07/28/2008
There are many reasons to be fascinated by Philip Weiss' TAC account of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee’s recent annual conference. But one of them is this:[T]he AIPAC'ers didn’t come for selfish reasons. They are devoutly concerned with the lives of people they don’t know, very far away. Yes, people with whom they feel tribal kinship. When Israelis came out on the dais to speak, they were almost invariably overwhelmed by the generosity, if not the Vegas schmaltz. “There is a tremendous amount of love in this place,” Meir Nissensohn, an Israeli executive of IBM, said in wonder. “If it was a beaker, it would explode.” Even a sharp critic like myself of what AIPAC is doing to American policy in the Middle East was frequently moved by the pure loving feeling that surrounds you at every moment.I instantly recognized this. It’s essentially what I was referring to in the essay I contributed to Mike Deaver’s 2005 book Why I Am A Reagan Conservative:
The core of conservativism, it seems to me, is this recognition and acceptance of the elemental emotions. Conservatism understands that it is futile to debate the feelings of the mother for her child — or such human instincts as the bonds of tribe, nation, even race. Of course, all are painfully vulnerable to deconstruction by rationalistic intellectuals — but not, ultimately, to destruction. These commitments are Jungian rather than Freudian, not irrational butarational — beyond the reach of reason.(Links in original VDARE.COM posting.)Leftists often say that conservatives are motivated by “hate,” because its recognizing these loyalties tacitly implies, by definition, that these loyalties have limits. But the truth is that conservatism is motivated by love.
In American debate, conservatives are regularly, and Zionists somewhat irregularly, accused of "hate". Weiss does well to note, in the frankest statement I've seen, that love is at least as important.
This is a content archive of VDARE.com, which Letitia James forced off of the Internet using lawfare.