Richard John Neuhaus, U.S. Jews, and the American Babylon
Seth Mandel 2014-01-08Today is the fifth anniversary of the death of Richard John Neuhaus, the influential Christian theologian who once edited the journal First Things. What most people remember about his writing–at least the intellectual/political side–is his classic The Naked Public Square: Religion and Democracy in America. But what has always stuck with me is his last book, American Babylon: Notes of a Christian Exile.
My preference among Neuhaus’s works for American Babylon is because it grapples with the subject of living in religious exile and what it means to be a good citizen to a secular state in such exile. This is a question that obviously means much to the American Jewish community as well, and so it’s valuable to see how a non-Jew, especially one as erudite as Neuhaus, approaches the question. Additionally, I think American Babylon’s relevance has unfortunately only increased since he wrote it–since that means the state’s encroachment on private religious practice has continued unabated.
But there’s also another reason I think the book is so beneficial to Jewish readers. Because of the troubled history between Christians and Jews, and because Christian politics have become so identified with the American right while Jews have been identified with the American left, there is still too much mutual suspicion. The clearest current example of this, of course, is the Jewish left’s rejection of pro-Israel Christian groups out of mistrust toward their intentions. American Babylon is in part a meditation on the Jewish-Christian relationship in exile–which is key. Neuhaus devotes a chapter to this called “Salvation Is from the Jews” (a reference the Christian scripture), in which he offers a good example. He writes:
It is significant that, after the Second Vatican Council, when the Catholic Church was formalizing its conversations with non-Christians, the Jewish interlocutors insisted that Jewish relations not be grouped under the Vatican office that deals with other religions, but instead included under the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity. That arrangement has much deeper implications than were perhaps realized at the time.
Now, this seems to me a pristine example of the kind of Christian theological activity that can be seen one of two ways. Promoting Christian unity with Jews quite obviously does not mean the Vatican has decided that all Catholics should convert to Judaism. So the conversion issue primarily cuts the other way. And it’s a sore subject for very good reasons. But it is also worth pointing out that this is a clear rejection of supersessionism. If the Jews are mere historical relics, after all, Christianity can be whole without them. Neuhaus was vehemently opposed to such a view.
Moreover, Neuhaus makes a very smart observation about this in the context of interfaith relations. He writes:
Christianity does indeed seek to engage culture, provide a guide for living, and propose the way to human flourishing, but, reduced to any of these undoubtedly good ends, it is not Christianity.
Liberal Protestant theology, taking its cue from the Enlightenment, was much preoccupied with the question of “the essence of Christianity,” and, not incidentally, was contemptuous of Jews and Judaism.
That is, liberal Christians, who center their lives more on the secular culture around them, can more easily discard the Jewish contribution to their own heritage precisely because their history is not what defines them. Instead, their own identity can be established by drawing on the here and now. It matters that Jesus was Jewish, ethically and theologically. But not to politicized liberal denominations of Christianity, who have no need for Jewish recognition.
That’s why, Neuhaus writes, “When we Christians do not walk together with Jews, we are in danger of regressing to the paganism from which we emerged.” But before we lock arms and sing Kumbaya, we need to take a closer look at what exactly it means for Christians to “walk together with Jews.” Got an itinerary, Fr. Neuhaus? He does:
With respect to Judaism, Christians today are exhorted to reject every form of supersessionism, and so we should. To supersede means to nullify, to void, to make obsolete, to displace.
But:
The end of supersessionism, however, cannot and must not mean the end of the argument between Christians and Jews. We cannot settle into the comfortable interreligious politeness of mutual respect for contradictory positions deemed to be equally true. Christ and his Church do not supersede Judaism, but they do continue and fulfill the story of which we are both part. Or so Christians must contend.
However intertwined, the two belief systems are not one. So Neuhaus is up front: his distaste for political correctness extends to his opposition to the idea that Christians must be quietly apologetic for their belief that Jews should believe as they, Christians, believe. But he says something important about how that argument is less vocal and literal than an appreciation for living these different lives and pursuing these truths. He writes:
We can and must say that the ultimate duty of each person is to form his conscience in truth and act upon that discernment; we can and must say, too, that there are great goods to be sought in dialogue apart from conversion, and that we reject proselytizing, which is best defined as evangelizing by demeaning the other. Friendship between Jew and Christian can be secured in our shared love for the God of Israel; the historical forms we call Judaism and Christianity will be transcended, but not superseded, by the fulfillment of eschatological promise. But along the way to that final fulfillment, there is no avoiding the fact that we are locked in argument. It is an argument by which–for both Jew and Christian–conscience is formed, witness is honed, and friendship deepened. This is our destiny, and this is our duty, as members of the one people of God–a people of God for which there is no plural.
What he’s saying is, essentially: we can share the same bench at the bus stop even while we disagree over whose bus will arrive. Yes, it’s cheesy on some level–let’s wait together! But a Judaism confident that our bus is the one that will show up shouldn’t mind the company.
A final thought: this was arguably more important coming from a Catholic theologian like Neuhaus than from our no-less-appreciated neighbors in the Protestant-inflected evangelical Christian Zionist community, both because of the fraught history of Jewish-Catholic relations and because it is not tethered to a cause–Israel–that is essential but also relatively modern, and therefore comparably new.
Neuhaus, correctly, notes the crucial role that America plays in all this:
The percentage of Christians involved in any form of Jewish-Christian dialogue is minuscule. Minuscule, too, is the percentage of Jews involved. Moreover, serious dialogue is, for the most part, a North American phenomenon. It is one of the many things to which the familiar phrase applies, “Only in America.” In Europe, for tragically obvious reasons, there are not enough Jews; in Israel, for reasons of growing tragedy in the decline of ancient communities, there are not enough Christians. Only in America are there enough Jews and Christians in a relationship of mutual security and respect to make possible a dialogue that is unprecedented in our 2,000 years of history together.
Neuhaus’s work was a strong rejoinder to the temptation to assume ulterior motives on the part of Christians seeking conversation with Jews. Neuhaus was right, as well, that America has given us the security to have that conversation.
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Richard John Neuhaus, U.S. Jews, and the American Babylon
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Democrats Are Being Outmaneuvered
Flirting with incoherence.
Noah Rothman 2018-01-26
A fair scoring of the Trump presidency’s first year would have to hand 2017 to Democrats. The opposition party exploited the Trump-led GOP’s mistakes and excesses and translated them into victories both on Capitol Hill and at polling places around the country. But that was then and this is now. Democrats remain married to tactics that have not served them so well in the New Year. Democrats are not winning this moment. They don’t know it yet.
Not even the most optimistic Republican could have anticipated the reaction that markets and large employers have had to the first significant overhaul of the tax code in over 30 years. Since that bill was signed into law on December 19, firm after firm has announced its intention to share the windfall with its employees in the form of raises, bonuses, and 401(k) hikes. Manufacturers ranging from Chrysler to Apple are repatriating capital and factories they had parked overseas. Even the minimum wage is on the rise for several major employers, including Walmart and financial institutions like Wells Fargo, U.S. Bank, and Bank of New York Mellon Corp.
Democrats had argued that the Republican tax code reform plan would benefit only the wealthy and, despite the strong economy and tight labor market, corporations were unlikely to reinvest their new capital. The Democratic message has not adapted along with changing conditions. They feel obliged to undermine the good news surrounding tax code reform, but they’ve gone about it in a spectacularly tone-deaf fashion.
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi said the $1,000 bonuses that a variety of firms had provided their employees in the wake of tax code reform amount to “crumbs” and “pathetic” gifts designed to purchase cheap loyalty. Rather than invest in their employees, she added, these firms should “invest in infrastructure.” Pelosi later called these bonuses and wage hikes “cute,” but ultimately insulting to the American worker because they are not commensurate with the advantage corporate tax reform provides employers. “Some of them are getting raises, and the rest are getting crumbs,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer agreed. When “you spread $1,000 over the course of the year,” former Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz pondered, “I’m not sure that $1,000 (which is taxed, taxable) goes very for almost anyone.”
If the Democratic Party is trying to convince voters that the GOP is detached from the concerns of average Americans, demonstrating you have no idea how far $1,000 goes is a bad way to go about it. For a family making the median household income (as of September of last year), $1,000 is more than 20 percent of their monthly income.
Democrats might hope to trade on lingering antipathy toward the tax bill they successfully fomented in the run-up to its passage, but the narrative that worked in December is going to start yielding diminishing returns. The headlines speak for themselves; even just the anticipatory effects of this tax bill are not being enjoyed exclusively by the wealthy. The longer Democrats ask voters to believe them over their lying eyes, the more they will find that they are only preaching to the converted.
Similarly, the GOP has boxed the Democratic Party in on the issue of immigration reform.
On Thursday night, the White House revealed the outlines of what amounts to a skinny immigration reform package. The one-page memo outlined a plan to provide a pathway to citizenship not just for the roughly 700,000 beneficiaries of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, which expires in March, but some 1.8 million DACA-eligible immigrants—approximately half the estimated population of immigrants who were taken into the U.S. as minors. In exchange, the White House requested $25 billion for security at both the Mexican and Canadian borders. Furthermore, the White House requested curbs on family migration, limiting the extended family that these formerly illegal immigrants could bring with them into the U.S.
This is a reasonable initial offer. The administration, having just secured an unambiguous victory over Democrats following a failed legislative gambit that resulted in a brief government shutdown, could have pressed their luck. Instead, the White House barely budged off its initial request for border security funding. Meanwhile, the administration made a big step toward resolving the status of nearly two million illegal immigrants, which has enraged some in the president’s immigration-hawk base. In fact, the White House reportedly had a difficult time trying to sell immigration restrictionists on the plan. “Lots of them hate the proposal,” Axios reporter Jonathan Swan related. Mark Krikorian, the executive director for the Center for Immigration Studies, summed up his fellow hawks’ thoughts succinctly: “Time to start burning your #MAGA hats.”
But for all the administration’s overtures toward Democrats, the responses have been hyperbolic and inflexible. Senator Dick Durbin said Trump had taken DREAMers “hostage” and was on a “crusade to tear families apart.” “The White House is using Dreamers to mask their underlying xenophobic, isolationist, and un-American policies,” wrote Democratic Rep. Michelle Lujan Grisham. Pelosi called Trump’s proposed restrictions on extended family unification represent “an unmistakable campaign to make America white again,” which aligned with sentiments in the liberal grassroots. A statement by the activist organization United We Dream called Trump’s immigration proposal “a white supremacist ransom note.”
This means Democrats are again handing the keys over to the party’s activist base just days after the party’s activists drove them into a ditch. Democrats spent months insisting that they wanted a “clean” bill to restore long-term funding for the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP). When they got it, they voted against it—sacrificing their claims on CHIP in the process. Now, the White House has made a good faith attempt to find common ground on DACA, only to be called racist for the effort. This is a remarkably short-sighted and parochial strategy.
By insisting that $1,000 constitute “crumbs” and giving citizenship to nearly 2 million illegal residents is racist, Democrats are flirting with utter incoherence. These claims might enliven their base, but they risk turning off every other sentient voter capable of an objective thought. Moreover, unreasonable polemics have a habit of activating the opposing side’s partisans at a time when reliable Republican voters have been staying away from the polls. The risks of the Democratic Party’s present course seem to outweigh the rewards.
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Integrity Matters
Conspiracies kill credibility.
Noah Rothman 2018-01-25
For Republicans, the Trump presidency has been one long test of faith. The truest believers in Trumpism are compelled to demonstrate their commitment to the cause by publicly defending obvious falsehoods with as much zeal as they can muster.
Thus, former White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer endorsed the claim that Trump drew “the largest audience to ever witness an inauguration,” an assertion he now regrets defending. Thus Trump campaign officials contended that crime in America is trending up, not down, contrary to federal statistics, and then credited Trump for ending a crime wave that never existed. Thus, the administration wasted federal resources establishing a legally dubious commission designed to ferret out the millions of illegal voters who supposedly robbed the president of a popular vote victory, only to quietly dissolve under the weight of its own contradictions. Thus, Trump’s fans in conservative media latched onto the odious theory that a 27-year-old DNC staffer’s tragic murder was, in fact, a political assassination; payback over his alleged role in leaking files to WikiLeaks, which conveniently absolved Russia of culpability for the hacking of Democratic targets in 2016.
This was all so much bunk, but these claims were based on grains of truth. Of course, violent crime remains a problem, particularly in the nation’s gang-plagued urban centers, and violent crime has recently been on the rise. Voter fraud is not a myth, Democratic claims to the contrary notwithstanding. The WikiLeaks hacks and Russian active measures targeting U.S. institutions is not a partisan issue; Republicans, too, were reportedly victims of cyber espionage by Russian sources. These are real issues that desperately need sober and serious advocates who command enough authority to be heard over the partisan din. Sadly, the president seems to demand that his allies sacrifice their credibility amid conspicuous displays of loyalty. This administration would rather have unflinching soldiers on its side than accuracy and trustworthiness.
Of all the scandalous sacrifices of authority in the Trump era, “text-gate” might be the worst of the lot, if only because of the collateral damage it has wrought. In the frenetic effort to cast a preemptive veneer of doubt over whatever Robert Mueller’s probe may find, Trump’s advocates across the Republican political spectrum grasped onto the December revelation that a member of that probe—a ranking official formerly with the FBI’s counter-espionage unit—had shared anti-Trump text messages with his mistress. Upon that discovery, Agent Peter Strzok was reassigned from the Mueller probe and dumped into the FBI’s purgatorial human resources department to languish. Since he served on the probe for fewer than two full months, it is likely that Strzok’s influence was limited. Still, the discovery of an anti-Trump voice in the independent investigation provided the probe’s critics with a way to discredit the investigation, and many jumped at the chance.
The discovery that thousands of text messages between December 2016 and May 2017 had gone missing added a tantalizing element of mystery to the nefarious allegations of bias in the Mueller probe. Was the entire Bureau in on this operation? What could have been said? After all, the suspect text messages that hadn’t been deleted were seriously disquieting. In 2016, Strzok texted his mistress, FBI lawyer Lisa Page, about his intention to have an “insurance policy” in the event that Trump won the White House. Later, it was revealed that Page stated her intention to form a “secret society,” presumably, of like minds.
Senator Ron Johnson alleged that this society was “holding secret meetings off-site,” according to an informant. Rep. Bob Goodlatte insisted that the texts “illustrate a conspiracy on the part of some people” to undermine the president. “These are the elements of a palace coup that was underway to disrupt President Trump,” claimed Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz.
You didn’t have to be a professional cynic to think that it was unlikely for FBI counter-intelligence operatives to be plotting the sabotage of a presidency on their government-issued cell phones. A review of all the text messages Strzok sent, including the mitigating material, further undercut the idea that he was an anti-Trump saboteur wrecking the administration from within. But lawmakers threw caution to the breeze, and they surely regret it today. When ABC News discovered the infamous “secret society” text, it was exposed as entirely banal. Republicans like Johnson have since backed off the claim that Strzok and his mistress were engaging in anything other than playful bluster.
This was a credibility sapping debacle, and no one should be more livid at the Republicans who sacrificed their honor to it than those who believe in limited and good governance. House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes allowed himself to be used last year by the White House to corroborate the president’s baseless claim that he was personally spied upon by Obama-era law enforcement officials. As a result, he sacrificed his credibility and was forced to recuse himself from Russia-related investigations. But there was a FISA warrant granted to investigate the Trump campaign, and no one knows the extent to which flimsy and political evidence was used to grant that warrant. Trump administration officials were swept up in that surveillance, and subsequently “unmasked” by unknown sources when the transcript of that reconnaissance was improperly related to journalists. That, too, is an abuse of power about which only Republicans seem to care. These are serious causes that require equally serious advocates. Unfortunately, those advocates are all busy throwing their integrity away so that Trump can win a news cycle or two.
Impugning law enforcement professionals in service to a political narrative is unconscionable. Republicans should be equally frustrated by the willingness with which their allies are so willingly discrediting themselves. If they don’t start vocally demanding better, Republicans will soon find themselves bereft of credible advocates. They’ll have no one to blame but themselves for that condition, of course, but that should prove no obstacle to finding a scapegoat somewhere.
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Nancy Pelosi’s Crumbs Will Power the Economy
A prisoner of the narrative.
JOHN STEELE GORDON 2018-01-25
Nancy Pelosi dismissed the bonuses associated with recently enacted tax cuts for middle-class individuals as “pathetic” and mere “crumbs.” For someone who lives in the Pacific Heights neighborhood of San Francisco (the most expensive neighborhood in the United States), when not relaxing at her vineyard in the Napa Valley, the financial benefits associated with tax code reform are, to be sure, no more than rounding errors. But for the average citizen–a demographic the Democratic Party claims to represent–they are very real.
Forbes reports that, with the new withholding tables just out from the IRS, a family of four with an income of $120,000 a year will see paycheck increases totaling more than $3,578, or almost $300 a month. Even a single person with an income of $40,000 will have at least $1,023, or $85 a month, more to spend. For the citizens of “fly-over country” and the vast middle-class suburbs around major cities, if not for the denizens of Pacific Heights, that’s real money.
And Veronique de Rugy, an economist at the Mercatus Center, a free-market think tank, sees a tightening labor market as at least partially responsible for the spate of bonuses and pay increases that immediately followed the passage of the tax bill. (Home Depot has just joined the list of companies giving bonuses to hourly workers). Wages have been stubbornly “sticky” during the slow Obama recovery, but that would change with a tight labor market. We’re at 4.1 percent unemployment right now, and 4 percent is considered full employment. Moody’s is predicting unemployment at 3.5 percent by the end of the year; a very tight labor market.
And Bloomberg expects the 4th quarter of 2017 to be the third in a row to see more than 3 percent growth in GDP, the first time that’s happened since 2005. (The figures will be out on Friday.) Since 70 percent of the economy is household consumption, and the disposable incomes of the middle class are going up and promise to go up further in coming months, the economy could grow at around 3 percent for the foreseeable future.
Oh, and Apple is bringing $252 billion in profits it has had parked overseas to this country (paying a tax bill of $39 billion in the process) and will “put some of the money it brought back toward 20,000 new jobs, a new domestic campus, and other spending.”
Even Nancy Pelosi would consider $252 billion in new capital to be invested in the American economy as real money.
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OK, So This Is What’s Happening with All the Probes
Podcast: The FBI, Mueller, and the infamous memo.
John Podhoretz 2018-01-25Text-gate. FISA-gate. Mueller-gate. FBI-gate. Unmasking-gate. What’s real? What’s nutso conspiracy theory? What’s to be concerned about? What deserves a fuller investigation? We try to sort this out on the second COMMENTARY podcast of the week. Give a listen.
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The Trump Standard Won’t Outlast His Presidency
A transactional relationship.
Noah Rothman 2018-01-24
Among the right’s moral majoritarian leadership, the ethical flexibility on display since the revelations involving Donald Trump’s alleged affair with an adult film actress is of Olympic caliber. This represents only the latest opportunity for the evangelical community’s leaders to jettison their credibility. Some leaped at the chance.
According to new reporting this month, Donald Trump allegedly had a consensual affair with a paid pornographic actress who went by the stage name Stormy Daniels in 2006, one year after marrying his third wife and just months after his son Barron Trump was born. Daniels consented to the release of an extensive 2011 interview in which she described the affair in explicit detail. The Wall Street Journal revealed that Michael Cohen, an attorney working for Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign, paid Daniels $130,000 to keep quiet about the affair. What’s more, he did so through a Delaware LLC to which Cohen was attached as the “authorized person” rather than a third party with some distance from the future president. This thing is pretty airtight.
What’s interesting is that, so far, Trump’s defenders are not following the president’s lead and denying that this affair occurred. As an entertainer and publicity seeker, Donald Trump made a virtue of his penchant for adultery. Jaws around the nation did not drop over the allegation that the president might not have been faithful to his third wife. These revelations do serve as another opportunity to check in with the religious right just to make sure they remain comfortable with the double standard they have reserved for Trump. And, yes, they’re still good with it.
In an interview with Politico, Family Research Council President Tony Perkins confessed that the community of moral leaders on the right gave Trump a “mulligan” for the debauchery in which he engaged before he became a political figure. He said that the religious right is “tired of being kicked around” by the left and are “glad” there’s “somebody on the playground that is willing to punch the bully.” What about turning the other cheek, Perkins’s interlocutor asked. “You know, you only have two cheeks,” he replied.
Perkins is getting a lot of grief for that, but his honest assessment of the transactional nature of the evangelical community’s moral compromise is illuminating. “That support is not unconditional,” he said. “If the president for some reason stopped keeping campaign promises and then engaged in that behavior now, the support’s gone.” In other words, if Trump stops delivering for them in office, this community of formerly self-righteous moral scolds reserves the right to rediscover their principles.
Many have offered theories as to why these and many other evangelical leaders compromised themselves for Trump. Less attention has been paid to whether the moral majority’s acceptance of Trumpian turpitude represents a depressing new normal. Is this the standard of ethical degradation to which all will be held in the future? If Perkins’ admission is reflective of unspoken sentiments broadly shared on the right, the answer is no. Trump’s is a standard to which only the politically valuable are held.
There was some justified fear that the Trump standard was being broadly applied in November when the right’s moral gymnasts engaged in a collective defense of Alabama justice Roy Moore. They joined with the institutional GOP to ratify Donald Trump’s support for the GOP nominee for U.S. Senate despite his contempt for the law, the Constitution, and the credible allegations that he had abused underage girls. But once Moore lost, his utility was spent. As Breitbart’s Alex Marlow confessed, the accusations against Moore were credible, but the impulse to protect Trump—not Moore, per se—from his detractors was more important than moral rectitude. This, too, was transactional.
Conservatives might be tempted to retreat into a persecution complex. After all, defending Trump’s repeated indiscretions is a full-time job and one that the left seems conspicuously able to avoid. The Trump standard is the Bill Clinton standard, they might say, and it’s about time that Republicans held a mirror up to Democrats and their enablers in media. Stringent moral standards were shackles by which the right constrained itself, thus allowing the left to operate with impunity. Good riddance.
But the Trump standard and the Clinton standard seem reserved for presidents. Anthony Weiner, David Wu, and John Edwards did not benefit from the Clinton standard. Al Franken and John Conyers’ appeals to precedent didn’t salvage their political careers. Similarly, even in just the last 12 months, personal indiscretions were enough to cut short the political careers of Republicans like Blake Farenthold, Joe Barton, and Tim Murphy.
Some might push back against the notion that we can draw broader conclusions from these politicians’ experiences because Rep. Patrick Meehan and Missouri Gov. Eric Greitens have managed to hold on despite the sex scandals engulfing their careers. Their careers might withstand calls for their resignations; time will tell. But their experiences reinforce the fact that there really are no universal moral standards. There are only individuals. And the actions of those individuals are condemned or condoned as a result of calculated cost/benefit analyses, not morality. It was always ever thus.
If this doesn’t sound like cause for optimism to you, buck up. Presidential politics is unique because the stakes at the presidential level are so high. Both parties tend to reflect their titular leaders, but presidents are transitory figures. The Republican Party’s status quo ante was Mitt Romney, John McCain, George W. Bush, Bob Dole, and so on; men of moral fortitude who had no stomach for conspiratorial thinking, nativist acrimony, or degeneracy. A reversion to the mean is perfectly imaginable.
If such a reversion is in the cards, no one who compromised their stated values in the Trump era should be allowed to forget the bargain they made. Yet this presidency has exposed a valuable truth: too often, ethical considerations are situational and conditional—particularly in politics. If American moral decline is going to be arrested, the country’s self-styled moral leaders must confront that fact and realize the extent to which they’ve contributed to the plunge.
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