The classical notion of justice, applied to the Israeli (and the U.S.) franchise
The Israeli politician Avigdor Lieberman is known for his proposal that Israeli Arabs should be required to take a loyalty oath to the state of Israel in order to possess political rights in Israel.
Writing at
Israpundit, Paul Eidelberg supports Lieberman’s idea, based on the Platonic and Aristotelian definition of justice, which he restates as follows:
Justice is giving equal things (such as rights and honors) to equals, and unequal things to unequals in proportion to their inequality, i.e., in proportion to their merit (as is done in classrooms), or in proportion to their contribution to the common good.
Any sensible Israeli would then see that to give Arabs, who strive for Israel’s demise, the equal political rights of Jews, who struggle for Israel’s welfare, is not consistent with justice. He would then conclude that if justice is to prevail in Israel, its Arab inhabitants must either be disenfranchised or undergo a profound political and religious metamorphosis.
I’ve posted a comment at Israpundit in which I agree with Eidelberg, adding that the same principle ought to be applied to the U.S.:
I am overjoyed to see the classical, non-liberal definition of justice—to each his due—being brought into play in any political discussion in today’s world, particularly in a discussion about the fate of Israel. Plato, Aristotle, Avigdor Lieberman, and Paul Eidelberg are correct on their general principle of justice, and the latter two are correct in their application of that principle to political rights in Israel.
Israel from the start has been founded on an unsustainable contradiction—that it is both a Jewish state AND a democratic state with equal fights for all people regardless of whether they are Jewish or not. If it is to survive as Jewish state, it must become truly a Jewish state and drop the principle that contradicts its being a Jewish state. Yes, Israel can be a democratic state in the qualified sense of being a democratic state for Jews; it cannot be a democratic state in the unqualified sense of giving equal rights to non-Jews, particularly Arabs.
So the loyalty oath proposed by Lieberman makes entire sense. Only people who are loyal to a nation should have political rights in that nation.
However, I think that the same principle should be applied to the United States. There are a significant number of Jews in the U.S. whose primary loyalty is to Israel rather than the U.S., and to the Jewish people rather than to the American people. According to the principle of justice that Eidelberg would apply to Israel, such Jews should not have political rights in the U.S. While their civil rights, property rights, and human rights would continue to be protected, they should not be able to vote and hold any office under the United States.
Does Mr. Eidelberg agree?
I posted a follow-up:
When I spoke of Jews whose primary loyalty is to Israel and the Jewish people rather than to the United States, I should also have mentioned liberal and secular Jews whose primary loyalty is to some extremist notion of Jewish-based liberalism rather than to the United States. An example is the coalition of national Jewish organizations supporting the Progress by Pesach movement which calls for the United States to stop enforcing its immigration laws, not based on the laws, traditions, sovereignty, and well-being of the United States, but based on the idea that “we [Jews] were strangers in a strange land.” As I said in my discussion of Progress for Pesach at my website, “[I]f Jews want to welcome all foreigners and to love all foreigners as themselves, regardless of how numerous, unassimilable, and hostile the foreigners may be, let the Jews do it in Israel, in their own country.”
Of course the Jews don’t propose opening Israel’s borders, nor should they, since it would lead to Israel’s destruction. Yet they expect the United States to adopt as its guiding principle a liberal Jewish interpretation of the Jewish Bible that would result in America’s destruction as a nation. I would argue that such Jewish organizations are showing contempt for the United States and that their loyalty to the U.S. should be openly questioned.
—end of initial entry— Paul Gottfried writes:
I have always liked Eidelberg’s non-democratic interpretation of the Constitution. As for Lieberman’s racism, I’m not sure I see any. My problem with his idea is the same one that I had with the loyalty oaths administered in the 1950s. They simply don’t work in ferreting out one’s enemies, who would have no compunctions about perjuring themselves.
Bjorn writes:
Paul Gottfried writes: “[Loyalty oaths] simply don’t work in ferreting out one’s enemies, who would have no compunctions about perjuring themselves.”
This is of course true but entirely unrelated to the purpose of such an oath. The purpose of administering the loyalty oath is to provide the legal foundation for appropriate prosecution (criminal, disenfranchisement, treason, expulsion) of the individuals who break the oath, when, as is expected of the real enemies, they do in fact break it.
LA replies:
How I love the sound of a Westerner talking about defending the West from its enemies instead of whining about how our enemies are taking us over.
March 25
James P. writes:
Ted Belman says in his reply to you in the Israpundit comment thread:
You specifically made reference to their alleged “primary” loyalty whereas such loyalty, if “primary” could be defined, may not make them disloyal Americans. Everyone has many loyalties. Some take precedence over the loyalty to the US and some don’t. For instance, in most instances our loyalty to our family takes precedence over our loyalty to the state. Or our loyalty to our religion does likewise. The state does not ask us to abandon our families or religion in favour of the state. Though it rightly asks us to follow the laws of the state including the constitution. A unionist may fight for union rights without regard if it is being disloyal to the state or works to its detriment. Many immigrants lobby for policies friendly to their former country. Are they to be considered disloyal for so doing. Do they not have the right to do so.
Here he is talking about Jews in America, but what if we applied his exact logic to Arabs in Israel?
Would Belman find it problematic if Arabs in Israel gave precedence to their families and their religion over their loyalty to the Israeli state? I suspect that he would, even if these Arabs otherwise obeyed the laws of Israel. He would be right to do so!
Would Belman find it problematic if Arabs in Israel fought non-violently for Muslim rights without regard for whether this was disloyal to the Israeli state or worked to its detriment? I suspect that he would, and again he would be right to do so.
Would Belman find it problematic if Arab immigrants in Israel lobbied for policies friendly to the Palestinian Authority? Would he consider that disloyal to Israel? Should Israeli Arabs have a “right” to do so? I suspect that Belman would, very properly, find such Arab actions problematic and disloyal to Israel.
In each of these cases, the actions that Belman regards as acceptable for Jews in the United States appear in a quite different light when applied to Arabs in Israel. It would be suicidal and insane for Israel to permit Arabs who reside there to be more loyal to their families and to Islam than to Israel, to fight for Arab/Muslim rights (even in a non-violent manner), and to allow Arab immigrants to lobby for their former countries or for increased Arab immigration. In my view, it is no less insane for the United States to permit any immigrant minorities, including Jews, to conduct analogous actions here. People who live in the United States should be loyal to the United States and only to the United States, period. In fact, naturalized immigrants to the US swear an oath to this effect:
I hereby declare, on oath, that I absolutely and entirely renounce and abjure all allegiance and fidelity to any foreign prince, potentate, state, or sovereignty of whom or which I have heretofore been a subject or citizen; that I will support and defend the Constitution and laws of the United States of America against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I will bear arms on behalf of the United States when required by the law; that I will perform noncombatant service in the Armed Forces of the United States when required by the law; that I will perform work of national importance under civilian direction when required by the law; and that I take this obligation freely without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; so help me God.
Steve R. writes:
Mr Gottfried is concerned about those who might lie while professing their loyalty. So am I. So I’ve been proposing this idea to my liberal friends for a couple of years: lets require that the oath be taken while hooked up to a polygraph machine. I’m serious. Consider that only those who know that they are patriotic in their heart will even bother to take the test. That should cut out about half the democrats.
Seriously, we only have to randomly administer the test to a fraction of those who take the oath. Just the knowledge that you might be the unlucky one will work wonders. I love it when liberals say ‘but the test can be beaten’. I get to respond ‘you should be glad…you’ll have a chance’. Ahh, the silence.
Posted by Lawrence Auster at March 24, 2009 03:28 PM | Send