Philosopher, scholar and political theorist Dr. Yoram Hazony joins John for a rich and interweaving conversation about conservatism, nationalism, democracy and modern politics.
Dr. Hazony, author of several books on these matters, provides a compelling critique of the political right - where it has gone wrong, the great benefits it can convey for society and how it diverges from liberalism. John and Yoram touch on many important topics, including multiculturalism, identity politics, globalism and the question of why nationalism seems surrounded by an unearned air of controversy.
John and Yoram touch on many important topics, including multiculturalism, identity politics, globalism and why nationalism seems to be surrounded by an unearned air of controversy.
Yoram Hazony is an Israeli philosopher, Bible scholar and political theorist. He is President of the Herzl Institute in Jerusalem and Chairman of the Edmund Burke Foundation. He has written several books, including The Virtue of Nationalism (2018) and his latest, Conservatism: A Rediscovery (2022), both of which have met with popular and critical success
Educated at Princeton University (B.A. in East Asian Studies), and Rutgers University (Ph.D in Political Theory), Yoram founded and was the first editor of Princeton’s conservative student journal, The Princeton Tory, while still an undergraduate. He lives in Jerusalem with his wife Yael Hazony. They have nine children.
Bongo_Stryker@lemmy.ca 10 months ago
Well I like that he defines nationalism so we can know what the heck he’s talking about. The idea that different nations should have their own autonomy and sovereignty and ways of doing things sounds pretty reasonable to me. It’s good that different nations have their own things going on. Sure.
Unfortunately, letting other nations do their own thing is not what conservatives have been doing. You don’t have to cast your eye back very far into the history of america to see it. Johnson, Nixon, Reagan, Bush 1 and Bush 2, all conservative presidents whose foreign policies were definately not about respecting other nations doing their own thing. He did directly address Bush Sr. And his “new world order” speech and said “well, they called him conservative,” and we are to understand that he wasn’t really a conservative. But I don’t see how his idea of “nationalism” goes along with conservative thinking in the context of American history.
It’s interesting how he talks about a one world government as of it’s this terrible threat that’s about to happen at any moment. It used to be communism that was the big threat conservatives worried about, now it’s the one world government. I don’t feel too worried about that happening.
I didn’t watch the whole thing, I got about 45 minutes, just to the point where a he’s talking about neo-marxists and his idea of what they are about. He puts it in simple terms - they say there’s always a powerful group exploiting the less powerful group. That happened throughout the history of the USA. Is there a time when that wasn’t the case? It’s still happening now. I plan to finish the vid, but I wanted to put down my thoughts before I got distracted with other things.
Bongo_Stryker@lemmy.ca 10 months ago
Ok I’m at 47 minutes and he’s talking about the problem of multiculturalism and diversity. He stars off saying it’s good to have “different strands” but it’s important for there to be a dominant group that can be “generous and capable of allowing other things to flourish,… That’s the best world”
But then he contrasts that with: " but if you say it’s illegatimate to think in terms of a unified national narrative…"
So this is very conservative red pill lobster thinking. There has to be a dominant group that holds everything together, and if you suggest sectarian discrimination is a problem, or that black lives matter, or that women deserve human rights for example, then you are trying to tear apart the fabric of society and destroy all unity. He talks about " National mutual loyalty" and I am thinking buddy, when people are extracting weath from this nation and consolidating it in their private coffers, when the cops can kill minority people with impunity, when so much of rural America is living below the poverty line and don’t have health care, where the heck is the mutual loyalty?
I think video this has little to nothing to do with the USA. The United States government has broken every treaty ever made with native American nations, where is the mutual loyalty?
Predatory lending aimed at racially segregated minority neighborhoods led to mass foreclosures that fueled the U.S. housing but the banks and airlines get bailed out at the drop of a hat. Is that the kind of mutual loyalty he is talking about?
But he goes on to drop this gem about the multiculturalists: “they say I’ll describe 50 percent of the picture, and I’ll pretend that’s the whole.” He says this after describing 50 percent of the picture, and pretending that’s the whole. The truth has to be somewhere between these two points.
There is about 20 minutes left in the video and I don’t think I’ll watch it, unless someone thinks there is a compelling reason to do so. I this guy is another academic that can say nice sounding things that perhaps don’t really apply to the real world I’m living in.