I.
“Trying to explain the doctrine of the Trinity to readers of The New Republic is not easy.” On June 2, 1944, W.H. Auden penned that sentence in a letter to Ursula Niebuhr. On January 26, 2010, Andrew Sullivan posted it as the “quote for the day” on his blog. Displaced and unglossed quotations are always in some way mordant, and bristle smugly with implications. Let us see what this one implies.
Auden was at Swarthmore when he wrote his letter to his friend. He began by thanking her for her admiration of a piece about Kierkegaard’s Either/Or that he had recently published in The New Republic, and then reported that he had just finished, “after writing it four times,” a review for the magazine of Charles Norris Cochrane’s book Christianity and Classical Culture, which had in fact appeared four years earlier. His trouble in completing the piece to his satisfaction was what prompted the remark that Sullivan finds so pleasing and repercussive. Auden’s intense and idiosyncratic theology was flourishing in those years, not least owing to the impact upon his thinking of the friendship and the teaching of Reinhold Niebuhr, Ursula’s very remarkable husband. The Cochrane piece, which barely mentions Cochrane at all, is a fine example of Auden at his most philosophically grandiose and amateurish. “The distinctive mark of classical thought is that it gives no positive value to freedom and identifies the divine with the necessary or the legal.” “A monolithic monotheism is always a doctrine of God as either manic-depressive Power or schizophrenic Truth.” And so on. On metaphysical themes, Auden’s original formulations could sometimes be very obscure. Perhaps that was why my predecessor at this magazine held the article for many months, until late September. “At last, The New Republic has printed my now months’ old piece on Cochrane’s book,” Auden wrote to Ursula in October, “—they’ve cut it about a bit but I’m really quite pleased with it.”
The striking thing about Auden’s discussion of the Trinity in his piece is that, notwithstanding his complaint about the difficulty of explaining it, he fails to explain it. Instead he concedes that it is inexplicable. “The formula,” he declares, is “a foolishness to the reason,” because reason is convinced only “by logical necessity, like the timeless truths of geometry,” and so could not “grasp … the doctrine of three persons” in God. Auden is not be chided for his failure. He followed in a long line of Christian intellectuals who despaired of explanations for this belief. That line included some of the greatest thinkers in the Christian tradition. Augustine, whose treatment of the Trinity was discussed by Cochrane in his book and by Auden in his review, began his influential treatise on the subject by declaring that the aim of his work was “to guard against the sophistries of those who disdain to begin with faith and are deceived by a crude and perverse love of reason.” Aquinas, in the first part of the Summa Theologica, was more direct: “It is impossible to attain to the knowledge of the Trinity by natural reason.” For this reason, he asserted, “we must not attempt to prove what is of faith, except by authority alone, to those who receive the authority; while as regards others, it suffices to prove that what faith teaches is not impossible.” Indeed, the despair of explanation goes all the way back to the Fathers of the Church, who afflicted themselves with the most extraordinary mental contortions–hypostasis, ousia, and the rest–to make the idea of the Trinity seem plausible. They were right, finally, to call it a mystery. To regard a concept as a mystery may be a spiritual triumph, but it is an intellectual defeat.
I wish to confirm Auden’s–and Sullivan’s–suspicion that New Republic people cannot comprehend the Trinity; or at least those New Republic people who are not (in Aquinas’s terms) among “those who receive the authority,” but are the logically minded “others”; or at least this New Republic person. The idea of plurality in the deity, like the idea of corporeality in the deity (Auden would not have had an easier time with the Incarnation!), represents nothing less than a retraction of the monotheistic revolution in thinking about God, a reversal of God’s sublimity, a regress to polytheistic crudity. It is completely inconsistent with everything that my mind instructs me to believe about God’s essence. (I leave aside what my mind instructs me to believe about God’s existence. We are in the realm of theology here, not the realm of philosophy.)
Of course, my stiff-necked opinion about this central tenet of the Christian faith is not only rational, it is also Jewish. The electrifying history of Jewish-Christian disputations in the Middle Ages amply documents the scrupulously argued Jewish refusal to entertain anything but a perfect unity in the conception of God. In the words of an early modern Jewish writer, whose polemical work survives in an unattributed Hebrew manuscript at the Jewish Theological Seminary, “I do not understand this and you will not be able to explain it to me.” That is not a report of a prejudice. It is a report of a view with rationally defensible grounds. The respect one must have for believers one need not have for beliefs.
When Auden joked to Niebuhr that the Trinity could hardly be understood in The New Republic, he was lightly lamenting the spiritual shallowness of the liberalism of his day. He was not alone in this lament, to be sure. The 1940s were the years of the inner deepening of American liberalism, under the influence of Niebuhr, and Schlesinger, and Trilling. Perhaps Sullivan is posting his “quote for the day” to make the same point–except that in his present incarnation he is himself a bizarre kind of liberal, and The New Republic today, a liberal magazine, is not known only, or in some quarters mainly, for its liberalism. It is hard to escape the impression that Sullivan is not liberal-baiting here. No, when he piously implies that the orbit of The New Republic is immune, or hostile, to the eternal verities of Christianity, he is baiting another class of people, and operating in the vicinity of a different canard.
II.
Consider some squibs that Sullivan recently posted on his blog. “Most American Jews, of course, retain a respect for learning, compassion for the other, and support for minorities (Jews, for example, are the ethnic group most sympathetic to gay rights),” he declared on January 13. “But the Goldfarb-Krauthammer wing–that celebrates and believes in government torture, endorses the pulverization of Gazans with glee, and wants to attack Iran–is something else. Something much darker.” Michael Goldfarb is the former online editor of The Weekly Standard, about whom the less said, the better. Charles Krauthammer is Charles Krauthammer. I was not aware that they comprise a “wing” of American Jewry, or that American Jewry has “wings.” What sets them apart from their more enlightened brethren is the unacceptability of their politics to Sullivan. That is his criterion for dividing the American Jewish community into good Jews and bad Jews–a practice with a sordid history.
As far as I can tell, Krauthammer’s position on torture is owed to a deep and sometimes frantic concern for American security, and his position on the war in Gaza to a deep and sometimes frantic concern for Israeli security, and his position on Iran to a deep and sometime frantic concern for American and Israeli security. Whatever the merits of his views, I do not see that his motives are despicable. Moreover, Krauthammer argues for his views; the premises of his analysis are coldly clear, and may be engaged analytically, and when necessary refuted. Unlike Sullivan, he does not present feelings as ideas. Most important, the grounds of Krauthammer’s opinions are no more to be found in, or reduced to, his Jewishness than the grounds of the contrary opinions–the contentions of dovish Jews who denounce torture, and oppose Israeli abuses in the Gaza war, and insist upon a diplomatic solution to the threat of an Iranian nuclear capability–are to be found in, or reduced to, their Jewishness. All these “wings” are fervent Jews and friends of Israel. There are many “Jewish” answers to these questions. We all want the Torah on our side. And the truth is that the Torah has almost nothing to do with it.
Sullivan is hunting for motives, not reasons; for conspiracies, which is the surest sign of a mind’s bankruptcy. These days the self-congratulatory motto above his blog is “Of No Party or Clique,” but in fact Sullivan belongs to the party of Mearsheimer and the clique of Walt (whom he cites frequently and deferentially), to the herd of fearless dissidents who proclaim in all seriousness, without in any way being haunted by the history of such an idea, that Jews control Washington. Sullivan might have a look at the domestic pressures–in lobbies and other forms–upon American diplomacy toward China, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Cuba, and give a thought or two to the elaborate and sometimes exasperating nature of foreign-policy-making in a democracy; but he prefers not to dive deep into the substance of anything. It is less immediately satisfying than cursing and linking. Does Sullivan think that Obama’s engagement with Iran–which, accurately described, is an engagement with the Iranian dictatorship and not with the Iranian people–is paying off? Does he believe that the Israeli war against Hamas was an unjust war, or that Israel should have continued to absorb Hamas’s rocket attacks–which were indisputably criminal–and not acted with force against them? His answers may be inferred from his various ejaculations–“the pulverization of Gazans,” for example, is a phrase that is calculatedly indifferent to the wrenching moral and strategic perplexities that are contained in the awful reality of asymmetrical warfare–but they are not so much answers as bar-room retorts; moody explosions of verbal violence; more invective from another American crank. Worst of all, the explanation that Sullivan adopts for almost everything that he does not like about America’s foreign policy, and America’s wars, and America’s role in the world–that it is all the result of the clandestine and cunningly organized power of a single and small ethnic group–has a provenance that should disgust all thinking people.
And this is not all that is disgusting about Sullivan’s approach. His assumption, in his outburst about “the Goldfarb-Krauthammer wing,” that every thought that a Jew thinks is a Jewish thought is an anti-Semitic assumption, and a rather classical one. Bigotry has always made representatives of individuals, and discerned the voice of the group in the voice of every one of its members. Is everything that every gay man says a gay statement? I will give an example. On October 15, 2001, when the ruins of the World Trade Center still smoldered, Sullivan published a piece in the Times of London called “A British View of the US Post-September 11.” In this piece he accused Bill Clinton of “appeasement,” and praised George W. Bush for assembling “the ideal team” for a “task” that “cannot be done by airpower alone,” and had kind words for America’s “world hegemony”–the politics changes, the fever remains the same–and also included this unforgettable sentence: “The decadent Left in its enclaves on the coasts is not dead – and may well mount what amounts to a fifth column.” A fifth column! It is a genuinely sinister sentence. I wish to emphasize two features of Sullivan’s comment. The first is that it is an exercise in demonization: it divides the American people into good Americans and bad Americans. The second is that it is in no way an expression of Sullivan’s homosexuality. It must never be said that when Sullivan lauded the bellicosity of Cheney and Rumsfeld–which wing of American Christianity, by the way, shall we blame for them? –he exchanged the company of the good gays for the company of the bad gays. To say that would be homophobic. Here is what such homophobia would look like: Most American homosexuals, of course, retain a respect for art, and compassion for the other, and support for minorities. But the Sullivan-Shmullivan wing of American homosexuality–that celebrates and believes in torture and war, and endorses the pulverization of Afghan villages with glee, and wants to attack any country where Al Qaeda may be found–is something else. Something much darker. Get it?
III.
A day later, on January 14, Sullivan permitted himself another thought on Israel. This is the whole of it:
“The Netanyahu government has all but declared war on the Obama administration and then openly disses a vital ally, Turkey. The slow cultural shifts in Israel–toward ever more arrogance, more fundamentalism, more Russian immigrant racism, contempt for the Muslim world, military adventurism, and the daily grinding of the Palestinians on the West Bank and pulverization and inhumane blockade of the people of Gaza–well maybe others can explain it. All I can say is: it saddens me, as a longtime lover of the Jewish state. It does not represent the historic mainstream of liberal Jewish society, it is a betrayal of many Jewish virtues that goyim like me deeply admire, and it seems designed for war as some kind of eternal and uplifting state of mind. I hope Israel shifts soon. For Israel’s sake.”
That bit about Sullivan’s love for the Jewish state is poignant, and on behalf of all the good Jews in America I thank him for it, but I am unmoved. This squib is an anthology of banalities and stereotypes. The “arrogance” of Israelis: they are pushy, aren’t they? And the slippery slope from pushiness in Tel Aviv to inhumanity in Jabaliya: it is obvious, isn’t it? “More fundamentalism,” Sullivan says, but there is no such thing as Jewish fundamentalism, and there has been no such thing as Jewish fundamentalism since early Karaism. (He can Google it.) The settlers on the West Bank and the religious fascists in their midst are not fundamentalists. They represent a particular school of interpretation of scriptural and rabbinical authorities–a debatable one and a deplorable one. But they are not fundamentalists. “More Russian immigrant racism”: it is a problem, though in this region there is a lot of xenophobia to go around, which brings us to “contempt for the Muslim world.” For the entirety of the Muslim world, by the entirety of Israeli society? I think not. And does Sullivan have any notion of the magnitude and the virulence of Muslim contempt for the Jewish world? Muslim contempt for Jews does not justify Jewish contempt for Muslims, of course; but nothing justifies Sullivan’s refusal to give the whole picture. “Military adventurism”: about the wars against Hamas and Hezbollah this is an empty and propagandistic phrase. Whatever went awry in those campaigns, and many Israelis and supporters of Israel were quick to condemn it, they were hardly adventures–unless you believe that the lives of Israelis under attack do not have the same moral import as the lives of Arabs under attack, which is what Sullivan’s malicious epithet suggests. It does not answer the question of whether those wars of retaliation were just wars, it simply dismisses the question. Here, too, Sullivan refuses to give the whole picture. “The daily grinding of the Palestinians on the West Bank”: I was in Ramallah recently, and the situation is more complex and even more hopeful. Anyway, the only thing that will save the Palestinians from the occupation–and a less terrible occupation is still an occupation, which is terrible–is political compromise. With the exception of Salam Fayyad and Mahmoud Abbas on his good days, I do not see a Palestinian keenness for compromise. Again, this does not justify the Israeli lack of the same keenness; but again, nothing justifies Sullivan’s refusal to give the whole picture. If “the Netanyahu government has all but declared war on the Obama administration,” it was after the Obama administration had all but declared war on the Netanyahu government. Obama may have been right about Netanyahu–the skepticism about the latter’s willingness to surrender land for a peace that will bring Palestine into being is not exactly fanciful–but Obama failed miserably, and set everything back. Sullivan’s characterization of the recent history is dishonest. On the other hand, there is no suggestion that Netanyahu is Trig’s dad.
And then Sullivan returns to his condescension toward the Jews. Contemporary Israel is “a betrayal of many Jewish virtues.” I thought that human rights, if this is what Sullivan sees Israel abusing, is not a Jewish virtue, or a Christian virtue, or a Muslim virtue, but a human virtue. Israel is a secular state. The primary offense of Israeli brutality in Gaza was not against Maimonides. But Sullivan desperately wants the Jews to be good Jews, to be the best Jews they can be. He wants edifying Jews. Don’t they realize that if they fail to edify, they may lose his friendship? The fools! Jews ought to determine their beliefs and their actions apologetically, so as not to disappoint “goyim like me.” This is a common phenomenon in the experience of minorities. They may awaken to their autonomy, but they must not go too far. Gays are abundantly familiar with this sort of phony friendship, as are blacks. “It does not represent the historic mainstream of liberal Jewish society”: but what if the historic mainstream of Jewish society were conservative? A day does not go by that I do not do my humble part to prevent such a transformation from coming to pass, but let us imagine that it does. What, then? Will they all be bad Jews, and “something much darker”? Is the Jews’ claim upon American understanding premised upon their conformity to a particular politics? Is their legitimacy conditional? Sullivan’s more-in-sorrow-than-in-anger tone is cheap. He can keep his sorrow and he can keep his anger.
IV.
Then, two weeks later, Sullivan posted whatever was in his head about “Jihadism and The Israel Question,” which is certainly better than “Jihadism and The Jewish Question.” “Jihadism has many causes,” he reflectively began. Then he remembered himself and continued: “But the idea that Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and pulverization of Gaza can be bracketed entirely out of that dynamic is loopy. … It’s clear that taking the Israel-Palestine question off the table would help us tackle Jihadism immensely. If the US were to help to establish a Palestinian state and could be shown to stand up to Netanyahu’s continual provocation, it would help the US advance its interests in the region and the world.” Sullivan then concedes that “it would not remove or emasculate [that is not the problem!] the more irredentist factions, the Qaeda core, the Saudi nutjobs, and the Mumbai maniacs. But it would help shift the paradigm in which they can use the daily humiliations of Arabs in the West Bank or the horror of the Gaza attack as ways to move the Muslim middle.” And that, of course, is what “those who want to brandish Gitmo, embrace torture, and accelerate Israel settlements,” “those who want a civilizational war,” hope to avert. They “intensify the polarization that the Jihadists relish.”
Sullivan seems unaware that his analysis is nothing more than a digital version of the traditional analysis of Arabists in Washington since 1948, and even before. This analysis is not entirely incorrect: America’s alliance with Israel has often interfered with America’s interests in the Arab world. This is obvious to any student of history. But the American alliance with Israel, like a good deal of American foreign policy, though not these days, was never only an affair of interests. Sullivan is apparently indifferent to the moral dimension of the alliance. On January 6, moaning that he is “sick of the Israelis and the Palestinians,” he noted also that “I’m sick of having a great power like the US being dictated to in the conduct of its own foreign policy by an ally that provides almost no real benefit to the US, and more and more costs.” The high moral dudgeon of the heartless realist: that is quite a trick. Like all of America’s other allies, Israel is a sovereign state, and like all of America’s other allies, it sometimes exercises its sovereignty in ways that baffle or infuriate us; but Sullivan’s patience is wearing thin. “My own view is moving toward supporting a direct American military imposition of a two-state solution,” he wildly announces, “with NATO troops on the borders of the new states of Palestine and Israel.” A new war! Even better, a new war of liberation! Never mind that Israel is a sovereign and a democratic state, and that Palestine is not remotely unified on behalf of such a solution. But at least it would not be a war against a Muslim country. And now that you mention it, isn’t it time that we attacked a Jewish country? It would prove our even-handedness, wouldn’t it? But alas, there’s no way AIPAC will allow it.
Having demanded that the Jews behave apologetically in America, Sullivan now demands that the United States behave apologetically in the world–that it adjust its relationship with Israel to the preferences of the Muslim peoples. This is a little like decrying the election of a black president because it will inflame white racists. (Sullivan writes about the “middle” and the “core” in the Muslim world as if they were the independents and the base in Massachusetts.) But peace between Israelis and Palestinians should be made primarily for them and by them. And anti-Americanism, like anti-Semitism and many versions of anti-Zionism, cannot be adequately understood as a response to the actions of Americans, Jews, and Zionists. Prejudice is not an instance of empirical thinking, as the tenacity of anti-Americanism after the election of Barack Obama demonstrates. There is a progressive president in America now, enchanted by “engagement” and by Muslims. In the universe of jihadism, however, this alters nothing. As a matter of numinous conviction, the jihadists are anti-Americans and anti-Semites and anti-Zionists, and their anti-Zionism is a form of anti-Semitism. They do not want to take the Israel-Palestine question off the table, they want to take Israel off the map. Their goals are literal and maximal. Their worldview is unfalsifiable; their “paradigm” does not “shift.” They do not make Sullivan’s distinction between Israel’s existence and Israel’s actions. If the two-state solution were to come into being, the jihadists would consider their job half-done.
It is true that peace and Palestine would have a modest and marginal impact upon the reputation of the United States in the Muslim world. But the scale of this impact is too inconsiderable to assure anything that Israel does an important place among the causes of jihadism. It may be “loopy,” as Sullivan says, for Israeli policy to “be bracketed entirely out of that dynamic,” but it is even loopier to include it significantly within it. Jihadism is a violent political theology determined by ideas and fantasies that do not come from America or Israel, and its abhorrence of freedom, materialism, democracy, modernity, and the West exceeds even its abhorrence of Jews. We do not determine who Muslims are, and they are more than their reaction to us. What does Sullivan really know about the origins and the writings of the jihadist tradition? Yet he has an even more brilliant theory of the origins of Muslim anti-Americanism. He accounts for it not only in terms of Israel’s policies, but also in terms of “those who want to brandish Gitmo, embrace torture, and accelerate Israel settlements.” The neocons, once more. They are what stand between America and Muslim adulation. Bad Jews are making bad Muslims! I doubt that even Krauthammer believes that Krauthammer is this important. The neocons have deranged Sullivan. I suppose they must take what victories they can get. This would count as merely a small comic episode in American political anthropology, except that Sullivan’s bitterness crosses the line into something that is neither small nor comic.
V.
I will conclude this unpleasantness here, though there are more rants by Sullivan that merit attention. Criticism of Israeli policy, and sympathy for the Palestinians, and support for a two-state solution, do not require, as their condition or their corollary, this intellectual shabbiness, this venomous hostility toward Israel and Jews. I have striven for Israeli-Palestinian reconciliation, and territorial compromise, and two states, for many decades now, but Sullivan’s variety of such right thinking is completely repugnant to me. There are decent and indecent ways to advocate change. About the Jews, is Sullivan a bigot, or is he just moronically insensitive? To me, he looks increasingly like the Buchanan of the left. He is the master, and the prisoner, of the technology of sickly obsession: blogging–and the divine right of bloggers to exempt themselves from the interrogations of editors–is also a method of hounding. Of course, it is impossible to know what is in a man’s heart; but on the basis of what Sullivan has written, I would urge him to search his heart. Such a reckoning would involve more than the “my bad” efficiency of internet introspection. I do not expect to see it. If explaining the Trinity to readers of The New Republic is not easy, imagine how hard it will be to explain all this.
Leon Wieseltier is the literary editor of The New Republic.
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COMMENTS (70)
As a longtime reader of Sullivan's blog and subscriber of this magazine, I sometimes don't know what to think. I have watched AS's progression from "neocon"-hawk to where he is now. In his defense, I interpret his angry, at times irrational words concerning anything neocon-ish as a result of deep personal anger at having been made to look like the fool. I can sympathize, because I [not coincidentally] have gone through the same trajectory [as has this magazine, in a way], from total support of the Bush Doctrine post 9/11, to questions concerning the WMDs, to outright horror as the details of Abu Ghraib began to gel.
Sullivan feels taken by Israel as he did by Cheney, I think. This is wher ... view full comment
As a longtime reader of Sullivan's blog and subscriber of this magazine, I sometimes don't know what to think. I have watched AS's progression from "neocon"-hawk to where he is now. In his defense, I interpret his angry, at times irrational words concerning anything neocon-ish as a result of deep personal anger at having been made to look like the fool. I can sympathize, because I [not coincidentally] have gone through the same trajectory [as has this magazine, in a way], from total support of the Bush Doctrine post 9/11, to questions concerning the WMDs, to outright horror as the details of Abu Ghraib began to gel.
Sullivan feels taken by Israel as he did by Cheney, I think. This is where I part ways with his thinking as mine dovetails with Wieseltier's and Sullivan's colleague Jeffrey Goldberg's. [And yes, I am Jewish, or as some would say, a One of The Jews.] I still respect Sullivan for his honesty of the moment even as I find myself increasingly at odds with him over this issue. But I still like to understand his anger, and I do not find him slipping into anti-Semitism, of which Wieseltier is careful to avoid accusing him, although the sentiment is unmistakable here.
Unlike Wieseltier, I cannot subscribe to the opinion that Sullivan is doing something akin to "Jew-baiting". [To be honest, I am not sure what this means. Is he leading me to a place I find pleasant, only to ensnare me with his hatred of my people?] I do understand his concerns about dividing the world up into Good/Bad Jews. Sullivan [I hope] will have an answer for that. I for one do not label Sullivan as someone about whom to worry, a Buchanan of the left. For Buchanan, there are no Good Jews, or at least I have never read about his admiration for any. [Perhaps Michael Kinsley could have an insight here.] If you want real "Jew-baiting", or outright anti-Semitism, check out, if you can stomach it, publications like The Occidental Quarterly.
This, also, is not the first instance of Wielseltier's "J'Accuse" with Sullivan, as many of you know. Although I do not agree with the accusation, I do appreciate the discussion that inevitably follows. I think we will all benefit from it.
The complement to the article's subtitle is that "TNR also has a Problem". From the second-rate defenses of Israel under Netanjahu and vague criticisms of Obama's Israel policies penned by Marty Peretz, to the attempts to downplay the destructive impact that Israel's sick settlement policy and treatment of Palestinians have on US and Israeli relations with the Muslim world, and on Israeli society in general, TNR risks falling into the category of a second-rate publication. Yes, Sullivan is wrong at regular intervals, but he is one of the few public intellectuals who openly reflects on his mistakes and retracts statements -- an almost unparalleled level of intellectual honesty. I find the ... view full comment
The complement to the article's subtitle is that "TNR also has a Problem". From the second-rate defenses of Israel under Netanjahu and vague criticisms of Obama's Israel policies penned by Marty Peretz, to the attempts to downplay the destructive impact that Israel's sick settlement policy and treatment of Palestinians have on US and Israeli relations with the Muslim world, and on Israeli society in general, TNR risks falling into the category of a second-rate publication. Yes, Sullivan is wrong at regular intervals, but he is one of the few public intellectuals who openly reflects on his mistakes and retracts statements -- an almost unparalleled level of intellectual honesty. I find the way that this article throws out the specter of anti-Semitism ("Something Much Darker") without actually using the word particularly offensive. What was Sullivan refering to, and is that a fair twisting of his words?
Flip around Mr. Wieseltier's argument in support of Israel as to how sovereign nations behave and you have Stephen Walt's recipe for how the US should behave towards Israel. Is that really the line of argument you wish to follow? Or do you sincerely believe that everything that is good for Israel is good for the US? I can live with the US not giving absolute priority to pursuing its own national interests in the special case of Israel, but please remember that this is not a one way street. Hold Israel up to the same standard, please.
As another longtime reader of Sullivan's blog and subscriber to this magazine, I think rlgordonma is correct about his subconscious motivations (though I'd add his campaign against "male genital mutilation" - kinda hard to have warm feelings about a group of genital mutilators) but wrong that Sullivan has not been Jew-baiting. While rlgordonma is right that Jeffrey Goldberg has a "middle position" on Israel, but Goldberg has stopped defending Sullivan. Just yesterday Sullivan compared Sarah Palin's Iran comments to Father Coughlin. I don't believe he doesn't know the difference between warmongering and the vilest racism.
As another longtime reader of Sullivan's blog and subscriber to this magazine, I think rlgordonma is correct about his subconscious motivations (though I'd add his campaign against "male genital mutilation" - kinda hard to have warm feelings about a group of genital mutilators) but wrong that Sullivan has not been Jew-baiting. While rlgordonma is right that Jeffrey Goldberg has a "middle position" on Israel, but Goldberg has stopped defending Sullivan. Just yesterday Sullivan compared Sarah Palin's Iran comments to Father Coughlin. I don't believe he doesn't know the difference between warmongering and the vilest racism.
If AS had said "Trying to explain the rapture to readers of The New Republic is not easy”, I could understand LW's reaction. While I don't know AS's motives for attacking all things neocon, I too find it very unsettling that American Christianists, or fundamentalists, court Jewish neocons, or "fundamentalists" (to use AS's term that LW finds objectionable), and vice versa. The former look forward to the rapture (the final reward) and would praise anybody who would give it a push. For those who don't know what is meant by the rapture, it is the end of the world, when Jesus returns to "raise up" Christians (and only Christians). Now that's truly disturbing.
If AS had said "Trying to explain the rapture to readers of The New Republic is not easy”, I could understand LW's reaction. While I don't know AS's motives for attacking all things neocon, I too find it very unsettling that American Christianists, or fundamentalists, court Jewish neocons, or "fundamentalists" (to use AS's term that LW finds objectionable), and vice versa. The former look forward to the rapture (the final reward) and would praise anybody who would give it a push. For those who don't know what is meant by the rapture, it is the end of the world, when Jesus returns to "raise up" Christians (and only Christians). Now that's truly disturbing.
Someone's got a problem, all right.
But it may not be Sullivan.
Someone's got a problem, all right.
But it may not be Sullivan.
Andrew Sullivan's vile antisemitism which I have been pointing to for a number of years, now has reached the Galloway level of bigotry. Galloway is the former British MP who supported Saddam and has made an alliance with Hamas.
Sullivan's antisemitism fits in nicely with traditional and contemporary British Jew hatred:
“Trials of the Diaspora: A History of Anti-Semitism in England” by Anthony Julius
http://www.oup.com/us/catalog/general/subject/HistoryWorld/Briti ... view full comment
Andrew Sullivan's vile antisemitism which I have been pointing to for a number of years, now has reached the Galloway level of bigotry. Galloway is the former British MP who supported Saddam and has made an alliance with Hamas.
Sullivan's antisemitism fits in nicely with traditional and contemporary British Jew hatred:
“Trials of the Diaspora: A History of Anti-Semitism in England” by Anthony Julius
http://www.oup.com/us/catalog/general/subject/HistoryWorld/British/Gener...
see also
http://www.jcpa.org/JCPA/Templates/ShowPage.asp?DRIT=3&DBID=1&LNGID=1&TM...
As for Sullivan referring to someone else as a Father Coughlin, that like the kettle calling the pot….
miceelf
"Someone's got a problem, all right.
But it may not be Sullivan."
It is Sullivan and his buddies, like miceelf who have a problem with Jews.
miceelf
"Someone's got a problem, all right.
But it may not be Sullivan."
It is Sullivan and his buddies, like miceelf who have a problem with Jews.
Bravo!
I, too, am a long-time reader of Sullivan's blog. He seems to have three idees fixes: (1) Israel (2) gay marriage and (3) Sarah Palin. I tend to agree with him on two of these (guess which ones), but his obsessive attention to Sarah Palin seems to verge on the pathological. Those posts can be amusing, and I'm grateful that Sarah P. distracts him from blogging about the imagined influence of the Jewish Lobby.
Bravo!
I, too, am a long-time reader of Sullivan's blog. He seems to have three idees fixes: (1) Israel (2) gay marriage and (3) Sarah Palin. I tend to agree with him on two of these (guess which ones), but his obsessive attention to Sarah Palin seems to verge on the pathological. Those posts can be amusing, and I'm grateful that Sarah P. distracts him from blogging about the imagined influence of the Jewish Lobby.
Stick to literature.
Stick to literature.
The objection to "fundamentalism" is one of the few comments in this piece that makes literal sense to me -- though it seems to be motivated by an attempt to invalidate the spirit of the statement by invalidating the literal truth, an exercise in irrelevance. Yes, it is true that conservative Judaism is not "fundamentalist" because it accepts Midrash. But that doesn't change the underlying truth: the meaning of fundamentalism has evolved beyond that literal meaning to refer to intractable, stuck-in-time religion that is uninformed by the real world. That is what the common sense of the word is today -- and it clearly applies.
The objection to "fundamentalism" is one of the few comments in this piece that makes literal sense to me -- though it seems to be motivated by an attempt to invalidate the spirit of the statement by invalidating the literal truth, an exercise in irrelevance. Yes, it is true that conservative Judaism is not "fundamentalist" because it accepts Midrash. But that doesn't change the underlying truth: the meaning of fundamentalism has evolved beyond that literal meaning to refer to intractable, stuck-in-time religion that is uninformed by the real world. That is what the common sense of the word is today -- and it clearly applies.
Wieseltier and Sullivan probably deserve each other. While both of them often have intelligent and measured insights, there is a certain mean-spiritedness about both that is so off-putting it is hard to separate the good sense from the invective. Suggesting, as Andrew does, that Bush and Cheney should be tried for war crimes and Trig Palin is Sarah's granddaughter, or accusing Sullivan, as Wieselier does, of "venemous hostility toward the Jews and Israel" simply go over the top, and make it hard to take either writer seriously. Clearly Wieseltier believes that Sullivan is an anti-semite in-the-making, if not already an anti-semite. I expect a post on Sullivan's blog shortly suggesting th ... view full comment
Wieseltier and Sullivan probably deserve each other. While both of them often have intelligent and measured insights, there is a certain mean-spiritedness about both that is so off-putting it is hard to separate the good sense from the invective. Suggesting, as Andrew does, that Bush and Cheney should be tried for war crimes and Trig Palin is Sarah's granddaughter, or accusing Sullivan, as Wieselier does, of "venemous hostility toward the Jews and Israel" simply go over the top, and make it hard to take either writer seriously. Clearly Wieseltier believes that Sullivan is an anti-semite in-the-making, if not already an anti-semite. I expect a post on Sullivan's blog shortly suggesting that Wieseltier is a Bush-Cheney neo-conservative crypto fascist. Bolth of them should cool it.
qnetter has given us a garbled post.
“Fundamentalism” means a deep belief in the literal meaning of a religious text. Fundamentalists read scriptures literally. This is foreign to the belief system of all Jewish denominations except the Karaites, as Wieseltier rightly says.
qnetter has given us a garbled post.
“Fundamentalism” means a deep belief in the literal meaning of a religious text. Fundamentalists read scriptures literally. This is foreign to the belief system of all Jewish denominations except the Karaites, as Wieseltier rightly says.
"I expect a post on Sullivan's blog shortly suggesting that Wieseltier is a Bush-Cheney neo-conservative crypto fascist. Bolth of them should cool it."
Sullivan’s view would be clearly wrong, while Wieseltier's view is verifiably correct.
"I expect a post on Sullivan's blog shortly suggesting that Wieseltier is a Bush-Cheney neo-conservative crypto fascist. Bolth of them should cool it."
Sullivan’s view would be clearly wrong, while Wieseltier's view is verifiably correct.
so I take it you don't like Sullivan? Look, I don't want to defend this aspect of him, and he also has a bizarre fixation on Sarah Palin and her pregnancy, which, to me, is even more troubling since it is not in the least bit grounded in any reality (he can be wrong about Israel, but at least he acknowledges it exists). But there are other areas I agree with him. I do agree he should be called out for his mistakes (which this article does in more than abundance). Whether Sullivan pays it heed is another matter.
I disagree about Krauthammer: Krauthammer argues for his views; the premises of his analysis are coldly clear, and may be engaged analytically, and when necessary refuted.
But he is n ... view full comment
so I take it you don't like Sullivan? Look, I don't want to defend this aspect of him, and he also has a bizarre fixation on Sarah Palin and her pregnancy, which, to me, is even more troubling since it is not in the least bit grounded in any reality (he can be wrong about Israel, but at least he acknowledges it exists). But there are other areas I agree with him. I do agree he should be called out for his mistakes (which this article does in more than abundance). Whether Sullivan pays it heed is another matter.
I disagree about Krauthammer: Krauthammer argues for his views; the premises of his analysis are coldly clear, and may be engaged analytically, and when necessary refuted.
But he is not engaged analytically, being that he has sealed himself in the Fox news cube and its (dare I say it) hosanna chorus. He has become a parody of himself. I noticed this with Goldberg as well, when he was engaged with by liberals (like Peter Beinart) he made clear, reasonable points, but surrounded by like thinkers, he becomes unhinged. The same can also be said about Sullivan and Palin, or Israel.
One last thing I found troubling about this article: it was in its anti-Christian prologue. Take down Sullivan as you wish, but please spare me the "a perfect unity in the conception of God." is any more comprehensible than a duality or even trinity. OK, if God is a perfect unity, than that means he is separate and apart, thereby limited, ergo imperfect. Lets face it, the concept of God is mind boggling for every human, so spare me the "we jews got it all sussed out." You have your faith, I got mine, it is what we do with our faith that matters. If you love freely, give generously, and are kind and considerate I don't care what you believe.
Correction: The same can also be said about Sullivan about Palin or Israel. ie he is unhinged. Not that Palin with her Palinsanity is not also.
Correction: The same can also be said about Sullivan about Palin or Israel. ie he is unhinged. Not that Palin with her Palinsanity is not also.
ok, didn't want to be so glib about faith, (I don't think LW thinks he has God sussed out) it is just that I take deep exception to: “I do not understand this and you will not be able to explain it to me.” Since it implies a clear lack of imagination or the denial of the ability to experience an epiphany, (which is a sudden, intuitive perception of or insight into the reality or essential meaning of something).
ok, didn't want to be so glib about faith, (I don't think LW thinks he has God sussed out) it is just that I take deep exception to: “I do not understand this and you will not be able to explain it to me.” Since it implies a clear lack of imagination or the denial of the ability to experience an epiphany, (which is a sudden, intuitive perception of or insight into the reality or essential meaning of something).
To be clear, I enjoy Wieseltier's work most of the time, the usually thoughtful back page stuff, etc.
But this is really too much in the Peretzian vein, the personal crap, the accusations of anti-semitism, while at the same time denigrating other folks' traditions.
Pff.
Dyer may like this stuff, but it's really tiresome for many of the rest of us.
To be clear, I enjoy Wieseltier's work most of the time, the usually thoughtful back page stuff, etc.
But this is really too much in the Peretzian vein, the personal crap, the accusations of anti-semitism, while at the same time denigrating other folks' traditions.
Pff.
Dyer may like this stuff, but it's really tiresome for many of the rest of us.
And let's be clear: LW isn't attacking Sullivan because of his positions on Israel. It's perfectly valid for someone to favor taking a hard line with Bibi Netenyahu on the settlements as an important part of the peace process, or criticizing aspects of the last Gaza invasion. But for Sullivan to continue to make these impassioned outbursts without ever defining what his boundaries are with respect to Israel, for him to use terms like "proto-facism" about the neocons he attacks (sounds like a watered-down statement from from the Durban conferences), for him to employ demonstratable double-standards about Israel compared to other American allies/recipients of American aid/nations in the wor ... view full comment
And let's be clear: LW isn't attacking Sullivan because of his positions on Israel. It's perfectly valid for someone to favor taking a hard line with Bibi Netenyahu on the settlements as an important part of the peace process, or criticizing aspects of the last Gaza invasion. But for Sullivan to continue to make these impassioned outbursts without ever defining what his boundaries are with respect to Israel, for him to use terms like "proto-facism" about the neocons he attacks (sounds like a watered-down statement from from the Durban conferences), for him to employ demonstratable double-standards about Israel compared to other American allies/recipients of American aid/nations in the world - that's what has become disturbing. But as blackton points out, Sullivan hasn't singled out Jews and Israel in this regard. David Brooks once commented that Sullivan is a conservative of selective doubt -- on issues he cares about he's impassioned. I think that explains why he can blanket every human rights violation that takes place at Gitmo and Iran (and to a lesser extent the occupied territories) and be pretty indifferent to it everywhere else.
So Andrew "I am gay. GAY! I said G-A-Y!" Sullivan is, um, gay, but a Jewish lobbyist isn't Jewish?
So Andrew "I am gay. GAY! I said G-A-Y!" Sullivan is, um, gay, but a Jewish lobbyist isn't Jewish?
miceelf -- I've been brutal on Marty for some of his writings on anti-semitism, but, you know, if Marty said the sun rose in the East, doesn't make it untrue. And as Sullivan has, as I recall, the most read political blog, including one followed by the President himself, I think it's important.
miceelf -- I've been brutal on Marty for some of his writings on anti-semitism, but, you know, if Marty said the sun rose in the East, doesn't make it untrue. And as Sullivan has, as I recall, the most read political blog, including one followed by the President himself, I think it's important.
Last one -- I also agree with blackton (gasp) that the first part of this piece is a little over the top. Pretty much all faiths are premised on some pretty fantastic creation tales and require a bit of leaping.
Last one -- I also agree with blackton (gasp) that the first part of this piece is a little over the top. Pretty much all faiths are premised on some pretty fantastic creation tales and require a bit of leaping.
Lymon- I hear you. I guess I just found the tone not what I usually expect from Wieseltier, and more in line with Peretz. I am not saying he shouldn't criticize Sullivan. i just find the over top asides (Christians in this case, Arabs/Muslims/Clintons in Peretz's case) especially vexing.
Lymon- I hear you. I guess I just found the tone not what I usually expect from Wieseltier, and more in line with Peretz. I am not saying he shouldn't criticize Sullivan. i just find the over top asides (Christians in this case, Arabs/Muslims/Clintons in Peretz's case) especially vexing.
JDyer:
I have been debating on whether to answer your charges on Sullivan's "vile antisemitism" as I am not in the mood to be called a self-hating Jew today. But on balance, I need not defend Sullivan, he is a big boy and can do his own bidding. On the contrary, may I ask you a question? [OK, another question?] If Sullivan is a vile anti-Semite, then who is just a plain old anti-Semite? Or not an anti-Semite at all?
I ask this because you seem to be setting the bar kind of low there. Wieseltier, as I and many others have noted, did not use this term. He is asking, rather, why Sullivan, in his instantaneous thoughts, demands Jews be different than, say, Gays or Catholics. Wieseltier has ... view full comment
JDyer:
I have been debating on whether to answer your charges on Sullivan's "vile antisemitism" as I am not in the mood to be called a self-hating Jew today. But on balance, I need not defend Sullivan, he is a big boy and can do his own bidding. On the contrary, may I ask you a question? [OK, another question?] If Sullivan is a vile anti-Semite, then who is just a plain old anti-Semite? Or not an anti-Semite at all?
I ask this because you seem to be setting the bar kind of low there. Wieseltier, as I and many others have noted, did not use this term. He is asking, rather, why Sullivan, in his instantaneous thoughts, demands Jews be different than, say, Gays or Catholics. Wieseltier has addressed anti-Semitism and Sullivan and has firmly denied the two terms belong together. Yes, I understand that the treatment of Jews [and Israel] differently than anything/anyone else is a form of anti-Semitism. I think Wieseltier is asking Sullivan to reassess these instantaneous thoughts because he knows that Sullivan is not an anti-Semite, despite the enmity he feels for him.
So Sullivan needs to explain himself. But equating him with Galloway? Wow, you really have narrowed the circle of friends for the Jews. As I stated before, take a look at The Occidental Quarterly for some real anti-Semitism.
ok, didn't want to be so glib about faith, (I don't think LW thinks he has God sussed out) it is just that I take deep exception to: “I do not understand this and you will not be able to explain it to me.” Since it implies a clear lack of imagination or the denial of the ability to experience an epiphany, (which is a sudden, intuitive perception of or insight into the reality or essential meaning of something).
ok, didn't want to be so glib about faith, (I don't think LW thinks he has God sussed out) it is just that I take deep exception to: “I do not understand this and you will not be able to explain it to me.” Since it implies a clear lack of imagination or the denial of the ability to experience an epiphany, (which is a sudden, intuitive perception of or insight into the reality or essential meaning of something).
sorry about the double posting, internet went on the fritz for a minute.
sorry about the double posting, internet went on the fritz for a minute.
I too found Wieseltier's lead in comment on religion a little too clever by half.
All talk of god, polytheistic, monotheistic, trinitarian, unitarian, or non-exitent-tarian is trite and unconvincing.
I too found Wieseltier's lead in comment on religion a little too clever by half.
All talk of god, polytheistic, monotheistic, trinitarian, unitarian, or non-exitent-tarian is trite and unconvincing.
lymon, please, you and I agree about lots of issues, I admit I love to needle and misrepresent you from time to time, but there are a lot of times I think you are absolutely right, like now regarding Sullivan, especially if he is read as widely as you say (I really don't know, so I am taking you are your word).
lymon, please, you and I agree about lots of issues, I admit I love to needle and misrepresent you from time to time, but there are a lot of times I think you are absolutely right, like now regarding Sullivan, especially if he is read as widely as you say (I really don't know, so I am taking you are your word).
rlgordonma “On the contrary, may I ask you a question? [OK, another question?] If Sullivan is a vile anti-Semite, then who is just a plain old anti-Semite? Or not an anti-Semite at all?”
Lots of people are not antisemtic, and for you to imply that if you think that Sullivan is an antisemite than everyone else must be an antisemite is just plain stupid.
Do you want a list of non antisemites? I’ll give you some names at random from the New Republic, Blackton, McWhorter, Christopher Orr. It’s easier to name antisemites here than those who are not because thankfully most writers and posters here are not antisemitic.
This wouldn’t be true for a typical publication in not so Great Britain ... view full comment
rlgordonma “On the contrary, may I ask you a question? [OK, another question?] If Sullivan is a vile anti-Semite, then who is just a plain old anti-Semite? Or not an anti-Semite at all?”
Lots of people are not antisemtic, and for you to imply that if you think that Sullivan is an antisemite than everyone else must be an antisemite is just plain stupid.
Do you want a list of non antisemites? I’ll give you some names at random from the New Republic, Blackton, McWhorter, Christopher Orr. It’s easier to name antisemites here than those who are not because thankfully most writers and posters here are not antisemitic.
This wouldn’t be true for a typical publication in not so Great Britain: from the Guardian to the New Statesman there are hundreds if not thousands of writers and posters who clearly are antisemitic.
I didn’t equate, btw, Sullivan to Galloway. I said they both come out of the same British antisemitic tradition.
Now antisemitism is a huge topic, but I would say that there are two types of Jew haters, those who admit and those who like to indulge in antisemitic tropes but deny being antisemitic.
They are both equally vile. For me I prefer the self declared antisemite to the mealy mouthed person who denied the appellation while indulging himself in its rhetoric. Galloway btw, also denies being an antisemite.
Finally, someone pointed me to this article on the topic which I’ll share with you:
“Zionism, anti-semitism and the left”
http://www.workersliberty.org/story/2010/02/05/zionism-anti-semitism-and...
It makes some useful distinctions between racism and antisemitism.
Let me add to dyer, anyone who claims to be an anti-Zionist is anti-Semitic (except, of course, the few Jews who due to theological grounds are opposed to the state of Israel) and you can have people who are anti-Semitic but (ostensibly) pro-Israel (like the fundies who are, due to theological grounds). I find it loathsome that the term Zionism is any more objectionable than Ireland for the Irish.
Let me add to dyer, anyone who claims to be an anti-Zionist is anti-Semitic (except, of course, the few Jews who due to theological grounds are opposed to the state of Israel) and you can have people who are anti-Semitic but (ostensibly) pro-Israel (like the fundies who are, due to theological grounds). I find it loathsome that the term Zionism is any more objectionable than Ireland for the Irish.
JDyer:
"Andrew Sullivan's vile antisemitism...now has reached the Galloway level of bigotry...Sullivan's antisemitism fits in nicely with traditional and contemporary British Jew hatred..."
"I didn’t equate, btw, Sullivan to Galloway. I said they both come out of the same British antisemitic tradition."
I believe you, but can you see why I might have thought the way I did? Yes, I agree that there is a serious anti-Semitism problem in the UK. This is nothing new BTW, although the British Left's reaction to anything Israel does gets louder by the year. That said, I still see no reason to lump Sullivan in with a Galloway. Sullivan is someone who has historically sided with Israel and still ... view full comment
JDyer:
"Andrew Sullivan's vile antisemitism...now has reached the Galloway level of bigotry...Sullivan's antisemitism fits in nicely with traditional and contemporary British Jew hatred..."
"I didn’t equate, btw, Sullivan to Galloway. I said they both come out of the same British antisemitic tradition."
I believe you, but can you see why I might have thought the way I did? Yes, I agree that there is a serious anti-Semitism problem in the UK. This is nothing new BTW, although the British Left's reaction to anything Israel does gets louder by the year. That said, I still see no reason to lump Sullivan in with a Galloway. Sullivan is someone who has historically sided with Israel and still loves and admires her. I just think its important for us to understand why his views have evolved and why he said things as he has. As for Galloway, he can go bugger himself.
[Sorry for multiple postings.]
As for who is and is not an anti-Semite, my point was not for you to name friends of the Jews. Rather, it was to point out that Sullivan gets on the order of a few million hits/month [not sure how many unique hits that is, but I imagine a lot]. Many, if not most, of the people behind those hits likely agree with his take on Israel. And a goodly number of these likely are subscribers to The Atlantic. So, if we imagine that all these folks are vile anti-Semites, then I fear that American Jews like us are boxing ourselves into a small cocoon of friends. [Recall that there is a lot worse than Sullivan out there, and just in the USA.]
At this point I likely seem ... view full comment
[Sorry for multiple postings.]
As for who is and is not an anti-Semite, my point was not for you to name friends of the Jews. Rather, it was to point out that Sullivan gets on the order of a few million hits/month [not sure how many unique hits that is, but I imagine a lot]. Many, if not most, of the people behind those hits likely agree with his take on Israel. And a goodly number of these likely are subscribers to The Atlantic. So, if we imagine that all these folks are vile anti-Semites, then I fear that American Jews like us are boxing ourselves into a small cocoon of friends. [Recall that there is a lot worse than Sullivan out there, and just in the USA.]
At this point I likely seem like the classic liberal who'll do anything to get everyone to like me. I don't doubt the optics, and I don't deny the instinct. We all want lots of friends. Conversely, however, I'd rather live without tons of enemies. There are people who hate Jews and are convinced we are the devil and would do with us what the Nazis did if they had the chance. But most people with whom we disagree about Israel are not like that at all. It is those people that I don't think I can afford to just throw in the "vile anti-Semite" bin.
What a pleasure it is to read such a thoughtful and civil discussion!
What a pleasure it is to read such a thoughtful and civil discussion!
Very accurate description of Sullivan. His narcissism will thrive on the attention. His preoccupations with 'torture' (which he clearly savors in an erotically masochistic way) and his hatred of Sara Palin's sexuality, tell you all you need to know. Reasoning with Sullivan is like reasoning with a resident of Pilgrim State Hospital. It's still the Jews behind every bad thing. In the old days thorazine would have done the job; nowadays everyone has a blog.
Very accurate description of Sullivan. His narcissism will thrive on the attention. His preoccupations with 'torture' (which he clearly savors in an erotically masochistic way) and his hatred of Sara Palin's sexuality, tell you all you need to know. Reasoning with Sullivan is like reasoning with a resident of Pilgrim State Hospital. It's still the Jews behind every bad thing. In the old days thorazine would have done the job; nowadays everyone has a blog.
Yeah, it's not too pretty to say something like, "I like Jews! They're such good *violinists*! So it saddens me when the bad ones do things I don't like." I'm surprised Sullivan doesn't see the condescension here. It's also not too pretty to talk about arguments about Israel by reference to the Jewishness of the commentator -- unless the commentator begins by saying, "As a Jew ...." or if your true subject is Jewish attitudes, in which case one most go beyond noticing the Jewishness of a few people. If you want to decry a rightward turn in Israeli society, go ahead. Get your facts together, and explain why it's bad. I don't see what Jewishness -- or a supposed betrayal thereof -- has ... view full comment
Yeah, it's not too pretty to say something like, "I like Jews! They're such good *violinists*! So it saddens me when the bad ones do things I don't like." I'm surprised Sullivan doesn't see the condescension here. It's also not too pretty to talk about arguments about Israel by reference to the Jewishness of the commentator -- unless the commentator begins by saying, "As a Jew ...." or if your true subject is Jewish attitudes, in which case one most go beyond noticing the Jewishness of a few people. If you want to decry a rightward turn in Israeli society, go ahead. Get your facts together, and explain why it's bad. I don't see what Jewishness -- or a supposed betrayal thereof -- has to do with it. Sullivan does what many with "a serious problem" do: Instead of confidently offering the substance of his argument, without fear of giving offense, he feels the need to soften the blow: "Some of my best friends are X. They're so [insert stereotypical positive character trait]. Which is why it's too bad that [insert substantive argument, which has now lost credibility because it has been bound up with the author's attitudes toward X, which apparently is a subject to which the author gives a worrisome amount of thought]." The apology says all, because you shouldn't feel the need to apologize in the first place.
I will take this opportunity to remind Leon Wieseltier that the most pervasive and pernicious form of anti-Semitism among the Western elite of today is the Zionist anti-Semitism which excuses the israeli oppression of the Palestinian people because Israel is a Jewish State. In hiding behind the cloak of Judaism the racist evil that has become the dominant political force in Israel they seek to share the responsibility among all Jews and, in particular, those who suffered in the Holocaust and other calamities. It is they with their high-profile columns and magazines along with tawdry fools like Marty's butthole surfers who are the most evil representatives of anti-Semitism in the Weste ... view full comment
I will take this opportunity to remind Leon Wieseltier that the most pervasive and pernicious form of anti-Semitism among the Western elite of today is the Zionist anti-Semitism which excuses the israeli oppression of the Palestinian people because Israel is a Jewish State. In hiding behind the cloak of Judaism the racist evil that has become the dominant political force in Israel they seek to share the responsibility among all Jews and, in particular, those who suffered in the Holocaust and other calamities. It is they with their high-profile columns and magazines along with tawdry fools like Marty's butthole surfers who are the most evil representatives of anti-Semitism in the Western World today. In this wicked and vile attack Leon Wieseltier showed that he too was willing to unzip his pants and piss on the memory of those Jews who have suffered genuine anti-Semitism. Look in the mirror, Leon, look in the mirror.
I will take this opportunity to remind Leon Wieseltier that the most pervasive and pernicious form of neo-Nazism in among the Western non-elite of of today is the neo-Nazism of the Israeli Settler movement. The Israeli people have allowed this vile ideology to dominate their countries polity - aided and abbetted in this disgrace by magazines like The New Republic and Commmentary which have become little more than the house organs of what can simply be described as Zionazism. Leon Wieseltier has shown with this article that he is no longer among the Jews fighting the evil of anti-Semitism but among those who view anti-Semitism as a word of contempt for someone they hate. Look in the mirror, Leon, look in the mirror.
Articles like this are becoming more frequent and more frenetic to the extent that anyone not supporting a particularly demented view of Israel is routinely targetted by them. They are the death croaks of the supporters of a vile racism finally facing its doom after decades of seemingly-invincible power. And it is in articles like this that their support dies. It does not matter how fancy the words Leon Wieseltier uses, the rational argumentation of Andrew Sullivan will inevitably crush his crazed and irrational bigotry.
Andrew Sullivan posts his initial thought on this tripe here:
http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2010/02/the-latest-...
With a promise of more to come. The emailed response from Frank Foer quoted by Andrew Sullivan shows his markedly different respone to the quote which sparked off this diatribe.
Andrew Sullivan posts his initial thought on this tripe here:
http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2010/02/the-latest-...
With a promise of more to come. The emailed response from Frank Foer quoted by Andrew Sullivan shows his markedly different respone to the quote which sparked off this diatribe.
I'm disappointed LW missed my favorite example of Sullivan suggesting that the Jews (sorry, Zionists, um, neocons) have an undeserved effect on American politics.
When discussing Gaza here http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2009/03/gaza.html, Sullivan wrote:
"American public opinion, as Glenn Greenwald noted, was evenly divided, and Democrats sided more with the Palestinians enduring a blitz with some white phosphorus thrown into the mix. Is there any plausible explanation for this discrepancy apart from the Walt-M ... view full comment
I'm disappointed LW missed my favorite example of Sullivan suggesting that the Jews (sorry, Zionists, um, neocons) have an undeserved effect on American politics.
When discussing Gaza here http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2009/03/gaza.html, Sullivan wrote:
"American public opinion, as Glenn Greenwald noted, was evenly divided, and Democrats sided more with the Palestinians enduring a blitz with some white phosphorus thrown into the mix. Is there any plausible explanation for this discrepancy apart from the Walt-Mearsheimer one?"
Amazingly, I think Sullivan meant that to be a rhetorical question.
rlgordonma
"As for who is and is not an anti-Semite, my point was not for you to name friends of the Jews."
I didn't name any freinds "of the Jews." This is insulting.
I don't know if McWhorter or Blackton, et al are "friends of the Jews" and I don't always agree with what they say. All I said was that they are not antisemitic.
You are really getting out of your depth here, gordon. Are you a personal friend of Sullivan?
rlgordonma
"As for who is and is not an anti-Semite, my point was not for you to name friends of the Jews."
I didn't name any freinds "of the Jews." This is insulting.
I don't know if McWhorter or Blackton, et al are "friends of the Jews" and I don't always agree with what they say. All I said was that they are not antisemitic.
You are really getting out of your depth here, gordon. Are you a personal friend of Sullivan?
malahat: I think you'd better stop reading while you're ahead.
ndmackenzie: Not sure why you bother to post here. Seriously, you must have as much success with fruitful discussion here as a Mormon missionary would in Saudi Arabia.
Clearly, the occupation of Palestinian lands really bothers you. I get it. And, no, I am not in favor of intellectual cocoons like those at Commentary. But you seem to come with so much baggage that you are as blind to objective facts as the Israeli settler who praises Baruch Goldstein.
Let's start with the use of anti-Semitism to refer to the oppression of all Semites, like the Arabs. That, right off the bat, tells me that the user is mordantly ignorant of the o ... view full comment
malahat: I think you'd better stop reading while you're ahead.
ndmackenzie: Not sure why you bother to post here. Seriously, you must have as much success with fruitful discussion here as a Mormon missionary would in Saudi Arabia.
Clearly, the occupation of Palestinian lands really bothers you. I get it. And, no, I am not in favor of intellectual cocoons like those at Commentary. But you seem to come with so much baggage that you are as blind to objective facts as the Israeli settler who praises Baruch Goldstein.
Let's start with the use of anti-Semitism to refer to the oppression of all Semites, like the Arabs. That, right off the bat, tells me that the user is mordantly ignorant of the original use of the term, cooked up by the German Jew-hater Wilhelm Marr in 1879, and the term stuck. The use of the term for hatred of Arabs, while having a certain sick logic to it, is all about the minimization of hatred of Jews. You may not like it, but that's how it is. If you want to speak of Israeli oppression of Arabs without seeming like you carry a lot of baggage of your battles with Israeli supporters, then Israeli anti-Arabism, while still reeking, shows that you are at least trying.
I agree with blackton and jdyer: I am not ashamed of the term "Zionist". It is an idea about preserving a culture in the face of its inevitable destruction amongst its hostile hosts. Zionism today seems part of an outdated and terrible idea, latched onto colonialism and other adventures. Problem is, the British colonized, say, India out of greed. Jews set up homes in Palestine to get away from the pogroms in Europe. For a while, the only place they could go was Palestine.
Your lashing Wieseltier [and a lot of us here] about the "Israeli Settler" movement is quite wrong, at least here. All Zionists whom I take seriously - Wieseltier included - would like nothing more than to see the settlers who are encroaching upon their Arab West Bank neighbors and harming them to move back to Israel proper, or at least come to a negotiated settlement as to what that means. There is nothing in any of Wieseltier's writings that give aid and comfort to such people.
Finally, the one thing that irritates me more than anything else is the equation of the Israeli gov't and/or people with Nazis. Such statements show me that a) you are unserious, and b) you have zero idea of what the Nazi's did. Yeah, sure , you know they killed 6 million Jews [or so the Holocaust Industry pays me to repeat], but do you really know what they did from 1920-1945? If you can equate that with how Israel treats the Arabs, Palestinian or not, on their worst, warmongering days with what the Nazis did to the Jews over those 25 years, then I'll leave you to your denial.
"That said, I still see no reason to lump Sullivan in with a Galloway. Sullivan is someone who has historically sided with Israel and still loves and admires her."
That is beside the point. Mearshimer and Walt also claim to admire Israel. Anyway, he and they seem to hold Israel to some impossible higher standard.
In any case, Sullivan's antisemitism shows up in the way he identifies people like Krauthammer with whom he disagrees as right wing, or neo conservative Jews.
Did he ever identify William F Buckley as an Irish conservative?
"That said, I still see no reason to lump Sullivan in with a Galloway. Sullivan is someone who has historically sided with Israel and still loves and admires her."
That is beside the point. Mearshimer and Walt also claim to admire Israel. Anyway, he and they seem to hold Israel to some impossible higher standard.
In any case, Sullivan's antisemitism shows up in the way he identifies people like Krauthammer with whom he disagrees as right wing, or neo conservative Jews.
Did he ever identify William F Buckley as an Irish conservative?
jdyer: Nope, don't know Sullivan personally. Sorry you found what I said insulting. Maybe I am out of my depth because I do not understand what was so insulting about it. And it's tangential at best to my point, which is that I would rather be more selective about whom I label an anti-Semite. If you think I am a squish on this issue, read what I said to ndmackenzie. Believe me, our differences are negligible in comparison.
jdyer: Nope, don't know Sullivan personally. Sorry you found what I said insulting. Maybe I am out of my depth because I do not understand what was so insulting about it. And it's tangential at best to my point, which is that I would rather be more selective about whom I label an anti-Semite. If you think I am a squish on this issue, read what I said to ndmackenzie. Believe me, our differences are negligible in comparison.
I can at least understand Jackson's definition of "anti-Semitism" here, although in these pages it is indeed often exercised according to Blackton's clarification and so I can't agree, but ndmackenzie's use of the term has passed through incomprehensible and gone into realms of fancy where we cannot follow. Somewhere between "anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism" and "pro-Zionism is anti-Semitism" must lie a useful meaning.
Whatever the case, surely we can decry Sullivan's racially stereotyped thinking without invoking Godwin's Law.
I can at least understand Jackson's definition of "anti-Semitism" here, although in these pages it is indeed often exercised according to Blackton's clarification and so I can't agree, but ndmackenzie's use of the term has passed through incomprehensible and gone into realms of fancy where we cannot follow. Somewhere between "anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism" and "pro-Zionism is anti-Semitism" must lie a useful meaning.
Whatever the case, surely we can decry Sullivan's racially stereotyped thinking without invoking Godwin's Law.
Well, so the nazi like British ndmackenzie has come to Sullivan's defence.
That says it all.
Well, so the nazi like British ndmackenzie has come to Sullivan's defence.
That says it all.
Gordon, your response to mackenzie was a model of good sense and patience.
We still disagree on Sullivan, though.
Gordon, your response to mackenzie was a model of good sense and patience.
We still disagree on Sullivan, though.
Clarification: I have misspoken, briefly conflating "anti-Zionism" with "criticism of Israel" (as so many people I disagree with here often do). Actual anti-Zionism, that is to say, belief that Israel shouldn't exist, is indeed anti-Semitism.
Okay, sorry, carry on.
Clarification: I have misspoken, briefly conflating "anti-Zionism" with "criticism of Israel" (as so many people I disagree with here often do). Actual anti-Zionism, that is to say, belief that Israel shouldn't exist, is indeed anti-Semitism.
Okay, sorry, carry on.
jdyer: I agree with you that I am disturbed about his referencing Walt. I think Walt is an off-the-rails realist who's use of "The Israel Lobby" stinks of anti-Semitism, even if Walt is not anti-Semitic himself. Fortunately, Jeffrey Goldberg provides some balance over at The Atlantic.
I can understand his frustration with Krauthammer, though. Sorry, but when you hole yourself up in a cocoon like Fox News where you take no tough questions and never need to correct yourself, then you appear to be an intellectual lightweight. [And I understand the man is highly intelligent and lives an amazing life, but I do not share his opinions.]
On your last point, I think this is what Wieseltier is asking ... view full comment
jdyer: I agree with you that I am disturbed about his referencing Walt. I think Walt is an off-the-rails realist who's use of "The Israel Lobby" stinks of anti-Semitism, even if Walt is not anti-Semitic himself. Fortunately, Jeffrey Goldberg provides some balance over at The Atlantic.
I can understand his frustration with Krauthammer, though. Sorry, but when you hole yourself up in a cocoon like Fox News where you take no tough questions and never need to correct yourself, then you appear to be an intellectual lightweight. [And I understand the man is highly intelligent and lives an amazing life, but I do not share his opinions.]
On your last point, I think this is what Wieseltier is asking. I await his response.
Here we have Sullivan's pathetically thin reply:
Summary: "Wieseltier (the Jews, are) is out to get me."
http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2010/02/the-latest-...
Here we have Sullivan's pathetically thin reply:
Summary: "Wieseltier (the Jews, are) is out to get me."
http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2010/02/the-latest-...
Jdyer: Thanks, and we agree to disagree.
Jdyer: Thanks, and we agree to disagree.
Weiseltier vs. Sullivan vs. Weiseltier vs. Sullivan, ad nauseum ... the eye verily glazes over. I too am a frequent reader of Sullivan's blog, and find his attitude toward Israel to be oft-exaggerated, condescending, misinformed or simply uninformed. Still, this attempted smackdown and counter-smackdown has a truly disproportionate amount of grandiosity, on both sides. I suppose Weiseltier may be attempting to do to Sullivan what Buckley did to Buchanan in 1992 -- publicly call him out as an anti-Semite and cast him from the decent conservative intellectual fold. Except that Sullivan is not a politician who commands a national stage and makes prime time speeches at party conventions and ... view full comment
Weiseltier vs. Sullivan vs. Weiseltier vs. Sullivan, ad nauseum ... the eye verily glazes over. I too am a frequent reader of Sullivan's blog, and find his attitude toward Israel to be oft-exaggerated, condescending, misinformed or simply uninformed. Still, this attempted smackdown and counter-smackdown has a truly disproportionate amount of grandiosity, on both sides. I suppose Weiseltier may be attempting to do to Sullivan what Buckley did to Buchanan in 1992 -- publicly call him out as an anti-Semite and cast him from the decent conservative intellectual fold. Except that Sullivan is not a politician who commands a national stage and makes prime time speeches at party conventions and is not quite a liberal intellectual (I would say he is more liberal than intellectual but not sufficiently so in either instance). As it stands, this just looks like TNR's own version of Jarndyce v. Jarndyce.
Oh, and that first disquisition on theology -- I love Jewish theology almost as much as Leon, but I think he's just doing this to show off how much he can get away with talking smack about Christianity in a liberal opinion magazine in 2010 America. Nachmanides he's not.
Aw blackton, ditto, you know I luv ya.
I've definitely seen Sullivan's blog rank first in something (maybe individual political blogs) but here he ranks 12th (of all types):http://technorati.com/blogs/top100 The White House comment is from something he referenced - that President Obama followed his extensive reporting about the Green movement protests in Iran (charmingly, Sullivan wrote of the report "well we're just chuffed")
Aw blackton, ditto, you know I luv ya.
I've definitely seen Sullivan's blog rank first in something (maybe individual political blogs) but here he ranks 12th (of all types):http://technorati.com/blogs/top100 The White House comment is from something he referenced - that President Obama followed his extensive reporting about the Green movement protests in Iran (charmingly, Sullivan wrote of the report "well we're just chuffed")