Daniel Johnson and William Kristol - The Left, the Right, and the Future of the West

The Tikvah Podcast

Tikvah

Judaism, Politics, Religion & Spirituality, News

4.6 • 620 Ratings

🗓️ 23 June 2016

⏱️ 87 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

As recently as the Cold War, the center-right and the center-left overcame their differences on other issues to oppose the enemies of the open society. In a lecture to alumni and guests of the Tikvah Fund, Standpoint editor Daniel Johnson argues that the center is failing to hold and that illiberalism's many forms are on the rise. Both right and left have been submerged under populist spasms. The right lured in by the coarse, idea-free spectacle of Donald Trump; the left embracing the Western self-loathing typified by Jeremy Corbyn. Radical Islam, the European migrant crisis, and the rise of Putin's Russia all threaten the West. Are conservatives up to the task? And what is the role of the Jews in all this? Johnson argues that Israel is uniquely central to the fate of the West, both as the frontier of its fights and as a symbol of what the West still stands for—or what, to its shame, it may yet abandon.

William Kristol, the editor of the Weekly Standard offers some thoughts on Johnson's lecture at its conclusion. Then the two take questions. The discussion was filmed in Jerusalem on June 2, 2016.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Thank you very much everyone for coming.
0:02.0	Thank you, Ricky, for that generous introduction.
0:05.0	Thank you, Tikva, above all, for being such a wonderful force for good in Israel,
0:13.0	as well as, of course, in other parts of the world.
0:16.0	Tikva, well, Bill and I are only two of the many, many speakers who've been invited here
0:24.7	and who've had the opportunity to experience Israel's exhilarating, invigorating politics
0:32.2	and society and culture, your hospitality, and above all, your friendliness, your liveliness, your intellectual excitement.
0:44.3	So it's a huge privilege to be here and thank you very much for inviting me.
0:50.3	So here we go. The right, the left and the future of the West.
0:57.0	Western civilization is threatened by an unprecedented array of external adversaries and dangers,
1:06.0	ranging from Islamist terror and Russian or Chinese aggression to the fallout from failed states. It also faces internal threats, above all the collapse of confidence in Judeo-Christian values and democratic capitalism. What solutions do liberals and conservatives have to offer in answer to this predicament? Can either the left or the right
1:29.4	rise to the challenge of the present crisis? Or are both traditions, both political traditions,
1:36.3	mired in self-destructive mindsets that prevent them from grasping the scale of the task, let
1:42.7	alone reversing the decline of the West.
1:46.0	In this talk, I shall sketch a diagnosis and propose a cure for these pathologies of left and right,
1:55.0	but I can only hazard a guess as to whether our political class is ready to take its medicine in time to save the day.
2:04.6	The future of Western civilization will depend on how well the present can mobilize the intellectual resources of the past.
2:13.6	I want to begin with the right because the crisis of conservatism on both sides of the
2:19.3	Atlantic seems too deep to be explained by the vagaries of individual personalities or parties.
2:26.1	The example that most obviously illustrates this comes from America, where the fiasco of the
2:31.5	Republican nomination is fresh in our minds.
2:35.0	How could one of the oldest political parties in the world,
	...

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