Capitalism overthrows theories of zero-sum economics and dog-eat-dog survival of the fittest. Thus, as in the United States (except for the Darwinian academic arena, where professors angle for grants from the outside), anti-Semitism withers in wealthy capitalist countries. It waxes in Socialist regimes where Jews may arouse resentment by their agility in finding economic niches among the interstices of bureaucracies, tax collections, political pork fests, and crony capitalism. As the elder Netanyahu’s great history shows, an oft-repeated pattern has the Jews serving as the most skilled and trusted servants of the central (or even absentee) government. Then, as the power of hated king or conqueror wanes, he abandons the Jews, who are left to the mercies of the enraged mob.
Static Socialist or feudalistic systems, particularly when oil-rich and politically controlled, favor a conspiratorial view of history and economics. Anti-Semitism is chiefly a zero-sum disease.
Christians may well gag at Prager and Telushkin’s accounts of the depraved anti-Semitism of Martin Luther, various miscreant cardinals, and rabid crusaders, as capitalists will retch at the views of Henry Ford. And all the charges are true. But, putting it as gently as I can, I would demur at the retrospective application of modern standards of morality to the long history of the human parade through the treacherous and bloodthirsty epochs of war, poverty, religious feuds, plagues, famines, and vicious ethnic struggles. The world has been at war for millennia, with hatred and death pandemic on all sides. During World War I, an entire generation comprising approximately 2 0 million young European men was lost. After World War I, an additional 29 million more Europeans died because of an influenza epidemic alone. Until the ascent of capitalism and trade, there was no alternative to joining in the zero-sum struggles for existence against enemies everywhere.
Feminists look back on that appalling panorama and see nothing but misogynist oppression, rape, and murder. Blacks look back and see virtually nothing but lynching and slavery. Native Americans see nothing but genocidal aggression by whites. Third Worlders everywhere see a history of colonialist and imperialist depredations. Armenians and Kurds give harrowing accounts of a history of murderous attacks that killed millions of their forbears. The Irish see an inexorable saga of predatory and vicious Englishmen, callously starving their ancestors to death. American Southerners tell of the loss of a generation of young men and the devastation of Dixie in the “War between the States.” The Muslims tell of rampant brutalities of the Crusades. All of them cherish their own acute grievances and sagas of victimization. All now have been taught to couch their historic suffering, whenever possible and often even when implausible, in the terms of “genocide.”
It is unseemly, as well as tactically questionable, for American Jews, the richest people on earth, to grapple with Armenians and Rwandan Tutsis, Palestinian Arabs and U.S. blacks, Sudanese and Native Americans to corner the trump cards of victimization. Although Jews are objectively correct that the Holocaust was unique in its diabolical details and genocidal reach, current-day Jews will get nowhere pointing to the suffering of their forebears. Every ethnic group has its own tale of woe, because the entire history of the world is woebegone. For most of human history, average longevity was under thirty years. For the vast majority of humans of all ethnic groups, nearly all previous history seemed essentially hopeless in any terms except the physical struggles for Darwinian group survival. You hated your enemies from other groups because most of the time they sought to kill you. You had no vision of the successes of others as your own opportunity.
Until the dominance of capitalism, with its positive spirals of mutual gain, the prevailing regime was a Darwinian zero-sum game in which groups fought for survival against their neighbors. As Walter Lippmann eloquently explained in The Good Society, capitalism for the first time opened a vista of mutually enriching enterprise, with the good fortune of others opening opportunities for all. The Golden Rule, he said, was transformed from an idealistic vision of heaven into a practical agenda. From Poor Richard’s Almanack to rich Andrew Carnegie’s autobiographical parables, all were rediscovering the edifying insights of the Author of Proverbs.
Yes, “Jew-hatred is unique,” as Prager and Telushkin’s first chapter proclaims. Jews are unique. Anti-Semitism subjects this uniquely gifted people to a crude and particularly incendiary manifestation of the immemorial hatreds that have afflicted the world for millennia. Judaism, however, perhaps more than any other religion, favors capitalist activity and provides a rigorous moral framework for it. It is based on a monotheistic affirmation that God is good and will prevail through transcending envy and hatred and zero-sum fantasies. Judaism can be plausibly interpreted as affirming the possibilities of creativity and collaboration on the frontiers of a capitalist economy.
The facts are clear. What makes Jews unique is their excellence. The solution is also clear. As Prager and Telushkin acknowledge, almost in passing, Jews do better under capitalism than under any other system. Anti-Semitism tends to wane under a growing and expanding creative economy. Other consequences of Jewish superiority are also evident. On a planet where human life subsists upon the achievements of human intellect and enterprise, Jews are crucial to the future of the race.
The Holocaust was not only an unspeakable catastrophe for Jews and an eternal source of shame upon all who collaborated with the Nazis’ “final solution.” It was incomparably more destructive than other modern genocidal acts not only because of the diabolical evil of the Nazis but because of the unique virtues and genius of its victims. It was an irretrievable loss and catastrophe for all humanity, depleting the entire species of intellectual resources that will be critical to survival on an ever-threatened planet. Imagine the wealth and culture that might have blessed the world from a population of 200 million Jews, the number that would live today if Jews retained their share of global population held at the time of the Roman Empire.
As irremediable and tragic the loss to the Jewish people and all Jewish families directly affected bv the Holocaust, one could argue that the rest of the world has suffered even more in absolute terms by the loss of the vast potential of the six million Jewish victims whose only sin was being Jewish on the European continent in the twentieth century.
The incontestable facts of Jewish excellence constitute a universal test not only for anti-Semitism but also for liberty and the justice of the civil order. The success or failure of any minority in a given country is the best index of its freedoms. In any free society, Jews will tend to be represented disproportionately in the highest ranks of both its culture and its commerce. Americans should not conceal the triumphs of Jews on our shores but celebrate them as evidence of the superior freedoms of the U.S. economy and culture.
The real case for Israel is incomparably more potent and important than the sentimental and self-serving mush usually mustered on its behalf. It has little or nothing to do with Israel’s murky politics, its frequently malfunctioning democracy, its extraordinary restraint in the face of constant provocations from its seething circle of demented neighbors, its treatment of gays or Palestinians or women or ethnic minorities, or its maddening indulgence of the Socialist sophistries of its critics and casuistically captious friends at Harvard, the Atlantic, and the New Republic.
The prevailing muddle of sentimentality and pettifoggery only obscures the actual eminently practical case for supporting Israel, for as long as it may take, without apology or deceit or waffles, without deception or obsequious self-denial. It is the case for Israel as the leader of human civilization, technological progress, and scientific advance. It is the case for Israel as a military spearhead of the culture of freedom and faith – the bastion of American progress and prosperity, and beyond America, for the progress and prosperity of all the people of the planet. The reason America should continue to “prop up” Israel is that Israel itself is a crucial prop of American wealth, freedom, and power.
In a dangerous world, faced with an array of perils, the Israel test asks whether the world can suppress envy and recognize its dependence on the outstanding performance of relatively few men and women. The world does not subsist on zero-sum legal niceties. It subsists on hard and possibly reversible accomplishments in medicine, technology,