Yoram Hazony on the Harper’s letter

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Yoram Hazony writes,

the liberals behind the Harper’s letter still think they’re going to get an alliance with the very same neo-Marxists who are out to destroy them. And they truly believe the way they’re going to get there is by putting conservatives down.

Liberals only have two choices: Either they’ll submit to the neo-Marxists or they’ll try to put together a pro-democracy alliance with conservatives. There aren’t any other choices.

An interesting take.

15 thoughts on “Yoram Hazony on the Harper’s letter”

  1. Here’s a perfect example of what Yoram is talking about.
    https://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/
    Dr. Scott Aaronson, a noted computer scientist (he works on quantum computing and has published innumerable papers) comes to the defense of Steve Pinker. The first paragraph is the obligatory hate on Trump and all conservatives. He uses this hate to call for an alliance between liberals and progressives. He actually entitles his post, My Enlightenment Fanaticism.
    Hard to know where to start.

    • Crane Brinton’s “The Anatomy of Revolution” used to be very influential and a popular text to assign in American High School European History classes, back when high schoolers read text, and when they actually taught European History instead of a fistful of libels. In his discussion of the typical reigns of terror, Brinton went easy on the Americans, which aside from the terrible treatment afforded to the Loyalists, cannot be said to have gone down anything approaching as bad a road as the other revolutions.

      From LaWik’s summary:

      The radicals triumph because: … the moderates are hindered by their hesitancy to change direction and fight back against the radical revolutionaries, “with whom they recently stood
      united”, in favor of conservatives, “against whom they have so recently risen” (p. 140).
      Thare are drawn to the slogan ‘no enemies to the Left’ (p.168).

      That was 1938. Leftist ‘moderates’ have had had 82 years to learn some history and absorb that lesson, but they have utterly failed to do so.

      That ‘no enemies to the left’ thing? Whose slogan was that? The English wikipedia page for Rene Renoult – co-creator of the French Radical Party (which lasted until 2017(!) and is not to be confused with the other parties with which it merged, The Radical Movement and The Left Radical Party – Monty Python did not make that up, but the point is they were all Commies) – is curiously sparse compared to the French one. The best article about it is also in French, from Jacques Lux in 1906, and the slogan went a little different at the time. I’ll do my best to translate the spirit so that it can understood in contemporary English:

      He identified the lack of cohesion of the radical party, which resembled a weak coalition of unruly and vehement opposition groups, and not an actual party capable of discipline, organization, and control, able to apply a particular program of reforms. He came to the conclusion that the spirit of the “young” in this group should be precisely the principle of organization around which this cohesion could be built and consensus about goals be be achieved. With the help of his peer radicals and the support of the older and undisputed party leaders of Bisson, Goblet, Floquet, etc., he founded the Committe for Actions and Republican Reforms in 1894 on this basis. Several radical caucuses of older members of parliament thought this was a clever idea and formed a similar committee, but the enthusiasm of the young won out and the the new commitee was absorbed into Renoult’s.

      The committee deployed a methodical approach and undertook the production of radical propaganda and deployed it widely which quickly created a rallying mechanism around which fellow-travelers is other radical groups could cohere and cooperate. This is when Mr. Rene Renoult came up with the formula which led to rapid and major success, “On the left, we don’t know any enemies!” How that committee turned into the executive branch of the radical socialist parties, and how he was able to get the whole bloc to adopt his politics, would be important for future historians of radical socialism to establish.

      What is hard to translate is that in late 19th century France, the “radicals”, while still communists, were still understood to be the “moderate” option when compared to the real “Socialists”, the views of which we would more closely associate with the Bolsheviks. It’s easier to grasp when you realize that not having enemies to the left only makes sense if there are still lots of people to your left, even more radical and crazy than you are.

      Speaking of the Bolsheviks, let’s fast forward 23 years to the February Revolution when Kerensky was briefly in charge and issued “Soviet Order Number 1”.
      In the chaos, Stalin was able to get out of Siberian summer camp where he had impregnated a local 13 year old, get on a train, and make himself editor of Pravda.
      There was, ahem, tension between the three main commie groups, the Socialist Revolutionaries (Kerensky’s faction, “moderates”), the Mensheviks, and the Bolsheviks (not moderates). So Kerensky also implemented the philosophy and strategy of “no enemies to the left”, throwing potential allies on his right like Kornilov under the bus, but giving the Bolsheviks a pass, which they used to take over the voyenka against which the Women’s Death Battalion did not fare well a few months later in the October Revolution when Lenin’s Bolsheviks took over entirely and Kerensky had to eventually flee for his life, the rest of which was spent in exile, much of it, interestingly enough, at the Hoover Institution at Stanford!

      Russian History is where one goes to prove “truth is stranger than fiction”, for example, Kerensky and Lenin were both lawyers born in Ulyanovsk in the middle of nowhere, and K’s dad was the local school principle who taught Lenin and gave him college advice! In 1913, Kerensky sponsored a resolution to the St Petersburg bar association condemning the show trial of Mendel Beiliss who was falsely accused of a Jewish ritual ritual of a Christian boy, and spent 8 months in jail for that letter, making him even less of a “moderate”, but still really moderate compared to Lenin.

      After the February revolution, Trotsky tries to back to Russia from his exile in New York City, but gets arrested by the British Navy in Halifax, Canada and is stuck there until Lenin pressures Kerensky to have Milyukov demand Trotsky’s release “as a Russian citizen”, and the Brits let him go. They were kind of fed up with him anyway, what with him immediately setting to work organizing his fellow prisoners and whipping them up with constant speeches. When Trotsky gets back to Russia in May, he links up with Lenin and starts bringing his truly unbelievable levels of energy and intellectual firepower to the cause.

      Trotsky came up with the root of “You may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you”. Kerensky was not interested in having enemies to his left, but he had enemies to his left, and they were interested in him. I mean, interested in him not being in charge anymore, or, you know, existing.

      Trotsky came up with the radicals answer to “no enemies to the left”, which was “All Power To The Soviets!” (the local communist councils and “activist groups”), which quickly meant, “No power for Kerensky”, or anyone else except the Bolsheviks.

      Kerensky actually lived through all this and still never learned the lesson! 50 years later, even though he’s working at the freaking Hoover institution in the middle of the Cold War, he *still* blamed *the right*! He said he was aware of the communist peril, but that the Whites has undermined his administration which opened the way for the Bolsheviks. This is even though, at the time, he explicitly said that he was going easy on the Bolsheviks!

      I feel it is very important to the cause of freedom everywhere to ascribe the main reason for the defeat of Russian democracy to this attack from the Right instead of to the foolish myth that Russian democracy was ‘soft’ and ‘blind’ to the Bolshevik danger.

      Even the members of the press who had been Stalin’s apologists for decades were a little stunned at this old leftist’s delusions and continuing need to assuage his boundless ego and try to repair his reputation as a naive appeaser who made one of the worst and most consequentially dumb mistakes in the history of history.

      That’s why Hazony’s call for alliance is dripping with sarcasm and irony, because everybody knows that the heart of a sincere leftist will never stop carrying a torch for the left and kindling a glowing hatred of the right, even right up the very last moment those further to the left prove themselves to be his truest enemies beyond any doubt.

      • I took a Russian History course in college. It was probably the best non STEM course (I’m an engineer) that I took. Your post brought back a lot of memories from that course. Thanks. Russia is not quite European and not quite Asian. In its history you see a lot of pure power plays. The history of the communist take over is truly fascinating.

  2. In other news, the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of African American History & Culture removed a display from their website after it was called out by Byron York and Ben Shapiro. The display, entitled, “Aspects & Assumptions of Whiteness & White Culture in the United States,” identified characteristics of whiteness, including: Individualism, hard work, objectivity, the nuclear family, respect for authority, and delayed gratification.

    Did people like Michael Jordan, Oprah Winfrey, Thomas Sowell, and Charles Drew achieve success by avoiding hard work?

    What sort of people would teach black children that these are “whites-only” traits and, by implication, things that black people don’t or shouldn’t do? The word “evil” comes to mind.

  3. “That brings us to the heart of what’s wrong with the Harper’s letter: Even after all that’s happened, the liberals who cooked this up still don’t understand the most basic thing about democracy, which is that you need to have two legitimate political parties for democracy to work—one liberal and one conservative.”

    Ummm…no.

    It’s this god awful dualism that has gotten us into this mess. Anthony Downs’ Economic Theory of Democracy birthed the left -right , liberal – conservative axis with communism at one end and laissez faire at the other. It made no sense then, it makes no sense today, and it has been largely responsible for reducing political science to its pitiable state today having dumbing down generations to becoming incapable of thinking beyond dualisms. At a minimum 4 parties are necessary to reflect the slightly more nuanced quadrants created when you take the left-right economic axis and combine a left-right social axis.

    To have a legitimate large-scale democracy, you need 6 things:

    1. Elected officials
    2. Free, fair, and frequent elections
    3. Freedom of expression
    4. Alternative sources of information
    5. Associational autonomy
    6. Inclusive citizenship

    See: On Democracy by Robert A. Dahl.

    The USA has none of the above.

    Tyrannical unelected judges can whimsically supersede all elected officials and micromanage the nation however strikes their fancy. Do they want to impose taxes and micromanage a school system? Sure, why not. See Kansas City. Do they not like a citizenship question on the census? Just toss it out. Don’t like oil? Just shut down the pipelines. No discipline among the lawyers in gowns and no restraint upon them.

    Our elections make those in third world countries look positively advanced. Voter registration is an unholy mess even in those jurisdictions that pretend to try to maintain accurate voter rolls. There are millions of dead people on the rolls across the nation and documented voting fraud rampant: see the Heritage voting fraud data base.

    No need to spend time on freedom of expression. The people of Boston thought they could express dissatisfaction with judge-imposed school bussing schemes and were instantly suppressed with military troops and curfews.

    The USA has no reliable sources of information much less alternate sources.

    Associational autonomy? Nope. Not just discrimination law, but even private homeowners associations are being dictated to by states preventing them from having single-family residential neighborhoods. The worst affront to autonomy though is the winner-take-all electoral system which denies autonomy to all except those represented by the winning party. Non-extremists will have ample opportunity to reflect on this when an extremist party seizes control of the federal legislature and executive this fall.

    And inclusive citizenship is sundered by the outsize influence campaign donations have in the winner-take-all USA. Not only will you be ostracized based upon the FEC campaign contributions data base, but those who buy the most influence with the most money will buy press outlets and your existence will be erased.

    Multi-party, proportional representation would solve 3 to 6. To attain the rule of law in 1, however, a constitutional convention to adopt a modern, legitimate judiciary comparable to Denmark or Germany is necessary.

    To solve 2, we could learn a lot from Canada, Switzerland, and other countries in which electoral integrity is valued.

    • Multi-party, proportional representation would solve 3 to 6.

      Seriously? I see virtually no causation from M-P P R to those four things.

      This is just my feels but it’s like someone saying the single tax will bring economic prosperity or the gold standard will bring stable money.

      • PR gives equal value to every vote and for this reason is likely to lead to increased government accountability to citizens and greater voter satisfaction.

        Arend Lijphart found that PR countries outperformed winner-take-all ones on 16 out of 17 measures of sound government and decision making – nine of them at a statistically significant level – including government effectiveness (quality and independence of the public service, quality of policy making), rule of law, and the level and control of corruption (including capture of the state by elite interests). Here is a short piece of testimony he offered in California that explains PR advantages: https://rangevoting.org/Lijphart.html

        It may be instructive too to look to Canada where a number of unsuccessful referendums were held on PR reform. Canada was the top ranked OECD country on the UN Human Development index. But in the last 20 years, they were overtaken by eight other OECD countries that all use proportional voting.

        From a Canadian source citing Lijphart: “With PR, because everyone has a seat at the table, policies are more likely to address the concerns of a wider range of society, he said. “It becomes harder to make policies that disproportionately affect one group of people.”
        “You get policies that prevent as much income inequality that otherwise might be generated. You get polices that address the health care needs of a broad section of the population.”
        He said  that PR leads to greater voter satisfaction, which in turn results in more satisfaction with democracy and a higher voter turnout. In a 55-year study conducted by world-renowned political scientist Arend Liphart, Liphart found that voter turnout was higher by 7.5 per cent in countries with proportional representation.
        PR also leads to more diverse legislatures and a greater portion of women in government. The same study concludes that there were, on average, eight per cent more women represented in parliamentary bodies in countries with PR. When parties are able to put multiple candidates forward in  a single riding, more balanced representation is likely.”

        Simply put, in a PR system, coalitions are frequently needed to make a government. A minor party might make the difference. One is therefore inclined to treat minorities respectfully and not attempt to silence them.

        In the USA, there is no similar incentive and every reason to wage scorched earth politics. After all, where else can your members go? Unlike the two major parties where the normal order of business is to say one thing to the base and then do whatever it takes to try to win over voters from the other side, PR parties face member discipline. You can associate with a minority party and not forfeit representation.

        And with the pluralism of multiple parties comes the pluralism of alternative voices and information those voices share. The press cocoons peddling them-bad, we good news in the USA would be challenged to incorporate integrity and balance into their reporting because they would not be able to assume half the market is invested in a single party. The pluralism of diverse voices at the table provides an opportunity for more nuanced debate and thorough analysis.

        And money cannot buy as much influence because everyone in the governing coalition has to get a piece. Smart businesses subject to regulatory shakedown split their contributions between the parties. With more parties, the money is diffused further.

  4. Yoram Hazony is onto something.

    I think he’s correct about the threat to civil discourse, free inquiry, and stable constitutional government. It doesn’t come from the Right–it comes from the Left.

    The radical wing of the Left (not liberals, but the Left) is full of people who seek to ruin careers, shame people, and damage reputations. This is done cheerfully, and with the conviction that it’s for a good cause.

    The average even-tempered and fair-minded liberal has far more to fear from the Left. Therefore it is a lot safer for liberals to denounce the Right.

    Some of this is prudence. Some of it is cowardice–but it’s actually prudence if you have a mortgage, a family to support, and “career stage vulnerability,” for lack of a better term.

    There is a similar phenomenon–many liberals are extremely cautious in their discussions of the Islamic faith. They find it expedient to criticize conservative Christians–Evangelicals, Pentecostals, conservative Catholics.

    Dennis Prager has a useful observation–the Left doesn’t fight evil. It attacks people who fight evil. Therefore it attacks people who speak the truth, or who discuss objective facts in public.

  5. Hazony thinks that libertarians have no choice but to join with the right, and that liberals have no choice but to join with the right…

    He is pretty fringy. His right is the right of Netanyahu, Trump, and Orban.

    As a liberaltarian (no, I have not turned into a conventional left-liberal, even still) I think there is a more natural coalition.

      • Clinton/Blair neoliberalism. Remember when under Clinton they were worried about what would happen to financial markets when the federal government paid off its debt? Well wouldn’t that have been a thing?

  6. A hilarious viewpoint.

    “No big surprise, then, that the Harper’s letter on free speech and viewpoint diversity includes no fewer than three (!) side comments aimed at delegitimizing conservatives.
    […] Maybe liberals just aren’t smart enough to see that this is what they’ve got to do. Maybe they don’t have the guts to do it. Maybe most liberal intellectuals are just going to keep hoping for love from the neo-Marxists until it’s all over. Could be.”

    The idea that specifically Trump-style conservatives are committed to democracy, compromise, and power sharing is even sillier, since they don’t pretend any interest in that, but I suppose that one can at least be read generously if one tries.

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