"Nationalism and the Future of Western Freedom" Episode 3

The Tikvah Podcast

Tikvah

Judaism, Politics, Religion & Spirituality, News

4.6 • 620 Ratings

🗓️ 9 November 2016

⏱️ 55 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	The goal should be to divide the Middle East, to redraw the borders according to national and religious boundaries.
0:16.0	This is exactly what Woodrow Wilson said in 1918.
0:20.0	But they didn't do that.
0:21.6	They didn't.
0:22.6	They couldn't.
0:23.6	No, because the French and the British wanted multinational states where they could more easily rule.
0:32.6	And there would be no opposition, you think, today to this proposal from great powers that saw their
0:38.2	interests being in some way damaged by it? He gave me unlimited power in the question.
0:44.3	The Tikva Fund and Mosaic magazine present Nationalism and the Future of Western Freedom,
0:50.3	a lecture based on the Mosaic article of the same title by Yoram Hazzoni.
0:56.0	My name is Jonathan Silver, and in this episode I will moderate a conversation between Yoram
1:01.1	Hazani and Walter Russell Mead, in which we probe the themes that came to light in their earlier
1:06.3	remarks.
1:07.7	Yoram, just listening carefully to Walter's presentation, Walter, you'll tell me if I'm understanding correctly, but the main current
1:15.6	that Walter would have us remember when we're trying to understand the limitations of the nation
1:21.6	are that nations historically just don't deal with minorities well.
1:25.6	If there's a virtue to the nation, which is that citizens have
1:31.0	an affection for one another, shared memories,
1:34.2	the organic growth of the Burkean nation
1:36.3	that Walter was having is from, it does that very well.
1:39.5	But for people who don't fit into that,
1:42.4	the nation has not been a good political form for them.
	...

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