https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=7JsrM5anRRs
the notion of modernity versus medievalism. And I want to speak briefly on behalf of the medievalists. And I’m going to try to do that from a Jewish perspective, let’s say, because one of the things that’s very interesting about the Jewish state is that despite its status as a modern democracy, it’s also unbelievably deeply rooted in an ancient tradition and also draws the ethical wellspring of its right to exist from that tradition. And so the Jews are wrestling in some real sense with the problem of not precisely medievalism versus modernity, but definitely tradition versus modernity. And I do have some sympathy for the more fundamentalist end of the religious spectrum, but let’s say more specifically the Islamic, well, and also the Jewish Orthodox end of the spectrum. And the reason I say that is because one of the problems with modernity is that it frees you up technologically and it produces a land of abundance in some sense, but the price that’s paid is ethical confusion and a kind of corrosive and nihilistic cynicism that emerges as a consequence of the realization, let’s say, that the world is only objective in nature and that God is dead. And Western societies are paying a very big price for this. Reflected, for example, and places like South Korea and Japan, reflected not least in their catastrophically low birth rates and their, what would you call, their lack of a belief that it’s ethically appropriate to move forward forthrightly into the future. And so you can imagine that on the medievalist side and the Christian fundamentalist side and the Jewish Orthodox side, there’s this insistence that goes something like, look, there’s a lot of things in these more traditional views that have to be, they’re appropriate bulwarks against the dissolute tendencies of a overweeningly intellectual modernism. And I do believe that’s the case. Now I’ve had some preliminary discussions with people who are more on the fundamentalist side of the Muslim argument, and they took me to task for a variety of things, but did admit that from their perspective, even that there is in some fundamental sense in the ideal to be no compulsion in matters of religious belief, which is a doctrine that has some origin in the Quran itself. Now, of course, it’s always subject to interpretation, but at least you can make that case. And so I would say, do you see a pathway? You said that with regard to the Palestinians, that the proper approach in some sense is to expand Israel’s relationship with other Arab states, particularly on the diplomatic and economic fronts. And that also opens up the rest of the Arab world in some sense to be the beneficiaries of the immense innovative capacity of the Israelis on the technological and the governance side. What would you do to extend a hand to the medievalists, given that the Jews are also rooted in an ancient tradition and obviously value it immensely and regarded as the very ethical foundation of their claim to a state? Like, what’s the pathway forward? So one of the things that really struck me after I had this conversation with a more traditional Muslim leader, and I’ve talked to lots of different Muslim thinkers, some of which are like Iyam Herzi Ali are quite profoundly anti-Islam in some real sense, what was very hardening to me was that despite the rather fractious nature of the conversation, it was watched by many millions of people. It got about two and a half million views in the first two weeks it was posted. And most of them were Muslim, and most of them were traditionalist Muslims. And all of them said, almost without exception, that they’re absolutely thrilled that a conversation like that could take place where real issues were discussed relatively peacefully, but intensely, and that there was a sense that I got that they were extremely pleased to be regarded as valid participants at the table of discussion. So a lot to unpack there. I will say about the Jews first. What’s different is we’re not a missionary faith. For radical Islam, they have to spread their particular brand of Islam all over the world. That is an article of faith that they have, certainly in all those regions that Islam once held. They have to go back and sort of reconquer it. And I think if there is a radical Christian group that would believe they have to missionize to everybody around, that would also make it harder for them to develop tolerance for those who disagree with them. But Jews are, I think, in a different category because we’ve been, you’d have to go back to the Bible and how we governed in the Bible, and it certainly wasn’t perfection there. I mean, I think one of the most remarkable things about Jewish scripture is that all the blemishes are put there for everybody. And I think that’s a very important thing because it’s not just the Jews who are going through the desert, it’s 40 years, but the five stories of them sinning or so, whatever that number is, it’s all there. And all the warts and everything, and even King David, when he sins and the prophet is telling him, you’re the sinner, that’s the foundation of the rule of law, frankly, and that the Jewish leaders would put a king being rebuked by anybody is, I think, remarkable in itself. I think that people could argue the jury is still out because you haven’t had sovereignty for 2,000 years, now you’re working your way through the modern world. I think Israel is actually an excellent example of reconciling faith and freedom. And I’m somebody who was born and raised in the United States, which you may have mentioned at the top, and I always thought the greatness of America, one of the things is their ability to reconcile faith and freedom in a way that Europe didn’t, because it sort of abandoned faith. And in the Middle East, they couldn’t accept freedom and could do it, and now a lot of those things are breaking down in the United States. But let’s take a step back about five centuries. And here I wanna go back to something I read that fascinated me by Isaiah Berlin, the great British philosopher. He said that sincerity is a completely modern virtue. It doesn’t exist before, I think he said the 17th century, maybe the 16th century. Like this idea that we have today, that we accept other people who disagree with us fundamentally on theological matters, because we know that they are true to their faith and they live by those principles, that did not exist before the 16th century. So when Protestants were killing Catholics and Catholics were killing Protestants in Europe, they weren’t saying about Thomas More or others, well, that guy really believes what he believes, and we have to have appreciation for that. No, sincerity is a completely modern virtue. And I think it’s very interesting. James Q. Wilson, the great sociologist, I don’t know if you ever had a chance to meet him, but he wrote an essay, I think it was in City Journal about 20 years ago called The Reform Islam Needs. And in that essay, he’s explaining how democracy rose in the West. And it didn’t rise because philosophers got around a table and came up with ideas. He says it rose because of the expedience of Kings, because you had these religious wars of fanaticism in the 16th century, and the Kings understood that they’re not gonna have young men to collect crops or to gather taxes from if this continues for more and more decades, more and more centuries. So what you had was a freedom of conscience that emerged. Then the philosophers come and codify. Then you expand the freedom a little bit, and then they codify. Of course, it can be reversed. You can have a Nazi power that wants to take you back. All sorts of things can happen that way. But what was interesting to me is he’s saying that Islam now, and this is right after 9-11, where you have the Shia radicals and the Sunni radicals, you might be actually in that path where you have these religious wars. And in the wake of these religious wars, you have the ability to have a space for dissent, to have freedom of conscience. And we only see it in hindsight, and it might take many decades, but frankly, it took hundreds of years for these democratic ideas to develop in the West, even the founders, as you know. There was slavery in the United States for a century. You didn’t have women that had the right to vote for 150 years. But the ideas that they put in place in 1776 and later when they were developing the Constitution, those are the ideas that still give the sense that you can keep expanding it. Now, could what you see happening in the Middle East with the forces of modernity, facing the forces of medievalism, could, out of this tremendous violence, and there’s one difference, as an aside, between today and the 16th century, the ability of one person or a small group of people to kill many thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, that’s what’s different. It could be that you’re seeing the Middle East in the 21st century is sort of where Europe was in the mid-16th century, and you’re moving, hopefully, to a different future. Now, we can speed that up because of communications, because of ties between people. So what may have happened in 100 years can happen in 10 years, but the real danger, and this gets to Iran, the real danger if you allow any of these fanatics to get their hands on nuclear weapons, because when you marry militant Islam to nuclear weapons, now you’re talking about danger to millions or tens of millions of people. So the fires burnt themselves out in Europe in the 16th century, and you could kill a lot of people, but this is a different order of magnitude, and I think that’s why the most important thing, and this is our view in Israel, but it’s not just for Israel. It’s for all our Arab neighbors. It’s also for Europe. It’s also for the United States, because we’re the little Satan, as Netanyahu says. America’s the great Satan. Europe gets aggravated. Maybe they’re a middle-sized Satan, but their designs are not just on Israel. They’re on you to reverse history, to upend the whole order. The Chinese are trying to replace the United States, but here you have the militant Islam. You have a fanaticism that is trying to upend the whole order, and to think that the traditional rules of deterrence will work with a nuclear-armed power, whether it’s a Sunni or Shia power that’s radical, that is armed with nuclear weapons, to think that the traditional cost benefits of deterrence and mutually assured destruction will work, you’re gambling with the future of the world. Now, if you’re stuck in that situation because you couldn’t stop it, well, you’re gonna have to make the best of it, but to allow something like this to happen is completely insane. And that’s what’s happening as we speak, where they’re trying to negotiate a nuclear deal with these ayatollahs in Iran that are trying to export this revolution around the world. I mean, it’s insanity to do something like this. And this, if this happens, because you talked about who are the forces of modernity, who are the forces of medievalism, on that medieval side, the point, the Shia point is certainly Iran. And all their proxies to the region, the Shia militias in Iraq, the Shia terror proxy in Lebanon, which is Hezbollah, their proxy in Yemen, which is the Houthis, they’re controlling through their proxies and terrorism, a huge swath of these medievalists. On the other side, you have, as I said, Al-Qaeda, and that was replaced really by ISIS, but Sunni fanaticism has not disappeared. It will reappear again. And what you want to do is move those forces of modernity. And here I would put those Gulf States, not because of their modern democracies, because they’re trying to advance their society. So let’s look at women’s rights in Saudi Arabia compared not to the United States or to Canada or to Europe, but compared to women’s rights in Saudi Arabia 20 years ago. Look at what’s happening in sort of the opening of these societies. Now, if you think about it in a 16th century context, the progress is remarkable.