“The Future Is Being Bulldozed”

Posted on by under cancel culture, moralism, Palestine

An email to me from a reader of the blog who asked to remain anonymous. As it happens, about a month ago, I wrote to two of the Times’s correspondents, Jeffrey Gettleman and Edward Wong, asking similar questions about their coverage of the West Bank. I have yet to hear back from either of them.

This report from a guest reporter to the NY Times is so different in so many ways from the dozens of other pieces, both news and opinion, that they publish. It reports from places where their own reporters never set foot, describes places and events in a specific and granular manner, directly quotes both Palestinians and settlers’ real words rather than quoting only official propaganda statements, and includes the relevant historical context of the places in the report. Continue reading →

Blathering at the Abyss: Bret Stephens on Ukraine

Posted on by under Ukraine

It’s said that you should never judge a book by its cover, but there’s a lot to be learned about a piece of writing from how it begins.* The opening to a piece of writing often marks out what the author takes to be uncontroversial, and in so doing, reveals the assumptions that structure his thought.

This column by Bret Stephens (back in September) is intended as a cautious defense of the presidency of Joe Biden. It opens with this apparently uncontroversial claim—or set of claims–about the war in Ukraine.

We are inflicting a strategic humiliation on Russia by arming Ukraine without putting American forces at risk.

A single sentence can assert several propositions at once. The preceding one asserts at least three: Continue reading →

Nationalism and Liberalism: ‘Policy of Truth’ at the APA

Posted on by under General announcements, liberty and the left, Palestine

Just a quick announcement that there will be something of a PoT presence at the American Philosophical Association’s Eastern Division meeting this January in New York (to be held at the opulent, hence utterly unaffordable Sheraton New York Times Square). Roderick Long has, through the Molinari Society, arranged a two-part session for Tuesday afternoon, January 16th: “Nation-States, Nationalism, and Oppression” in the 2-3:50 pm slot (Session G7C, listed at APA Draft Program, p. 33), and “Topics in Radical Liberalism” in the 4-5:50 pm slot (Session G8C, listed at APA Draft Program, p. 37). I’ll be presenting some version of my PoT blog post, “Teaching Machiavelli in Palestine” in the first of the two sessions. Continue reading →

From Apartheid to Genocide: Israel in Gaza

Posted on by under Palestine

Blood on all our hands
We cannot hope to wash them clean
History is mystery
Do you know what it means?
Motorhead, “Brotherhood of Man“

In an earlier post, I wrote:

Whether I end up keeping the resolution or not, and barring some extraordinary event that absolutely “demands” comment, my aim is to keep my counsel for the next full year, from now until the beginning of November 2024.

That “extraordinary event” is here. Israel’s open, unapologetic attacks on the medical system of both Gaza and the West Bank are a conclusive indication that we’ve reached a macabre turning point in this “war.” Continue reading →

Teaching Osama bin Laden’s “Letter to the Americans”

Posted on by under Palestine

I’m told that Osama bin Laden’s 2002 “Letter to the Americans” is currently trending on TikTok, and that some people have encountered my short pedagogical paper about it from the Winter 2017 issue of Reason Papers.

The paper began life as a presentation to the 2011 conference of the Association of Core Texts and Courses, which explains the somewhat cryptic references in it to “dialectic” and “the Core” (“dialectic” was, if I remember, part of the official theme of the conference). The presentation later became a contribution to RP‘s “Afterwords” section, where it was called “You’ve Got Mail: Teaching Osama bin Laden’s ‘Letter to the Americans,‘” Reason Papers 39:2 (9 page PDF). Continue reading →

How to Fix the United States

Posted on by under book announcement

How to Fix the United States: Amendments and a Constitutional Convention

At this point, it must be obvious to everyone paying attention that the United States is a nation in deep trouble. Over the last two decades, both the effectiveness and democratic credentials of the US federal government have gone into decline, which has helped to drive increasing political polarization and public frustration that steepens the decline. More of the public turn to extremist politicians promising to eviscerate their political enemies, which makes the compromises needed in the American federal system totally impossible. Even the basics cannot get done: a single senator holds up over 300 military officer promotions for many months; a group of six radical House members out of 435 cause a government shutdown by holding up funding bills. Continue reading →

Bi’l Haq, B’Sabr

Posted on by under Palestine

By the passage of time
Surely humanity is in grave loss
Except those who have faith, do good, urge each other to the truth (bi’l haq), and urge each other to perseverance (b’sabr).
–“Al Asr,” Qur’an 103:1-3

After some thought, I’ve decided to keep the implicit resolution I made in this post awhile back, and take a break from public commentary on Israel and Palestine, and for the most part from blogging and social media altogether. Whether I end up keeping the resolution or not, and barring some extraordinary event that absolutely “demands” comment, my aim is to keep my counsel for the next full year, from now until the beginning of November 2024. Continue reading →

Health Facilities and Human Shields

Posted on by under Palestine

It’s frequently asserted as an unchallengeable axiom that Hamas uses health facilities as a base of military operations, so that Israel is forced–by Hamas’s callous, murderous use of human shields–to target these facilities. I’m very skeptical of this claim, but let me set that particular skepticism aside for now. Consider this item below, which comes from a neutral third party, the World Health Organization (WHO). What it reports is a series of Israeli attacks on Palestinian health facilities.

Let’s suppose that Hamas does indeed use health facilities as a base of operations, thereby treating the patients and staff as innocent human shields. Still, that claim leaves us with a quantitative problem. How often? Put another way, how do we determine, in particular cases, whether this accusation is true? (a) Do we simply treat it as an axiom that regulates any evidence we receive about Palestinian health facilities hit by Israeli fire? Or (b) do we treat each case on its own merits, granting as much credence to the “human shield” hypothesis as is warranted by the evidence in each case, and taking it from there? Continue reading →

The Epistemology of Mass Death

Posted on by under Palestine

Does the item below reflect a good faith attempt to avoid civilian casualties, or does it express a cynical, murderous attempt to demand the impossible, then set up a pretext for the mass killing of large swatches of north Gaza (in principle all of it)–and as much of south Gaza as Israel chooses to hit, while demanding that the northern population flee there?

To belabor the obvious: both hypotheses are in play, as are all of the ones intermediate between them. Strictly speaking, the evidence neither rules in nor rules out either hypothesis. But no impartial observer could say that American political discourse is structured by the preceding fact. The obvious, ubiquitous epistemic imperative appears to be: rule out the latter, “pretext-for-mass-killing” hypothesis a priori, on pain of being labeled a terrorist-sympathizer, an anti-Semite, or a traitor. Why? Are we not permitted even ex hypothesi to consider the ascription of malign motives to Israel? In that case, I guess I’m not interested in getting anyone’s permission before I do.

Continue reading →