"Nationalism and the Future of Western Freedom" Episode 2

The Tikvah Podcast

Tikvah

Judaism, Politics, Religion & Spirituality, News

4.6 • 620 Ratings

🗓️ 9 November 2016

⏱️ 19 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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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

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0:00.0	We have two alternatives, and they're both flawed, really deeply flawed, not just like a few superficial mistakes,
0:18.0	but both of them are capable of the most incredible, vile, ugly stuff.
0:27.5	The Tikva Fund and Mosaic magazine present Nationalism and the Future of Western Freedom,
0:33.6	a lecture based on the Mosaic article of the same title by Yoram Hazzoni.
0:38.4	In this episode, distinguished writer and strategist Walter Russell Mead responds to Yoram
0:43.8	Hazoni's analysis and argument.
0:46.0	Walter Russell Mead is a professor of foreign affairs and humanities at Bard College and a senior
0:51.5	fellow at the Hudson Institute.
0:53.4	Previously, he was a fellow at the Council
0:55.6	on Foreign Relations. He's the author of Special Providence, God and Gold, Power, Terror,
1:02.1	Peace, and War. And his forthcoming book is called The Ark of a Covenant, the United States,
1:08.4	Israel, and the fate of the Jewish people. Well, I guess, you know, tonight is sort of a night maybe for stereotyping in that the sort of
1:18.6	young firebrand intellectual gives a great message and then this sort of dottering old
1:24.6	Foggy says, well, it's a little more confused and complicated but
1:29.4	that's you know hey that's the way it works and I say you actually have much more
1:35.3	fun I can remember being the young firebrand and it's great and being the old
1:41.2	fogy is sort of a bore but let me, let me try to complicate the picture.
1:47.0	This is what I'm always telling to my students.
1:49.0	I'm going to try to complicate your life a little bit.
1:52.0	They build this great tower of Babel, and they want to build a tower that reaches heaven,
1:59.0	and that looks on the one hand like, you know, how noble you want to get up to heaven.
2:03.4	What could be a more appropriate ambition for a human civilization?
	...

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