Capitol Ideas / The Blindfolded Synagogue

...Zionist organizations...

...The Queen Bee feels entitled to use force and coercion to attain its ends only so long as it is reassured that its workers (the progressive forces all over the world) continue to believe in the system and to toil laboriously to deflect all criticism of it...

...In The American Spectator's 20th Anniversary issue, twenty-eight eminent commentators discussed "the single most astonishing development of the last twenty years...

...George Gilder is now telling us, in a different context, that geography is not destiny...

...By the same token the protracted conflict between Communism and Liberty, often visualized as though it were embodied in two antagonistic territories, is in reality a war of ideas in which national borders serve merely to confuse the real issues...

...They are Plato, Aristotle, and Marcus Aurelius...three of the wisest, wittiest, most stimulating minds that ever lived...

...The protest, he said, was "a bid to poison the atmosphere of the upcoming negotiations by U.S...

...Emphasizing them merely leads to more absurd arms control charades which play into Soviet hands by allowing the Soviets to masquerade as our "partners" in the search for peace...

...Likewise, Moscow is dependent on the spiritual and ideological support of its progressive worker-bees—the Hive...

...Just like us...

...They're carefully printed on expensive paper stock...

...And, at any time, you may cancel your membership, without penalty or hurt feelings...

...As Gorbachev flew to Washington, stridently anti-American articles were published by Tass, denouncing "raging anti-Semitism" in this country...

...Don't send any money now...

...They're hardbound in matched wheat-colored buckram, worked and stamped in the colors of crimson, black and gold...

...You never have to buy any of these books...

...How misguided we have been to wage cold war against such innocents all these years...

...Soviet rulers are perpetually and justly filled with doubts as to their own legitimacy...

...And of course what was of particular interest was the huge Jewish demonstration on the Mall, on behalf of Soviet Jews denied the right to leave the Soviet prison camp...

...Mail coupon to The Classics Club, Roslyn, New York 11576...

...T he problem is that so many of us, 1 out of habit, still think in World War II terms ("there's no such thing as a good German," and so on...

...Greeks clambering aboard the Trojan Horse before it was dragged into the unsuspecting city of Troy might well have offered analogous reassurances, although I suspect that the Soviets are THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR FEBRUARY 1988 9 far from unsuspecting when they gaze out on the Jewish throngs...

...To force you to buy a classic would be barbaric...

...And indeed we are now beginning to see ancillary protests on behalf of Ukrainians, Latvians, Lithuanians, and so on...

...This treaty, which now seems so unwise, indeed perilous, was approved by the U.S...

...The selections themselves are remarkable values...

...Senate less than ten weeks after it was signed with only two dissenting votes...

...In the event, over 200,000 gathered on the Mall in 1987, some coming from as far away as Alaska...

...All along it has been faith that kept Communism going...

...But I think everyone realizes that no one is allowed to leave the country without special perby Tom Bethell mission, and that drawing attention to the plight of Soviet Jews does simultaneously draw attention to the plight of all...

...No wonder that the Zionist gathering got the blessing of the White House...

...He suggests here that "Israel"--meaning not the country, which of course did not then exist, but the Jews considered as a whole—have a "mysterious historic mission," which he contrasts with the mission of Christianity: "Whereas the Church is assigned the task of the supernatural and supratemporal saving of the world, to Israel is assigned, in the order of temporal history . . . the work of the earthly leavening of the world...

...to protest Gorbachev's visit...

...I sensed this strongly myself one day in 1986 when I stood inside the very Kremlin walls—at the Focus of Evil...

...If this trend continues, as it gives every evidence of doing, then it bodes ill for the Evil Empire...

...Of course they do...

...Many of them teach at universities and preach in newspapers...

...Turn back the pages to the U.S.-Soviet summit in Moscow in 1972...

...the works of Shakespeare...

...It is another thing entirely for the world to be reminded of it by endless reproachful demonstrations...

...That's why they have a steel fence around the country—to stop such people from running away...

...By contrast," Mintz added, "a smaller New York-based Jewish group, which believes the mainstream groups are sellouts, is planning a sit-in near the Soviet Embassy on 16th Street N.W...

...But they also want the liberty that their government denies them...

...Tom Bethell is The American Spectator's Washington correspondent...

...Omar Khayyam's Rubaiyat...

...They still live...in the Five Great Dialogues of Plato, the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, and Aristotle's On Man in the Universe...

...These are World War II categories...

...Israel, Maritain boldly added, "is charged with activating the history of the world...

...We know what charmers these three wise men are...

...Then there were no Jewish demonstrations, or none large enough to attract much attention...

...We'll send you the first three selections, Plato, Aristotle and Marcus Aurelius — all three for only $1.00 plus shipping...

...These Jewish demonstrations are dangerous to the Soviet system because they will inevitably shape public opinion about that system...

...Despite the many absurdities of the recent summit, engendered primarily by President Reagan's eagerness to win liberal approval (apparently he believes that the liberals write the history books, a mistake also made by President Carter), there has already beenquite a change in public perception of the Soviets...

...Beware of coalitions, I always say...

...The Soviets themselves do see thesedemonstrations as anti-Soviet...

...Nowthe protests, the hope-filled demonstrations, the Hebrew songs, the yarmulkes and prayer shawls threaten to delegitimize the whole socialist enterprise...

...It is one thing to know this in one's mind...

...0 rganizers say their protest will not have an angry or anti-Soviet tone, but a respectful one, in the hope of getting tangible results on the issue of Jewish emigration," John Mintz wrote in the Washington Post three weeks before the demonstration...

...And it is the Hive that the anti-Soviet Jewish mobilization now threatens...

...All three books (regularly $34.35) can be yours for only $1.00 as your introduction to the Classics Club...

...merely as trying to help their fellow Jews...

...They came together on the Ellipse and marched to the Mall, throngs of people with but one thought," according to the Washington Post, "captured in hundreds of signs that carried the historic appeal of Moses to the Pharaoh: 'Let my people go.' The message may have been somber, but the tone was joyful on a blustery day filled with Hebrew songs, the warmth of a family celebration, and above all, hope...

...On May 26, 1972, Richard Nixon signed the SALT and ABM treaties in Moscow, thereby inaugurating the peculiar period we are still in, when Americans agreed to feel more secure by promising not to defend themselves against Soviet missiles...

...I found myself thinking about these weighty matters at the time of Mikhail Gorbachev's extravagantly praised visit to Washington...

...What has really sustained the Soviet system over the last seventy years has been the knowledge that out there, beyond the Kremlin, beyond the Iron Curtain, there has been this powerful ideological support group in the West: the Progressive Forces, the true believers, be they liberal or socialist, who stand in the same relationship to the Kremlin as worker bees do to the queen bee of a hive...

...Evidently the Jews have now decided, at some invisible level of collective unconscious, that the world has had enough already of Communism, and that it is time to swing the searchlight of publicity onto the single most repressive feature of the Soviet system: the fact that the country is nothing more than an enlarged prison camp from which no one may escape without the permission of the privileged prison-guard class of Party officials...

...Like the leftist demonstrations in Washington which span the liberal-to-Communist spectrum, the Jewish rally was a coalilion of groups...

...Taking advantage of this confusion, some Communist-sympathizing media propagandists love nothing better than to show us "ordinary Russians" who 10 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR FEBRUARY 1988 are supposedly newsworthy because they "want peace just as much as we do...

...At the time of the summit NBC's "Today" show broadcast some disingenuous footage of ingenuous Nashville housewives who had been admitted to the Soviet Union and were shown on camera meeting their peace-loving counterpart Soviet housewives...

...I realize that these events are represented more specifically as demonstrations against the denial of emigration rights to Soviet Jews...

...The Classics Club is quite unlike any other book club...

...She is completely dependent on the support of the hive...

...The Jews for the most part do not wish to be perceived as threatening to the Soviet Union, and if we can accept the metaphor of the Blindfolded Synagogue groping its way through history, we can easily imagine that many, perhaps most of those who participate in these demonstrations do not see themselves as threatening to anyone...

...and the USSR are irrelevant, indeed anachronistic...

...Although a number of prominent Jewish intellectuals were included in the symposium, no one mentioned what I believe may well have been the most remarkable development in this period: the ever-increasing Jewish mobilization against the Soviet police state—a development wholly confined to the last twenty years but of particular significance in the last ten...

...A Washington correspondent for Tass said that the "aim of Sunday's action [the demonstration] is to try to smear, in the eyes of Americans, the Soviet Union and its government, to try to stop the positive changes in the attitude of U.S...

...showing that they have already conceded in principle to the Jewish demonstrators...

...And of course there are even more Russians who are on the side of Liberty...

...Just fill in the coupon below, now, while you're thinking about it and while the invitation still stands...

...that nation-states are passe...

...Benjamin Franklin's Autobiography...

...In mid-November its organizers promised that it would be the biggest gathering ever of Jewish protesters in Washington, easily surpassing the 12,000 who assembled in Washington for the June 1973 visit of Leonid Brezhnev...

...Interesting, you see, that the Soviets even in Tass feel obliged to pose as the true friends of the Jews...

...Basically they believe that credentialed people should have the right to give orders to ordinary people...

...The point is that when considering "the Soviet system," it is a great mistake to think of it as confined simply to a country, to a geographical area—something that exists within the Iron Curtain...

...and other fresh, spontaneous, even outspoken works that stretch your mind and sweep away the mental cobwebs that hold back most men...

...plenty of people who, without ever having joined the Communist Party, are in practice on the Communist side...

...We do in fact have in the U.S...

...The "communion of earthly hope," it "stimulates the movement of history...

...We'll bill you later...

...As a member, take only those books you really want to own...

...So wrote Jacques Maritain in the early 1940s, in a long essay entitled "The Mystery of Israel" (reprinted in Ransoming the Time, a Maritain collection...

...The issue of human rights in the Soviet Union was not raised at the summit...

...We are misled by those ubiquitous charts showing that they have twice as many tanks as we do, twice the number of ground troops, or whatever...

...We're betting that you'll be so taken by them that you'll want to stay in the Club and meet some of their friends, including the greatest story tellers, philosophers, poets, and historians the world has ever known...

...THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR FEBRUARY 1988 11...

...Do you have room in your home for three wise men...

...Gorbachev of course would be unlikely to make any such wholesale concession (and would be weakened if he did), but if hewere to do so he would I am sure instantly find himself hemmed in by even larger demonstrations, both at home and abroad, Hebrew-singing and yarmulke-capped, with prayer shawls aplenty, on behalf of others still held captive, and at that point one senses the dream of New Soviet Man and the Vision of a New Society would have all but run their course...

...But there were anti-American protests...

...That is why they (and their Hive supporters) love summits...

...Maritain compares Israel to "some foreign substance, like a living yeast mixed into the main body," which "gives the world no quiet...

...Interested...

...We still tend to think of "the enemy" as someone who can be located geographically...

...Most of those who participated in the Washington demonstration probably really do think they would be content if only Gorbachev were to turn reasonable and grant exit visas to those who have applied for them...

...Instead, it offers its members a chance to stay young through great books that will never grow old...

...It prevents the world from sleeping, it teaches the world to be dissatisfied and restless so long as it has not God...

...public opinion to the USSR which are taking place now, and which are expected to increase...

...I don't believe the Soviet army is any real threat to Western Europe, any more than I believe the Soviets are about to launch a World War II-style blitzkrieg...

...The Los Angeles Times did, however...

...Soviet soldiers are slaves, remember, and many of them would no doubt construe an order to move westward as an opportunity to escape...

...By contrast the pending INF treaty is small potatoes, yet it will be controversial...

...And through direct-to-the-public distribution, we are able to offer to our members these deluxe editions for only $11.45 each, plus shipping...

...From the point of view of continued Soviet stability, all this is highly dangerous...

...Apparently subordinating news to detente, the New York Times did not publish these comments...

...These books include Utopia by Thomas More...

...Walden by Thoreau...

...The Club doesn't offer best sellers that come and go...

...The queen bee cannot survive alone...

...Because geography is no longer important (but ideas are more so than ever) it also strikes me that all these comparisons of conventional forces between the U.S...