Taught to hate America?

There's an idea afoot—I've seen it on Twitter but I assume it is common elsewhere as well—that blames the state of America on college professors. The specific claim is that our society is laboring under a number of dysfunctional principles—principles that are summarized as "woke" and that relate to such topics as sex, gender, race, and the correct uses of police authority. The suggestion is, further, that these principles have been smuggled into modern consciousness by college professors teaching "Critical Theory." While only a small percentage of students come anywhere near a class that might be flavored by even a hint of Critical Theory itself, the idea seems to be that it serves as some kind of leavening agent, so that a tiny bit can transform the whole of higher education.

However things may stand with Critical Theory narrowly-construed, it is undeniable that overall the attitudes on campus have changed in the last 75 years with respect to patriotism, government, and the American Founding, to say nothing of sex, gender, race, and the police. And so it is natural to wonder Why? What has caused this change?

The accusation from the modern Right appears to be that it all started with a cabal of radical professors (perhaps European émigrés fleeing World War Two) who hated and resented America's foundational principles and who therefore taught their students to do likewise. The students, in turn, were too simple and naïf to suspect their professors of perfidy, and therefore passively accepted the hatred of America that they were taught in class. And so, over the course of about a generation, everything that Americans used to believe about themselves was brought into disrepute. And here we are.

It's a clear picture, and it has the virtue of simplicity. But I don't think it's true. Of course something like it might have happened here or there once or twice in an incidental way, but I think it can't be the whole or main explanation.

In the first place, the explanation is too clear and simple: whenever you hear someone blame a broad social change on a handful of deliberate bad actors you should be suspicious, because bad actors rarely have that kind of power by themselves.

In the second place, it's nothing like what I remember. I went to college in the late 1970's and early 1980's, exactly the time period in which this project (if it ever existed) should have been getting well under way. The overall ethos of the college I attended was aggressively left-wing. And yet I would not say that any of my professors hated America.

It is true that there was a strain of the left-wing sentiment which bordered on disloyalty. And if you had asked me to explain it back then, I could only have pointed to isolated bits of the larger picture. Not many years before, Richard Nixon had left the White House in disgrace and everyone knew he been caught lying to the American public. His record destroyed the trust in our government that many Americans had felt beforehand. Inside the academic world, scholars like Charles A. Beard had argued years before that the Constitution was written to protect the property of rich men, an explanation which was rather different from what most of us had learned in high school. These bits and bobs contributed to an air that felt edgy and exciting; and, as I say, in extreme cases it may have bordered on disloyalty. But it wasn't that any of my professors ever hated America.

To get to the true explanation, I think we have to look at that edginess, and how exciting it felt. And it is critical to remember that America is, in its fundamental character, violent and aggressive. Therefore we honor courage. We honor those who stand up to powers stronger than they are … especially those who stand up and win. Even among the "woke," we give the greatest honor to those who fight against the greatest odds: Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King Jr., or Che Guevara. In fact, I think these figures are honored far more for their courage than for the causes that they supported. Even people who are unclear what exactly these figures stood for admire their courage.

Young students want to make names for themselves. They desperately want and need to be brave. In the 1860's young men proved themselves by enlisting to fight in the Civil War; in the 1940's young men dropped out of school and enlisted to fight in World War Two. As long as our country faced foreign enemies that could credibly threaten us, young men (at any rate) proved their courage by joining the armed forces to fight in defense of our country.

But by the 1960's and 1970's, we had run out of such enemies. Notionally there was still a threat that we could be annihilated by nuclear war with the Soviet Union; but nobody lived their lives in that fear. We all figured that if it happened, it happened; but there was no room for courage when one was threatened by an atomic bomb. And other than the Soviet Union, our enemies were … who exactly? Vietnam? Grenada? It's true that we lost the Vietnam War in any meaningful sense, but nobody ever pretended that Vietnam could seriously threaten the United States. And Grenada? Oh please.

For all practical purposes, that left the ambitious young of this country only one meaningful enemy that they could feel brave by opposing: the United States itself. To the extent that we were seduced into disloyalty or something like it, it was because we wanted to be brave and daring; and our own government was the only available enemy strong enough that it required courage to oppose them. So my classmates opposed the government in order to show that they were brave and independent. My classmates opposed the government because only in such opposition could they display the martial courage that they needed so desperately to maintain their self-esteem. 

Maybe in another country this would have worked out differently. But we are Americans. We are a country made by war, a country marked by violent self-assertion. We are happiest fighting the good fight against terrible odds. So when we won—when we ran out of credible enemies to fight—how could it have been any surprise when our best and most talented youth began fighting against our own institutions?

Who needs professors to teach us to hate America, when the students will pick up the fight on their own initiative?      

          

The tragedy of Israel and Palestine

This is a post that I have been slow to write. I figured out a while ago what I wanted to say—a year? Two years? I forget. But actually putting my fingers on the keyboard is work; so for some time now I've told myself, "There'll be a time to do that later."

But maybe that time is now.

Yesterday, October 7, 2023, the Palestinian militant and nationalist organization Hamas launched an attack on the State of Israel out of the Gaza Strip. Today, October 8, Israel retaliated against the Palestinian population in Gaza, and formally declared war against Hamas. [As a pedantic aside, I didn't know it was possible to declare war against anything but a sovereign state, which Hamas is not. But my thinking is probably out of date.] 

The news is horrifying. Whichever side you support, there is enough news about the atrocities committed by the other side to enrage you. Twitter is a complete mess.

But which side should we support? If we take a step back and look at the situation through a philosophic lens, which side is right and which is wrong? I started this blog with a commitment to the idea that philosophy can be naïve and practical, and to the related idea that the things in our world have a nature and a purpose. That should mean that we can ask questions about right and wrong. So let's ask. Who is right, and who is wrong?

Why blame gets us nowhere

I'll give my answer first, and then I'll give my reasons for it. Yes, it is fair to ask about right and wrong, but in this particular case the question gets us nowhere. The conflict between Israel and Palestine is not a morality play, with heroes and villains. No, the conflict between Israel and Palestine is a tragedy in all the most classical senses of the word: it has been and continues to be very destructive; it was inevitable; and there is no way out. I do not see any chance for a happy ending.

I'm sorry. I wish it were different.

Partisans on each side will be furious with me for refusing to denounce the Other Side as the malicious Bad Guys who started the whole mess. But when I make this refusal, I am not indulging in easy or unthinking both-sides-ism. Let me try to explain.

In the first place, the history of the conflict is very crowded with incident and circumstance. Whatever date you pick as a starting point (the founding of Israel in 1948 is a popular choice), a lot has happened between then and now to cause rancor, grief, and rage. Any attempt to parse through this history to find the true Guilty Parties will take a very long time (because there is so much of it), but in the end the analysis is guaranteed to terminate in the following hard facts (among others).

There have been incidents when particular Israelis have treated particular Palestinians with cruelty and violence and injustice. A complete history will include many such incidents.

There have been incidents when particular Palestinians have treated particular Israelis with cruelty and violence and injustice. A complete history will include many such incidents.

When the particular Israelis that I just mentioned above mistreated particular Palestinians, they were certain that they were morally justified in what they did, because of some earlier mistreatment that had been inflicted on them personally or on someone they cared for.

When the particular Palestinians that I just mentioned above mistreated particular Israelis, they were certain that they were morally justified in what they did, because of some earlier mistreatment that had been inflicted on them personally or on someone they cared for.

A truly complete history—the kind of history that only Divine Omniscience could compile or understand—would include a long-enough train of such actions followed by such reactions that any human who tried to analyze it would lose the thread or fall asleep before he got even halfway through.

In other words, there is simply too much history here—and entirely too much righteousness—for any philosophic understanding of the recurrent claims and counterclaims to be possible. The only way anyone can extract a moral from this history is by deliberately ignoring half of it. There was probably one person responsible for starting the Hatfield-McCoy feud as well, but after enough years the identity of the varmint who started it all just didn't matter any more.*

Therefore, the Moral Framework implied by the question "Who is to blame?" gets us nowhere. Is there another framework we can use instead?

Israel as a colonial power

Indeed there is. We could use a Historical Framework, to see Israel as the very last of the European colonial powers that dominated the world in the nineteenth century. The proposal to see Zionism as a form of settler colonialism is controversial; Wikipedia states that the idea "is rejected by most Israeli Jews and perceived either as an attack on the legitimacy of Israel or a form of antisemitism."** But if you consider the question at a purely factual level, and not as an attack or a piece of propaganda, this framework does have a few points in its favor.

Wikipedia defines "settler colonialism" (in part) as follows:

Settler colonialism is a form of colonization where foreign citizens move into a region and create permanent … settlements …. The creation of settler colonies often resulted in the forced migration of indigenous peoples to less desirable territories …. Many settler colonies sought to establish European-like institutions and practices that granted certain personal freedoms and allowed settlers to become wealthy by engaging in trade. Thus, jury trials, freedom from arbitrary arrest, and electoral representation were implemented to allow settlers rights similar to those enjoyed in Europe, ….***

And can anyone deny that this exactly describes the establishment of the State of Israel inside the territory of the British Mandate for Palestine?

• Foreign citizens (mostly from Europe) moved into the area. (Indeed, even today 50% of the Jewish population of Israel traces their origins to Europe or Russia.)****
• The settlement of these Europeans in the Levant forced the migration of indigenous peoples (the Palestinians) to somewhere else.
• And the State of Israel established political institutions that look remarkably like the institutions of the European countries that they left.

Of course there are differences too—there are always differences whenever you consider any historical analogy. I dare say that even if you look at two instances of undeniable "settler colonialism" you will find important differences between them. But the similarities are suggestive enough that the analogy is intriguing.

But stick with me for a minute.

If you take the framework of settler colonialism seriously, the first thing that strikes you unavoidably is how much gentler has been the Israeli occupation of Palestine than any other instance you care to name. I'm an American, so the easiest example for me to think of is how the British settlers who colonized North America treated the American Indians. Spoiler alert: it wasn't good! Earlier in this essay I alluded to the many cases of mistreatment of (particular) Palestinians at the hands of (particular) Israelis: now having said that (and I stand by it), I also insist that this mistreatment—bad as it has been!—does not even remotely rise to the level of callous brutality that marked the long wars between the fledgling United States and the tribes who were here first.

Because this is a contentious issue and it is easy to misunderstand what anybody says about it, let me be very clear about two things:

• To my mind, calling the Israelis "colonialists" does not indict them!
• And also, to my mind, saying that the Israelis haven't been as brutal as the Americans does not exonerate them! 

All I'm trying to do is to get a view of what has been going on for the last 75 years. It's not easy, and I hope that this framework can help. And the answer is, well sure … maybe. But now that I've painted this picture, what comes next?

The fundamental question

It almost looks like I have stacked the argument against the State of Israel at this point. Colonialism is out of fashion these days. The polite, accepted opinion of the educated and comfortable classes around the world is that colonialism is bad. So if I describe Israel as a colonial power, somebody might think that I mean to condemn her. More pointedly, if we all politely agree that colonialism is bad … well, presumably that means we all think the colonization shouldn't have happened. The State of Israel was declared only 75 years ago, which is pretty recent in historical terms. In fact that was right about the time that European colonies the world over were getting their freedom. If the world had come to agree that colonialism was bad, why did the world allow the creation of one more European colony at that exact time, a colony which by necessity of its nature would end up mistreating the indigenous people it displaced?

Of course we all know, historically, why the State of Israel was established just then. So let me turn the question around and ask: If colonization is always so bad, what exactly was the alternative?

More pointedly: Where exactly were the Jews of Europe supposed to go after 1945, if not to Palestine? 

• Their recent treatment by Hitler's Reich had made it pretty clear that they couldn't trust Europe any more, since the most civilized and cultivated country in Europe had just come close to exterminating the European Jewish population.
• And every other piece of dry ground on the planet already had other people living there! 

When the Great Powers deliberated after World War Two and looked for a place that the Jews could safely resettle, suppose they picked somewhere else: Arizona, or Madagascar, or Tibet.***** Name a place. Wherever you choose, there would have been somebody else already living there. And that means that the very same dynamic which has defined the Israeli-Palestinian conflict would have played out in the other place instead.

As soon as it became clear that the world's Jews could not feel safe among the goyyim, as soon as anyone decided that a Jewish State was the best security against the annihilation of the Jewish people—from that moment, it became certain that the new Jewish State would have to be a colonial one. From that moment, the current conflict in Palestine became inevitable. Of course it might have taken place somewhere else: Arizona, or Madagascar, or Tibet. But it was always sure to happen. 

That's why I call this conflict a tragedy. It's destructive; it's inevitable; and I don't see any way out.

I'd love to be wrong, though.   

__________

* You are entitled to ask, "But isn't that just both-sides-ism after all?" Maybe. Call it that if you like. But it is categorically not easy or unthinking. If this is both-sides-ism, it is nonetheless reasoned.   

** https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zionism_as_settler_colonialism#Reception. Link copied 2023-10-08.  

*** https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analysis_of_Western_European_colonialism_and_colonization#Settler_colonialism. Link copied 2023-10-08. 

**** https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israel#Demographics. Link copied 2023-10-08. 

***** So far as I know, nobody suggested any of these specific places in real life. They are just crazy examples that I made up. But the point is that it doesn't matter where you picked, because the same thing would have happened regardless.