Muddling Toward Maturity Blog

YORAM HAZONY - TO AVOID CIVIL WAR IT IS NECESSARY FOR ONE POLITICAL PARTY TO GRANT THE LEGITIMACY OF AN ELECTION VICTORY TO THE OPPOSING SIDE

Yoram Hazony, President of the Herzl Institute, a citizen of both the United States and Israel, currently makes his home in Jerusalem.  He is a brilliant scholar, the author of several books, including The Philosophy of Hebrew Scripture,  The Virtue of Nationalism and God and Politics in Esther.   He recently wrote a MUST READ essay, "The Challenge of Marxism," which I will write about  another time.  For now, watch the following fascinating interview and note especially what Hazony says about "the only way to avoid civil war."   I will produce the text of his statement below. 

 (The bolding below is mine)

 10:45 mark:    I am sure that we have never seen in our lifetimes this degree of hatred.  That's not to say there wasn't hatred.  I remember when Ronald Reagan was president people hated him, and when the Bushes were president, people hated them.  And they certainly talked as though they were fascists and monsters, and all the rest, but what's changed, I think what's clearly changed, is the next step which is the willingness to withdraw legitimacy from a Republican president. That's something that we have never seen before.

COUNTRY MUSIC -- THE SOUTH AS A SHAME-HONOR CULTURE

Rod Dreher wrote an illuminating column today which I continue to think about. He titled his column, "Sad Songs and the South."     

He concludes his article with the following rendition of "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down,"  but you've got to read the article (below) to understand how it fits into the article's thesis.

Dreher wrote:

. . . ..I was thinking the other day about the Confederate controversy, in light of the fact that the South is a shame-honor culture, and one where people are deeply rooted in a sense of family and place — for better or for worse. Might it be that non-Southerners, for cultural reasons, simply cannot understand why it’s difficult for Southerners to execrate their ancestors, even if their ancestors did bad things?

That thought came back to me after listening to this amazing episode of Malcolm Gladwell’s Revisionist History podcast. It’s about country music, and what sets it apart from other American musical genres. Malcolm Gladwell is not the first person I would go to for insight into how country music works, but boy, was this great.  

On the podcast, Gladwell explores why country music has so many sad songs, but rock music does not. After listening to Vince Gill’s “Go Rest High On That Mountain,” which is about the death of country singer Keith Whitley, who drank himself to death, as well as Gill’s own brother, who died young of a heart attack, Gladwell says: