Yehuda, you are exactly right — Piker’s project is to delegitimize the liberal order Klein is playing by. What I’d add: this Israeli government has made that project easier than any before it. The infrastructure was always there. But Ben Gvir, the settlement acceleration, the death penalty legislation — these are gifts to people who needed Israel to behave badly to justify a conclusion they already held. Both things are true simultaneously.
Yes, and so are Hamas and Hezbollah gifts to those who already want the Jews and the Jewish state destroyed. Ben Gvir, settlement expansion, death penalty---all connected---are horrific, no question. But Hamas and Hezbollah, using modern technology and well-honed, well-financed persuasion techniques are gifts as well, as you note, to the enemies of decency. Never forget that.
Sure. Which means we zoom out a little and look at consequences. Which side has killed more people and destroyed more property? We need to start with responsibility before we look to justifications.
I agree with the very general thesis of affirming pluralism in discourse. However, for me as a liberal Zionist, I don’t think there can be a good faith conversation with antizionists, or for that matter, as a liberal, with fascists. Why would you interact with someone that seeks your destruction.
there are versions of anti-Zionism and people who identify as anti-Zionist who are absolutely worth engaging and who can be engaged in good faith; and since these terms are so slippery, it will be very self-defeating for our community to draw too narrow a boundary around these terms. But supporting Hamas and Hezbollah make clear that “anti-Zionism” is a fig leaf and I was very disappointed that Ezra Klein used Hasan Piker as a case study for anti-Zionism in this way.
Perhaps I’m narrow in my understanding of the different strains of antizionism and would earnestly welcome your assessment of which types are worth engaging in good faith and are not ultimately useful to those seeking Israel’s destruction.
I’m wondering who you have in mind. Even a humane one state solution would presumably advocate for the Jewish population to remain in Eretz Yisrael, therefore still qualifying as some form of Zionism, perhaps cultural.
One state for both Moslems and Jews would be neither a solution, nor humane toward the Jews as Islam's mission is to rule the state and destroy the Zionist infidel Jew. There are plethora of Moslem states, as well as states where Christmas is treated as a national holiday. There is no plausible objection for a democratic Jewish state.
I would say that the only anti-Zionists worth engaging with are those who don’t believe in the concept of the state or peoplehood at all, for consistency. That is, there shouldn’t be a country of Ireland or Italy or Brazil or China for people who identify with those groups of people. Otherwise how is this anti-Zionism -which in my definition defines Jewish peoplehood as deserving of a state like any other people - especially given the massive disaster of the historic experience of stateless Jews - seems to be highly selective and discriminatory.
Also Klein is a media personality focused on getting more digital subscriptions for the NYT. I think Kurtzer gives him too much credit. His Piker interview is not an anomaly but core to Klein’s and the NYT’s desire to increase subscription revenue by appealing to the millions of young people who sadly listen to Piker.
I stopped listening to to Klein when he interviewed Khalil. You could have written a similar piece about that interview I would imagine. Maybe I shouldn't give up on the NYT and people like Klein. But how do we find them credible when they welcome the bomb throwers in?
This is also a miscalculation of who some of these people are. The problem is that Ezra Klein is not a “centered” left wing advocate like you are Yehuda. Klein is very Progressive, lost on the ideology spectrum, and doesn’t realize that Hasan Piker is equivalent to someone like Nick Fuentes on the right. He thinks Piker’s extremism is equivalent to people on the right like Ted Cruz and that no one on the left is as odious as Fuentes. That’s just wrong. When you are lost on the spectrum you make this kind of mistake to include the Pikers in the conversation. It’s like the right wingers that argue for including Fuentes and Owens and don’t realize how extreme they are. They are also lost on the right side of the spectrum.
You are right about Klein. He is more left than liberal and while I agree with Yehuda he has made great effort which I appreciate to go into depth on all sides, his own confusion also comes through clearly in his past interviews
"I felt that the obligations of liberals, as I outlined above, included both the advocacy for an open tent and a willingness to make clear which ideas were wrong. That means, in certain cases, the refusal to platform them. To not publish something is not the same as banning it. There is no hypocrisy in liberals not weighting all opinions identically."
Speaking of "hiding the football," methinks Yehuda does not like Bari Weiss very much. I also think this is the very trap set for "liberals" they fall in over and over, that their opinions not only matter but are born of virtue and therefore are virtuous. Give me a break.
If the NYT and Mr. Kurtzer want to be regarded as the arbiters of good and bad, liberal and not, then they should say so and suffer the inevitable consequences for being full of ..... But if the NYT wants to maintain (or perhaps restore) its credibility as a trusted news source, then it should stop pretending it is such an arbiter. Because it gets things wrong all the time, on the facts, on the morality, and the likely consequences.
Some things are black and white. Allowing a US Senator to express a view that is shared by many is not one of them. Disagree all you want. But don't pretend your opinion is anything more than an opinion. This is the core of progressive illiberalism.
This opinion is illiberal in my opinion, uncharitable and blinkered.
I think you are wrong on how to restore trust: my thesis is that it will get there precisely by being open arbiters, rather than pretending they aren't, or actually forcing themselves not to be. We trust those whose principles we know.
I have a lot of respect for Yehuda, which is why this piece is so disappointing.
The "Piker is illiberal" premise has been pretty thoroughly contested since it was first floated – and Yehuda doesn't engage that contestation at all. He just asserts it, then builds an entire argument on top of the assertion. That's not serious.
Worse, he attributes to Klein and Piker a position neither of them holds – that the pro-democracy left must recruit illiberals to win. Then he condemns that position. That's a strawman, and at the level Yehuda operates, it's not an accident.
Actual liberalism requires engaging with empirical reality: the full record of what Piker has said, the context in which he said it, the foreign policy concept of blowback, the question of what produces radicalization in the first place. Actual liberalism requires enough intellectual humility to update your worldview when the facts demand it. Actual liberalism means opposing genocide – and not smearing people who do.
The illiberalism in this conversation isn't coming from Hasan Piker. It's coming from this piece. Presenting that inversion in liberalism's name, with Yehuda's platform and institutional credibility behind it – that's a shanda.
You criticize the author for failing to engage with a contested premise before building an argument on top of it, while doing the same yourself by asserting one of the most disputed and unproven claims of all: that Israel has committed genocide in Gaza.
> We have to find ways to prevent our culture of hyper-polarization from setting Americans against each other in ways that are disproportionate to our actual disagreements
I agree with this. But if this was what Klein wanted to do, he'd be trying to convince liberals to see Republicans more moderately and have an open mind about voting for them, not to embrace the deranged extremists of their own side. That he did the opposite suggests what his real goals are.
More than anything I am disturbed by Klein's lack of outrage at Piker, Klein as both Jew and journalist. Klein treats the end goal of journalism largely as neutral and as objective as possible. I have appreciated many of his interviews.
But our most valued journalists who have stood the test of time in the US over time have engaged with their interviewees with a definite point of view, case in point Buckley with Cleaver. Edward R. Morrow and more. No shrinking violets there. I couldn't stand William Buckley but he engaged in the common ground of liberal journalism. But Klein in his confusion, like many on the left including Jews on the left, are becoming more illiberal and assumptions rather than open dialogue are creeping into Klein's own discourse. Why this is happening is a fascinating conversation of itself. However I am less concerned with Piker being interviewed by Klein or anyone else. I am more concerned about how good journalists or any leaders take them on publicly.
In 1971 the Rabbi of my synagogue in Sands Point NY invited Rabbi Meyer Kahane to debate him. I was a junior in high school and my parents were excited and agitated to take me. What I witnessed that day changed and challenged my young life. The huge social hall was packed. Kahane said his piece within his time limitations, was booed over and over. When it was his turn our Rabbi made it clear in no uncertain terms Kahane's hate and advocacy for violence had no friends in the house. He was never rude or demeaning. But his outrage was loud and clear. Questions were taken. Or rather the audience had a chance to express their outrage.
Kahane was booed right out of there.
Ben Shahn posters were sold in the Temple lobby and I still have mine to this day.
If we think the role of a Rabbi or even a journalist is not to take sides, then what the heck does Judaism stand for?
If we can listen calmly as someone calls himself a Hezbollah supporter and anti-Zionist, but nooo, not an anti-Semite, then we are complicit in the kidnapping of our terminology and someone who supports violence against Jews. But Klein says "but wait, he says other things"..really??
So I say interview Piker. Interview him EVERYWHERE. Invite him and debate him out of town.
I think the surprising part of Klein’s piece was exactly this: he combined an argument for engaging with your opponents and then offered an *apologetic defense* of Piker, thus making him less of an “opponent.”
This is excellent. Sure, bring him on your show. But challenge him on his actual beliefs and debate him. Klein, citing Aaron Regenburg’s interview (Klein himself didn’t interview him) did not challenge Piker’s fundamental views. It was more a debunking of some of the more outrageous statements which were to done degree taken out of context. Same goes for Jon Favreau who did do a sit down interview with Piker on Pod Save America last week. He let so many things Piker said go absolutely unchallenged. It was like he was trying to be liked by the cool kid. Truly pathetic. By not challenging Piker on the assertions he made regarding Israel and Zionism Favreau tacitly makes those views his own. So now Pod Save America is of the view that Israel is an 80 year and counting Colonialist project of oppression, apartheid and genocide of the Palestinian people. Zionism has been fascism since the start. Just ask Einstein. He agreed according to Piker. And the ADL, they are the actual antisemites. But Piker, he hates antisemitism and has been fighting it for decades.
Yes, what I observe in our fragmented culture is that right now it suffers from a heightened values malaise. Many have lost a sense of moral clarity and Yehuda's striking summary of what Klein did here is how that can play out on the left. Something I have long worried about is that not only has the left made a general turn away from religion but often blames religion for most society ills. Without knowing much about religion! So if you dont like religion of any kind, then Jews are 3x suspect because historically and uniquely our religion is bonded to peoplehood and Land, a strong little triple helix.
So It is a slippery slope from feeling religion is to blame for world problems to bigotry towards Jews and Judaism.
That view is precisely the opposite of what our country is founded on. Even as it moves slowly toward its mission, the US was founded on respecting all citizens' rights to worship and speech as long as it doesn't tread on others' rights. Respecting doesn't mean just tolerate. It means valuing. It doesnt mean we tolerate hate speech. It means we value the fact that abhorrent speech is a citizen right, but it needs guard rails.
If we are to have common ground this must be a fundamental principal and a relentless project: the insurance of Individual rights and responsibilities to others.
Pure Nationalism, pure ideology, pure anything is anti-American. Moral purity is divisiveness
Moral clarity connects.
The democracy of our country and Israel too are threatened by those who have a weak sense of moral clarity. Politics has become a false God with its own rigidities. So as liberal Jews who love this country, we cannot allow the fog to mess with moral vision. That's why I love this substack and Yehuda 's work. It grapples with the center flexible hold, flushes out the fog and clears some brush. He says all this much better than me, but perhaps more of us need this message more often!
100% agree and good piece. Ezra Klein should be ashamed of himself if such a thing were possible. I'm afraid, however, it is not as Klein has lost all touch with reality and has gotten high on his own supply of nonsense.
Can you, or did you already in some other blog post, show with examples that “Piker’s very project involves the delegitimating of the very liberal order by whose rules Klein is playing.”?
I’m not super familiar with Pilker, but I haven’t seen evidence that his overall project is delegitimizing the liberal order.
Lest we forget, this is the same Ezra Klein who stated that Charlie Kirk was "doing politics the right way" after Kirk's murder. Kirk's murder was an attack on liberalism itself, full stop. Plus morally wrong. But acknowledging that, vs. arguing that Kirk was a hero of political discourse, are quite different. Kirk was another Piker, only on the right. Yet Klein embraced him, and thus all of of his terrible prior statements, which were no better than Piker's.
Among a certain strain of progressives, there is this self-defeating purism that leads to this nonsense. Drawing lines is fine. Required even. I'd rather some lines defending liberalism than getting the "liberal Joe Rogan" any day, because, and this is what Klein doesn't get, we don't want a "liberal Joe Rogan." It's not a good thing!
One additional point about Piker. He seems to think that Hezbolah and Hamas are only about destroying Israel. They are, of course, about that, but these two terrorist organizations, along with Iran, are also about destroying modern civilization, including the US, Europe, and most other democracies in the world, and replacing them with Islamic extremist dictatorships.
No matter where the liberal draws the line, the illiberal will attempt to rip him or her to shreds for their viewpoints. And they play nasty, impugning motives, suggesting shame, and twisting the arguments.
Yehuda, you are exactly right — Piker’s project is to delegitimize the liberal order Klein is playing by. What I’d add: this Israeli government has made that project easier than any before it. The infrastructure was always there. But Ben Gvir, the settlement acceleration, the death penalty legislation — these are gifts to people who needed Israel to behave badly to justify a conclusion they already held. Both things are true simultaneously.
Yes, and so are Hamas and Hezbollah gifts to those who already want the Jews and the Jewish state destroyed. Ben Gvir, settlement expansion, death penalty---all connected---are horrific, no question. But Hamas and Hezbollah, using modern technology and well-honed, well-financed persuasion techniques are gifts as well, as you note, to the enemies of decency. Never forget that.
Sure. Which means we zoom out a little and look at consequences. Which side has killed more people and destroyed more property? We need to start with responsibility before we look to justifications.
Destroyed "more property?" What are you even talking about?
I agree with the very general thesis of affirming pluralism in discourse. However, for me as a liberal Zionist, I don’t think there can be a good faith conversation with antizionists, or for that matter, as a liberal, with fascists. Why would you interact with someone that seeks your destruction.
there are versions of anti-Zionism and people who identify as anti-Zionist who are absolutely worth engaging and who can be engaged in good faith; and since these terms are so slippery, it will be very self-defeating for our community to draw too narrow a boundary around these terms. But supporting Hamas and Hezbollah make clear that “anti-Zionism” is a fig leaf and I was very disappointed that Ezra Klein used Hasan Piker as a case study for anti-Zionism in this way.
Who can you recommend that I read that you consider an anti zionist who can be engaged in good faith ?
i ask sincerely and respectfully
I have not met , read or seen an interview of anyone that calls themselves an anti zionist
I very much would like to read their work
Thank you
Perhaps I’m narrow in my understanding of the different strains of antizionism and would earnestly welcome your assessment of which types are worth engaging in good faith and are not ultimately useful to those seeking Israel’s destruction.
I’m wondering who you have in mind. Even a humane one state solution would presumably advocate for the Jewish population to remain in Eretz Yisrael, therefore still qualifying as some form of Zionism, perhaps cultural.
A one state solution disavows the essential need for a distinctly Jewish State which is basic and inextricable to Zionism
That's right.
One state for both Moslems and Jews would be neither a solution, nor humane toward the Jews as Islam's mission is to rule the state and destroy the Zionist infidel Jew. There are plethora of Moslem states, as well as states where Christmas is treated as a national holiday. There is no plausible objection for a democratic Jewish state.
The objection, in short, is all the people it rules that are not citizens.
I would say that the only anti-Zionists worth engaging with are those who don’t believe in the concept of the state or peoplehood at all, for consistency. That is, there shouldn’t be a country of Ireland or Italy or Brazil or China for people who identify with those groups of people. Otherwise how is this anti-Zionism -which in my definition defines Jewish peoplehood as deserving of a state like any other people - especially given the massive disaster of the historic experience of stateless Jews - seems to be highly selective and discriminatory.
Also Klein is a media personality focused on getting more digital subscriptions for the NYT. I think Kurtzer gives him too much credit. His Piker interview is not an anomaly but core to Klein’s and the NYT’s desire to increase subscription revenue by appealing to the millions of young people who sadly listen to Piker.
This was so insightful and nuanced, and I really hope it’s shared widely!
I stopped listening to to Klein when he interviewed Khalil. You could have written a similar piece about that interview I would imagine. Maybe I shouldn't give up on the NYT and people like Klein. But how do we find them credible when they welcome the bomb throwers in?
This is also a miscalculation of who some of these people are. The problem is that Ezra Klein is not a “centered” left wing advocate like you are Yehuda. Klein is very Progressive, lost on the ideology spectrum, and doesn’t realize that Hasan Piker is equivalent to someone like Nick Fuentes on the right. He thinks Piker’s extremism is equivalent to people on the right like Ted Cruz and that no one on the left is as odious as Fuentes. That’s just wrong. When you are lost on the spectrum you make this kind of mistake to include the Pikers in the conversation. It’s like the right wingers that argue for including Fuentes and Owens and don’t realize how extreme they are. They are also lost on the right side of the spectrum.
You are right about Klein. He is more left than liberal and while I agree with Yehuda he has made great effort which I appreciate to go into depth on all sides, his own confusion also comes through clearly in his past interviews
"I felt that the obligations of liberals, as I outlined above, included both the advocacy for an open tent and a willingness to make clear which ideas were wrong. That means, in certain cases, the refusal to platform them. To not publish something is not the same as banning it. There is no hypocrisy in liberals not weighting all opinions identically."
Speaking of "hiding the football," methinks Yehuda does not like Bari Weiss very much. I also think this is the very trap set for "liberals" they fall in over and over, that their opinions not only matter but are born of virtue and therefore are virtuous. Give me a break.
If the NYT and Mr. Kurtzer want to be regarded as the arbiters of good and bad, liberal and not, then they should say so and suffer the inevitable consequences for being full of ..... But if the NYT wants to maintain (or perhaps restore) its credibility as a trusted news source, then it should stop pretending it is such an arbiter. Because it gets things wrong all the time, on the facts, on the morality, and the likely consequences.
Some things are black and white. Allowing a US Senator to express a view that is shared by many is not one of them. Disagree all you want. But don't pretend your opinion is anything more than an opinion. This is the core of progressive illiberalism.
This opinion is illiberal in my opinion, uncharitable and blinkered.
I think you are wrong on how to restore trust: my thesis is that it will get there precisely by being open arbiters, rather than pretending they aren't, or actually forcing themselves not to be. We trust those whose principles we know.
I have a lot of respect for Yehuda, which is why this piece is so disappointing.
The "Piker is illiberal" premise has been pretty thoroughly contested since it was first floated – and Yehuda doesn't engage that contestation at all. He just asserts it, then builds an entire argument on top of the assertion. That's not serious.
Worse, he attributes to Klein and Piker a position neither of them holds – that the pro-democracy left must recruit illiberals to win. Then he condemns that position. That's a strawman, and at the level Yehuda operates, it's not an accident.
Actual liberalism requires engaging with empirical reality: the full record of what Piker has said, the context in which he said it, the foreign policy concept of blowback, the question of what produces radicalization in the first place. Actual liberalism requires enough intellectual humility to update your worldview when the facts demand it. Actual liberalism means opposing genocide – and not smearing people who do.
The illiberalism in this conversation isn't coming from Hasan Piker. It's coming from this piece. Presenting that inversion in liberalism's name, with Yehuda's platform and institutional credibility behind it – that's a shanda.
You criticize the author for failing to engage with a contested premise before building an argument on top of it, while doing the same yourself by asserting one of the most disputed and unproven claims of all: that Israel has committed genocide in Gaza.
> We have to find ways to prevent our culture of hyper-polarization from setting Americans against each other in ways that are disproportionate to our actual disagreements
I agree with this. But if this was what Klein wanted to do, he'd be trying to convince liberals to see Republicans more moderately and have an open mind about voting for them, not to embrace the deranged extremists of their own side. That he did the opposite suggests what his real goals are.
More than anything I am disturbed by Klein's lack of outrage at Piker, Klein as both Jew and journalist. Klein treats the end goal of journalism largely as neutral and as objective as possible. I have appreciated many of his interviews.
But our most valued journalists who have stood the test of time in the US over time have engaged with their interviewees with a definite point of view, case in point Buckley with Cleaver. Edward R. Morrow and more. No shrinking violets there. I couldn't stand William Buckley but he engaged in the common ground of liberal journalism. But Klein in his confusion, like many on the left including Jews on the left, are becoming more illiberal and assumptions rather than open dialogue are creeping into Klein's own discourse. Why this is happening is a fascinating conversation of itself. However I am less concerned with Piker being interviewed by Klein or anyone else. I am more concerned about how good journalists or any leaders take them on publicly.
In 1971 the Rabbi of my synagogue in Sands Point NY invited Rabbi Meyer Kahane to debate him. I was a junior in high school and my parents were excited and agitated to take me. What I witnessed that day changed and challenged my young life. The huge social hall was packed. Kahane said his piece within his time limitations, was booed over and over. When it was his turn our Rabbi made it clear in no uncertain terms Kahane's hate and advocacy for violence had no friends in the house. He was never rude or demeaning. But his outrage was loud and clear. Questions were taken. Or rather the audience had a chance to express their outrage.
Kahane was booed right out of there.
Ben Shahn posters were sold in the Temple lobby and I still have mine to this day.
If we think the role of a Rabbi or even a journalist is not to take sides, then what the heck does Judaism stand for?
If we can listen calmly as someone calls himself a Hezbollah supporter and anti-Zionist, but nooo, not an anti-Semite, then we are complicit in the kidnapping of our terminology and someone who supports violence against Jews. But Klein says "but wait, he says other things"..really??
So I say interview Piker. Interview him EVERYWHERE. Invite him and debate him out of town.
I think the surprising part of Klein’s piece was exactly this: he combined an argument for engaging with your opponents and then offered an *apologetic defense* of Piker, thus making him less of an “opponent.”
Exactly that.
A disingenuous and harmful strategy at best.
This is excellent. Sure, bring him on your show. But challenge him on his actual beliefs and debate him. Klein, citing Aaron Regenburg’s interview (Klein himself didn’t interview him) did not challenge Piker’s fundamental views. It was more a debunking of some of the more outrageous statements which were to done degree taken out of context. Same goes for Jon Favreau who did do a sit down interview with Piker on Pod Save America last week. He let so many things Piker said go absolutely unchallenged. It was like he was trying to be liked by the cool kid. Truly pathetic. By not challenging Piker on the assertions he made regarding Israel and Zionism Favreau tacitly makes those views his own. So now Pod Save America is of the view that Israel is an 80 year and counting Colonialist project of oppression, apartheid and genocide of the Palestinian people. Zionism has been fascism since the start. Just ask Einstein. He agreed according to Piker. And the ADL, they are the actual antisemites. But Piker, he hates antisemitism and has been fighting it for decades.
Yes, what I observe in our fragmented culture is that right now it suffers from a heightened values malaise. Many have lost a sense of moral clarity and Yehuda's striking summary of what Klein did here is how that can play out on the left. Something I have long worried about is that not only has the left made a general turn away from religion but often blames religion for most society ills. Without knowing much about religion! So if you dont like religion of any kind, then Jews are 3x suspect because historically and uniquely our religion is bonded to peoplehood and Land, a strong little triple helix.
So It is a slippery slope from feeling religion is to blame for world problems to bigotry towards Jews and Judaism.
That view is precisely the opposite of what our country is founded on. Even as it moves slowly toward its mission, the US was founded on respecting all citizens' rights to worship and speech as long as it doesn't tread on others' rights. Respecting doesn't mean just tolerate. It means valuing. It doesnt mean we tolerate hate speech. It means we value the fact that abhorrent speech is a citizen right, but it needs guard rails.
If we are to have common ground this must be a fundamental principal and a relentless project: the insurance of Individual rights and responsibilities to others.
Pure Nationalism, pure ideology, pure anything is anti-American. Moral purity is divisiveness
Moral clarity connects.
The democracy of our country and Israel too are threatened by those who have a weak sense of moral clarity. Politics has become a false God with its own rigidities. So as liberal Jews who love this country, we cannot allow the fog to mess with moral vision. That's why I love this substack and Yehuda 's work. It grapples with the center flexible hold, flushes out the fog and clears some brush. He says all this much better than me, but perhaps more of us need this message more often!
I think you say it all very well!
Thank you for engaging !
100% agree and good piece. Ezra Klein should be ashamed of himself if such a thing were possible. I'm afraid, however, it is not as Klein has lost all touch with reality and has gotten high on his own supply of nonsense.
Can you, or did you already in some other blog post, show with examples that “Piker’s very project involves the delegitimating of the very liberal order by whose rules Klein is playing.”?
I’m not super familiar with Pilker, but I haven’t seen evidence that his overall project is delegitimizing the liberal order.
Lest we forget, this is the same Ezra Klein who stated that Charlie Kirk was "doing politics the right way" after Kirk's murder. Kirk's murder was an attack on liberalism itself, full stop. Plus morally wrong. But acknowledging that, vs. arguing that Kirk was a hero of political discourse, are quite different. Kirk was another Piker, only on the right. Yet Klein embraced him, and thus all of of his terrible prior statements, which were no better than Piker's.
Among a certain strain of progressives, there is this self-defeating purism that leads to this nonsense. Drawing lines is fine. Required even. I'd rather some lines defending liberalism than getting the "liberal Joe Rogan" any day, because, and this is what Klein doesn't get, we don't want a "liberal Joe Rogan." It's not a good thing!
One additional point about Piker. He seems to think that Hezbolah and Hamas are only about destroying Israel. They are, of course, about that, but these two terrorist organizations, along with Iran, are also about destroying modern civilization, including the US, Europe, and most other democracies in the world, and replacing them with Islamic extremist dictatorships.
Lol no
No matter where the liberal draws the line, the illiberal will attempt to rip him or her to shreds for their viewpoints. And they play nasty, impugning motives, suggesting shame, and twisting the arguments.
unfortunately the principles of liberalism demand that we keep trying
Well said.
Very good Prof. Kurtzer.