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Big Words, Old Dreams
 “Don’t use big words
for little matters,”  Unlike
most people, Johnson used big words with care and precision
as well as humor. But in this case he wasn’t talking about
polysyllables; he was reproaching casual exaggeration. It may cause more
trouble than outright lying.
In a televised interview this last week, Virginia’s Republican
senator, John Warner, spoke of “our vital interests” in the
Middle East, naming first among these the security of Israel. Talk about using
big words for little matters! Does this man listen to himself? You expect
loose talk from politicians, but there should be some limits.
A vital interest is one your survival may depend on; it is not the
same thing as an emotional preference. No matter how much you love the
Zionist state, it’s absurd to say it represents “our vital
interests.” The opposite is more nearly true. We are embroiled in
endless futile wars in the Middle East because our government supports
Israel — a state based entirely on what in this country would be
flagrantly illegal racial and religious discrimination — no matter what it
does. It’s hard to say which is the worst feature of American policy in
the Middle East, its shameless venality and hypocrisy or its sheer
irrationality. It would make some sense only if huge oil reserves were
discovered under Tel Aviv.
Possibly Warner meant by the phrase our vital interests
something like the survival of crooked politicians such as myself.
Yes, that might explain it!
Put it this way. Just when did creating a Jewish state in the Middle
East, antagonizing Arabs, Muslims and Christians alike, become a vital
American interest? Did anyone think we needed this before Harry Truman
recognized Israel in 1948? Did even Truman himself, who was probably bribed
to do it, have the gall to pretend it would actually help us?
Nothing in the writings of our Founding Fathers argues that the
United States should be a “superpower,” or have a global
empire, or send armies into Arabian deserts. Nor is there the faintest
suggestion that the president of the United States should be the most
powerful man in the world, or even in this country. How did we get to this
point?
![[Breaker quote for Big Words, Old Dreams: Which interests are "vital"?]](2007breakers/070717.gif) I
sometimes joke that the difference between Europe and America is this:
European heads of state speak good English. This is more than a swipe at our
president’s difficulty with language; I mean that if we can’t
master the language of Jefferson and Madison, we are fatally cut off from
our own past. That is also the point of my frequent observation that the U.S.
Constitution poses no serious threat to our form of government. Neither
President Bush nor Senator Warner seems able to measure his words; so
both are in the habit of using very big words for very small matters.
Modern government, and maybe most government at most times, is
more like dictatorship — some men forcing their will on others —
than like the harmony of a contented family, where the rules are taken for
granted and quarreling is the exception. Government, as someone has said, is
neither reason nor persuasion, but force. The mystery is why we still expect
good to come of it. Yet men who don’t believe in God easily believe in a
benevolent state, or even in the Iraq war, in blind defiance of history and
experience.
The original idea of the state of Israel was that a Jewish state
— not necessarily in the Middle East — would be self-sufficient,
not dependent on anyone else, certainly not a burden to the United States. It
would give the world’s Jews a “normal” nationality and
refuge from anti-Semitism. That was the dream. At the time it seemed
plausible, even inspiring, though a few prescient people had their doubts and
predicted ceaseless trouble.
But today we take for granted that Israel is this country’s
responsibility (politely called an ally rather than a client) and that its enemies
must be ours too. Politicians assume (though politeness also forbids them to
say) that American Jews owe their chief allegiance to the “Zionist
entity.” The old nightmare of “dual loyalty” has come to
seem quaint: dual? If only it were!
Joseph Sobran |
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| Copyright © 2007 by the
Griffin Internet Syndicate, a division of Griffin Communications This column may not be reprinted in print or Internet publications without express permission of Griffin Internet Syndicate 
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