The Eric Metaxas Show - Yoram Hazony

Episode Date: September 2, 2020

Bible scholar and political theorist Yoram Hazony talks with Eric from Israel and expresses concerns with the direction of our country, focusing on ideas from his next book, "The Virtue of Nationalism."

the announcer and Eric is the host, but they name the show after the host. You have no idea who I am, do you? Well, do you? Mommy. Papa, do you know who I am? Mommy? Now your host, Eric Mataxis. Hey, the folks, welcome to the Eric Mataxis show. This, of course, as you know, I think, is the show about everything. We love to talk to all kinds of people from all walks of life about all kinds of subjects. Today, I have to tell you, I'm excited. I have someone about whom I've heard so much. You're Hazoni. Have you heard of him? Well, stick around. He is an Israeli philosopher, Bible scholar, political theorist, award-winning author of the philosophy of Hebrew scripture. And more recently, the virtue of nationalism, his writing has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times,

too, NPR, and he's the president of the Herzl Institute in Jerusalem. You're a welcome of the program. Thank you, Eric. Good to see you. And are you now in Jerusalem? I am. I thought so. I'm amazed.

I've only been there once, but that's kind of a quite a distance. Thank you for working with us on the time zone issue. There's so much I want to talk to you about. You've had some articles out recently. What's on your mind currently before we get into the bigger, deeper, deeper issues? Well, believe it or not, What I'm worried about here in Jerusalem right now is the future of America, which is kind of a change.

Usually, Americans are justifiably worried about Israel's future. But right now, Israel looks pretty good. And I am scared to death for the future of the United States, a country which I care about deeply. And why then, as an Israeli, do you care so much about the United States? Well, first of all, I don't want to be false in advertising. I actually am an American citizen. So I have a certain obligation to care. But other than that, the most wonderful experiment

in creating a nation in recent centuries, a country that has been very often a force for moral good and contributing something fantastic to the world and to see it being brought to the point of civil rupy, by internal hatred that's being fueled by what's effectively an updated Marxist ideology. It's scary. And I don't think that the rest of the democratic worlds can do so well without the United States either.

It's not, you know, I always hate agreeing with folks like you who say that. But I do agree utterly with every syllable you've just spoken. I think that the key right now is communicating these things to those who are on the fence. Those people who really, they're scratching their heads, they don't know what to think, and they don't understand what American-style liberty and self-government is, where it came from. You talk about the roots of it coming, you know, through Protestant Reformation's linking back to the Old Testament Hebrew covenant world. As a Jew who is currently in Jerusalem,

talk about that a little bit because there are many, many Americans who simply have no clue about those roots of freedom. I think this is something that Christians used to know pretty well. There's a family of nations that gained their independence

in the 1500s, 1600s, 1700s, I'm thinking about countries first like England, Scotland, the Netherlands, Switzerland, and ultimately America. And all of these countries are countries which, although obviously a Christian in their heritage, but their politics, their ideal of national independence, their ideal of national freedom. of, you know, the minimum justice that a society has to do in order to be legitimate. All of these ideas were explicitly Old Testament ideas. And in fact, in all of these countries, there were significant thinkers who saw their country poetically as the New Israel from Scripture. It's a little bit different from the older idea of the church as New Israel. Here the idea was, we the English or we the Dutch, we the Americans, we are in fact adopting those Old Testament ideals of independence and freedom and justice, and we're going to implement them here in this land.

So those are all nations that are in a sense a family of biblical, biblically inspired, biblically rooted nations, and in that sense also very close to Israel. Well, it's amazing to me that even folks like Ben Franklin, who were certainly not a theologically Orthodox Christian, nonetheless understood these things. All of the founders understood these things and saw America as a new Israel. Of course, we have Lincoln, as a young man, calling America God's almost chosen people. They understood very clearly what, as you just said, we have mostly forgotten. I've done my best to talk about it in my book, if you can keep it in other places. But I guess in your book, the virtue of nationalism, you deal with this issue. How do you answer people who say patriotism is good, nationalism is bad?

Maybe we have to clarify our terms. So what do you mean by nationalism? Well, I use the word nationalism in a traditional way that is, very common in countries that use that term. Countries like Ireland or Israel or India still have the positive nationalism, where nationalism is considered to be a principled stand that says that nations should, that the world does govern best when nations are allowed to chart their own course independently. And of course, that view of the good, the inherent good of a world of independent nations, that is what brought independence to nations across Europe and across Asia and in other parts of the world during the 20th century. So if you ask me, what's the difference between patriotism and nationalism, they're pretty close to one another.

patriotism is usually used to describe a feeling that you have towards your own country. So you say, I'm a patriot when you're talking about the love of your own country. But patriotism isn't a word that can apply to kind of like a broad, worldwide political theory when we're talking about a worldview that says the world is best governed when nations are free. That kind of a general view is usually called nationalism. Well, and of course, speaking as a Jew, you're not talking about nationalism the way the national socialists talked about nationalism. That's what I find, you know, comical that people's sense of history is so tremendously shallow and abbreviated that when they hear a term like nationalism, they have no context.

They have no ability to understand what it really would mean. And they immediately say, well, that's Hitler, right? I mean, he believed in, you know, the state and the power of the state. And the irony, of course, is that when we would talk about nationalism, we're talking about self-governing people. We're not talking about an all-powerful state Leviathan. We're talking about just the opposite, quite frankly. Well, that's, in fact, the case that I tried to make in the book, the virtue of nationalism,

is that if we use the word nationalism in this kind of traditional, anti-colonial kind of sense, the way that I'm using it, nationalism is basically the idea that people should be freed, from empire. Like when one nation decides that it should rule, you know, the whole world or a quarter of the world, because it can do a better job governing, you know, all of those other nations, we call that imperialism. And so imperialism in this tradition, imperialism is kind of the opposite of nationalism. Nationalism is when you want to govern your own country and you're willing to let your

neighbors govern themselves. Imperialism is when you say, well, that's not working. How about if we just conquer everybody and we'll take care of things? Well, that's very, very well said. We're living in absurd times. People like me who wrote a book, Lawting William Wilberforce, who ended the slave trade in the British Empire and being accused of being a white nationalist. I mean, we're living in very strange times, which is why it's so valuable to have you.

We'll be right back, folks. I'm talking to Yoram Hazzoni. Don't go away. Welcome back. It's the Eric Mataxas show. I'm talking to Yoram Hazoni, or as many Americans would say, Yoram Hazoni. I got to tell you, Yoram, you're speaking about nationalism as a Jew living in Jerusalem at present, even though you said you're an American citizen. It's very important we get your perspective because you would think if you listen to the mainstream media that anybody, who even leans toward nationalism is pro-Hittler. I mean, it's so stupid. I've written a 600-page book against Adolf Hitler, but we are at this stage where the demonization of one's political opponents is scorched earth. I've never seen anything like it. It's horrifying, and it reminds me of some of the ugliest moments in the last century where there's no room for civil discussion.

once there is no room for civil discussion, there's no room for freedom. There's no room for self-government. And I fear that the left by allowing itself to go in such radical direction so quickly in their hatred of Donald Trump is doing it a service to everyone, including themselves. Yeah, you know, I think we're probably about the same age. I also don't, I'm sure that we've never seen in our lifetimes this degree of, of hatred. Now, that's not to say that there wasn't, you know, hatred. I mean, I remember when Ronald Reagan was president, people hated him. And when the Bushes were president, people hated them. And they certainly talked, you know, as though they were fascists and monsters and

all the rest. But what's changed, I think what's clearly changed is the next step, which is the willingness to withdraw legitimacy from a Republican president. That's something that we've never seen before. Even though people hated Reagan, they still understood that he was a legitimate president, meaning that there's a deal between the Democratic Party and the Republican Party, and that deal is, instead of shooting each other in the streets, the way we decide who's going to get to rule is in periodic elections. And when I win, you grant me legitimacy, meaning you support my ruling. You're going to be the loyal opposition. And when you win, I do the same for you. That's the basic rule in democracy, which prevents constant civil war. And it seems to me that with the

resistance, with the concept of trying to at all cost remove the elected president and not recognize his legitimacy, in fact, I mean, on social media, I see, I see people put in president in quotation marks, you know, like president quotation marks Donald Trump, as though he's not the actual president. People don't seem to understand that this constant delegitimization, first of Donald Trump, but then also of everybody works with him. And then after that, of everybody who votes for him, that constant delegitimization simply is the road to civil war. And if you don't want civil war, then you've got to back. away from that and be willing to grant the legitimacy of the other guy when he wins the election.

I think the reason for some of this madness is that we have had formerly respected leaders on the Republican side decide that they're going to publicly come out for Joe Biden. This is, in fact, unprecedented. And I can see how people would be confused. In other words, when you have somebody like a John Kasich or some of these folks, whether it's Colin Powell or others coming out for Biden, you think, first of all, it's hard to believe they could be that dumb. I have to be honest, that they would have more sophistication and really understand what's going on. But I think what they don't appreciate is that, first of all, Joe Biden is not going to govern. I mean, he has been propped up very, very clearly and dramatically by many people who think of him as a or who think of his previous policies as fascist or as right wing or as racist, but they're using him conveniently now simply to get rid of Trump. That is itself bizarre.

And I do think that, you know, the problem is who elected Trump? America elected Trump. It's very simple. His base didn't elect him. America elected him. We had an election and he won rather clearly. And so the idea of delegitimizing him is to delegitimize the American people. It's to delegitimize everything that we stand for.

That, to me, is what is existentially horrifying. And as you say, will lead to civil war if we don't avert it. Yeah, look, I think the reason things are so confused is because we really are watching a realignment. you know, what political scientists call it a realignment of the political party system. So it's true that there are all sorts of former Bush supporters who are endorsing Biden because their worldview really is closer to Biden's than it is to Trump's. But at the same time, we got to see in the last election many former Obama voters in entire counties that had gone for Obama, which switched sides to Trump,

And there are, there's all sorts of working class people who are lifelong Democrats who look at the new nationalist agenda of the emerging Republican Party. And they say, well, that, that, I'm much closer to that traditionalist nationalism or that national conservatism. That speaks to me as a traditional Democrat, whereas, you know, these guys running, you know, global, the global corporations and the forever wars, that doesn't speak to me at all. So we are seeing people switching in dramatic ways in both directions. It's clear that that makes things confusing for people. But none of that is justification for crossing those red lines and saying you're not going to recognize the other side if they win the election.

And I think that that's something that Americans should really be demanding of leaders. on all sides is asking them directly. This is what should be asked in press conferences. Are you saying that the other side is not legitimate? A few days ago, Nancy Pelosi talked about the people living in the White House as the enemies of the state. And I'm sure Republicans have also said things that are that bad or almost that bad. And what journalists or just citizens should be asking, when somebody says something like

That is, can you be perfectly careful with your words and clear? Are you saying that the other political party is not legitimate? Because you understand that once you say that, you've given the sign for violent overthrow of that party if it takes office. That's exactly right. Before we get too far, I want to ask you, what is the Herzl Institute in Jerusalem? You are the president of that. What is the Herzl Institute? Well, as you probably know, but maybe not all your viewers know,

Theodore Herzl was the founder of the Zionist movement, which is the modern movement end of the 19th century for the establishment of an independent Jewish state in the Middle East. So he's both the practical politician, but also the theorist of the idea of bringing the Jews back to their homeland. And the Herzl Institute, we have a double mission. We both are devoted to teaching about Herzl's nationalism and his legacy and his ideas in Hebrew here in Israel. And at the same time, we also participate along with other organizations from other countries to advance a democratic nationalism, a democratic national conservatism among all democratic nations.

And what is your story? In other words, were you born in Israel and became an American citizen? Or did you move there more recently? I was born. I was born in Israel. My parents moved to the states when I was one year old. So I grew up there and I picked up the New Jersey accent that you can hear. And went to your alma mater. And there I met my wife, Julie. We got married on the campus and then moved back to Israel. And now it's a generation later. We have nine kids. We just had our first grandson. Nine kids.

That is wonderful. Very, very impressive. My goodness. And you had your first grandson. You don't seem old enough. But congratulations. Or as we say in New York, Mazel Tov. So let me ask you then,

raising all those kids in Israel. We, you know, in the United States, I think it's always strange because you have many Jews who are pro-Trump. I mean, where I live, all of the more religious Jews are very pro-Trump. And then the less religious Jews seem to hate Trump. It's kind of a, it's the way things break down. But I think it's very interesting this president's views toward Israel, moving the embassy, the Golan Heights thing. So when we come back, we'll talk about that. Talking to Yoram Hazzoni, we'll be right back.

Hey there, folks. I'm talking to Yoram H-A-Z-O-N-Y. You can find him at Jerusalemletters.com. He's the head of the Herzl Institute in Jerusalem. And I have to ask you, how do you pronounce Jerusalem? them. Jerusalem. That's wrong.

It's Jerusalem. Yeah, Rishalime. I love it. Okay, so let me just say that, you know, the relationship that America has had with Israel is an extraordinary one. It's kind of like a relationship with England. Why do you suppose this president has understood that in a way that seems to be the opposite of the way that Obama, understood it or misunderstood it. Well, he certainly has a personal, you know, a family background with,

he has Jewish grandchildren. He has all sorts of Jewish business partners from New York. So I'm sure that there's all sorts of personal biographical information that's relevant to answering that question. But I think the main point actually is something different, which is that Donald Trump is an instinctive nationalist. He believes in the idea that nations should be free to pursue their own course. He doesn't like empires. He doesn't want America to be an empire. And instinctively, when he looks at other countries, he respects those countries that are seeking to become strong independent nations.

So he's naturally drawn to Israel in part because I think he feels that Israel is a model of a small, country that is fighting still to make sure that it's permanent on the map. And I think that you see that same kind of sympathy from Trump and from the Trump administration when he went to visit Poland. I think he feels towards Poland something very analogous to the way that he feels towards Israel or Japan or India. All of these seem to him like, I think, examples of the kind of thing that he'd like to see America be, a country that's proud to be what it is and to be different from other countries

and to fight for its own way and to fight for its own interests, rather than trying to nestle under world bodies and international organizations or to demand that American soldiers be there to take care of everything. It's interesting. As someone who visits Greece and is Greek, I have felt that in Greece, that they feel sold out by the European Union and that they've lost their national identity.

They've lost their rights, really, as Greeks. And everything's been subsumed under, you know, the unelected officials in Brussels. It's a very strange thing. And it's important that we do try to clarify what we mean by nationalism. I, you know, being raised in a Greek immigrant family, it's fascinating to me how you are taught to love Greece. You're taught to love the history. And every history is checkered, but we all have things that we're proud of and heroes that we celebrate and ideals that we strive for, or at least most nations do. And it seems to me that the globalist leftist class, the folks that we went to school with at Yale, They really are against that. They really do believe in a kind of globalism and what amounts to empire. In other words, they don't like the idea that a nation would be self-determining in the same way that they don't seem to like the idea of deplorables getting to vote for somebody like Donald Trump.

They seem to feel that they know better somehow and that they're always posturing to get that kind of power. I mean, that seems to me at the heart of this conversation. I think you're right about the power. And it also dovetails real well with the kinds of ideas that are taught at university campuses. I mean, if you're taking any kind of courses in political theory or philosophy or religion or law, you know, the core disciplines that are about thinking about the way the world ought to be, then, you know, you know, the core disciplines that are about thinking about the way the world ought to be, then you are almost always reading a curriculum which is based on universalist thinkers. People who either like Emmanuel Kant who explicitly believes that we will overcome our base nature and have one world government and unite under an international federation,

or other Enlightenment thinkers who are implicitly of the same model, where the political theory doesn't allow anything for families, tribes, and nations to have unique identities, right? A unique path and a unique course. Now, there are great thinkers who wrote like that, but those texts are almost never taught in the curriculum in American universities. And so you end up with this, it's not just a feeling that. that anybody who is for America first must be some kind of evil person. I mean, they actually have all the theories to back it up, saying, look, an enlightened person doesn't talk like that.

An enlightened person thinks that all the countries in the world should care about each other equally. It's kind of like a utopianist scheme. I mean, I think we've seen this from the beginning of the time. You know, you could go back to the Garden of Eden. It's this idea that we can be as gods, that we don't need ordered liberty, that we're going to have something else, some kind of an institution. We're going to a break. Folks, I'm talking to Yoram Hazzoni. We'll be right back.

Folks, we are talking to Yoram Hazzoni. He's the author of many books, God and Politics in Esther, the philosophy of Hebrew scripture, the Jewish state, the struggle for Israel's soul. and in 2018 the virtue of nationalism. I have to ask you, Yoram, the struggle for Israel's soul in the Jewish state, I cannot help as a sincere Christian seeing the existence of Israel and the struggle of Israel and Israel's enemies as being part of something larger than that's just the way life is. I do see God's hand on Israel.

I take that seriously. I think most evangelicals do. And part of that has to do with the virulent anti-Semitism, or at least anti-Zionism that you see on the left. I was amazed when I first saw that anti-Zionism and the pro-PLO stance of people. When did that emerge? Because, you know, having parents who grew up really during World War II,

I really did assume that we all knew that we're supposed to look kindly on the Jews after the Holocaust. It's a new world now. And yet we are seeing the rise of anti-Semitism around the world and that kind of language. Well, it's got a long history. In my book, The Jewish State, I write about the last hundred years of anti-Zionism. the basic idea behind opponents of the Jewish states. I don't mean people who criticize Israel. I mean people who actually think Israel shouldn't exist,

and there are plenty of those. The view comes from the idea, which should sound familiar to you. It comes from the idea that the moment, that the Jews were good and righteous, as long as they had no power, as long as they were not connected to any kind of state or government or military and were wandering from country to country at the mercy of more powerful people.

Then they were always righteous and good. But the moment that the Jews turned to having a military, having their own independence, all right, well, having a military means that you're going to make mistakes. Having a police force, as you know, means you're going to make mistakes. There's no such thing as a military or police force that never, makes a mistake. But the enemies of Israel, anti-Zionists, the way they view it is that the Jews, in making the transition to having national independence and national freedom, have gone from being the oppressed, which is the good guys, to being the oppressor, which is evil. And if you look at

this from a Marxist perspective, or from a left liberal perspective, then it makes perfect sense. whoever's got the most power at that given moment, you look at them, you magnify their mistakes, you call them crimes, and you say, French Revolution, bring out the guillotine. Yeah. Okay. And so that is anti-Zionism. It's the demand that the Jews go back to a state of powerlessness because we're just too evil to be entrusted with having power.

Are you not surprised, though, that the Democratic Party, by attacking so hard left, has made common cause with some of the uglier voices in the group we're talking about? No, it's not surprising because if you think back to the high point of this anti-Israel demagoguery was the 1975 United Nations resolution, which said that Zionism is racism. It's like saying today that America is racist. It's the same exact thought. And so the UN voted to say Zionism is racism. The state of Israel is a racist country. Who put them up to that? Well, the main force behind it was the Soviet Union.

It was the communists whose goal was to find ways to undermine the legitimacy of democratic countries all over the world. And they were able to undermine Israel's legitimate. to such an extent that even though the UN actually has repealed that resolution officially, but all over the world, people who are descended from those communist theorists continue to push the same line, which is that Israel is an apartheid state, that it's a racist state. And we've been hearing this for a few generations, but now it's come to America. Now America is a racist state too. It's the same argument. It is the same argument, and it's just extraordinary to me. Well, what do you suppose, from your vantage point in Jerusalem, will happen in the next months

in America? What do you suppose will happen with the election? Are you asking me to place a bet? Well, you can place a bet, or you can talk about it more vaguely and elliptically, but I'm just wondering what your thoughts are. Look, I don't want to make a crystal ball prediction. You know, the last few days, it's, it's been looking like Americans are beginning to tell pollsters that they're going to vote for Trump because they simply can't deal with, you know, with the looting and the riding in the streets, which the Democratic Party has been very slow to condemn. Now, that could change one event, one terrible event in some direction, could change the outcome of the election.

But I want to go back to what we were talking about before. The most important thing is that Americans be clear, the future of their nation depends on their saying in advance, I'm going to accept the legitimacy of whoever wins this election, and I'm going to become a loyal opposition. not a resistance, not de-legitimizing, not seeking to overthrow, but a loyal opposition. And for me, that's the great fear is that that message will not get out and that people simply will be irresponsible and think that whatever their policy preferences are more important than the question of whether America continues to be a two-party democratic system, the anchor to the democratic world.

So I unfortunately believe that this is going to be a problem. And that's why I urge everyone who has a platform to be very clear about this. Legitimacy of both parties is the requirement of maintaining democracy in America. Well, it's good to hear you clarified that way, because I do think that is the issue. And I think that the left's goal at this point is to already delegitimize the election to say that it's stolen. If Trump wins, by definition, he stole it. because I think that's their way of stealing it preemptively. They simply don't have the ideas.

It's looking very bad for them. In any event, we're at a time. Yoram Hazzoni, wonderful to have you. I hope we can have you back as soon as possible. God bless you and thanks so much. God bless you. Thank you. Thank you.

Have you heard my cries? Through all my lonely, lonely, lonely, lonely, lonely, lonely, lonely nights. What can I say? I've told you everything. So why do I feel all alone? Are you still looking at news I believed? I can't just believe I faded?