the inaugural festivities of President Andrew Jackson in March 1829. What else would one expect of the common man’s president, an uneducated western frontiersman who only escaped his supporters’ enthusiasm on Inaugural Day by crawling out of a window

 

That image of Jackson, which continues to resonate in American culture, needs refining. By the time he became president, Jackson was hardly the country bumpkin that his critics believed him to be. Instead, he was a wealthy southern planter who owned nearly 100 slaves who lived on a large estate called the Hermitage just outside of Nashville, Tennessee, where Jackson also housed a stable of racehorses. In today’s terms, he would have been a multimillionaire candidate entering the White House.

 

The traditional narrative of Jackson’s life – a commoner who worked hard to lift himself into the presidency – is hardly a new one. Ever since his victory in 1828, presidential campaigns have employed this trope as a signal that their candidate understands the average American. One need only look at a few examples to see that this tactic has been used by the presidents whom Americans consider their greatest (the rail-splitting, self-taught lawyer Abraham Lincoln), as well as those in recent decades (the simple Georgia peanut farmer Jimmy Carter and Texas everyman George W. Bush). Even Barack Obama can rightly claim to have overcome the challenges faced as the child in a single-parent household. Americans want to believe that their presidents comprehend the struggles that they face, that their backgrounds assure their understanding of a democratic society in which every voice matters.

 

The reality, of course, is that each of the above-named men possessed advantages that enabled them to win the presidency. Lincoln was a successful lawyer working railroad contracts when he ran in 1860. According to his biographer, David H. Donald, Lincoln hated physical labor. Carter’s background as peanut farmer called up images of him walking onto the campaign trail having just finished working in a straw hat in the hot Georgia sun; in actuality, Carter had turned his father’s farm into a profitable corporation. Both Bush and Obama were products of Ivy League institutions, with Bush having the added advantage of a grandfather who served in the U.S. Senate and a father who served as U.S. president. All of these men also had business, political, and social networks that allowed them the opportunity to vie for the presidency. In other words, none of them were self-made men.

 

The same was true of Andrew Jackson, whose ascension to elite status began long before he reached the presidency. During the years prior to his move to Tennessee, he was exposed to various examples of southern gentlemen. Jackson grew up in an area along the North Carolina-South Carolina border called the Waxhaws. While his immediate family was not well-off, members of Jackson’s extended family living in the area owned significant land acreage and several slaves. Both gave them social status in the community. When Jackson moved to Charleston as a teenager, he witnessed the lives of southern gentlemen in an urban setting. As a port city, Charleston served as a center of news, commerce, and trade; during his time there, Jackson could not help but see the importance of social networking and slavery in creating a gentry lifestyle. His decision to read law indicated his realization that the legal profession carried with it a mark of success. During his time as a law student in North Carolina, Jackson also became more aware of the centrality of kinship networks to social advancement. His peers were young men connected, by blood or friendship, to some of the wealthiest and most important state leaders. Indeed, it was a member of Jackson’s own network who gave him the appointment that brought him to Middle Tennessee.

 

Jackson was already regarded as an elite gentleman before he stepped foot in the Nashville settlement, however. His elevated status is clear for two reasons. First, he purchased his first slave, a woman by the name of Nancy, during a months-long stay in the East Tennessee town of Jonesboro. Jackson’s lack of a permanent residence suggests that Nancy’s purchase was not for utilitarian purposes but to indicate a lifestyle of prosperity. Second, Jackson engaged in a duel with an older, prominent attorney, Waightstill Avery. Their dispute centered on a court case, which led Jackson to challenge his courtroom opponent to a deadlier contest. The duel did not result in injury for either party, but it still proved important for the messages that it sent about Jackson. In southern culture, only elite white men could participate in duels. That Jackson felt secure enough in his social position to issue the challenge, and that Avery answered his challenge, indicated Jackson’s own sense of standing and the community’s recognition of his rank.

 

Jackson’s entrée into elite southern society is often traced to his marriage into the Donelson family, whose patriarch had been one of Nashville’s co-founders. In reality, Jackson was already part of the gentry class, but his decision to marry Rachel Donelson Robards furthered his advancement. The Donelson kinship network gave Jackson access to businessmen and politicians who helped him become a land speculator, a U.S. congressman, judge, and militia general. He used the financial advantages that accrued to him to begin establishing the agricultural enterprise that culminated in his Hermitage plantation.

 

Jackson’s military career only solidified and enhanced his social status. His generalship helped push Native American tribes off of millions of acres of land in the South and defeat the mighty British army at New Orleans. But as important as those exploits were to his political career, the war brought other benefits. His kinship network expanded to include members of the military who served with him, soldiers such as John Eaton and William B. Lewis. These men were well-connected in their own right and provided their military superior with access to money and influence that would have escaped him otherwise. The land that Jackson and his men seized from Indians, both during and after the war, also proved a source of profitability. Jackson speculated in Alabama and Florida lands, buying cheap and, in the case of Alabama, establishing farms to supplement the revenue generate at his main landholdings in Middle Tennessee.

 

The Jackson that Margaret Bayard Smith and other Washingtonians decried in 1829 existed merely as a symbol. Old Hickory was not as refined as the Adamses who served as chief executive, nor as aristocratic as the Virginia presidents. But neither was he the vulgar leader of “raving Democracy” that inaugurated the “reign of KING MOB,” as contemporaries observed. Andrew Jackson was a man who had taken advantage of hard work, networking, and a little bit of luck to become a successful member of elite southern society. While he embraced his symbolism as the champion of the common man, Jackson also lived the life of a southern gentleman until his death in June 1845. Ignoring that southern identity misses the complexity of the president with whom the flourishing of American democracy has been most closely associated.

Andrew Jackson, Hero of New Orleans. by Ralph E.W. Earl, 1817. National Portrait Gallery, Washington, D.C. Wikimedia.

In Israel, a Push to Screen for Breast Cancer Gene Leaves Many Conflicted. By Roni Caryn Rabin.

In Israel, a Push to Screen for Cancer Gene Leaves Many Conflicted. By Roni Caryn Rabin. New York Times, November 26, 2013.

A “Powerful” Image of Breast Cancer Offends Some Times Readers. By Margaret Sullivan. New York Times, November 27, 2013.

The New York Times, the nipple, and the Jewish star tattoo. By neo-neocon. Legal Insurrection, November 28, 2013.

Breast Tattoo (Women’s Bodies Jewish) (Front Page of the New York Times). By Zachary Braiterman. Jewish Philosophy Place, November 27, 2013.

This 28-year-old woman discovered a large lump in her left breast last year. Years earlier, her mother's half-sister, who lives in Canada, tested positive for a genetic mutation that increases cancer risk and then warned her Israeli relatives. Rina Castelnuovo for The New York Times.

Hamas May Be Turning Away From Violence. By Aaron Magid.

The World Has Barely Noticed This Huge Political Development in Gaza. By Aaron Magid. The New Republic, November 28, 2013.

Creeping Toward Palestinian Statehood. By Louis René Beres.

Creeping toward Palestinian statehood. By Louis René Beres. Washington Times, November 28, 2013.

Core Roots of Palestinian Terrorism. By Louis René Beres. NJBR, August 14, 2013.

The Legal Basis of Israel’s Rights in the Disputed Territories. By Alan Baker. Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, January 8, 2013. Also here.

Open letter to John Kerry. By Alan Baker. Israel Hayom, November 11, 2013. Also here.

The legal case for Judea and Samaria. By Nadav Shragai. Israel Hayom, December 13, 2013.


Beres and Baker:

Above all, Jerusalem must argue vigorously against new European Union guidelines, insisting that Palestine’s borders never be based upon pre-1967 lines. In the words of an Israeli legal expert, Ambassador Alan Baker: “The legality of the presence of Israel’s communities in [Judea and Samaria] stems from the historic, indigenous and legal rights of the Jewish people to settle in the area, granted pursuant to valid and binding international legal instruments, recognized and accepted by the international community. These rights cannot be denied or placed in question.” Accordingly, Jerusalem should clearly affirm that Israeli settlement activity is recognizably consistent with international law.

Fox News’ Highly Reluctant Jesus Follower. By Kirsten Powers.

Fox News’ Highly Reluctant Jesus Follower. By Kirsten Powers. Christianity Today, October 22, 2013. Also here.

A liberal’s journey to Evangelical Christianity. Video. Kirsten Powers interviewed by Howard Kurtz. Media Buzz. Fox News, December 1, 2013. YouTube.

The Revolt Against Urban Gentry. By Joel Kotkin.

The Revolt Against Urban Gentry. By Joel Kotkin. JoelKotkin.com, November 30, 2013.

The War on Human Nature. By Victor Davis Hanson.

The War on Human Nature. By Victor Davis Hanson. National Review Online, November 26, 2013.

Film Review: A Documentary Explores Israeli Attitudes to the Nakba. By Lisa Goldman.

Film review: A documentary explores Israeli attitudes to the Nakba. By Lisa Goldman. +972, November 28, 2013. Also at The Daily Beast.


On the Side of the Road - OFFICIAL TRAILER from Naretiv Productions on Vimeo.

Ari Shavit on My Promised Land.

Ari Shavit on Charlie Rose (11/18/13). Video. Charlie Rose, November 19, 2013. YouTube. Complete episode of Charlie Rose with Shavit, Jeffrey Goldberg, and David Remnick. Bloomberg, November 19, 2013.

In Israel, a Dream Made Real. By Ari Shavit. Wall Street Journal, November 29, 2013.

American Jews are “endangered,” says Ari Shavit. By Philip Weiss. Mondoweiss, November 20, 2013.

Ari Shavit: Apocalypse now, apocalypse forever. By False Prophet Blog. +972, November 21, 2013.

Shavit called Gideon Levy an “enemy of the Jewish people” for wanting secular, democratic state. By Ira Glunts. Mondoweiss, November 22, 2013. Video at YouTube.




Video transcript:

Dan Margalit (host): If two peoples seriously intend to live in peace, the Palestinians shouldn’t have a problem with Ofra or Ariel staying where they are. Let’s say that we stole the land. Let’s say that we’ll pay for the land. We’re a people that pays for land – ever since the days of the Cave of Machpelah [i.e. the time of Abraham -trans.]…. That’s not the point. The point is your rejection of the very idea – not yours, maybe, Abu Mazen’s, Yasser Arafat’s – of the very idea that a Jewish community [Heb. “yishuv”] can exist in the heart of Palestine.

 

Gideon Levy: Why? Would you allow the Arabs of Nablus to live in Tel Aviv?

 

Margalit: What’s the connection?

 

Levy: Ah, suddenly. What’s the connection?

 

Shavit: You’re a total demagogue. They don’t recognise the state of the Jewish people. They don’t recognize the Jewish people and its right. That’s the issue. That’s what you’re ignoring. You always take this extreme part.

 

Levy: You are the extreme right. I have nothing to discuss with you. You are a spokesman of the extreme right, masquerading.

 

Shavit: Gideon, You want a secular, democratic state. You’re worse than the extremists among the Palestinians.

 

Levy: Terrific. OK. Perfect. Anti-Semite.

 

Shavit: And this is a kind of anti-Semitism, an unwillingness to recognize the right of the Jewish people to self-determination.

 

Levy: [Just] say Nazi.

 

Shavit: No, this is an extreme anti-Israeli approach that you spread like poison around the world. And then you call it demagoguery. This is demagoguery of the worst kind, your demagoguery.

 

Levy: I’m a little tired of Ari Shavit. Who tries to have it all. It is . . . I want to refresh people’s memory, once and for all. We came to a country inhabited by another people.

 

Margalit: Oh, delegitimizing of Israel. We understand.

 

Shavit: Then let’s leave. That’s why you’re not worried about Iran, because you agree with Ahmedinejad. You think we should go back to Austria. That’s what you’re saying.

 

Levy: [Just say] Adolf Hitler.

 

Shavit: When you talk like this, when you don’t recognize the right of the Jewish people, when you don’t want a national home for the Jewish people, you are a partner of the enemies of Israel [also “the Jewish people” - trans.].


“We’ve Lost Our Narrative”: Ari Shavit hopes his new book will revive an honest, painful, conversation on Israel. By Gary Rosenblatt. The Jewish Week, November 27, 2013.







Ari Shavit, My Promised Land. Video. Politics and Prose, November 22, 2013. YouTube.




The State of Israel: Past, Present, and Future. Video with Ari Shavit. Council on Foreign Relations, November 20, 2013. YouTube.

How Israel Won the Arab Spring. By Danny Danon.

Rider on the Storm. By Danny Danon. Foreign Policy, November 27, 2013. Also here.

How Israel won the Arab Spring, and why a dangerous new instability threatens the entire region’s geopolitical landscape.

Politics Is Not a Soap Opera. By Andrew C. McCarthy.

Politics Is Not a Soap Opera. By Andrew C. McCarthy. National Review Online, November 30, 2013.

Hostility Toward Israel Is the Ruling Classes’ New Anti-Semitism. By Einat Wilf.

Hostility toward Israel is the ruling classes’ new anti-Semitism. By Einat Wilf. Haaretz, November 12, 2013. Also here.

The fine line between criticizing Israel and anti-Semitism. By Anshel Pfeffer. Haaretz, October 31, 2013.

Einat Wilf Q&A. By Julie Wiener. The Jewish Week, September 7, 2011. Also here.

Isn’t It Ironic: When U.S. Jews Celebrate Hanukkah. By Rabbi Avi Shafran.

Isn’t it ironic: When U.S. Jews celebrate Hanukkah. By Rabbi Avi Shafran. Haaretz, November 21, 2013. Also at RabbiAviSharfran.com. Also here.

Shafran:

There’s a striking irony in the fact that Hanukkah is one of the most widely celebrated Jewish holidays among American Jews.

 

Cynics have contended that it’s Hanukkah’s proximity to the Christian winter holiday, with all the latter’s ubiquitous glitz, baubles and musical offerings, that has elevated Hanukkah – seen by some as a “minor” celebration, since it’s a post-Biblical commemoration – to the pantheon (if a Greek word is appropriate here) of popular Jewish observances.

 

In fact, though, Hanukkah is not minor at all; a wealth of Jewish mystical literature enwraps it, and laws (albeit rabbinical in origin) govern the nightly lighting of the holiday’s candles and the recital of Al Ha'nisim (“For the miracles”) in our prayers over Hanukkah’s eight days.

 

As to whether many American Jews are enamoured of Frosty the Snowman, well, it’s an open question. Me, I prefer my winter nights silent.

 

But onward to the irony, which is not only striking but significant.

 

I recall hearing a Reform rabbi on a public radio program a couple of years ago extolling Hanukkah as a celebration of “pluralism” and “tolerance.” After all, the Greek-Syrian Seleucid enemy of the Jews at the time of the Hanukkah miracle, he explained, were intolerant of Jewish religious practices; by resisting them, the Jews were, according to his logic, fighting for open-mindedness, Q.E.D. Well, yes, but the Jewish rebellion wasn’t aimed at establishing some sort of Middle-Eastern First Amendment but rather to fiercely defend the study and practice of the Torah. And to rid the Temple of idols. Judaism has no tolerance at all for some things, idolatry prime among them.

 

What is more, the Jewish uprising also – and here we close in on the irony – was to counter the influence on Jews of a foreign culture.

 

To the Jewish religious leaders who established the observance of Hanukkah, a greater threat than the flesh-and-blood forces that had defiled the Holy Temple was the adoption by Jews of Hellenistic ideals.

 

For the Seleucids not only forbade observance of the Sabbath, circumcision, Jewish modesty laws and Torah study, they held out to Jews the sweet but poison fruit of Greek culture, and some Jews devoured it whole.

 

The enemy, in other words, didn’t just install a statue of Zeus in the Temple, but an assimilationist attitude in some Jewish hearts. And Hanukkah stands for the fight against that attitude.

 

It’s easy to dismiss the ancient Greek soap-opera that passed for divine doings, the gods who were described as acting like the lowest of men. It isn’t likely that many Jews (or Greeks, for that matter) really believed the tales of celestial hijinks that passed for spirituality at the time.

 

But the ancient Greeks had something much more enticing to offer. Hellas celebrated the physical world; it developed geometry, calculated the earth’s circumference, proposed a heliocentric theory of the solar system and focused attention on the human being, at least as a physical specimen. It philosophized about life and love.

 

But much of Hellenist thought revolved around the idea that the enjoyment of life was the most worthwhile goal of man, yielding us the words “cynic,” “epicurean,” and “hedonist” - all Greek in origin.

 

Western society today revolves around pleasure too. It adopts the language of “freedom” and “rights” to disguise the fact, but it’s a pretty transparent fig leaf.

To be sure, most Jews in the U.S. remain stubbornly, laudably, proud of their Jewishness. But, all the same, they have been culturally colonized by a sort of contemporary Hellenism, American style.

 

Which bring us – if you haven’t already guessed – to the irony.

 

Because Hanukkah addresses neither pluralism nor tolerance (admirable though those concepts may be in their proper places), but rather Jewish identity and continuity, the challenges most urgently faced by contemporary American Jews.

 

And its message stands right in front of them, in the flickering flames.

 

The “miracle of the lights,” Jewish tradition teaches, was not arbitrary. Abundant meaning for the Jewish ages shone from the Temple candelabra’s supernatural eight-day burning of a one-day supply of oil. For light, our tradition further teaches, means Torah, its study and its observance – not “contemporized,” and not edited to conform to the Zeitgeist, but as it has been handed down over the centuries.

 

When American Jews light their Hanukkah candles they may not consider that the holiday they are acknowledging speaks most poignantly to them. But they should.

Emma Koenig’s So-Called Redacted Life. By Penelope Green.

Emma Koenig

Wash That Blog Out With Soap: At Home With 20-Something Emma Koenig. By Penelope Green. New York Times, July 25, 2012.

Emma Koenig, Blogger Behind “F***! I'm In My 20s!,” Snags Boyfriend, Book Deal Thanks To Blog. By Alyssa Creamer. The Huffington Post, July 26, 2012.

“Fuck! I’m In My 20s” Blogger Pretty Much Having Best Decade Ever. By Katie J.M. Baker. Jezebel, July 26, 2012.

This 20-Year-Old’s Experiences Make GoodBlog & Book Fodder. By Nina Amir. How to Blog a Book, August 30, 2012.

Fuck! I’m In My Twenties. Emma Koenig’s blog.

Speed Dating. By Emma Koenig and David Seger. Video. SegerTube, June 28, 2012. YouTube.

Prisoners of War (Hatufim): The Israeli Original of Homeland.

Prisoners of War. Seasons 1 and 2. Video. Hulu.

The Promise. Season 1, 4 episodes. Video. Hulu.

A “Homeland” in Its Original Packaging, Subtitles, Too. By Mike Hale. New York Times, November 24, 2012.

The Ties That Bind Two TV Siblings. By Mike Hale. New York Times, May 28, 2013.

Prisoners of War (Hatufim) Trailer. Video. ArrowFilmsUK, February 26, 2013. YouTube.

Promised Land, Golden Land: Why Jewish Survival Depends on Both Israel and America.

Promised Land, Golden Land: Why Jewish Survival Depends on Both Israel and America. Symposium. Tablet, November 19, 2013.

The Quest to Belong. By Roger Cohen.

The Quest to Belong. By Roger Cohen. New York Times, November 28, 2013.

The NAF Puts Anti-Zionism on the Table. By Jonathan S. Tobin.

The NAF Puts Anti-Zionism on the Table. By Jonathan S. Tobin. Commentary, November 26, 2013.

No Way Out for Syria’s Palestinian Refugees. By Laura Dean.

No Way Out. By Laura Dean. The New Republic, November 25, 2013.

Syria’s Palestinian refugees thought Egypt would be safe. Now they want to get to Europe.

Can the Republican Party Return to Its Realist Roots? By Robert Kaplan.

Can the Republican Party Return to Its Realist Roots? By Robert Kaplan. Real Clear World, November 28, 2013.

Kaplan:

When it comes to an approach to the outside world, the Republican Party would seem to be tearing itself apart. There are not one or two factions but several, all vying for a mandate from the party faithful. This is all happening while the Democrats appear more or less to be united – if not always enthusiastic – behind President Barack Obama’s foreign policy, especially after the triumph of his interim deal with Iran.

 

In recent decades, the Republicans have usually been the more nationalist of the two major parties. Whereas Democratic foreign policy experts have been more at home among global elites, and more enthusiastic about pursuing altruistic humanitarian goals, Republican experts have been less comfortable at conferences abroad, and more concerned about the safety of the American homeland and its traditional allies than about trying to improve the lot of the rest of the world. As one might expect, defense budgets have usually fared better under Republican than Democratic presidents.

 

The problem for Republicans is that there are various kinds of nationalism. There is, for instance, the aggressive Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld brand of nationalism, in which you proactively seek out enemies and destroy them, with relatively little concern for what the outside world thinks. Especially in a post-9/11 world, you can’t take chances! This is a nationalism in which high defense budgets are encouraged, even as humanitarianism is de-emphasized. It is not that such nationalists are necessarily hardhearted. Rather, it is that they genuinely feel the world overall will be a more humane place with preponderant American power.

 

To one side of these Republican nationalists are Republican isolationists. Now isolationists are nationalists, too. They also believe that the most important thing in the world is a safe and secure American homeland. It is just that they feel this can be better achieved by staying out of foreign wars and other such entanglements, particularly in the Eastern Hemisphere. In their minds, American human and material treasure is simply too precious to be wasted abroad. Tried-and-true isolationists are actually rare in the Republican Party: just because you are against this or that military intervention certainly does not make you an isolationist. Rather, there are isolationist-trending Republicans of varying degrees who seek to do the minimum abroad, while concentrating on protecting and improving the homeland. They seek a perfectionism within the American continent only, with some concern for contiguous parts of the Western Hemisphere as well. The world overseas will just have to fend for itself.

 

To the other side of Republican nationalists are Republican neoconservatives. They combine a militant nationalism with Wilsonianism. Wilsonianism, named after Democratic President Woodrow Wilson, seeks an activist role in the world in order to spread American values of democracy and human rights. Whereas isolationists see America as mainly an example to the rest of the world, neoconservatives seek to use America as a launching pad to forcibly spread that example to other shores. To those of an isolationist bent, the military is for defending the homeland against a direct and credible attack. To Republican neoconservatives (as well as to liberal interventionists in the Democratic Party), the military is there to put distant and troubled societies to rights. For America can only be secure when the rest of the world, too, enjoys freedom. When traditional Republican nationalists bonded with neoconservatives, the result in the early years of the 21st century was the Iraq War, which isolationist-trending Republicans, as well as many others in both parties, now view as a disaster.

 

This rift sometimes defines how history is seen. Take the media, for example. Markedly influenced by liberal and neoconservative elites, the media has been generally averse to isolationism in all its forms and degrees. Thus, the great early and mid-20th century Republican, Robert Taft – who opposed involvement in World War II – is often held out for ridicule. While Taft was clearly wrong to oppose America's entry into the war when he did, it is important to realize that Taft’s very caution in international affairs remains a mainstay both within the Republican Party and within the American heartland.

 

Such competing visions of an approach to the outside world will not be solved by a vigorous debate per se, however much one might hope so. For in an Internet age, especially, the different sides talk mainly to themselves, not to each other. What tends to happen is not that each side objectively considers the views of the other, but that each side visits only the websites compatible with its own preconceived view. Robert W. Merry, a historian of the American continent and someone with decades of journalistic experience, wrote not long ago in The National Interest that because America has a presidential system, such disagreements can only hope to be settled by the selection of a presidential candidate who can fuse some, if not all, of the sides in a party debate.

 

Actually there is a strong precedent for this in the Republican Party. Dwight Eisenhower ran as a Republican realist who tempered the isolationism of Robert Taft as well as the crackpot, conspiracy-mongering anti-communism of Joseph McCarthy. Richard Nixon was a tough-minded, traditional Republican nationalist whose opening to Communist China had an internationalist basis, as well as a long-range humanitarian effect in East Asia. Ronald Reagan spoke the Wilsonian language of moral rearmament, so central to the philosophy of neoconservatives, even as he took care to put bureaucratic governance in the hands of traditional nationalists and realists. George HW Bush was a traditional nationalist and realist who, nevertheless, pleased neoconservatives by demanding that all of Germany come under NATO’s umbrella at the end of the Cold War and by forcibly ejecting Iraqi troops from Kuwait (even if neoconservatives were disappointed that he did not topple Saddam Hussein).

 

Only such a presidential aspirant, whom different subcultures of the party respect, has a chance to win the next election. For as much as Republicans may furiously deny it, Obama continues to execute a credible foreign policy that, while rarely daring or innovative, is realist in the traditional sense, even as it has cautiously avoided military quagmires – something the last Republican president, George W. Bush, did not do. Obama’s attempt at a rapprochement with Iran fits well within American realist tradition and is popular among the public besides. Moreover, the presumed front-runner among the Democrats, Hillary Clinton, has already proved her realist bona fides as secretary of state, however cautious and lackluster her term at Foggy Bottom may have been.

 

Realism, remember, can itself be a fusion of tough-minded nationalism, respect for a mild isolationism and awareness of the attributes here and there of neoconservatism. For realism accepts the outside world as it is, not how idealists want it to be. But while accepting the imperfections of the world outside, realism also understands that America must occasionally – rarely, that is – intervene to both protect human life and to preserve the balance of power. That is enlightened realism. And unless the Republicans find a candidate who espouses it, their chances of regaining executive power will be further diminished.

America’s Coastal Royalty. By Victor Davis Hanson.

America’s Coastal Royalty. By Victor Davis Hanson. National Review Online, November 28, 2013.