"Nationalism and the Future of Western Freedom" Episode 1

The Tikvah Podcast

Tikvah

Judaism, Politics, Religion & Spirituality, News

4.6 • 620 Ratings

🗓️ 9 November 2016

⏱️ 33 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

On Wednesday, September 14, 2016, alumni of Tikvah’s advanced programs and friends of Mosaic came to an intimate discussion between the Israeli philosopher Yoram Hazony and the American author and historian Walter Russell Mead. The subject of their conversation was the same as the title of Yoram Hazony’s essay in Mosaic: “Nationalism and the Future of Western Freedom.”

Hazony argues that the political battle over the fate of the nation is the most consequential struggle of our time—one whose roots extend all the way back to the struggle between the ancient Israelites and the overweening imperial powers of their day. It was in the Hebrew Bible that the national idea was born, an idea whose enduring virtues would in time profoundly shape the emergence of the modern democratic West. But what is the status of the national idea today, and why do so many in the West oppose it? Can it survive if cut off from its religious origins, or can those origins be recovered in the secular West? What does today’s widespread disparagement of national independence mean for the Jewish state, the state of Israel?

In these three episodes, we hear Yoram Hazony speak about the themes from his Mosaic article, a response from distinguished writer and strategist Walter Russell Mead, and a conversation moderated by Tikvah senior director Jonathan Silver.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	For all of the mistakes of nationalist governments that we can point to, empires far worse.
0:12.0	Nations try to do the same thing on a small scale that cosmopolitan empires do on a large scale.
0:20.0	There never was a more tolerant order of nations
0:24.6	than the order that was created on the basis of this Protestant construction.
0:29.6	What the medieval popes and emperors wanted to see in the kind of Christian Republic of Europe, you'll find that very often nationalists
0:40.9	want to achieve that same kind of homogeneity within the boundaries of a nation or among the
0:47.1	members of a nation state.
0:48.7	I don't think that an imperialist or internationalist principle
0:55.0	can live in the same political environment
0:58.0	with a principle of diversity and self-determination.
1:01.0	If we can't say three cheers for Britain,
1:05.0	good luck with their independence we feel for them,
1:08.0	just like we want to see Kurdish independence, we want to see Jewish
1:11.4	independence in Israel, want to see America independent. If we don't have the right to say that,
1:16.6	I think we're lost.
1:18.6	The Tikva Fund and Mosaic Magazine present Nationalism and the Future of Western Freedom,
1:25.6	a lecture based on the Mosaic article of the same title by Yoram Hazzoni.
1:30.8	The program will consist of three parts.
1:33.5	A lecture by Yoram Hazzoni, a response from Walter Russell Mead,
1:38.2	and a conversation moderated by me, Jonathan Silver.
1:41.5	As president of the Herzl Institute, Yoram Hazani advances research
1:46.4	in Israeli history and Zionist thought, political theory, Jewish philosophy, and the intellectual
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Tikvah, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Tikvah and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.