``Just in the last week, I've gone back to my shelf of books. I've been reading Steven B. Smith's work on Leo Strauss and shaking my head at the idea that Jewish identity involves a particular providence that is at odds with Enlightenment ideals of citizenship...'' Phillip Weiss
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Oh boy. I've got two shelves of books you should read where you will discover that independent of any Jewish question, the whole neoconservative movement has a providence that is at extreme odds with Enlightenment ideals of citizenship. What links them with a Jewish identity, isn't the Jewishness of it, but the whole question of identity and state.
In a quick sketch, it is a fundamental democratic mistake to link one's identity with the state, because we live in a multicultural, multilingual country, with diverse religious practices and beliefs.
Historically we have discovered one of the consequences of adopting Enlightenment ideas of citizenship is we have to abandon the primacy of any sort of tribal identity---as a our political expression. This is the abstract way of saying we are living in a zoo.
It is no mistake that the religious right where an Evangelical Christian identity dominates it's politics, finds comradeship with the neoconservatives in a hauntingly parallel way that Leo Strauss and Carl Schmitt found themselves temporary bedfellows in the late 20s and early 30s.
CG