Here are two items which suggest that leading Israelis are breaking free of the destructive delusions that still control the neoconservative movement and the Bush administration.

1. Alluding to Francis Fukuyama’s famous “end of history” article, published in 1989 in the National Interest, Benjamin Netanyahu on a recent Think Tank related how he had called the editor at the time of its publication to ask how he could have published such “brilliant nonsense,” and wasn’t he aware of Islamic terrorism. Although Fukuyama later developed his thesis into a complex and challenging book—and still later more or less rejected it—the idea that liberal democracy was the last and inevitable word in human history took hold in a simple-minded way and contributed to the mentality that led us to think that the Iraqis would form a liberal democracy immediately after the fall of Saddam and that anyone who disagreed was a bad person and racist, pessimistic, and condescending. But why did we never hear of Netanyahu’s assessment before now? We could have used it sooner, because our own stupid left and worthless Democratic Party didn’t even know how to mount opposition to the president’s absurdly naive statements.

2. Natan Sharansky’s new book, Defending Identity, proclaims the idea that a people’s cultural or religious or ethnic identity is important to its survival and self-government and that appeals to “universal freedom.” are insufficient. Of course it’s too bad he didn’t bring this out in his last book, The Case for Democracy: The Power of Freedom to Overcome Tyranny and Terror, the one that inspired President Bush to proclaim freedom as the universal desire and entitlement of all mankind right now, and practically to personify freedom as an entity in and of itself capable of creating liberal democracy. Still, Sharansky is intellectually vigorous, now tempering his previous proclamations with some commonsense understanding of what forms a people and makes it possible for them to pursue freedom and self-government on a practical basis. In his new book, Sharansky even writes that the American Revolution “was born out of American religious tradition and identity no less than out of political traditions of democracy and Enlightenment.” Whoopee! America is not just an idea!!! We have a culture and a tradition!!! And it took an Israeli Jew to see this!!! Let’s hope the president reads this one.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at June 05, 2008 12:16 PM | Send