Ask Me Anything—October 2024, Part 1

I answer questions about Israel and the Palestinians, the future of conservatism and the Democratic Party, and whether it's ever legitimate for the government encourage procreation

Neural network of the brain on a dark blue background. (Yuichiro Chino / Stock Photo / Getty Images)

I received so many good queries in response to my call earlier this week for questions from paying subscribers that I’ve decided to separate my answers into two groups. I’m publishing the first batch today. The second will run next Tuesday. (As always my AMA posts are open to all readers without a paywall.)

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Alice Jena
Why is the United Nations so prejudiced against Israel?

J Dalessandro
There is little or no support for the two-state solution in Israel today. Why don't our politicians and pundits start addressing this reality? Isn't the US public more realistic on this than they are?

To answer Alice Jena’s question first: There are a number of reasons why the UN tends to be hostile to Israel. First, Israel faces opposition in the Security Council because Israel is a close friend of the United States, and the Security Council is a power-politics body whose permanent members are great powers (circa 1945), and some of them view our interests as antithetical to theirs. In other words, our rivals on the world stage can make things more difficult for us by forcing us to stand alone in defense of our controversial friend.

Second, Israel faces opposition in the General Assembly because that body is a democracy including all the nations of the world, and a number of those nations (especially those that won their independence from Western powers after the end of the Second World War) view Israel as a settler-colonialist regime actively oppressing the indigenous Palestinians who became refugees when the Jewish state was founded 76 years ago.

Third, Israel faces opposition around the world because of the brutality of the actions it takes to defend itself against terrorism, Iran, and its proxies in the Middle East—and because of Israel’s policy of encouraging the settlement of the occupied West Bank by its citizens, many of whom believe in an ideology of Greater Israel that, if fulfilled, would lead to the outright annexation of these territories and either the imposition of permanent apartheid-style political powerlessness on the Palestinians or their forcible expulsion.

Note that I didn’t respond by saying Israel faces opposition around the world because of anti-Semitism that infects many people and countries, as well as the United Nations itself. There is some truth to such a claim, but I don’t think it’s a good idea to emphasize the observation because it lets Israel off the hook too easily for its actions in defense of itself. (They’ll hate us no matter what we do, so we should do whatever we want without regard for what they think.) I support some of those actions, I think others are needlessly cruel overreactions, and I consider the settlement policy in the West Bank to be utterly indefensible in either moral or strategic terms.

I also think the Israeli government foolishly neglects to make its case to the world in terms that might generate more support. Its attitude (and especially Benjamin Netanyahu’s attitude) too often seems to be: Our cause is righteous. And if you can’t see that with your own eyes, you can go to hell. Believing that all criticism is rooted in anti-Semitism can contribute to fostering such an outlook, and I don’t want to do anything to encourage it, because I think it’s horribly counter-productive and borderline delusional.

As for J Dalessandro’s question, I’m unsure what it would mean for “our politicians and pundits start addressing” the reality that “there is little or no support for the two-state solution in Israel today.” That’s because I think a lot of our politicians and pundits agree with the Israeli view. What I mean is this: There is little to no support for a two-state solution in Israel today because Israelis believe there is insufficient support among the Palestinians for a two-state solution on terms Israel can accept. A lot of American politicians and pundits agree with this Israeli assessment of Palestinian public opinion while continuing to think any eventual resolution of the conflict will have to involve the founding of an independent Palestinian state.

Is this assessment of Palestinian public opinion accurate? I don’t know. It might be. (It’s hard to gauge public opinion in a war zone and/or when elections are rarely held.) Should Israel be forced to adjust what it considers acceptable terms for a two-state solution? Since the main sticking point is the Palestinian demand for a right of return for those who fled in a war three quarters of a century ago and I don’t consider this a reasonable demand, I don’t think so. But that means I have little to offer by way of advice toward solving this most intractable and morally wrenching of problems.

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James Ackerman
Given that Trumpism has essentially thrown out historical American conservatism writ large at this point, what do you see as the future for actual, traditional, William F. Buckley or even Ronald Reagan-type conservatives? Clearly for the moment some are making cause with the Democrats, but even if the Dems moderate to the furthest extent they can it's still going to be a marriage of convenience.

Middle Aged Moderate
To piggyback on James Ackerman’s question, you’ve called for conservatives who are disgusted with the MAGA takeover of the Republican Party to become Democrats. Yet these same conservatives have some major differences with moderate Democrats (social issues such as abortion, transgender issues, etc.) and view the progressive left with as much disdain as they do the MAGA right. Why should these discontented conservatives become Democrats instead of independents? After all, if Trump loses, is it not possible the MAGA movement’s influence within the Republican Party will wane?

These questions are well-timed with my first-year seminar on conservatism at Penn this fall. Delving into the history of conservative thought has strengthened my conviction that what American Reaganite conservatives like to think of as “American conservatism writ large” is a historical contingency. Conservatism meant one set of commitments to John C. Calhoun in the decades prior to the Civil War. It meant different things for the wealthy industrialists of the Gilded Age. And for Henry Adams, HL Mencken, and the Southern Agrarians. And for Presidents Coolidge and Hoover. And for Charles Lindbergh and the members of the America First Committee during the 1930s. And for Robert Taft in the late 1940s and early ’50s.

The type of conservative ideology associated with William F. Buckley and Ronald Reagan—combining economic libertarianism, moral traditionalism, and militarily aggressive internationalism justified in morally idealistic terms—emerged at a specific time in the past and addressed itself to a specific constellation of problems confronting the country in the postwar decades, and especially during the 1970s: counterculture overreach; Great Society profligacy in spending and indiscipline in policy formation; double-digit unemployment, inflation, and interest rates; the oil shocks of 1973 and 1979; surging rates of violent crime; and national demoralization that followed from humiliating defeat in Vietnam.

Reaganism responded to these problems. Our problems are different. If anything, Reaganism dominated the GOP far longer than it should have. In failing to adjust to changing circumstances, the party became vulnerable to the populist insurgency that first emerged with Pat Buchanan’s primary challenge to George HW Bush in 1992, returned in the Tea Party movement during Barack Obama’s first term, and finally managed to depose Reaganism once the insurgents fell in line behind Donald Trump in 2016.

So no, I don’t think Reaganism as we came to know it in the decades following 1980 has a future in the Republican Party. That’s one reason why I’ve suggested the few Republican voters whose preferences remain fixed on that constellation of positions ought to migrate over to the Democratic Party and make their preferences felt there. They will never dominate the Democrats the way they dominated the GOP from 1980 to 2016. But their convictions can have an influence in helping to shape the orientation of the country’s center-left party. I think this would be good for that party and good for the country.

As Middle Aged Moderate suggests, the Reaganites could also just become independents, alternating their allegiance between the parties from election to election, depending on who and what the two major-party nominees stand for during future cycles. That could be fine, but I think it would also be a little unfortunate. I want the Democratic Party to resist the efforts of progressives to pull it toward the left, and I think those acts of resistance will be strengthened by an infusion of Reaganite conservatism from the center-right. But I’ll admit that such hopes are partly rooted in my own self-interest: I want it to become easier rather than harder for me to continue voting for Democrats.  

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Chris T.
Who wins on Nov. 5 and why?

How would I know? I’m not a soothsayer.

More seriously, I thought Trump was going to win when Joe Biden was the Democratic nominee, but Kamala Harris has evened things up quite well. If the polls are accurate, the race is pretty close to exactly tied at both the national level (where Trump will still enjoy some advantage in the Electoral College) and in the swing states. Nearly all of them are so close that the polls are within the margin of error. You can’t get tighter than that.

So, as I said: How would I know? And if I don’t know who will win, I obviously can’t offer an explanation of why the outcome turned out the way it … will?

Ask me again after Election Day. (Just kidding: You won’t have to; I’ll offer it up voluntarily.)

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Seth R. Yaffo
Do you think the fact that the party associated with higher taxation of higher earners has steadily gained higher levels of support from those earners represents moral progress?

Not really. I don’t consider taxation a form of theft (as some libertarians maintain), but neither do I consider a person’s willingness to pay (a higher share of) taxes a moral act. I suspect a fair number of these well-off Democrats don’t especially like paying a significant share of their income to the government. They just don’t dislike it enough for them to begin voting for the Republican Party when it stands for several dozen things they dislike more. I consider that a reasonable act of assessing one’s own self-interest, not a noble act of self-sacrifice for the public good.

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James PdB
Say Trump wins and actually initiates many of the unconstitutional actions he has announced, what would you recommend “constitutionalists” do? Antifa types will be tempted to do things that will just cement his power with the law-abiding center. But if he is really defying the Constitution, what is a small-d democrat to do?

I’d need to hear more about what you mean. Trump has proposed some bad things. But which of them are unconstitutional? Firing tens of thousands of career civil servants and replacing them with lackeys is really bad, but it’s not unconstitutional. If the courts try to block him and he attempts to push forward anyway, that might be unconstitutional. But he’s not promising to do that.

Likewise with his promise to deport millions of undocumented immigrants. That sounds like it would be an enormously expensive logistical and moral disaster. But it wouldn’t be unconstitutional. The Clinton administration deported more than 12 million people, the Bush administration deported more than 10 million, and the Obama administration deported more than 5 million. Unless the courts try to block the effort and Trump orders ICE to continue with the policy despite the injunction, the Constitution won’t have anything to do with it.

This even holds for my own nightmare scenario of widespread protests breaking out in opposition to the policy and Trump invoking the Insurrection Act to send in the troops to restore order, which is then followed by more protests, which is then followed by more widespread deployment of troops and the de facto imposition of martial law in several American cities. That would be very bad and extremely dangerous for the future of American democracy. But the Insurrection Act is valid federal law, and it gives the president the power to do exactly what I just described. Which means all of the above could happen without the events triggering a constitutional crisis. That’s especially true if Republicans control Congress and react with passivity to Trump’s actions under the Insurrection Act.

Now, if Trump does explicitly violate the Constitution, and especially if the system’s mechanisms for reining in such acts are failing to restrain him, then taking to the streets may well become necessary. Though I would very strongly urge protesters to keep their heads and obey the law. As James PdB acknowledges in his question, going the Antifa route of acting out in violence would almost certainly prove counter-productive by increasing support for Trump’s acts of defiance of the rule of law in the name of restoring order. (“Law and order” don’t always go together.)   

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Will
How do you see ongoing “class dealignment” playing out over the next decade or two? Do you think it is possible for Democrats to win back working-class voters? It seems the Democrats could be in trouble in high turnout elections if they primarily appeal to people with four-year college degrees (about a third of electorate).

I worry a lot about Democrats continuing on their present path of aiming their pitch toward the professional-managerial class of highly educated people living in cities and their inner-ring suburbs. The party combines that upper-middle-class support with a still-strong appeal to minority groups, especially black and Hispanic voters, though there has been some erosion of that support, as education has gained strength as a variable determining party affiliation.

This shift of working-class voters away from the center-left and toward the right, as highly educated urban and suburban voters take their place, is happening in countries across the West, leading to declining overall support for Social Democratic and Green parties and increasing strength for parties of the center-right and populist right.  

Turning back to the U.S., Democrats remain as highly competitive as they do, especially at the presidential level, because while Trump has been a powerful catalyst for this shift, he is also so personally unappealing to so many voters that the net effect has been more muted than it probably would be otherwise. That’s why, once Trump has died or retired from politics, I think we’re likely to see the following scenario unfold: A right-populist candidate who’s less “Trumpy” ignites somewhat less fervent enthusiasm and devotion from the Republican base during the primaries but nonetheless wins the nomination; then this candidate becomes a much more formidable opponent for Democrats in the general election than Trump ever proved to be.

Once something like this happens, Democrats will be forced to do a lot of rethinking as they try to figure out how they can reverse the transformation of their party into a vehicle for the economic interests and cultural sensibilities of the highly educated urban and suburban professional-managerial class.

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John Murphy
In your view, is it ever appropriate for the state to regulate consensual adult sexual activity to achieve outcomes like family formation and above-replacement fertility or should it consider all such behavior private and adopt an attitude of strict non-judgmentalism?

I don’t know anyone outside of certain dark corners of the religious far right who thinks the government should “regulate consensual sexual activity” for any purpose. How would that even work?

But if we change one word from your question—“regulate”—to another—“incentivize”—then things get interesting. Do I think it’s ever appropriate for the state to incentivize consensual adult sexual activity to achieve outcomes like family formation and procreation? Sure, why not? I’m not now and have never been a libertarian who thinks the government must do nothing whatsoever to encourage or discourage any kind of citizen behavior. If certain kinds of decisions, when multiplied across tens of millions of individuals, will increase the flourishing of the political community as a whole, and the government can think of ways of incentivizing such decisions, especially if it falls short of outright criminalization of activity, then it should do so.

I don’t go as far as JD Vance in thinking people who don’t procreate are somehow defective citizens because they have an insufficient stake in the body politic. But I do think it will become increasingly difficult to maintain liberal democratic politics in a context marked by long-term declining fertility, declining population, and accompanying declines in economic growth, standards of living, and tax revenues to pay for social services for a rapidly aging population. That is a recipe for national (and probably civilizational, and possibly global) existential pessimism, along with the kinds of (illiberal) politics that tend to follow from a lack of hope for the future.

The one region of the world where declining fertility has yet to make much of an impact is Sub-Saharan Africa. This will lead some to suggest we can use immigration from those countries to avoid the outcomes I listed above. But of course, sharply increasing immigration (especially of people perceived as significantly different than “us”) tends to empower anti-immigration parties of the populist right, which may well make this just another way of reaching the same politically unpalatable place.  

I consider all of this a pretty good reason for the government to do what it can to forestall such an outcome by adopting pro-natalist policies. That doesn’t mean such efforts will work. Hungary has gone pretty far down this road while, so far, reaping modest to negligible benefits. But it’s better to try than to do nothing at all.

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Part 2 of this post will appear next week—including questions about my views of capital punishment, the Electoral College, and whether I’m concerned about a crackdown on free speech from the left.