Culture and politics

Rod, excellent post and valid logical analysis. Just don't expect many to take you up on it in kind. After all, it's racist to discuss something in other than racial terms if someone got there first with the racial terms... sorta like it's rude to point out someone being rude.

Re: the US electorate becoming more Latin American (e.g., passive, susceptible to a patron rule, etc.)

Um, where was Huntington these last 6 decades or so? Passivity, blind loyalty to patrons and patronage, pretty well defines local American politics (municipal for sure, state to a lesser extent). I limit my perspective to the 1940s only because that is where my living memory ends (my parents having arrived in the US in 1948). There is plenty of literature supporting passivity and patronage well before that limit. From my POV, the only fear of immigrants would be their patrons grabbing the seats of power from "our" patrons, thereby robbing us of what little benefits we might receive in return for our loyalty.

Very well written & exactly correct.

Because in today's society, it's considered impolite and ill-advised to point out differences in culture and what certain groups of people do better than others. To do so is to risk being called "racist," "reactionary," or a rube. Given a choice, I'd rather live in Israel and be governed by democratic, comparatively liberal Israel, than have to suffer the cultural expectations and governance of the Palestinians, who do appear to have made an enormous mess of governing, even considering the challenges they're faced with. From what I can remember, enormous amounts of cash and humanitarian assistance flowed into the Palestinian territories before and after they gained control, intended primarily to build schools, create businesses, help with medical care, etc. I would guess much of that money ended up going for weapons or in the Swiss bank accounts of corrupt Hamas and PLO leaders, some of whom have retired to the south of France.

Personally, I would much rather live AND vacation with the reasonably well-ordered Scandinavian and German-Americans of Minnesota and North Dakota than in Louisiana, but the drinking and carousing and the other things that go with Mardi Gras in New Orleans simply aren't my idea of a good time. There are a number of entertainment options in the Midwest here too, just less likely to end in a drunken brawl or with the police being called.

Call me bourgeois if you like, but I sincerely doubt that each and every Palestinian would forgo being rich and at peace if the cost were living in a world that contained Israel.

Your blanket statement asserting this to be true is a racist statement and, not incidentally, a repetition of pro-Israeli propaganda.

Having said that, I will confess that Israel has a right to exist and to defend itself and that I have no idea how the current situation should be resolved.

Let's just try for a little nuance, okay?

I agree that there is a connection between culture and politics and it’s not fair to suggest that this is racist. However, if we are going to suggest that Palestinian culture is partially to blame for the problems in Gaza, I think we’ve got to acknowledge some of the problems in Jewish culture.

It’s become very fashionable for conservative Christians to “love” the Jewish people. We’ve all been raised to feel guilty about the Holocaust. Rightfully so, IMHO. The cynic in me imagines that these people falling all over themselves declaring their “love” for the Jewish people imagine themselves to be modern day Oscar Schindlers. I put “love” in quotes because I don’t see it as a real love. You can’t love what you don’t really know and watching Schindler’s List, the Exodus and Fiddler on the Roof doesn’t cut it.

Traditionally Christians have had problems with Judaism. We’ve allowed post-Holocaust guilt to turn Fathers of the Church like St. John Chrysostom into anti-Semites. It is not anti-semitic to be troubled by aspects of traditional Judaism. We talk about “Judeo-Christian” culture as if Judaism is just Christianity without Jesus. That disrespects Judaism and our own Christian heritage. See this discussion about whether it is acceptable to save the life of a non-Jew on the Sabbath. The commenters take the moderate position that it is acceptable but that it is debatable is the problem. It is a matter of discussion because in traditional Judaism, there is a fundamental difference between Jews and non-Jews. Christians hold that there is an ontological difference between the soul of a baptized person a non-baptized person however that difference doesn’t mean there are different rights or obligations for that soul. A non-baptized person can keep the fast and obtain benefits from it. In traditional Judaism, a non-Jew gets no benefits from keeping Jewish law.

Israel has become increasingly dominated by ultra-Orthodox hardliners. Ironically most of these groups are not Zionists. These groups are walling off from all non-Haredi Jews. See the recent conversion crisis for an example of this. http://www.forward.com/articles/14796/ The implications of this crisis are tremendous. In essence it calls into question the Judaism of all non-Haredi Jews. See this interesting article from the New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/02/magazine/02jewishness-t.html

Another thing with regard to the idea that all Palestinians would rather live in poverty and bad governance that see Israel exist - as Joshua Knox hinted at above, a Gazan who speaks against Hamas or voices the idea that maybe they should find a way to live in peace with Israel stands a good chance of seeing his family murdered before he is then himself killed.

So let's not go around thinking that Palestinians are a monolithic group that all thirst for the destruction of Israel, okay?

1) Little to no education
2) Grinding, inescapable poverty
3) Fundamentalist religious belief.

We've seen this again and again. First in out own history with the white supremacist that still reach their deadly tendrils our lives, to the young immigrant woman screaming to inflict horror onto a group of person of whom she has probably never spoken with, to the religious violence that belts the globe from South Asia through Africa.

Poor, under educated people, under nourished people are easy marks. Weather it for the anti-semitic Iman, the Klan leader, or your local name it and claim it health wealth gospel preaching pastor, their like fish in a barrel.

Their only escape is god, to his heaven or through his "work". From the holocaust, to 4 little girls, to the Janjaweed. We are all to familiar with the disease.

They've never heard of the other options, and if they have they were told it was the voice of the devil.

Fixing this is harder than going to war, fixing this will take generations, you have to change the culture, and bigotry is the last to go.

How comforting and how smug it must to make such sweeping generalizations about millions of people, Rod. Ironically, as I read your post I heard on BBC News your co-religionist, Orthodox Christian Palestinian Hanan Ashrawi speak of the "cruel and immoral" collective punishment of the Palestinian people of Gaza.

Perhaps a people which has not known peace or prosperity ever, 70 percent of whom burn with anger at being refugees in their own land, deserves a little slack. And I am pretty sure that Palestinians are not the only people who sometimes blame others for their misfortune. That seems part of the human condition.

And of course, they did blame Fateh and Arafat for corruption which is why Hamas won the last (US-supported and funded) elections!

Rod, you are exactly right in this analysis.

So many Americans are simply narcissists, folks who believe all the peoples of the world are really just nice, liberal Unitarians like they are, and would reveal their true, peace-loving natures if the horrible Jews and their American stooges would just leave them alone.

For the hairsplitters on this thread, yes, I'm sure there are some Palestinians who want to live in peace with Israel, just as their were some Germans who opposed Hitler. But we are right to say that Germany and Germans wanted war with the world and the annihilation of of the Jews. In no way is this a racist rant against the German people, and I say that as someone who has beloved German relatives.

The Jews of Israel are not narcissists. The blood of 6 million men, women and children have taught them that their enemies are not like them, that they cannot be appeased, and they need to be destroyed if they venture to attack Jews. It would be good if Americans learned the same lesson, a la Huntington, but without our own Holocaust, I doubt that we will.

So I call horsesh*t on the solipsists on this thread, who would and could live happily in a tolerant and free Israel that is much like the US, but couldn't stand living in any--yes I said any--Arab/Islamic state.

Ah lancelot, so many strawmen, so little time.

"Racist" is the new all-encompassing and all-damning pejorative.

True. But sometimes it fits, and the fact that it is often used incorrectly does not mean that anyone should shy away from using it correctly.

For the record. Racism: The belief that all members of a race possesses characteristics or abilities specific to that race, esp. so as to distinguish it as inferior or superior to another race or races.

I agree with Rod that the Palestinians place more value on having an Islamic or at least Arabist state than they do on wealth. This is a hard thing for Americans to imagine, but its the way of most people in the world. Imagine this: suppose we could be rescued from the current difficulties, but at the cost of accepting Chinese domination of the government and the economy. And anybody who wanted to get ahead in the world had better learn Mandarin, and anybody who wanted to get to work would need to learn to endure checkpoints maned by Chinese soldiers. Would we accept such a "bailout"? Hmmm.

Only by pondering the problem in terms such as this can we appreciate the Palestinian predicament. Now, the Chinese may be our competitors and it is not impossible that they would replace us as the world's economic engine. But they are not likely to be our conquerors. The thought experiment is safely abstract, for the time being. But if you can imagine it, can you also imagine yourself lobbing rockets into Chinese settlements? It is certainly not racist to imagine this situation. Indeed, I suspect that most patriots would not, in such circumstances, be looking for the end of the Chinese, just for the end of an American "Chinese" state in the American homeland, a state we would (likely) never accept. In the same way, the Palestinians will never accept a "Jewish" state in the Arab homeland.

Viewed from this aspect, the support that the "radicals" have among the Arabs is not so inexplicable after all. It was not originally an opposition to the Jews, because Jews have lived peaceably among the Arabs for centuries. It is the founding of a "Jewish" state, a state which privileged people who were most from Europe and nearly all non-Arab. Things have gotten to the point were the Arabs likely will not only not accept a "Jewish" state, they will no longer accept any Jews. Hence, an Arab victory will lead to a holocaust. This is the predicament for Israel: they can't go and they can't stay.

I am not smart enough to see any easy way out of this dilemma, but I am just barely human enough to see why the Arabs act as they do. In similar circumstances, I might very well act the same way myself.

For the record. Racism: The belief that all members of a race possesses characteristics or abilities specific to that race, esp. so as to distinguish it as inferior or superior to another race or races.

And since the Palestinians aren't a "race", generalizing about them isn't racism.

Did anyone even recognize a Palestinian "ethnicity" -- as distinct from that of other Arabs -- before the establishment of Israel?

Rod,

If the Palestinians "hate the Jews more than they love anything else"

(which is, I think, a highly dubious assertion - since "they" like any other ethnically, politically, culturally defined group consist of many different sorts of people, with a wide range of beliefs about and reactions to the world, and determining whether all or even a majority of "them" "hate the Jews" more than they - say - love themselves or their children is humanly - in empirical terms - impossible to determine)

I think it is because they have many good historical reasons.

John Médaille's last post is spot on. If we put the shoe on our foot, and tried imagine our collective reaction if some foreign power colonized New Jersey (about the size of Israel) and expelled nearly all the people living there, razed most of the towns there and built over them, and then oppressed the remaining Americans, I think most of us would react in a far more violent fashion than the Arab or Muslim world has to Israel doing the same thing to them.

There would be blood, and lots of it. A few odd rockets falling on their newly seized territory would be the very least of their problems.

Look at how we reacted to 9/11. Or how many of us react to Mexicans. If the Mexicans behaved like the Hindus in treat Muslims in India (burning down Mormon or Baptist churches in Mexico, lynching Americans in mobs) or the Serbs have so often treated Muslims in Bosnia, the American reaction would be very violent. Look how badly so many of us react when it's simply a question of a bunch of poor Mexicans coming up here to work our fields for 7$ a day (we should be thanking them for all the cheap tomatoes and lettuce on our whoppers, I say - instead "we" want to throw them out.. )

If Mexicans were still carrying on like Pancho Villa or Santa Anna, there would be another war like 1848, or military excursion south, and a very ugly one at that.

So I think you are very unfair to the Palestinians. I've seen the IDF in the territories.. Tanks plowing through towns at will, constant curfews and arbitrary checkpoints, bulldozing the houses of the extended family of anyone remotely associated with any resistance, establishment of illegal settlements on land that - if Israel were in any way serious about peace - would have to belong to the Palestinian state.

That the Palestinians fight back (often with odious tactics, which I heartily condemn) is no surprise.

It's what men do, when they're provoked as they have been. If they won more often and knew how to propagandize the West (like the ANC did, another group that used terrorist tactics) they would have our respect.

But they stink at propaganda, and lose almost all the time. That's why we despise them. Their violence has nothing to do with it.

The Palestinian-Israeli conflict is a hell of a lot more complicated than "The Israelis stole and occupied their land." From what I can remember, there were Muslims AND Jews living in that territory for thousands of years and Jews who started emigrating there well before World War II. There never was a country called Palestine and there was never actually a people called the Palestinians who exercised control over "Palestine":

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestinians

Yes, there are people who lost land and people who lost a war, which is sad, but it's also going on 40 to 60 years ago. Winning nations usually get to dictate terms of the win. Now we have people who have their own territory and still look more interested in launching rockets at civilians in neighboring Israel and suicide bombings and teaching hate to their children than they are in establishing businesses and a decent life for their people.

Nice try, Sigaliris.

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&safe=off&q=female+palestinian+suicide+bombers&btnG=Search

You sexist, you.

"Palestinians are behaving exactly as any other nationality would in response to land being taken that had been theirs for thousands of years."

This is something that supporters of the Israeli side of this conflict willfully ignore, and have ignored since 1948. I strongly suspect that if you took the population of Dallas/Ft. Worth metroplex and forcibly evicted them from their homes, you would have a Texas "Hamas" brewing for battle within a week, and anyone who came in to take over those homes would be targeted. And, quite honestly, I suspect Rod would be out there defending his own family's homestead with whatever resources he had at hand, whether it be rocks or guns.

But, the echo chamber is alive and well here in Crunchy-Con land, so I'll save Rod the trouble.

"RJohnson, if all you can do is disrupt and post anti-Semitic garbage, your posts will be summarily deleted. We don't stand for that kind of garbage here. Go troll somewhere else."

Huntington’s notion of democracy being a product of English Protestantism is true on paper. In practice, it’s a rather more complicated story.

English “democracy” restricted the voting franchise, not just to men but to propertied men, until the early 20th century. Its tradition of local gentry dictating election outcomes has persisted. U.S. political history has followed a parallel course.

In this country, the most English-Protestant regions were the New England Puritan settlements and the South, neither of which were governed democratically, even by 18th- and 19th-century standards. The Puritans fled religious persecution in England, only to practice it in their colonies. Rhode Island was founded as a refuge for dissenters from Puritan theocracy. Massachusetts and South Carolina retained religious tests for decades after the Constitution outlawed them on the federal level.

After the Civil War and Reconstruction, Southern states restricted the franchise through the poll tax, which in the Upper South disenfranchised more poor whites than blacks, until the Supreme Court outlawed it in the mid-1960s. Public dissent from prevailing ideology was – arguably, still is – physically dangerous in many communities in the Deep South and elsewhere.

The creation of “rotten boroughs” in Britain and at-large and gerrymandered districts in the U.S. effectively disenfranchised large numbers of mainly urban voters, a practice that continues in this country. The British House of Lords, an unelected body checking the elected House of Commons, has a U.S. parallel in the Senate, which wasn’t popularly elected until 1917 and whose makeup still grossly over-represents small, mainly rural states.

For the past century, the most democratic U.S. states, in voter participation, access to education and other measures of inclusion in civil society, have been those of the Upper Midwest, which were settled largely by German and Nordic immigrants. Rod’s observation about good governance in Minnesota testifies to Scandinavian, not English, democracy.

The history of democracy in England and its former colonies is one of constant pressure and incremental, fitfull success in overcoming dominance of the political process by lords and squires. Time was, they were landowners. Now they are big-money interests. The struggle is far from over.

As to the cultural question, a reasonable case can be made that the Anglo-American/Protestant social temperament is not exceptionally egalitarian or democratic. It is patriarchal, and highly deferential to traditional authority figures and institutions. It is, at best, reluctantly tolerant of ethnic and religious minorities. It is prone to suppression of dissent, through violence and expulsion if coercion doesn’t work. All of which is to say, it pretty much conforms to the social temperaments of most other cultures.

What’s exceptional is that Anglo-American societies have had geographical escape valves – places like Australia and the American colonies, and subsequently the American West, where non-conformists could flee from persecution. (Other sparsely settled colonial territories, such as North Africa, Brazil and Siberia, have been escape valves for other cultures. Now that Earth is more or less fully settled, future rebels will have to look to outer space.)

Re: Headbanger

"And what could produce such an internally oppressive and externally combative culture as we see among the Palestinians, et al? Well, for a main ingredient, how about a counter-rational, coercive and codged-together religion -- a religion founded on, advanced by and sustained through violent aggression?

Thank God for the courage of the Crusaders or the world might be living in a perpetual 9th century, groveling under the filth and fear of Shari'a, today."

And so it goes! I realize I may be the one who doesn't get it, but how can you disparage a "religion... sustained by violent aggression" in one sentence, and then in the very next thank God for the CRUSADES? First off, at the time of the Crusades, the worlds of Islam and Byzantium were far more advanced (and dare I say civilized) than Western Christendom, so this talk of a "perpetual 9th century" is a bit much.

And this is from a side that tells how reasonable they are? Forgive me, but "I'm glad we slaughtered their innocents centuries ago," sounds a bit emotive. Or do you really not understand what the Crusades were? Are you glad the Crusaders sacked Constantinople, too?

So you're thankful for the Crusades, but view anyone thankful for Jihad as irredeemably barbaric? This lack of perspective is precisely the problem. "When they are violent and aggressive, it's bad and evidence of barbarism. Our violent aggression is a sign of an enlightened conscience! When they attack innocents, it's vile and disgusting. When we attack innocents, it's a useful measure of deterrence."

This is the basic problem with the Israeli-Palestinian situation as discussed in the U.S. Rather than attempting to gain some perspective on the issue, many people are content to identify with one side on a strictly emotional/tribal basis. Israelis apparently are more "like us" in some cultural way, so emotionally taking their side (and rationalizing it later) is a-okay. Why else would admitting the basic humanity of Palestinians somehow become grounds for thought-crime?

Before I get too carried away, let me just say this: what I'm reacting to here is a mentality that seems to delight in violence and the dehumanization of one side of this conflict. Any time we even open the door to "you see, they're not like us, so..." we start to lose OUR humanity.

Face the facts: Israelis are people. Palestinians are people. No amount of "cultural difference" makes the murder of their innocents justifiable.

Would anyone who stated that allowing Hamas to actually govern would result in it becoming moderate like to recant now?

Betty, there is some irony in trying to compare this conflict to a fanciful takeover of Scotland by Calvinists; Scotland has been Calvinist (Presbyterian) since the 16th Century and John Knox. But I know what you meant.

Allbetsareoff, the franchise was limited not just to men, and not just to propertied men, but to propertied Anglican men

John Medaille,
I didn't pick Scotland out of the blue. They used to be fiercely Calvinist a long time ago--now, for the most part, they're fiercely liberal or nothing (with a few holdouts). Some of the old churches are bars. I have friends who are Reformed missionaries there and they advertise themselves as "going back to heal our mother." This is why it seems funny to compare it to Israel around the time of the Zionist settlements there (imagine Calvinists returning to the ancient homeland)

By the way, Rod,

I'll repeat now: ethnicity is not the same thing as culture.

Consider the definition: ethnicity: the fact or state of belonging to a social group that has a common national or cultural tradition.

Either you or the Oxford American Dictionary is wrong.

Ha ha ha.

Are you familiar with the term "tergiversation", Rod? That certainly is an awful lot of effort you're going to to show that, no, it definitely isn't racist to think that Palestinians don't like peace and prosperity and are incapable of democracy, no sirree, definitely not, absolutely.

Re: I didn't pick Scotland out of the blue.

You know, a better analogy would be the settlement of the Scots-Irish in Northern Ireland, with the objections of the dispoessessed native Irish. The Scots-Irish did have Irish ancestry (the Celtic Scots came from Ireland early in the Midle Ages) and they belonged to a religion that was at serious variance to the religion of the natives. Of course, the Scots-Irish had experiened no Holocaust at home, only grinding poverty. But no little violence has resulted from their emigration.

Hmmm....could the differences in governing have something to do with proximity to the equator? I know, stupid thought. Every example you used for good self-governing people are Northern societies and every example used of poor self-governing peoples are Southern societies.

Just a thought.

Otherwise, the essay is execellent and I agree with you. It takes courage to point out the obvious and challenge the word usage. Telling the truth has always taken courage. Keep up the good work.

"This is historical nonsense. By the time of the Crusades (12th not 9th century by the way), Islamic civilization had already become fractured, weak and decadent and was no threat to Europe, which is why the Crusades were even possible and why they enjoyed their initial success. True, the Turks were a threat to Byzantium, but that's another matter entirely-- and the idiot Crusaders ignored the Turks entirely; hence their long term failure."

Perhaps it is my imagination that the Ottoman Empire kept invading Europe until the Nineteenth Century...although I allow that you are talking about an earlier period. In any event, the Crusades were a direct response to Islamic imperialism and invasions of Christian kingdoms in North Africa and Iberia. The Crusade led by the Good Sir James Douglas of Scotland (also known as the Black Douglas) fought in Spain at the behest of the Spanish against the Moors. Muslim raiders and slave expeditions continued to plague and harry Christian nations through the Middle Ages.

Just a point of clarification: "invasion" is not an accurate term. The Ottoman Empire already extended into the European continent, and it was a full-fledged war between the Ottomans and Hapsburgs up to that point. The Battle of Vienna was the decisive defeat for the Ottomans, and during the next few years they withdrew considerably from previously held territories (Hungary, notably).

The boundary eventually settled on the Croatia-Serbia frontier, helping to define and cement the ethnic and religious hostility between those two cultures through the modern era, and setting the mish-mash of cultures and religion in Bosnia-Herzegovina.