Comments on: Never Met a Poor Communist

By: Thomas

Thomas — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 00:16:23 +0000

It would be quite difficult for mostly East European Jews, speakers of Indo-European languages (like Yiddish), to revive a Semitic language without the impetus of building a totally new nation in a foreign land alongside a new mix of peoples. The grammar is entirely different. At best you would end up with some lazy creole, though Modern Hebrew is somewhat European and un-Semitic in many ways.

By: Jack Ross

Jack Ross — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 21:20:17 +0000

In principle, sure, but historically speaking the Yiddish Renaissance was a reaction against the revival of Hebrew in the mid-19th century.

By: Thomas O. Meehan

Thomas O. Meehan — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 18:21:27 +0000

Jack, thanks, I think I understand your antipathy to modern Hebrew now. But is it not possible to resurrect a language outside a political/ ideological context? I have no dog in this fight as a Christian, but it seems to me that Hebrew could be reborn without Israel even existing.

By: Jack Ross

Jack Ross — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 21:57:51 +0000

It’s next to impossible for me to say who I would have voted for in 2000, when I was 15 and started paying attention to politics for the first time and look back on my attitudes at that age with great embarassment. I will go out on a limb and say, that while there were legion problems with the Buchanan campaign and how it was run, myself today would have probably voted for him.

Regarding nationalism in general, whereas Abe Foxman has stated that the one way one can be an anti-Zionist without being an anti-Semite is if one rejects all nationalisms, to which I can say that yes, I do, but that doesn’t mean some nationalisms aren’t more invented and pernicious than others.

Which leads to the answer of the first question among the comments, about why I defend the legacy of Yiddish against modern Hebrew.

By: Thomas

Thomas — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 21:21:34 +0000

Jack,

Apologies for not addressing the heart of the article, but what was foolish about backing McCain and Nader? Particularly coming from a right-wing socialist background?

Those were the first two votes I cast. Of course I never wanted McCain to be president, but the point was to defeat the Bush clan and oligarchic forces behind him. Would it have been more true conservative to back Gore (though Nader and a few of the latter’s supporters have been interviewed in AmCon, unlike Gore, Lieberman, or Donna Brazile)? Or the Crown Prince himself?

By: Thomas

Thomas — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 21:05:16 +0000

Markus,

I was not meaning to mock the idea of national self-determination, I was only referring to the modifier “whenever desired”, since our govt supports democratic elections, but only “whenever desired”.

All the same, there is a problem with ethnonationalism as the number one guiding principle, namely, that it leads to the creation of multiple microstates. These have the problem that they are essentially impossible to defend or develop economically without falling under the protective wing of a larger state. Notice that the US govt has occasionally promoted ethnonationalism (again, “whenever desired” by the US itself) while the US promotes itself as the 180-degree opposite thereof. A hodgepodge of microstates is easy for an empire to dominate. Read Foreign Affairs and see how many articles are about promoting the break-up of Iraq or Pakistan or Russia or China (but rarely Turkey or the Ukraine or Georgia or Croatia, whose borders are sacrosanct, since their breakup is not “desired”). This is no accident.

Peace and anti-materialist principles also demand that we construct identities and allegiances higher and broader than those of blood. For large religions like Christianity and Islam, placing preference on one’s religious identity is a good start, and certainly nothing new.

By: Markus

Markus — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 11:57:42 +0000

I think it is a damn good prinicple, Thomas: the right to national self-determination, whenever the borders to the emerging nation can be drawn without necessitating large population transfers, and without oppressing unwilling minorities within the proposed new nation. Based on the principle that ethnic consciousness is a positive good in an otherwise soulless materialistic world, that people prefer to be ruled by their own kinsmen rather than others, and that an ethnically homogeneous political unit is likely to be more stable and less prone to conflict than a heterogeneous one.

By: Thomas

Thomas — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 09:39:00 +0000

In principle, it is bizarre when David Duke does this because he was a major South African supporter. However, the South African Apartheid of the 70s-80s was much less bloody than today’s Israel.

Supporting ethnonationalism or anything “whenever desired” does not sound like much of a principle to me.

By: Markus

Markus — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 03:24:42 +0000

Paleoconservatives, or traditional conservatives, or whatever name they (you) want to call themselves (yourselves), ought to support the principle of “ethnonationalism whenever desired and feasible.” It is bizarre when anti-zionists on the right, whether respectable or disrespectable, start aping anti-racist rhetoric. I actually saw David Duke somewhere accusing Israel of being a “brutal, Apartheid state.”

By: Thomas O. Meehan

Thomas O. Meehan — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 18:15:43 +0000

You wrote, “Now, for myself, as a Yiddishist I consider the modern Hebrew language to be an abomination.” I’m curious as to why you feel this way.